The Great Wreck Read online

  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

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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.

  More people poured out into the corridors as the screams of the living and dead mixed drawing more living to the scene. It was a bloodbath. Whatever had infected me had spread to the socialite bitch and then to the unfortunate man who had only wanted to help, then to the two crewmen who were with him, then to the teenage girl who stepped out into the hall to see what was going on, then to her parents, and so on unto the Queen of the Caribbean was a plague ship carrying the first load of newly dead and living dead to the Brazilian coast.

  The dead ignored me so I sealed myself up in a cabin and attempted to drink myself to death. I failed at that which surprised me so much that when the ship ran aground and the local police came to investigate and thereby get themselves and the local population infected, I gathered up what food and water I could carry and decided to try to get back home.

  On the way I raced with the ever growing numbers of walking dead to see who could spread the infection we were carrying faster. I lost all moral bearing and bit, fucked, drank, and snorted my way north. The chaos spread, law broke down, and I became an animal.

  Survivors would invite me in. I’d kill the men, fuck the women, then kill the women. I never fucked so much as I did these last few months. It was glorious. I was a monster that stalked the streets as the dead raced around me in a frenzy to catch the living. I was just like the infected, the dead, except better camouflaged. I made it all the way back to Los Angeles, to Ground Zero, all the way back to the research center that had injected me with this thing.

  Only now, here at the end of this rope I have strung around my neck, I realize that the fuckers had injected me with something that got out of hand. And by “got out of hand” I mean destroyed the fucking world. I don’t know what they were trying to do. I don’t know if they meant to unleash what they did. So I am making this confession. I am writing it down and putting it in a plastic baggie with these blood samples. I have pulled as much blood as I can and sealed it in these tubes. I’ll put it in the freezer but the power will go out soon enough. I hope whoever finds it can figure out what was in it, maybe find a cure. I’ll be dead by then but unlikely to be completely dead though. When the roped snaps my neck, I will die. Then I’ll come back and dangle there at the end of my rope where the birds can peck me to pieces is left for years and years.

  That is a fit punishment for all the pain and agony I have caused.

  Out of the Desert

  Patient Zero One Epsilon, Unscheduled Release

  (New Mexico Proving Ground)

  What was left of Carl Dennis Spencer stood at the bitter edge of the Black Rock Research Center. The laboratory worked with diseases of the southwest: hanta virus, bubonic plague, rabies, and such. It worked to cure these regional specific diseases with no other purpose than to relive human suffering. No military application, no secret plan to destroy the human race, just pure medical research to find cures.

  But at 4:00 o’clock there was not a single soul alive in the research facility. Of the two hundreds researchers, secretaries, interns, and staff that had reported to work at eight o’clock, every single one of them was dead. Only they weren’t dead exactly as attested to by the remains of the aforementioned Mr. Spencer.

  Mr. Spencer worked with a very virulent species of neurotropic viral rabies from the Lyssavirus genus of the Rhabdoviridae family. A mouthful, I know, but stay with me. Mr. Spencer also had a very young wife who was sleeping with a great many men when Mr. Spencer was at work. Today, before he had left on the long drive out to the isolated facility, he had found a stash of tapes that carefully documented each of his wife’s affairs in graphic detail.

  She seems to be enjoying herself, he thought as he wife cried out under her lover in ways she never did for him. Carl felt his life and his sanity slip away. He carefully replaced the tapes in their secret spot in the back of the closet, finished getting ready for work, and made the ninety minute drive out to the research facility where he promptly entered his laboratory and injected himself with a very nasty concoction of rabies virus that killed him within the space of a very few minutes. His staff, shocked at witnessing his calm and controlled suicide rushed to his side as the virus worked through his body and rapidly brought his heart to a stop.

  Shocked, they all stood, crouched, or knelt next to his corpse and began to realize they all might have been exposed to whatever the good doctor may have injected into him. For a split second, someone, anyone could have halted the holocaust that would in the years to fol
low sweep away human civilization. Someone, anyone could have slapped one of the many bright red buttons, the big, shiny, candy-like red buttons scattered around the laboratory. Each one located at every entrance, every doorway, and every work station that would have sealed the facility and isolated the microbial nightmares that they kept contained there. Of course, there were the others making their way through urban population centers, but the good folks at the Black Rock Research Center did not know that. And so no one moved and when Carl sat straight up after being so clearly dead, his staff gaped in amazement thinking that they might have dodge a very deadly bullet.

  Then the feeding began.

  Carl bit his young, pretty assistant on the throat. A move he had fantasized about many times when he was alive but not exactly in this context. She screamed repeatedly sounding an awful lot like his wife and her lovers. Had Carl been alive, he might have relished the irony, but he was dead and what was left of him rapidly devoured his pretty little lab assistant before launching onto another. A few seconds later, the pretty little lab assistant was up and diving into the fleeing researches like a tight end making the winning tackle in a football game. And they bit their friends. And they bite their friends, and so on, and so on until the entire facility was engaged in a massive slaughter. By noon it was over and the things that used to be normal people working towards the good of all mankind were now shambling about the dead facility in various states of half eaten carnage.

  Then the delivery guy came in the front door. They were on him before he realized what was happening. There were so many on top of him that when they were done, there was nothing to come back from the dead except a few scraps of bloody cloth and bone fragments. But what was left of him managed to prop the front door open and through this the dead things of the facility poured out and into the desert.