Dead Calm (33 page)

Feeling a crisis at hand, both men rose as Steve
said, “No, he stayed here because he had to watch the stairs.”

Heather rushed forward as she said, “He was supposed
to take over from Susan and hour ago but he never showed. She
called me a half hour ago and we’ve been looking for him ever
since.”

Steve ran through the possibilities of where Brain
could be. None of them were good. His first thought was that Ricky
and his people had grabbed him so he asked, “Did anyone see him go
to the upper decks?”

Heather nodded and said, “Susan was watching the
stairs, and she said he went up to five with Tim to grab something
to eat. She didn't see them come back down. When we asked Tim, he
said they both came back downstairs through the elevator shaft
because they wanted to explore.”

“Is everybody else here?” He asked, relieved that
Ricky didn't seem to be involved. Now they just had to find Brain
in case he was hurt and laid up somewhere and not take on over a
hundred religious fanatics.

“Everyone's accounted for,” Heather answered as she
approached Steve and hugged him. “I left Susan at the stairs and
got everyone else organized to search the shops. I already checked
the elevator shaft and he's not there.”

“Who else saw him this morning?” Tick-Tock asked.

“Connie saw him, and they made plans to get together
for lunch. After that - nothing.”

“Okay, we'll find him,” Steve assured her. “He
couldn't have gone far. Hopefully he didn't go exploring the ship
on his own.”

“We’re almost finished searching deck four and then
we planned to check five,” Heather told him. “I came back here to
look for him in the kitchen and the dining room.”

Taking charge, Steve said, “There are three of us
here now so we'll split up. Tick-Tock and I will take the kitchen
and you look here in the dining room. Before you start though, go
out and tell everyone to wait when they've finished searching the
shops. We’ll go up to deck five as a group.”

Heather rushed off as Steve and Tick-Tock each
un-holstered their pistols. Even though they dreaded finding Brain
injured or dead, if they found him undead, they would have to put
him out of his misery. After a thorough search of the kitchen with
no results, they re-entered the dining room to find Heather, Tim
and Connie lifting table cloths to make sure Brain wasn't lying
unconscious under one of the tables. Pitching in, they finished in
no time. Steve noticed that Connie wore a T-shirt with the words
‘I’m not as dead as you think I am’ on the front. Brain had made
one for everyone.

Steve thought to himself, I hope you're not as dead
as I think you are, Brain. Then pushed the thought from his head.
If you're alive, we'll find you, he vowed.

Moving into the Centrum, Steve heard Sheila and Mary
calling out for Brain. As he approached the stairs, the shouts
suddenly stopped. Thinking that the engineer had been found, he
hurried forward. Instead of finding the missing tech though, he saw
a man standing at the bottom of the grand staircase while Susan
covered him with her rifle.

Not wanting to be interrupted in his search by one of
Ricky's people, Steve asked abruptly, “What do you want?”

“Ricky sent me down to see if you needed some help,”
the man said. “One of our people said you were running around down
here looking around and calling out for someone named Blain.”

“Brain,” Steve corrected.

The man nodded and smiled, “Brain then. If one of
your people is missing, we can help you search for him. It happens
with us all the time, so we’ve kind of got a grid system set up
that covers all the accessible areas of the ship.”

Steve was debating this when the man looked past him
and said, “Hello Sheila. How are you?”

“You son-of-a-bitch,” she spit out in reply.

Turning to her, Steve said dryly, “I take it you know
him.”

Her face had become almost the color of her hair.
Sheila said venomously, “That's Brother Seth, one of the guys that
Ricky sent to kill me.”

“I beg to differ,” Seth said in a sanctimonious tone.
“The truth of the matter is that you killed Brother Raymond and ran
off. I used to be a cop, so I could arrest you for murder if I
wanted to.”

“Where did you work?” Heather cut in.

“The Lee County Sherriff's office in Fort Myers,
Florida,” Seth said with pride.

Heather made a snorting noise. “It figures you'd be
with Ricky then. You used to be one of the back shooters.”

Distracted by the label she used, Steve asked, “Back
shooters?”

“Every year at least three unarmed suspects were shot
in the back by a Lee County Sheriff's Deputy. Somehow or another,
they always convinced the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to
let them investigate their own shooting. Miraculously, the officers
were always cleared. They're trigger happy, and the Sherriff down
there condoned it and covered it up.”

“Imagine that,” Steve said sarcastically.

Trying to ignore the scornful looks from the group,
Seth knew the conversation needed to be refocused so he said, “But
that's neither here nor there. I’m down here to offer our aid in
your search for Randy. We can check the upper decks for him.”

Steve looked thoughtful for a moment before saying,
“I accept your help. We’re going to search deck five first, so give
us an hour and then come back. Our people need to be in on the
search of the upper decks though.”

“Of course,” Seth said, “wouldn't have it any other
way. We’ll split it up and give you your own sections.”

“And ask Ricky if he has a spare lens for the sextant
he gave us. The one we have seems to have been accidentally
cracked,” Steve said.

“I’ll pass on your request,” Seth told him. Nodding
to the group in front of him, he said, “I’ll be back in an hour so
we can plan the search. Ladies, gentleman, Sheila, stay safe until
then.”

After Seth was gone, Heather exchanged a knowing look
with Steve and Tick-Tock. Sheila approached them and said, “Don't
trust him. He's a snake, just like the rest of them. Maybe
worse.”

“I know,” Steve told her.

Mary asked, “Then why did you agree to work with him.
And why'd you ask him for the spare lens for the sextant? We’ve got
one.”

“To throw Seth off the track and make Ricky think we
still need him. I want to stall them for a while,” Steve
answered.

“So we can search deck five?” Susan asked.

“So we can make it look like were searching deck
five,” Steve told her. “I’m sure they have people watching us so we
have to go through the motions.”

Confused, Mary asked, “What about Brain?”

“Yeah,” Sheila put in. “Even though the little dweeb
always wanted to talk about Star Wars, I kind of liked him.”

“He's not on deck five,” Heather said. “Ricky's
people have him.”

“They kidnapped him?” Mary asked with horror. “How do
you know?”

Heather answered, “Seth must have been a lousy cop.
He gave himself away when he called Brain by the name Randy. Only
we know him by that name. He acts like he doesn't even know Brain's
name and then he calls him Randy? What a dumbass. Seth blew it.
“

Steve and Tick-Tock nodded. They'd both picked up on
Seth's mistake as soon as he made it.

“What would they want a nerdy engineer for?” Mary
asked.

No one said anything except for Sheila. She suddenly
sat down on the planter behind her and moaned out, “Oh God, I know
why. It was there the whole time but I didn’t see it.”

All eyes turned to her as she told them about
Cozumel.

Chapter Seventeen

Quantico, Virginia:

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the
meeting to order. “Gentleman, since the communication satellites
have come back on line, we’ve been able to establish contact with
the remnants of many foreign governments around the world. Two of
these are China and Russia. Both were hit hard by the HWMW Virus,
much harder than the United States, but they're working to
eradicate the dead and rebuild. “

“How long will it take them?” The Navy Chief
asked.

“Decades, but that's not the point,” the Chairman
answered. “The point is, that one day they will again be a threat.
Right now, as far as we know, no one except the United States has
any kind of nuclear capability they can call upon, but that will
change. We need to make sure we stay on top.”

“Are you suggesting a pre-emptive strike?” The
Commandant of the Marine Corp asked in astonishment. “Isn’t the
world screwed up enough?”

“A pre-emptive strike, yes,” the Chairman said. “But
not with nukes.”

“But our conventional forces are tied up trying to
eradicate our dead,” the Marine said.

“And the dead might be our best weapon,” the Chairman
told them. “I’m sending you a report on some research we’ve been
doing in Arkansas. Take a minute to read the synopsis, I’ll wait to
hear your comments.”

Although the civilian Internet was dead, it had been
originally created so the military could have a form of secure
communication in the event of a nuclear war, the computers serving
the armed forces were still humming.

After the Chiefs downloaded the file and read the
report, the Navy Chief spoke first, “Incredible, but will it
work?”

“They're still testing it, but so far the results are
promising.” The Chairman replied.

“Isn't Russellville where they're looking into a cure
for the HWNW virus?” He asked. “I recall you saying something about
that in an earlier briefing.”

“It is, but that's not the only research they've been
doing,” the Chairman answered. “After you read the entire file,
you'll see that finding a cure has been a slow process. Since part
of the disease mutated from the H1N1 flu, it's turned into an
attempt to find a cure for that along with numerous other aspects
of the disease. Additionally, the lack of subjects found who are
immune to HWNW has further delayed the development of an
anti-virus. “

“0ne in five-hundred million,” the Commandant of the
Marine Corps interjected. “That's how many people have a natural
immunity.”

“And of the three subjects we’ve studied who are
resistant to HWNW, two died from other causes and the third is
still being tested,” the Chairman informed them. “But that isn't
what I’m getting at. What I want to do is authorize Doctor Lyonel
Hawkins to expand the study he's been working on into controlling
the dead, to give us some solid results. This has been on the back
burner, so he'll need additional resources and a free hand in his
experiments. From his research, we can form a weapon that will make
the United State the only world power for centuries to come.”

Silence greeted this proposal. The Chairman added,
“Hawkins won't go any further in his experiments until he has the
go ahead from us.”

The Commandant said, “But some of these experiments
I’m reading about here are slightly disturbing.”

“The few sacrificed for the many,” the Chairman
answered. “Now I’d like to put it to a vote. All those in favor of
authorizing Doctor Hawkins to go forward with his test, say
aye.”

It was unanimous.

Russellville, Arkansas

Doctor Hawkins looked through the shatter proof
window into the room holding the test subjects and thought;
hopefully today I’ll get the go ahead for my new line of
experiments and there'll be no more mucking around with these
filthy creatures.

Lined up on the far wall in the containment room were
five of the living dead that were the object of his scrutiny.
Although two technicians were also visible as they moved around the
room, they were in no danger of being attacked as each of the dead
was secured hand, foot and neck to the concrete wall by shackles on
ten-inch chains. As further protection against them biting, each of
the living dead wore a mask of heavy plastic that covered the
bottom half of their face.

Despite his revulsion to the dead, Doctor Hawkins was
still fascinated by certain aspects of his experiments. It was this
curiosity that led him to press down on the intercom button and ask
one of the men in the room to unmask the dead woman on the far
right.

Carefully, the technician undid the Velcro straps and
pulled the mask off with a quick jerk as he backed away. The Z
lunged forward to bite but was stopped short by its neck restraint.
The dead woman looked around and gnashed her teeth at the
technician standing well out of striking distance.

Doctor Hawkins pressed down on the intercom button
again and said to the technician, “Jim, give me the statistics on
that one.”

Thumbing through a pile of charts, Jim selected one
and opened it. After scanning through it, he flipped a few pages
and started to read while adding his own comments from his
knowledge of the specimen. “Forty two year old female. She was one
of the first to be brought here to the facility and has been here
the longest. Bite mark on her left bicep. This was what caused the
initial transference of the virus. She hadn't turned when we
received her, along with two others, from Little Rock. This was
shortly before they abandoned the city. Died on October
twenty-ninth at ten-forty eight AM. Came back to life on the same
date at eleven-oh-one AM. Suffered convulsions before expiring. She
was transferred here to containment one where she's been kept
without food and water since.”

Hawkins looked at the drawn face of the subject.
While she looked like she was suffering from anorexia due to the
skin stretched across the bone structure of her face, she was
neither lethargic nor seemed to be suffering from a lack of energy
from being deprived of food. Even as he watched, the stick figure
rattled its chains in fury as it tested its bonds. Whipping its
head around, the dead creature banged it against the wall behind
it, leaving a smear of black puss. Seeing this reminded him of
something so Hawkins asked the tech about the body fluid tests he'd
ordered the day before.