Demon (24 page)

Temms's eyes widened a little. “Fifty-five? Those vessels don't carry a crew that big.”

Mike turned back to Yusuf and resumed in Arabic. “That seems like a large number for a vessel of its size. Our understanding is most tankers like yours carry a crew of only twenty-five to thirty, if not less.”

Yusuf nodded. “Yes, normally. However, the Iraq Oil Shipping Company, in cooperation with the government, agreed to hire more crew than normal for its ships. As a way of putting more citizens to work. They merely doubled the amount of beds in sleeping spaces.”

“I see.” Mike relayed the information to Temms, who nodded in acceptance.

“That means forty-one dead.” Temms rubbed her jaw. “Not good odds.”

“And have you been told how many survived?” Mike said in Arabic, ignoring Temms's last comment.

Yusuf nodded, tears streaming down his temples. “Fourteen.”

“A tragedy.”

Yusuf said nothing.

Mike waited another moment. “The
al-Phirosh
set sail from Basra a little over three days ago, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Your ship was moored when the riots broke out, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Your ship was moored when the military helicopters were flying over Basra, ordering all personnel out of the city, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Captain, I must ask, why did you get your ship underway after being ordered to evacuate?”

Yusuf wiped his eyes. “Anyone who did not want to set sail was given every opportunity to leave before getting underway. Not many chose to leave.”

Tears ran down the side of Yusuf's face. “I thought we were safe at sea.”

“I sympathize with your decision. After seeing what happened in Basra, I cannot blame you for leaving.”

“After what has happened,” Yusuf said, “I wish I would have made everyone leave and never set sail.”

Mike leaned forward. “What happened out there, Captain?”

Yusuf swallowed again, harder this time. He took a deep breath and told his story. Mike translated every word for Temms. As Yusuf progressed from the finding of the skeleton to the deaths in the berthing to the loss of his first officer, his words came slower and more labored, as if they stabbed his chest as he uttered them.

When Yusuf reached the point in his story where he and the security detail confronted the walking dead, Mike leaned back and listened, not translating for a long time. He couldn't believe what he heard. Everything up to that point had fit with what had happened at R91 and Basra. The sudden surge of violence. The man-on-man primal attack. The suicide by the last one standing. And then nothing for a few hours until the cycle started once more.

The walking dead, though, caught him completely off guard. And yet, as he heard Yusuf tell his story, he couldn't not believe it. There was such sadness and loss in his words. Mike knew the man spoke the truth, at least what he perceived to be the truth.

Part of Mike, though, fought the ridiculousness of it. He tried to link Yusuf and his security detail's experience to the hallucinogen theory. Exposure led them to imagine dead bodies walking toward them.

But why didn't they attack each other then?
Mike thought. It didn't make sense. The whole walking dead thing shot a big old hole in the hallucinogen theory. No one else had reported seeing crazy shit because no one else had survived a direct exposure. This meant if there was a hallucinogen, it was mutating. Or Yusuf was telling the truth.

“You can't kill this one, Mike.”

“Hey,” Temms said. “You forget about me?”

Mike held up his hand. “I'm just letting him get it all out. I'll tell you the whole thing once he's done.”

Temms didn't seem to like that, but she held her tongue and allowed Yusuf to continue his story.

Yusuf eventually reached the end of his tale and stopped talking. Mike rubbed his mouth and turned off the recorder. He tried to think, tried to provide a logical answer for what had happened and what needed to happen next. But he couldn't. All he could do was create images from Yusuf's words. And what he saw was death.

“Jesus,” Mike said. He turned to Temms. “I need to talk to you alone.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

M
ike stood with Temms in the passageway just outside the quarantined berthing, out of earshot of anyone else. He told Temms what Yusuf had said, choosing his words carefully, not wanting to scare the captain away before he finished. Temms listened but shook her head often.

Once Mike was done, Temms said, “This all sounds like horseshit.”

“I know how it sounds, but it isn't horseshit.”

“How can you say that? The walking dead. That's ludicrous. Sounds like the good master took too many hits off the hookah.”

“Captain, I believe when you spoke with the president in private he may have related to you what happened in Basra.”

Temms looked away. “Yeah, he did.”

“And so you are aware of the amount of death that occurred there. But not random death. Ordered. A pattern. It started in one place and moved, like riding a wave. Then it stopped. The violence didn't spread to the whole city.”

“You and the president and your boss, Cheatum, talked about a biological attack. How the hell can a weapon raise the dead?”

Mike gritted his teeth. Temms was right. From her point of view, based on what she had been told, the whole thing stunk. He could stand there and swear to God and country Yusuf's story was more truth than fiction, but it would get him nowhere. Temms had been told by the president of the United States it had happened one way. Why on earth would she take Mike's word for it right now?

Mike had seen R91, though. He'd been in the prison. And the more he remembered them, the more he knew this wasn't some kind of ancient hallucinogen. There was something else at work here, and he couldn't just hold his tongue and let the possible truth die.

“The biological attack is bullshit,” Mike said.

“Excuse me?”

“Bullshit, the whole thing.” Mike took a deep breath. “They don't know what it is. They're just using the biological attack to give the whole madness some form of order. But it's crap.”

“And how do you know that?”

Mike shrugged. “I've been to ground zero.”

“You were in Basra?”

“No, I was at ground zero.”

“What are you saying, Mike?”

Mike hesitated a moment and then decided to say the fuck with all the secrecy. The truth needed to be told if anyone was going to survive this.

“Basra wasn't the first outbreak. There was a dig at a construction site outside An Nasiriyah . . .”

Mike told Temms everything. Everything except the dreams. Those he kept close.

He knew he sounded insane, but getting it all out, baring his soul, felt liberating, as if he could once and for all lift the weight of secrecy and lies off his heart.

“And what was in the prison?” Temms said.

Mike blinked. “What?”

“The prison.” Temms's face was hard and unyielding. “What did the man say was in it?”

Mike smirked, hardly able to comprehend that he believed it now. “A demon.”

Temms's eyebrows narrowed. “A what?”

“A fucking demon. Hard to believe, huh?”

Temms sighed. “A demon in a box in the desert? Do you expect me to believe a demon is responsible for all this, Mr. Caldwell? Do you know how insane this is?”

Mike shook his head. “I know it's ridiculous, but there is no other answer. Something, whether it's a demon or something else supernatural, was on the
al-Phirosh
. It wasn't a biological weapon and it wasn't a hallucinogen trapped underground until that sewer pipe fell on the slab and freed it. It is some kind of entity that can wreak destruction on whoever it comes in contact with.”

“Well, I disagree, Mr. Caldwell.”

“Captain—”

“Do you want to know what I think?”

Mike crossed his arms. “Sure.”

“I think you've experienced some pretty traumatic stuff in recent days. I think it's affected your rational mind. And I don't think your boss knows how screwed up you are, or he would not have sent you here.”

“With all due respect—”

“I also think Captain Yusuf panicked after seeing what was happening in Basra. I think he had a mental breakdown and most of his story is in his head. What happened in Basra was a biological incident, as the president explained, and someone on board the
al-Phirosh
was infected. When Yusuf found out, he freaked and convinced his crew they were all going to die if they didn't abandon ship. He convinced himself something supernatural was on board and told the crew the only way to survive was to sink the ship.”

Mike shook his head. “Yusuf wasn't lying. I know when someone is lying to me.”

“I didn't say he was. He believes it's the truth. How can you lie when you don't know what's real?”

“What happened on the
al-Phirosh
and what happened in Basra and at site R91 are not coincidences.”

“No,” Temms said. “They're not. They are all related to the accidental release of a biological specimen probably buried in an old weapons cache. The biological attack story is bullshit; I accept that. The material the box at R91 is constructed of, once examined, will probably be explained as specially developed to contain said weapon. The reason why it spreads to those in close proximity and then stops will probably be due to both rate of decay and airborne diffusion.”

Mike shook his head. “I've tried to explain everything with the same rationale. But instead of a weapon, I thought it was some ancient hallucinogen that had been trapped in the box. I believed it caused everyone within a certain distance to see things not really there. Horrors of some kind. And that was why people attacked each other. Like it flicked on a primal switch in the lizard brain or something. But I don't accept that anymore.”

“Why, Mr. Caldwell? Are you so desperate for an explanation that you'll grasp on to the irrational answer?”

“Yusuf came face-to-face with it. He saw the dead bodies coming at him. If it were a hallucinogen or biological weapon, he would have gone crazy like all the others who have come in contact with it. But he didn't. Which means there's an entity at work here, hopscotching from place to place.”

“If that's true, Mr. Caldwell, if a demon is moving from place to place and wreaking havoc, why didn't it kill the entire crew? Why did it let anyone survive? Why did it let anyone survive in Basra for that matter? Why didn't everyone kill each other like R91? And why, for God's sake, would it kill and then stop only to kill again?”

Mike tried to say something, to come up with anything that made sense. But all possible answers avoided him. He didn't know why it killed only to stop. He didn't know why it let some survive only to move to another place to kill again. And most of all, he didn't understand why it moved. The complete randomness of the whole situation drove him crazy. There had to be an answer, a simple explanation, but it was far from his grasp.

“Do you see what I mean?” Temms said. “Although this mess has been fantastic from the very beginning, indulging in the madness will make it only worse. You are too personally involved in this situation to think logically or make sound decisions. Therefore, I must remove you from it.”

Mike's eyes widened. “What?”

“As the captain of this ship, I refuse to allow you to perform your grim task and believe you should rest in your quarters.”

“This is not your decision to make. The president—”

“I'm well aware what the president has ordered. But I think everyone is acting emotionally in this matter. I could be wrong but am willing to face punishment for disobeying an order rather than allowing the murder of fourteen innocent people on a hunch.”

Mike readied further protest but stopped. His shoulders sagged and he nodded. “It's your ship. But if it makes any difference, I don't think I could have gone through with it.”

“I understand.” Temms put her hand on Mike's shoulder. “A lot has been asked of you. And by the look of you, you've been ridden pretty hard over the last few days. Go get some sleep.”

Mike sighed, feeling like he'd lost a battle. “I'm sticking to my theory.”

“Get some sleep and see if you feel the same way.”

“I will feel the same way.”

“Well, we'll see then. One of three things is going to happen: either someone in that berthing carries the biological weapon inside them and everyone in there will kill each other, or your demon is in there and everyone will kill each other, or nothing will happen. In which case, whatever was on board the
al-Phirosh
sunk to the bottom of the ocean with it. In the meantime, we will keep the survivors quarantined and under armed guard. If anything out of the ordinary happens, we'll reexplore the president's order.”

“I hope you're right and nothing happens.” Mike slipped his hands in his pockets and exhaled hard. “Things were quiet on the
al-Phirosh
for a long time, and it fooled Yusuf. Don't let it fool you.”

Temms nodded. “Go get some sleep.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

D
oc Morris finished his rounds in the quarantined berthing. All the survivors were stable and, with the exception of some cuts and other various wounds, resting comfortably. Confident his corpsmen could manage their needs without any further necessity of his immediate attention, Morris decided to write his report on the five deceased members of the
al-Phirosh
stored in the forward refrigerator on the second deck. It didn't have to be anything too detailed. Most, in all likelihood, had drowned. Basic documentation, though, was required until a thorough autopsy could be performed off the ship.

Before typing the official report Morris had to perform an examination of the deceased. He swung by medical on the way down, grabbed his digital recorder and a fresh pad of paper, and headed to the reefer. He descended ladder after ladder to the second deck. Once there he walked forward down the starboard side. The passageway curved in, following the shape of the bow. Then he took a dogleg left toward the middle of the ship, stepped through a door on the right, and then stood before the big steel door of the reefer.