Plague Ship

“You’re holding up pretty well for someone who isn’t a medico,” Hux had told Eddie when she was working on the first of the victims.

“I’ve seen how Chinese interrogators leave their prisoners after extracting whatever information they think the person had,” Eddie had said in an emotionless monotone. “After that, nothing much bothers me.”

Julia knew of Seng’s deep-cover forays into China on behalf of the CIA and didn’t doubt he’d seen horrors far worse than anything she could imagine.

As she had suspected, there was a trail of bodies leading down the corridor toward the dispensary, men and women who had had just enough time after falling ill to go to the one place they thought they could find help. She took samples here as well, thinking that something in their physiology gave them a few minutes other victims had been denied by the pathogen. It could be an important clue at finding the cause of the outbreak, since she was holding little hope of finding any survivors.

The hospital door was open when they arrived. She stepped over a man wearing a tuxedo lying across the threshold and entered the windowless antechamber. Her flashlight revealed a pair of desks and some storage cabinets. On the walls were travel posters, a sign reminding everyone that handwashing was a crucial step in reducing infections aboard ship, and a plaque stating that Dr. Howard Passman had received his medical degree from the University of Leeds.

Julia played her light around the adjoining examination room and saw it was empty. A door at the far end of the office led to the patients’ rooms, which were little more than curtained-off cubicles, each containing a bed and a simple nightstand. There were two more victims on the floor here, a young woman in a tight black dress and a middle-aged man wearing a bathrobe. Like all the rest, they were covered in their own blood.

“Think that’s the doctor?” Eddie asked.

“That would be my guess. He was probably struck by the virus in his cabin and rushed here as fast as he could.”

“Not fast enough.”

“For this bug, no one is.” Julia cocked her head. “Do you hear that?”

“In this suit, I can’t hear anything but my own breathing.”

“Sounds like a pump or something.” She pulled back one of the curtains surrounding a bed. The blanket and sheets were crisp and flat.

She went to the next. On the floor next to the bed was a battery-powered oxygen machine like those used by people with respiratory problems. The clear-plastic lines snaked under the covers. Julia flashed her light over the bed. Someone was in it, with the blankets pulled up over their head.

She rushed forward. “We’ve got a live one!”

Huxley peeled back the blankets. A young woman was sound asleep, the air tubes feeding directly into her nostrils. Her dark hair was fa

Her eyes fluttered open, and she screamed when she saw the two figures in space suits hovering over her bed.

“It’s okay,” Julia said. “I’m a doctor. We’re here to rescue you.” Julia’s muffled voice did little to calm the woman. Her blue eyes were wide with fear, and she backed up against the head-board, drawing the blankets over herself.

“My name is Julia. This is Eddie. We are going to get you out of here. What’s your name?”

“Who . . . Who are you?” the young woman stammered.

“I’m a doctor from another ship. Do you know what happened?”

“Last night, there was a party.”

When the woman didn’t continue, Julia assumed that she was in shock. She turned to Seng. “Break out another hazmat suit. We can’t take her off the supplemental oxygen until she’s in it.”

“Why’s that?” Eddie asked, tearing open the hazmat suit’s plastic wrap.

“I think it’s why she survived and no one else did. The virus must be airborne. She wasn’t breathing the ambient air but drawing oxygen from the hospital’s oh-two system, and, when that went down, she started using this portable unit here.” Julia looked back at the girl. She estimated her age to be early twenties, either a passenger traveling with her family or a member of the crew. “Can you tell me your name, sweetie?”

“Ja

“May I call you Ja

“You are American?”

Just as Julia opened her mouth to respond, a deep bass sound filled the room. “What was that?” Eddie didn’t have time to tell her it was an explosion before a second, closer blast echoed through the ship. Ja

“We have to go,” Eddie said. “Now!”

Two more blasts rocked the Golden Dawn. One of them detonated a short distance from the ward, knocking Seng to the floor and forcing Julia to use her body to shield Ja

Eddie got to his feet. “Stay with the girl.” He ran from the room.

“Ja

“What is happening?”

“My friend is checking it out. I need you to put this on.” Julia held out the protective hazmat suit. “We have to do it very carefully, though, okay?”

“Am I sick?”

“I don’t think so.” Julia had no idea until she could run some tests, but there was no way she was going to tell the frightened girl that.

“I have asthma,” Ja

“Has it passed?”

“I think so. I have not used my inhaler since . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“But you stayed on the oxygen?”

“I saw what happened to Dr. Passman and to my friend, Karin. I thought maybe it was something they had breathed, so I kept using it.”

“You are a brave and resourceful girl. I think you saved your life by doing that.” Knowing she had done something to help herself gave Ja

Eddie jogged back into the room. “The blast wrecked the hallway about twenty yards from here. We can’t go back up the way we came.”

“Is there another way?”

“We better hope so. I can hear the lower part of the ship flooding.” WATER SURGED UNDER the jammed door like a rising tide, and, if not for the protection of his hazmat suit, with its own air supply, Cabrillo would have drowned. After a few minutes struggling again to free his crushed prosthesis, he lay back and let the sea roar over him, as it rapidly filled the main engine room. The swell was already a foot and a half deep, and rising by the second.

Juan’s only consolation was that the rest of his team hadn’t ventured this deep into the Golden Dawn and would be able to escape relatively easily.

During his earlier examination of the engineering spaces, he hadn’t seen any victims of the virus, or whatever had been unleashed on the ship, telling him that the vessel had been ru

The air conditioners had been shut down for a while, letting dust and microbes settle. Had enough time elapsed? Cabrillo could only hope so, because he knew that by lying in the torrent of rising water and thinking about it, he was just putting off the inevitable.