“Behind here!” Finn pointed as he veered left behind the curtain. I followed him into a narrow corridor lined with electrical equipment and props. We weaved through several tight left and right turns as I continued to hear people screaming in the distance.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m not entirely sure, but I know it’s back here somewhere.”
My stomach dropped. “You don’t know where we’re going? What if those people get to us?” My legs started to shake as I imagined being ripped limb from limb.
“Look,” he said, “the only exit that way is blocked by those things. I’ve taken backstage tours of Imperial’s ships before, and they typically have a back exit to the highway. I just hope this class of ship is built similar to the Gemstone class.”
I nodded, but froze as a scratching noise came from somewhere ahead of us. We spotted the man who we’d seen run up the aisle just before the attack. He was throwing himself against a door with the letters I.C.H. stamped across its front. Several bloody, misshapen fingernails were embedded in the wood, his fingernails.
The man’s shirt was dripping with something dark and foul, and I realized he was wearing an Imperial uniform; he was a crewmember. I hadn’t noticed before because of all the blood.
“Hey, is that the way out?” Finn asked cautiously. “Is it locked?”
Finn cleared his throat after he didn‘t respond.
“Sir?”
The man lowered his hands and turned toward us. There was a vacant expression on his face as he started walking in our direction. The same foul substance his shirt was soaked in was dripping from the corners of his mouth.
“Stay behind me, Lily,” Finn said shakily, “and make sure nothing comes from behind us.”
He looked around and grabbed a metal rod from a box of props. I took a step back as Finn raised the bar like a baseball bat. The man was getting closer.
“Stop now or I’ll use this!” he warned, raising the rod higher. Finn’s threat didn’t register to the man. His hands slowly raised in front of him as he let out a long, low groan.
“Stop!” Finn yelled.
I closed my eyes a second before I heard the bar smash into the man’s body.
My skin crawled as something hot sprayed over the right side of my face. I opened my eyes and wiped my cheek, and realized it was the man’s blood, mixed with small bits of things I still refuse to think about.
My veins turned to ice as I realized my husband might have just killed someone, cannibal or not. I felt the salty sting of tears as Finn’s hand closed around mine once again.
The man’s body was sprawled on the floor in front of us, and a pool of something black and tar-like oozed from his mangled face. I thought he was dead… but then an unnatural and inhuman gargling noise escaped his motionless lips. He slowly lifted a blood-soaked hand in our direction when we started to move. His neck was arced at a weird angle, and despite his injury he still tried to reach out to us.
The blow had broken the man’s neck, and he was still alive. Finn turned and vomited. I still don’t know if it was because of what he’d done, or because of the rotten stench coming from the man.
“I promised nothing would happen to you,” Finn said as he turned back to me. “And I meant it.”
We made our way around the man. His mangled, outstretched fingers brushed our jeans as we edged by him. I covered my mouth in order to keep quiet as I nearly slipped on all the blood. Finn placed his hand on the door lever and mumbled under his breath. “Please don’t be locked.”
He turned the lever and pushed, and the door swung open to reveal a narrow staircase.
“Yes!” Finn whispered as he ushered me through. He followed close behind, gently shutting the door until the man who tried to attack us was out of sight. His hand still grasped the metal rod, which was now slightly warped.
“Where does this lead to?” I asked, looking down the spiral stairs. My heart was still racing from our encounter with the man lying on the other side of the door. I tasted bile as I tried not to think about what was going on in the theater.
“I‘m hoping it leads everywhere,” Finn answered as he bolted the door behind us.
“What do you mean?”
“The letters on the door. I.C.H. It stands for Imperial Crew Highway. All of Imperial’s ships have them. It’s a way for crewmembers to access every part of the ship with minimal passenger interference,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s perfect, because it’ll take us to any part of the ship without having to go anywhere those things might be. That’s assuming they’re not down there, too.”
“So where do we go now?”
A sudden scratching noise made us both jump. We turned to the door as the noise grew louder. The man with the broken neck was still trying to get to us, and his blood had already started to seep under the doorway.
Finn ignored the noise and turned back to me. “It looked like a good portion of the ship’s passengers were in that theater. That means the majority of them might already be dead, or worse.” He took the sleeve of his shirt and wiped the blood from my cheek.
My pulse quickened as I pictured what just happened, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. How could Finn be so calm about all of this? I think he sensed I was inches from losing it, because he placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“I‘m scared too,” he said softly, “but freaking out won’t do us any good, and it’ll probably just get us killed faster. I‘m sure there is a rational explanation for all of this, and if we manage to stay safe long enough, everything will sort itself out.”
I nodded as I fought the urge to collapse. He wrapped me in a tight hug before making his way down the stairs.
“Stay close Lily,” he whispered, “and watch where you put your hands.” He pointed to a smear of blood on the railing.
As we made our way down the steps a putrid, overwhelmingly strong odor suddenly hit us. It smelled of meat that’d been left out to rot in the sun, and then sprayed with cheap perfume. My stomach turned as I thought of what it could be, and I instantly decided I didn’t want to find out.
The smell grew stronger with each step, and as we reached the base of the staircase, my worst fear was confirmed. A woman’s body was lying in a pool of blood, just beyond the bottom step. It looked like she’d been thrown in a pool of piranhas. Her torso was almost completely void of flesh, and ragged bits of clothing hung from her hollowed ribcage. Her skull had a gaping hole in one side, and what was left from inside had since oozed out of it.
Somehow I managed to keep my composure as we stepped around her. Finn looked detached, and I saw he was trembling as we stepped on pieces of her clothes.
“Do you know what this means?” I said.
“That those things are down here, too…”
“Yeah, but look at the flies, and the dried blood. She’s been here for hours. We shouldn‘t have come this way. I think we should try a different deck.”
“You’re probably right, but let’s at least check the highway first, it’s our best bet to get back to the cabin. If she‘s been here a while, those things could be anywhere.”
I thought about what was back at the theater, and whether or not the doors we’d passed on the way down led to anything better. “Fine.”
The staircase had ended at the edge of an enormous hallway. My first thought was to head back, the shear distance in front of us screamed certain death to me. If those things were down here, we’d never make it to the other side without running into them.
I nearly missed the dozen or so smaller corridors, hidden in shallow alcoves. They were nearly invisible from where we stood. The ship was so new that time and use hadn’t gotten their chance to fade the pearly white walls. All of our possible escape routes blended together almost seamlessly. The floor, however, was a different story. The once white tiles were splotched and smeared in something dark.
The corridors seemed to stretch out like tributaries, all feeding off of o
ne big river. I could see several crew members off in the distance, but they weren’t moving. They were just standing in place, swaying like pendulums as the ship moved.
“So what now?” I asked. “Those people over there look like they work for Imperial, should we try to talk with them? Maybe they know what‘s going on.”
Finn looked at the workers, then turned and looked back at the stairs behind us.
“Lily,” he whispered, “I need you to be ready to run if I say to, all right? We’ll head back up the stairs and try another floor.”
My eyes widened in fear as a dozen unpleasant scenarios ran through my head.
“Something seems off about those people. They aren’t moving like the maniacs in the theater, but it seems weird for them to be standing there in the middle of the highway. I mean, a large portion of the ships passengers were just murdered. You’d think they would’ve been told to do something, anything. At the very least they should be panicked out of their minds. We’ll go try to talk to them, but let‘s be ready to bolt just in case.”
“Okay,” I squeaked, my voice breaking. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Finn tightened his grip on the metal bar and started making his way toward the crew members.
“Finn, the floor,” I said, pointing. The white tiled floor was nearly coated in a retched smelling, reddish black substance. Most of it was dried, but there were a few pools of it that still looked wet. “Be careful where you step.”
He nodded silently as we started down the corridor. We crept along the side, dodging the pools as we made our way to the opposite end of the ship. They smelled similar to the woman’s body, but with a sour aspect to it that made my nose burn.
Our pace slowed to a crawl as we approached the two stationary crewmembers. The first was a short blonde woman, and her collared shirt said maintenance on the back. As we inched closer I saw a large portion of her left cheek was missing, exposing her jawbone and a row of blackened teeth. I managed to stifle a gasp as Finn raised the bar in preparation.
The second was a man of Asian descent. He wore a white, paint stained jumpsuit and rubber boots. He looked to be unharmed, except for his hands, which were pitch black and swollen. We were less than five feet away, but they made no move toward us. Instead they just swayed in unison, keeping with the subtle movements of the ship.
Finn must have realized something, because he lowered the bar and looked back at me. He let go of my hand and put his finger to his lips. I mouthed the word “NO” as I realized what he was about to do, but he ignored me and turned toward the workers.
The bar trembled as he raised it in front of their eyes. He waved it up and down, then quickly stepped back. Their breathing came in quick, shallow breaths as they continued to stare forward. Finn carefully tiptoed back to me and took my hand. I gave him the “you’re in trouble” face before we made our way around the woman.
“It almost seems like they‘re asleep,” he whispered. “But their eyes are open. I don’t really know what to make of it, but if we’re quiet we might be able to sneak by and get to our cabin without waking them up.”
I nodded and made sure I had a good grip on his hand; he wasn’t going to pull something like that again. The workers in front of us made my skin crawl. They smelled like rotten eggs, and I’m not sure if it was better or worse that they weren’t moving. I half expected them to jump at us at any moment.
“Let’s stick to the main hallway,” Finn added after we passed the crew. “I don’t like the looks of those alcoves. There could be more of those maniacs just out of sight.”
We snuck by two more eerily still crewmembers before Finn and I started looking for a staircase that could lead to the upper decks.
I stopped briefly as we came even with one of the alcoves. The walls leading down the short corridor were covered in bloody handprints. It ended in a set of metal double doors that read CREW MESS HALL. Both doors had porthole windows, but the glass had been blacked out by something, making it impossible to see inside. After a moment of silent staring, we pressed forward without saying anything.
A loud BANG followed by the clang of a door being slammed against metal nearly made us jump out of our skins.
We spun to see a small group of people, normal people, falling out of an alcove. They were halfway between the staircase we’d climbed down and us, right in the middle of the four crewmembers we’d slipped by. There were three men and a young woman, all dressed in formal attire. One man had a gun in his hand, and another carried a shattered violin. I recognized them as the band I’d seen playing in the Albatross Lounge on deck seven. For a split second the woman and I locked eyes, and even from where I was standing I could see the pure, unadulterated fear that coursed through her veins.
Their noisy entrance into the highway had jolted the sleeping crewmembers, who were now twitching and jerking their heads in the group’s direction.
The ones Finn and I had snuck past earlier started to close in on them, slowly but surely cutting off any chance they had of moving forward.
The sound of doors opening, lots of them, started reverberating throughout the highway.
“What is that?” Finn asked, his jaw clenched.
My heart dropped when I saw them.
Finn pulled at my arm as he took a step back. “Oh my God.”
More crewmembers had started to stream in from the side corridors. They stumbled and shuffled their way toward the source of the noise as Finn and I stared on in horror. The crewmembers didn’t seem to notice us, they were too focused on the band members.
“We’re dead if we stay here!” the woman screamed. “Go back, now!”
They disappeared as quickly as they’d come, back into the alcove and out of sight. The highway had changed almost as quickly, from a couple of crewmembers to dozens in a matter of seconds. It was like the aftermath of an ant pile that’d been stepped on and thrown into chaos.
Everything seemed surreal at that point. The shock of being overrun seemed to root us in place. Finn had been right about the alcoves, and I’d been right about the highway. It was a deathtrap.
He pulled my hand again and pointed toward an opening about ten feet ahead of us. I nodded and started behind him. My nose started tingling, and without thinking about it I let myself sneeze. Finn whipped his head around and froze. His eyes widened as he looked behind me. I turned and saw a massive chunk of the maniacs in the middle of the corridor already breaking off. They were slowly making their way in our direction.
My stomach lurched as Finn yanked on my arm, but my feet didn’t want to move, they couldn’t. I suddenly felt hands grabbing at my legs and back. I screamed and kicked, but quickly realized it was Finn. He picked me up and carried me toward the opening. He gently set me down at the base of a staircase identical to the one we’d originally come down.
“Let‘s go Lily!” he urged.
I was still in shock, but somehow managed to start moving. We climbed for what seemed like forever before he tugged at the back of my shirt.
“This is our deck,” he said, keeping his voice at a whisper.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I tried the door handle. It was unlocked.
“Finn, listen. They’re following us.”
The sound of feet clumsily making their way up the metal stairs was faint, but slowly getting louder. We made our way into the corridor of deck 11 and found it deserted. Plates of half eaten room service platters littered the floor outside several suites. We power walked the fifty feet to our suite and locked ourselves in.
That was how yesterday went. I wasn’t sure if I should write about it. Or if I could, for that matter. I do know one thing for sure. If we die, I want the world to know I’m not crazy. All of this really happened.
Separated
August 15th
It has been two days since we’ve gone outside the cabin and we’re running low on food. We’d already be out if it weren’t for the mini-bar and a stash of snacks I’d brought in my carry-on. Thankful
ly the sink still works, so we have plenty of water. I’m not the biggest fan of drinking from the faucet, but I feel like that’s the least of my worries at the moment.
“Sooner or later I’ll get someone,” Finn said as he dialed yet another number. He’d been at it all morning. After giving up on any of the passenger relations numbers, he’d started calling random cabins. “We can’t be the only ones left on the entire ship,” he growled as he slammed the phone down.
Undead Honeymoon Page 4
