Chapter 1

I was on a cruise ship when IT happened, the end of the world as we knew it. The funny thing was that I really didn't want to be on the ship, but I often wonder if being there saved my life, whether or not I would have survived IT had I been on land.

The cruise was a leaving present from the company I had worked for and from my work colleagues. They all knew that I was a sailor and even had my own sailing boat, not that I found enough time to use it much, so when I decided to leave the company after many years of working there, a month's cruise was what they clubbed together and bought me.

I hadn't the heart to tell them that being onboard a motorised sardine can was not my ideal holiday and that I preferred wind power to diesel power. Instead I smiled and thanked them for their generosity and took the cruise. After all, it was not a cheap present for them to give me.

I got quite a lot of ribbing from my male colleagues since the cruise was an "adult" cruise, meaning no children under 16, but many of them tried to joke about XXX rated holidays. I say tried since mostly everyone had fully partaken of the free booze at my leaving party.

So I flew to the States and boarded the ship and off we sailed for 28 days of sun, sea and fun. At least that's what the brochure said.

I'm James, by the way, middle aged computer programmer and, as I mentioned before, a part-time sailor. When I joined the cruise I was fully 15Kg overweight, that's 33lbs for those of you who still think in Imperial, a bachelor although I had been married many years before. It lasted a few years before she decided that living with a very good programmer was not for her and off she went. Last I heard she had married a Bank Manager. Not that I blame her really, since good programmers get the difficult jobs and then we spend all hours working in the aforementioned jobs, sometimes to the exclusion of all else.

The cruise ship was not a large one, thankfully, just 1000 passengers and 500 or so crew according to the brochure, all over the age of 16. It didn't take long for me to find out that the average age of the passengers was around 50 meaning that there were many older couples, most of whom would never deign to talk to me let alone have me in their social circle.

The saving grace of the whole cruise, as far as I was concerned, was that the ship had a very good gym where I spent some time every day. I decided that I would work on loosing the extra 15Kg I carried around with me. The other thing that was good, if somewhat unexpected, was that I had been invited to join the Captain's Table within the first week and asked to continue at the table for every evening meal. The Captain was a most entertaining fellow and owned his own sailing boat. We spent many hours talking about where we had been and what we had done to improve our vessels.

It was during the third week of our cruise that IT happened. I won't bore you with the details except to say that we were not spared. The delivery of the virus or bacteria or whatever it was occurred high enough in the atmosphere to ensure that the entire States was covered and that meant that a lot spread far out to sea and we were in part of that sea.

We watched the news broadcasts as the end of the world happened in front of our eyes. Then, a few days later, many of the crew and passengers fell ill and we knew that we had not escaped. Soon bodies were everywhere including all of the bridge crew. Ted, the captain, had ordered the engines to standby when it became obvious to him that there was shortly going to be no-one left to pilot the ship and we drifted, a death ship on the high seas.

"James!" the voice of the remaining doctor called me as I walked along one of the upper side decks. I stopped and waited for her to catch up.

"Sharon, what can I do for you?"

"Unless something gets done we are going to have a big problem." She looked at me and I could see a little fear in her eyes.

"Yes, I know, the bodies are beginning to rot and if we don't do something we'll have a plague." She looked at me for a moment.

"How do you know that?" Her voice was curious not accusing, thankfully. I've always tried to hide my knowledge as it can make many people uncomfortable.

"I read a lot and most historical plagues were caused by dead bodies being a suitable breeding ground for the microbes."

"We still need to do something about it."

"As far as I can see there is only one thing to do. Toss them overboard." To her credit she didn't flinch at this and I knew that she had already considered the possibility. She seemed to be waiting for someone else to make the final decision.

"The remaining passengers won't like it."

"That I also know, but they'll not enjoy dying of the plague either. Why don't you announce a meeting in the ballroom in an hour and I'll tell them. You'll need to back me up." I looked at her and she nodded.

"Okay."

She walked off to the bridge and soon I heard the announcement of the meeting over the ship's tannoy.

I refrained from going to the ballroom until 5 minutes before the meeting was due to start, I didn't want anyone to start asking questions of me. I called into the Doctor's office on the way and found Sharon waiting for me. She had put on her "Official" uniform and was ready to go. She's nobody's fool, that's for sure. Together we walked to the ballroom. A few people were standing just outside the main doors and followed us in as we moved purposefully into the large room and went up to the raised area that served as a stage. Our deliberate pace made everyone watch us and the hubbub of noise quieted as we climbed into the rostrum and turned to face the passengers.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," I began "the ship's doctor has asked me to address you all on a matter that is of grave concern." I attempted to speak more slowly and with a slightly deeper voice that I normally do. I was trying to give the impression that this was very important and they had better listen. I ignored "What's good about it?" spoken bitterly by one of the men.

"We will be organising you into teams consisting of 5 people in each team. You will be given an area to work in and our task it to collect all of the dead bodies on this ship and throw them overboard."

Not surprisingly the reaction to this was immediate and loud. Primarily the reaction was "you can't do that. You can't throw my Billy/Susan/Wife/Husband into the sea."

I waited until the voices quieted before continuing. "The reason for doing this is simple. Doctor Maitling," I gestured to Sharon, "informs me that if we do not get rid of the bodies then we will all shortly die a painful death from the plague." Once more loud voices broke out and there was a healthy dose of fear in the sound.

This time I raised my voice over the noise, "There will be no shirking this task, we must get all the bodies off the ship in the next two days. Doctor Maitling will be organising the teams. There are just 75 of us left, so the sooner we start the better."

I was making most of this up but it has been my experience that should you leave any room for doubt, then it will be pounced upon and talked to death by those wanting to get out of doing something they didn't want to.

"I'll hand over this meeting to the Doctor." I said and I got down off the rostrum leaving Sharon to organise the work details.

"Thank you James. This distasteful task is quite necessary and with nearly 1500 bodies is going to take some time. Please put aside your fear and dislike of handling the dead or you will find that you will be dying also. Please come forward in an orderly fashion so that I can organise the teams."

I made sure that I obviously moved to the front and waited. To my surprise four women quickly moved to join me. We gave our names to Sharon who wrote them down and allocated us an area of the ship to deal with. She also gave us a copy of the master key for that area so that we could get into every cabin. I was right, Sharon had been thinking about this judging by how she was already organised to deal with the body disposal. We walked away allowing others to move forward.

My companions were Julie, a red-head, Liz, brunette, Ayesha, a gorgeous coloured lady and Li a diminutive Japanese lady. To my initial surprise they were all younger than most of the survivors, none of them would be older than 30 I would guess, but then, I've never been good at judging the age of women. I decided that they had probably wanted to get away from some of the older men who were obviously trying to vie for their attention. Not that I'm complaining.

Sharon had started us off in officer territory including Ted's cabin and I have to say that it was disheartening to carry that man out and roll him over the side. Having done that we went back to his cabin and I started searching.

"What are you doing?" Ayesha asked the question but I could see all of them watching me.

"Sooner or later we are going to have a big problem with some of the men left in this group and I don't want to have them find the weapons that Ted would have." Saying this I found a bunch of keys and started looking for locks.

"Also, I don't think many people have started think about the future yet. We are somewhere in the North Atlantic and we need to be able to navigate our way out of here, so I'm also looking for things to help use there. Sextants, charts and so on."

After a moment's thought all of them started rummaging around and it wasn't long before we found what I was looking for. Several hand guns, two rifles and a shotgun. Several boxes of ammunition and some cleaning supplies completed the find. Fortunately they were all in a very well secured locker and I put them all back except one handgun that I kept for myself. Making sure it was loaded I stuck it into the waistband of my shorts in the middle of my back and covered it with my shirt. Trite, I know, but what else was I supposed to do with it?

"James?" This time it was Li, "Is this what you were also looking for?" I turned to see her looking into a wooden box. Inside I saw that she had found a beautiful sextant.

"Indeed it is, and I thank you for it. Put it into the locker with the firearms and we'll keep it all locked there."

This formed the pattern for our area of the ship. We would dispose of the bodies that we found and then search the cabin for anything that could be useful. Important items we put into the firearms locker, other things we locked in Ted's cabin. His being the only cabin we found that didn't open to the master key. Obvious in hindsight.

By the end of the day we were exhausted but we had cleared our allotted area. We walked back to the Doctor's cabin. I knocked on the door. "Come in!"

We walked in and saw a very frazzled Sharon sitting behind her small desk.

"We've cleared the area you gave us, where should we start tomorrow morning?" Sharon consulted her deck plan and assigned us another area of officer country. I looked at her. "How is it all going?" She sighed.

"About half of the survivors have been organised into teams, I've tried to put the weaker ones in teams with stronger ones but the rest refuse to do anything, some are even trying to prevent the others from working."

"Let me guess, Mr Boyd Alexander and his two friends."

"Correct, Mr Alexander seems to think that he should be running things now and wants everyone to make him the 'Captain'." I grunted at this and started to wonder what mischief BA and his sidekicks were going to try.

Julie chose this moment of quiet to speak.

"Um, we were wondering if we could ask you something?" She looked at me and I was surprised to see that she was feeling shy. "We were talking earlier this morning, before Doctor Maitland..."

"Sharon" Sharon interjected

"... before Sharon made the announcement, well, Mr Alexander and his friends have been..." She stopped as she tried to find a diplomatic was to say that they were being assholes... I helped her out. "They were being assholes and coming on to you somewhat forcefully seeing as you are the youngest ladies on board"

She looked at me gratefully while the others, including Sharon giggled.

"Yeah, right, anyway we don't want to be alone anywhere where they can find us and we wondered if we could, um, that is you don't mind, if we could..."

It dawned on me what she was trying to say.

"You were wondering if you could all move into my suite for protection."

"Well, yes." They all looked at me with that pleading look that all women seem to be able to do from birth and I knew that I couldn't say no. Not that I wanted to, you understand, I am male and my hormones work perfectly well.

"Actually, I wonder if I could also take advantage of you that way." I turned to Sharon and was amazed to find the same look of pleading on her face as well.

"They have been getting at you also?"

"Yes. I didn't want to worry anyone about it, but I have heard my door being tried the last few evenings. I keep it locked as a matter of course, but it isn't comfortable to realise that someone was trying to get in at a time when I was there."

"Okay." I scratched my head and began to wonder what I had let myself in for. The five of them immediately started thanking me and clustered round like I was Father Christmas.

"Quieten down, ladies." I could see that this was a relief to them all and suddenly I found myself feeling good about the decision. "We need to transfer your belongings to my suite without anyone noticing."

"Why don't we put everything in one of the big suites on the top deck just behind the bridge. The one at the very end is not overlooked by any of the others and has four bedrooms and two bathrooms." Sharon wore a thoughtful look on her face as she said this. "If we organised this properly and moved things up there in twos, then I don't think anyone would notice until it was too late."

"You organise it with the rest of the gang of four," This raised another giggle, "while I think about another problem that's bothering me."

The ladies chatted away between themselves as I wondered what to do about the survivors who refused to help in the clear up. Soon they had finished talking and three of the girls went out, presumably to start the transfer leaving Sharon and Liz with me.

"Okay, the abstainers. Unless we do something to persuade them to join in with the work force, there will be nothing to stop the others from abstaining as well. I don't want to do anything too rash and after the bodies have been cleared away I don't want to force anyone to do anything else, but this is serious and a point has to be made. I think we should lock the galley and the food stores and only provide food for the workers for a few days." I looked at Sharon, "Can you think of a better way?"

In answer she reached in her pocket and took out a bunch of keys and shook them under my nose with a smile on her face.

"Ah," I said unnecessarily, "Seventeen steps ahead of me again."

"Not really. It's just that I've had most of the afternoon to think about it."

"That's letting me off lightly." I grinned at the two of them. "So, how do we enforce this? Let me guess, giving us officer territory was not coincidental and you banked on me retrieving one or more items from the Captain's cabin to back you up?"

Her smile was answer enough, so I continued. "Added to the fact that the people who did work will also back you up and that should be enough."

Liz and I left the doctor's office at this point and we walked out to where the other girls were waiting. They went off by themselves and I gathered that this was all part of the plot to make everyone think that they were nothing but a giggle of girls without a brain cell between them.

I went back to my suite and packed what few belongings I had into my haversack ready for a sneaky departure.

Half an hour before it was time to eat, we had been cooking our own food since IT happened, but 18:30 was the time that we had all gathered together to do this, I went down to the galley hoping that this wasn't going to be too painful. As I rounded the penultimate corner I could hear that it had already started.

"What do you mean I can't go in. You can't stop me. I have just as much right to go in there are anyone else."

I decided to join in as I turned the final corner to see a beleaguered Sharon standing in front of the closed and I presumed still locked galley doors.

"Just what she says, Yes she can and no you haven't." I said loudly, approaching the small crowd from behind. No surprise to see that the speaker was BA even if I hadn't recognised his voice. I pushed my way to the front and stood along side Sharon.

"What the fuck! What are you talking about?"

"She means that you can't go in there, yes she can stop you and no you don't have the right to go in there." I smiled at him knowing that it would irritate him no end. It did.

"Listen old man, I don't know what your beef is but I'm going in there whether you like it or not."

"No you are not, only those who helped out today are getting fed. Those of you who didn't forfeit your supper." At this a number of the people that had worked pushed their way through the crowd and stood beside us. It was a nice feeling of solidarity. Predictably BA and his friend started to swear and curse and it wasn't long before BA tried out his muscles.

"He's not the captain of this ship, I say we take what we want."

I knew he was going to use force at this point and I took what is known as preemptive action. I hit him in the stomach. No warning, just a fairly straight jab to the solar plexus. He made little sound as he sank to his knees trying to get his breath. I looked at his two friends.

"Leave now and take Asshole here with you. You get fed when you work. No exceptions." I raised my voice for the last part and it had the desired effect. Grumbling, the non-workers moved away from the galley. BA was helped away by his two friends.

Sharon unlocked the galley door and let the workers in. We locked the door again behind us and had a pleasant meal. I wasn't at all worried about the rest of them breaking into the galley since all the doors into the galley were fire doors made of thick steel. You'd need a cutting torch to get though that and I knew that the doors to the engine room where the cutting torches were kept were also locked and were of similar construction.

I sat alone at a table far from the rest of the survivors but not for long. As soon as each of them had prepared their food, my girls, including Sharon, came over to sit with me. We sat in silence mostly, just eating. When we had finished Ayesha spoke up.

"What now?" I sensed that she means in the larger scheme of things rather than at that moment and answered her in kind.

"We find a way off this tub. That means doing something with the food to preserve it, the only reason we still have good food is because the freezers are still working but when the generators stop, so do the freezers and a few days after that we only have rotten food." I paused and looked at them. "Any of you know about preserving food?" I sighed when they shook their heads.

"Then there is water. We have plenty now, but it won't last long at the rate that most people are using it. They are still taking showers or baths everyday, sometimes twice. They don't seem to realise that the water is limited. And again, once the generators stop the only way to get water will be to get it out of the bunkers by hand."

Li giggled. "That would stop them taking too many showers." The others laughed at her comment.

"True," I replied "and if I knew how to restart the generators I'd turn them off for at least 6 hours a day to conserve fuel."

"Look at it this way, Ted told me that they only provisioned the ship with enough food and water to reach the next port plus two days in hand. Our next stop was in 7 days giving us nine days food and water for 1500 or so people. Now there are only 75 of us meaning that under ideal conditions the supplies would last 20 times as long or a shade under six months. Well, the fresh food will be bad before the end of the week leaving just the food in the freezers and cans. So what happens in 6 months if we are still here? So we have to get off this ship, sooner rather than later."

Sharon looked at me gravely. "Do we really have a chance?"

"Yes, we do." I said very positively. "We just need to get back on land as soon as possible and with enough supplies to last the six of us for about 3 months, 6 if we can manage it." I glanced around at the other people in the Galley. Let's talk about this more this evening in our suite. I don't want certain people to get wind of what we are trying to do here."

With that we got up from the table, washed and dried our plates and dishes. This seemed to be the signal for everyone else at we all left at the same time. Sharon carefully shut and locked the door and as we were walking away she slipped the bunch of keys to me without anyone else noticing.

Later that evening we spent a long time talking about how to get off the ship. We needed to know what food and water was available. There were many powered lifeboats which were simple to use and we could get to land in one of those if we stocked it up with food, water and fuel. So we had to find water and fuel containers, but most of all we needed to find something to preserve food in. We finally decided to take a comprehensive look around after the body disposal.

Our pattern for the next few days was dispose of bodies, search cabins and generally keep a look out. Not surprisingly all but BA and his buddies joined in the disposal the second day. They held out for another day but the clincher seemed to be when Sharon also locked up the booze. After that they started work. By then all the easy bodies had been disposed of and Sharon gave them really awkward areas. I noticed that she did keep them away from the engine room and officer country. Instead they dealt with the crews quarters deep inside the boat and not easy to get bodies out of.

During these few days I learnt about my companions. Julie, 23, had graduated in business studies and had been trying to find a job that interested her. The cruise was a trip paid for by her parents. Liz, 26, was a pharmacist. She and her husband had given themselves this cruise before they settled down and started a family. Sadly he was one of the first to succumb to IT probably due to his chronic asthma.

Ayesha was also 23 and worked as a cook and waitress in a diner. She had won a small amount of money in a local lottery and had decided to give herself the holiday she had never been able to afford before. Her boyfriend had left her once he realised that she wasn't going to pay for him to go as well. Good riddance I thought.

Li was just 18 and had already graduated with degrees in Physics and Meteorology. She had taken the two degrees simultaneously and come out top in the class in both. She was one hell of a smart lady. She was on the cruise with her family as a graduation gift from her parents. They also had died early on. She also had martial arts training which could be useful later on.

Finally Sharon. She was 33 and a fully qualified GP. She had also taken various course in additional areas of medicine such as minor surgery and midwifery. As she said, nearly anything can happen at sea. She did not have a family. She had a discreet on/off relationship with one of the stewards, friend with benefits was how she described it.

Once all the bodies had been thrown overboard, Sharon unlocked the galley and the booze and left everyone to their own devices and our work began.

The girls went around together thinking that there was safety in numbers and to an extent I agreed with them. We searched and catalogued that entire ship, or it felt like it. We found fuel and water containers but it was only after Li had thought to search the back one of the storage areas off the galley did we find something to preserve food in. Preserving jars. I kid you not. We call them Kilner jars back home in England, I believe they are known by something else in the States, but there were hundreds of them. Also neatly stored in boxes were empty catering sized food jars. I presume that they had originally been for jams and other preserves, but someone, bless their cotton socks, had carefully wash and dried them and packed them away.

Our campaign to leave could now start in earnest.

I was taking a short breather from a series of exercises in the gym when I was approached by one of the other men of the survivors. "Could we talk for a few moments?"

"Sure." He sat down on a bench and started some basic stretches. I liked this guy. If anyone looked in it would look like two guys working out.

"Some of us have noticed that you are preparing to do something." He gave a small smile at the look of concern on my face. "Don't worry, most of the others haven't noticed and you have been trying pretty hard to make sure that they didn't. But some of us have not been totally diverted by pretty young ladies in skimpy swim gear."

At this I had to grin. It had been Liz's idea to distract the more obnoxious male members of the survivors with glimpses of tanned girls flesh and it had largely worked.

He held out he hand "I'm Bob Sheffield." We shook and he continued. "Before IT happened I was an auto engineer. This trip was a 20th wedding anniversary present to myself and my wife. We were unable to have children and both worked hard, so we had money to spend that we had earned ourselves and we lived comfortably. My wife Harry." Here he grinned at the look on my face at this, "Her real name is Henrietta but don't ever make the mistake of calling her that. Anyway we both survived and it was she who noticed that you were up to something. She was an office manager for a large firm of accountants back home and could see that you were organising something."

We both moved to the step machines, damnable things, and started climbing.

"We talked this over with some of our friends George, Smitty, Andrea, Sarah and... well, you'll meet them all later. We decided that you are trying to find a way off this ship and we want to sign up. As far as we can see you are probably going to use one for the forward lifeboats to do this and you are carefully stock piling food, water and fuel."

I smiled to myself. Li had been correct when she said that we should take the diversion further and suggested that it look like we were going to use one of the forward lifeboat when in reality we were going to use another in a different part of the ship.

"Okay, Bob, I don't see why you shouldn't at least join in the efforts even if you decide not to join us on our particular escape. By working together we can gather food and supplies for all of us in a shorter time. Whether we escape individually or together can be decided later on."

We carried on working out and then went our separate ways. The girls were very interested to hear about Bob's group, Ayesha went as far as to say that she liked Bob as he had stood up for her when one of the more racially prejudiced passengers had started making derogatory comments about her.

The following day I sought out Bob and met Harry and asked them to gather together their friends and join us on the top sun deck for a drink and later on we all met up. Bob and Harry arrived with Joanne and Silvia. Smitty, Andrea and Sarah were obviously also together and finally Pete, Moe, Daisy and Jenny. We introduced ourselves and told the others what we had done before IT had struck.

Joanne and Silvia had been housewives, both were good cooks and both had worked in a supermarket part time. They had been friends since the age of 6 when they met at school. Both were divorced and the cruise had been a present to themselves to try and meet some interesting people. Smitty was a postman and had won the cruise by filling in a competition in a magazine. Andrea had also been a housewife and worked at tele-marketing from her home. She was single and had joined the trip on a whim. She'd decided to have a holiday and looked for a last minute offer just two days before the ship sailed. Sarah was an accountant and this trip was her honeymoon. Unfortunately, her new husband had not survived. Pete and Moe were professional landscape gardeners and childhood sweethearts. They had taken the trip to meet possible clients as they were trying to break into the money clients. Daisy was a carpenter and builder and self-employed as a home fixer. Any job that was too small for a company of builders was what she did, filling the gap between DIY and professionally builders. Finally Jenny was an aerobics and fitness instructor and had joined the ship as crew for this voyage.

It had taken a good two hours to finish introducing ourselves and I'd a good feeling about them all. I could sense no bigotry or racism from any of them and they all seemed to be practically minded. I looked at my ladies and each of them gave me a small nod.

"Okay," I started in a suitable lull in the conversation "We all know what we are here for and that is to get off this floating coffin and get to land. There we want to set up a new life that will support us and give us the best chance at survival in the post IT world." I paused for breath and noticed that I had the attention of everyone. "Our initial needs are simple. Food, water fuel and protection from those others in the group that would prefer to let us do the work and then take it from us."