Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition

by Michael Compton

  ***

  Catfish burst into the galley stores with weapon drawn and made a quick sweep of the area. “Clear!”

  Victoria, Bao, and Lani entered behind him. They stood on a raised platform that looked out on pallets and pallets of food. Catfish froze to the spot, taking in the spectacle with awe.

  “Is that all…food?”

  “Just like mom used to—” The unfortunately phrased quip died on Bao’s lips at the sight of Catfish’s pained expression. “I mean—you know what I mean. Like real food. Like you used to get before…”

  “Yeah, kid. I know.” He smiled. “Race you down.”

  Catfish bounded down the steps past Victoria and Lani like a little kid in a race for the ice cream truck. The first crate he came to was full of yellow onions. He grabbed one and held it up to his nose, rapturously sniffing it like a rose. He noticed the crate next to it. “Peppers!” He took one in his hands and bit into it like an apple. “Oh, my. We gonna cook up a mess o’ gumbo tonight!”

  Victoria, who had not gone so long without fresh food as Catfish, surveyed the crates and pallets with a more calculating eye. “It’s a lot of food, all right. But it’s a big ship. How long will it last?”

  Bao consulted with Lani over his tablet. “Four weeks supply of fresh in cold storage. If you factor in frozen and non-perishables, maybe six months’ worth.”

  Lani pointed out something to Bao on his tablet. “Those numbers are just for guards and crew, though.”

  “Well, we don’t have to worry about them anymore. How long for everybody on the ship now? Us and all the inmates?”

  Bao shrugged, did a quick calculation. “Thirty, forty days, maybe.” He cut a glance at Catfish, who was eyes-deep in a mango. “That is, if people don’t get carried away.”

  “I heard that.”

  Catfish tossed aside the pit of his mango and licked the juice from his fingers. “What’s that rumbling noise? The engines?”

  Bao shot a look at Lani. “I’ll show you.”

  He led them to a hatch mounted in the floor like an entrance to a storm cellar. When he opened it, the rumble grew immediately louder, and there was an updraft of air that smelled of seawater with an overlay of something sweet and rank. Catfish looked down a flight of metal stairs, sniffing the air skeptically.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s where they make Process.”

  Bao led them down to a platform that overlooked a massive rush of water gushing through a sieve the size of a panel truck. The sieve fed into a giant vat with sluices and pipes leading in and out from all directions. Bao had to shout over the noise.

  “Every prison ship has its own self-contained plant.”

  “Is that seawater?” Catfish asked.

  “That’s right. The sieve works just like the baleen of a humpback whale. As the water passes through, it filters out the seaweed, plankton, all the organic matter.”

  “And that’s what Process is made of?” Catfish was pleasantly surprised. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “ALL the organic matter,” Victoria reiterated. She turned to the two Drones. “And not just from seawater, right?”

  Bao and Lani exchanged an uncomfortable look.

  “Show us.”

  They descended to the plant floor. Consulting his tablet again, Bao led them to a large, enclosed sluice that was fed by many pipes. He found a hinged metal lid, pausing before he opened it as if he hoped someone would stop him. He took hold of the handle and lifted the lid wide, letting it clang on its hinges as he stepped back. Everyone else held their noses against the stench as they gaped down at a metal screw that churned through a thick brown glop. Victoria looked at Catfish with the perverse satisfaction of one who knows how the sausage is made.

  “Potato peels, toenail clippings, food wrappers, engine oil—anything carbon-based and everything flushed down the toilet...”

  Catfish blanched.

  Victoria hefted the lid and banged it shut. “It’s the circle of life, baby.”

  “Now you see why we don’t eat it,” Lani said. “Plus, there’s the drugs they put in it.”

  “Here’s something I’m betting you don’t know,” Victoria said. “Parolees and the dead are negative assets on this ship—but they have something very valuable.”

  As if he had already guessed, Catfish said, “Their organs.”

  “Gold star for you. Organs, bone marrow, stem cells—it all gets harvested and shipped to clearing houses, where the bits and pieces are auctioned off to the highest bidders. What’s left over, well…” She shrugged and patted the lid on the sluice.

  The others looked sick.

  “Gives new meaning to the old saying, doesn’t it? Waste not, want not.”

  ***

  Sands held up a hand to signal halt as he and Ahmer came to the landing marked 6 HERESY 6. He gazed at the legend and snorted in recognition.

  “Six letters. First time I ever noticed.”

  Ahmer looked at him quizzically.

  “Six letters in the word ‘heresy.’ Six-six-six. Some joke.”

  Ahmer didn’t get it.

  “It’s a Christian thing.”

  Sands peered through the glass porthole in the closed hatch. All clear. He put his hand to the latch to lead on, but he realized Hari wasn’t with them.

  “Where’s Hari?”

  Ahmer looked back. “Right behind. I heard his footsteps. I think.”

  Sands listened. “Well, there’s no footsteps now. He didn’t turn off at the wrong deck, did he?”

  They stepped back to get a good look up the stairwell. Nothing.

  “Hari!” Sands’ voice reverberated off the hard metal surfaces that surrounded them. It was answered by a scream.

  Sands leapt to the stairs, taking them three at a time. Ahmer scrambled after him.

  Another scream.

  “Hari, hold on!” Ahmer shouted.

  Sands looked up just in time to see Hari come over the rail. He flew out, as if he had leapt—or been pitched—and sailed across the rectangle of empty space, landing at the base of the steps on the other side. Sands heard the bone-crushing impact below, but he kept his eyes upward. When a ghoulish face looked over the rail he was ready. He squeezed off a burst from his bullpup, and the Psych went tumbling down the well until he was nothing but a dull thump in the darkness.

  Sands scrambled back down the steps to where Hari had landed. Ahmer was already there, Hari’s broken body cradled in his arms. His eyes were open, but his breath was strained, his mouth and nostrils running with blood. Sands bent down and pressed a hand to his narrow shoulder. He wanted to tell him it would be all right, but he knew it wouldn’t.

  Hari struggled to speak. “Sorry…Mr. Sands…”

  His last breath rattled to silence. Ahmer turned shining eyes to Sands, but if he wanted some word or gesture of comfort, Sands had none for him. Instead, he grimaced as if in a rage and grabbed Ahmer by the shoulders.

  “You stick with me—do you hear? Do you hear!” He shook Ahmer into a violent nod of assent. “From now on, we’re joined at the fucking hip!”

  He shoved Ahmer back to the deck, his eyes blazing, but there was something in them besides anger. He turned away, his head down, standing with his back to Ahmer as if taking a moment to gather his strength. Ahmer watched as Sands straightened his massive shoulders, took three steps toward the Deck Six hatch, and stopped. Ahmer got to his feet. Sands still waited, his hand on the latch. He didn’t open it until Ahmer fell into step behind him.

  -19-

  All sorrows are bearable, if there is bread.

  —Cervantes

  On Gluttony Deck, Catfish strolled down the rows of cells behind a pushcart laden with fruit, singing out like a New Orleans street vendor.

  “Fresh fr-u-u-u-it! Red ap-ples! Juicy pea-ches! Ripe ba-na-na-a-a-s! Fresh fru-u-u-it!”

  In Catfish’s imagination he was tossing the fruit out to eagerly waiting hands, the way he had seen generous vendors do
back home with hungry street kids, but the illusion was spoiled by the narrow grates that many inmates could not even get four fingers through. He could slip the bananas and peaches through easily enough, but the apples had to be cut in two with his knife. It slowed him down, but the inmates were grateful and full of questions.

  “Hey man,” one called, as he sucked on a peach pit. “What happened to the treadmills? They ain’t come on since yesterday.”

  “Why, you miss ’em?”

  The man looked down at his belly. He still had an ample paunch, but his pants were so loose he had to hold them up with one hand.

  “Not much. You turned ’em off?”

  “We sure did.” In truth, the treadmills hadn’t operated since the ship had gone to emergency power, but Catfish saw no harm in the lie.

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “We, the motherfuckin’ people, my friend. You’ll be joining us pretty soon.”

  The man nodded his thanks, too happy to speak.

  “Hey! Hey, fruit man!” The man in the next cell must have been a recent transfer to the block. He still had what the guards called “baby fat.” In other words, his skin was still tight. He hadn’t yet suffered the catastrophic weight loss that left so many denizens of Gluttony Deck with sagging folds of loose skin.

  “Ap-ples, pea-ches, ba-na-nas—what’ll ya have?”

  “You got any donuts?”

  Catfish gave him the eye as he pushed a peach through the grate. The man caught it and gave it a glum look. But the aroma caught him by surprise. He smiled and sank his teeth into the fruit, the juice running over his lips.

  On Lust Deck, Victoria and Lani carried large trays from which they doled out sliced meats, fruits, and cheeses. A huge clamor rose up as word of the food spread throughout the block, but the two women maintained their composure, pausing at each cell as if they were passing out hors d’oeuvres at some posh gala.

  One woman asked if they were going to be released. “Soon,” Lani told her. “You got to detoxify first. The Process you’ve been eating is full of drugs.”

  The woman nodded her understanding. “When?”

  Lani involuntarily glanced at her watch. Never, she thought, if Sands can’t defuse the bomb. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe the next day.”

  Victoria came to the cell of an old woman with wide, sunken eyes. She had to be coaxed to the grate to get her portion, Victoria beckoning her with a piece of hard cheese the size of two fingers.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s cheese.”

  She pressed it into the woman’s outstretched hand, which was thin enough to fit through the grate.

  “Process cheese?”

  “No, honey. Real cheese. From a cow.”

  The woman sniffed at it, pulled back at the sharp smell. But then she sniffed it again and nibbled a corner. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Here,” Victoria offered. “Take some more.”

  The old woman shook her head. She held the morsel in her two hands as if she were a priest praying over the Host. “Make sure everyone gets some.”

  Victoria swallowed against a lump that rose in her throat. “I will.”

  On Limbo Deck, where the inmates were so clean and well-fed they could have been tourists on some sort of bizarre fantasy cruise, Bao and Desmond did not fare so well as the others. The normally docile Limboers knew by their internal clocks that their midday ration of Process was fourteen minutes late, and they were not about to accept any substitute. The fruits and vegetables they had been given they flung back through the slots in their cell grates, some with enough force and accuracy to pelt Bao and Desmond as they retreated from the block.

  “We want Process!” they chanted, rattling their cages like enraged apes. “We want Process!”

  “What the hell!” Bao cried, as a carrot speared him in the side of the head.

  “We-want-Pro-cess!! We-want-Pro-cess!!”

  A peach hurtled at Desmond’s feet. He stepped on it, spilling his basket of fruit as his foot went sideways. He got to one knee to try to gather up what he had dropped, when someone above began spitting out mouthfuls of masticated banana.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Bao shouted. Desmond didn’t argue.

  ***

  Sands and Ahmer were at the lowest deck of the ship, making their way to the Engine Room. They were in some sort of hold, where engine parts, machinery, and equipment were stored, much of it rusted and ready for scrap. The hold was dank, the bulkheads cold and wet as the walls of a limestone cave. Dripping water and the scuttling sound of what Sands hoped were mere rats echoed all around them. Ahmer was stumbling and near-blind in the darkness, but Sands felt as if he could really see for the first time in days. After three years living in the gloom of Treachery Deck, the shadowy twilight of the hold was a welcome relief to his weakened eyes.

  The scrape of a footstep alerted Sands to the fact that something other than a rat was stalking them. Ahmer, who was so on edge that he jumped at every sound he heard, didn’t even notice the footfall, unable to distinguish it from the white noise of imagined threats around him.

  Sands shifted his bullpup to his right hand, locking the shoulder strap around his elbow. With his right he unsheathed his knife and held the blade ready against his thigh. He didn’t yet know the nature of their stalker. Was it another of those beasts that had killed Wolf? Was it a Psych? Or was it a man—some stranded hand, or even an inmate who had somehow managed to escape his cell? It could even be Einstein.

  Ahmer hadn’t heard the sound, but he noticed the change in Sands’ demeanor.

  “What is it?”

  Sands held a finger to his lips. The sight of the big knife in his hand made Ahmer’s eyes go wide.

  In that moment of distraction, a Psych leapt out of the shadows. He came from Sands’ blind side, but he spoiled his advantage with a wild screech that gave Sands the moment he needed to meet the charge with a broad-arm to the chest. Sands drove his knife blade through the Psych’s throat to his spine. The hulk crumpled to the deck, his arms and legs gone limp. Sands didn’t strike another blow. He just watched until he was sure the last bit of life had drained away.

  Staring up at him, the face looked much like that of any other Psych Sands had seen. Like Bloodyface, the man’s visage was altered not just by insanity, but physically distorted by whatever chemical processes had driven him mad. It concerned Sands that he was so far below decks. It meant the Psychs could be spread all throughout the ship.

  Sands wiped the blood from his knife on the Psych’s pants and turned to Ahmer. The young Pakistani wobbled on unsteady legs, his mouth open and eyes glassy, like a person on the verge of a faint. But they had no time for that.

  “How much farther?”

  The question brought Ahmer out of his funk, giving him something else to focus on besides his fear. He stared at his tablet as if trying to make it out through a thick fog.

  “Just ahead.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Before Ahmer could protest or even hesitate, Sands pushed him forward. After a few twists and turns around decaying machinery and stacks of pallets, they came to a large vault-like hatch in the bulkhead.

  “This is it?”

  “Yes. The Engine Room is through here.”

  Sands tried the wheel-lock, but the hatch wouldn’t budge. “Can you unseal it?”

  Ahmer checked his controls. “No. Someone used manual override to seal it from the other side.”

  Sands ran his hands and eyes over the hatch, exploring it for weaknesses. The hinges were as big as his arms. He took hold of the Wheelock again and strained with everything he had.

  “I think it moved! Help me!”

  Ahmer doubted it had moved. Next to Sands’ meaty hooks he placed his own hands, looking like an underfed baby’s by comparison. He pulled as hard as he could, even as he thought how ludicrous it was to imagine his meager strength could make any difference against bolts of heavy tempered steel.

 
Sands released the Wheelock, gasping with spent effort, his face red.

  “Shit! Shit!”

  He pulled two grenades from his belt, the only two he had. “Maybe we can blow it.”

  He fumbled about at the hinges, looking for some way he could effectively place the grenades.

  Ahmer shook his head. “The door is too strong, Sands.”

  “We just need more firepower. We can go back to the weapons cache and get some C-4.”

  “There is no time.”

  Sands checked his watch: Twenty-three minutes… Twenty-two-fifty-nine…fifty-eight….

  “Goddammit!”

  Sands’ breath labored like a bull’s. He cast about with starting eyes—looking, thinking, looking—until he fixed on something. On the adjacent bulkhead, high above a stack of drums, was the emblem of the 600-Cell, and below it, just legible through layers of grime, was the motto: In hoc signo vinces.

  Seeing the look in Sands’ eyes, Ahmer stepped back, fearing his friend had gone mad. Sands took his bullpup in his hands, and with a cry of rage let loose a spray of fire that sent cartridges pinging off the deck and bullets ricocheting through the hold like blind hornets.

  Ahmer clapped his hands to his ears and screamed, “Sands! Stop shooting! Sands, stop!”

  The gun went quiet and Sands fell to his knees. He banged the butt of his rifle on the deck.

  “Why! Why can’t one motherfuckin’ thing go right!”

  Breathing heavily, he looked at his rifle as if he meant to fling it across the hold, but instead he lay it on the deck. He sat back on his haunches, his head bowed in thought, but canting back and forth in despair of finding any answers.

  Ahmer realized Sands had not gone mad, but he had never seen him at such a loss. He tried to think of some words of encouragement—but what words could one such as he say to a man like Sands that would not be laughed at? “Sands,” he began—but something caught his eye.

  One of Sands’ errant shots had pierced an oil drum, and the oil that leaked from it had begun to puddle on the deck. Ahmer watched as the puddle sent out a tendril that meandered its way to a groove in the center of the deck and then down to a round, iron grate. Ahmer checked his tablet, scrolling through schematics until he found the one that showed where that drain might go.