The Great Wreck

The Great Wreck

By Jack Stewart

Iron Cross Publishing

Dedication

To
the dead who haunt my night

 
and the ghosts who haunt my day,

thank
you for a lifetime of nightmares.

P.S.
Fuck you.

This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or (particularly the) dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Jack Stewart

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by
Iron Cross Publishing, Santa Fe.

Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Cover art by Beatrice Myny

Threshold-Driven Studios

www.soundcloud.com/oyouthna

www.soundcloud.com/threshold-drivenn

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Out to Sea

Patient Zero One Sierra

(Los Angeles Proving Ground)

           
I didn’t know I was infected. I
promise. If I had known I would have killed myself right there and then. I
swear to God and Jesus and the Saints, and all that is Holy and Right. I would
have done it. But it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not now, does it?
You’re probably dead or worse. And if you’re not, you probably wished you were.

It was
supposed be a test trial of some sort, maybe an infectious disease cure. I
don’t know. I didn’t care. Not then. They shot me full of whatever it was they
were testing and set me loose. They might have said it was some sort of
vaccine, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention. Maybe some sort of
cancer treatment. They never told me what tests I was volunteering for, I just
signed the waivers and took the money. The jerks in white coats told me I got
the placebo as I rolled down my sleeve and walked out of the testing room.
Turns out I got the panacea.

$1200
dollars. Wow. For me that was a small fortune. I reported to work the next day on
the Caribbean Sea Queen and looked forward to having some fun in the ports
along down the Lesser Antilles all the while catering to rich Americans
pretending they all had golden ass cracks and were something special to behold.
But boy did I have a surprise for them!

During the
day I bussed luggage all over the ship, ran food up and down the endless floors
of the luxury liner, and washed dishes after the meals were done saving up my
tips for the next port. We passed down the west coast of Mexico and Central
America, crossed through the Panama canal and hit the Caribbean.

In port, I
would cut the fuck loose. And by that I meant I would snort every ounce of
cocaine I could find, drink every drop of liquor I could pour down my throat,
and fuck every cheap hooker I could get my dick into. In short, it was a good
life that was bound to end quickly, but that didn’t bother me. So I snorted,
and drank, and fucked my way to Saint John’s where things got a little out of
hand.

           
And by a little out of hand I mean I
killed a teenage hooker. I didn’t mean to, I swear.
 
She looked so sweet standing there on the
street corner in her little white sundress and white sneakers. Her hair was a
light brown streaked with blond and her skin the color of coffee and milk. She
asked me if I was looking for a date, I said yes if that date didn’t cost me
more than fifty bucks and we were off to the races. I had her skirt up and
panties down as soon as we got back to her tiny room. She said she wanted it to
be quick. I said I wanted it to be quick.

She rolled
over on her stomach and I bent her over her bed
 
pounding her for every penny of the fifty bucks it cost me to buy her. I
was up to my balls in that sweet young girl when the urge to bite overwhelmed
me. I mean, one minute I am banging her for all she is worth trying my best to
dislocate my ball sack or break off my cock and the next I had my teeth buried
in her shoulder. She tried to scream but I clamped my hand over her mouth and
continued to bite and tear and chew until I had dug a deep trench into her neck
and shoulder, hit a major blood vessel, and ended her life. She bled out and I
blew my load deep inside her.

When I was
finally done, I looked down at the mess I had made.
 
I was covered in blood, sweat, and cum and
the sweet girl looked like she had been attacked by a pack of wolves. I
stumbled back pulling up my pants, leaned over a chair, and puked and puked,
looked at what I had done again and puked again. I got to me feet and went into
her bathroom. When I looked in the mirror…well…I don’t know what I saw. My skin
was pale and bruised, my eyes seemed faded and covered by some weird cataracts,
and the lower half of my face was covered in gore.
 
What the fuck had I done?

I looked
closely at my face and saw the dark circles under my eyes, and I swear to god,
my brown eyes were a pale gray. Not fucking possible, I know, but those are the
facts and only the facts. I thought about calling the police. It would have
been better for everyone if I had but my animal survival instinct was kicking
in. It might have been too late anyways. Once what I was carrying inside me was
loose, there was little hope of getting it back inside. And I didn’t know about
the others like me roaming around New York and Los Angeles. And nobody knew
about that dumb fucker in New Mexico.

I showered
instead, rinsed out my cloths, and collected any evidence that might point to
me. Maybe if I could make it back to the ship and get out of town before her
body was found I’d be OK. I’d figure out what had happened to me sometime later
but I’d rather do it on the ship as a free man than in a St. John’s prison
cell. Maybe we snorted some bad coke. Maybe I was hallucinating somewhere back
in California. I didn’t know and wasn’t going to be put in a cage to try to
figure it out for thirty years to life.

As I scoured
the prostitutes room for evidence, my mind was playing tricks on me. Did she
move? Twitch a little? No, I was just losing my mind. I checked three times on
her nearly ruined neck for a pulse and there was none.

I stood at
the door, my hand on the knob weeping quietly. Then I heard something rustle
behind me. It was nothing, I told myself, nothing I want to see anyway. I would
not look. I would not look. I would not look.

I looked.

The sweet
little whore was standing up facing away from me. Her head weaved back and
forth like a dog tracking a scent. Her white dress was now a blood soaked
scarlet covered with streamers of tissue and gunk from her ruined neck. She
slowly turned around to look at me.

Her dead,
grey eyes looked at me and for a moment it looked like she was going to speak.

I tried to
speak first, to tell her that I was sorry, that everything would be OK.

But before I
could open my mouth, her head snapped to my right at the sound of people
walking pat her window. She screamed with such rage and fury that I screamed
with her. She bolted towards the window, leapt through the glass pane and onto
the street, and was gone. Somewhere down the street, I heard another scream and
I bolted.

I made it
back to the ship, changed into my uniform, and reported for my shift. For the
next eight hours I waited for the police to arrive, to cuff me, and haul me
off. The police never arrived and soon the tourists were piling back onto the
ship, the mooring lines were cast off, and we were on our way to Saint Croix.

The day it
took to get from St. John’s to St. Croix was just enough time for me to
convince myself that it had all been a bad trip. I had fucked the little
hooker, gave her a good tip, and rolled back to the boat just as happy as a
clam and ready to do it again in St. Croix.

This time,
though, when things got out of hand, the hooker had been able to shake me off
and escape with only a bite to her wrist. I was lucky to escape with my balls
intact when she whipped out a nasty little blade and tried to vivisect me as I
scrabbled into my pants and nearly tumbled down the stairs fleeing the whore
house.

I made it
back to the ship again without incident and hoped I could sleep off whatever it
was I had ingested. But it was not to be. Word began to slowly spread among the
crew of a viral outbreak on St. John’s and then on St. Croix while I was slowly
losing my mind. When people got to close to me, I’d want to bite them. I’m a
freak, I admit, a druggie, an alcoholic, a sex addict, but I’ve never been a
biter. Never was my style.

Until now.

Each time
someone passed close to me or brushed up against me it was all I could do not
to spring on them and begin to feed.

Every single
person; it didn’t matter if it was a man, woman, or little girl. If they got
within I few inches of me, all I could think about was sinking my teeth into
them.

It was only
a matter of time before I broke.

Twenty seven
hours and sixteen minutes from the time we left St. Croix to be exact.

I had to
deliver a dinner up to one of the executive suites at the top of the ship. All
the way there I could feel the strain and keeping my teeth to myself pulling at
me, pushing from within, trying to break free.

When the
fucking rich bitch from
who-the-fuck-cares
opened the door and blasted me for being five minutes late, I smiled and let
the door close behind me. She was wearing next to nothing in a tiny bikini that
barely held her in.
 
Big tits, big ass,
long black hair, sneering and pointing around her like a general leading an
army. She kept going on about declining service and having my job. I popped
such a serious erection thinking about biting into her skin I knew at that very
moment I was a monster. She walked into the bedroom telling me to place the
tray anywhere and get the fuck out before she had me fired and thrown from the
ship. Instead I followed her into that huge beautiful and pristine bedroom and
did what I had to do.

Our
activities started in the bathroom, made it out into the living room, then
finally onto the bed leaving a blood and gore splattered trial in our wake. She
never screamed, not once. Maybe she was too dammed shocked that she was being
eaten alive or maybe it was because I had my fist shoved down her throat before
she had a chance.

When I was done
I sat on the blood soaked bed next to her. There would be no getting away this
time. They would know it was me. My blood and semen were everywhere. My
fingerprints were on the food trays, my boss would know I was sent up here to
deliver the food. The gig was up and now it was just a matter of someone
walking in and seeing us.

So I sat
there and waited for nearly an hour. And then, I swear to god, she moved. I
jumped and she moved again. Then she lifted her torn body up out of the puddle
of her blood an viscera and looked right at me. Her eyes were as pale as mine,
her skin a hue that left no doubt in anyone’s mind who saw her next that she
was good and dead. I screamed as she began tearing around the room. Someone
must have heard me because a few minutes later, there was a pounding on the
door. She locked onto that sound and screamed bloody murder then bolted
directly for the front of the suite.

Whoever it
was broke the door down just as she launched herself at him. He didn’t know
what hit him. One minute he was breaking in to rescue a damsel in distress, the
next he had her teeth tearing large chunks of flesh first from his face, then
his neck. The crew members behind him tried to pry her off but she was having
none of it and finally landed her teeth on one of the young men’s arm. Soon the
first man who had crashed through the door was back on his feet and joining in
the feeding frenzy. I screamed at them but neither seemed to notice as they
locked on and devoured the two young men who had arrived to help.