The Last Passenger

by Manel Loureiro

  Suddenly, the noises stopped. The feeling of sluggishness that had dogged them was slowly dissipating as the elevator sank deeper into the heart of the ship. The air seemed to become more breathable, and Kate was able to stand up straight without feeling like someone was violating her mind.

  “I think it went away,” she murmured, trying to convince herself, as she labored to catch her breath.

  “I think so,” Senka answered, looking up at the ceiling doubtfully. She pulled on the sweatpants and tied her hair back in a ponytail. Gradually, they seemed to be regaining control. “But I don’t think we can outrun whatever it is for much longer. We have to get off this ship as soon as we can, or we’ll be found sooner or later.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Kate said. “We’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in case you forgot.”

  “We could take one of the lifeboats.”

  “And drift around six hundred miles from any land and in the middle of a storm?”

  “How about we scamper about this damn ship without a plan until that thing hunts us down, Kate?” Senka’s Slavic accent was even more pronounced than usual. “Unless you have a better plan, we ought to go out to the deck rather than the storage holds. That’s the equivalent of hiding in the basement of a haunted house.”

  “We have to go down to the boiler rooms. That’s the only hope we have of getting out of this nightmare.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Kate stared at her. It wouldn’t be easy to explain that she had just slept with her husband a few hours ago and that he was the one who had told her. Not to mention that her husband had been dead for weeks. Even though the line between rationality and irrationality aboard the Valkyrie had long ago been tossed to the wind, it was simply too intimate to share.

  “When you got me out of the brig, you freed me from reliving a horrible experience,” Senka finally said, a repulsive grimace contorting her otherwise beautiful features. “You have no idea what they had in store for me. I overheard them talking. Those sons of bitches. It’s all I’m able to remember.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s it. They were just talking about what order they were going to . . . Then, I remember being struck hard on the side of the head and then . . . nothing. That is, until you kissed me.” Senka smiled openly even though her split lip made her wince. “So, either I’m crazy, or this ship is cursed. Both choices are equally scary. So if you want to go down to the cargo holds instead of venturing out on the ocean, maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.”

  It was Kate’s turn to smile. The two embraced, silently affirming that they had one another’s backs.

  Then, the elevator stopped with one final rattle, and the door opened.

  XLVI

  What awaited them looked straight out of a Bosch painting. A draft of fiery hot air whipped across their faces as the two stepped out of the elevator, far too shocked to speak. Kate’s inability to focus on any one thing was making her sick as everything whirled around her. She heaved, but all that came up from her empty stomach was bile.

  The explosion of the stabilizing engines had sent a volley of lethal shrapnel across the machine room. The chief engine operator, tall and athletic, had been torn apart by the blast. The other four engineers had met the same fate, and now their bodies were sprayed across the room. The largest pieces of the remains looked like pincushions some sadistic giant had delighted in by poking them with splintered, twisted needles. Blood oozed out around the primary engines that continued to roar. It was hard to tell what smelled worse, the stench of burning oil and diesel fuel or the blood stewing on hot metal.

  Both mental and emotional exhaustion dropped Kate to the floor. It was all just too much. She wanted to cry but couldn’t even muster the tears to do so. Her emotions had been disconnected or perhaps stamped out completely. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for a week. She wanted to wake up and realize it had all been a horribly vivid nightmare. But more than anything, she wanted to wake up and find Robert’s hot body next to her in bed.

  “Are you going to make it?” Senka asked, leaning over her with a look of concern.

  Kate shook her head. “This place. So many horrors. So much bloodshed and death, Senka. I can’t do this anymore.”

  Senka took a couple of strides toward the middle of the engine room and stepped within an inch of the severed head of one of the engineers, its neck studded with many bits and pieces of steel.

  “We have to do something now, Kate!” Senka said, the urgency in her voice betraying a hint of panic. “No one is around, so whatever it is we’ve come to do down here, now’s our chance to do it!”

  Senka walked forward and stepped on a piece of lung that collapsed beneath her foot with a squishy sound. She didn’t even flinch. She just stared straight at Kate, looking more and more confused.

  Then, Kate understood.

  She can’t see it, thought Kate. She can’t see any of this.

  “Senka, tell me what you see down here. Doesn’t something seem off?”

  “The stench of metal,” Senka said and shuddered. “I remember I smelled something just like it just before . . .” Her eyes widened in terror, and her head whirled all around. “Do you think it’s here? Do you think that shadow’s found us?”

  “I don’t think so,” answered Kate, getting up off the ground. She felt like she’d aged tremendously, like her soul had been weighed down by a sack of rocks. Something had changed within her, perhaps forever. She was trapped between two worlds. “It’s just the smell of the engines, Senka.”

  “So what are we doing down here?”

  “We’ve got to stop the Valkyrie by any means necessary.” She looked at her watch. The time of the last log entry had already passed. Whatever was going to happen—or, rather, whatever had already happened—was about to happen.

  About to happen again.

  “How are we going to do that? Do you understand any of this?” As Senka pointed to the multitude of gauges, levers, buttons, and indicators, her index finger brushed a dial that was soaked in blood and clumped bits of brain.

  With both disgust and fascination, Kate watched how Senka didn’t even realize that her fingertip was slicked with someone else’s blood.

  Robert, Kate thought to herself, now would be a great time for you to say something.

  As she paced around hoping to discover an answer to their problems, Kate kicked something that jingled across the floor. She followed it with her eyes and assumed it was a piece of shrapnel. But the metal was far too long and perfect. Intrigued, she took a closer look. It was a long screw, maybe two inches in length. It was perfectly greased and shiny. She wondered where it had come from. Then, the screw trembled a moment before beginning to roll, moving slowly, as if being attracted by a magnet.

  At first Kate thought it was because the sea had been rocking the ship. But she realized the screw was rolling in the opposite direction from everything else, which was sliding in an avalanche of iron, flesh, and unidentifiable parts.

  It was hair-raising. It defied all of the laws of physics. With a pang of sadness, Kate thought of how much Carter would have liked to see it.

  The screw rolled against a steel grate on the wall and stopped there. There were five other screws sitting on a jacket. The jacket had been set neatly in the crack of the grate, conveniently propping it open.

  Thank you, Robert.

  “Where does that tunnel lead?” Senka asked as she helped Kate move the grate. The reporter shrugged, and Senka, a bundle of nerves, started to smile. “I don’t suppose there’s any screw rolling around in that passageway that will tell us what to do, is there?”

  Kate’s only response was to start moving through the tunnel. The stench of burnt oil was stronger than anywhere else on the ship. The passageway narrowed down to a circular tunnel that only became more cramped and dark. Only then did Kate realize that neither of them had brought a flashlight. Their only option was to grope a path through the blac
kness.

  The passage continued to narrow, and a severe wave of claustrophobia hit Kate. She could picture herself enclosed in that tiny passageway with hundreds of tons of steel and pipework above her head and only a plate of steel beneath separating her from thousands of feet of icy water. Ahead was only darkness, and behind Senka was blocking her only way out. The ceiling became dramatically lower and forced both women to continue by crawling.

  Kate stopped. Her legs and arms were getting stiff. Her breath was getting shorter and more labored. Little fireflies of light pranced before her eyes in the darkness. She shut her eyes. Sweat was rolling down her back and sides, and her clothes were sticking to her body like a second skin. She was hyperventilating so much that she was on the verge of fainting.

  I’m going to get stuck in here. We’ll be trapped, and that shadow will find us and devour us in this rat maze.

  “Easy, baby.” Robert’s voice burst into her mind and had an immediate soothing effect. “There’s just a little ways left. Have faith, Kate Kilroy.”

  Her nerves relaxed, and she opened her eyes to see the faint glow of a flashlight flickering in front of her. She crawled toward the light, but her nostrils were assaulted by a new stench that overpowered the smell of burnt oil. It smelled like decay and charred flesh.

  Kate then noticed that beside the flashlight was a bulge that was not moving. As she got closer she realized it was a human body. Kate armed herself with courage and crawled the final few feet until she was within inches the figure’s feet. She pulled on the leg, but the body did not move. The person was dead.

  Trying to hold back her repulsion, Kate turned the face up. She was stunned to see the bloated, bloody face of Will Paxton. He was gazing at her with the same expression of shock and rage that would remain plastered on his face for all eternity.

  “It’s Paxton.” Senka had crawled up to her side. Both women were quite skinny, yet they barely fit side by side in the narrow tunnel. “What the hell was he doing here?”

  Kate grabbed the flashlight, which was nearly dead, and pointed it down the tunnel. They could make out the opening over the axle and the neat bundles of Semtex piled around the room as if some dangerous child had been playing there. The detonation wires hung out of each pile, ready to be connected.

  “Paxton was the Wolf und Klee spy,” Kate whispered in disbelief.

  “Maybe,” Senka murmured with a shudder, lost in her own thoughts. “Or maybe not. Maybe it was the Valkyrie that brought him here. Besides, the who is not as important as the why.” Pensively, Senka examined the piles of Semtex for a few moments. Finally, she nodded and looked sure of herself. “He wanted to render the axle useless, that’s for sure,” she said as she handled the detonators. She took a bundle of explosives and handed it to Kate. “But he was using too many explosives. If he had succeeded in setting this off, he would have blown a hole in the hull the size of a bus. We would’ve gone down in five minutes. There wouldn’t have even been enough time to deploy the lifeboats.” Senka frowned and began piling a few bundles of Semtex around the axle. “It’s strange,” she said. “Someone capable of handling this kind of material must know how much to use. I don’t get how he could have made such a dumb mistake.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t able to think clearly,” Kate speculated. “Aboard this ship it seems like there are times when your mind is thinking backward.”

  “These three bricks should be enough,” Senka said. “The blast will twist up the axle and probably create a hole in the hull, but it won’t be serious. I’ll set the timer to go off in fifteen minutes. What do you think?”

  Kate thought and then gave a nod. They would be able to get out of the engine room in fifteen minutes and take the elevator up to one of the outside decks. Once there they would be able to hide in one of the lifeboats hanging from the side of the ship. With a little luck they would go unnoticed until the moment the Singularity ended, and everything went back to normal. In the event that the madness continued, they could always drop the lifeboat to the water and hope to be rescued by some nearby ship.

  Senka pressed a sequence of buttons and stuck the end of a detonation wire in the wax around the Semtex. At the last second, compelled by a sudden epiphany, she grabbed Paxton’s green cloth bag and looked inside. With a perverse smile she took out what looked like a metallic pin and connected it to the explosives. Then, very carefully, she dragged Paxton’s body over the bundle in the middle of the passageway, so that if anyone wanted to get to it, they would first have to move the body.

  “This is a pressure detonator,” she explained and backed up on all fours. “If anyone tries to get to the bomb and moves the body, the whole thing will go off.”

  When they got back into the engine room, Kate was gasping for breath. She took the stale, rotten air of the storeroom into her lungs because she had to, but after all that time trapped in the service tunnel, it smelled like the sweetest air on the planet.

  She turned to Senka and smiled, but her heart shrank to the size of a pinhead when she saw the terrified expression on her friend’s face.

  Before she even had time to think about it, Kate felt an insufferable pain in the back of her head, and darkness fell over her.

  XLVII

  Moore felt so jubilant that he could barely stay still. For starters he’d been given complete authority to deal with the Jews. That alone was enough to make him ecstatic, and his mind teemed restlessly as voices continually whispered dark, devilish ideas.

  But as if summoned from a magical lamp, when Moore and his three men exited the elevator, they ran headlong into the two Communist sluts. Their backs were to him, and they were apparently distracted. It had indeed been a stroke of good luck. The voices in his head had howled in a chorus of delight as Moore rammed the butt of his gun into the back of the redheaded bitch’s neck. If they’d come five minutes earlier or later, the two women would have already placed their bombs and stealthily scurried away again.

  They were very good, he had to admit it. The Serb had managed to break out of her cell in astounding fashion. The three men that had been on duty were missing without a trace, something that worried Moore slightly, until the strongest voice in his head told him to forget that minor detail. Since she told him to, Moore obeyed. She was his friend. His personal goddess. His guiding light.

  The fact that these two women were moving freely about the ship constituted a security threat. But now it was as if they’d fallen from the sky, holding a bag full of detonators and some futuristic, earth-like material that could only be an explosive. Moore had taken care of the English woman, and one of the guards had put a stranglehold on the Serbian woman, who had fought back like a viper. The four men dragged the women into the empty coal storage room.

  “More stowaways?” asked the engine operator. “It’s like a goddamn infestation of cockroaches. Someone oughta be more careful in Hamburg.”

  “Worse.” Moore pointed above the man’s shoulder. “These women are Communist spies. Probably Jews. We no longer have any need for you, Chief. Head back to work. We’ll take care of things from here.”

  Moore managed to make his last sentence sound so threatening that the chief operator turned pale and raced out of the room. The thought of what Moore might do to these stowaways made him feel sick, but whatever might happen, he wanted nothing to do with it.

  Kate began coming to slowly, feeling like she’d polished off the entire wine cellar. She wanted to throw up and had a terrible headache, but now she realized that it hadn’t been caused by the dark shadow.

  Moore watched the Jewish family as if he were finding them all over again. The young father had managed to stanch his bleeding, but his nose would never look the same again. His glasses were no more than a twisted, broken souvenir. The man looked furious and frightened all at once. The mother was sobbing softly over the baby. The young girl’s arm had taken on a blackish color, thanks to Moore’s manhandling of her.

  The only one who hadn’t changed positions was
the old rabbi. He stood on his two feet as if they were cement posts in the ground, standing indefatigably. An incomprehensible murmur, his prayers almost couldn’t be heard above the thunderous noise of the engines. His eyes remained shut until Moore walked up to him, at which point he stopped and opened his eyes.

  The rabbi did not blink. He simply moved his eyes over the group without expressing an iota of emotion. He appeared to be off in some distant land that was beyond all feeling, emotion, or suffering. Then, his eyes stopped on Kate. His lips curved up in the slightest of smiles that was nearly imperceptible before he uttered nine simple words that were spoken in a surprisingly firm manner for a man of his age.

  “Hello, Kate. You’re finally here. Now everything can begin.”

  He closed his eyes again and swayed rhythmically. He was far from everything that surrounded him, distant and peaceful.

  “You know the Jew!” Moore threw up his hands and turned beet red. “I knew it. I knew you were a Jewish spy. Fucking Zionist conspiracy—admit it!”

  Kate, still lying on the floor, shook her head but was too feeble and confused to speak. She looked at each member of the family with wide eyes before they fell on the eldest member.

  “All right, if you won’t talk, maybe the old man will.” Moore spun around without warning and put a hard boot into the rabbi’s knee, which crunched like firewood being split in the winter. The man collapsed to the floor. His face was full of color, but his lips were pressed shut, and he didn’t make a sound. He kept his eyes focused on Kate, looking at her with such tender care and warmth that she could feel his genuine affection.