The Last Passenger
Page 32
The Valkyrie was drifting through the storm with no one at the helm and its engines powered off. The waves had lashed the ship off course. In a storm like this, it was no more than a question of time before a particularly strong wave obliterated the hull and sent the Valkyrie to the bottom of the ocean. The wind grew more blustery, and it was hard to tell if it would take hours or just a few minutes, but one way or another, the ship was doomed. If she didn’t hurry, Kate would go down with the ship.
Fighting against the ceaseless wind and rain, Kate gripped the railing and walked forward step by step. Each movement forward was a serious accomplishment. The salty water was splashing against her knees more frequently, and Kate realized that the water level had risen quickly. It could only mean one thing—the ship had sustained a leak somewhere, and the Valkyrie was sinking.
While the leak hastened the Valkyrie’s end, it also saved Kate’s life. Flooding the Valkyrie’s cargo holds, the water was weighing the ship down and causing it to be more stable as it sank. For Kate to lower the lifeboat down to the water without hitting the side of the ship, it was imperative that the ship not rock too violently. If the lifeboat slammed into the ship, the force would break the boat apart, casting Kate into the ocean to drown.
She finally reached the closest lifeboat. Next to that boat, in some vicious time warp, she had found a straw hat, the first sign of the nightmare that was to come. Kate shivered at the memory.
She raised the glass protecting the pulley and activated the boat’s descent. The electric engines hummed to life, and the boat began its trip to the water. When she was about to step into the vessel, her foot bumped something. It was Robert’s urn. Kate picked it up and entered the raft.
Then, she breathed deeply a few times, and screwing up her courage, she pressed the button to release the two pins simultaneously.
With a click the lifeboat was released from its securements, and it dropped to the water. Kate grabbed hold of her seat to avoid being bucked off. The tiny lifeboat was tossed about in the middle of waves that looked like enormous hills all around her.
A treacherous wave slammed the side of the boat and flooded it. Kate struggled to keep her head above the waves. Seawater got into her mouth, and she spat out what she did not swallow. Then, she heard a thunderous crunch behind her, and she looked back. Through the fog of the storm, she watched as the majestic stern of the Valkyrie tipped up above the waves and sheets of water poured from the bronze propellers. The ship was sinking and producing a symphony of sound. Metal crunched and scraped. For a moment the ship remained vertical and was tossed about by the waves, and all of the lights turned off on board. Kate flinched and waited for the final blow that would finally send the ship to the depths of the ocean. But the Valkyrie sank tamely below the waves, as if an invisible hand were pulling it from below.
The ocean surface bubbled a few times, and a couple of life preservers appeared in the dirty, oily whitecaps that crowned the waves, but suddenly, everything had come to an end.
The Valkyrie was no more.
LIV
Eight hours later
A cold morning sunrise slowly usurped the darkness. The sea had been tossing the lifeboat around for hours, leaving Kate bruised and unable to sleep. She was exhausted, terrified, and dying of thirst. The fog had vanished, and the sunshine had revealed a wide expanse of empty ocean that was still stirring from the aftershocks of the storm receding on the horizon.
As soon as the boat had quit swaying, Kate risked letting go of the seat she’d gripped tightly for hours. She took a couple of shaky steps to the other side of the boat and pulled open a rubber cover to reveal a modern emergency beacon. With tired eyes she followed the instructions and pressed a button to activate it. The beacon turned on with a blip, and a red light began blinking on one side. Then, far too exhausted to care, she collapsed against it and closed her eyes.
Even though the Valkyrie had drifted quite a ways during the storm, Kate knew more or less where she was. She was near the commercial routes that crossed the Atlantic. What she did not know was when she was. She contemplated what the hell she might do if she wound up trapped in 1939.
She looked up and weighed her possibilities. All in all, living in 1939 would not be such a bad thing. It would have its drawbacks, of course, but . . .
Smoke. Smoke was on the horizon.
Kate got up and looked for a pair of binoculars in the boat’s emergency kit. In the distance she could make out a black spot moving against the rising sun. She put down the binoculars and searched through the supplies until she found a flare gun. She placed a flare inside before pointing into the sky and firing.
With a hiss, the flare ascended into the air and exploded high above in a lovely cloud of red. Kate fired two more flares before opening a colored smoke flare she found at the bottom of the emergency kit. The lifeboat was immediately enveloped in a red cloud that had to be visible miles away. She picked up her binoculars again and looked toward the ship. She sighed in relief. The spot in the distance was coming closer.
They had seen her.
The wait felt like an eternity. It was an enormous, imposing cargo vessel that was sailing alone. It made Kate feel miniscule and left her in a state of doubt. But eventually, the ship was close enough for her to make out the colors on the hull. On the deck above she could see hundreds of stacked Maersk containers.
Overcome with joy, Kate looked around the bottom of the lifeboat. Tucked back in a corner, dripping wet, was Robert’s urn. Kate picked it up tenderly and brought it to her lips for one last, soft kiss. Then, she held it above the waves and let go. Entranced, she watched as the urn slowly sank down to its final resting place at the bottom of the ocean.
Good-bye, Robert.
Robert, who had helped her survive this horrible experience.
Robert, whose spirit had somehow nestled into those ashes.
Robert, the man who had been able to remain by her side even after Moore had tossed his ashes out to the winds.
Robert, the man who had defied the shadow’s plans.
Kate smiled and delighted in her secret. She watched as the boat that would rescue her descended to the water. As she waited Kate gently placed a hand over her womb.
Because there, inside, grew the fruit of one last fit of passion. Because she knew that the child of a dead man was growing inside of her, the child of the man who had come back from the shadows to save her life.
A child of love. A child of light.
The last passenger on board the Valkyrie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2012 Pablo Manuel Otero
International bestselling author Manel Loureiro was born in Pontevedra, Spain, and studied law at Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. After graduating, he worked in television, both on-screen (appearing on Televisión de Galicia) and behind-the-scenes as a writer. His Apocalypse Z trilogy—The Beginning of the End, Dark Days, and The Wrath of the Just—took him from the blogosphere to bestsellerdom, earning him acclaim as “the Spanish Stephen King” by La Voz de Galicia. Loureiro continues to reside in his native Pontevedra.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Andrés Alfaro is a translator, teacher, and musician who focuses on Central American literature, especially that of contemporary Costa Rica. He received his MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa. His translations have appeared in The Buenos Aires Review, MahMag, Hispanic Issues, and Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. He currently resides in Iowa City, Iowa.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
CONTENTS
PART ONE THE FOG
I
II
III
IV
PART TWO KATE
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
PART THREE VALKYRIE
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
L
LI
LII
LIII
LIV
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR