Demon (18 page)

“We need to leave here now!” Mahmoud yelled.

Yusuf barely heard him but made out enough to understand what he said. He could not agree more.

“Yes,” Yusuf yelled over the continuous gunfire. “Run!”

The man who had been crying was already gone. Yusuf watched the two men with Glocks flee as well. The man with the Kalashnikov stayed steady, reloading and opening fire once again. Yusuf checked the status of the three bodies. All of them were on their bellies crawling toward them like snakes.

“Allah, be merciful,” Yusuf said.

Down the passageway beyond the crawlers, Yusuf saw another man, this one standing and walking toward them. He could not make out a face, but its arms were stretched out in front of it.

As it grew closer, Yusuf could make out more. He still could not discern a face, but looking at the clothing and stature of the person, he knew who it was.

“Alwad,” Yusuf said. Which meant the three dead men crawling toward them had been his search party.

Alwad stepped underneath a light and Yusuf received a clear view of his face: the nose was gone; the eye sockets were empty black voids; what skin remained around his cheeks hung in flaps. Then he noticed the smile. The lips had fallen off, revealing a permanent toothy grin.

Mahmoud fired down into the bodies, only a few feet away now. The action broke Yusuf's fixation on Alwad. He turned and ran, not looking behind him once.

At the top of the ladder on the deck above, Yusuf slammed the watertight door shut as the last man ran through. He latched it closed and posted a watch on it until chains could be wrapped around it and locked.

Mahmoud breathed heavily. “What in God's name just happened?”

Yusuf shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“That was Alwad!”

“
Was
Alwad,” Yusuf said. “We cannot consider it him any longer.”

“Then what do we consider it?”

Yusuf, still able to hear only out of his right ear, ran both hands through his sweat-soaked hair. “The living dead.”

Mahmoud spat to avert evil. “The hell you say.”

“You saw what I saw, Mahmoud. How many bullets were put into those three? And yet they kept coming, as if nothing would stop them.”

Mahmoud closed his eyes. “We are doomed.”

“No, we are not.”

“We cannot tell the crew. They will tear each other to pieces to get off the ship.”

Yusuf nodded. “And we cannot pull into port. It could spread back to the shore.”

“Just like Basra.”

“Just like Basra.” Yusuf reached into his pocket and fished out a cigarette and lit it. He took a long, slow drag. “We may have to abandon ship.”

“And what happens to the ship that discovers the
al-Phirosh
and decides to board her? Do we leave a possibly infected vessel for them to enter?”

Yusuf shook his head. “We have no idea what we are dealing with but know we cannot allow this to go any further. Whatever happened in Basra is now happening here. How would it look if we perpetuated it by exposing others?”

“Then what do we do?”

Yusuf closed his eyes. He knew but could not believe it was the only option. He also knew the longer he waited, the more crew members would be killed. Whatever had crept aboard the
al-Phirosh
had led to the deaths of at least eight crew members since setting sail. What had happened to Alwad had probably happened to Sayid. And probably the poor man found in the refrigerator.

The refrigerator
. Was that ground zero for all of this? It had to be. Yusuf looked at his own hand as if skin would fall off at any moment.

The skeleton, the member of his crew who had somehow decomposed in a few short hours. It could all be traced to him. Sayid's disappearance. The two men dead in the berthing above. And now this. It had spread slowly, allowing Yusuf to fool himself into thinking it was just an isolated event.

You idiot,
Yusuf thought.
You have signed the death sentence of your crew. All because of greed.

Then I must save as many as I can. And not let this spread any further.

“Mahmoud,” Yusuf said, “take your team and finish securing the passageway. I need to go back to the wheelhouse and start making preparations.”

“Preparations for what?”

Yusuf dropped the cigarette on the deck and crushed it with the toe of his boot, exhaling smoke. “To scuttle the ship.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

M
ike sat in a bar in Baghdad's old coalition-protected Green Zone, nursing his fifth glass of Johnnie Walker while he waited for his MAC flight. He still had a couple of hours to kill.

He hadn't headed straight for the bar. First, Mike stopped and bought a decent pair of pants, a couple of shirts, and a windbreaker. He also bought a small travel bag and loaded up on socks and underwear. Then he headed for the bar.

“You look like a man who has a lot on his mind,” the bartender said in English with a thick Iraqi accent.

Mike smirked. “You could say that.”

“As a bartender I have discovered I must also be a part-time therapist. Especially in this part of the city.”

“I don't doubt it.” Mike polished off the rest of his glass and signaled for another. The bartender dutifully filled it. “How is it Muslims can be bartenders? I thought you couldn't touch alcohol.”

“Simple really. What I serve I do not drink, and what I get on my hands I wash off.”

Mike nodded and sipped from the fresh glass. “Makes sense.”

“So, do you need someone to talk to?”

“Can't. Not allowed.”

The bartender nodded. “I see. Perhaps you should talk to a priest.”

“You need to be sorry to receive absolution, not guilty.”

“So you are stuck keeping it all inside?”

Mike nodded and held up his glass. “Johnnie helps, though.”

“Of course.”

Mike's cell phone rang. “Excuse me.”

The bartender bowed his head and moved on to another customer.

“Hello?” Mike said.

“It's Glenn.”

“Hey.”

“You out of Iraq yet?”

“No. I'm in Baghdad waiting for my flight.”

“How's the injury?”

Hurts
. “Better. Still smarts.”

“Are you drinking?”

Mike's hand holding the glass froze halfway to his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Don't fall into a shame spiral on me, Mike.”

“Have I ever before?”

“There's a first time for everything.”

Mike took a sip and set the glass down. “It's a switch, Glenn. Always has been. I can flip it on or off anytime I want.”

Glenn didn't say anything for a few seconds. “All I'm saying is you've dealt with a lot of strange shit lately and haven't had anything to show for it. Don't let it get the better of you.”

“I won't.”
Because I'm still a good guy,
he thought.

“Good. I need you frosty. I've got lots of work for you to do in the Horn.”

Translation: I've got lots of people for you to kill. “Got it.”

“Call me when you get to Djibouti.”

The line went dead. Mike slid the cell phone back in his pocket. Then he stared at his glass of whiskey and wondered if he should leave it.

Just walk away,
Mike thought.
You've had enough.

Then Mike thought about Greg McDaniel blown to bits by a suicide bomb. He thought about Lowe, mowed down by crazies in the desert. He thought of Major Greengrass, heading home, shitting out of a hole in his side into a plastic bag. And he thought about all the dead in Basra. Mike shook his head and grabbed the glass and knocked back what was left.

The drinks had managed to keep the thoughts at bay since getting to Baghdad. Now, though, they flooded in like a damn tsunami. The images of dreams rode with them. The bodies in the sea. The smiling insurgent with the two holes in his head. The lone highway leading to Basra. Leading to death.

Mike pinched the bridge of his nose. A skull splitter was brewing. He could already feel it fermenting behind his eyeballs.

“I'm still a good guy,” Mike said, barely whispering. “It's how I'll win. I am what I am. Accept it. There's a difference between just and selfish.”

“Did you say something?”

Mike released his nose. The bartender stood across from him again, smiling.

“One more for the road.” Mike reached into his jacket and pulled out his empty flask. “And fill this for me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

S
emyaza needed a new body immediately. Controlling the dead had forced him to relinquish his focus on preserving his vessel. As a result, the deterioration of it had actually multiplied compared to the first one, Henry Prince. In less than an hour, all the skin and muscle had eroded up to the shoulders. He couldn't see his face but knew the eyes had dissolved and ears had fallen off, as had the nose.

Not much time,
Semyaza thought. He stepped over the bodies and walked toward a closed door. Controlling them had been fascinating but not worth it. The men with guns had all escaped and had left him with a near worthless vessel. In addition, moving the dead required Semyaza to extend part of himself into each body, to branch out. The experience left him exhausted, as if he had been stretched over an infinite distance.

The door would not budge under his grasp. He moved farther down the passageway to another. Again, it would not move.

Semyaza walked up a ladder to yet another door. Like the previous two, the handle would not pivot.

They have locked me in. They are not as dumb as they look.

For the first time since escaping the prison, Semyaza felt the initial inkling of desperation. If he did not indwell in another body soon . . .

He heard something move on the other side of the door. A rattle of some kind. It was brief, but Semyaza had no problems discerning it. He leaned forward and sniffed.

Man. He smelled a man separated from him by a few inches of steel.

A vessel.

But can I penetrate this steel and possess him fast enough?

Then he noticed more skin and muscle falling from underneath his pants legs to the deck.

I do not have a choice,
he thought.

Y
usuf had kept the crew of the
al-Phirosh
at their emergency stations, explaining over the ship's main communication circuit there had been reports of pirates operating off the Omani coast. It was not the best lie but one that would afford him some time. Then he assembled his senior ranking officers in the wheelhouse.

He looked over their concerned faces, taking quick drags of his cigarette as he did.
How do I tell them?
he thought.

“Captain,” Jibril said, “where is Alwad? Will he be here for this?”

Yusuf had not seen Jibril since confining him to medical. Now, he thanked him internally for providing a way to start.

“No, Jibril, he will not.” Yusuf stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray by his chair. “It is why I have asked you all here.”

He told his crew everything, from the skeleton in the refrigerator to the dead men in the berthing to the demise of Alwad and his search party. Eyes widened and heads shook and hands fidgeted as he informed the leadership of what he considered their only option remaining. The only people who nodded in agreement were Mahmoud and Jibril.

Yusuf had decided to allow those confined in medical free to return to their duties. He did not see the point anymore with what had happened to Alwad. Plus, having Jibril and Mahmoud, two witnesses to the horrors, up there to corroborate his story helped Yusuf's confidence. For his crew to execute what he asked of them, Yusuf needed the leadership behind him. He needed to sell them on what he recommended. And having two senior leaders in his corner, right from the beginning, was a major advantage.

After Yusuf finished, silence greeted him.

“Does anyone have anything to say?” Yusuf said after a few more moments of silence.

“Captain,” the chief engineer said. “This is insanity.”

“You have not seen what we have seen,” Mahmoud said. “The captain is being truthful.”

“But sink the ship,” the chief engineer said. “There must be a better solution. That is a last resort you are speaking of.”

“Exactly,” Yusuf said. “Even if we successfully lock it down in the lower decks, it will have to be dealt with sooner or later. Would you risk releasing it in another populated area like Basra?”

“I do not even know what
it
is, Captain,” the chief engineer said. “What it sounds like is something causing people to hallucinate.”

“So Mahmoud, myself, and the others down there imagined all this? We all saw the exact same hallucination?”

The chief engineer started to say something else, but Yusuf cut him off, his anger rising. “Perhaps a hallucination is responsible for the death of Alwad and his search party. Tell me how a dream can smash in a person's skull.”

The chief engineer lowered his eyes toward the deck.

“We saw three dead men walking toward us,” Mahmoud said. “We saw Alwad moving freely, most of his face gone, his hands mere bone. Jibril found the skeleton of a man who had decomposed within a few hours of setting sail. There is something greater going on here than any one of us can imagine.”

“I tried to treat this whole situation logically,” Yusuf said. “Ever since leaving Basra, I have rationalized everything that has happened. But those dead men walking toward us betrayed all logic. And I will not let this go any further. We fled Basra. I will not be responsible for starting another one.”

“How will we explain this?” the chief engineer said. “Millions of dollars of oil and property sunk because of, what, something supernatural?”

Yusuf nodded. “Sure.”

“They will arrest us.”

“They will arrest me,” Yusuf said. “The captain takes full responsibility. It will be logged. And you know what? It is a small price to pay considering the alternative.”