Elaine rose into a half-crouch, and listened intently.
After a moment, she heard another thump that sounded even more distant. Judging by the noise, the creature had moved even further away from her, presumably into another empty cabin.
The time to go is now.
It took Elaine a moment to persuade her legs that fleeing was the best course of action, and then she exploded into motion, running through the layout of the dark corridors that she had already travelled through more than once even as her legs began to propel her forward. She was certain that she could find her way, even moving at speed. She had to.
She burst into the corridor and heard a sickly chuckle.
"I seeeeee yooooou."
Elaine let out a yelp and shot a glance over her shoulder.
The thing was standing in the corridor, no more than ten feet away, tossing small pieces of furniture down the dark hallway.
The distant thumps she had heard.
The creature hadn’t been moving away from her. It had been drawing her out.
Elaine saw the glowing red eyes in the darkness, and felt something catastrophic enter her mind. A level of fear that she hadn’t thought possible. An endless despair that made her soul shriek.
She tore her gaze away, and began to run, heedless of the lack of light, pounding her feet hard.
She made it five steps.
Just far enough for terrible hope to blossom in her mind.
I might actually make it.
And then something sharp raked down her back and Elaine went down hard with a scream, and then the entire world was filled with pain and inhuman shrieking.
34
It didn't feel like it had happened to him; in truth, Dan barely remembered it, as though it began to slip from his mind even as it was happening. It felt like he had been watching through someone else's eyes. Fuzzy and vague.
Launching himself toward the creature. Attacking.
It was an impossible event that had been blotted onto his memory. It couldn't possibly have actually happened.
It seemed that it took an eternity for the thundering of his pulse to slow enough that he could think clearly, and when he did, he was still gripping the cleaver in white-knuckled hands. Still drenched in the foul black gore that had splashed from the creature's wounds.
Still panting for air.
And Edgar was still staring at him from the floor, wide-eyed. Terrified. Dan saw the man's eyes drop to the cleaver for a moment.
He thinks I'd hurt him. Thinks I've lost my mind.
Have I?
Dan dropped the cleaver.
*
They walked away from the food court without speaking; a solid sort of silence that felt like it might require a hammer to put a crack in it.
Dan's mind tumbled.
He thought about Katie. The way she had been picked apart. The creature's hideous, mocking laughter as it disembowelled her and sheared her head almost clean off with a nonchalant flick of its wrist. Like a bored child plucking the wings off an insect.
Thought about the way he himself had acted, almost as if somebody else had been piloting his body.
Dan had retrieved the cleaver once Edgar was satisfied that it wasn't going to be used on him, and he cleaned the gore from the blade as best he could, wiping it on his filthy shorts. He stared at it in wonder as he walked.
Did I really do that?
He had to speak.
"You pissed yourself."
"What?"
Edgar flushed and examined himself. The stain on the front of his trousers was clearly visible.
When he looked at Dan once more, the eyes behind his goggles were filled with anger and shame.
Dan held his hands up.
"Me too," he said, and pointed to the dark stain at his crotch.
Somehow, incredibly, Edgar snorted a laugh.
"So...I guess you really do believe they are vampires, then." Dan said softly. "I mean...a stake through the heart, right?"
Edgar paused, lost in thought.
"It's not a question of believing," Edgar said at last. "Knowing. I was raised to know that these things exist. I know because I was born to know."
"So, what?" Dan said. "You're a vampire hunter or something?"
"Or something," Edgar said sharply, and Dan judged from his tone that the subject was closed.
"I don't know where the hell we're going," Dan whispered. "Katie was taking me to the cabins. I couldn't find my way around this ship even when the lights worked."
"We keep going straight," Edgar said. "Past the Ocean lounge, past the casino, then find a staircase. Most of the cabins are above."
"You know the ship pretty well," Dan said dubiously.
"Not well enough to get the hell off when I had the chance."
Dan zipped his lips and frowned in frustration. He was riding the giddy adrenaline high of battling the creature, trying to persuade his brain to accept that it had actually happened, that he had acted so...courageously? Psychotically?
Yet Edgar seemed to have lapsed into a mood as dark as the ship itself. The confidence that oozed from the man when they first met seemed to have departed entirely, leaving him brooding. Almost fearful.
Dan's nerves sizzled. He needed to talk. Had to find some way to let the energy building inside him dissipate.
"I wonder how many of them are on board," he said. "I wonder if we could kill—"
"We weren't supposed to be able to kill that one," Edgar snapped. He sounded angry, and Dan took a step back in surprise. "Nobody is supposed to be able to kill them. So how did you do it?"
"Uh, well, technically you—"
"I didn't do anything," Edgar interrupted bitterly. "I finished it off, no more than that. I was ready to let the thing carve me up. It was in my head and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop it. That's the deal with these things. It's why we can't fight them. So how did you attack it?"
Dan shrugged. A useless gesture that Edgar didn't see. The big man's eyes were focused firmly on the path ahead.
"I have no idea," Dan said. "I'll be honest with you: I haven't got the first fucking clue about anything that's going on here. I guess that makes one of us, since you seem to know so much. So why don't you tell me?"
Edgar snorted, but his eyebrows arched, as though something had only just occurred to him. He stopped walking, and turned to face Dan.
"What I know is looking more and more like a lie every fucking minute," he said. "Wait."
Dan froze, and scanned left and right nervously.
"What is it?"
"Just wait," Edgar said, and fished a small walkie-talkie from his pocket. Dan wanted to remind him that the ship had been hit by an EMP; that the radio wouldn't work, but he caught himself.
The goggles do work.
It hadn't even occurred to Dan until that moment that the man was in possession of what appeared to be the only electronic items on the entire ship that still worked. Dan stared at him, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, as Edgar pressed the radio to his lips.
Static crackled in the darkness.
"It's Edgar. I'm still on the Oceanus. Respond."
He released the button and waited for so long that Dan began to suspect there was nobody listening.
The radio hissed.
"No names. Extraction is too dangerous before dawn," a disembodied voice said. "You were fully aware of this before you went in."
"Fuck your extraction, and fuck no names, too," Edgar barked in a voice loud enough that Dan cast a worried glance around the dark deck, expecting to see something rushing toward him. "I'm standing here with a man who just killed one of them, you understand? One of The Three is dead."
The radio crackled and fell silent.
Dan thought about reiterating that it was Edgar who'd struck the killing blow, but the big man's eyes flashed dangerously behind the goggles. He let it drop.
Edgar waited again, and this time there was only silence.
He lifted
the radio to his lips once more.
"Tell my father that if I get off this ship, I've got some fucking questions for him, understand? Over and fucking out."
Edgar slipped the radio back into his pocket, and started forward once more.
Dan trotted after him, moving past an ornate signpost that was emblazoned with directions to the Ocean lounge, the casino.
And the cabins.
They were getting close.
"Three," Dan said quietly. "The Three. That's what you said on the radio. You're a part of this, aren't you?"
Edgar grimaced.
"Not anymore," he growled. "Enough questions. We find your wife, we find my brother, and then we find a way to get off this ship, or we die in the attempt. If you've still got questions after that, I'll personally introduce you to the man with the answers. There."
Edgar pointed at a doorway beneath a small sign that read Cabins 149 - 250 and limped toward it without looking at Dan.
They walked to the doorway in silence, but inside Dan's mind, the noise was cacophonous. Questions crowded his head, bubbling away like boiling fat as a fire of anger and doubt burned underneath them. Edgar's appearance was no fluke. Hadn't he said that he'd had the chance to leave the ship?
That meant he knew what had been coming, just like he knew exactly how many of the creatures there were on board. Like he knew to call them vampires.
Dan tried to put the pieces together, but the picture they formed made no sense. It almost sounded like the Oceanus had been set up to be attacked by the vampires. Hell, someone had even cut the power for them. Was that someone Edgar?
When they entered the hallway, Dan stopped immediately, and his thoughts leaked away.
There was a set of stairs leading up to the several decks of cabins above, but it was the door at the far end of the hallway that caught his attention and sent his mind spinning.
It hadn't been printed on the signpost they had just passed; or maybe he had missed it. Maybe his mind had employed some sort of self-defence mechanism, refusing to allow him to see the words.
He saw them now.
Brightly coloured, printed in a cheerful comic font and decorated with smiley faces and flowers.
Nursery and Children's Play area.
The door was ajar. Propped open by a tiny arm that Dan could see was drenched in blood.
He felt his knees buckle underneath him as he imagined the scene beyond the door. When he had stood in the terminus, several hours and a lifetime ago, he hadn't seen that many children—most of the passengers had looked middle-aged—but he remembered a few. Scampering about in excitement like they were in the grip of the world's biggest sugar rush.
The scene in front of him became fuzzy, and it took Dan a moment to realise that the goggles he wore were misting with tears that rolled down his cheeks unnoticed.
"Oh," he said feebly. "Oh, no..."
Edgar's arm on his shoulder made him flinch.
"Don't look," Edgar said gruffly. "Don't think about it. There's nothing you can do. Focus on your wife."
Dan nodded, and allowed Edgar to guide him to the stairs as sobs began to wrack his body. He'd been riding on adrenaline, surfing a wave of euphoria that came with banishing the stale anxiety that had plagued him for years to the back of his mind. Even watching Katie being gutted hadn't quite pulled him back to his senses.
But that arm did.
Tiny and frail; propping open the door, as if the child it belonged to had been trying to escape, and had almost made it.
Halfway up the stairs, Dan shook his head as though answering a question that nobody had asked, and he sat down heavily, forgetting the ever-present danger for just a moment, and he let the tears flow.
*
There was no mistaking the sound. A crash that clearly emanated from the coffee lounge that Mark and Herb had departed moments earlier.
Mark tried to come up with a logical reason for the creature to risk jumping from the deck above in the same manner he and Herb had, but only two options presented themselves: either the thing was far more physically able than its human counterparts, or it was utterly determined not to let its quarry escape.
Neither possibility made Mark feel any better.
The coffee lounge had three exits: to the left and right, parallel to the hull, or dead ahead to the ice rink. There was a chance that it would pick the wrong direction, of course, but chance was starting to look increasingly like it wasn't on Mark's side.
So he ran.
At least, he tried to run, and almost immediately lost his footing on the ice, landing hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. He bounced back up instantly, ignoring the pain that tried to limit his breathing, and settled for an approximation of skating; sliding forward on the soles of his shoes awkwardly. It wasn't as fast as running, but it had the advantage of being quieter.
He heard Herb fall heavily, spitting a low curse about the pain in his back, before he also apparently decided that less speed meant more haste.
The vampire was somewhere behind them, but judging by the shrieking they had heard, it wasn't close, and it didn't sound like it had heard them. Another shriek split the silence; slightly more distant than the first, and a lot of crashing, as if furniture was being tossed around.
Mark figured it was thoroughly searching the coffee lounge before it decided which exit to take. That gave the two fleeing men a few precious seconds to put as much distance as they could between themselves that the creature.
If the vampire decided the coffee lounge was empty, and if it picked the correct exit, it would surely see them instantly: most of the deck was split between the ice rink and the nightclub, and the former was a wide open space that offered nowhere to hide. There was no way it would miss them out there on the ice, assuming it could see in the dark better than Mark or Herb could.
There was no time to ask Herb about that—or any of the myriad other questions that Mark still needed answers to, and so he assumed the worst. After all, if Herb was to be believed, these were creatures of darkness. It stood to reason that they would not be as disabled by a lack of light as humans were.
It felt like crossing the ice took forever. When they reached what Mark guessed was the centre of the rink, he felt his panic chasing him. Never in his life had he felt so exposed. It was like he was standing in the middle of an open park, and someone had just informed him that there was a sniper out there somewhere.
With each passing second, he expected to hear the creature behind him; the crunching of claws biting into the ice. He desperately wanted to move faster.
He crashed into the low barrier that surrounded the ice without warning, and only as he toppled over it did he realise that he hadn't been out in the centre of the rink at all, but had crossed it. The darkness playing tricks on him.
He opened his mouth to whisper a warning to Herb, and the air was blasted out of his lungs again as the man landed heavily on top of him. He shoved Herb off without a word, afraid that the sound of them falling had been more than loud enough to draw attention, but when he cocked an ear, he heard only eerie silence.
That's because it did hear something, and it's listening, just like you are.
Mark held his breath and waited a few seconds, until he was as sure as he could be that nothing else was out there on the ice, and slipped the lighter from his pocket, casting a glow that extended no more than a few feet.
It was enough. To his right, he saw the changing area where people could exchange their shoes for ice skates. A few tables set up around a sandwich bar and a soft drinks machine for those who weren't brave enough to step onto the ice themselves.
And the exit.
Mark knew the way from there. Outside the ice arena, there was another small lounge area decorated with stunning floor-to-ceiling tropical fish tanks—one of many such rest areas dotted around the ship, offering passengers a chance to catch their breath before moving on to the next attraction.
When the nightclub opened its doors,
the lounge was intended to double as a chill out zone. Three words that Mark thought were destined to never belong together again.
They were close to the nightclub doors now, and Mark extinguished the lighter flame, confident that he could find his way in the dark.
"Let's go," he whispered, and hauled himself upright, moving toward the exit carefully. Herb followed a moment later, close enough that Mark could almost feel the man's breath on the back of his neck.
He moved through the lounge area carefully, and felt his way along the wall until he found what he was looking for: the door to the Apollo nightclub was framed by faux tiki torches. He found them easily, and pushed the door open, blinking as the sharp smell of disinfectant washed over him.
The nightclub opened at 11pm, and judging by the smell, it was still being readied for action when the ship went dark.
Mark was suddenly struck by the time: he estimated it could be no later than ten o'clock. Only a matter of hours since they had been docked in Portsmouth, and Mark's biggest problem had been the possibility that Steven Vega would somehow prevent him from heading to the nightclub to party when his shift was over.
Now, Vega's brains were splattered over the conference room wall, and Mark was running for his life from a mythological creature.
If he hadn't been so steeped in terror, Mark thought he would have found the situation funny.
"In here," he said in a low voice, and flicked on the lighter for a second to direct Herb. As he stepped inside, Mark reached out and plucked a tiki torch from its bracket.
It was flimsy, but it would serve as a temporary deadbolt, and would deter anything that wasn't determined to get in. He was, however, under no illusions that the flimsy plastic would withstand a barrage similar to the one the creature had unleashed on the conference room doors.
He pulled the door shut and slipped the torch between the handles. After a moment's pause, in which he heard only silence and Herb's panicked, shallow breaths, he flicked on the lighter once more.
The Apollo was small: like the ice rink it was designed to be a scale model representation of the real thing. The Oceanus didn't expect to play host to too many younger people; those for whom evenings and alcohol inevitably led to thumping beats and crowded dance floors. Mark had hoped differently, of course, but the prospect of getting drunk and finding young, single women to dance with suddenly seemed very distant indeed.
The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy) Page 23
