Plague Ship

Max wasted no time in entering the secured area. The floors were covered in a thick green carpet and the walls were covered in sheetrock and wainscoting. The paint gave off a slightly acrid smell that told him it had been recently applied. The lighting was still fluorescent, but the fixtures were of a better quality, and there were even occasional sconces. The framed artwork hanging on the walls was gaily colored but bland. For some reason, it reminded him of the law office of one of his divorce attorneys. It was institutional, but a higher quality of institutional. The dining facility was more like an upscale restaurant, with flat-panel monitors on the walls in place of real windows. The chairs were heavy and covered in soft leather, and the top of the bar was a plank of solid mahogany.

He found a cubicle farm for a small army of secretaries outside a suite of offices and a communications center that would have made Hali Kasim drool. He entered the center and started looking for a phone or radio, but the system was unlike anything he had ever seen. Feeling exposed in the small room, he decided he would try again later and continued his exploration.

Set away from the functional side of what Max had dubbed “the executive wing” were bedrooms appointed like a five-star hotel, right down to the minibars. There weren’t any Gideon Bibles in the bedside tables but rather copies of Lydell Cooper’s book, We’re Breeding Ourselves to Death. There were enough rooms for forty people or couples, depending on the sleeping arrangements. Max guessed that this would be for the very cream of the Responsivist movement, the leaders, board of directors, and wealthiest believers. At the very farthest reaches of the executive wing was a suite of rooms that had to belong to Thom Severance and his wife. They were, by far, the most luxurious. The bathroom alone was the size of a studio apartment, and the tub looked big enough to need a lifeguard.

Max spent the night on Severance’s bed, and, in the morning, brushed his teeth with what would be Severance’s toothbrush, once he arrived. To Hanley’s utter shock, he heard voices from the living room while he was rinsing. He recognized Zelimir Kovac’s thick accent and precise diction, and heard a second, smoother voice he assumed to be that of Thom Severance and a third voice that gave his heart another jolt. It was Dr. Adam Je

Max listened to their conversation in stu

Severance said something about Gil Martell’s suicide that Max took to mean Kovac had killed him. And then Max heard the terrifying truth about their plans to release an engineered virus on the world and sterilize half of humanity.

There was no admiration this time, but Max understood the genius of this plan as well. Civilization would never survive a coordinated global bioattack that killed half its victims, but what they intended was survivable. Mankind would be set back a generation but would emerge more prosperous in the end. He had read up on Cooper’s movement when his ex had told him their son had joined. Cooper had written that the Dark Ages never would have ended if not for the plague that wiped out half of Europe and ushered in a new era of prosperity.

He was pretty sure it wasn’t as simple as that, but he wondered how today’s world of twenty-four-hour information and high-speed travel would react. Fifty years after the pandemic, populations would have shifted to fill the gaps left by the reduced number of people, and the world very well might be a better place.

But it was no place Max wanted to be a part of. In his mind, Cooper, Severance, and Kovac had no more right to decide what was best for humanity than Larry, Moe, and Curly.

He wanted to rush from the bathroom and take them on single-handedly. He thought he might get five, maybe six, paces before Kovac gu

There would be another opportunity. He would just need to be patient.

After the three men had left, Max slunk out of the suite and holed up in the closet of one of the unused hotel-style rooms, reasonably confident that he was safe for the time being. As much as his brain wanted to focus on the hell Severance and his band were about to unleash, Max concentrated on how they were going to pull it off.

They had mentioned a transmitter. They were going to coordinate the release of the virus by transmitting some sort of activation code. Max saw the flaw immediately. An aerial broadcast, even on shortwave, couldn’t encompass the entire world with any measure of reliability. There were too many variables, from atmospheric conditions to sunspot activity, that could cause a signal failure.

Not shortwave, he thought.

He recalled the tu

“It’s a bloody ELF ante

He waited until after Kovac had run their test before sneaking into what he had first thought was the communications room. It took him nearly twenty nerve-racking minutes to figure out how to operate the ELF transmitter. He fine-tuned the frequency and sent his message: OREGON ITS MAX BUG ATTACK 50 CRUISE SHIPS NOT KILL WORSE ELF IS KEY

NUKE IT >72 HRS

He would have loved to add the location of the transmitter, but he had no idea where he was. He would just have to trust that Hali would be able to trace back the source of the signal. He had also used the word nuke deliberately because he felt this was an impregnable bunker and could only hope Juan would figure out a way to destroy it.

He returned to his hidey-hole in the closet, after helping himself to a couple of protein bars and a beer from the minibar. He was certain that with the day of their attack fast approaching, Severance would have Kovac station guards near the exit, so Max knew he wouldn’t be leaving that way. Wth no intention of sacrificing himself, he had less than three days to find another way out.

THOM SEVERANCE WAS in his office, chatting with Lydell Cooper, when someone knocked. He looked up from his desk and hastily whipped off the glasses he had been recently forced to use. Zelimir Kovac stood just inside his door. The normally dour Serb looked downright morose. Whatever had happened, Severance knew it couldn’t be good.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“It was just on the news, a death on a cruise ship in Istanbul. It was one of our people on the Golden Sky, Zach Raymond.”

“He was heading the cell we put aboard her, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do we have any details?” Cooper asked

“Apparently, he fell from the balcony of the ship’s atrium and was killed instantly.”

“So it was an accident?”

“That’s what the news is saying, but I don’t believe it. It is too much of a coincidence that our team leader died.”

“You think that whoever was behind Kyle Hanley’s abduction has people on the Golden Sky?” Severance asked with obvious sarcasm. “Don’t be ridiculous. There is no way that anyone could make that co

“There’s more. I just received word from our team in the Philippines. They said that two men arrived at the abandoned virus factory and discovered the old Japanese catacombs. The two men were buried inside following an explosion, but the very fact that they were there is troubling.” Severance steepled his fingers under his cosmetically cleft chin. “If someone did a little digging, they would know we had a facility in the Philippines. I don’t know how they knew about the abandoned Japanese tu