Noah's Ark: Contagion (7 page)

“No,” she smiled kindly. “Of course not. Let’s go and find Mrs Wernström.”

Despite the late hour, they had to wait in line for a lift. Since power had been restored courtesy of the
Ambush
, two sets of lifts were working. The remainder had been shut down as nobody was quite sure just how much electricity the submarine could provide, particularly under sail. By the time they reached deck eight, Kiera was worried that it was rather an unsociable hour to be disturbing anyone.

“Wait!” Erica shouted, and tugged on the nurse’s blouse. “We have to go to our cabin first, to get my pyjamas!”

“Of course, silly me. Lead the way then.”

The girl produced a card key from her pocket and opened the door onto a small but neat little room. Kiera was relieved to see that none of the passengers crowded into the corridor earlier appeared to have stolen anything. Theft wasn’t a problem yet, but the crew all knew it was only a matter of time. Erica located her things and stuffed them into a tiny
Hello Kitty
rucksack which she slung over her right shoulder.

“Ready!” she announced, and skipped outside.

Cabin 845 was towards the back of the ship where the staterooms were much larger. Kiera knocked gently on the door. There was no response. She tried again. “Mrs Wernström? Are you there?” Worried about disturbing others, she didn’t speak too loudly.

Erica had no such concern. She banged hard on the door and shouted at the top of her voice, “Mrs Wernström it’s me, Erica. I need to come in!”

“Shh! You’ll wake up half the ship!” Kiera said, looking around anxiously, expecting doors to start flying open any second. “Listen, she’s obviously not there right now. It’s getting late; you’re just going to have to come back to my room. You can have my bed, I’ll sleep on the floor or something.”

“Don’t be silly, you can’t sleep on the floor, you’re a grown up. I’ll just wait here for Mrs Wernström.”

“You can’t wait out here, Erica.”

“Duh! I’m not waiting out here! You’re silly.” Erica stuck her hand in her other trouser pocket and took out another key card which she inserted in the brass door lock.

“Where did you get that?”

“She gave it to me. I told you, she’s really nice. I haven’t seen her for days though, I expect she’ll be really happy to see me again.”

Before Kiera could stop her, Erica had pushed the door open and was running inside. Kiera strode in after her.

“You can’t just let yourself in! We have to go back to…” She never finished the sentence because Erica started to scream, and she didn’t stop for a very long time.

Seven

“G
RAU
,
BEFORE
YOU
go in, it’s not a pretty sight. Just…be prepared, okay?” Kiera put her hand on the doctor’s arm in a motherly way.

“I’m sure I have seen worse, but thank you for the warning.” He donned his mask, and entered cabin 845.

Kiera had not been exaggerating. Maryse Wernström was not in good condition. In fact there wasn’t much left of her at all, mostly just bone. Large areas of her flesh appeared to have rotted away, staining the once crisp white bed sheets a deep red-black. Yet bizarrely, some of her internal organs remained fully intact. She looked like some strange cut-away model of a human being, a model that might be used to teach medical students where they would find the heart and kidneys. Her eyeballs looked out of fleshless sockets, directly at Doctor Lister.

“I was wrong,” he said. “I have not seen much worse. That poor little girl, she will never sleep again.”

“Maryse was covered over when we found her. Erica only saw her head. Well, her skull. She was spared the worst.”

“Where is she now?”

“Silvia has taken her in.”

Grau moved around the body, taking photographs on a digital camera, being careful not to touch anything, yet. “Look at the hair,” he said. Maryse’s white curly locks lay on the pillow, like a halo around her skull.

“Like Scott’s,” Kiera said, looking more closely.

“Possibly, although we must not jump to conclusions. But yes, it looks at first sight like what we are seeing here is a far more advanced stage of what our patient downstairs is experiencing. The rotting flesh and the hair loss. See here.” He snapped some more photos, “There is a lot of blood around her ears. Given the spread, I think she was moving her head as this came out.”

“She bled from the ears before she was dead?”

“It looks that way. But the way the rest of the sheet is stained, it is regular, no sign of movement. So either the flesh rotted after she had lost consciousness or had died, or—” he left the words hanging.

“Or she wasn’t able to move, because she was paralysed,” Kiera finished for him

“Indeed. Okay, I have all the pictures I need. Let’s get her into the body bag and take her down. We will seal her in the morgue; there is one place left.”

“Who died?” Kiera asked surprised.

“Nobody we know. At least, I don’t think so. I will fill you in later.”

“Should we tell the captain about Mrs Wernström?”

“Let him sleep. There is not much we can do tonight. We will seal this room, and David will monitor our one living patient. We will know more tomorrow.”

Doctor and nurse continued in silence. They wrapped the bed sheets around the remains of the corpse and then lifted the whole package into a thick black body bag, which then went onto a trolley. It was covered with a sheet. They didn’t expect to run into anyone outside given the late hour, but they weren’t taking any chances.

• • •

Dawn came early so far north, but Jake slept until almost eight. By the time he opened his eyes, Lucya had been on the bridge for a couple of hours. She often took the early watch, which suited Jake very well.

He took a shower and got dressed, putting on his uniform. It had been decided that bridge officers should remain in uniform, but other former crew members could wear whatever they chose. Now everyone was being assigned jobs there was no longer any difference between passengers and crew, at least not officially. In reality, that division was going to take a long time to fade away.

By the time he got to the bridge, it was buzzing with activity.

“We’ve got the Faroe Islands in sight,” Lucya said without introduction, as soon as he walked through the door. “We’ll reach them by midday, sooner than we expected. Officer Whitehall is calculating our position more accurately now that we have a fixed point to work with.”

“Excellent. Cross check with the
Ambush
when you have something.”

“Are you suggesting I’m not up to the job?” Dave asked, smirking.

“Not at all. I’m suggesting you might have an opportunity to show up the navigation officers of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.”

“Hardly. All their kit on board, they’ll have worked it out way quicker than us, and to a higher degree of precision.”

“Well that gives you something to aim for then, doesn’t it,” Jake said, smiling. He walked to the front of the bridge and picked up a pair of binoculars. The islands were a long way off, barely visible even with magnification, but it filled him with hope and joy to see land again. He knew it would be barren, uninhabitable, inhospitable, but it was still land, his natural environment. Jake had never been a true sailor at heart.

Lucya joined him at the window and spoke quietly. “Jake, Claude called looking for you this morning. He wants to know what happened to the fish. He sent a couple of boys outside with crates, but they were sent back again.”

“There aren’t any fish. Not yet, anyway. The catch was contaminated. I’ll explain later.” Jake looked around. Only Dave and Chuck were with them on the bridge, but he didn’t want news of the body spreading any further than necessary. “Stieg is sending out the net again this morning, right about now in fact. What did you say to Claude?”

“That you’d call him back. He said you had to go and see him though, he said he’s had enough of dealing with you over the phone, and that if you don’t make the effort to go in person, you can find a new head chef.”

Jake sighed. “I’ll go down now. I can bring breakfast back up for everyone too.”

• • •

“Do my eyes deceive me, or is it not our captain in person I see before me?” Claude Dupont spoke with a thick French accent. Jake was convinced he put it on; he didn’t think anyone could work on a cruise ship where the predominant language was English for so many years, and still talk like that.

“Claude, it’s good to see you. I’ve been wanting to come down here for some time, but you know how it is. Getting ready to sail, it’s a busy time.”

“Hrmph. Well, you are ’ere now. Come, there is something I need you to see.”

The diminutive chef beckoned, and Jake followed him through some swing doors into a store room. Three walls lined with white shelving, interrupted only by a plain white door. All but two of the shelves were empty. The fourth wall was filled with gigantic refrigerators. One of these buzzed gently, a green light flickering in the corner. The middle of the large room was dominated by huge freezers, twenty of them lined up back to back. All but two were silent.

“You see that?” Claude pointed to the two full shelves.

“Yes?”

“Tell me, Captain Noah, what are we to eat when this is gone?”

“That can’t be all the food we have left on board?” Jake said, shocked.

“No, not all. But almost. These two freezers are full, and we ’ave two more store rooms, but they look a lot like this one.”

“How long?”

“Until there is nothing? A week, maybe a little longer.”

“Claude, why didn’t you tell us this before? We have to reduce the rations!”

“I ’ave been trying to tell you, Captain Noah, but you are too busy with preparations, and with talking to your new friends under the sea. And the rations are already small. Even my brilliance cannot make food from air. I was promised fish, I even sent
les garçons
to collect it. A big catch they said, enough to prepare fish pie for the ’ole ship. But they come back with nothing!”

“There was…an accident. The fish were not suitable. We had to throw them back. But there will be fish today, I promise you. Stieg and his men have proved the net. Right now they are deploying it again.”

“And after the fish? Without fruit, without vegetables, what then?”

“I’m working on it, Claude, I’m working on it.”

“You put a lot of faith in your navy friends I think, yes? Their base in Scotland?”

“What choice do I have?”

Claude shrugged. “I don’t ’ave the answers, Captain Noah, that is your job.”

“Maybe you can answer me this, Claude: is the smoke coming from that grill normal?”

The ventilation grill that was smoking was linked to the next store room. Claude opened the interconnecting door before Jake could stop him. Flames ripped through the air, the searing heat sending the tiny chef flying backwards. Had he been even marginally taller he would undoubtedly have suffered terrible burns. As it was, only his hair and the top of his head was singed.

“Shut the door, Claude, shut it now!” Jake screamed. The chef crawled forwards on hands and knees, pushing the door closed with an outstretched hand.

The fire had already caught a cardboard box on one of the shelves. Jake searched in desperation for something with which to douse the flames. Instinctively he opened the only working refrigerator. An entire shelf was stocked with five litre bottles of orange juice. He grabbed one, pulled off the cap, and squeezing the plastic hard between his hands, sprayed the thick liquid over the burning box. It sizzled and smoked, the flames becoming less ferocious, allowing him to get closer in and pour the remaining contents over the cardboard, putting out the small fire.

Smoke continued to bellow out of the grill. It was turning black and smelt toxic. It had started to fill the small store room and Claude was on the floor choking. Jake dropped to a crouching position, grabbed the Frenchman’s ankles, and dragged him backwards towards the main door.

Once safely out in the kitchen he located a fire alarm button and smashed the glass with his elbow. An ear-splitting klaxon rang out throughout the ship. Sprinklers burst into action in the kitchen, and suddenly the whole place was being deluged with icy water.

“Extinguishers!” Jake shouted at the top of his voice. The assembled kitchen workers gawped at him, mouths open. “There’s a fire, in the stores. Get the extinguishers, now!”

After a moment’s hesitation, the men and women flew into action. One rushed forwards with a fire blanket, someone else found a small red extinguisher. It was clear to Jake that these would not be any match for the fire. Even so, he grabbed both and returned to the store room. As soon as he opened the door, black smoke billowed out. A couple of people screamed, but the others seemed to be spurred into action by the sight. A young man with a tomato-stained apron began shouting orders, directing the others to fill saucepans with water.

In the meantime, Jake was using the blanket to block up the grill between the two store rooms, stopping any more smoke from escaping, and—he hoped—blocking off at least some of the air supply to the fire. The sprinkler system did not extend to the stores. Jake wasn’t surprised; any chance to cut corners and save costs was okay with Pelagios Line, the ship’s operator.

Behind him the door was being propped open. Extractor hoods in the kitchen whirred into life, sucking out the acrid smoke and clearing the air. The water falling from the ceiling had slowed to a trickle.

The fire klaxon stopped, and shouting from the corridor leading to the kitchen announced the arrival of a team of two from engineering. They brought with them a bigger extinguisher, and a tiny mobile fire appliance. This comprised a small petrol powered pump on a trolley, and two rolled hoses. A woman in blue overalls unfurled the hose in a single smooth action. While she ran to a window and lowered her end of the tube into the sea, her colleague attached the other end to the pump. The second hose was already attached. He pulled three times on the starter cord, and the motor sputtered into life. The hose from the window popped into three dimensions as water was sucked up and pulled through it.