So when he had discovered he’d been outmaneuvered, Rakao seethed, but he knew better than to lash out. He had the dried tongues of his predecessors nailed to the lintel above the door to his village house. He hadn’t climbed to his position by reckless actions.
Staying focused, Rakao had his radioman retreat thirty yards so as not to be heard, then contact the ship, to warn them of an impending attack. But as Rakao waited, shots rang out — followed by alarm bells. His warning had reached the ship too late.
So be it…
Rakao maintained his position.
If the sneak attack aboard the ship failed, his radioman would let him know. If not, Rakao knew where the victors would end up.
The true prize was here.
Rakao watched his target, standing at the edge of the jungle.
It should not be long.
Monk raced down the last flight of stairs. Lisa followed with a pair of WHO scientists: a Dutch toxicologist and an American bacteriologist.
At the bottom of the stairs a pair of pirates lay tangled in a widening pool of blood. A cannibal stood a step away, motioning for them to leave the stairwell.
He was another of Ryder’s bread crumbs, leading a safe path through the besieged ship. It was a circuitous route down flights of stairs, through a passenger hallway, along the outer deck, even trespassing across a kitchen. Gunfire continued in sporadic bursts of guerrilla fighting.
At least the alarms had finally gone silent.
But was that good news or bad?
Monk led the way across the bloody landing and out into the main starboard hallway. They had reached the lower deck that lay even with the waterline. Ryder’s private launch was on this level. Monk took a breath to orient himself. This deck also housed the ship’s tender dock, along with a theater, day-care center, video arcade, and the Midnight Blue disco. Ryder’s launch was near the ship’s bow.
“This way!” He headed to the right, stopped, turned around again. “No, this way!”
They headed off again, trailing tribesmen.
He spotted furtive movement ahead, rising from a middeck stairwell, not far from the opening to the tender dock. He recognized the shabby uniforms.
Pirates.
Both parties spotted each other at the same time.
Monk shoved Lisa into the arcade. “Get down!”
His group scattered into other doorways or behind support pillars. One of the cannibals took a round to the head, flying back. But Monk’s party outnumbered the pirates. They laid down a continual swath of return fire, chewing down the passageway. Three pirates fell. The tallest shoved a slender man back into the stairwell and fled away.
Monk led a handful of the cannibals forward. One ripped a fresh weapon from one of the dead pirates’ hands and tossed aside his smoking rifle. Another pinched one of the corpses’ cheeks. Not in affection. Just testing for tenderness.
“That was Devesh hightailing it out of here,” Lisa said, joining Monk and pointing down the stairwell as they passed it. “The Guild leader here.”
Monk glanced toward the tender dock. “They must have been planning on crossing over to Pirate Town, to gather reinforcements.”
The thought spurred him faster down the hall toward the ship’s bow. Monk wondered if reinforcements weren’t already headed there, radioed in.
The hallway curved ahead, following the shape of the ship’s front end. As they rounded the bend, Monk spotted the open doorway to Ryder’s private launch.
They’d made it.
Before he could continue, shrieking cries erupted from the hall behind him.
Monk turned.
From the middeck stairwell, a dozen figures tumbled out into the hallway, scrambling, fighting, agitated, half naked in ripped and soiled hospital gowns. Limbs were blistered and weeping. Bloody lips peeled back in savage snarls. Even from fifty yards away, Monk recognized the sheen of madness shining from eyes caked with pus.
“Patients,” Lisa whispered, grabbing Monk’s arm and drawing him back. “In a catatonic psychosis. They’ll attack anyone. Devesh must have set them loose.”
“Bastard.” Monk waved the last of his party around the bend, out of sight. He hurried toward the open door to Ryder’s launch. More cries arose from ahead, past the door, where the hallway curved around to the port side.
Feet pounded in that direction, running toward them.
Monk lifted his weapon — but a familiar figure raced into view, one hand along the outer wall, keeping him upright. Jessie spotted his group, face brightening with relief. He was followed by a clutch of seven cannibals. The last two supported a third, a man bleeding heavily from a rip to the neck. From his green surgical scrubs, he was one of the WHO doctors.
The two groups met at the open door to the launch bay.
“You made it,” the young nurse gasped out.
Ryder, drawn by the commotion, appeared at the doorway with his own escort of cannibals. He smelled of gasoline, wiping oil from his hands on a rag. “What’s happening?”
Monk nodded. “Is your boat gassed up?”
A nod. “She’s ready to fly.”
To the side, Jessie allowed Lisa to hug him briefly while nodding to the other two WHO doctors. “Dr. Barnhardt. Dr. Miller.” He waved a hand to the man in the green scrub smock. “I need help with him.”
The cannibals lowered the wounded man to the floor. Blood, dark and heavy, pumped from his neck wound.
Lisa knelt to one side, the other two doctors on the man’s other side. Jessie already had his shirt off and passed it to Lisa. She bunched it and pressed it against the wound.
The man convulsed once, coughing blood. Then he lay still, unmoving, eyes open. Only his chest collapsed a bit deeper, sagging with death.
Still holding the bundled shirt to the wound, Lisa checked for a pulse on the other side of the man’s neck. She shook her head. There was nothing they could do for the man.
As she had worked, Jessie had related his story, wiping his brow and smearing blood there. “We rescued him. He was being attacked by one of the patients. We had to shoot her. But others are rising up from below. They’re already rampaging through the lower decks and moving up. Hundreds of them.”
Punctuating his words, savage cries echoed amid more shooting.
“Time to abandon ship,” Ryder said.
Monk turned to Ryder. “How many can your boat hold?”
“Six seats…but we can squeeze in one or two others.” Ryder eyed the number of people gathered here.
Jessie shook his head and backed a step. “I’m not going.”
Lisa took his elbow. “Jessie.”
“Someone has to defend the people, the children, still on board. From the pirates, from the madness. The tribesmen are their only hope. And they know me. They’ll listen to me.”
Dr. Barnhardt stepped to the young nurse’s side. “I’ll help him. We’ll attempt to set up some secure barricade. Gather as many as we can. To wait you all out.”
Dr. Miller stared with reluctance toward the open hatchway, then down to the dead doctor. He nodded. “These…these are our people. Our friends and colleagues. We can’t leave them.”
Lisa hugged each one in turn. “Henri…” she mumbled in a half plead to the last one.
The older man squeezed her and pushed her toward the open doorway. “Go get Susan. More than our lives, the cure must be taken beyond the Guild’s reach.”