Dead Calm (28 page)

For this final part of their gruesome feast, the
engine compartment was filled with the sounds of teeth scraping on
bone.

Since then, none of the dead had eaten, but they
still moved about with a purpose, to find something to feed on.

Dressed in gray coveralls, one of the crew stumbled
down the stairs of a catwalk. As it neared the main deck, it slowly
sank into the water that had been building up in the engine room
over the past few days. With the hatches sealed, the water had
nowhere to go as the compartment filled. Reaching the floor, the
creature started wading through chest deep water. If the dead thing
had been able to make a comparison, it would have realized that the
water had only been knee deep the day before and ankle deep the day
before that.

Not noticing anything, the zombie crewman continued
to slog through the water as if it wasn't there.

***

Later that night, Reverend Ricky dismissed his
informant with a flick of his hand and the warning, “The next time
I summon you, I want you to come immediately, and I don't care if
you're eating, shitting, or playing with yourself. Lead the one
named Randy to where I told you to or the consequences will be
painful. Tomorrow morning, be there.”

Once his snitch was gone, Ricky looked at the dials
and gauges set into the consoles lining the back bulkhead of the
bridge. For a moment his eyes rested on the bank of switches
controlling the watertight doors before moving on. Shaking his head
at the undecipherable readings on the rest of the dials, he was
content that he knew enough to take care of business when the time
came. He could let his dead go at anytime, anywhere. Turning to go
back to his cabin and the two young girls waiting there for him, he
didn't notice a row of solid red lights with labels under them that
read: FLOOD WARNING; Deck One, and, FLOOD WARNING; Engine Room.

Chapter Fifteen

Russellville, Arkansas/Clarksville, Arkansas:

Major Jedidiah Cage glared through the window of his
office at the farmhouse where Doctor Lyonel Hawkins kept his
research facility.

Months wasted, Cage raged to himself. All this time
and not a damn thing had been accomplished. Those idiots have been
screwing around trying to find the source of the disease when all
they had to do was ask me. I was at the hospital where this
nightmare started. Just from talking to the doctors and the nurses,
I found out what was going on and how the HWNW virus got
started.

Cage steamed as he recalled the meeting he'd just
left.

Hours earlier, he’d been summoned from his office by
Doctor Hawkins. The Doctor informed him that he had an announcement
to make regarding some big advances that he and his team had made.
When Cage arrived at the farmhouse he found that, besides all the
officers who worked at the base, the doctor had also invited a
reporter from the Army Press and someone to tape the meeting so it
could be replayed over the few radio stations up and running in the
Dead Free Zones.

Cage was interested in what Doctor Hawkins had to say
but scoffed at the “Press” that attended. The Army rag was nothing
more than a propaganda sheet that was barely suitable as toilet
paper, and the last he’d heard there was only a total of five radio
stations across the country up and running. Not even enough to
cover an area as big as the State of Rhode Island. Sometimes, late
at night when conditions were just right, he could pick up the
station out of Fort Hood while he scanned for any new stations that
might have come on the air. He always spun the dial past it, since
he'd listened to Fort Hood radio once and vowed never to tune in
again. The broadcasts, like the Army paper, were controlled by the
government and never reported anything of substance.

Arriving on time, although the meeting didn't even
look close to starting, Cage was kept waiting while he tried his
best to avoid conversation with the rest of those present. Finally,
the great doctor himself appeared with his white lab coat flapping
around him and called the meeting to order. After introductions
were made, Hawkins laid out his stunning revelation about how the
HWNW virus had sprung from a combined mutation of a rare disease
named Prader-Willi and the H1N1 virus.

No shit Sherlock, Cage thought at hearing this. What
was your first clue? Now tell us something we don't know.

Doctor Hawkins then went on for twenty minutes as he
threw out a lot of medical jargon that made no sense to anyone
present and explained nothing. He summed up by stating that he and
his team were still working on a cure, and now that they had
isolated the root cause of the disease that progress should speed
up. He then looked at those gathered as if he'd just told them that
the secret of time travel was accomplished by making a few minor
adjustments to your espresso machine and waited for his accolades.
There was enthusiastic applause from all those present except Cage,
who looked on in wonder.

That's it? He asked himself. That's all they've got
after months of research. That information was put out days after
the initial outbreak. What in the hell have you been doing over
there, jerking off?

An Army reporter who asked him to stand interrupted
Cage’s internal tirade. It was photo op time and similar to a
feeding frenzy. Cage with Hawkins, Hawkins with his staff, Cage
with Hawkins' staff, and once every combination had been exhausted,
Cage alone. The reporter then cornered him and asked to conduct a
quick interview that would appear in the next issue of the Army
Times. Cage knew that no matter how he answered any of the
questions they would print what they wanted so he replied in words
of one syllable whenever possible.

He wasn't a cover your ass kind of guy and stood by
any order he gave, but he wanted to distance himself from anything
having to do with Hawkins' research. As much as the doctor seemed
to be screwing around, Cage could feel an investigation coming and
wanted to be known only as the Base Commander. He didn’t want to be
connected with the farmhouse in any way other than that he
protected it.

When the interview was over, Doctor Hawkins suggested
they all head over to the mess tent for refreshments. As they filed
out, Cage hung back from the herd. When they rounded a corner and
he was momentarily out of sight, he cut between two tents and
headed for his office. He had work to do and didn't have time to
waste at some kind of half-assed coffee klatch. There were supplies
to order, two disciplinary reports to review and he had to finalize
plans for the most important item on his agenda; an upcoming
foraging mission into the nearby town of Clarksville.

Diverting his gaze from the farmhouse framed in his
office window, Major Cage leaned back in his chair and looked at
the map of the city of Clarksville pinned on the wall next to
him.

Since taking command of the base from Major Conway
the previous day, he'd been planning this mission to look for
survivors and to see what could be salvaged from the small town
only twenty miles away. The former commander of the base had kept
his operations limited to the nearby town of Russellville, but
between the looters who had swept through before the National Guard
arrived and his own people combing through it, the town had been
picked clean. The only thing left in abundance was the dead.

With supplies not arriving in a steady flow, all
military commanders had standing orders to supplement their rations
and equipment by foraging what they could from the surrounding
areas. Since supplies in Russellville had become scarce, Cage knew
it was time to look for greener pastures. There were still large
amounts of food and gas, albeit in lesser quantities, scattered in
the small towns surrounding Russellville, all they had to do was
look for them. Most farms had their own fuel storage tanks and
pantries were generally stocked with food. Despite this temporary
stop gap measure in gathering supplies to ensure they could
continue operating, Cage often asked himself what was going to
happen when they ran out of towns to scrounge from. If the Army
supply chain kept going the way it was, everything would fall apart
within three months. What in the hell were they going to do next
year?

A few days earlier, when he had been nothing but a
Captain in charge of perimeter security, he had thought his job was
difficult. But now...

Deciding that the burden of command really meant that
you were the only one who knew how seriously fucked you were, Cage
closed his eyes and leaned further back in his chair while he
considered the difficulties that he and his people were likely to
face in Clarksville. As he tried to focus on this his thoughts
wandered, and he couldn't keep his mind off the meeting he'd just
attended. He was replaying in his head what Doctor Hawkins had said
when a thought came to him with enough force to make him sit
upright in his chair.

Hawkins had lied.

Cage knew there was no way in hell Hawkins hadn’t
known how the HWNW virus started, and his announcement wasn't any
revelation that he and his staff had recently come up with. Hawkins
was in Little Rock when the first cases were reported. He had been
on the original team brought in from the University to study the
disease.

Cage's thoughts drifted to Major Conway and the
briefing he had given him before transferring to Fort Hood. Cage
had already wondered what was really going on over at the
farmhouse, but when he voiced these doubts to Conway, the Major had
assured him that the scientists and doctors were working hard on
the problem of the HWNW virus and trying to figure out how to turn
it to our advantage.

That statement had seemed odd to Jedidiah.

Conway hadn't said, “They're working hard on a cure,”
he had said, “They're working on how to turn the disease to our
advantage.”

What advantage? He pondered this as he remembered
something else that Conway had said to him, or maybe had been
warning him about, “You don't want to know too much about what's
going on over there in the lab. Just keep in mind that it's in the
best interest of the country. Men like us take our orders and carry
them out to the best of our ability. My job, and now your job, is
to keep this compound secure. Keep in mind that everything over
there is way above our pay scale.”

Cage shook off his suspicions as looked at his watch
and realized that it was time for him to walk the perimeter. This
wasn't actually a job of the Base Commander but was something that
had been his duty as a junior officer. He continued doing it
because it gave him a chance to talk with his men, the people who
actually worked for a living and find out where their heads
were.

Before leaving his office, his eyes turned once more
to the map of Clarksville pinned on the wall. If anyone was still
left alive there, he hoped they weren't in serious danger and could
hold out until tomorrow. By noon, he and his men would be all over
that burg.

***

Major Cage and two platoons of his soldiers actually
arrived on the outskirts of Clarksville at five minutes to ten, two
hours earlier than planned. The recon team that had been sent along
I40 the previous day to scout their route had overestimated how
clogged the Interstate was, so the column of four Humvees and two
trucks made better time than planned. This was often the case
whenever the roads were scouted, since the recon teams were under
orders to only travel a mile or two in any direction before turning
around. This was due to security. They didn't want a small group of
their people getting cut off and wiped out. It was a trade off of
safety verses information, and Cage always looked out for the
safety of his men first.

He knew that regardless of the size of the town,
traffic was always jammed up worse right around its edges than
further out. This was caused by people who were fleeing from that
city running into other people fleeing to that city. In the end,
nowhere was safe and it left a huge jam of abandoned vehicles and
wrecks. Cage tried to plan for the blocked areas around
Russellville, but since the Interstate heading toward Clarksville
had never been completely scouted, he had to be ready to adjust to
any situation.

In this same vein of thought, Cage considered
splitting his forces and coming into Clarksville from two
directions. Since one group was tasked with looking for survivors
while the other's job was to scrounge, this seemed to make sense.
They would be able to cover a larger area. He reasoned that the
timetable had been moved forward by the ease they had reached the
area, so now his people would have time to reconnoiter before
moving in. After considering the different scenarios, in the end he
discarded the idea. Until he knew what awaited them, he didn't want
to halve his firepower and risk the possibility that the roads
through town were blocked, which would keep his forces from joining
up. Erring on the side of caution, he ordered his column to keep
their interval and approach as one from the south.

Although I40 was scattered with abandoned vehicles
sitting on their rims and a few cars tangled up in wrecks that had
to be winched out of the way, once the force took the off-ramp onto
the main drag into town, the road was clear except for a few
derelict vehicles sitting in the breakdown lane.

Having travelled this section of Arkansas before, to
Cage, the number of broken down cars and trucks on the side of the
road wasn't even extraordinary. He marveled to himself that if it
hadn't been for the events of the past few months, it could be a
Sunday morning with the roads deserted because everyone was at
church.

This illusion was quickly shattered when the convoy
crested a small ridge. Here, a line of fifty-five gallon metal
drums stretched across the road to block it. Railroad ties had been
wired between each container to create a formidable barrier.
Secured to the barrels were three large, hand painted, plywood
signs. The first read: QUARRANTINE AREA. The second: TRESSPASSERS
WILL BE SHOT IN THE HEAD. But it was the third one that disturbed
Cage the most. It read: WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN US?