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  With a heavy sigh, Ricky said, “I know Don, we're caught between Scylla and Charybdis.”

  Parsons gave Ricky a questioning look so he explained, “lt means a rock and a hard place. We can't make it to safety, and time's running out if we stay here.”

  “Well, we didn’t know the ship was going to sink when we made the decision to stay with it,” Parsons replied.

  “But we knew that Cozumel was free of the dead and taking in refugees if you brought your own supplies. We should have gone when we had the chance,” Ricky countered.

  Parsons nodded, but he knew that when they had first made radio contact with Cozumel and found out it was a safe haven, the Calm of the Seas was still in excellent condition. The booze was running freely and the orgies on the pool deck were going full tilt boogie. There was no way the people on board were going to give that all up to be farmers or fisherman on an island off the Mexican coast. It was live for the moment, and to hell with the future. The only problem was that the future was here.

  “How long did Brother Seth say we have until the pumps go out?” Ricky asked.

  “Two weeks at most.”

  “Well, we had a good thing going here while it lasted, but I guess it's time to move on.” Sighing, Ricky thought back over the past few months and the pure power he'd enjoyed and was about to lose.

  When Richard Rosencrantz had boarded the Calm of the Seas months earlier, it had been to take a much-needed break from his business of promoting religious tent revival meetings. Needing a breather from travelling from one end of the Bible belt to the other while hawking an endless stream of snake handlers, people speaking in tongues and little girls in pretty, white dresses singing ‘Jesus Loves Me’, a seven day cruise seemed to be just what he needed. After decades in the business, he was starting to get burned out, and it seemed like he was doing too much for too little. Month after month he felt like he was working his ass off. And for what, he asked himself, ten percent of the take when the plate was passed around at the end of the night? It just didn't seem to be worth it.

  Despite making a decent living, Ricky's real problem stemmed from watching the preachers and charlatans over the years and how they lived off the other ninety percent. Jealousy and resentment ballooned as he watched the false prophets drive around in Jaguars, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes while he was stuck with a Cadillac.

  Last year's model, he often reminded himself. It wasn't fair.

  And the power that these so called men of God wielded, Richard often raged to himself. They could tell their flock to do damned near anything, claiming it was an order sent down from Jesus H. Christ himself, and the idiots would fall all over themselves to do it. Standing on the bridge of the Calm of the Seas, he remembered getting drunk with a Baptist minister one night after a rather profitable show and what he had confided in him.

  The minister explained how he used his ushers as spotters. They would watch the crowd for any mother and daughter combination that had come to the show unescorted. If the two females seemed to be taken in with the Holy Spirit during the service, an usher would approach them afterward and explain that the Minister had a private message to them from God. Once alone with his victims, the Minister would roll his eyes up and pretend to go into a trance. In an ethereal voice he would say that it was God speaking through him and that it was time for the little girl to become a woman. He would tell them that the vessel he was speaking through had been put on Earth to plant his seed. This would grow into the Son of God. The Messiah.

  Ricky remembered how the old pedophile had laughed and said, “I got more teenage pussy with that trick than you can shake a stick at. And that's not even counting the older broads, who damn near threw themselves at me after every show.” Proudly he added, “Eight to eighty, blind, crippled or crazy, I’ve had them all.”

  Ricky could only shake his head in disbelief and laugh. While craving the power these men had, he was not religious himself. He had seen early on in his life that the church was for suckers. Look at the suicide bombers killing themselves and everyone else around them in the name of Allah. There was no way a smart guy like Richard Rosencrantz was going to fall into a trap like that. The Christians, Jews and Muslims had been trying to wipe each other out for centuries and would keep on until one of them succeeded. He just didn't get the upside to being a soldier of God and having someone dictate how he should live his life.

  But then again, he didn't see any down side in profiting off other people's foolishness. Having grown up in the back woods of Georgia, he’d been forced to attend enough revival meetings as a kid to see they were so much bullshit, but he did recognized there was a potential for profit to be made in an overlooked niche of the travelling religious organizations.

  Promotion.

  His entire life he watched as the preachers and ministers came to town on a Tuesday to start advertising their meetings with a few flyers and street corner sermons. They would tell the faithful to come out for service on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, which were ill attended at best, and culminated with the big show on Sunday, which was the best attended and the most profitable. What Ricky knew from being raised in an area where these revival meetings thrived, was that the people in these regions had work to do. Whether it was farming, running a store or working in a factory, they couldn’t just take off with little or no warning to get closer to God. Besides being the Sabbath, this was why the Sunday sermon was the best attended. People had time to rearrange their schedules and plan ahead.

  But, Ricky told himself, if these same people had more than a day or two of warning, like a week or two in which they were bombarded by constant reminders of the upcoming show, they would be more apt to put in an appearance for multiple meetings. And this meant the plate would be passed to more of the flock more times.

  In 1994, armed with a computer, a printer and the idea that he could increase the profitability of any tent revival meeting, Richard approached three preachers working the same circuit a few weeks apart. After pitching his idea, he got all three to give him a chance. His idea ended up being so successful that by the following year, he'd contracted with twenty-two different travelling revival meetings to provide all their promotional needs. Expanding on his original idea to blanket an area with flyers two weeks before his client hit town, he turned his attention to the religious radio stations in the targeted vicinity and started getting himself booked on talk and morning shows to promote his patrons. Here he found he could spout the fire and brimstone just as well as, or better than, anyone he represented. He even toyed with the idea of hitting the circuit himself but abandoned the plan when he realized how glutted the market was. It was better to continue profiting a little from each of the charlatans than risking it all by putting on a show himself.

  But still, over the years, as he watched the power these preachers wielded, Richard craved what they had.

  When the first cases of the HWNW virus were reported on the news, Richard saw his clients jump on the story and start calling it God’s retribution for our sins. They had been spouting the same line for years about AIDS, herpes and the clap, but a little fear went a long way to convincing the masses of divine retribution and opening their wallets and purses in the hopes they could buy themselves into heaven.

  Although profits rose, Richard wasn't going to let business get in the way of his much needed vacation. Leaving things in the capable hands of his personal assistant, Rosencrantz, Inc. now had eight full time employees, he embarked on his planned vacation with a redhead named Sheila, who he met in a dive bar in Tennessee, secure in the knowledge that the additional money coming in, due to the latest virus spreading across the world, would be waiting for him when he returned.

  After two days of sex, sun and self-indulgence, Richard woke on the third day to a knock at his cabin door. Answering it, he found one of the ship’s officers standing nervously in the passageway. The man explained that, because of some mechanical difficulties, temporary difficulties he stressed, all passengers n
eeded to remain in their cabins until further notice.

  Suspicious of the explanation and the jittery demeanor of the officer, Richard nonetheless agreed to remain in his room. As soon as the officer moved on though, he dressed quickly, grabbed his camera, and after making sure that the coast was clear, slipped out of his cabin. He’d heard horror stories of people on cruises being stuck at sea for days when their ship broke down, and if this was a similar case, he wanted pictures to back up the lawsuit he would slap the Cayman Cruise Lines with.

  Looking for anything suspicious and keeping his nose open for the smell of backed up sewage, since this seemed to be one of the most reported causes of a cruise being disrupted, Richard hadn't gone far when he heard the sounds of cursing and fighting coming from a hallway ahead. Rushing forward, he found himself at one of the service corridors the crew used. Not quite knowing what to expect, he was completely unprepared and shocked at what he saw.

  Two cabin attendants gripped the wrists of a middle-aged woman. She struggled and fought them with a rage that Ricky had never seen in a female before. Thinking he had walked in on a rape, he was preparing to back up and watch the festivities when the woman broke the grip of one of her attackers. Before the man could restrain her, she lunged at his partner and sank her teeth into his forearm. Blood flew as the woman whipped her head back and forth and the attendant screamed for help.

  While he was expecting to sit back and watch a sexual assault, Richard was shocked at this turn of events. He was even more surprised when he jumped forward and grabbed the crazy lady around the waist. Not sure whether he was helping her or the man she had bit, he dragged the woman backwards. The attendant screamed again and this was when Ricky saw that the female fury wouldn't unclench her teeth from where they were clamped into the man's arm. He watched in fascination as the skin on the man's limb stretched further and further until it reached the breaking point. With a wet plop it let go, and Ricky saw more blood well up in the mouth-sized gap where a huge chunk of meat had been removed from the man's arm.

  Rage and blinding pain overcame the attendant, making him forget the Captain’s orders about not harming the passengers, as he swung a roundhouse punch at the woman’s head. It connected with her left temple and Ricky felt her go limp in his arms.

  Letting the dead weight drop to the deck, Richard quickly retrieved his camera and started taking pictures of the scene as he backed away. Both crewmembers seemed unconcerned with this, which Richard found curious. He stopped and watched as they wrapped the wounded man’s arm in a shirt to staunch the flow of blood. When they were finished, the injured man said something in a thick brogue about seeing the ship's doctor and walked away. The remaining crewman then grabbed the inert woman by the legs and started dragging her across the carpet. Looking up from his burden and seeing Richard watching him, he said with a British accent, “Thanks for your help before, Gov, but I could use a bit more if you might.”

  Seeing that the woman had not regained consciousness, and believing that the Brit was now tampering with a crime scene, Richard decided that since he had gotten involved in an attempted rape and assault, it was time to put some distance between himself and any liability.

  Putting on an act of being an innocent bystander, and in a loud, righteous tone, he said, “Just wait a minute, you can't move her. What do you think you're doing?” Looking closely at the lifeless body, he added in an incredulous voice, loud enough for any potential witnesses to hear, “What did you do? Oh my God, I think you killed her!”

  Adjusting his grip on the woman's leg, the attendant seemed unconcerned as he replied, “Might have done just that, Gov, but she's still got to go with the others.”

  Richard was going to continue his charade by yelling for help, but the man's statement stopped the words in his mouth. Instead, he asked in a curious tone, “Others?”

  “Lots of them, don't you know, Gov?” The man answered. Looking down at the body and then back up at Richard, he said, “It's an outbreak of some kind. At first the Captain thought it was drugs but....” The man's voice trailed off.

  Richard quickly put together the reports on the news and in the papers he had seen before coming on this cruise, with what he'd just witnessed, and came up with the HWNW virus. Wanting to know more about what was going on, he reached down and grabbed the woman's arms and let the cabin attendant lead him through a maze of crew passageways to the Sounds Lounge.

  Built on two levels, it really wasn't a lounge but a two-story theater complete with stage, orchestra pit and balcony. Entering through the doors leading to the balcony, the first thing Richard noticed was an unpleasant smell. It was a slightly rank odor, which reminded him of the time he came across a raccoon that had crawled into a tin shed behind his house and died. No one discovered it until months later and it gave off the smell of old, musty death. The second thing he noticed was a strange sound that came and went. It was a high-pitched keening noise that seemed to dig for the center of his brain.

  “What the hell is that?” He asked the Brit.

  “You'll see in a minute, Gov,” he answered and pointed with his elbow toward the edge of the balcony where two crewmembers were readying a rope.

  After depositing the woman with the two men, Richard followed his guide who ushered him to the rail and motioned for him to look. Leaning over cautiously, he found himself looking down at rows of plush seats with aisles cutting between them stretching away to the stage. At first noticing nothing unusual, he thought to himself, so what, it's a fucking theater.

  A hissing noise made him look straight down. Jumping back slightly at what he saw, Ricky exclaimed, “Holy shit, what in the fuck is that?”

  In just a brief glimpse, he had seen over two hundred former members of the passengers and crew clustered beneath the balcony in different stages of dress and undress with different types of grotesque, oozing wounds. Shaking off his initial shock, Richard leaned over the rail again for another look. Fascinated, he let his eyes scan the group below as he took in the different, gruesome aspects of the horror show.

  One man's head flopped sideways, his neck muscles ripped away. A woman in shorts and a halter-top raised fingerless hands as if in supplication. A teenage boy dragged himself across the carpet by his hands, the muscles in his legs shredded to the point where they wouldn't support his body weight. He passed an older lady missing an ear and part of her scalp, revealing the gray white bone of her skull. A beautiful woman gawked up at Ricky. She was wearing nothing but bikini underwear bottoms as she stood with one ponderous breast half ripped away to hang limply from her chest. A college-aged man, who didn't appear to have a mark on him but who had the same bluish-gray skin stretched across his face matching the others, made a hissing noise when he noticed the two men above him. It went on and on. Feral, hungry eyes stared up at Richard as the whining noise he heard earlier started up and rose to a crescendo. The sound was coming from the things below.

  Looking closer at the woman with only one breast and then at the others, something that Richard had first thought was a trick of the light became apparent. A thick, black pussy substance had replaced the blood that should be leaking and spraying from their wounds.

  Turning to his guide to Hell, he asked, “What's that stuff oozing out of their bodies?”

  “Don't know, Gov, an infection of some sorts I'd guess,” he answered with a shrug.

  Another well-endowed woman with her chest exposed through a torn Miami Dolphins jersey caught Richard's attention. He watched her for a few minutes before turning away with a look of disgust on his face. He wanted it to appear like he was repulsed by the sight, but what he really wanted to do was hide the erection pressing against the crotch of his pants. He hadn't been this excited in years.

  Richard's gaze settled on the two men who had taken custody of the woman he'd helped bring to the balcony, and he tried to take his mind off his growing lust by watching them. One held the woman's arms up while the other looped a rope around her chest and drew it tight. W
hen he was finished, they picked her up and lowered her over the railing down to the floor below. When she hit bottom, the man on the right gave the line a stiff jerk to release the slipknot he'd made and reeled the rope in.

  Seeing Richard watching him, he called out, “I think that one's dead, but it's kind of hard to tell. They all kinda look dead.”

  Turning to look once more at the things below him, Richard had to agree. They did look dead. He'd just fixated on the breasts of the woman in the Miami Dolphins jersey again when a hand suddenly appeared out of the corner of his vision. At first flinching away, he felt embarrassment roll through him when he realized it was the Brit trying to shake his hand.

  “Easy mate,” the man said, “just wanted to thank you for your help. I'll escort you back to your cabin and then I need to get back to work. Idle hands are the devil's tools and all that.”

  Richard shook with the man and let the Brit lead him back to his room.

  Sheila had woken in his absence, so after closing and locking the door behind him, Richard took his lust for the woman in the torn jersey out on her.

  As he lay in bed afterward, his mind drifted to how he might gain from his present circumstances. Without question, a lawsuit would be forthcoming against the cruise line. With thousands of people on the Calm of the Seas though, the number of plaintiffs would lessen the payout. Richard racked his brain. There must be some way he could profit from this disaster. Maybe blackmail. He had pictures of the crew assaulting a passenger, so that should be worth something.

  Richard's thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door and a voice calling out that the problem with the ship had been fixed. Remembering what he had seen that morning; he had a suspicion that the real problem was just beginning.

  Wanting to find out more, he joined the passengers milling about in the Masthead Bar and listened to them speculate as to the cause of the temporary lockdown of the ship. Their theories sounded ludicrous to his ears, and he contented himself by feeling superior in the knowledge of what was really going on.