Hysteria

Chapter 11 - Extraction

Ahead was a fleet of ships unlike any Brooke had seen before, not that Brooke had seen many ships in her time. Collections of different ships all gathered together in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there were large aircraft carriers surrounded by hundreds of destroyers, cruisers, frigates and all manner of civilian vessels.

They were heading for one of the aircraft carriers and it just happened to be right in the middle of the fleet, various people on the numerous ship briefly glanced up as they passed then returned to their work. The ship got bigger and bigger as they approached making Brooke wonder how big they all were, far bigger than she ever imagined. As they approached a couple of jets took off from the surrounding aircraft carriers and whizzed past, Brooke could barely contain her amazement. People hurried back to work almost immediately.

"Biggest gathering in, ever" one man told them noticing Brookes wide eyed wonder, "just goes to show something."

"Takes a global disaster to bring everyone together" Roland added sternly, "took long enough."

"Blame those in America" the man blurted, he struggled to be heard over the helicopter but continued regardless "they told the rest of us that they had defeated the creatures so we all stepped down, then we heard the Americans were wrong and the zombies were still at large. Thanks a bunch, we lost time and resources." Roland didn't respond, instead he sat looking out the window seething.

Finally they reached the carrier and began to lower, it made Brookes stomach churn almost as much as seeing the creatures. This was the part she had been dreading, everything else had been better than she had dreamed.

With a slight jolt they landed, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief then one by one they took their first steps onto the ship dragging their various bags behind them. Lauren laughed nervously; Brooke had to stop herself from doing the same but for the opposite reasons. The man they had spoken with hurried away with his team in hot pursuit, in all the madness on the deck they quickly lost sight of him.

"Roland Murphy" a voice rang out amongst the noise, "is there a Roland Murphy?"

"That's me" shouted Roland snapping back to life, there was a sudden sense of urgency about him. The voice hurried over and the person it belonged to was not what they expected, she was tall and thin and reminded Roland of the stereotypical librarian.

"Follow me" she spoke with little emotion and wasn't pleased by the group she was confronted by. The group followed her away from the helicopter which took off behind them then into ship itself. Almost instantly Brooke found it intimidating, hundreds of narrow white corridors with some intersections that all looked very similar. She could easily get lost here and she didn't like it. The woman led them to a corridor of bunks then pointed to a set. "These will be yours until you leave" she expressed almost sneering at the group, "you will be responsible for their wellbeing, someone will be down to collect you for the meeting soon." With that she scuttled off.

Each set of bunks was arranged in a three story formation, four sets were squished in-between two intersecting corridors, the boys took one side while the girls the other. Any hope of privacy was dashed as they realised the bunk was all they got, they soon found out that the space in-between them was public right of way and used very often.

"Well she was cheery" remarked Lauren taking a seat on the bottom bunk, the mattress was no different to the one she'd had for years, hard, lumpy and cold. She heaved her bag up onto it then shoved it into the corner.

"Hey why do you get the bottom bunk" Chloe moaned attempting to climb onto the middle bunk, with a little help from Roland she managed it. She giggled slightly and blushed bright red though he didn't notice.