Infection

Jane explored the captain's suite. She sat at his desk. She found a passport in a drawer. Dougie Campbell. British citizen. Fifty- eight.

An envelope on the desk blotter. A thick sheaf of handwritten notes. Part letter, part diary. Campbell spent half his life at sea. He got lonely. He wrote to his wife every night.

Ship gossip. Most of the crew were east Europeans working for tips. Romanian and Polish. The Romanians hated the Polish. Officers had to mediate.

Jane thumbed through the pages, scanned trivia, searched for the moment it all went bad.

She sat back in the chair and put booted feet on the desk.

The ship docked at Trondheim two weeks into an Arctic cruise. They brought aboard fresh supplies and a couple of new waiters.

Three days out: an incident in a kitchen. One of the new waiters went berserk. He cut himself with a cleaver, then attacked two pot-washers. Deep cuts. Bite injuries. The waiter was restrained and sedated. He was confined to the medical bay.

Thank God no passengers were hurt.

A couple of nights later a group of passengers gathered to sip hot chocolate on deck and watch the Northern Lights. They saw a distant figure at the end of the promenade climb over a railing and jump into the ocean. The figure was wearing a white galley uniform. The figure appeared to be hugging a heavy fire extinguisher to help himself sink.

Passengers threw lifebelts into the sea and raised the alarm. The ship came to an immediate halt. The crew trained searchlights on the sea. No sign of the man.

Quick headcount. The missing man was a pot-washer treated for bite wounds.

The captain radioed ashore for medical advice. Four staff and two passengers had been admitted to the infirmary for treatment. They were delirious, restrained, and bleeding from their eyes and ears.

Representatives of Baltic Shipping instructed the captain to implement full quarantine procedures. Isolate all infected personnel and head for the nearby port of Murmansk.

The ship was turned back from Murmansk. Their maydays were ignored. They tried to approach the port, despite the harbour master's refusal to let them dock, but were fired upon by Russian soldiers as they threw mooring ropes to the jetty. Instead, they sailed west towards Norway.

Patrick Connor. Bosun for nine years. The captain's closest friend. The men stayed aloof and professional during the working day, but most evenings they sat in the captain's cabin and uncorked a bottle of claret. Neither man was supposed to drink. The seniority of their positions meant they were never truly off duty while the ship was at sea. So they sipped wine in secret and enjoyed their little transgression.

It has been a week since Patrick was bitten. I have had to watch the horrifying progress of this disease. I have had to watch my friend slowly become a monster. It has been the worst experience of my life.

Patrick was bitten on the face. He was bending over Lenuta Grasu, one of the Romanian cabin maids, when she broke her restraint and bit a chunk from his cheek. He immediately washed and disinfected the wound, but both he and the captain knew it would do no good. The disease was transmitted by body fluid like HIV or hepatitis. Once a person became infected they quickly succumbed to dementia. They, in turn, would bite and claw, be driven to transmit the infection any way they could. Rafal, the Trondheim waiter who was the first to show signs of infection, was lashed to a hospital bed. He spat and snarled. He was horribly deformed. There was little chance he would recover.

Dr Walczak, the ship's surgeon, referred to the disease as rabies, for want of a proper diagnosis. By the time they reached Norwegian waters the fourteen-bed medical bay was full to capacity. The staff commandeered a couple of staff cabins for use as treatment rooms. Patrick Connor had volunteered to help Walczak, allowing the doctor to get much needed rest from time to time.

Patrick wrote farewell letters to his wife and children, then allowed himself to be restrained. It took less than twenty-four hours for the disease to take hold. In rare lucid moments he begged for death.

The captain made frequent visits to the medical bay.

This evening Dr Walczak and I had a long conversation in which we discussed the best form of treatment for Pat, the best way to relieve his suffering.

Next diary entry:

We held Patrick's funeral service at noon today, and committed his body to the deep.

The captain liberated a few bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon from the galley. No journal entries for the next three days.

Jane lay on the bed. She scanned the notes. Page after page of carnage. One by one the captain's crew succumbed.

The engines were shut down. Hyperion drifted north of Norway.

They lost the lower levels. They hoped that, by dropping the watertight compartment doors, they would seal infected passengers in the lower cabins. But the passengers found the stairwells before the crew had time to finish building barricades.

First Officer Quinn issued his men with Molotov cocktails. If they held their ground in the stairways, if they drove the infected passengers back down to the lower levels, they might retain control of the upper decks.

I don't think those sent mad by this disease intentionally kill. They are compelled to bite and penetrate, to spread the contagion. Nevertheless I have seen eyes gouged and throats ripped out. Survivors lie injured in cabins and corridors crying for help until they too are overtaken by blood-thirst, haul themselves to their feet and attack.

It was hard to estimate casualties. Captain Campbell conducted a head-count. A minority of the passengers and crew, fewer than a thousand, were declared clear of infection. They treated the injured in the Grand Ballroom.

I wish Dr Walczak was still with us. Quinn tells me the doctor was sighted near the sewage treatment plant just before the lower compartments were sealed. He had no shirt. His back was clustered with spines like a porcupine. He often said he would rather die than succumb to this strange affliction. I suppose he didn't have time to take his life before dementia took hold.

There seemed little chance the captain's journal would reach his wife, so instead he left a warning.

Once a person enters the advanced stages of infection they become extremely hard to kill. Quinn saw a girl cut clean in half when we dropped the watertight doors. She lived for fifteen minutes. She dragged herself across the deck, still trying to bite and tear. The entire lower half of her body had been detached and left behind, nevertheless her legs continued to kick and twist.

Many of the crew armed themselves with knives from the kitchen. Word soon spread. Knives didn't work. Stab wounds didn't even slow them down.

The only effective way to deal with the infected is either to destroy them in their entirety with a weapon such as a Molotov cocktail, or inflict a severe blow to the head.

The captain was shocked to find himself listing the most efficient ways of 'dealing' with the infected. In a matter of days his passengers and crew had become lethal predators.

It is a matter of survival. Those of us who remain must act quickly and ruthlessly to ensure the ship does not become totally overrun.

Campbell wondered if there were some way of scuttling the ship, sending the infected passengers and crew to the bottom of the ocean as a mercy.

Campbell gave the order to abandon ship. He and his crew had been shivering in the cold and dark for days. They were drifting. Navigational instrumentation off-line.

They posted lookouts round the clock in the hope of sighting land. One night they saw what they hoped to see: lights in the distance. Steady, electric light. Too dark to make out detail. The captain estimated they were drifting east of Svalbard. They were probably passing the little coastal township that served the Arktikugol coal field. He ordered his men to take to the boats.

Seventy-four souls.

Hard to believe of all the passengers under my care, all the crew under my command, this ragged handful of exhausted and traumatised people are all that remain.

Campbell gave First Officer Quinn the ship's log and told him to lead the survivors to safety. He saluted his men as they rowed away.

He was alone aboard the ship, the last uninfected individual on the vessel. He retreated to his cabin. He uncorked a Bordeaux.

Campbell could have evacuated the ship with his men, but was determined to play the role of captain to the last.

We all need to believe our lives have some ultimate meaning. I have rank and responsibility. It's not foolish to live your ideals.

Jane woke with a jolt. She had dozed off, crumpled papers in her hand.

She stood at the washstand. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and cleaned her teeth. Toothpaste and bottled water.

'Jane? You there?' Ghost.

'Yeah.'

'Punch and I are going to make a run for the engine room.'

'I'll be right there.''

Jane adjusted her dog-collar. The room reflected in the mirror. A silver-framed photograph on the desk. Captain Campbell and his wife in happy times.

'Okay, Dougie,' said Jane. 'Let's get our boys home.'