He scratched his head dumb-founded, and then shrugged it off. He quickly frisked the captain’s cadaver, found his pocket book, checked the door as the boat creaked and listed slightly, and then slipped it into his jacket pocket, when a skinny, bony hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.
Tasker heard lieutenant Graves’s blood-curdling scream and ran towards the noise. He burst through the cabin door to find him gibbering in fear. He waddled backward on his butt dragging the corpse with him. The captain’s boney hand firmly clasped around his wrist.
“Argh! Get it off! Get it off!” screamed Graves. The lieutenant attempted to peel the fingers from his wrist but his grip was too firm, then his blood ran cold as the captain’s eyes flipped open and his blood-shot eyes swiveled slowly towards him.
Petrified and chilled to the bone he scrambled backward, when the captain’s thin reedy voice pleaded. “Help… me…”
Just when Lieutenant Graves thought he couldn’t take any more, he gazed terrified as the captain’s skin tore open, ripping across his cheek bones exposing muscle and bone. The rotting, living, corpse screeched, a sound he would never forget….
CHAPTER 1
17:30 PM
A sternutation — an involuntary respiratory convolution — otherwise known as a sneeze can expel up to forty thousand infectious droplets at any one time, travel at over one hundred miles an hour and cover a distance of thirty feet. This was particularly unfortunate for the other passengers on the early evening commute home upon the green-line Miami Metrorail heading northbound.
Lieutenant Graves sneezed loudly and violently over the other commuters who squashed together like sardines, rubbed up against total strangers.
“Gross,” said a young Hispanic girl with a purple streak in her hair. She cradled her young child and pushed further down the packed car.
Graves did not register her comment, or seem to notice the other passengers crammed against him on the standing-room only metro-train. His head ached and his vision blurred. He wiped his sleeve across his nose and sniffed deeply. The passengers regard him with distain, unbeknown to them that they’d already breathed in the microscopic droplets of the deadly virus and would all be dead within the next twenty-four hours.
Graves shuddered. He was not sure if it was from a summer cold, or from remembering the rotted, living corpse whose skin had torn apart in front of his very eyes. Jesus and what about that sound? He shivered once more. His boss had tried to get him to stay behind, for further investigations as the team picked apart the corpse-ridden vessel, but he’d refused, it being a holiday weekend and all.
Turned out there were over two hundred immigrants crammed into the hold. They had captured a higher number once before, but it was still a good bust and a feather in his cap. The train pulled into the next metro station and even more folks squashed into the packed car making Graves sweat profusely. Without warning, he sneezed again, splattering the newest passengers.
A burly, bearded Hell’s Angel with ‘Death or Glory’ tattooed on one arm raged; “Cover your mouth, you goddamn nig—” He stopped himself short as he realized he was the only white person on board the train with the exception of the dyed blond teenager in a sailor’s uniform, and he was clearly a faggot, so he didn’t count.
Graves snarled back. “Fuck you, bro — get outa my face, if you—” A violent tremble cut him short. The nearest passengers backed away. Lieutenant Graves’s eyes strained against the pain.
The dyed-blond sailor pointed hesitantly at Graves’s face and said in a quaking voice. “You’re bleeding, dude… from your eyes…” The sailor stepped back aghast as tears of blood rolled down Graves’s cheek.
Lieutenant Graves touched his face and was aghast to see blood on his fingers. “What the fuck?” He felt blood trickling from his nose, and wiped it on his sleeve.
The Hispanic girl shifted her tiny infant to her other arm. “You should see one doctor. There is hospital. At next stop. Has a free walk-in clinic.”
“I don’t need no free hospital. What are ya saying?”
“I meant no harm, sir. It’s near, I could take you?” She offered helpfully.
“I don’t want no charity — leave me the fuck alone.” He turned away into the armpit of the bearded biker. He recoiled from the odor. The Hell’s Angel glared daggers at him.
“Why don’t y’all—” He sneezed again covering the Hispanic girl and her child.
She turned away in disgust. She soothed her baby, stroked her head and covered her with the deadly bacteria. She pushed her way to the furthest end of the car.
Graves sneezed again but this time caught most of the bacteria in his hand. “There. Y’all happy now?”
The train rumbled into Overtown station. He maneuvered himself to the door, pulling himself forward using the handrail. The dyed blond sailor followed, touching the same spot on the handrail transferring the deadly disease onto his own hand. He pushed through the impatient crowd and sneezed loudly infecting each and every one of them.
CHAPTER 2
ZERO HOUR
THURSDAY JUNE 30th
19:50 PM
Luke Spencer pushed forward on the control bar of his hang-glider tipping the nose downward, accelerated and soared up into the dazzling blue sky. He felt like a hawk as he lay in the supine position. He leaned his weight to the side and turned a slow circle back over South Miami Beach passing over the famous Art Deco hotels lining the beachfront. Once sleazy, the South Beach district was now chic and fashionable. He caught a thermal and spiraled upward. He’d been a fan of hang-gliding for several years now. He loved the silence and solitude as he soared high above the beach. The simplicity of the craft, using only his wits the simple machine made flight possible. He had trained to fly the motorized version but preferred the challenge of using his skill to fly, to catch a thermal to give him the necessary lift while gravity did its damndest to pull him back to earth.
The heat generated by the hot sand supplied ample thermals and he could stay up for hours, however he’d promised Kenny his cameraman it’d only be a short flight. He was an adrenaline junkie and he needed a quick fix.
Although he got his fix most days from his job as outside news broadcaster for a major network, which frequently took him into plenty of adrenaline-rush situations. Known to take risks to get as close to the action as possible, he ducked and dodged police cordons to get right into the heart of any action, be it an auto-wreck, or better still an ongoing gang turf-war dispute. He knew that gunfire always scored high on the nightly news, and possible bloodletting — not his, or Kenny’s preferably — would make the top of the hour bulletin, remembering the mantra of his journalist professor. ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ Luke stuck to this motto and had gained national coverage more than once.
Although covering the gore was not his prime objective, he knew if he kept his face on screen, it would give him leverage with the network to go after larger stories, uncovering wrong-doing at city hall, unveiling the back-handers and corruption at the highest levels.
This, of course, had made him a target from time-to-time of politicians and members of organized crime syndicates, although he felt more of an affinity towards the latter; at least they were honest in their dishonesty.
He recognized the enormous shape of Kenny dashing down the beach, hard to miss really, five feet five, weighing in at nearly three hundred pounds, his flabby flesh burned by the sun, looking like a beardless Santa. He smirked and recalled how an extremely drunk Kenny had begged him to teach him to hang-glide and no matter how much he told him that he was far too heavy for flight Kenny had insisted and Luke relented. He helped him into a rig and checked the equipment. He instructed Kenny to rush down the beach until he reached approximately seventeen mph — the optimum speed for take-off. Luke had nearly burst a rib laughing as Kenny waddled along the sand, jumping up into the air every now and then in a futile attempt to launch himself sky-ward with all the elegance and grace of a baby elephant until he ran out of beach and he pitched head-first into the ocean.