Chinese virus slammed two nucleocapsids into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Lantau to Hong Kong. We'd just delivered the tests. The Corona virus tests.

Eleven hundred men went into the hospital. Hospital was overrun in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first cough for about a half-hour. Dry. 13-seconds. You know how you know that in the hospital, Chief? You can tell by lookin' at a watch.

What we didn't know, was that our tests mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, that virus come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups

It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the virus come to the nearest man, that man he starts coughin' and sweatin' and sometimes that virus he go away...

but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that virus looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a virus is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes

When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he infects ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The floor turns red, and despite all your coughin' and your sweatin' those viruses come in and...

they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many cases there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour.

Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the bed, he was like a kinda top.

Well, he'd been coughin’ up a lung. At noon on the fifth day, a few doctors swung in low and he spotted us, a young doctor, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat doctor come down and started to pick us up.

You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a hazmat suit again. So, eleven hundred men went into the hospital. 316 men come out, the virus took the rest, March the 2nd 2020. Anyway, we delivered the tests.