Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel (17 page)

Atlantis

It always amazes me what humans, as a species, can accomplish. This structure we were now on was a fucking
marvel
. Firstly, it was big. I mean, huge like a skyscraper huge. Maybe not as tall, but I guarantee you there was just as much space on this rig as in most office buildings. They had thought of everything too. They make their own water, nearly endless supplies of fuel and power. Food for fifty people for a solid year, and not shit food, good food. Really good food. My first meal aboard Atlantis was lasagna that would have made a fat Italian nana soil her granny panties. They even had a movie theater with over a thousand relatively new titles stored on a couple of giant hard drives.

Hot showers, hot meals, a medical staff, an engineering staff, a gym, and plenty of things to do. I always thought roughnecks were all musclebound dumbasses, but every one of them has some kind of degree, and a lot of them are Ship-quality smart. No, not ship like a boat, Ship like my Sasquatch-esque genius pal.

Did you know that a lot of the bigger oil rigs float? They don’t sit on giant pilings that are sunk into the ocean floor like I thought. They have those big pilings, but they are just for weight and balance. The actual rig is anchored to the bottom with even bigger weights, with bunches of twelve-inch cables attached to the underside of the pilings extending all the way to those weights I just mentioned.

Genius, I shit you not, there were even plans to get some farms going on the helipad.

Of course, there are the bad things too. There were a hundred and thirty two people now on this rig, and it was made for a crew of seventy. A lot of the original crew left when the last few helicopters or boats took off for the mainland in search of their families. Many of the crew stayed though, and eventually Atlantis started taking on survivors.

There were a few military guys, and a bunch of civilians, even a few kids. All of whom now had important jobs. Some were security, some cooks, and some did whatever they were told. When the elevator to the docks below was locked up, nothing without ninja skills was getting on board either, so defense from bad guys who didn’t have flying or floating military vehicles was sound.

There had been an outbreak of the plague in the early days when an older roughneck had had a heart attack, turned, and killed another guy. The two of them were put down fast, and since then steps had been taken to alleviate this problem should it occur again. Not everybody had a weapon, but every door had some type of lock, and if anybody saw an infected, they would start screaming, and someone would set off the fire alarm. When the alarm sounded, everyone was to get to a locked room and get a weapon. Blunt objects, such as wrenches, rebar, pipe, and other heavy tools were everywhere already, so close quarters weapons were prevalent. Security would use the fire location system to see where the fire alarm had been tripped, and ten heavily armed and armored men would be scouring the area inside of two minutes. There hadn’t been another death since the first ones, so the system hadn’t been tested, but it sounded good to me.

What didn’t sound good to me was the math. There was food enough for the crew for a year, but we now had double the capacity that was designed to occupy the rig, so that food supply would go fast. Austin, the guy in charge, said he would not turn away anyone who wasn’t infected either, so we had the potential to overfill this place fast should more survivors show up. He did say that we were the first survivors they had seen in two weeks other than the crew from the Ensco DS-5.

The thing that bothered me the most about this place was the name though. I might not be a history buff, but I’m fairly certain that the mythical city or continent of Atlantis fucking sank. What a stupid name for something that is supposed to be sea worthy. It was like naming a jet liner Lynyrd Skynyrd.

All the positives outweighed the negatives, and eventually even Ship had to admit this place was great.

After that great lasagna dinner, our group of twelve was asked to meet with Austin for news of the mainland. All the information that the rig had was from the television, the internet, and survivors. We met and talked, and one of the biggest toughest roughnecks on board cried like a baby when we told them about Keesler. His whole family had been there.

“So it really is all gone then,” Austin asked.

“No,” I answered, “no, it isn’t. We’re all alive, and if we do things correctly, we can live a long damn time.”

Have you heard the term ear-splitting silence? Yeah. I experienced it first hand for a couple seconds there.

And then everybody clapped and we lived happily ever after.

Yeah, right. Remember when I said I was a magnet for bad shit to happen? It just might be true.

We integrated nicely into the Atlantis family. So much so, that I thought of them as
my
family. Every person on the rig, even Half-smile, who I know you were thinking was going to be a bad guy, and who’s name ended up being Ralph, was like a brother or sister or father or mother to me.

We all lived well, ate well, and got along. There weren’t any castes or
I’m better than you’s.
We initiated trade with four other rigs and some drillships, and soon we had friends all over the gulf. Most of the mechanics on all the ships and rigs had left to go back to the mainland during the initial stages of the outbreak. So when I went on a visit to another rig, the Atwood Condor, I helped repair their forklift and a drive motor on one of their windmills. They had the same type of engineer geniuses, but couldn’t figure out the old Cat lift or the mill motor, so I helped them. Word got around, and I became the official mechanic of all the rigs and drillships in our family.

We lived happy and healthy for almost three months. Had plans to go mine some earth to start the farms, and were having a meeting about it when one of the radio operators came down to talk to Austin. He told him he had the
Prague
on the line, and they sounded concerned.
Prague
was another rig a few miles away, far enough that we couldn’t see their lights at night. Austin left with Ted (the radio guy), and he came back about twenty minutes later. He sat down, and I could tell he was itching to tell us something.

I interrupted the earth-stealing meeting and asked Austin what was up.

“We may have a concern. Jeff on the
Prague
just told me that a massive container ship, the
Majestik Maersk
, just steamed by them on a heading of one hundred ninety degrees. They tried to contact the ship, and even tried to get aboard, but they couldn’t. The vessel is travelling at a speed of six knots, which is too fast for the current, but seemingly very slow for a ship of that size.”

“So how does that impact us?” somebody asked.

“One hundred and ninety degrees puts them on a collision course with us.” He held his hands up when the room got a little antsy. “Now the odds of this ship hitting us are extremely remote. It’s a big ship, yeah, and we’re a big stationary target, but it would be exceptionally unlucky for it to come within a mile of us, really.”

Fuck.

Exceptionally remote? Extremely unlucky? Do you remember who I am? Fecal attractor. Double fuck.

I truly believe he was going to leave it there, and go back to the meeting, but Ship passed him a sheet of paper, which he read aloud:
I don’t do unlucky. We need to get aboard to evaluate that vessel.

Before Austin could ask how, Ship had scribbled and passed him another note: 
The Beaumont has a helicopter. At some point my prestigious comrade here will have to repair it, we borrow it and call it a trade. At the very least the other rigs will want us alive to help if something bad happens, and this vessel could kill us all.

“He’s right,” a bunch of folks said at once. Murmurs of assent and worry went around the table, and we shelved the soil appropriations summit for the time being and talked about this possible threat. It never got heated, none of our meetings did. That was how our life was: good.

Things got thrown around and talked about, but it was finally decided that a small team would go aboard the
Majestik Maersk
and see what the hell was happening.

Something I haven’t mentioned up to now was that everybody had been calling me Captain. They did this because I was the guy who flew our boat to Atlantis. Jesus, that statement sounded ridiculous…  Anyway, they asked me if I could sail or at least stop the Majestic Maersk, and I immediately told them no. One of the drillship captains was visiting, and we brought him into the meeting and told him what was happening. He seemed considerably more alarmed than we did.

“That ship was built this past year,” he told us, “and it will have the new course correcting software in the wheelhouse.”

We all stared blankly.

He shook his head. “Means that if the course is set for one ninety degrees, that’s where she’s gonna go. Somebody get me a chart.” Two guys ran out for a chart. “The software accounts for moderate weather and current, and will auto correct heading should the need arise. The captain or his designee is still supposed to be in the wheelhouse. Your rig being only five hundred feet wide will probably be enough for her to miss you, but we should still take a look.”

Austin asked the captain if he would go with the team to check out the
Majestik
.

“Of course,” was all he said.

A kid came running in with a chart, and we spread it out on the table using coffee mugs to hold it straight.

“This is the
Prague
,” the captain said pointing at a red dot. He pulled a red grease pencil from thin air and a folding straight edge from his pocket, “and this is Atlantis,” he drew a line connecting the dots, “gimme the coordinates of the ship?” The radio guy read off of his piece of paper. The captain found the coordinates on the map and traced a line from them on a one hundred and ninety degree heading. Wouldn’t you know it, that fucking greasy red line ran dead across our little red dot.

It just isn’t fair.

Austin and the captain assured us that there was no chance this ship could hit us, but I wasn’t so sure. Lady luck had abandoned us in the past year and had been replaced by something downright malicious.

The captain pulled out a compass, not one that tells direction, one of the little pointy things that you always see ship captains flipping back and forth on a map in the movies. He did the same thing mumbling something about six knots and then looked at his watch, “Should be able to see her by morning.”

The helicopter from the Beaumont arrived just before midnight. A team of twelve of us would go, including the captain, Ship, Babe, Alvarez, Greg, and myself. Ship was an engineer and a computer genius, I was a mechanic, and Alvarez, Babe, and Greg were our muscle, along with five other guys with guns and a medic. Not my doctor hottie. We hit the rack at just before one AM, and were back up by five thirty. I stretched, got my gear and met the fellas at the helipad.

It was absolutely the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. The sky looked like it was on fire to the northeast. We were boarding the helicopter when the radio guy came running. He handed something to the pilot, and the pilot looked at his co-pilot like some shit was about to happen. The pilot handed the something, which was a computer readout, to the captain, who then showed it to us.

“This is printout of a reading from the Atlantis Doppler radar. We need to get on that ship soon.”

The printout was color, and there was a big fucking green swath coming in our direction. I didn’t know what a radar depiction of a hurricane looked like back then, but I sure as shit do now. As it turns out, the weather was the least of our worries with that damn
Majestik Maersk
.

Ship of Fools

It took thirty minutes to reach the ship. They had painted it a shitty sky-blue, and it had MAERSK LINES on the side in letters you could undoubtedly see from the moon. We circled the ship once in the chopper, and Captain Bob (no shit) pointed out that there were no life boats or those orange floaty circle thingies left on board. There were tents and stuff on the deck, and it looked as if some of the containers had been used as housing, at least from the air. Captain Bob said that there weren’t that many containers on board, but there had to be a thousand of them. No people though, and nobody answered the radio even with repeated attempts.

The ship was massive. Much, much bigger than the Atlantis. It was easily a quarter mile long, and tall, really, really tall. We circled a few times, and had the pilot, Billy, called back to Atlantis to get a couple of boats out just in case. Billy looked at the sky and it was black as shit in the distance, but the wind here was light and variable and the waves were almost non-existent. Billy looked nervous and that made me nervous.

Billy brought the bird down on some of the higher containers. There was no place else to set her down. We got out of the helicopter and they took off. They couldn’t just hover, it would kill precious fuel, so they headed back to the Atlantis, which was now closer to the
Majestik
than the
Prague
was. They would come get us as soon as we called them, or in two hours, whichever came first. In three hours, the storm would catch the ship, but Bob said that could be a good thing, because severe weather could defeat the course correction software and push this big bitch away from us.

Still, a rogue runaway boat, the size of a small town, was not a nice thing to have running around us or our friends in the gulf, so we had to shut her down. Or take her. If the containers held shit we could use, we would of course pilfer said shit. The water here was too deep to anchor her, but Bob was talking about sea anchors when we began climbing down the containers. It took a few minutes, but we made it to the deck, and I gotta tell you it was creepy in there. It was like being at the bottom of a steep, metal ravine. Everybody was quiet, but our footfalls echoed at each step, and honestly, it was tough to keep our shit together. Even Alvarez, who is normally stoic and tough, was looking a might nervous.

We made it to the tents we had seen from the chopper and my suspicions were confirmed on what had happened here. The tents were torn and bloody, with signs of struggle. Bullet brass and blood was everywhere, as were the tell-tale drag marks of a body being moved across the deck. A stainless steel medical table was overturned and there were medical supplies scattered all over the place. Syringes and unopened gauze and bandages, stainless instruments and even a defibrillator. Steve the medic began to inspect some of the stuff, and pocketed anything not covered in zombie shit.

Other than the sounds of the ship, it was eerily silent. So when one of the container doors moved slightly and squealed, we all spun and faced our weapons toward it. The container was black, and there were three of them. The doors were open, but the boxes were empty. Upon further inspection, the things stank to high heaven. Brown stains covered the floors and walls, and pieces of clothing were here and there. They had been storing their dead in here, or they had been storing
the
dead in here. Either way they were crazy. Why anybody would have a container full of infected is beyond me.

Alvarez, Babe, and Zero, one of the marines, began to confer on what to do. The plan was to run if things got dicey. We would get back to the tops of the containers by any means necessary, and wait for extraction by the helicopter. We did a comms check and we moved on toward the wheelhouse.

We came across the first body lying on its side against one of the containers. It was a torso, and there was barely anything left of it. It was impossible to tell if it had been a man or woman, as there were no features left. It had been dressed in jeans but the shirt, and face, and scalp and every single scrap of flesh and muscle was gone. There were tiny pieces of viscera, but for the most part this was a skeleton that had been picked clean. It looked like the blood on the deck and container had even been lapped at.

So you can imagine how far back we all jumped when the thing shifted its head. The head moved a little, but other than that there was nothing else left to budge, and it couldn’t moan as there was nothing below its upper jaw. Zero pulled his knife and jabbed it through the thing’s empty eye socket, ending its pathetic imitation of life.

We were all nervous and on edge now. It took a few minutes of frightful meandering through the containers to get to the superstructure of the ship. A really long set of white metal steps went up and up, but there was also a hatch leading inside right where the stairs met the deck. We decided to split up, six up the stairs, and six through the hatch. I was lucky enough to go through the hatch. Alvarez opened it, and it didn’t squeak horribly like I thought it would. Eleven firearms lowered when we saw that the inside was totally lit by interior lights, and seemed to be empty, and the stairs-six began their ascent. Ship was the last one through the hatch, and he closed and locked it with those little handles behind him.

A corridor went straight, all the way to the other side of the superstructure, but we wanted the stairwell in front of us. Another body was sitting down in the corner of the first landing, and it opened its eyes and tried to stand as we approached the stairs. It moaned, and Alvarez smoked it with his machete before it could get all the way up. We heard more moaning above us, and shuffling footsteps on the metal.

We were as quiet as possible going up the steps, and our enemy was making as much noise as possible, so when we met, we were surprised that there were only two of them. The guy who had been sitting down was a civilian, but these two were ship workers. They were both wearing what used to be blue jumpsuits with MAERSK on them, and they were absolutely mauled. They came at us, and Alvarez and Zero smoked them with a machete and a combat knife. When the dead were dead again, we listened. We could hear movement above us, and everybody knew what it was. Three landings up, we found it. Again, it was not possible to tell the gender of this one, but it had more to it. No legs and only half of one arm, it was trying to drag its wretched self to us.

What drives these things? Why do they want to eat us? If it’s some primal need, then why don’t they eat each other? Is it because nobody wants to eat something rotten, or do they consider themselves a different species, and abhor cannibalism?

Alvarez brought one of his size tens down on its noggin a few times and it was finished. We listened again, but couldn’t hear anything, so we moved on. There were several hatches on the way up, but they were all closed, and some of them looked to have that gore spatter you see when a group of them have been beating their rotten fists against something. We were smart enough not to open any of them. All we had to do was get to the bridge and turn this big bitch a tiny bit.

We reached the top of the stairs, and there was carnage everywhere. How the hell these things had gotten inside the wheelhouse when there were only a few entrances was beyond me. All the hatches had locking mechanisms, but the port side door was wide open. Why would they open the fucking door with those things pounding on it?

The bridge looked like what I would think a spaceship bridge looked like. There were so many controls and buttons and lights and sticks it was insanity. And it was big. Really big, super wide and if it weren’t for the giant broken window, all the blood, and few staggering zombies, it would have looked quite nice up there.

Zero dispatched the first one to come at us with the butt of his rifle. Alvarez got the next one, and Babe and Ship took the last two. All of them were down in under five seconds, and all of them looked like civilians except for one in blue scrubs. She had been a doctor, and she looked fresher than the others. She had a single bite mark on her forearm, even though the front of her scrubs were covered in blood and bits of shit. Although quite infected, she hadn’t been mangled like the others we had seen.

Captain Bob moved toward the massive instrument panel and began to search it over, just when the exterior team arrived at the outside hatch. They came in and we were all confused, as they hadn’t seen shit. The captain reached for one of the knobs or dials, but Steve, our medic stopped him with a hand on his arm. Steve pointed at all the blood on the panel, and said one word, “Don’t.”

He opened his pack and fished out a pair of purple examination gloves for Bob, who nodded and put them on. The rest of us searched around for stuff, and the security force began to sweep the giant room and the access points. There wasn’t a lot of space to hide, but the first time you don’t check, you’ve got a zombie chewing on your ass, so they checked. With the captain fiddling with his knobs, the heavy hitters securing the perimeter, the  medic looking like he was shitting himself, and Ship looking over the computer systems, I had some free time, so I searched for something to do.

I found a black bound notebook and picked it up. It was the captain’s private log. I read the last entry, and it was like a fucking horror story.

July 6
th

They’re at the doors and the stairwell is crawling with them. They can’t get in, but we can’t get out. We only have a day’s rations up here. Eventually we will have to try to escape. My God there are so many. I can see several of my crew members on the deck, feeding on their friends and the civilians we picked up. I’ve set a course of 190° and a speed of seven knots and turned on the CCS. This should beach the Majestik near the port city of Tampico, Mexico. Seven knots is as slow as I can set her to maintain course, and the CCS will help. I want her to be as slow as possible when she beaches so she doesn’t break up. God help anyone left alive in Tampico if the Majestic breaks up and spills her cargo.

If we live through this, I swear to all that is holy I will kill every one of those USAMRIID bastards. That bitch Doctor Callus won’t need my wrath, as she was bitten earlier today, and she’s already sick. She’s killed us all, even herself.

This is the final log of Captain Asmund Pedersen. I hope I see my children again. Jeg elsker deg Hanna. Jeg elsker deg Marit. Jeg elsker deg Jan Egil. Beklager…

I kept reading as I heard the security guys saying
Clear
through the radio. I flipped a few pages back.

June 29
th

They dropped off the containers today. Three Sky Cranes plopped them down right on the deck by the tent city that has sprung up there. We had room aft, but Callus demanded we put them immediately in front of the bridge, so they could be monitored from the wheelhouse. My suggestions that these containers be put aft for safety went unheeded, and actually earned me looks of reproach from the soldiers and doctors. I’ve come to realize that Captain means nothing to these people. I don’t run my ship anymore, they do. “A military operation now” is what she said. Those damn containers should not be aboard this vessel with all these survivors on board. They should be doing this elsewhere.

Jarron fixed the electrical issue with the forward boom this morning.

We picked up another eight survivors from the sea as well today. Their boat was taking on water and we were able to get to them before it sunk, but just. They were grateful. One of the children reminds me of Marit, six years old and blonde to the point of blinding me. She is beautiful. I miss my children. I hold no hope that they survived as Trondheim is a large city. Hanna is resourceful though, perhaps they escaped to the sea.

And a few more pages back.

June 23
rd

The Majestik received radio contact from the Navy of the United States this morning. We were anchored southwest of Pensacola Florida taking on survivors, when we received a request to weigh anchor and steam southwest further into the gulf. There is a US military ship, the Winston S. Churchill, that has suffered some type of catastrophe, and we have been asked to help.

Forward boom is still giving us some trouble.

Thirty two survivors made it to us today. We are acquiring quite a family here.

June 24
th

We now have several doctors and naval sailors on the
Majestik
. They have brought weapons and medical equipment and supplies from the Churchill. There was an outbreak aboard the Churchill, and they were unable to contain it. Apparently there are dozens of dead confined below decks, but the engine room is overrun and there was a fire. They were dead in the water when we found them. One of the sailors was bitten, and not allowed to come with us. I could hear the dead pounding on the hatches and bulkheads, and apparently so could the sailor, because he took his own life. I don’t blame him, nobody survives a bite from one of those things.

I harrumphed.

When we had moved a kilometer away from the Churchill,
o
ne of the sailors triggered something, and there was a huge explosion on the port side. A large fireball leapt from the ship, and she immediately listed to port. She took less than twenty minutes to slip beneath the waves. None of the sailors or doctors would tell us anything other than there was an outbreak and a fire. The lead doctor, a woman named Callus, demanded to see me on the bridge. I think she’s a tad intrusive, but she’s a doctor, and we need one since Bernhardt died.