by Joshua Grant
“Great, I knew I was the expendable one,” Mac groused.
“Stow it Mackenzie. Let’s move.”
Julian pressed forward. Surprisingly, even Mac fell in behind him without a second word of protest. Things must have really been bad.
The deck curved around the deckhouse like the rings of some gas giant. Julian sidled along the smooth white wall of the deckhouse, preparing himself for whatever lay beyond the corner. He took a deep, mist-filled breath.
Here we go—
He dipped around the corner, fast and low with rifle up and ready. As with the aft section, the wide walkway was littered with deck furniture and other detritus—smashed plates and the like. These cast eerie shapes in the milky haze. Visibility was at about fifteen feet. Not a lot of forewarning if someone was coming their way.
At least they can’t see us either.
Julian moved quickly but carefully up the side of the ship, the soles of his boots squeaking lightly on the wet deck slats but there was nothing more he could do about that. The illusion of a great nothingness was created by the fog to his right. It only reminded him that they were completely alone out here. Should something more go wrong…
Tom’s hushed voice blared in his ear. “It looks like the crew tried to improvise a barricade. The stairway’s completely a mess. We’re moving to the alternate route.”
“Acknowledged,” Konesco said quietly, his voice booming in the unnatural stillness.
They made steady progress up the side of the ship. The solid white wall to their left fell away to a caged in basketball court. Jackets and towels were strewn over the bleachers that dissolved into the mist. The one visible hoop’s net swayed lightly. Nothing else moved.
Julian was suddenly very aware of his own breathing, loud in the suffocating silence. Everyone had up and left in a pinch, but where did they go? If pirates had indeed taken over the ship then they should have heard the racket Julian and his team made getting here. Anyone in a three mile radius would have heard that crash.
So where the hell were they?
Past the basketball court was a massive open space. This railed in square dipped down a deck like a caged arena. The pit had a spanning pool that was normally backlit by a large movie screen, its white canvas completely dark now and torn slightly in one corner. More deck chairs had met an unfortunate fate here as well, overlooked by a few bars that dotted the pit’s perimeter. Like the movie screen that towered over them, these had also lost their once lively nature and had grown dark. Empty. Deserted. Lifeless.
Judging by the schematic he had studied before departing, they were at the midship pool party area, halfway to their destination. Julian slid around the outside of the railing, all the while keeping a careful watch on the shadowy bars below. They were exposed up here and the deck furniture and serving lines offered a lot of places for any lurking terrorist to hide.
The squad crept forward past the large pit. Out of the fog loomed the twisted shape of the waterslide like the crumbling skeleton of some hulking beast. They were nearing the front of the ship. As they had seen before, a tube section of the slide had fallen into the metal framework of the forward atrium’s skylight. This waterpark, once so full of life and motion now lay dead and still, a forgotten ruin like the rest of the ship.
They moved around the battered atrium skylight, a thousand teeth of shattered glass panes smiling at them as they passed. The unsettling maw opened several decks down into the bowels of the ship. Julian could see how the atrium would have been glamorous when it was lit—balconies, crystal chandeliers, wood paneled walls with false gold trim. In the gloomy dark it offered only another glimpse into the sad state the ship had fallen into. Its open deck balconies wrapped around the vast inner lobby with no onlookers to adorn them, its chiseled glass lights now dark and dead.
Julian scanned the murk, swallowing back the trepidation that insisted on crawling up his throat. Crystal elevators lay at different levels along one wall. He could almost imagine the hordes of people trapped in them when the power went out. Innocent people looking for a nice getaway instead found themselves pounding on the metal doors, trying to escape their see-through prison until the pirates, or--God help him--something worse found them. He saw the fourth elevator was completely shattered and smashed and tried not to think about it.
What the hell could do all this?
They passed the atrium to where the forward deckhouse was located. This was their point of entry. Julian saw the glass double doors that would lead them into a stairwell lobby identical to the one B Squad had used—
--and motioned for everyone to halt.
“Blood,” Aubrey whispered, her voice quavering slightly.
The doctor’s chilling synopsis was correct. There was blood splashed out on the deck just before the door, a lot of it. Whoever it belonged to hadn’t been shot or stabbed. Too much blood for that sort of thing. Anything beyond that would just have to be left to their imagination since there was no body to accompany it. Nothing suffering a wound that could have left such a mess would be able to get up and walk away on its own.
Crimson streaks smeared away from the sticky puddle toward the lobby doors. Someone had dragged the body away, for what purpose Julian really didn’t want to know.
“Yeah, definitely signing up for B Squad next time,” Mac whispered.
Julian ignored him. Now really wasn’t the time. He crept forward toward the doors, sweeping the lobby beyond with his rifle. The shadows remained as still as ever. Unnaturally still. Expectant. The ship was watching them closely, waiting for the real show to start.
Everyone carefully avoided the scarlet welcome mat. Konesco and Olga moved to opposite sides of the door. They pried their fingers into the seam where the two doors met and looked to Julian for confirmation. He aimed his rifle, braced himself, and nodded. They yanked the two glass panes apart.
An icy chill wafted from the ship’s interior. The air conditioning was obviously still working. Unfortunately, the gust was less than refreshing and carried with it an all too familiar scent. Julian had been a soldier for a long time. He had been on far too many battlefields. He remembered his first time heading to the mountain camps to collect a shipment of drugs. A deal had gone wrong up there, very wrong. Some savvy-looking business men now lay in a heap in the middle of the complex. Their clothes were tattered and bloody. Their faces were pulled back and grotesque. But it was the smell Julian remembered most. Those men had been lying in the hot sun for days, rotting into a pungent odor like a bowl of old fruit mixed with milk spilled in a heating vent.
The same smell bombarded his nostrils now. The smell of death and decay. He suppressed the violent need to puke. He was only fifteen when he had first smelled death’s putrid breath. It terrified him to this day. He never wanted to join that pile of stinking corpses, nothing but a decaying stain on the memory of the world. That same fear gripped him now, all these years later. It crept in through his nostrils, slithered down his clenched throat, and squeezed his protesting lungs.
You’re going to get Ricardo and you’re going to redeem yourself.
He breathed deeply through his mouth, suppressed another gag, and forced himself to breathe again.
The lobby was clear—well, at least empty. The blood trail smeared through the gloom and abruptly ended at the base of the golden doors of one of the four elevators. It was the red carpet leading to some nightmare of a show.
And what’s behind door number three?
Julian sure as hell didn’t want to know. He wondered how the doctor was holding up having not been experienced with such dangerous environments as the rest of them were, but he couldn’t afford to break focus, not now.
He tiptoed around the blood and moved towards the stairwell on the far side. The ship’s interior produced a whole different kind of eerie silence. Soft carpet squished under his boots. Something rocked distantly with the ship’s sway. And deep in Julian’s subconscious he heard the soft whir of the air conditioning going.
Nothing else made so much as a susurration.
He motioned the all clear and the others followed him in. Olga and Konesco clicked flashlights. The radiant beams danced oddly off the reflective elevator doors and inactive chandelier lights. Pools of shadows condensed and spilled out under their onslaught but nothing sinister sprang from the dark globules.
“Four decks down,” the captain directed softly.
Julian was the first on the stairwell. Every step down boomed in his mind, calling for something dark and terrible to come up. He reached the landing between floors. A large motif of parrots hung on the wall. Their unblinking eyes followed him as he rounded the corner and descended into another lobby almost identical to the one above. In place of the double doors leading into the outside world, this one had four more elevator ports that would bring them into the glass lifts Julian had seen in the forward atrium a moment earlier. A fine sign on the wall read “Deck Eleven” in fancy text.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary here, other than the power being out, so Julian continued the descent. He rounded the corner and stopped on the next landing. The others did the same. This midlevel had a large depiction of an old style sailing galleon. The fine ship was beautiful, save for the line of bullet holes that punctured its center mast.
Who were they shooting at?
The gunman must have been an amateur—or frantic. The firing pattern was erratic, a sign of shaky hands, and there was no blood on the embroidered carpet. They must have missed. Julian whipped around the corner expecting to find the shooter, or what was left of him. Instead he found that Deck 10 looked pretty much the same as Deck 11. Spent bullet casings were the only evidence that someone had been there at all. They looked like 9mm, standard security issue.
Julian continued downward, a shell jingling as it pinged off his boot. Deck 9 was just another lobby full of stale, dead air. They passed this quickly and moved to Deck 8. One of the overhead chandeliers had been ripped from its lofty perch and had crashed into the lobby’s center. Julian wondered if anyone had been around to hear it fall.
“The command bridge should be just around the corner,” Konesco announced.
Thank God for that. Julian was getting sick of this haunted house BS.
“The security doors may still be engaged,” Olga informed.
Mac smiled and patted a pouch on his tactical vest. “That’s why God invented me…and this lock breaking cypher…but mostly just me.”
Julian shook his head and crept around the corner. He stepped into the port hallway that led down the side of the ship. Passenger cabins dotted the length of the hallway but it dead-ended in a large door marked “crew only.” So far so good.
We’re not going to make it out of this alive.
The thought came so suddenly and with such force that it stopped Julian in his tracks. He had no reason to be so pessimistic. He had been in a thousand worse situations. But this time he had the creeping suspicion the prediction might come true. Something about this hallway, this ship, felt wrong somehow. It was watching them, playing with them. Like a cat with a mouse covered in catnip, it wanted to juggle them around a bit before tearing them to pieces.
“What is it Julian?” Konesco asked sharply.
Everything. We need to get the hell off this ship!
Julian exhaled slowly. “Nothing sir.”
He moved up to the crew door and tested it. Unlocked. He rushed in with a burst of adrenaline driving his heart. The dozens of windows surrounding the bridge blinded him temporarily with their sterile white glare. He blinked hard, forcing his eyes to compensate as he scanned the computer stations for possible threats. Like everything else they had seen thus far, the bridge was devoid of life.
“Clear,” Julian announced.
The others moved quickly into the bridge and sealed the door behind them. Konesco moved right to the navigation controls and began plugging away at the screen there. Olga did the same at communications. Aubrey moved closer to Julian.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on here?” she asked.
Julian decided it would be better to cover his hand for the time being. “Your guess is as useless as mine on this one.”
“Yeah, did you notice how there aren’t any bodies?” Mac interjected. “All the blood and none of the bodies. These terrorists are kind of a tease aren’t they?” All joking aside, Julian could tell he was just as creeped out as the rest of them with the lack of personnel, dead or alive.
“Dammit!” Konesco smacked a fist on the side of the panel. “It’s locked out. We can’t get control from here without the captain’s access card.”
“Easy Cap. Let the miracle worker have a look.” Mac slid past him with ease and began moving things across the screen. The man may not have known how to hold a conversation but he certainly knew his way around a computer.
Aubrey and Julian exchanged a glance. “First the helicopter and now this,” she said. “Makes a girl wonder if someone’s out to get us.”
“You can add long ranged communications to that list,” Olga cursed. “The whole system’s shot up. Someone didn’t want anything going out. I think I can get it to work but I’m pretty much going to have to rebuild it. It’s going to take time.”
“Get on it,” Konesco ordered. “With the chopper gone that’s our only source of communication with the outside world. In the meantime, we’ll—“
Static blared over their headsets. Tom’s voice barely made it through the garble. “…we made…more barri…the engine room but it looks like…”
The static suddenly increased to a roar and the transmission abruptly cut out leaving an eerie silence in its wake. Julian tensed. Just like the damned chopper. He could see the same thought flashing across everyone else’s face as well. Easy Julian. Take a deep breath. It’s not the same. They’re fine.
“Tom?” he tried. “You broke up Tom.” He was greeted by more dead air.
“It sounded like they made it to engineering,” Aubrey interjected.
“Could be interference from the machinery down there,” Konesco proposed. His voice said he didn’t believe that either. He moved toward the door. “Julian and Aubrey you’re with me. Olga, get those communications up. Use paperclips if you have to. Mackenzie, stay with her and get me some damn control of this vessel.”
“And where are we going?” Aubrey inquired.
Konesco peeled open the door. The hallway was still as dark, empty, and irrationally menacing as before. “We’re going to engineering to see what’s going on down there, maybe get lucky and stumble on the captain’s keycard on the way. And, should we find the asshole who’s been playing hell with our radios, we’re going to put him in the dirt.”
Amen to that. Julian gave Aubrey a reassuring nod. She returned it tersely. He could tell she felt even less enthusiastic about venturing back out into the ship than he did, and that was saying a lot. One more mission and you and Ricardo can retire somewhere safe, he reminded himself, squared his shoulders, and made his way out the door.
Chapter 7
Deck 1, Fore
Aubrey tried to relax and let the tension drain from her neck muscles with some degree of success. For the first time since landing on this damn tomb of a ship she was somewhat in her element. Konesco had decided to take a detour to Captain Sepella’s ready room on Deck 1 in the hope that his passcard might be miraculously laying around somewhere. Every level down to this point had been the same nightmarish disaster scene snapshot.
Out there she felt lost, and in all honesty the place creeped the shit out of her. In here she found some degree of comfort. The small office was relatively intact minus the papers and maps strewn across the floor. With her background in archeology, Aubrey was used to going into a vacant room and determining something about the people that once dwelled there.
Captain Sepella was a fairly methodical man. His office fell just short of OCD. The small desk was devoid of anything but a built in lamp. Pre-disaster, the papers on the floor probably resided there
in a fine pile. Like many ship captains, he was also a bit of an egoist. His naval licenses and awards dotted the cream colored walls. Neat and mostly tidy.
But something is definitely off here.
Perhaps it was Konesco’s unnerving quietness that left her to her own thoughts for too long but Aubrey couldn’t shake the feeling that something in the office screamed for her to notice it. She scanned over the small bookshelf in the corner but saw nothing unusual.
Konesco had sent Julian to see if the stairwell to Deck 0, the maintenance and crew deck, was blocked while they checked over the office. He’d only been gone for a few minutes. In that time, Konesco and Aubrey had managed to rifle through all the desk’s drawers and scattered papers. The squad captain had since been leaning on the small bookshelf, silently watching her try to grasp whatever it was about this room that was bugging her.
The guy’s wound tighter than a screw, she thought. Frankly, he gave her the creeps too. Despite his regal accent and attitude, the captain was a cold blooded killer. It was in the way he just watched, patiently, waiting for the strategic moment to strike. The very same way he watched her now. His cold silence crawled over her, forcing a shiver from the tension returning in her back.
And just what the hell would you like him to talk about? “Hey, isn’t this empty rig so creepy? Doesn’t my small talk make you feel more comfortable and trust me more?”
Aubrey shrugged off the jitters in her spine and turned her attention back to finding the room’s nagging secret. Awards, a large map of the seven continents—God Sepella, get a family photo—a postcard from Cozumel, Mexico.
Aubrey froze.
She turned back to the map that had caught her attention. Her subconscious recognized something there that her conscious mind did not. She studied the almost cloth paper closer.
What the—
She approached the chart, her outstretched hand guiding her to the drawing’s abnormality.
“What are you,” Konesco started but immediately he recognized what she had seen.
