Plague Ship (24 page)

The elevator door opened and David came face to face with Edith Teller, the librarian from Ohio who had suffered an oculogyric reaction to Compazine. She appeared much more attractive now, with her perfectly applied makeup.

“How are you, Mrs. Teller?” David inquired.

“Fine, doctor,” she reported sprightly.

“No more facial contortions, eh?”

“None at all. My only problem is this nagging cough that won’t go away.”

“Oh?” David’s brow went up. “Did you have any fever or chills?”

She nodded. “I had that a few days ago, but it’s gone now. This cough just hangs in though. Is there anything I can do for it?”

David was about to say
It’s only a virus
, but wisely decided not to. “It’ll pass,” he advised. “Just drink plenty of fluids.”

“Should I continue taking my cough drops?”

“If they’re helping.”

David walked on, shaking his head in wonderment.
Another survivor! Another female!
Hundreds of passengers were dead, hundreds more dying, yet five females survived and returned to health. Something must have protected them. But what? Was it something they did or didn’t do? Was it something in their blood? He concentrated his mind and searched for an answer, but drew a total blank. David decided to present the problem to the CDC on their next teleconference call. Maybe they could figure it out.

David entered Kit’s cabin and found Carolyn asleep on the sofa in the sitting room. He walked over quietly and kissed her forehead, then watched her eyes open.

“Hi, beautiful,” he said lovingly.

“Hi, handsome,” she said and sat up. She brought up a hand to stifle a yawn, then stretched her arms out wide. A moment later she was patting her hair into place. “I must look like hell.”

“You look great to me.”

“You say that to all the girls.”

“Nah! Only to the pretty ones.”

Carolyn smiled. “You should see your daughter now. She’s talking a mile a minute between spoonfuls of soup that Juanita is feeding her.”

David hummed happily. “That’s music to my ears.”

“But she’s worried about you.”

“Why?”

“She’s worried you’ll get the flu from all the sick people you’re looking after.”

Kit was just like her mother, David thought yet again. That natural caring and sweetness must be in her genes. “Did you reassure her?”

“About a thousand times,” Carolyn said as she studied David’s face. The lines seemed deeper, the circles under his eyes darker. “You look like you could use some sleep.”

“I guess.”

Carolyn’s smile returned. “That great performance you gave up on deck must have tired you out.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was outstanding!” Carolyn enthused. “You had me completely fooled until those damaged lifeboats came down. That’s when I put two and two together. You used the hatchet to scuttle the boats, but you know you weren’t tall enough to reach them, even on your tiptoes. That’s why you needed a stepladder or metal stool. Right?”

“Right.”

The smile left Carolyn’s face when she asked, “Did you know you would use the hatchet to take off Choi’s head?”

“Pretty much so,” David said without a hint of emotion.

Carolyn hesitated before asking the next question. She thought she already knew the answer, but she still had to ask. “Would you have really shot the crew with those shotguns had they rushed you?”

“Oh yeah,” David said at once. “When the choice is between my life and theirs, I’ll choose mine every time.”

“But you could have killed a dozen men.”

David shrugged. “When your survival is at stake, numbers don’t matter. You kill as many as you have to.”

“And you could still sleep after doing that?”

David nodded. “Except for the nightmares and flashbacks. But on the positive side, I’d still be alive.”

Carolyn stared out into space for a long moment before coming back to him. “You’ve got to be the most unusual person I’ve ever encountered.”

“Why so?”

“Because you’re a chameleon. You can go from sweetness to savagery in a split second.” Carolyn paused to snap her fingers. “It happens that fast, in the blink of an eye. Do—do you actually feel the change coming on?”

“Sometimes,” David said, but that was a lie. He never sensed the change. He simply went on automatic pilot. “Yeah, sometimes I do.”

“Jesus! It’s as if you’re a mixture of contrasting personalities,” she went on. “Do you have any idea how many people you are?”

“A lot.”

“That’s not a very good answer.”

“All right then, five.”

“Where did you get the number five from?”

“A Somerset Maugham novel,” David told her. “In it, one character asked another the question you just posed. The answer was five. Then the questioner asked how one individual could possibly be five different people. The response was ‘You tell me the situation, and I’ll tell you who I am.’”

From the bedroom, Kit coughed, wet and loud, then coughed again before clearing her throat.

David helped Carolyn to her feet and grinned wryly. “I just turned into a father, and in ten seconds I’ll be a doctor.”

“I should write a book about you,” Carolyn said. “The only problem is no one would believe it.”

They walked into the bedroom and saw Kit sitting up in bed, coughing between spoonfuls of soup that were being fed to her by Juanita. Her color was much improved, her raven hair carefully combed and held in place by a yellow ribbon. Juanita was nicely dressed in a pink blouse and skirt. She looked like her old self.

“Hey, sweetheart!” David called out.

“Hi, Dad!” Kit called back and gulped down more soup.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said and coughed loudly. “Except for this cough.”

“It’ll pass.”

“When?”

“In a couple of days.”

“Darn virus!” she said and shook her head to more soup. “How could I catch the stupid thing? I got all those shots for the regular flu and swine flu.”

“This is a different virus,” David explained. “Those shots didn’t give you any immunity against it.”

“I’m living proof of that,” Kit said sourly. “And so is Juanita. She also got both shots and ended up sick with the virus too.”

David’s brow shot up.
And both of you survived,
he thought immediately.
And Carolyn and I and probably Karen, like most healthcare providers, took both shots and never became ill, despite being exposed to God-only-knows how many people infected with the avian flu virus. Jesus! Could that be the answer? Could the combination of vaccines against the regular influenza and swine flu viruses give the individual enough immunity to protect against the avian flu virus? Did the three similar viruses share enough common antigens so there’d be cross-reactivity between them?

Kit saw the strange expression on her father’s face and asked, “Dad, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” David said hurriedly and continued his thought process.
Is that really the answer? If so, why did Kit and Juanita come down with such a severe form of the disease? Why?
David blinked as the answer came to him. Because Kit was exposed to a massive dose of the virus when she was with Will. The huge virus load overwhelmed her immune system. And Juanita was a senior citizen who, like most with advancing age, had less resistance and a weaker immune response to all invading microorganisms.

“Dad,” Kit broke into his thoughts, “did I say something wrong?”

“You said everything right,” he replied and kissed her forehead.

David’s mind was now concentrating on Kit’s survival, despite the enormous load of virus she’d been exposed to. Somehow she survived, but poor Will, who also received a huge dose of virus, didn’t.
Maybe Will was exposed to even more of the virus than Kit. Yeah. That would explain—

David’s eyes suddenly lit up. Maybe, in Will’s case, it wasn’t a matter of viral dose, but rather a matter of immunity. Quickly he came back to Kit. “Sweetheart, do you know if Will had gotten the same shots as you had?”

“I don’t know,” Kit said through a cough. “But Will told me, after you got that gumball out of his throat, that he was glad nobody had given him a shot because he was allergic to eggs or something like that.”

Eggs!
David thought at once.
The flu vaccines are produced in incubating chicken eggs! The manufacturing process is egg-based! People allergic to eggs can’t receive the vaccine. Will never received the flu shots. He had no immunity to the avian flu virus
. “Was anybody else in Will’s family allergic to eggs?”

“I think so,” Kit replied and reached for her diary. She flipped through pages until she came to the one she was looking for. “Yes, here it is. His stepdad, Sol, was also allergic, but his mom wasn’t.”

“I’ll be damned,” David muttered as all the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. “It’s so straightforward it’s unbelievable.”

Kit misinterpreted his remark and proffered her diary to him. “Here, Dad. You can see for yourself.”

“No, no,” David said hastily. “Your observations are perfect and right on.”

“Good,” Kit said and closed the diary. “Accuracy is important, you know.”

“I know,” David leaned over and kissed his daughter’s cheek, loving her with every ounce of his body and soul and then some. “How did you get to be so smart?”

“I got it from my dad, I think.” A smile came across Kit’s face, but it was interrupted by a coughing spell.

Juanita moved in rapidly, with a steaming bowl and spoon. “You must eat more soup to dampen your cough.”

“We’ll be back,” David said, taking Carolyn’s arm and guiding her out to the sitting room. While he waited for Kit’s cough to abate, he rethought his scientific reasoning. All the facts fit, but the numbers bothered him. He was basing his conclusion on a small sampling of people, and that was always dangerous. Finally he said, “I may know how to stop the pandemic.”

“How?” Carolyn asked promptly.

“This is how.” David went over all the facts in detail, explaining why some had survived and others hadn’t. He paid particular attention to the vaccines against the regular influenza and swine flu viruses, and how the combination could protect against the avian flu. “It’s the only logical explanation, but I can’t be sure until we do a survey of everybody aboard the ship. If the surviving passengers received both flu shots, we’ll have the answer.”

“Jesus!” Carolyn breathed. “Let’s hope you’re right.”

“If I’m not, then God help us,” David said grimly. “Because this virus will eventually get to land, and when it does, a pandemic is an absolute certainty.”

thirty-seven

Chandler heard the whispers
coming from halfway down the passageway. The words weren’t meant for his ears, but the people uttering them didn’t know that Chandler had supernormal hearing. Sounds that others could barely detect were crystal clear to him. It was an unusual trait that he had possessed for as long as he could remember, and it had always served him well, but never more so than now. The voices thirty feet away were talking mutiny! Not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants–type mutiny, but one that was planned by experienced crewmen. They wouldn’t make the same mistakes that the civilian mutineers had. Chandler pricked his ears, not wanting to miss a word, while he painted a white cross on the door in front of him.

“With a knife at the little girl’s throat, that doctor won’t dare use his shotgun,” a burly, tattooed crewman was saying.

“Right,” the other crewman agreed. “That’ll hold him until we can run this bloody ship aground off Cozumel.”

“Have you been to Cozumel before?”

“Aye. It’s a nice little island with fancy hotels and lots of tourists.”

“Any police?”

“A few fat Mexicans who can be easily bought off.”

“Perfect.”

Son of a bitch!
Chandler groaned to himself. They were going to wreck the ship and swim ashore, along with the infected rats, just like the doc predicted. And that would spread the disease everywhere. Chandler wanted no part of that, and he wanted no part of a mutiny either. He was a sailor who loved the sea as much as life itself, and he knew that those involved in the mutiny would never sail again under any flag. Screw that!

He stared down the passageway, a brush in one hand, an empty can of paint in the other. The crewmen stopped talking and eyed him suspiciously. The one with the tattooed arms stepped out and blocked Chandler’s way.

“Where are you headed?” he asked hoarsely.

Chandler pointed at the empty can. “I need more paint.”

The crewman examined the can and moved aside. “Don’t take all day.”

Chandler continued down the passageway at a slow, even pace. But when he reached the stairwell, he tossed the can and brush away and dashed up the stairs, running as fast as he could.

———

David was having trouble with his survey. There were too many dead, and he had no way of determining whether they had received the various flu vaccines.
So far, 203 dead and eighty alive
, he thought. And of that eighty, fifty were very sick, twenty moderately ill, and ten with few or no symptoms. He concentrated on the ten who had mild or no disease. Eight of them had received both the regular and swine flu vaccines. So, he calculated, 80 percent of those immunized appeared to be protected by the combination of vaccines. That was an impressive result except for the fact that the number of people studied was far too small to draw any conclusions. Only ten passengers with mild or no disease had been surveyed, and that wasn’t nearly enough. If, for example, the 203 dead had also gotten both vaccines, the total protection rate would have been less than 5 percent, which would be a poor outcome by any measure.
Shit!
David growled and hoped that the CDC could help him make sense of the numbers.

He moved on to the next cabin and, after knocking, opened the door. The smell alone told him there was only death within. Peeking into the bedroom, he saw two fully dressed, decaying bodies on the bed, still holding hands. Now there were 205 dead. In the following cabin, he found an elderly man sitting on the sofa across from his dead wife. The couple’s names were Roy and Mary Mitchell.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” David asked.

The old man shook his head.

“I’m sorry to bother you with questions,” David went on, “but I need to know if either you or your wife had gotten the regular flu and swine flu shots.”

“I had both,” the man replied in a monotone. “But she took only the regular flu shot. She was frightened of the swine flu vaccine because it was so new and all.”

David nodded and walked out, thinking one more passenger protected, one not. He jotted down his observations on the Mitchells.

He heard footsteps coming down the passageway and turned to see Chandler running toward him at full speed. He wasn’t carrying cans of paint or brushes, and he was waving rather than crying out. David immediately sensed something was terribly wrong.

“What’s up?” David asked at once.

“Trouble!” Chandler said between gasps. “Big trouble!”

“Like what?”

“Like mutiny!” Chandler hurriedly repeated the conversation he had overheard in the passageway, remembering most of it word for word. “And they’re going to run the ship aground at Cozumel. They’ve got this thing planned down to the last detail, and that includes throwing you into the brig with the mutineer named Tommy.”

“Are they armed?” David asked.

“No, and they’re not worried about your shotguns either,” Chandler replied, taking another deep breath. “They’re taking your daughter hostage to prevent you from interfering.”

David’s eyes narrowed sharply. “Have they already got her?”

Chandler nodded. “It sounded that way.”

David’s face reddened as his temper rose to the point of boiling over.
My little girl! A sick little girl! And those bastards using her as a hostage!
With effort, he suppressed his anger and calmed himself. Then he concentrated on the typical behavior of hostage-takers. Their first order of business was to secure the perimeters. “Did they mention anything about posting guards?”

Chandler shook his head. “Only that Joe Barrick would be holding a knife to your daughter’s throat.”

“Who is Joe Barrick?”

“The big, ugly guy with a scar on his face.”

David stared out into space for a moment and thought about the two basic tenets of hostage rescue—deception and execution, which were euphemisms for distract and kill. He turned quickly to Chandler. “It’s about to get really messy, so if you want to split, I’ll understand.”

Chandler shrugged. “I got nowhere in particular to go.”

“Follow me.”

They dashed down the passageway and up the stairs, taking them two at a time. David led the way, with shotguns at the ready, not for firing but for threatening. A loud blast would remove the element of surprise, which was essential for a hostage rescue. David tried to keep his brain focused, but a picture of Joe Barrick holding a knife to Kit’s throat stayed in his mind’s eye.
God! She must be so frightened! She must be wondering where her dad is. Well, he’s on
his way!
Then David sent a silent message to Joe Barrick.
Want to play hardball, eh? Good! I’ll show you what real hardball is
.

They came to the level of Kit’s cabin and cracked the door that led out to the passageway. Halfway down the corridor, standing outside Kit’s cabin, was a short, stocky guard. He was unarmed but vigilant, constantly looking from one side to the other.

“Do you recognize the guard?” David asked in a whisper.

“His name is Poston,” Chandler whispered back.

“How tough is he?”

“Plenty. He won’t back down and he doesn’t scare easily.”

“We’ll see,” David said, his face now stone-cold. He pointed to the paint can and brush that Chandler had discarded earlier. “Pick those up, one in each hand, then walk down the passageway swinging your arms widely. I’ll be at your side and just behind you. He won’t see my face.”

“But he might see your shotguns.”

“I’m not taking the shotguns.” David removed his white coat and wrapped the shotguns in it, then knelt down to hide the bundle beneath the stairs. Straightening up, he reached for his hatchet and held it close to his thigh. “All right, go! Walk normally, not too fast, not too slow.”

The moment the door opened, the guard turned to them, his senses heightened. He kept his eyes on Chandler and watched the paint can and brush swing back and forth in the crewman’s arms. As the pair came closer, he called out, “Where the hell are you going?”

“To paint crosses on the doors of the dead passengers,” Chandler answered, now less than twenty feet away from the guard. He didn’t slow the pace. “It’s a real shitty job, but I was ordered to do it.”

“By who?” the guard challenged.

“The man.”

“What man?”

“Me!” David said and slammed the flat side of his hatchet into the guard’s testicles. The guard went down, with a low-pitched, guttural groan, and groped his groin. In an instant, David was on top of the man, pinning him to the floor. Then he waited for the guard’s pain to ease before showing him the sharp edge of the hatchet. “One wrong move and I’ll do a Choi-job on you. I’ll spit your head wide open.”

Poston’s eyes bulged.

“You stay real quiet and I might let you live,” David said before looking over to Chandler. “Go into the next cabin and rip the drawstring from the drapes and bring it back.” He watched Chandler hurry away, then came back to the guard. “I’m going to ask you a few questions. You answer by nodding or shaking your head. Got it?”

Poston nodded hastily, his eyes still on the hatchet.

“Is Barrick the only mutineer in the cabin with my daughter?”

Poston nodded.

“Are they in the bedroom?”

Poston shook his head.

“The sitting room?”

Poston nodded.

“With the nanny?”

Poston nodded again.

Chandler rushed back in, holding a long piece of sturdy drawstring. “Do you want me to tie him up?”

“No,” David said. “I want you to pull down his pants.”

“What?”

“Pull down his pants and undershorts,” David directed. “Then tie the drawstring securely around his balls.”

Poston’s face went pale. His eyes seemed to be coming out of his head, but he didn’t resist being undressed.

“Good,” David approved as the guard’s testicles were roped off. “Now let’s stand him up.”

With the weak-kneed guard on his feet, David gave Chandler another directive. “Pull on the string, but not too hard.”

Chandler performed the task and watched as Poston’s scrotum was lifted away from his body.

“Hold it right there,” David said, then leaned close to Poston’s ear. “You make one wrong move or say one wrong word, and my hatchet will separate you from your private parts. And you’ll have the pleasure of watching your balls roll all the way down the passageway.”

Chandler gulped. “Do you think there’s a password?”

“You never know,” David said and pushed Poston in front of the door’s peephole. “Knock on the door and tell Barrick you’ve got to use the head. And remember, if my daughter gets even a scratch, you lose your balls.”

Poston rapped on the door.

A moment later a gruff voice answered, “What?”

“I—I got to use the head,” Poston said.

“Use the one in the cabin across the passageway,” Barrick barked.

“Say okay,” David whispered immediately.

“Okay,” Poston said loudly.

David, staying away from the peephole, jerked Poston down the passageway and into the next cabin. He shoved the guard onto the floor and asked Chandler, “Do you know how to hogtie?”

Chandler grinned. “I grew up on a farm in Ohio.”

“Then hogtie him and gag him,” David said. “And if he starts to squirm or make noise, kick him in the balls again.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wait,” David said and dashed out of the cabin.

He positioned himself at the side of the door to Kit’s cabin and listened for sounds from within. He heard only silence. David wished he had a revolver because then he could end everything quickly. Barrick would eventually look through the peephole and the peephole would suddenly darken. One shot into the peephole would go straight through Barrick’s eye and into his brain, and the hostage situation would be ended. But David didn’t have a revolver, and he couldn’t use a shotgun because the blast would be too wide and might hit Kit or Juanita. So he’d have to do it the hard way. A minute passed by, then another minute. David bent down and put his ear to the door again. He heard a rustling sound. Something was moving. Quickly he went back to the side of the door and raised his hatchet.

“Poston!” Barrick hollered. “Where the hell are you?”

Ten seconds ticked by before Barrick growled loudly, “Goddamn it!”

More seconds passed by.

“Leave the child alone!” Juanita pleaded. “You are frightening her.”

“Shut up, granny, or I’ll slice an ear off.”

The door handle turned and the door opened.

Barrick stepped out, holding Kit in front of him. He had his knife pressed against her throat. He didn’t see the dull edge of the hatchet swinging toward him, but he felt it smash into the front of his skull. The knife dropped from his hand and he went down face first onto the floor. He tried to struggle to his feet, but David kicked him viciously in the chest, breaking ribs. Barrick howled in pain and rolled from side to side. David kicked him again for good measure, this time in the head.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Kit cried out and ran into his arms. “I’m so scared!”

“I know, I know,” David said soothingly and hugged her close. “But it’s all over now.”

“I want to go home, Dad,” Kit said in a little girl’s voice.

“We’re going to do that soon,” he promised and gently rubbed her back, calming her. “Real soon. But now I want you to go with Juanita. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He glanced over at Juanita, who was glaring at Barrick. “Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” she said strongly and spat on Barrick. “Pig!”

“Take Kit and hurry to the elevator,” David told her. “Hold the door open for me. I’ll be right behind you.”

Juanita grabbed Kit and dashed down the passageway.

Chandler stuck his head into the cabin. “Do you want me to tie him up too?”

“No,” David replied. “I want you to check every level until you find my girlfriend, Carolyn. Then both of you scoot up to the bridge. Got it?”

“Got it!”

“Go!”

David walked over to Barrick’s outstretched body. The mutineer was breathing in short gasps, with his arms extended out to the side. He was mumbling words that sounded like, “No more.”