Noah's Ark: Contagion (8 page)

“In there!” Jake cried, pointing towards the store. “Through the second door.”

The mechanics nodded to each other, then ran forwards and into the room. Jake picked up the large extinguisher they had brought with them and followed them in.

“Ready?” the woman asked. Her hose-wielding colleague nodded. She pulled open the door, and instantly the flames roared through. The heat was incredible, unlike anything Jake had ever experienced. But he was running on adrenaline and without hesitation he aimed the nozzle of the sturdy red cylinder towards the floor and pulled the handle. The unit discharged with a whooshing sound, sending clouds of white gas into the inferno.

At the same time, the column of water snaking through the hose finally reached the nozzle, escaping at high speed, the momentum causing the mechanic to struggle for balance. Gallon upon gallon of cold green seawater was pumped into the store, drenching every inch of the place, starving the fire of fuel. The flames began to recede, and the mechanics chased them down until they had nowhere to go. Within minutes of them entering, the fire was out.

“Cut it!” the mechanic shouted to the woman. It was hard to hear over the roar of the water coming from the hose, but she knew the drill, and ran back to the pump, cutting the fuel line and silencing the motor. The hose went limp, and then there was silence.

Eight

J
AKE
DIDN
’
T
HANG
around to assess the damage. He thanked the mechanics and left them and the kitchen staff to begin a clean-up operation. His priority was to get Claude to the medical centre where they could treat him for smoke inhalation.

Fortunately for the two men, Lister’s rooms were not far from the kitchens, just two decks down via a nearby staircase. Jake ran as fast as he could, still dripping with water from the sprinklers, to find a wheelchair.

“Good morning, Captain, what is the rush?” the doctor asked as Jake burst through the door.

“Wheelchair!” he managed to say, still trying to catch his breath. “Need a wheelchair.”

“Kiera! Bring us the chair! What is it, Jake, who has been taken ill now? Is it the legs?”

“The legs? No, it’s smoke.”

“Ah, yes, I heard the alarm. What happened?”

“Fire in the kitchen,” Jake said. Grau’s rooms were clean and dry; the sprinklers had been set off only in the zone in which the alarm had been raised.

“That does not sound good. Ah, here is the wheelchair. Shall I accompany you?”

“No need, thanks.”

Jake grabbed the chair and charged back to the kitchen, this time using the lift. He found Claude sitting in a pool of water on the floor, still coughing and spluttering.

“Here, help me up with him,” he said to a nearby pastry chef. They lifted the head chef into the chair, and Jake set off back in the direction from which he had just come.
 

Grau and Kiera were waiting for him, armed with an oxygen mask and a burns kit.

“No, not the treatment room,” Kiera said, blocking Jake’s path as he went to go through. “Patient in there, not a pretty sight,” she added by way of explanation, seeing his inquisitive look.

Doctor and nurse worked quickly together, attaching the mask, and treating Claude’s scorched skin. When he began to complain about the fuss they were making, they knew he was going to be alright.

Grau took Jake to one side, leaving Kiera to finish cleaning up the chef. “As you are down here, I need to fill you in on the woman we brought down to the morgue yesterday. What was left of her anyway.” He proceeded to bring the captain up to speed on what had happened with Maryse.

“And you think the guy you’ve got back there, it’s the same thing?” Jake asked, rubbing his brow.

“I think it is a possibility, but I need to perform a post-mortem, and I need to test her blood, after I have tested the body we pulled out of the water.”

“Busy time for you, Grau.”

“Yes, not a situation I am particularly delighted by. There is something else. The blood from the patient in there? I had the machine run more analysis overnight. We have absolutely no idea what is wrong with him apart from that it seems to be some kind of microbial infection. It is as if his body is being eaten from the inside out. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

“Forgive my ignorance, Doctor, but is it possible it’s a rare condition that your machine is not programmed to detect?”

“Very possible. We are but a small unit; Pelagios installed the minimum equipment required by international maritime law for a vessel of this size. If he had a common cold, or influenza, or even e-coli, then it would be a trivial task to detect. But once we step outside of the everyday, we are in the dark.”

“Is the
Ambush
better equipped?”

“Sadly not in that respect. They have a similar capability to our own. I will take the opportunity to speak with Surgeon Lieutenant Vardy; perhaps he has seen this condition or something similar. That is the best I can hope for.”

A thought occurred to Jake. “Grau, get on to Silvia and have her check the census. You’re overstretched. We’ve been so focussed on creating the farming, fishing, and cleaning teams that we haven’t even begun to look at expanding medical yet. With three thousand people on board, there have to be doctors, nurses, all sorts. Get yourself some staff, Grau.”

“More hands on deck would be most useful, I must admit.”

“Great, do it. Keep me posted if anything important happens.”

• • •

“…Five six seven eight!”

Music blared out of speakers the size of garage doors. A thumping bass line made the walls vibrate. Six lines of ten people leapt into action, swinging arms and legs in time to the beat. At the front of the huge and brightly lit gymnasium, Entertainments Manager Barry Nickelson faced the group, calling instructions into his head-mounted microphone, and demonstrating the moves that were to be followed.

“And…swing and jump! Swing, swing, kick. Turn and lean. Back and kick!”

Barry saw it as something of a personal mission to try and keep the whole community fit and in shape. The holiday was over, and if they were truly the last surviving humans on the planet, they had a duty to keep themselves in peak condition. Unfortunately his enthusiasm for this healthy living was not shared by the majority, and the class size shrank a little every day. Most cited the same complaint: with little in the way of healthy food available, and only water to drink after a workout, what was the point in expending energy unnecessarily?

“I can see you at the back there! Come on, put some effort into it. And…swing and jump!”

The front row, those showing the most motivation, comprised entirely of submariners. Coote had granted them ‘shore leave’ aboard the
Spirit of Arcadia
. They had as long as it took to reach Scotland to stretch their legs and take in the fresh air that they so craved. Their presence wasn’t just about giving them a break from the confines of the submarine; it also made more space available for those remaining on the
Ambush
, and to those men, space was the ultimate luxury.

Barry began a series of star jumps, arms and legs outstretched. He was getting close to the end of the routine, and liked to finish with this energetic sequence. On the third jump, something went wrong. His feet hit the ground, but he never experienced the sensation of them coming into contact with the hard linoleum surface. His balance lost, his legs crumpled underneath him. Arms flailing, he landed with a thump on his bottom, sending the full force of the impact up his spine. A moment’s dizziness, and he fell flat on his back, out cold.

• • •

“Honestly, she’s no bother at all, Kiera. It’s quite a pleasure having her actually. She’s a little angel.”

“If anyone’s an angel it’s you, Silvia, taking her in like this.”

“How’s her father?” Silvia lowered her voice, not wanting to upset Erica, who was contentedly drawing pictures of her friends. “She never stops asking. All I can tell her is that he’s getting better. She wants to know when she can see him.”

“It’s not looking good. Any time he regains consciousness he yells out in so much pain, we have no choice but to sedate him. Grau’s at a loss for a diagnosis.”

“Well I hope this is going to help.” Silvia pulled some paper out of a file. “I haven’t been through the whole lot yet, but I’ve found you a retired forensic pathologist, and a nurse. I would have thought there would be more, but it’s a start.”

“A forensic pathologist is the jackpot!” Kiera’s face lit up. She leaned in, speaking in a whisper. “We’ve got two corpses down there, and no disrespect to Grau, but he’s better at dealing with the living than the dead. So who’s our new best friend? We’ve got post-mortems waiting.”

“She’s called Janice Hanson. If my maths is right, she’s fifty-five years old. Retired young, lucky lady. She’s an American; Chicago. Here, you can keep her census form, I made a copy. And here’s the nurse, Mandy Chalmers, Australian. Not much in the way of detail on her form. Let’s see, twenty-eight years old, married, works full-time in an emergency room.”

“That’s brilliant, Silvia, you’re a star.”

“Hanson’s already in a nice room so we can’t offer her an upgrade in return for work, but she will get to keep her cabin. Chalmers can be moved up. She’s got a tiny cabin, not even a window. She’s married; her husband isn’t on any team yet. He put himself down as unemployed. He’ll probably end up washing dishes or as a labourer for one of the food teams in time.”

“I’ll go and see Hanson right away. The quicker we can get some answers the better.” Kiera stood to leave and walked over to Erica. “Hey Erica, I have to go now, but I’ll come and see you again later okay?”

“Okay. Are you going back to my daddy?”

“Yes. Not straight away, but I’ll see him later.”

“Tell him he has to get better quickly, or else!”

“I will, sweetie.” She ruffled the girl’s hair. Erica pulled a face and went back to her drawings.

Kiera took a step towards the door, but something was terribly wrong. She tried to move, to lift her foot, but it was stuck to the floor.

“Kiera? Are you okay?”

“No,” the nurse replied, panic rising inside her. “I can’t feel my feet, Silvia. I can’t feel or move my feet!”

• • •

Jake filled his lungs with cold, fresh sea air. His nose was still filled with smoke from the fire; it felt like it was burning his sinuses and throat. As he took more deep breaths, he looked out from his deck seven vantage point towards the approaching Faroe Islands. They weren’t passing very close by, but even so, the rocky projections were clear to see with the naked eye. The toxic ash from the asteroid had blanketed the once green slopes, making the archipelago look like huge lumps of coal that had been scattered into the sea by some giant unseen hand.

“Captain Noah, we are about to bring up the net!”

Jake looked back over his shoulder. Stieg was waving to him, a big grin on his face. He was a man who loved his profession and was delighted to be doing what he adored once again. Jake smiled and went to join the Swede and his men.

“How do you think it went, Stieg?”

“Hard to say, but I am, how do you say, quietly optimistic? I saw many herring this morning. If we don’t have some of those in the net I will be surprised. Your chef will have his hands full, I am sure.”

“My chef has his hands full already,” Jake said, feeling a sudden pang of guilt that he was outside enjoying the fresh air while Claude had suffered much more in the fire. “But that’s a different story. Don’t let me hold you up. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“As a matter of fact, yes there is. You can operate the winch. You know the two buttons?”

Jake nodded. Stieg dished out instructions to his men and positioned them strategically. All three were armed with boat hooks to guide the steel cables and net. Once in place, he signalled to Jake, who pressed down on the bright green button, bringing the electric motor to life. The spindle began to turn, winding the taut lengths of cable around the drum. The net was deep in the sea and there was a considerable amount of steel cabling to drag back in. Jake could feel the heat from the winch as the motor strained and laboured.

Shouting from the fishermen suggested that the net had surfaced. “Many fish, Captain Noah!” Stieg called out. “Many, many fish!” He worked away with his hook, ensuring that nothing tangled or twisted.
 

The net drew alongside the winch so it was directly below Jake. He peered over the side and saw that there were indeed many fish. The surface of the sea was boiling as thousands of herring flipped and somersaulted in the few inches of water that were left. Another turn of the drum and that water had gone, and the top of the net was out in the air. Slowly it eased out of the sea, water draining from it, and the true bulk of the catch became clear for the men to see. The net was bulging, it looked set to burst at the seams. And then, quite without warning, that is exactly what it did.

Nine

“T
HIS
IS
AN
urgent announcement. Would Janice Hanson and Mandy Chalmers please go to medical immediately. That’s Janice Hanson, and Mandy Chalmers, please go to the medical suite on deck five immediately.”

Kiera listened to the announcement echo out through the ship. The thought that there was a specialist in dead people coming to help, did nothing to calm her fear. The paralysis in her feet was slowly working its way up her legs.

“Try not to worry now, Kiera, we will beat this.”

“You don’t have to give me the full-on customer service, Grau,” she said wearily. “We both know that we haven’t a clue what this is or what to do about it.”

“That doesn’t mean we won’t find out.”

“The question is, will we find out before or after I end up like Scott in there?” She tried not to look at the door to the treatment room, but her eye was drawn to it. She knew that on the other side, Erica’s father was dying slowly and painfully, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. “Will it be before or after I end up a shell like Maryse Wernström?”