The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy)

by K. R. Griffiths

  He couldn't see anything.

  He closed the door again.

  "It's too dark," he said grimly. "We're going to need some light, somehow. Any ideas?"

  "There are flares. In Security."

  "Fuck that. Anywhere else?"

  "I...I'm not sure. Maybe, but it would be a gamble trying to find them in the dark."

  "Shit," Dan said.

  "There's a restaurant a couple of decks above the park, not far from here," Katie said. "Fine dining."

  "I don't think this is the time to—"

  "Candles, on the tables," Katie interrupted. "At least, I think there are. That's the only light I can think of. We'd have to drop down to the park and head left, then back up two decks."

  The park. Dan didn't want to go anywhere near it, but he guessed that was an impossible dream. All stairways and corridors on the ship flowed to the park like rivers to the ocean. There was no avoiding it.

  Two decks up, Dan thought. It sounded like nothing at all, but in the darkness, and with the creature so close, it became a forbidding task. Yet light was a necessity. The prospect of stumbling through the dark, right across the ship to the cabins, was unappealing to say the least.

  "Okay," he said. "Candles are a good idea. That’s step one. Where would we have to go from there?"

  "Once we get to the restaurant, we can stay on that deck for a while; circle around the ship. If we can get past the restaurant area, it’s a short run to the cabins," Katie said. "As long as the route is clear."

  Dan sighed heavily.

  As long as the route is clear. He knew exactly what Katie meant, and tried not to think about it, but his mind had ideas of its own. He was certain that he had seen three of the creatures barrelling through the park, massacring everything in their path, but there could have been more. Either way, they knew where one was.

  The others could be anywhere.

  One problem at a time, he thought. Get to Elaine, and take it from there.

  He picked up one of the brooms and hefted it. It would make a pathetic weapon, but holding it somehow made him feel a little more secure.

  "Okay," he said. "Let's go."

  27

  It felt like the walls of the conference room were closing in, suffocating Mark; wrapping around his neck like a noose.

  Herb hadn't taken it well. He roared about betrayal and humans deserving to die, creating a racket that made the atmosphere in the conference room hiss with tension until Mark found the man’s flapping jaw in the darkness and popped him with a couple of sharp jabs.

  Silence fell on the group once more.

  Herb was conscious, but for the moment he was apparently focused only on trying to stop his brain rattling in his skull. Vega was whimpering somewhere in the darkness, and Phillips, Saunders and Ferguson seemed good for precisely fuck all.

  This is on me, Mark thought, and the notion scared him witless. He was working in cruise ship security precisely because he didn't have the faintest idea how to respond to conflict in any way other than the method his father had taught him. The Oceanus wasn't meant to involve life-or-death situations, for fuck's sake. It wasn’t supposed to involve conflict at all.

  He was no leader; hell, he could barely keep a job for more than a few months because people, in general, took a dislike to him.

  He considered finding Vega's jaw and popping him a couple of times too, just to see if he could snap the big man out of it, but there was no time.

  When he had finally managed to shut Herb up, the man's enraged wailing had resulted in an altogether more pressing problem.

  The silence that fell after he jabbed Herb didn’t remain in place for long.

  Click.

  Click, click, click.

  Click.

  Clawed feet in the hallway outside the conference room door.

  There was a pause, and the men huddled inside the room held their breath in unison.

  And let it out as one synchronised explosion of sound when something heavy charged the doors, the noise of the brutal impact almost as loud as the thunder that intermittently ripped the sky apart overhead.

  The doors held, but the aftershock of the impact rippled through the piled-up chairs and tables that had become their makeshift barricade.

  It all sounded so terribly fragile.

  It wasn't going to hold for long.

  Vega wailed in abject terror. The sound was pitiful; somehow worse than anything Mark had heard thus far.

  Mark headed for the dreadful, piercing noise and clutched at Vega's clothes, half-hauling the big man to his feet.

  "My lighter," he snarled. Vega made no response save for a pathetic sob, so Mark frisked him, and found the lighter in the man's left hip pocket. He sparked it, and moved quickly around the walls of the conference room, searching for some means of escape. A doorway led to the bathrooms, but Mark knew there were no windows there. No other way out, aside from the single large window that stood at the far end of the room, overlooking the sheer drop into the freezing ocean.

  Outside the conference room, the creature at the door shrieked and charged again.

  This time, Mark thought he heard something cracking. A dry, brittle sound that made his nerves howl.

  His mind raced, and he ran to the window. It was a single, large pane that didn't open, but could be smashed easily enough. He pressed his nose against the glass. The deck below was wider by a few inches than this one. If they were careful—if they were lucky—he thought they might be able to drop a deck and catch the railing below as they fell.

  Insane, he thought, and it was.

  It was also the only option.

  "Okay," he said. "We're going out of the window. We can drop to the next deck."

  "W-what?" a terrified voice said. Mark thought it was Phillips; couldn't be sure. "That's crazy."

  The thing charged the door again, shrieking.

  "No," Mark said, "That's crazy. This is our only chance. I'm going. Feel free to stay, if that's want you want."

  He let the words hang on the air a moment.

  "No, wait," Vega said abruptly, and Mark arched an eyebrow in surprise. Suddenly, Vega's voice was clear and confident, the pathetic whimpering gone. He sounded like he knew exactly what to do.

  Maybe, Mark thought, when things really started to fall apart, the big man had found the strength to pull himself together; perhaps all that boot-camp bullshit had come back to him just at the right time. That would be very good news indeed: let Vega deal with leading the others and fighting whatever was on the ship. That would leave Mark free to focus on running. Getting to a lifeboat and getting the fuck out of Dodge.

  "Give me your gun," Vega said, and Mark heard shuffling as one of the other men unholstered their firearm. "I know what to do. Quickly, now."

  "Here, boss," Phillips said thickly.

  Mark's mind wasn't quick enough. By the time he pieced it together, it was already too late.

  The room flashed once and a roar of localised thunder made Mark's ears ring as Steven Vega placed the barrel of the gun under his chin and blew his brains out.

  Mark heard pieces of Vega splatter onto the floor, and for a moment the world stopped turning. Even the creature outside seemed to pause before resuming its assault on the door.

  "Fuck," Mark yelled, and he scrambled to Vega's corpse, feeling around for the pistol and scooping it up in trembling fingers. The grip of the handgun felt slick, and Mark was glad of the darkness; glad that he couldn't see what was smeared across the weapon.

  He aimed the pistol at the door and let off a couple of rounds at the barricade, hoping at the very least to scare whatever was on the other side away, but the thing charged the door almost immediately, and this time there was no mistaking the dry snap of the impact. It was coming through, and it would not take long.

  No time to think.

  No time to question whether what he was about to attempt was impossible; whether he had only seconds left to live.

  Mark turned, a
nd fired another shot, straight at the window, and the room filled with the shrieking Atlantic wind.

  "That way," Mark roared, and began to run. He didn't wait for acknowledgement or debate. Let them follow if they wanted; if they weren't persuaded by the cracking of the makeshift barricade or by Steven Vega painting the conference room with his brain, there was nothing more that Mark could do to get them moving.

  By the time he reached the broken window and leaned out into the storm, he heard four sets of footsteps behind him, coming fast, and Mark grimaced. He had expected Phillips, Saunders and Ferguson to follow. The fourth set of footsteps told him that Herb, apparently, had swallowed the pain in his back and decided that he wanted to live after all.

  *

  Herb considered throwing himself straight out into the ocean when he rushed to the broken window, but his legs had other ideas. He cursed himself for a coward, and leaned out into the shrieking wind and rain, staring down.

  In the darkness he could just barely make out the deck below, and just like the security guard had said, it bulged a few inches out. They would have to drop something like fifteen or twenty feet, somehow remaining flat against the hull, and catch the railing. There would only be one chance to get it right, and even if they timed it perfectly, the driving rain would make the rail slippery.

  Herb tried to remember what was on the deck immediately below, but he came up empty. He had studied the schematics of the ship for almost as many hours as Edgar had, but the information seemed to be locked just beyond his reach now.

  It didn't matter in any case. Whatever was happening on the lower decks, it couldn't possibly be as bad as what was happening right outside the door to the room he stood in.

  For several long moments, the five men in the conference room huddled in front of the broken window, staring down at the impossibly risky jump they were about to attempt and Herb knew what was going through their minds.

  Who goes first?

  Herb let out a mirthless laugh, and pushed in front of the other men. If he missed, he missed. So be it. The ocean wouldn't be as quick as the gun, but it would do the job. Anything was better than letting the vampire at the door have him.

  "Geronimo," Herb said affably, and stepped out into the storm.

  The drop passed in the blink of an eye. Herb thought he would have time to see the rail coming, but it didn't turn out that way. He operated on pure instinct, and only when his fingers were locked firmly around the rail of the deck below and he was hauling himself up did he realise that the fall had been successful. He dropped over the rail onto the deck, gasping for air as his back sent a stab of agony up to his mind, and he scanned his immediate surroundings.

  A dark lounge area that offered comfortable sofas and a stunning view of the ocean. A coffee bar. It all looked quiet.

  He leaned out, grinning up at the faces that peered down at him.

  "All clear," he roared, lifting his voice above the crashing of the waves below.

  The man who had developed a fondness for punching Herb in the face went next, and almost lost his grip on the rail entirely. Herb leaned over the rail and grabbed him, heaving him up to safety with a grunt.

  "I owe you," the man gasped as he landed on the deck, and Herb nodded, wondering if he had just saved the guy, or if he had condemned him to suffer a death far more terrible than the one that waited in the ocean below.

  *

  Ferguson went next.

  He didn't make it.

  Mark knew immediately that he had jumped rather than dropped. He was too far away from the hull from the moment he left the shattered window above, and he shot past Mark's scrabbling hands and fell screaming into the Atlantic.

  Mark roared a curse as his fingers closed on air, and he couldn't be sure whether the surge of frustration he felt was down to Ferguson’s unnecessary death, or the fact that he took one of the three remaining guns with him.

  Mark peered up, blinking as the rain blinded him, and saw Saunders leaning out of the window, staring down in horror. He screamed at Saunders to move, but the man was rooted to the spot, gripping the frame tightly, and staring down with wide, frightened eyes, shaking his head miserably.

  Judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t hearing the words Mark shouted up to him. It sounded like he was listening to a voice in his mind; more persuasive than Mark could hope to be.

  "Come on," Mark started to yell, but the words died in his throat.

  A level above, Saunders suddenly whipped around and disappeared from view, turning back into the conference room to face something that Mark couldn't see.

  And then the screaming started.

  28

  It hadn't seen Elaine.

  Couldn’t have, or it would surely have charged forward and torn her apart instantly.

  She backed up the steps quickly, and heard the creature following her along the corridor toward the stairs, but it moved slowly. The progress it made sounded almost leisurely, not like the movement of something that was focused on chasing her.

  She reached the top of the staircase, and almost toppled over when the floor behind her suddenly flattened out. Only when she was certain that she had put herself out of sight around the corner did she let herself breathe.

  Once more, she extended her arms to the hallway walls, feeling her way along the corridor. The turns she had taken earlier had slipped from her memory completely, but she knew that one of the hallways nearby had open doors: the electric locks that had released just as the one in her own cabin had. There were several cabins close to her, if she could just find the entrance to them.

  One of them had to offer a hiding place worth a damn.

  As she moved, her mind raced ahead of her, and she tried to figure out just what the hell she had seen in that flash of lightning.

  It looked tall, but thin. Definitely not human; an animal of some sort. She had the impression of leathery skin, almost reptilian. Only one detail truly stuck in her mind: the talons that hung from the creature’s oversized hands.

  Vicious claws. Weapons designed to kill and maim; they looked to be a couple of inches long at least, and Elaine didn’t think she’d be able to forget the way looking at those talons as they ripped apart human flesh had made her feel; not if she lived past a hundred years old.

  It wasn't like any creature she had seen before, but there was no mistaking its intent.

  Elaine had loved animals since she could remember, and like so many little girls, when she proudly told her father one day that she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up, he expected her to outgrow it. Yet she never did. Caring for animals was so much more than a job to her; so much more than a salary.

  There were very few animals that scared Elaine and certainly none that a British vet would come across in the course of their everyday work. Other people were scared of spiders or snakes, and Elaine got it; understood that those creatures were creepy, but there was little to be afraid of, and certainly not in the UK where poisonous critters were all but absent.

  Elaine reserved her fear for bears and sharks and alligators: creatures whose fearsome reputations were well-earned. They deserved her fear, but having never seen one of those particular killing machines up close, they hardly mattered.

  But as she had looked at the gore-stained creature that was now pursuing her, she was reminded of one time that she had been scared; of a family trip to London Zoo when she was a kid, and of staring at a lion lazing in the sun in its enclosure.

  At a distance, the big cat had looked almost cute; just an overgrown version of her parents’ own little ball of fluff, really. Until it turned and looked straight at eight-year-old Elaine, and she saw something wild behind its eyes. Something ferocious and calculating. Looking into the predator’s eyes and realising that it was looking right back at her, that hot summer day had suddenly seemed terribly cold.

  She felt an echo of that feeling now.

  What the creature was didn't matter; not in the slightest. What mattered was t
hat it was a large animal, and it had claws built for killing and a taste for human blood, and that she had to get away fast.

  Her right hand suddenly stopped grazing the hallway wall, and she felt air. A corner, leading at a right angle into another dark corridor.

  She couldn't be sure if she had been that way earlier, when her mind had been preoccupied with the dark and the disappearance of her husband. Now that she was concerned only with flight, it didn't seem to matter.

  Any direction would do, as long as it wasn’t back.

  She started up the corridor and paused, listening intently.

  The creature behind her was sniffing loudly.

  It grunted.

  The bottom of the stairs, Elaine thought. It's still coming this way.

  She allowed herself a faint flicker of hope. It wasn’t actively chasing her. Maybe she had been lucky, and it really hadn’t seen her at all. Maybe it couldn't see in the dark any better than she could.

  The creature snorted out a breath.

  "You're bleeding, humannnnn. I can smell your blood. I can smell your fearrrrrr."

  The words were raspy and malformed. Spoken as though the mouth that delivered them was not designed to speak words at all.

  Terror gripped Elaine, and for a moment she froze on the spot as her mind went blank, save for a single, utterly horrifying thought.

  Not an animal.

  Go!

  She hurried down the pitch-black corridor, forcing herself not to run blindly, scraping her fingers on the wall once more and searching for another corner. If she took enough turns, maybe she had a chance of losing the monstrous creature pursuing her in the maze of hallways.

  Somewhere behind her, she heard the clicking of talons as the creature ascended the stairs. It was still moving at what sounded like a leisurely pace, but not with the sort of caution that Elaine had been forced to adopt with her vision compromised by the darkness.