Outpost

Most of the passengers had gravitated to the vast lobby. Rye drifted through empty restaurants, a vacant cinema, a children’s play area with ball-pit and slide.

She amused herself in the sports centre for a couple of hours. She played table tennis against a wall. Her mutated body retained good movement.

She shot hoops. She powered up the golf simulator and thwacked balls down a digital fairway.

She found a mini-nightclub. No music, but the glitter ball still revolved. She hopscotched across the dance floor. Each tile lit up as she stood on it.

She wondered where the other passengers had gone.

Rye sought out the medical bay. Maybe she could load a hypodermic with morphine and put herself to sleep like a sick dog. Mix it with bleach, oven cleaner. Press the plunger. Feel good. Press the plunger some more. Lie back and let corrosives melt her brain.

A friend from medical school got a job on a cruise ship. He had an easy time. He ate, flirted and swam. All he had to do was listen for coded Tannoy announcements. ‘ Dr Jones to the white courtesy phone,’ meant he should head to Medical. ‘Dr Jones to the red courtesy phone,’ meant he should hurry to Medical to deal with an emergency. He dreaded the message ‘Dr Rose please report to the Neptune Bar,’ because Rose was the code-word for a coronary. Most passengers were elderly. At least one heart attack per trip. Someone sprawled on a restaurant carpet turning blue. The ship’s doctor would have to grab his resuscitation kit and haul ass.

Rye followed signs to Medical. Arrows and a little red cross.

Sjukhus

The infirmary had been ransacked. Instruments scattered across the floor. Bloody bed sheets bunched on the examination table. Blood sprayed up the wall. It looked as if an army surgical unit had treated hundreds of battlefield casualties then cleared out. The doctor aboard Hyperion had obviously done heroic work in his attempts to treat infected passengers before he too succumbed or was torn apart.

Rye felt hungry. She followed sombrero signs to the Tex Mex Grill. She wanted to crunch nachos.

She climbed stairs and walked down a passageway. Her path was blocked by a watertight door, one of the heavy steel hatches that had immediately dropped like a portcullis when Hyperion ran aground and took on water.

Rye put her ear to the hatch. She could hear faint music. ‘Gimme Shelter’. Muffled voices. Men talking, laughing. The Rampart crew on the other side of the door. They must have taken over the Grill.

Rye was overcome by loneliness. She leaned against the wall and wept.

The casino. A plush, Monte Carlo gambling den. A couple of roulette wheels, a craps table and a bar.

A showgirl lay dead and rotting on the floor. Sequins and pink ostrich plumes. A pulped mess where her head used to be.

Rye stepped over the body and approached five men sitting round a blackjack table. They wore ripped and bloody dinner jackets. One man was so far gone he was virtually a pillar of dripping metal. He was fused rigid and would clearly never leave his chair again. The croupier was slumped like he had fallen asleep. His head had melted into the table. The other men retained movement in their arms. There were cards and chips scattered on the green baize. The least inhuman of the bunch, a passenger who still retained half a face, acted as dealer.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Fresh blood.’

Rye took a seat at the table.

‘Ready to lose your money?’ asked the dealer, shuffling his cards.

‘It’s nice to hear another sane voice.’

‘This thing, this contagion, seems to strike people different ways, as you have evidently discovered. Some people die outright. Not sure why. One bite and they keel over. Must be like a peanut allergy. But sometimes, if you’re unlucky, it takes your body but not your mind. You’re not one of the passengers, are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’

‘I’m from an oil refinery near here.’

‘The ship ran aground?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you know what is happening out there in the world?’

‘No,’ said Rye. ‘Not a thing. You?’

‘Nothing. Just rumours. We circled for weeks trying to find a port. Then there was an outbreak. It must have been with us all along. An infected crew member perhaps, hiding the disease from his colleagues. Who knows? Who cares? Here we are, waiting for the end to come. The cowards. The ones too chicken to slit our throats or leap into the sea. Doomed to live.’ The dealer shuffled cards. ‘Have you ever played blackjack?’ he asked.

‘It seems like a good time to learn.’

Rye saw men and women suffer and die during her time on a cancer ward. Most accepted the end of their lives with stoic resignation. Youngsters calmly faced death even though they had yet to live. Joked as they were wheeled into the operating theatre, joked as they got shot full of chemotherapy or blasted with radiation.