by Carrie Patel
They found a ladder and climbed as quickly as they could. Jane’s body had already taken a beating, but she couldn’t afford to slow down now. The ladder ended at deck 03.
“We’re just under the surface,” said Roman. “Nearly there.”
The tossing of the storm flung her across the passageway as she made her careening progress forward. Roman stumbled along behind her, thudding into the bulkheads on either side as the ship pitched.
And beneath the roar of the storm and the wail of the siren, Jane heard the distant rumbling that could only be crewmen running through the ship, looking for them.
And shouts, loud enough that they had to be on the same deck. Jane slipped and fell flat, cursing and scrambling to get up. Her arms, her legs, even her stomach was wet, and –
“Water,” Roman said, pulling her up. “Look.” He pointed to a puddle oozing into the passageway from the next intersection.
“An exit,” Jane said.
They followed it to a metal door with a wheel. The storm was louder than ever on the other side – Jane never would have thought she’d be so relieved to hear it. It took their combined strength to rotate the wheel and push the door open.
They stumbled onto a balcony, and Jane went from being blinded and deafened by the strobe and sirens to being blinded and deafened by the waves and wind.
Yet through the rain and sea spray, Jane saw a gangway swinging from the edge of the balcony.
“You first. They won’t shoot me,” Roman said before she could argue.
Jane clambered onto the gangway, Roman following close behind.
The shape of the next ship was hazy in the dark and rain, but it was a big one. Stacked with neat, massive rows of crates.
The box ship COSCO.
“Faster!” Roman shouted behind her. The storm almost drowned out his voice. But the gangway was bouncing and swinging, and Jane was already moving faster than seemed safe.
“They’ve found us!” he said. Two big impacts ripped through the gangway – Jane suspected those were their pursuers, but she didn’t dare look back to confirm.
Nor did she have to. Lights and shadows ran along a parallel gangway a couple of hundred feet away. The Kennedy’s crew were trying to cut them off.
And they were making headway.
Jane pushed herself to go faster, ignoring the pain in her abused joints and the fury of the water thrashing below.
She hit the deck of the box ship barely a second before Roman. He was already heading into the canyon of crates, tugging her along.
She found her footing and ran along beside him. “What’s your plan?” she asked.
The deck swayed. He caromed into a metal crate, then pushed off again. “Get out of sight. Fast as possible.” It wasn’t what she’d meant, but it would have to do for now. He swerved down a passage between the stacks, and she followed.
In that sense, anyway, the storm and dark were on their side.
They kept up their winding path, running fast enough that they were slipping along the deck and crashing into the boxes. Nearly all had been drawn shut. Yet Jane caught glimpses from the narrow gaps between them: eyes, wide and pale, watching her. But she couldn’t stop to look back. She and Roman were moving toward the superstructure, which loomed above the stacks like the peak of a mountain.
Roman slowed near a ladder. “Up,” he panted.
They climbed. Jane felt movement through the boxes on the other side of the ladder, like the arrhythmic heartbeat of a behemoth. The rungs were perilously slick, and the ship heaved and rocked as though it were trying to throw them from its back. When they reached the top of the stack, they hunkered down to keep from sliding off and looked.
To their left, the deck of the Kennedy glowed with their pursuers’ lanterns and searchlights. To their right was a wide, turbulent stretch of open water between the COSCO and the cabin ship beyond it.
There was nowhere else to run.
“We’ll open one of these containers,” Roman said. “Hide inside. There’s no way they can search them all before we reach the Continent. When we make landfall, we slip away.”
In his strained voice were the many unspoken ifs – if they found food and water to sustain them, if their captors stuck to their course, if they were able to sneak and swim away before the crew or the currents took them.
If the children inside didn’t give them up.
“I’ve got another idea,” Jane said.
He looked to her, hopeful.
She pointed. “That.”
It looked like a big, orange shoe, but it had the general shape of things that were meant to go in the water, according to her time on Salvage. It also looked reassuringly watertight.
A shout rang across the ship. A pair of figures stood on the stacks about a hundred feet away. They’d been spotted.
“Hurry,” Jane said, scrambling back to the ladder.
Climbing down was harder than climbing up. She took the rungs two at a time until one unexpected toss of the waves tore her feet from the ladder and left her clinging to safety with only her slick, much-abused hands.
“Slide!” Roman called down.
She didn’t know what he meant, but when she looked up she saw his boots a foot from her head, squeezing the sides of the ladder. She copied his posture, uttering a brief prayer to no one in particular as she released the rungs and grabbed the sides of the ladder.
She slid down, faster than she’d hoped but slower than Roman’s urging suggested. The poles squealed through her grip, but it was all over in a few hair-raising seconds. She hit the ground with a thump that shook her whole body, and as she staggered back from the ladder Roman grabbed her elbow and yanked her toward the summit of the superstructure.
He yelled something as he pulled her forward, but “too close” was all she caught.
She risked a glance over her shoulder, long enough to see lantern light bouncing along not fifteen feet behind them.
Jane threw all of her strength into a burst of speed. Too late, she realized it was too much.
The deck rose to meet her. Roman was a smudge in the darkness, and he stopped and turned even as she shouted him onward.
He was looking beyond her, his mouth slack and open.
Something slammed into the deck behind her. Jane looked back and saw a man splayed on the deck, surrounded by four or five short-statured people.
Children. The children from the stacks.
Roman bellowed something, and she sprang to her feet. They ran ahead together.
When they reached the superstructure and saw the lifeboat perched a mere three flights up, Jane wanted to cry with relief.
Then she saw the dark silhouettes and swinging lanterns of their pursuers converging behind them and on the other side of the deck, trying to cut them off.
Jane pulled herself up the stairs two and three steps at a time, not daring to slow until the bright orange stern of the craft appeared in front of her.
It was even smaller than it had looked from the top of the stacks, and the whole thing was angled down toward the water. Jane opened the door and saw one seat nestled amidst a panel of button, knobs, and levers, and an aisle descending toward the bow. Roman swung inside and Jane followed suit, pulling the door closed behind her.
“Okay, how do we lower this into the water?” Jane asked.
“We’re lashed to the scaffolding,” Roman said, already tearing through a compartment set under the helmsman’s seat. “I’ve got to cut us free before we can go anywhere.” He found a knife and tucked it into his belt. “Lock the door and keep them out until we’re loose.”
Before she could ask how he expected her to deter a bunch of desperate, armed mutineers, he was clambering down the seats like a ladder and heading toward a door set in the side of the craft.
Hers was the easy job, she told herself. All she had to do was lock up.
Unfortunately, there was nothing that looked like the latch. If this was an escape vessel, it had been built to let
people in, not keep them out.
Shouts rose over the roar of the storm. The mutineers were coming.
Jane searched the compartment as Roman had. She found several orange sticks, a white box with a red cross, a wrench, a length of rope, and a black box with a faded decal on the front.
She opened the box, and inside she found an orange gun and six red cylinders.
They were coming up the stairs, their feet pounding hard enough that she could feel their frantic rhythm in the deck.
Jane had never seen a gun like this, but the mechanism seemed straightforward enough. She chased Ruthers’s memory away as she pulled the barrel down, saw it was empty. She loaded one of the red cylinders into it and snapped it closed.
She thumbed the hammer back and raised the gun just as the door flew open.
The man who’d opened it jumped back just as quickly, staring at the orange pistol in her hands. There were five others with him, all with the same adrenaline-addled expressions.
Three of them held guns, all pointed at the deck. They were watching her, trying to decide whether she had the nerve to use hers.
And so was she. Because pointing a gun at these men and women standing between her and freedom felt too much like being in Ruthers’s chambers more than three weeks ago, weighing the value of his life and her and Roman’s liberty.
Except with Ruthers, she’d known without a doubt what she was prepared to do. Now, faced with the prospect of inviting six more phantoms into her psyche, she wasn’t so sure.
But she couldn’t let them know it.
“Back,” she said. “And drop your guns.”
They took a couple perfunctory steps back, but they held onto their weapons. Not an encouraging sign.
The man who had opened the door raised his hands and gave her a wolfish smile through the hair whipping around his face. “Listen,” he said, “ess six of us ee two of you.” He slid one foot along the deck, edging forward again.
“About to be five,” she said, aiming the gun at him. She locked her arms to keep them from trembling. She couldn’t afford to let them see how badly she wanted to avoid this.
He froze. Then he laughed. “You won’t shoot. If you do, my companyeros’ll fill ye with holes right pronto.” He took another sliding step. “So let’s–”
“Shoot her, and I jump!” Roman roared from his perch outside the lifeboat. “I’m no good to you dead!”
Their faces went rigid. Only their eyes moved as they looked between her and Roman, trying to weigh how much their quarry valued survival over freedom and whether they’d be in bigger trouble for killing him or letting him escape.
And even though she hated that they’d instantly found Roman’s threat more credible than hers, she was mostly relieved.
Then the man standing next to the door lunged. Jane instinctively turned her gun away from him and fired.
The projectile exploded on the platform only a few yards away. Even as she shut her eyes against the blast, bright red light flared in her vision. The mutineers were screaming over a hissing that sounded like frying oil. She tried not to think about it as she opened her eyes to grab at the door.
Unfortunately, she could hardly see through the thick, acrid smoke. But she fumbled for the handle and pulled it shut, sliding the wrench through it for good measure. It might buy her a little time.
Maybe even enough, if Roman finished whatever he was doing soon.
Seconds later, she heard the thump of the aft door slamming shut, then Roman’s voice rising above the din.
“Get us out of here!”
“I thought you–”
“I cut the safeties. The controls are up there with you.”
Of course they were. But smoke choked the air in the cabin, and between that and the darkness, Jane couldn’t see more than vague shapes on the control panel.
And the shouts from outside were growing less frantic and more purposeful. Their pursuers were regrouping.
Jane found a button and pressed it. Nothing.
Thumps came from outside the lifeboat. They were trying to get in.
She grabbed a handle, pushed it and pulled it. Some mechanism in the craft grumbled loudly enough to startle their pursuers into inaction, but Jane knew it wouldn’t last.
“Jane…” Roman’s voice rose with a singsong note of worry.
“Working on it!”
“Fasten yourself in!” A metallic click pierced the racket.
She was tempted to ask why, but suspended a hundred feet over the water the answer was obvious enough. It had probably been too much to hope for a slow, gentle descent.
She groped for the straps around her seat and for the metal clasps at the ends. She’d just fitted them together and heard the confirming click when the door behind her started to rattle.
A few seconds of that, and they’d dislodge the wrench and have the door open. She was out of time.
As she braced herself, her knee brushed up against something. A handle, bright red and just visible through the haze.
Jane pulled it.
The rattling stopped, and the ground fell out from under her.
Between the smoke and the old, fogged portholes, she couldn’t see anything, but her body told her she was falling – and fast. As they shot toward the sea, Jane only had time to be grateful that she wouldn’t have long to wonder whether or not this had been a good idea.
They crashed into the water. The impact hurled her against the restraints. And then she was still tumbling, and for a moment there was only the smoke, the lurching of the craft, and the crash of waves outside.
Then Roman’s face appeared in front of hers, and he was saying something.
She just laughed. For a moment, she allowed herself to feel joy and relief – they were free and alive. For the moment.
Roman frowned, and his mouth formed familiar shapes.
“Are you okay?”
Jane nodded, still smiling, but the euphoria began to slip away.
“Good, because we’ve got to go.” He pointed up and behind her, at one of the fogged and scuffed windows in the “ankle” of the shoe.
The lights of the Kennedy hovered above and behind them, and they were bearing down. Fast.
And Roman was looking at her like he expected she’d figured this out from her two minutes at the control panel.
She reached over and tried the handle that had startled the mutineers. Sure enough, gentle force pressed her back into her seat, and the waves outside the window began to pass by more quickly.
Roman looked at her, then back at the aft window.
“Can you make it go faster?” he asked.
She checked the handle. It was already pushed as far forward as it would go. “I think–”
The lifeboat rolled. Jane was still strapped in, but Roman tumbled and flailed.
“Head into the waves,” Roman said, bracing himself in the small space.
Jane spun the wheel, but controlling the craft was easier said than done. Before she knew it, they’d whirled all the way around to face the Kennedy. Its bow wave was a gleaming crest ahead of them.
“Turn back! Quick!” Roman cried.
But Jane had a different idea. She kept her nose forward, aiming for the long side of the COSCO. There was still a wide lane between it and the smaller boats tethered to the next group of ships.
“Good thinking.” Roman coughed and squeezed her shoulder as they passed into the box ship’s shadow. The smoke was clearing slowly, but they didn’t dare open either of the doors with the sea churning so violently. “We should–”
A thundering splash from behind them cut him off, and the wave shoved them forward. Jane’s gut went to ice.
“What was that?” she asked.
He was staring out the aft window again. “Go. Fast as you can.”
A massive, dark rectangle plunged into the water several dozen yards ahead. As the outbound wave pushed their nose up, Jane got a look at the stacks of the box ship, listing toward them.
She felt sick, thinking of the children she’d seen in those same crates. All she could do was swerve away and hope they’d gotten out. “Is the Kennedy doing that?”
“No idea,” Roman called, still watching the big craft from the aft window. “I think we’re clear,” he said. “Turn us back so we can find a way through.”
“That’ll put us in view of the Kennedy again,” Jane said.
“I know, but there’s no way through here,” he said, pointing to the smaller boats bobbing on the waves. “Besides, what can they do?”
Jane didn’t want to find out, but she didn’t see another route.
And as they passed the bow of the box ship, they discovered what the Kennedy could do.
They had a wide, clear lane alongside the next tethered cluster, leading to the blended horizon of gray waves and sea beyond. Jane was heading for it when a sound like an immense raspberry rattled through the air. There was a pause, and then another.
Jane kept her eyes forward. They couldn’t risk getting flipped by another wave. “What are they doing?” she asked.
Roman pressed his face closer to the aft window.
“They’re… shooting at us.”
A ridge of white water rose fore and port. Jane risked a glance back and saw an orange glow spitting from somewhere just under the surface deck of the Kennedy.
“We can’t outrun that gun,” Roman said.
“I know.”
She turned again, angling to put the waves at their back. “There,” she said, pointing.
Roman looked out the fore window. “You think we can fit?”
“Probably.” Jane said it with more conviction than she felt. “But you should fasten yourself in again.”
Roman hustled below and into one of the harnesses. There was a gap between two mid-sized boats ahead, but it was closing faster than she’d thought.
And behind, the Kennedy fired another volley into the water. This one was close enough that Jane could feel the wave.
The gap narrowed ahead. They were just a dozen yards away.
“I thought they wanted you alive,” Jane called down to Roman.
Two looming bows filled the view.
“I thought you did, too,” he said. She glanced down long enough to see him smile.
