“What is it now?” he asked wearily.
“The captain and his men have escaped, sir.” no sooner had the Commander received this news he saw the hazmat bedecked men shooting their way up onto the flight deck and over to the nearest lifeboat. The deckhands were unarmed yet they were shot in cold blood by the captain and his followers.
A half-assed retaliatory team of armed sailors appeared from below deck and fired at the retreating men, killing one outright and wounding another in his arm, puncturing his all import hazmat protection uniform and releasing the dangerous virus-filled outside air into his suit.
He crouched down and gave covering fire along with another and they held back the advancing sailors. The captain fixed the lifeboat ready for launching, greatly impeded by the hazmat suit and the limited vision the helmet gave him. The gun battle behind him made the decision for him and he stripped off the helmet and his gloves and then worked easily preparing the lifeboat.
His loyal troops kept their lackluster attackers at bay. In fact, one stood up, dropped his weapon and slowly advanced into the barrage of bullets, death by gunshot being preferable to the ravages of the plague.
Another of the enlisted men half-heartedly tried to stop the captain leaving, when he understood what his colleague had done and with a sinking dread realized that if he did not die from the Bubonic Plague he would drown when the ship scuttled. Hobson’s choice, he thought. Death by plague, or by drowning. Now he had a third choice, a fast, painless way, like his colleague, death swiftly by a bullet. Hmm, a no-brainer he thought and dropped his weapon, praying that the captain’s men were expert shooters and that his death would be rapid and relatively painless. Thankfully, a high velocity bullet answered his prayers and removed the top of his skull in a plume of red mist.
“Come on” the captain shouted to his men above the sound of the Claxton horn, the burning helicopter and the incessant gunfire. The men backed towards the lifeboat and as they clambered in their attackers dropped their weapons rushed forward and leaped into the lifeboat with them, much to the shock and horror of the now helmetless captain who was in grave danger from the very air that these men exhaled. The two enlisted men raised their hands in willing surrender and looked pleadingly at the captain, who pulled his pistol and shot them both dead without compunction.
He held his breath as his companions hefted the dead bodies over the side, then sighed with relief. He smiled and pressed the button on the hand-held controls and the lifeboat lowered awkwardly into the ocean and away from the madness above.
The captain’s loyal crewmen stripped off their cumbersome helmets and gloves and high-fived as one of them used an oar to push them away from the disease-ridden death ship and towards freedom.
A sailor leaped from the edge of the aircraft carrier and hit the ocean with a mighty splash. He landed awkwardly and his flesh stung, but he ignored the pain and splashed toward the departing lifeboat and freedom.
The oarsman heard the splash and saw a desperate sailor swimming in their direction. The sailor swallowed mouthfuls of seawater in his desperate bid to reach the safety of the lifeboat, but as he reached the gunwale of the lifeboat, an oar viciously cracked him over his head. The sailor barely had time to register what happened when the oarsman stood and swung the oar with all his might and once again caught the sailor on the top of his head.
The first blow stunned the sailor, the second split his skull wide open, and he slowly disappeared below the waves.
The oarsman grinned and held his hand up for a high-five when his was shot by a bullet from a sniper back on the aircraft carrier, he dropped to his knees, blood bubbled from his mouth, he choked and then pitched forward, where he twitched and jerked spasmodically on the floor of the lifeboat, leaving only three. The captain, nodded and his two companions heaved the dying man over the side, then he fired up the outboard motor and the lifeboat puttered to the shoreline. They settled back down and grinned at the captain, they were now out of range of gunfire and they were on their way to freedom, when the captain violently sneezed. He heard the cocking of weapons; he turned to find that the previously loyal pair of supporters had their guns pointed at him. “Now, hold on just one doggone minu—” They fired in unison riddling him with bullets.
CHAPTER 41
20:45 PM
“Ah, this is the life,” sighed Luke slowly releasing the sweet smoke from his lips as he passed the joint to Sophie, who sucked at it tentatively. They were both lying on the floor of the main cabin; hands behind their heads in what they agreed would be the most likely hippy pose when taking drugs. “It’s so peaceful.”
Sophie choked on the joint, but persevered, “It is stronger than I thought,” she remarked.
“It’s Acapulco gold,” Luke said. “Erm, I expect,” he hastily added.
She regarded him balefully; he wasn’t fooling her for a minute.
“I could get used to living like this,” Luke sighed.
“You might have to.” She said.
“Come again?”
“If this outbreak spreads throughout the United States, or god forbid the world, the infrastructure would collapse with no one left to run it, gasoline would eventually run out, they’d be no electricity or gas almost immediately, no communications,” she took the proffered joint and took another hit on it. “We would be back to living in the middle ages, growing our own food, making our own clothes bartering our surplus for other necessities.”
“I’d love that,” he said, then giggled, stoned.
“Money, shares, stocks and bonds would all be completely worthless. Can you possibly grasp such an idea?”
“Bring it on,” he smiled.
She leaned on her side and said. “When we jumped the drawbridge, you said you’d done it before?”
“Yeah, that’s right, but that was in a car, and I was drunk, so I don’t remember much about it.”
“Who was driving that time?”
“I was.”
“Why did you jump the bridge?” she asked bemused.
“Because I was drunk. I thought I’d just said that?”
She laughed and rolled onto her back, took another hit on the joint and passed it back to Luke.
“So,” he asked. “What do you think of dope?”
“Not bad, but do we have to lie on the floor?”
“Where do you suggest?”
“The bedroom?”
“I thought we were in the bedroom,” he said in genuine surprise. “Lead the way.” He stood and nearly fell back down again, and smirked, stoned. He helped Sophie to stand as she was in a bad way too. She giggled, he held his hand up for her to high-five, which she tried to do but missed and ended up slapping him in the face instead, making her roar with laughter.
20:46 PM
Pandemonium reigned below decks of the USS Thomas Jefferson. The Commander had ordered the below deck doors locked, effectively sealing the men in to a metallic tomb.
Tyler Buckman was not going to lie down and die like some of the others He stood at the door in a short corridor on the lower deck. He and the other men trapped with him were Bilge-Rats, the guys who worked in the engineering compartments. He had always known that working on the lower decks in wartime would be dangerous, that his life expectancy would be considerably less, then that of someone topside. If a torpedo hit the ship that breached the hull and they started to take on water then it was standard procedure to contain the breach and seal the affected area, trapping men below.
Although the commander had earlier stated that the ship would be scuttled he had imaged that he would be out on deck, in the fresh air, on parade nobly going down with the ship. Not like this, locked in the bowels of the ship like rats. Bilge rats. This was not the way. He could not believe it when his fellow sailors locked them in. People he knew well, had gone drinking with, had stood shoulder to shoulder with in bar room brawls. Guys he trusted to fight alongside with in battle, to the point of sacrificing himself, only to find them quietly and cowardly locking him down in the airless bowels, while they breathed the clean air above.