by A. R. Daun
He finally shook his head, turned his back on the waiting creature, and walked out of the bridge. He could feel the death throes of the other ships in the strike force as the infection spread outwards from the carrier. Miami was a few miles west of the fleet, and he decided that like the long gone Beach Boys of yore, he also had a sudden wish to be someplace with sandy white beaches.
“Miami, here I come,” he declared, then tried to whistle a few bars of California Girls.
Behind him the bridge lights automatically came on as the day gave way to another long night.
CHAPTER 13
Day 3 (2 am EST)
700 miles off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.
- Arthur C. Clarke
The stateroom door opened, but the man who entered was not Steve.
He was tall, his dirty blond hair a disheveled mass that looked like it hadn't felt the touch of a comb in years, and instead of being lean and muscular like her husband, this man was rangy and somehow desiccated, as if he had been put out to dry in the hot sun for too long. He wore filthy looking jeans with no belt and a raggedy army jacket over a collared blue shirt with missing buttons in front. His whole ensemble sagged loosely around him, as if they had been thrown haphazardly over him by some sympathetic but fashion-challenged salvation army aid worker.
The man stepped in and closed the door behind him, all the while gazing at Mara with shockingly bright blue piercing eyes set deep into his craggy and weather-lined face.
They stared at each other, seeming to size each other up. Mara had never met this man before. She was sure of that. And yet she was surprised to find that her initial impulse to scream and bolt for the door had quickly subsided, leaving behind it a residue of curiosity, and what she realized was a feeling of growing anticipation.
Then the man's eyes widened, as if in recognition, and he mumbled some words that Mara could not catch before dropping on his knees in front of her, his head lowered in submission and arms held limp at his sides.
“I have found you,” he said clearly, and when he lifted his face to her Mara could see tears streaming shamelessly down his face, the gleaming rivulets winding their way down to pool along the sharp angles of his profile before raining down on the carpeted floor.
She moved towards the bedside telephone, and placed one hand on the cradle, lifting it slightly, then sighing and dropping it back on its cradle and turning to face the man.
It was true that one reason for her hesitation was that the intruder seemed pathetically harmless, no matter how unkempt the raggedy man may have seemed. But more than that, he intrigued her. Mara was a rational and logical creature by habit and training, and the man before her was a curiosity that begged to be examined and pried apart and studied.
She stood before him then knelt down, bringing her face level to his. He cringed back at first, averting his face, as if the mere proximity of her presence could burn him.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” Mara said, before she knew what she was going to say. In the back of her mind a small part of her laughed at her bizarre admonishment. Here was this white guy who had burst into her room, looking for all the world like one of those homeless people you see trolling the streets of urban cities everywhere, and it was her who had to calm him down.
She tried again. “What's your name?” She asked softly, her voice still calm and steady, but the man steadfastly refused to meet her gaze, and she could see that he was trembling slightly.
“I'm not going to call security,” she said. “Just tell me your name and why you've come into my room.”
He mumbled again, and then more clearly. “I came to find you.” He whispered in a gravelly voice, finally turning his head to face her. “It was dark. It was dark and cold and I could hear them scuttling behind the walls, and waiting in the hidden corners and folds of my path, but I remembered to follow the lights and that guided me to you.”
His looked around the room, as if seeing the ship in its entirety, and Mara again noticed how blue and clear his eyes were, and how the irises were flecked with gold.
“Finally it brought me here, to the first Ark and to you,” he said, then turned back to gaze at her in something like wonderment. “You are more beautiful than I ever imagined.”
Mara sighed, then rubbed her forehead and stood up. Ark? Things behind the walls? The man was obviously in need of some psychiatric care. He had probably seen her on the deck and developed an unhealthy infatuation. She felt disappointment course through her.
“Listen,” she said sternly. “This has gone far enough. I don't know who you are, and why you've broken into my stateroom, and I certainly don't want you to be here when my husband shows up.”
She pointed at the door. “Get out.” She said coldly at him. “Get out right this minute or I'll call security.”
A look of forlorn desperation crossed the man's face, and he stood up to his full height, towering over her. Mara backed away from him, her hand reaching behind for anything solid to use as a weapon.
“Please,” he pleaded, raising empty hands towards her as if to placate her anger. “I'm sorry if I scared you, but I'm still confused and I've forgotten so much. But now that I've found you I'm hoping it all comes back to me.”
“I've...I've even forgotten my own name,” he stammered, and Mara's questing hand found the telephone and gripped it by the base, ready to swing it at the man if he so much as moved towards her.
But the man kept his distance, and instead offered one hand towards her, palm up.
“Please, I can show you something,” he told her. “But we need to get out of here, the walls block everything. Just...just take my hand. I won't harm you. We need to get to open air.”
Mara shook her head.
“This is insane,” she said, more to herself than to the man. But she was seriously considering taking this stranger at his word. For all she knew he would forcibly bring her to his room and rape her, or worse.
Curiosity killed the cat, she reminded herself. But some small part of her added the rejoinder that satisfaction brought it back, although no one ever elaborated on the final condition of this erstwhile zombie feline.
Mara looked at the proffered hand and finally took it with some hesitation, and his face lit up with something akin to hope, and maybe something more. Elation? It transformed his whole persona and he now moved with a surety and confidence that belied his earlier cowering.
Mara watched as he led her out of her stateroom and up to the promenade deck. His hand was strong, dry and callused, not unpleasant to the touch, and he kept a firm grip as they wandered out into the corridors and stairs of the mostly slumbering ship.
She found that they were like ghosts, insubstantial figures wafting in the night air as they cut a cold swathe through the small crowds that still bustled around but did not seem to see them. Twice Mara saw people almost blunder into them before unconsciously jigging to right or left in order to avoid a collision at the last second, as if they could somehow sense Mara's passing even though their eyes remained oddly blank and unseeing.
Mara felt a wave of unreality sweep over her and she closed her own eyes, only opening them when she felt a faint breeze caress her face. They were standing by the deck railing, and she stared out into the darkness. Far below Mara could barely see the ocean swells as they lapped against the hull of the Coral Odyssey, but she could sense the movement of vast currents underneath the surface calm, the ponderous shifting of gargantuan masses whose flowing progressions were as inevitable as the shifting of tectonic plates.
“I can't remember my name, but maybe that's ok for now,” the man began. “My name probably doesn't matter. Most names don't. Call me the Raggedy Man for want of something better.”
He smiled at this, and at her surprise, for she had been thinking of him as such earlier. He had small even teeth, and they gleamed white in the soft light of the moon.
The Raggedy Man placed rough hands on Mara's shoulders and gently turned her to face him, and she gasped as something electric passed between them. She looked up at him in shock, her eyes wide, her nose flaring and her lips slightly parted as she trembled in his grasp. She arched her back and he bent over and kissed her gently on the lips, and she was suddenly filled with a deep feeling of contentment. Everything immediately around her faded into an indistinct blur. But this was replaced by sensations that flooded into her mind and swept her away like mere flotsam riding the crest of a tsunami, and she knew that she was tapping into the Raggedy Man's own sensorium.
Suddenly, Mara realized she could sense the crowds who milled in the warren of passageways that tunneled through the ship's structure, and not just the ones nearest to her as she stood rooted next to the deck railing, but ALL the various hues and colors of humanity that filled this floating city. Most of the people were sleeping, lying in their various staterooms in pairs, singles, or whole families. But the Coral Odyssey itself was a ship that never slept, and Mara found that she could follow the activities of the individual crew members as they toiled away inside her fabricated steel and aluminum alloy belly. In her mind's eye the ship was a vast living coral adorned in phosphorescence, with each of the 8000 plus people a pinpoint of light sprinkled into the surrounding darkness, a spark made up of trillions of bits of information that together comprised the essential core of that person.
She felt someone grasp her hand and guide her away from the vast twinkling panorama, and suddenly she was zooming up and above the earth at tremendous speeds. Below she saw faint flashes of light, a million billion trillion fireflies fluttering in droves, and she instinctively knew that these were representations of the multitudes of marine life that dwelt beneath the ocean waves. Although the waters teemed with light, each was noticeably dimmer than those of the passengers and crew in the Coral Odyssey.
On the horizon loomed a landmass that she identified as the northeast coast of the United States. But where she expected a galaxy of lights from the millions that inhabited the urban centers of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC, she saw only a diffused glow that blanketed the entire landscape from coast to coast and as far down south as she could observe.
“Do you see?” A low gravelly voice said from beside her, and when Mara glanced to her side she was not surprised to see the Raggedy Man was there with her.
“Yes,” she said softly, her voice barely a whisper. “Is this real? Are we really here?”
He shook his head.
“I don't know.” He thought for a long moment then continued. “I don't think so. I think this is a virtual representation of the real world, something conjured up from streams of data gathered by...well, by parties who are friendly to us.”
Mara looked strangely at him. The obsequiousness he had displayed when he first met her was gone. In its place was a quiet confidence that was at odds with his outward appearance, as was his choice of words, which spoke of a background steeped in the jargon of technology and not one of the urban streets.
Mara considered his words. “If this is a accurate,” she finally said. “Then why can't I make out the individual....well, the separate lights of people down there like I could in the Odyssey? Is it because we're too high up?”
He looked at her then, and in the faint light of the ship's deck she saw a hint of sadness crossing the man's eyes, like the momentary passing of rain clouds on the clear blue skies of a sunny day.
“It's all gone Lady Ammara,” he whispered, and she started when he said her name, for she had never given it to him. “I crossed the city on foot and only found empty streets and empty storefronts. The leavings of a civilization but not the inhabitants. It was as if some catastrophic event had taken all the people away but left behind their belongings.”
“I know I have memories of why this is so, of how this came to be.” He shook his head, his frustration evident. “But it's all in the mist, slightly beyond my reach for now.”
He looked at her imploringly. “I don't even know where I came from and how I ended up walking the streets yesterday with nothing except for an urgent need to find and warn you.”
Mara's hand fluttered to her lips. His distress was contagious. “Warn me about what? And how did you know my name?” She asked.
But before he could reply, the world exploded in a shower of sparkling lights. Mara blinked, and suddenly she was back on the Odyssey again.
The Raggedy Man was lying on the deck, his face turned to one side. Blood was dripping from one split lip and spattering down like red raindrops.
A man stood over him, fists clenched, his broad shoulders and back all but hiding the fallen man from Mara's view.
“Motherfucker, what the hell were you doing with my wife?!!” Steve was shouting. He aimed a kick at the man's side, and the Raggedy Man gave a pained grunt and curled up in a fetal position.
Steve kicked him again, aiming for the man's head but getting one upper arm instead. The Raggedy Man made a moaning sound and curled up even tighter.
“Stop it! Steve! Stop it!” Mara yelled, gripping her husband's shoulder and trying to turn him around to face her. It was like trying to move granite rock. Steve worked with weights daily, and there was not an ounce of fat on him.
He walked around the fallen man, eying him contemptuously, his face a grimace that turned his handsome features into something grotesque. Mara had never seen him so angry.
“I asked you what you were doing with my wife you honky motherfucker,” he snarled, and kicked the Raggedy Man on the back of his head. The sound of the toe of his shoes connecting with flesh made Mara wince, and she realized she had to do something or Steve might seriously injure or even kill the man.
She saw the restaurant manager she had met yesterday walking along the corridor on the inside of the ship and raced towards him, grasping his arm and pointing out to where Steve circled the Raggedy Man like a predator getting ready to deliver the killing stroke.
“Please, I need you to get help right now!” she said to the startled man. “My husband....he's...he's in a fight...and someone might get hurt!”
The restaurant manager.....Marco, she thought, his name is Marco. stared at her, then after glancing at the commotion outside dialed security on a phone that he took from a clip by his side.
“This is Restaurant Manager Marco Papadakis,” he said importantly into the phone, as he patted her hand. “Get some security men to the promenade deck, starboard side aft. We have two passengers involved in an altercation.”
He closed the receiver and glanced out the window before addressing her again.
“Ms...Lewis, isn't it?” He cooed in what he probably thought was a reassuring voice, and Mara felt his eyes roaming avidly over her body. “Not to worry, security will be here quickly and get this straightened out.”
The sound of another thud came from the outside, and Mara jerked away from him, suddenly realizing how intimate the distance between them had become. She hurried out the sliding glass door without acknowledging or even thanking him for his help and she heard the restaurant manager give a loud exaggerated sigh as three security people converged on Steve and the Raggedy Man.
Mara came forward to kneel by the fallen man as the crew restrained her still ranting and raving husband. The Raggedy Man was curled in a fetal position, and Mara had the frightening thought that Steve had killed him.
She touched his shoulder and was relieved when she felt him moving beneath her touch. He uncurled and and turned towards her, and she realized he was smiling as he looked up at her, his gaze fixed on hers, his hand searching then grasping her hand.
“I can remember,” he whispered in awe, and Mara noticed that there was not one mark on his face. No bruises, no cuts, no bleeding lips. Nothing except for the deep crevices and fractured lines of a face that had seen much years pass, and triumphant blue eyes that now blazed out at her like polished jewels.
“Richard, “ he said, and
she felt his fingers tighten around hers. “My name is Richard.”
“Yes,” she heard herself whisper back as if from a long distance, and she touched his lips in wonder, the lips that had been bleeding copiously just a few minutes ago but were now full and unbroken and shining dark red in the low light of the outside deck. “Hello Richard.”
“They will come,” he whispered earnestly to her. “Those who have cleansed the world will find this Ark, and they are hungry.”
He said the last word in a sibilant rush, and Mara shivered.
“Remember the gift I gave you, the susuwatari.” Richard continued. “It will protect you from the coming storm, you and any who follow you. Lead them to safety, my Lady.”
Mara nodded, though her mind struggled to process what this strange man was saying. A hand touched her shoulder and Mara looked up. A serious looking man in an officer's uniform was looking down at her kindly.
“Ma'am,” he said. “I'm Staff Captain Gani Uwais. If you'll just move aside and let the medic take a look at him first.”
She stood up and faced him while another uniformed man bent down to check on Richard, and the thought of knowing his name made her smile inwardly. At least we got the first letter right, she decided.
“Thank you,” she said softly to the Staff Captain, and he nodded briskly and moved to include Steve in the conversation.
Steve had been released by the crewmen and stood glaring at both her and Richard, although he seemed more perplexed now than angry. Mara would have felt sorry for him if she hadn't known that he had spent the last few hours with the red haired girl.
The Staff Captain looked at both of them in turn. “Now, let's take this from the beginning.” He said calmly and clearly, taking a pen from his jacket pocket.
Steve glared one more time at Mara then pointed at his opponent, who was still being examined by the medic. “That fucker was attacking my wife!” He shouted. “I was coming from the casino when...”
