by Joshua Grant
The continents of Africa and South America had been reversed. It was something that any school child above the age of eight would have noticed but being so preoccupied with their unusual situation, Aubrey and Konesco had missed it. The strange deformity could have been a mistake on the mapmaker’s part, but Aubrey had a hunch. She reached up and explored the two misplaced continents with her fingertips.
Sure enough, Africa flopped away like a miniature tent flap and something small and paper slid freely to the floor. Konesco stood up straighter with a renewed interest as if the hand-sized piece of paper might blow up at any moment.
“It’s a journal page,” Aubrey announced, barely able to form the words. What the hell? She stooped and retrieved the coarse paper. Normally cold and unreadable, Aubrey caught a flash of disappointment, even annoyance, in Konesco’s eyes. And why wouldn’t he be? It’s not a keycard and it can’t fly us off this ship, even if we fold it into an airplane. But why would anyone hide such a thing in a wall map?
Does it matter!? Just read the damn thing.
Setting aside the doubts that it was probably just the captain’s secret pasta recipe or his confession to cheating on his wife, Aubrey began to read aloud:
…and they’ve gone fucking nuts! There’s so few of us left now that I don’t know—ah dammit, I can’t even write it—I don’t know if any of us are going to make it off. Even if we do, we can’t let it come with us.
Aubrey tried to control the trembling in her hands. The captain’s bird scratch handwriting danced madly on the paper. He wrote ‘it.’ Why’d he write ‘it’ and not ‘they?’ She read on, trying to suppress the quaver in her voice.
It’s already found a way past the barricades. We’ve begun taking steps to sink the ship. I hope somebody finds this. I hope they understand, I tried to save as many as possible. They say the captain always goes down with the ship. I guess I’ll get my chance to prove them right.
Sink the ship!? Oh my God! What—what is this!? The final sentence was scrawled haphazardly across the bottom of the page. It was almost illegible.
Oh God I can hear them! I can hear them! They’re coming for me! They’re wearing the others’ faces and they’re coming for mine too!
The scrawl ended abruptly there, as did Aubrey’s capacity for rational thought. She held it silently for a long time. Did Sepella go crazy? Maybe the rest of the journal could answer that but it was nowhere to be found. First ‘it’ and then ‘they.’ Obviously the guy was losing it.
That didn’t bode well for anyone.
Aubrey’s eyes moved to Konesco’s and she saw something there. Was it distrust? Why was he looking at her like that? Her heart thundered faster. He knew something more than he was sharing too. It was a crazy notion—maybe not Sepella crazy but certainly nothing rational backed it up. Yet there it was, in the man’s cold eyes, Aubrey was sure of it. Perhaps Carver had aired his fears about an inside traitor with him as well. Maybe she wasn’t in this alone after all.
And maybe I’m losing it too.
Konesco went to speak. “Perhaps it’s best we don’t share this with the team. I need them focused on their job and then there’s the matter of—“
Julian suddenly burst into the room, small droplets of sweat dotting his tanned forehead. “You guys need to see this.” The concern in his voice immediately summoned the tension back in Aubrey’s aching muscles. “We’ve got a big problem.”
Chapter 8
Deck 0, Fore
Julian saw the same terror reflected on Aubrey and Konesco’s faces that he had when he first made the discovery. Looking at the churning water at the bottom of the stairwell, he felt the knot in his own stomach tightening again. The murky and somewhat oily mixture continued to lap lazily against the carpeted stairs. Deck 0 was completely gone.
Julian’s flashlight only penetrated a few feet into the grimy water. A plastic doll fought its way to the surface, caught a breath of air, and plunged back into the unknown depths. There were perhaps seven or eight feet of water already, not counting that which had inevitably filled the hold. Maybe it was Julian’s imagination but he swore the water had gained an inch on the stairs in the time it took to retrieve the others.
He decided this wasn’t one of his better days.
“How long before she sinks?” Konesco asked.
Julian shrugged. “With communications down we have no way of knowing if the flooding runs the length of the whole ship or how bad the damage to the hull is. These ships are designed to be able to take on two compartments full of water and still be seaworthy.”
“So you’re saying it might not sink?” Aubrey asked. She sounded hopeful. Julian got the vibe she didn’t like to swim. That was something they both had in common.
Of course, nobody liked getting stranded in the ocean. People hated to be the bearer of bad news too. “That much water taken on already,” the others stared at him expectantly, “It’s not a matter of if but when.”
Aubrey looked like she was going to be sick. Konesco just nodded, absorbing the information.
“The captain said they were going to try to sink the ship in his journal,” Aubrey said suddenly. “I guess someone managed to succeed.”
Julian’s attention snapped up. “Wait, what? What journal?”
Aubrey seemed surprised before realizing he didn’t explore Captain Sepella’s ready room with them. “We found a page torn out of the captain’s journal.”
“And he said they were going to sink the ship?”
Aubrey opened her mouth but Konesco spoke instead. “It’s not important right now. We’ve got a sinking ship that’s currently running on emergency power without anyone at the helm. We need to take things one step at a time and the first item on that list is to get in contact with B Squad in engineering. Anything besides that right now is superfluous. Clear?”
Julian locked eyes with Aubrey momentarily and then nodded.
“Good. Let’s move this fieldtrip along then shall we?”
The captain trudged back up the stairs. Maybe it was just him but Konesco seemed a little more harsh than usual.
What’s there to get on edge about? We’re just on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean with no way off and no communications. He glanced back at Aubrey who now looked a completely different shade of uneasy. The sinking vessel wasn’t the only thing that was bothering her. Perhaps the captain isn’t such a ladies man either. Big surprise there.
Julian made a mental note to ask her what happened between the two of them and about the journal later. He gave her the “ladies first” gesture which she accepted absently. He glared down broodingly at the grimy liquid that fought its way to get to him. A last message that was left by a captain so desperate he was trying to destroy his own ship. Where had Julian heard that before? For the first time on this mission, he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever see Ricardo ever again. He turned and hurried up the stairs after them.
They climbed to Deck 4, the first deck that had an unobstructed hallway that ran the length of the ship. And well above the water line, Julian noted.
“Stay close,” Konesco whispered. His face looked like someone had taken a spray bottle to it. “We don’t know what’s back there.”
What, not who.
Stowe it Jules. Now’s not the time to get jumpy.
Julian tightened his sweaty grip on his machine gun. Not everything is as it seems. Very helpful Marcus. At least the exec’s words weren’t fully coming true. The Emerald Rose appeared to be exactly what it was, a sinking dead husk. Whatever happened here went down a week ago. They’d only get to bring home the aftermath.
And that’s why you keep checking over your shoulder, right?
Julian had learned to always trust his instincts, a hard lesson paid for in blood. Those that listened, lived. Those that didn’t…well, that’s what body bags were invented for. Julian didn’t feel like getting measured up for a casket today. He very gently thumbed the safety off his gun.
Konesco pr
essed into the hallway leading away from the Deck 4 lobby. Aubrey went to follow but Julian caught her arm. “Captain’s never this nervous. Keep an eye out,” he whispered.
He felt her arm tense. She nodded quickly and he released her. They had to speed walk to keep up with Konesco. The ornate carpet drew them down an exhibit of tainted elegance. A splash of florescence was painted here and there by emergency lights, a dozen glowing islands floating in a sea of murky abyss. The strange shadows created by the three moving between them played hell with Julian’s eyes—not to mention his nerves.
They sidestepped a wheeled cart here, a pile of soiled towels there, minor monuments to the people that should have been there but weren’t. By the fifth or sixth glob of light, they stopped. It wasn’t by choice.
The thin corridor dead-ended in a dark, lumpy mass. The hybrid of duffel bags, service carts, and room furniture jammed together in a tight lumpy wall reached all the way to the ceiling. Konesco tested its integrity with a solid shove. The improvised wall didn’t budge.
“Looks like one of Tom’s barriers,” he said through gritted teeth. Again he prodded the blockade. “Who knows how many more are throughout the ship.”
“So what do we do now?” Aubrey asked. “Head back and try the port hallway? Sepella mentioned that some of these barricades had failed. We could try a different deck.”
Julian turned to face the way they had come. The corridor seemed longer than when they had traversed it, the islands of light stretching on into oblivion--
--an oblivion that awaited them if they went back, one that wasn’t an empty void but filled with dark things, things that wanted to slither around them, to pull them into the black.
Something less intent on their good health waited patiently for them back there, a creature worse than the dark that had crept into the shadows between islands, skulking, waiting for them to head back towards it. It was herding them, a cattle drive to the butcher’s block.
The idea was stupid, sure. Just nerves. Julian didn’t care. He turned to the nearest starboard side room door. With one solid kick, he smashed the flimsy barrier inward.
“Eduardo, what are you—“
“We need to know what’s going on in that engine room right now,” Julian replied and stepped into the suite without further explanation.
A small bathroom lay just to the right of the door. It was empty. It’d be just my luck to walk in on the one survivor on this ship in mid crap. He bypassed it. The thin entry hallway opened into a larger living space.
“To the left!”
Julian snapped his rifle up in a second’s breath. He found his weapon trained on himself. His reflection in the mirror showed a more tired man than he expected to see. Julian exhaled slowly. He turned to find that Aubrey had followed him into the room.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
“This way,” he instructed to her and Konesco who shuffled in behind her.
The previous tenants of the room were slobs. Clothes were strewn over the mini couch. The bed looked like it had been slept in for months and made by trolls who hated all things orderly. Julian suspected that only a fraction of the mess was created in the dismay of whatever had happened aboard this ship.
The room itself wasn’t his objective. He moved to the far side—all panel glass windows and a glass door—and let himself out onto the misty balcony. The warm air snatched him in its comforting embrace as he blinked away the darkness of the ship’s interior. He inhaled deeply. He had no idea how badly the ship stank, how much he hated its rank cold air, until he was free of it, and for one insane moment he wanted to hurl himself overboard and swim away from this hateful place.
The loud splashing of the ocean crashing into the hull nearly seventy feet below dissuaded him from that notion. With this day’s luck, he’d snap his spine in the fall, get sucked in through the hole in their hull, and become the only body found on this barge of the absent dead.
“This is all very nice, but why are we out here?” Konesco probed.
Julian moved to the dividing wall between this balcony and the neighboring one. The sturdy metal abutment would never be bashed down by mortal man. But when you couldn’t go through something, you could generally go around it.
“Remember Cairo?”
He was of course referring to the hotel hostage situation at one of Mr. Carver’s resorts. Konesco winced. “I hated Cairo.”
“Yeah,” Julian hoisted himself up on the dew-slicked railing, keeping a firm grip on the metal divider for support, “Me too.”
“What are you doing!?” Aubrey asked in disbelief. The doctor in her must have seen the thirty ways he could get grievously injured by doing this.
“Relax. It’s just a hop, skip…” Julian replied, trying to sound calmer than anyone attempting to jump from balcony to balcony ever felt.
The metal barrier stuck out over the ship’s edge about half a foot. Julian gripped the moist edge and eased his head around it. Wind instantly smashed into his back, threatening to yank him free of his tenuous connection to the ship. His boots squealed with the effort to keep him grounded. Eager waves reached for him four stories below. The other balcony was clear. No bogey men waiting to receive him.
Here goes everything.
He lifted one booted leg around the obstacle, the other leg straining to compensate for the extra weight and the rocking of the ship. Julian must have been a sight to see, this grown man straddling the wall like the world’s most militarized koala.
Almost there.
His toe just barely touched railing, slipped, and reestablished contact. Julian’s hands were losing the battle against gravity as they slid down the smooth wall. His muscles ached with the effort to keep him attached. He breathed in short choppy breaths.
Come on, come on!
He eased his right foot off the railing and began the transfer.
Shit!
Julian’s left foot, his only hold on the ship, squealed off the railing. He fell faster than a person could think, arms flailing for anything that could save him. His wrist smashed painfully into one of the railing’s rungs with a glorious ping. He fought back the urge to pull away from the agony and grabbed. A second burst of liquid fire exploded through his arm as it halted his body’s fall. His chest crunched up against the ship’s exterior hard enough to knock the wind out. He coughed painfully, fighting for air, battling with the dizzy sensation that threatened to pull him into unconsciousness.
He was alive. His body would punish him for it later.
“Julian!” Aubrey and Konesco shouted simultaneously.
He reached up—damn that hurts—and used the railing like a makeshift ladder. Each rung he pulled on sent new waves of agony through his aching arm and torso as if the ship was electrified. He hoisted himself over the top and threw himself onto the balcony, smacking a deck chair as he went down. He gulped greedily at the air as he fought to regain his composure.
“…and a jump,” he concluded hoarsely. “So who’s up next?”
Static blared over his headset and Mackenzie’s voice fought its way through. “Captain, you need to get back up here pronto!”
“Mackenzie? Do you copy?” Konesco tested.
“Oh Captain, thank God! There’s someone up here moving shit around and it doesn’t sound like they want to bring joy to the world.”
“Mackenzie, we’re kind of busy at the moment. This had better not be nerves.”
Olga’s voice cut in. “Captain it’s not Mac’s overactive imagination this time—“
“Hey.”
“—there’s really someone up here. And from the sounds of it, they can really pack a punch.”
Konesco was silent for a moment. “Julian?”
Shit.
“Go, I’ll be fine.” Julian wasn’t keen on facing the long dark of the ship alone, but he knew how to handle himself. Basket case Mac, however, was pretty killable. Julian wasn’t going to lose anyone else today.
“Hang tight. We’re on ou
r way.”
“Julian?” Aubrey called, the concern evident in her voice.
“Just go, it’ll be alright,” he instructed.
Julian heard the two move off on the other side of the barrier leaving him alone. Be safe.
He stood on shaky battered legs and faced the new dark room ahead. Julian wanted nothing more than to spend just a few more minutes out in the warm fresh air of the balcony, but knew that that was a dangerous thought, that if he gave into it for just a second he’d never find the courage to reenter the ship. He sighed. I think I’ll let Carver know my asking price for this one just doubled. He opened the glass door and was blasted with the unpleasant reminder that the ship smelled like crap vomited from a corpse. Guess I’ll go see what there is to see.
Chapter 9
Deck 4, Midship
Aubrey felt like she was being pulled between the gravity of two gas giants. In the short sprint back to the stairwell, every step towards the beleaguered bridge team couldn’t come fast enough. And yet each step took them further from Julian. God only knew what fate they had abandoned him to face alone.
She had to admit, she was relieved she wouldn’t have to perform the little parkour stunt. Turtles with broken legs were more agile than her. The list of things that relieved her on this mission pretty much ended there.
Now she hurried up the stairs with a guy she didn’t fully trust to help some people she hardly knew against who knew what kind of threat. Her scientific mind deduced that the pirate theory didn’t really float anymore. Pirates didn’t sink the ship they were trying to rob, or leave creepy ass journal entries lying around. Anything beyond that was up to the part of her brain that wove nightmares.
Konesco motioned for them to slow down, her heart not getting the memo. They had reached Deck 8. She tried to control her rapid breathing and listen. If someone was banging things around before when Mac called, they had since finished whatever they were trying to do and had gone silent.
Konesco turned towards her, taking care to slide in a way that he could still monitor both hallway entrances. “You’ve handled one of these before?” He produced a handgun.
