Chucklers: Laughter is Contagious

by Jeff Brackett

  He couldn’t save her. She didn’t know she needed to be saved. None of the people around him understood. So he took the coward’s way. He ran on.

  As he shoved his way through the milling crowd, the volume of the voices behind him rose. There was more laughing… more screaming. And he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could hear the young woman’s voice join those of the screamers.

  As soon as he hit the deck below, he cut sharply around the first corner he came to and looked for something to hide behind. Nothing.

  Ahead, he could see pockets of normalcy along the ship. But there were also pockets of laughter, and those areas turned immediately into rioting throngs of insanity. People—running, panicked, angry, fighting, laughing, people. People fighting for their lives. There were screams of anguish and anger, but above it all was the incessant sound of maniacal laughter. Whatever this was, it was spreading rapidly throughout the ship.

  Chris shoved his way through the riot, pushing away everyone, laughing or not. All he wanted was to get away from everyone… to hide.

  A scene caught his eye… a man swung a length of wood, something he had salvaged from some broken piece of furniture. He screamed his defiance at several laughing attackers, hitting them with his makeshift weapon, but all his screams did was draw more attention to himself, and as Chris looked on, the man fell beneath more of them.

  Looking for a way through the churning crowd, Chris began to panic. He shoved people away, heading toward the elevator. The only thing he could think of was to get into an elevator and get to the lower decks. If he could get to the crew quarters, there was a chance that the insanity hadn’t made it past the general populace. Even if that wasn’t the case, there were fewer people below decks, so it should at least be easier to hide.

  Chris dodged through the crowd until he got to the elevator. He hit the button and ducked behind a large decorative potted plant, waiting for his salvation to arrive. He didn’t hear its arrival over the screams of the crowd, but he saw a laughing group of teens pour out of it. As they dove into the fray, Chris jumped up and ran into the newly emptied car. He pressed frantically at the button to close the doors even as he reached for his ID badge with his other hand.

  After an agonizing wait, the doors slid shut. He shoved his ID card into the slot on the panel, and selected the restricted D2 button that would take him to the floor where his quarters were located.

  He sobbed with relief when the elevator began to move.

  Chapter 15

  August Grappin

  This Is a Family Cruise

  Gus eventually caught Cindy in a darkened corner of the pool, and he had to wonder if he’d really caught her, or if she had let him catch up in the place of her choosing. He had to admit that the dark corner was about as good a place as the waterpark offered. He smiled as he swam up to her. They were in the deep end of the pool now, and Cindy had to hold onto the wall.

  He put his hands on either side of her. The exertion of the chase in the pool had taken more out of him than he had expected. He felt lightheaded, drunk. He grinned at her, suddenly leaning in and kissing her hard.

  Cindy moaned into his mouth, grinding against his thigh. She reached down to the bulge in his swim trunks and gripped him hard. He laughed.

  “That’s enough, you two.” The lifeguard scowled at them. “This is a family cruise.”

  Gus ignored him, laughing as he pawed at Cindy’s bikini top.

  “Hey! I said that’s enough! You can’t do that here.” The man dropped into the water beside them and reached to pull Gus and Cindy apart.

  Cindy laughed at him, and threw herself forward, suddenly clawing at the man’s face. He screamed in pain as one of her nails tore into his eye. Gus thought this was hilarious. He grabbed the man’s head and slammed it into the side of the pool. He and Cindy giggled as the blood from the man’s scalp wound began to spread through the pool. They let go, and the lifeguard’s unconscious form slipped facedown into the water.

  Gus grabbed again at her breast, giggling as he did so. “I like tits!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. Several other kids around him laughed as well. There were also screams, but most of the kids were laughing and shouting. For a brief moment, Gus felt like there was something wrong. Wasn’t there something…?

  The thought left as quickly as it had come. After that, all that mattered was the laughter. Maintaining the high that accompanied the laughter. Finding anyone who wasn’t laughing. Making them laugh. Or using them to make others laugh.

  Cindy pulled herself out of the water, and Gus noticed with interest that one of the straps on her bikini was untied. It had come loose, leaving her left breast exposed, giving him the first glimpse he’d ever had of a real live breast. He guffawed at the sight and pulled himself up to follow her out of the water.

  Chapter 16

  Transcript of emergency radio call from cruise ship Bahama Queen to US Coast Guard Search and Rescue unit based out of Freeport, Texas

  Sunday, November 20 – 10:53 AM

  BAHAMA QUEEN —…an emergency. Please someone respond!

  USCG DISPATCH — This is Coast Guard Search and Rescue out of Freeport. Please identify yourself.

  BAHAMA QUEEN — There’s some kind of outbreak here—

  USCG DISPATCH — Sir? Who is this?

  BAHAMA QUEEN — I’m sorry. (voice sobbing) They’re killing everyone! Everybody’s going crazy.

  USCG DISPATCH — Sir? I need you to iden—

  BAHAMA QUEEN — My name is Johannes Karlsson. I am third engineer on the Bahama Queen, and the rest of the crew— (more sobbing)

  USCG DISPATCH — Mr. Karlsson? What’s going on, sir? You said someone was killing people. Who is it?

  BAHAMA QUEEN — They’re laughing and… and… (undecipherable).

  USCG DISPATCH — I’m sorry, Mr. Karlsson. What are they doing?

  BAHAMA QUEEN — I was on watch when they started laughing… they began beating people with… with anything they could grab… (more sobbing)

  USCG DISPATCH — Mr. Karlsson, is there someone else there I can speak with?

  BAHAMA QUEEN — There’s no one else down here. No one sane. I’m hiding in the Engineering Control Room. (pause) Oh, God. They’re outside! They can see me through the glass!

  (loud, repeating, booming noise in background)

  BAHAMA QUEEN — Oh God. (mumbling)

  USCG DISPATCH — Mr. Karlsson, what’s going on? What is that noise?

  BAHAMA QUEEN — They’re beating the glass. It’s breaking. It’s not supposed to break. Oh God. They’re going to get in.

  USCG DISPATCH — Do you have someplace you can hide?

  BAHAMA QUEEN — (undecipherable)

  USCG DISPATCH — What was that?

  BAHAMA QUEEN — They can see me. They’ll know where — (sound of glass falling and breaking) Oh my God! They’re coming in! (Many voices laughing in the background) Please don’t let… (screaming)

  [Transmission ends]

  Chapter 17

  Chris Tallant

  Elevator Hatch

  The elevator traveled only a few seconds before the lights went out, and the car jerked to a halt. The car went pitch dark for a short time before the red emergency light in the ceiling flickered to life.

  “No!” Tallant jumped forward and hit the D2 button over and over, trying to will the car back into motion.

  He was stuck. Worse, he was stuck, and terrified, in a motionless elevator, with nothing but the faint red illumination of the emergency lighting as he tried to come to grips with the fact that his dream job had turned into a nightmare only Dante himself could imagine, all in a matter of a few minutes. He hit the call button on the panel, but the line was silent. Did it tie into the power system somehow?

  There was no way for him to know for sure, but it didn’t seem likely. After all, a power failure was what had trapped him in the elevator to begin with. Who would design an emergency system that would quit working as soon as the elevat
or did? But he was having trouble thinking straight. His heart pounded in his chest, and his lungs heaved as he gasped for breath so rapidly that he sobbed as the oxygen entered his terrified body.

  He told himself it was simple exertion, not panic, that made him tremble. And his eyes were just blurry from exhaustion, not tears. He forced himself to take more trembling breaths, sucking oxygen deeply into his lungs, and trying to calm his trembling nerves.

  “Don’t panic!” he told himself. “There’s no one after you right now.” He looked around the elevator once more. “And for the moment, at least, you’re safe.”

  It was true. He assessed the elevator anew, seeing it now not as a trap, but rather as about as safe a place as he could hope for, considering the riot he had just escaped.

  But that drew his attention back to the sounds on the other side of the steel doors. The agonized screams, and insane laughter, and the pounding in his chest rose again. His breathing increased again, and his hands started shaking once more. His hands shook as he tried to wrap his head around his situation, and it became too much. He sank to the floor of the elevator, squeezed his eyes closed, and covered his ears, trying in vain to block out the sights and sounds replaying in his mind. At some point, his mind simply refused to accept any more of the insanity. The faint shouts and screams faded into nightmares of bloody binoculars and laughing dolphins.

  Chapter 18

  Charles Griffe

  Stone-Cold Sober

  Charlie must have passed out, because he woke up staring into the vomit-filled toilet. The stench of partially digested lobster thermidor and whiskey caused him to gag once more, but there was nothing left in his much-abused stomach to heave, and he had finally managed to raise his aching head off the porcelain rim of the commode.

  The muzak piping in through the bathroom speakers ripped through his pounding head like a jackhammer, but he fought his way to his feet. He fumbled for a moment with the lock on the stall door, but finally persevered and staggered to the row of sinks. It only took him a few minutes to rinse his mouth and scrub the puke off his face. He stared into the mirror at the disheveled reflection, focusing for the moment of the splatters of partially digested lobster humidor on his collar. You look like hell. And it’s all her fault. She made a fool of you. You let her make a fool of you.

  “Damned bitch!” It was her who had whined about dinner, who had turned down a ninety-dollar fucking lobster dinner—her who had run off crying when he’d said he didn’t want to go dancing. Hell, it was her who’d wanted to come on the fucking cruise, not him! And now here he was, drunk in a bathroom in the bar of a cruise ship he didn’t want to be on in the first place. He slipped off his soiled dinner jacket, making sure to hide the pale stains as he draped it over his arm.

  In a worse mood than he could remember being in, in a very long time, Charlie opened the door to go back out to the bar. He froze before the door was open more than a few inches, sure that there was something wrong with his eyes. Or perhaps he was just more plastered than he thought, because the sight before him surely couldn’t be real. There was no way that the bar had really turned into a slaughterhouse full of bodies while he was passed out in the bathroom. He blinked. Then blinked again, willing his eyes to shed this macabre illusion and show him the mundane reality he expected. But no, the carnage remained, and there were about a dozen teens laughing hysterically as they beat the few remaining victims with bottles evidently acquired from behind the bar. Charlie’s eyes widened, and he was quite suddenly stone-cold sober as he realized that he was witnessing a mass murder in progress. As quickly as possible, he closed the door to where there was only enough of an opening to peer through.

  In the far corner of the room, a young boy, about fifteen or sixteen years old, swung an electric guitar over and over, beating one of the jazz musicians to his knees before the neck of the guitar finally broke. Then he rammed the splintered neck into the man’s abdomen and pointed, jumping up and down, laughing excitedly.

  An old woman came staggering into sight from across the room. She was sobbing hysterically, clearly terrified as she glanced back over her shoulder into the room behind her. Charlie heard the laughter of her pursuers and he ducked back out of sight, pulling the restroom door almost closed. Peeking through a half-inch gap, he watched in horrified fascination as six or seven teens caught the woman and knocked her to her knees. An attractive young girl in a string bikini swung a bottle at the old woman’s face, and Charlie’s eyes locked for a second on the picture on the label, where a seventeenth-century privateer stood on one leg, the other foot raised and resting possessively on a barrel of rum.

  His trance was broken as the bottle slammed into the woman’s cheek, and she shrieked in anguish. It was a terrified wail, more horrifying than anything he had ever before heard, and Charlie choked back his own scream as something flew from her face. He envisioned a piece of her jaw ripped from her skull and thrown flying at him. It was harder still for him to remain silent when he saw that there appeared to be a full set of teeth lying on the carpet before him, until he realized it was a set of dentures. He looked back at the poor woman, and he saw momentary hope in her eyes as they locked onto his own. For a split second, Charlie’s heart trip-hammered in his chest and he feared she was going to give away his hiding place. That fear, and the hope in her eyes, evaporated as the girl in the bikini did her best Mickey Mantle imitation, slamming the bottle of rum into the back of the woman’s head so hard that the bottle broke, half of it flying into the face of one of her companions. They all seemed to think this was hilarious, even the boy whose face the glass had cut, and the old woman dropped like a marionette with severed strings. From where he cowered, Charlie could see her empty eyes staring sightlessly at the spreading pool of scarlet as her life’s blood leaked from her mouth and nose onto the finely tiled floor.

  Another shout drew his attention to where a different group of teens dragged the bartender onto the bar itself and began beating him with whatever they could get their hands on. Charlie froze, unsure of what to do. He was a big man, in relatively good condition. Should he run in to help the poor bartender? The teens were facing away from him. He could jump them from behind, probably knock several of them down. They were only kids, after all. Jump in, kick a little ass, and drag the man out of the crowd before they knew what happened.

  Or you could run.

  He looked around to consider his options. The restrooms were near the entrance to the lounge, and Charlie bolted without a second’s hesitation. He was running toward the elevators when the lights went out. All the lights, all the music piping through the speaker system, all the elevators — all suddenly lifeless.

  “Shit!” Charlie watched helplessly as the indicators on the elevators went dark. Dim red lights now lined the room and corridors, the only light available to in the otherwise pitch darkness. And he was suddenly aware of the sound of laughter as the doors to the bar opened behind him. The gang was coming. Whether they had seen him leave, or it was just a coincidence didn’t matter. He had no doubt that he would meet the same fate as the people in the bar if they caught him. Next to the elevators, a door sported an emergency exit sign. Charlie slammed his shoulder into the door and raced down the stairwell.

  Chapter 19

  Chris Tallant

  Get Your Act Together

  Time passed. He wasn’t sure how much, but it was long enough that his body ached when he stirred on the dark floor of the elevator car. The dim emergency light didn’t cast enough light for him to see what time it was. And the act of trying made him wince at the long bloody streaks on his arm. He wondered if the girl who gave them to him was still alive.

  The shouts and screams outside the elevator seemed to have diminished for the moment. He realized that while the elevator car might be a safe enough refuge for now, he couldn’t continue to hide in it. And the idea that he was hiding at all, shamed him into action. “Come one, Tallant. Get your act together.” He got to his feet and took a deep,
shaking breath. “You’re a freaking second mate on this ship, dammit! So get your sorry ass out of this elevator and get some help!”

  Taking a deep breath, he stood and looked up at the ceiling. He knew there was a hatch up there. Everyone had seen them in movies. It only took a minute for him to manage the delicate balancing act of straddling the handholds on either side of the elevator car and moving the light covers out of the way. Once they were down, he spotted the hatch easily. He pushed.

  The door lifted a fraction of an inch, then stopped.

  “What the hell?”

  He tried again. He heard a telltale rattle that told him the door was locked from the outside. “Son of a bitch!”

  So much for the movies.

  He thought about trying to pry open the elevator doors. Was it worth the risk? After all, he might open the doors into the middle of the riot. “Do you have a choice?” he asked himself. “Besides, all you have to do is open it an inch or so to see what’s outside.”

  He put his fingers into the tiny gap in the door and strained. They parted slowly, but part they did, and Tallant groaned as he saw nothing but painted steel before his straining face. He was trapped between floors. He let go and stepped back. “You’re screwed, Tallant. Well and truly…”

  The words trailed off as he looked down and saw the red of the emergency lighting reflected off a shiny surface near the bottom of the closing doors. "Yes!" He shoved his hands back into the gap and pulled again. Sure enough, there was the inside of an outer door. He had stopped at the top of a floor, and the shine of steel revealed his salvation.

  Shoving the inner doors open, he placed his left foot against one side, dropped to the floor, and shoved his shoulder against the right so he could get to the outer doors at the bottom. It was a bit of a balancing act, holding one side open with his foot, the other with his shoulder, all while sitting on his right foot and prying the outer doors open with his hands. It was awkward as hell, but he managed to open them a few inches and dropped his head down to peek through the opening. There was barely enough room to see anything. In fact, he was afraid for a moment that there wasn’t enough room for him to fit through the gap. The screaming and laughter was still there, but for the moment, it was far enough away that he risked pulling the door open farther, and as the gap widened, he was able to see that there was, indeed, enough room to slide through. It would be a close thing, but he figured there would be a few inches to spare.