The Final Outbreak: An Apocalyptic Thriller

by ML Banner

  Chen was ready to tell Spillman it was over, when he left a message that he had a meeting at four, but could they meet in a new room at five instead?

  The last thing she was going to do was participate in his sloppy seconds. She recalled all the times he had been conveniently unavailable over this past month. That’s when she got real angry and decided to get even. She figured the best gotcha would be to show him what he would be giving up by sleeping around. She knew neither Lana nor any other woman could give him what she did. She worked at it. She couldn’t wait to see his face. Just a few minutes more.

  The new room—he was always changing rooms around—was a luxury suite on deck 8 that wasn’t going to be used until the Canaries, when several maintenance crew were being added to help with some of the systems that hadn’t been fixed yet while the ship was in dry-dock. That’s what he told her.

  Robert said he changed the location because he could no longer hide their meeting at the cabin they had been recently using on deck 2. Something about the ship’s maintenance fixing everything and he could no longer disable the cameras. And that meant they might be caught if they didn’t switch their meet locations. In his position as a first officer, he said, they couldn’t be caught, or it would mean his job.

  For this meeting, he told her that he had found a cabin which was just outside the view of all but one camera, and he would take care of that one. Robert gave explicit instructions to wait until right at 17:00 and then to ascend the outside forward crew stairwell and exit port side on deck 8, to cabin 8504.

  She couldn’t care less where it was. She knew he was interested in only one thing, and so was she. Before finding out about his infidelity, she had been happy to give him what he wanted because he promised her a life in America after this cruise was over. So she’d played the part of the demure geisha, even though she was Chinese, offering sexual favors in whatever form he desired. Then when they were married and she had her citizenship, she could do whatever she wanted. Even at the time, she knew he was using her, so she didn’t think it was wrong to be using him too. But that had all changed now. She’d find another officer after him.

  She tilted her watch—a gift from him—and saw it was time. She bounded up the crew stairwell, the hem of her kimono clutched tightly in both hands and held close to her body to shield her private parts from anyone who might walk underneath. No one was going to get a free show, least of all Spillman.

  The stairwell lights blinked twice and then she was covered in darkness. She felt hot and had started to panic when the lights flashed again and remained on, but considerably dimmer than before. She continued up the stairs.

  At the entrance to the hallway, she felt light-headed. Maybe she was coming down with a cold. She held her fingers to her forehead to see if she was running a fever. She was warmer than normal, but that was probably because of the kimono. Perspiration streamed down her neck and the small of her back, so she loosened the heavy garment to let in some air. She hated the damned thing, and him more.

  The hallway had a murky feel from the orange glow of the backup emergency lights. The power must be out, probably part of Robert’s plan. She marched forward, wanting this to be finished as quickly as possible.

  When she found the cabin, it was as if something inside her snapped. The door was supposed to have been propped open by a room attendant, but it wasn’t. Spillman had given her someone else's key-card, but he said it should be used only as a last resort. He didn’t want evidence of her being there and so he’d have the door propped open. As she pulled out the stolen card, her anger completely overwhelmed her reason and she imagined slicing his face up with it.

  She thrust the card into the door and yanked it out after a green light told her it was unlocked. She shoved the door open with a crash, her anger pouring out.

  None of the lights were on. Nothing happened when she flipped on the light switch. This angered her more. Only the hallway light provided illumination enough to see partially into the room.

  She jumped, startled by someone on the farther of the twin beds. He sounded like he was eating, but in a crazed sort of last-meal-like way. The small figure had his back to her and he was near the corner of the room, where the meager hallway light couldn’t penetrate. He seemed oblivious to her.

  At first, she was angry at Robert for screwing this up and sending her to the wrong room. She was going to apologize, but then felt the urge to take her aggression out on this person for being in her room.

  She let go of the door, and simultaneously flipped on the light switch, already forgetting that she had tried this before and the power was out.

  The door flopped closed loudly, its frame shuddering. With the hallway light cut off, the room fell back into complete blackness.

  Behind the closed cabin door, a muffled high-pitched scream leaked out, and was immediately consumed by the carpet before it had a chance of being heard.

  26

  Robert Spillman

  Robert Spillman’s career problems were mounting, and to protect himself, he’d have to put the whole ship in jeopardy.

  Captain Christiansen and Staff Captain Haddock were already suspicious of his disappearing one too many times. Then the damned maintenance guys fixed the cameras in such a way that he couldn’t disable just the one camera. And then, to add insult to injury, he found out that the one area on deck 8 that he thought was a hole in their camera system wasn’t a hole anymore, as the maintenance men also swapped out the nonfunctioning camera #387. Once again they had eyes on every corner of every hallway on the ship. And Chen Lee was going to be walking by 387 and into the cabin he had set aside for them in less than two minutes. A cabin that was supposed to be empty. He had to do something quick or they’d be caught.

  Shift change wasn’t for another two hours and now he only had one minute ten seconds, if she followed his instructions. Desperation was setting in, and so was his longing for her body; hers was far firmer than Lana’s. He did the only thing he could think of: shut down a portion of the ship’s power, and most of the cameras.

  Oh shit! I’m going to Hell for this, he thought and then he pulled the lever.

  The lights went out, and he waited for the emergencies to flash on. Then he shot out of the confines of environmental and dashed out and around to the entrance to the monitoring room, where he met Fish at the door.

  “Fish, go check the breakers. I’ll hold up here and check with the bridge,” Spillman commanded, holding up his radio.

  “Yes, sir,” Fish said and dashed out of the room, heading down the path Spillman had just come from.

  Robert smiled at his ruse. But he only had thirty seconds at the most. He reached underneath the work table and opened a panel revealing all the circuit boards. Next, he pulled out a folded piece of tin foil, unfolded it, and pressed it against the back of the main circuit board, which he knew controlled all the cameras. From what he understood, this would work. He’d been waiting to try this trick, but only when it was necessary, or when he was desperate. Like he was now.

  He left the panel open and then stood up, waiting for the power to come back on. He had flipped a switch that only controlled two decks and shouldn’t affect any of the other areas of the ship. At least that was what he remembered from his research.

  If this didn’t work, he was pretty sure he’d find a way out of this mess, just like he’d always done in the past. Even when he was fired from his department for watching porn videos in his patrol car, he worked his magic by having a friend change his employment record and remove the reason for his termination. That gave him the freedom to tell his next employer it was mutual. Most prospective employers wouldn’t dig further. Certainly, Regal European didn’t.

  The bright overheads flashed back on and the emergency lights darkened. Almost immediately, the monitors flashed on. At the keyboard, he toggled to camera #387 and saw Chen walking to their meeting place. She was wearing the kimono he adored.

  Then all the monitors flashed again and went
dark. There were sparking noises inside the panel and the smell of something burning.

  Quickly, Robert reached back into the panel to grab his foil, but it had melted to the circuit board, which was melting too. Oops. Better think quick.

  He grabbed his walkie and hollered into it, “Attention, this is Security Chief Spillman. I need at least two security personnel to appear at the monitor station, on the double.”

  Just then Fish strolled in and said, “Sir, someone had flipped off the master power lever. I flipped it back...” He wrinkled his nose. “What’s burning, sir?” he asked, but his superior didn’t reply.

  Three security guards arrived at the door and Spillman let them in.

  “Okay, Fish, admit what you did and we'll go easy on you,” Spillman demanded.

  Fish shot him a confused glance. “Sir, what do you mean?”

  “Don’t play games with me. This is your last chance.”

  Fish swung around to see the guards come up behind him. That’s when he got nervous. “Sir, I really don’t know what you are talking about. But I assure you, whatever it is, I didn't do it.” He thought maybe he was about to be busted for his card games with Deep and the other crew.

  “So you didn’t flip the master switch off and then pretend to switch it back on—”

  “—what? Wait, you just asked me to check it out.”

  “And the whole time, you set up the monitors to crash? Why? Who’s paying you to do this?”

  The guards grabbed his arms to restrain him.

  “What are you talking about? You saw I was here... Wait, you’re trying to pin something on me, aren’t you? What did I ever do to you?”

  “Take him to the brig. We’ll let Captain Christiansen sort this out.

  “You,” Spillman said to one of the guards. “You stay here. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

  Spillman bounded out the monitor station’s door and into the hall, where several other crew members had assembled and were nervously talking to each other.

  “Go about your business!” he yelled at them, barely slowing.

  He charged out a crew exit, turned two hallway corners and found himself in front of the cabin in less than a minute. He pulled out his keycard and opened the door to the cabin.

  It was pitch dark; this time not even a flickering candle waited for him.

  “Chen Lee, are you here?”

  He flipped the switch and it didn’t work. A scary thought flashed across his mind: what if his efforts caused power to go out in more than one area? The lights should have been on; only the cameras should have been disabled.

  A crazed scream curdled his blood. It came from the back of the room and it was rushing in his direction.

  He had pulled out his phone to engage the flashlight app on it. He flicked it on and caught a flash before he felt his eye explode.

  27

  The Bridge

  “Bring us around to a heading of two-zero-nine point five. We’re going to go straight into the wave at full speed,” the captain announced.

  “Can’t we outrun it?” pleaded First Security Officer Wasano Agarwal, voice fluttering. He bit his lip before it quivered to hide his fear from the others. Even if he wasn’t the most junior officer on the bridge, he would have been forgiven. The others were just as frightened. They merely hid it better.

  “Afraid not,” Jessica cut in. “It’s traveling at over four hundred knots, and of course, our top speed is only twenty-five. And even if we could travel faster, there’s no place to hide. No, we have to go directly into it.”

  She tapped away at her keyboard and then a window popped up on all of their display screens. Inside each of their pop-up windows were three numbers telling them all they needed to know at a glance: the wave’s current height, now 29.58 M; the speed, 418.61 K; and finally the time to impact, 00:09:47:53. All three numbers fluctuated rapidly. The first two kept increasing. The last and largest number ticked down much too quickly for the crew’s comfort.

  Jean Pierre hung up one of the multiple phones on a wall at the back of the bridge, and then padded over to the captain while examining his tablet. “Engineering is preparing to give us full power on all engines so that we can slice through this bad dude. Also, the shipwide announcement has gone out and is being repeated every two minutes.”

  Wasano added, “I’m already getting reports from my security officers.” His voice grew stronger, more resolute as he too stared at his tablet. “Passengers are proceeding to their rooms in an orderly fashion. There’s at least one security posted at each stairwell on each deck to help whoever needs it.”

  Jean Pierre nodded to Wasano and then added, “Hotel captain reports that they’ve started the process of storing away glassware and other breakables. But he said there’s not enough time to secure everything. There will be damage.”

  Urban Patel, the deck officer, added, “And shipwide, the crew are taping up windows and binding tables and chairs to limit damage and potential injury.”

  “I hope these are our biggest concerns,” said the captain, voicing what they were all thinking. He scanned the bridge area. “And where the hell is Spillman?” he yelled at Wasano.

  “He’s still missing, sir. My men were looking for him before the tsunami alert sounded.”

  “Captain?” Jessica hollered, sounding very alarmed.

  All eyes turned toward Jessica.

  At first it wasn’t immediately obvious to any of them since there was little lighting on the bridge. This enabled them unhampered views of their screens and everything beyond the bridge windows. The black screens should have been the biggest clues, followed by the absence of the muted illumination from the recessed lights.

  The crew understood the problem at the same time... their electric power was out.

  “Where’s my power?” yelled the captain.

  Jean Pierre had one of the ship’s phones at his ear almost immediately. “You too? Merde! Call us as soon as you do.

  “Sir,” he hollered from the back of the bridge, “engineering reports loss of power as well. They have comms, with no controls. Chief Engineer Ivan Pavlychko has already given the order to set up for manual. That way, we’ll have manual controls if computers remain offline, to steer through the tsunami. They’ll report to us as soon as they’re done.

  “He also reported that the stabilizers will be stuck on until we get our power back. We may not have all the speed we need.” Jean Pierre was stating the obvious to the captain as he glanced at the screen for the current speed, but it was still dead. Only seconds ago, they were doing just over fifteen knots. It felt like they were going faster, but still much too slow. If they didn’t get more speed, the giant wave could capsize them.

  The lights flashed once, and the crew held their collective breaths.

  Then they flashed again, but remained on.

  “That’s emergency power, but we still have a shipwide outage,” Jessica announced. More stating the obvious, but that was the protocol. Cold comfort, if any.

  The windows in their screens appeared to be resetting, indicating their computers were rebooting, which meant they might regain helm controls. Each screen finally updated its numbers: 33.87 M, 423.18 K, 00:05:56:21

  Jean Pierre wasn’t a praying man, but at that moment he looked up to the sky he couldn’t see and said a quick prayer for his ship, her crew, and her passengers. They would need some divine intervention if they were to make it through this one alive.

  28

  Ted & TJ

  “Here it is.” TJ’s disembodied voice poured out of the dark opening in the elevator’s ceiling above him. A few seconds later, a grunt and scraping sounds preceded a ladder unrolling from the hole, reaching its end a foot from the floor.

  “Great find,” Ted stated earnestly, as he quickly planted both feet and then his hands, carefully moving up two rungs at a time. “This looks pretty heavy-duty, like it might even hold me. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t, but I guessed they must have
something up here, for emergencies.” She smiled at him when he popped his head through the opening. “And it’s an easy ladder up half a deck to 6.”

  “What do you suppose happens if the power comes back on?” Ted mumbled.

  “I guess we’ll be able to better see the elevator when it runs over us, then.”

  “Ha-ha. Not funny,” Ted deadpanned.

  The emergency lights inside the elevator shaft flickered, and the elevator under their feet shuddered, moved—and then stopped.

  Then the lights flicked back on.

  They exhaled and shot forward, scurrying up the ladder’s rungs and into the recessed safety of the deck 6 doors before the elevator moved again. An easy release on the inside gave them their exit—Ted thought they were going to have to find an ax or something else to pry open the doors, like in the movies.

  The alarm horns blared twice again, followed by the message about heading back to their rooms.

  “What I don’t understand is if their engines are running, and they provide the power needs of the ship, how can the power go out?” TJ asked.

  “I was wondering the same thing too. How much time do we have?”

  TJ glanced at her watch, her face instantly twisting in a grimace, before she glanced up at Ted. “Um, less than five minutes. Let’s run.”

  ~~~

  Hugo from Philippines dashed up to the first refrigerator in the hallway and tugged on the handle, making sure it was properly sealed and didn’t budge. It was secure.

  He jogged to the next. This one held the spirits, wine, and beer. As he stopped in front of the huge door, one foot slid on a piece of paper. Realizing he was going to go down, he reached for the only solid surface available to stop his momentum: the door-latch handle. Immediately the door clicked and slid with his forward motion, opening the vast space before he and the door finally came to rest. His heart raced at his nearly catastrophic fall, which probably would have resulted in his breaking a bone and losing his contract, had he not been able to grab something. He let go of the latch and lay on the floor to collect himself.