George Ryan had been sleeping when the madness hit. As had Cushing and Soltz. They came awake at roughly the same time, gagging and coughing and finding it impossible to draw so much as a breath. They heard the men stampeding in the corridors outside, but decided not to join them.
In fact, it really wasn’t even a choice.
Soltz passed out before he made it to the porthole. George made it there and Cushing just barely did. Within the span of a few minutes it had all passed and they were left lying on the floor, leaning up against bulkheads, their throats raw and dry as desert sand.
They never heard the screaming.
Never even knew what hell had been let loose on the decks above. Everything they would learn, they would learn later and in varying detail from the others. For now, it was just enough for them to be able to breathe.
“What happened?” Soltz asked them.
“A very interesting question,” Cushing said, coughing.
George ignored the sarcasm of that. “We better get topside and see what this is.” Soltz said, “Are we sinking?”
He was staring up into the rafters of the cabin, at the lifejackets and survival suits hanging up there.
“No, we’re not sinking.”
Cushing was staring out the porthole by this time. “Look at that fog,” he said. “You ever see anything like it?”