by M. L. Banner
In truth, Dr. Chettle despised having a dog kennel on the ship, and was so blinded by the chance to catch his colleague in a mistake, he missed any connection between dog bites and the several cases of rat bites on the ship, including those on the body of their butcher, who died from a trip and fall accident.
He tapped out a couple more notes on his tablet and then attached the file to an email he had already started. He read it over again, changed “second” to “third,” and then sent it to the staff captain. He looked back up to Mr. Thompson, who was sitting up again and slinging animated words at his nurse.
“No, your bloody thermometer is not broken. My temperature is naturally low, so what? You’re wasting time. You need to warn the captain, and he needs to warn the crew and passengers about this crazy dog. We’re not safe!”
~~~
“I think he went this way,” said Yakobus, who knelt by a pallet of crushed cardboard and pointed down the throat of a junction off the I-95 hallway.
Jaga and Catur stopped short behind him and looked around, pretending to have a good reason to be there, one that didn’t involve chasing after their illegal ferret. Whenever a ship’s officer would approach, they tried to act normal. Any crew member ranked lower than an officer wouldn’t care what they were doing loitering along I-95. They had been looking for Taufan for hours now, and when they heard that a “really long rat is loose in the kitchen,” they came running. They picked up Taufan’s trail on I-95. And then they lost it.
I-95 was the busiest and longest thoroughfare on the ship, stretching from bow to stern. And because it was used by all crew to trans-navigate the ship to get to their shifts and transport supplies outside the scrutiny of guests, Taufan could be anywhere now.
An engineering second officer strolled past them for a second time, glancing at the curious room attendants, who seemed out of place.
“Sir,” they all said in unison.
“And I think you should report the missing clothes to the laundry,” Yakobus hollered at Jaga, much too loudly, acting as if they were caught in mid-conversation when the officer passed.
When the second officer was no longer visible and out of earshot, Jaga knelt down to where Yakobus had been pointing and saw the droppings, plus something else: a fish bone. This had to be from Taufan, when that nutty ferret reportedly raided the salmon in the kitchen. Jaga couldn’t blame his buddy for going after fresh salmon. I’d have done the same if I was in his shoes... I mean, paws.
“Hey guys,” warned Catur. He had popped up like a tower, and like Yakobus beside him, he was facing straight down the long hallway junction toward the vast provisions areas. Both wore looks of shocked anxiety.
Fifty feet away, in front of a pallet of bottled waters, was a pack of dogs barking and scratching at the containers. Some of the offending bottles had burst and still sprayed water like fountains. All the dogs appeared crazy, consumed by some rabies-like frenzy. And Jaga could see the object of their fury.
In the middle of the pallet, surrounded by the water bottles on all sides, was a small man cradling himself, and rocking back and forth. Beneath the pallet was little Taufan, attempting to shrink into the dark recesses to evade the dogs. The dogs didn’t see him.
“What do we do?” To Catur’s shock, he watched Jaga already tentatively walking on the balls of his feet, approaching the pack of wild dogs.
Jaga hugged a wall and quietly stepped closer to the pack, attempting to look small and not make any noise that might attract their attention. He had no idea what he would do when he got there, but hoped he’d figure something out before the dogs attacked him.
He halted halfway to the snarling pack. Before him was the crumpled form of a man lying behind a box of bundled papers waiting to be deposited at their next port. Jaga reared backward a couple of steps, almost losing his footing. The man appeared lifeless; his skin color matched his gray work clothes. A puddle of blood expanded slowly from his neck and sought escape under the box. The man appeared to have tried to hold together his mangled neck in a failed attempt to stay alive. Bloody bite marks spotted his body, and gory paw prints made it clear; the dogs were the killers. It must have just happened.
“Oh my God,” Catur yelped, having just left Yakobus behind and caught up to Jaga, and now seeing the body. He said this much too loudly.
The pack of dogs abruptly halted their ravenous clawing and barking and turned its collective attention away from Taufan to the trio.
“Oh crap,” Catur yelped once again.
Jaga wanted to kill him, but instantly knew they would be next.
A crazed little poodle scurried around the edge of the pack, and despite its tiny size issued a terrifying, high-pitched screech.
Jaga sucked up a scream when he realized the chase was over. There was no way they would be able to run away from this pack. He made a quick decision and leapt out to the middle of the hall, and then ran toward the pack, waving his arms and screaming the vilest swear words he knew in Indonesian at the top of his lungs.
Catur stood dumbfounded as he watched his friend Jaga charge the pack of crazed dogs in an attempt to divert their attention from them to him alone.
The dogs—all but the poodle were leashed together—charged after Jaga, with the toy poodle trailing. Both Jaga and dogs were converging quickly, with barely a second or two separating them. Just before they crashed into each other, Jaga dove into one of the wide-open refrigerators.
The pack of dogs didn’t see this coming and attempted to change course immediately, but their feet—slick from the blood and the water-bottle attack—slid across the hard floor. Each attempted to regain its footing, some doing somersaults and others flailing at the air. But no amount of effort on their part could stop their momentum. Finally, they stopped.
They spasmodically righted themselves and bounded, as one tangled group, for the open space of the refrigerator. Jaga, unseen inside, seemed insane himself as he yelled more Indo curses at the oncoming pack, which bounded through the door almost at the same time.
There were multiple crashing sounds, followed by breaking glass, barking, and chaos. Then Jaga burst out of the refrigerator. He pivoted quickly and pushed with a grunt at the massive sliding door. It clicked closed just as the muffled sounds of the dogs pounded and scratched on the other side.
Jaga, practically hyperventilating, searched around the walls for something and made a small sound of satisfaction. He lumbered to the other side of the closed refrigerator, took down the notice about an upcoming crew party, flipped it around, and with his Sharpie wrote “Don’t open! Crazy dogs!” on the back and slid the notice into the handle: a warning to the next person who might be tempted to open this refrigerator.
Jaga then mustered the last of his strength and sprinted to the pallet of ruined water bottles. Finally, Catur and Yakobus caught up. They checked on the rocking man and helped him out of his faltering water-bottle containment. “Are you okay?” they asked.
“Come here, Taufan,” Jaga called into the dark space under the sloshing, dripping mass of eviscerated water bottles. Yakobus and Catur quietly plodded behind him and the three listened, hoping Jaga’s pleas would be rewarded.
A barely audible squeak blurted back in reply, and moments later a soaking wet Taufan waddled over to them and leapt into Jaga’s arms.
None of them reveled in their joy at finding their little friend and not dying in the process. Rather, they turned and left the area quickly. All three averted their eyes when they walked past the dead body. They would head back up to their room and put Taufan back, safe and unseen, into his bed. Only then would they report the dead body and the locked-up dogs.
They turned back onto I-95, Jaga cradling Taufan while his friends draped their arms around him, heaping praise upon him for his heroics.
A few seconds later, the warning sign Jaga had made slipped off the door and fell to the floor, note-side down.
22
Edgar
Edgar trudged through the bedroo
m to close the slider, but left it slightly ajar. It had been open the whole cruise, despite the cool temperatures. He liked it cold, and she didn’t mind. But in her state now, it seemed right to close out the cold.
He’d checked the one in the living room, and it remained shut behind the sheers and drapes, which were fully closed. She wanted it that way, having no interest in seeing the outside.
After making sure that their cabin was secure, he sauntered back into their bedroom and paused at their bed, studying her and wondering what he should do next. More accurately, what he should do about her.
Eloise had come home last night after a late-night bender. He was in their lavatory dealing with an upset stomach after that evening’s meal. He heard her clumsily rumble through their cabin, yelling his name, and then she was quiet. A few minutes later, when he exited the loo, he found her face down on their bed in much the same state she was in right now. He had turned her over once, just to make sure she was breathing. She was. She’d had been passed out for hours now. For this, he was glad.
At this moment, he had the best of both worlds: she was unconscious, which was far better than her annoying conscious self, and she was almost completely naked, and he did enjoy looking at her body. What was not to appreciate after she’d spent so much money attempting to perfect it? And if he was being truthful, her looks were what attracted him to her in the first place.
He harkened back to when they met, and she had come on to him.
He had not been with a beautiful woman since secondary school. After he graduated from college, he’d married a respectable woman of fine lineage; it was Martha who he had faithfully been with the entire time, until her death last year. Martha may have been homely on the outside, but her beauty was deeper and evidenced by her kindness to others. Eloise was the opposite.
He rehashed the images from that night when he first saw her at a pub he and a few of his friends frequented, near his Parisian home. She was wearing a bright red dress that was quite revealing and clung to her curves. He could also see she’d had way too much to drink. She staggered toward him and then halted a few feet away, wobbling such that she had to steady herself on a bar stool. She was searching for something in her designer clutch and then pulled out what looked like car keys. He remembered thinking, You’re not going to try and drive in that state, are you? He couldn’t let her do it. He excused himself from his mates and approached her as she was trying to figure out which of the three keys went to her car.
He insisted that he drive her home. She responded with measured resistance, but almost immediately agreed and dropped the keys into his open hand. He had put an arm around her when she almost flopped over, just to steady her, until they reached her Mercedes. But before he could drive her, she’d passed out in the passenger seat. Without an address—her little purse held only a wad of euros—he carried her to his home across the street and placed her in one of his five guest bedrooms. The next morning, he woke to find her in his bed.
The rest was a blur: the sex, the whirlwind romance, the small wedding—she wanted it small—and now the cruise/honeymoon. But the more he got to know his new wife, the more he realized he simply didn’t like her. Oh, she was beautiful on the outside. But something was very wrong with her, like a delicate red apple with a spoiled core; you didn’t know it was bad until you bit into it. It was only after the wedding that her true self came out, and the sex stopped immediately. He suspected then that her whole purpose was to get to his money, which was funny because she seemed to have lots of it herself.
And now he found himself on this cruise, married to a woman he didn’t love, and didn’t even really like. Other than her being great in the sack—before she put a stop to it, anyway—and being movie-star beautiful, she had nothing he wanted anymore. He no longer wanted to be with her. He had insisted on a prenuptial agreement, and that was good, because he decided then and there, while staring at her unconscious body, that when this cruise was over he’d tell her he wanted a divorce. She could keep what she had and he’d keep what he had.
He glanced at her beautiful body, lying peacefully in their bed. She was so arousing though, and he was an old man, not likely to ever have a woman who looked like this, unless he paid for it. He felt himself tighten up, and a wicked thought grew in him. This was probably his last opportunity to lie with her. She sure wasn’t going to have him when she was conscious.
That little part of him that was still good, that last part that she hadn’t yet destroyed, protested. This is wrong!
He considered her once more: drool ran from the corners of her mouth toward her ears; her healthy chest—only her nipples were covered by the fine flowered embellishments of her damaged dress—was now heaving up and down rapidly; her lower half—where the dress was torn completely off—lay fully exposed and beckoned him.
He decided to do it.
He dropped his trousers and quietly walked around to the front of their king-sized bed. Her legs were bent at the knees, draped over the edge of the bed. Her thighs waited. He pushed his large, tangled comb-over to the other side of his head, and then parted her legs. He pulled her closer to him and mounted her.
At one point, he thought he heard her moan. Otherwise, she slept through it all.
DAY FOUR Cont...
LA PALMA, SPAIN
IN 1971, CUMBRE VIEJA, ON THE ISLAND OF LA PALMA AT THE WESTERN TIP OF THE CANARY ISLAND ARCHIPELAGO, ERUPTED FOR THE SEVENTH TIME IN SIX HUNDRED YEARS. COMPARED TO SOME OF ITS PREVIOUS ERUPTIONS, THIS ONE WASN’T VERY LARGE AND DIDN’T LAST VERY LONG. THE ERUPTION IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO THIS ONE, IN 1949, LASTED THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS AND SHOT LAVA THIRTY METERS INTO THE AIR. BUT EVEN THAT ONE WAS SMALL IN COMPARISON TO THE ONE IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO IT IN 1712. AND STILL THESE WERE NOT CONSIDERED “MAJOR” ERUPTIONS.
WITH EACH YEAR THAT PASSED WITHOUT A MAJOR ERUPTION, TOP SEISMOLOGISTS WARNED, “THE BIG ONE IS COMING.” PAPERS WERE WRITTEN, BUT MOST VOICES ONLY RECEIVED PEER REVIEW AND NOT THE ATTENTION OF WORLDWIDE MEDIA, EVEN THOUGH THE POSSIBILITIES OF A GIANT ERUPTION WERE GREAT. AND THE EFFECTS OF SUCH AN ERUPTION WOULD BE MONUMENTAL... “APOCALYPTIC,” SOME WOULD EVEN SAY.
UNLIKE THE THREATS FROM MOST VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS, WHERE BLACK ASH, PYROCLASTIC CLOUDS, OR EVEN MOLTEN LAVA WERE THE PRIMARY CONCERNS, CUMBRE VIEJA POSED A MUCH GREATER THREAT TO ITS NEIGHBORING CANARY ISLANDS AND EVERY COASTAL TOWN ON ALL SIDES OF THE VAST ATLANTIC SEABOARD: A GIANT TSUNAMI.
A MASSIVE SLAB OF ROCK, TWICE THE VOLUME OF THE ISLE OF MAN, HUNG FROM THE NEARLY TWO-THOUSAND-METER-HIGH MOUNTAIN, BARELY CLINGING TO ITS ROCKY BASE BY ITS NAIL-THIN ROCK ANCHORS. EACH YEAR, THOSE ANCHORS WERE WEAKENED FURTHER. BECAUSE OF THE SLAB’S ENORMOUS SIZE, EXPERTS SAID THAT THE NEXT LARGE ERUPTION WOULD MOST LIKELY DISLODGE IT, CAUSING IT TO SLIDE INTO THE OCEAN. THE ENERGY FORCE CREATED BY THIS WAS PEGGED BY ONE SOURCE TO BE THE EQUIVALENT TO SIX MONTHS OF ALL THE POWER GENERATED BY ALL OF AMERICA’S POWER STATIONS. THE RESULT WOULD BE A MASSIVE TSUNAMI, LARGER THAN ANYTHING EVER RECORDED.
ESTIMATES VARIED WILDLY. ONE SAID THAT THE RESULTING INITIAL WAVE COULD ATTAIN A LOCAL HEIGHT OF 600 METERS AND PEAK AT 1600 METERS, OR ONE MILE HIGH. THE MOUNTAIN-SIZED WAVE WOULD TRAVEL AS FAST AS 450 MILES PER HOUR, OR NEARLY THE SPEED OF A COMMERCIAL JET AIRCRAFT.
A WAVE THIS SIZE WOULD FLOOD THE COASTLINES OF AFRICA IN AN HOUR; THE BRITISH ISLES WOULD BE DELUGED IN THREE TO FOUR HOURS; AND EVEN NORTH AMERICAN COASTS WOULD BE SWAMPED IN SIX.
THE DEVASTATION WOULD BE UNIMAGINABLE.
AT 5:40 PM, THE UNIMAGINABLE HAPPENED.
23
Bridge Trouble
It was the second time in a few hours that Ted had been up on the bridge. Neither visit was pleasurable.
“Please wait here,” said the first officer, Jessica, who ushered them to the entrance of the ready room.
They stood with their backs to a wall, ready room on their left, active part of the bridge on their right, and quietly watched the bridge crew do its thing during what was probably one of the most stressful times any of them
had ever experienced. The nervousness was palpable and hung like humidity during a hurricane.
During his previous visit to the bridge, as part of the All Access Tour, Ted had not spent more than a moment to really take in the bridge, even though that was the tour’s purpose. Now, while they waited for the captain, he studied all that was going on around him.
The Intrepid’s bridge was an expansive mélange of old and new, hierarchical and exclusive, functional and symbolic. This was demonstrated by all the systems and the personnel working on it. Each member of the bridge crew proudly wore two bars or more on their shoulders, signifying the bridge’s obvious importance. And yet, its purpose was somewhat archaic. He remembered hearing one surprising fact from the tour: 95% of all ship functions, including all maneuvering, could be handled by Ivan, the operations room chief, and his crew, three decks below. There were other seemingly anachronistic elements in this “modern” bridge.
A captain’s chair stood up high and resolute in the middle of the room, giving the captain a 180-degree view of everything outside the ship. Of course, there were no other chairs, because no one sat while on duty, least of all the captain, who seemed to spend most time eyeing a monitor farthest back, and away from the most forward view of the ship.
Eating up a lot of the floor space were maybe a dozen bulky platforms, each rising to chest level, each with a tilted computer screen blinking multitudes of data relevant only to the five crew members bustling around them. One per each crew member would have been sufficient, as surely each of these had the same conning and ECDIS software and would have been connected to the same computing power available to those in the operations room
Finally, a vestigial remnant from the past lay in front of them: a gigantic back-lit table, which would have held navigational maps on an older ship, took up a large portion of the bridge on the port side, where they waited. Instead of paper maps—replaced by the ECDIS system—there were now permanently fixed schematics of many of Intrepid’s deck plans. Different from the public deck plans displayed on every deck, these revealed protected details like locations of restricted hatches. As an afterthought, in the middle of the table was a large to-scale-model of their ship, encased in a glass display.
