Dead Calm (21 page)

“Maybe it’s gotten better,” Brother William said.
“We've had so little contact with anyone. Maybe the zombies ran out
of food after they ate everyone. Maybe they died?”

“They can't die, William. They're already dead.”
Ricky pointed out as if explaining something to a child.

“Maybe they'll eat each other when they run out of
food then,” William proposed.

“That would be cannibalism,” Seth pointed out.

“Isn't that what they're doing now?” William
challenged, sounding like a five year old on a school play lot.

“Is not,” Seth said.

“Is too.”

Ricky shook his head sadly as he thought that, while
both of them were loyal as dogs, they were so dumb their lips moved
when they thought. Sometimes, when he’d been listening to them for
too long, he got the feeling his IQ had dropped twenty points.

Ricky was about to break up the debate between his
two Rhodes scholars when Don cut in and said sharply, “Enough about
the dead. The ones we've had locked up in the cabin areas are still
moving around and ready to take a bite out of your ass, so they're
still out there in the cities too. We head to Cozumel like we
planned. We only have a few days left, so we need to move our
timetable up.” Turning to Ricky, he said, “Our problem is that the
newcomers need to be spread out, so we can deal with them
separately. Maybe what we need to do is give them more room.”

“How so?” Ricky asked.

“We give them deck five. We pull the spotters back to
six and let the newcomers move around. That might give us a chance
to take them out. We'll have to play it by ear and keep giving them
enough rope to hang themselves. It should make them feel more
comfortable, and maybe they'll split up and go off in different
directions. Then we can isolate and kill them.”

“What about having your snitch just cut the chain in
the door and let the freaks loose?” William proposed.

“That's only going to be done as a last resort,”
Ricky said. “Don and I discussed it. We know there's a couple
hundred stinkers locked in the cabin area on deck four, and they
could easily overwhelm and kill the people down there if we let
them go, but then we'd have to deal with the dead to get to the
weapons and the sailboat.”

“So, do we let the three newcomers have the run of
the ship tonight?” Brother Cal asked.

“I want no interference with any of them,” Ricky
ordered. “If we give them an inch, I hope they'll take a mile.”
Standing, he looked down onto deck twelve and saw that some of the
Faithful had gathered for his evening sermon and their chance to
ascend into heaven.

‘Dumbasses,’ he thought.

Turning back to his Head Ushers, he said, “After I
finish with the magic show, I'm going to go down to deck four and
tell them they should feel free to use the shops and restaurants on
deck five. Pull the spotters back to six while I'm down there and
make a show of it. I want them to see how trusting and generous we
are.”

With a big grin, Ricky added, “Maybe while I'm down
there, I'll even get a chance to see Sheila again.”

Chapter Eleven

The Dead Calm:

Tick-Tock pried the outer elevator doors apart and
held them open, leaving the inner ones exposed for Brain to release
the lever locking them in place. After a full minute of looking, he
still couldn't find the latch as he searched from top to
bottom.

With an “Aha,” Brain finally saw what he was looking
for and moved a lever set flush with the inner panel. The doors
parted with a soft click as both he and Tick-Tock jumped out of the
line of fire. Steve was standing behind them with his rifle ready
in case anything came out of the elevator. Just from the smell, or
lack of it, they knew the car was clear of the dead but still they
entered cautiously. On the Dead Calm, nothing could be taken for
granted. After setting a chair under the maintenance hatch in the
ceiling, Steve undid the fasteners that held it in place and eased
it down to swing free on its hinges.

Tick-Tock looked at Brain and asked, “I need to know
if your mind's a little preoccupied tonight, Pork Chop?”

With a cautious look on his face, he replied, “Why do
you ask?”

“Because you spent all that time looking for the
release catch for the elevator door and it was right in front of
your eyes marked with the words Emergency Release, Push Down.”

Brain chuckled nervously and admitted, “I might have
been thinking about Connie a little bit and my mind wandered.”

“Put her out of your head,” Steve ordered as he
shined his flashlight through the access hatch into the darkened
elevator shaft. “Keep focused or you might end up dead. Or worse,
undead.”

“I can't help it, it's like she's invaded my brain,”
the tech said and then asked, “Don't you ever think of Heather and
get distracted?”

Looking down from his perch on top of the chair, he
replied, “I think of her before I do something dangerous but then I
push her out of my head. If I'm thinking about Heather when I'm
supposed to be concentrating on what I'm doing, and get distracted
and killed, it's no consolation to either of us that my last
thoughts were of her. I'm still dead. If you keep thinking of
Connie when you're supposed to be focusing on what you're doing,
then that's how you'll end up, dead.”

Brain nodded thoughtfully and replied, “Understood.
My mind is now purged of Connie.”

Laughing, Tick-Tock said, “You might want to do the
same thing with Mary and Sheila. I've seen the way you've been
looking at them.”

“Steve already warned me about Mary,” Brain replied.
“But what's a lip-stick lesbian?”

Tick-Tock laughed again, while Steve said, “You've
lived a sheltered life, kid.”

“A lip-stick lesbian is a lesbian who looks like a
normal heterosexual woman,” Tick-Tock explained. “You know, she
dresses like one, does her hair nice and wears make up. She's not
dyked out with a butch haircut or dresses like a guy.”

Brain considered Mary's long blonde hair, feminine
features and how she was attracted only to her own sex before
nodded in understanding. Curious, he asked, “So what about Susan?
She's like Mary, but she's with you, Tick-Tock.”

“Susan's bi-sexual,” Tick-Tock answered. “She goes
both ways. Men and women.”

“What about Sheila then?” Brain asked.

“She's try-sexual,” Steve answered before pulling
himself up onto the top of the elevator car. Sticking his head back
into the opening, he added, “She'll try anything sexual.”

Brain laughed, and in a mock serious tone Tick-Tock
warned him, “You don't want to try tapping Sheila for a couple
reasons, Pork Chop. One, is that Mary's on the trail of that and
would cut your throat in your sleep, and two, is that you might
come away with something incurable like
gono-herpa-syphil-aids.”

Brain chuckled, but from the look on his face seemed
to take Tick-Tock's warning to heart.

Perched above them, Steve called down, “If we're done
with tonight's lesson on alternative lifestyles, can we get
going?”

Looking at Brain, Tick-Tock said, “Anything else you
need to know, just ask me later.”

After handing Steve's rifle up through the opening,
Tick-Tock boosted himself on top of the elevator and reached down
to give Brain a hand. Since the tech only had his holstered pistol,
he waved him off and said, “I've got this,” before jumping up and
grabbing the lip of the opening and easily pulling himself up on
top of the car.

“I've been working out,” Brain explained once he'd
settled himself with his legs dangling in the access hatch.

Giving him an appraising look, Tick-Tock said, “So I
see.”

Pointing to the rungs set in the metal side of the
elevator shaft, Steve said to Brain, “Then you get to go first,
Hercules.”

Guided by a flashlight, Brain scaled the ladder until
he was two floors above them. Tick-Tock and Steve waited while he
listened and sniffed for the sound or smell of anyone or anything
lurking outside the elevator doors. After a minute, he waved that
it seemed clear. When the three men were stacked right below each
other on the ladder, Brain stretched his arm out and undid the
inside latch for the elevator doors on deck six. He eased the doors
open to their stops and cautiously looked out into the short hall
that ran in front of the elevators. Giving them a thumbs up, he
motioned with his Colt .45 that he was going in. Swinging through
the opening, he was quickly followed by Steve and Tick-Tock.

Brain crept to where the passageway T-boned into the
main passageway running along the port side of the ship. Cautiously
looking around the corner into the Centrum, he studied this area
for any signs of life.

Or death.

Gone were the shops and restaurants of the lower
decks. They were replaced with conference rooms for conventions,
business service desks and small private rooms furnished with
computers and office equipment so executives could use the
facilities to keep track of their businesses while on vacation.
Seeing the area was clear, Brain moved to the starboard side and
repeated his performance, while Steve and Tick-Tock each covered an
end of the hall from in front of the elevator. It had been agreed
upon that Brain would lead them on the expedition into the upper
decks. This was to give him more experience moving around in a
hostile environment. It was a skill they all needed in the
post-dead world.

After checking that the starboard side was clear,
Brain led them in the opposite direction from the Centrum.
Cautiously making his way down a short hall that dead-ended at a
door marked Authorized Personnel Only, he stopped and took a quick
look around before proceeding.

With Tick-Tock covering their rear and Steve covering
Brain, the tech tried the door in front of him only to find it
locked. Extracting a large ring of keys that Tim had scrounged from
somewhere, he tried the most likely ones first. On the fifth try,
the lock turned. Steve shouldered his rifle as Brain eased down on
the lever and opened the door; standing back while Steve searched
the area beyond for anything living or dead.

Illuminated by emergency lights set twenty feet apart
on alternate walls, Steve saw that the passageway stretched all the
way to the stern of the ship. Besides doors, which were staggered
every ten feet on both sides, he saw nothing that anyone or
anything could hide in or behind. Waving Brain forward, he followed
him through the opening. Seconds later, Tick-Tock backed into the
passageway and shut the hatch behind them. Just in case they had to
make a quick exit, he tested the door lever to make sure it would
open without using the key. Turning to Brain and Steve, he nodded
and looked down the passageway.

Since leaving the top of the elevator car, the men
had moved in complete silence. Steve broke this by saying in a
quiet voice, “Looks like you get to be Monty Hall, Brain.”

“How's that?” He asked.

“You get to show us what's behind door number one,”
he replied.

“And door number two, three, four and five,”
Tick-Tock added. “We don't want to let anything come up behind us
after we pass, so we need to check them all.”

Brain took a deep breath and let it out before moving
to the first door. Finding it locked, he went on to the next one.
The undisturbed dust on the tile floor told them that no one had
been through this way in months, so they were more concerned with
running into the dead than the living. They knew that Z’s had a
habit of milling around in one spot and had difficulty opening
locked doors, so they would only stop to check out the ones that
were unlocked. On his eighth try, Brain found one.

As the knob turned in his hand, Brain's eyes grew
wide with surprise. Steve motioned him back against the far wall as
he and Tick-Tock took up positions on either side of the door.
Reaching forward, Steve turned the knob and gave it a slight push.
As it opened to bang lightly against the inside wall, the three men
saw the same thing through the entrance. A small room with two
single beds, two dressers and another door set in the right side
wall.

“Crew’s quarters,” Tick-Tock said in a low voice.
Pointing to the door in the near wall he added, “Gotta be a
bathroom.” Brain moved forward to check the area but Tick-Tock
stopped him by saying, “I got this one.”

Giving the beds a wide berth because they brought up
childhood fears of the boogeyman reaching out from underneath and
grabbing him, Tick-Tock checked the bathroom first and found it
empty. After getting up his nerve, he used his rifle barrel to lift
the blankets covering the beds so he could look under them.
Relieved that he found no boogey men, he exited the room.

Steve looked at his watch and then at the remaining
doors. Realizing that if even one in ten was open, that it would
take all night to clear the rooms, not to mention the exposure to
possible attack in searching each one, he knew they needed to come
up with a quicker way to by-pass this area.

Pulling the deck layout from his pocket, he saw the
area where he was standing was grayed out except for the hallways
crossing it. Knowing that these diagrams were for the passengers
use, it made sense that they weren't going to show the crew's
quarters and mechanical sections.

“We’ve got to figure a way to secure these doors or
we'll be here forever,” Steve voiced his concern.

“We could use the keys,” Brain proposed.

Tick-Tock and Steve both looked at him questioningly
so Brain produced the ring of keys that Tim had given him. “These
are the masters for deck six,” he said.

“Masters?” Steve asked, “I thought those were just
for the locks on the main doors. Don't you think you could have let
us know that you had the masters a little sooner?”

Brain shrugged, “You didn't ask.”