by Dayle, Harry
“Lucya, I…I’m married, you know that.”
“You’re separated. But what does that matter? I’m not asking you to marry me. I just want you to know how I feel about you. How I’ve always felt. We have a connection, you and me. Something deeper than attraction. There’s something there. I only want to hear you say that you feel it too. Then I will be at peace. Then I will be ready to die.”
She grabbed his shoulders, pulling him round to face her. They stared into each other’s eyes, and all pretence was gone. Jake knew she was right: there was no use pretending, not now. He let her pull him closer to her. The corners of her mouth turned up into a smile. She leaned in, and then fell back with a gasp. From somewhere out at sea, behind the ship, came a deafening cracking sound, like the sky being ripped apart by an enormous bolt of lightning. The couple turned instinctively towards the noise. A giant black disc loomed on the horizon. It appeared to emerge from the sea, growing in size as it approached them, faster than either could believe possible. Behind it, the sky disappeared into a thick grey mist.
“Oh Jesus,” Lucya said. “This is it, this is really it!” She crossed herself, and began to mutter a prayer in her own tongue, all the while watching the black monster swelling in the sky.
The ship had become silent. The cries of panic had stopped. Anyone out on deck had turned to watch the spectacle. They were joined by more as those inside came out to see what had caused the noise. Some sank to their knees in prayer. Others closed their eyes and turned their heads towards the heavens. But most just stood and stared.
“It’s going up,” Jake said.
“What?” Lucya whispered.
“Look. Look at the distance between the asteroid and the ocean. It’s getting bigger. The asteroid is going up. It’s gaining height.”
“Jake, I’m so sorry. This is the end. We are going to die here.” She looked at him with huge black eyes, sad eyes.
“No, I don’t think we are. It really is going up.”
Other people had begun to murmur and whisper around them. As the rock grew nearer, it became clear that it was indeed increasing in altitude. There was no denying it. It was no longer headed right at them. It was headed skywards.
• • •
Half an hour had gone by since the asteroid had changed course and charged off into the heavens. It was now little more than a pinprick in the distance. Hundreds of passengers and crew members had spilled out onto the decks to see for themselves. There was a palpable excitement in the air. Certain death had been averted, and although it seemed likely that the rest of the world had been destroyed, that families and loved ones back home were gone, that home itself was gone, the fact that they were alive, against all the odds, was enough right now.
Jake was one of the first to see the dust. To begin with it just appeared as a thickening of the haze already clouding the horizon. Before long though, clouds of grey were moving in towards the ship. The water around them began lapping and slapping against the hull as the wind picked up.
“Lucya, we need to get these people back inside, now!” Jake said. He pointed to the dust clouds, growing nearer by the minute.
The two of them turned and started calling to the people massed all around them.
“Get inside! Everyone back inside, now! The dust is coming, everyone needs to get in, quickly!”
But nobody listened. There was already too much noise from the assembled crowd to hear two voices in the wind.
“It’s no good,” Lucya said, holding her arms wide open. “We need to get back to the bridge, get on the PA. Come on!”
She pushed her way through the thick soup of bodies, trying desperately to make it back inside. Jake was right behind her, but they were quickly separated in the chaos as people pushed between them. Jake made it to a door, took one look back at the approaching dust, and dived for shelter. As the heavy door swung closed behind him it became instantly quieter, as if somebody had pressed a mute button somewhere.
He was in a corridor and it was entirely deserted. There wasn’t enough time to get to the bridge before the dust cloud reached them, but Jake knew the ship well. It had been his home, on and off, for the best part of five years. He could find his way round in the dark if necessary. After performing a quick route calculation in his head, he turned left and sprinted along the passage for a couple of hundred meters, turned one hundred and eighty degrees on his heel and hurtled down a wide flight of stairs. Then more running until he reached an unmarked door. He tried the handle. Locked. He swore to himself, turned to run back the way he had come, and ran straight into the shoulder of a skinny young man emerging sideways from another doorway.
“Hey! Watch where…” The man turned to look at him. “Oh, Jake. What’s the rush? I heard Armageddon was cancelled.”
“Martin! The dust…” He tried to catch his breath. “The dust is coming. We have to get people back inside or they’ll burn. Lucya’s gone to the bridge to use the PA but she’ll never get there in time. I was going to use the emergency system in the hotel manager’s office, but she’s locked it.”
“Sounds like Silvia. World’s ending, better lock up. Come with me.” Martin opened the door through which he had just come, and disappeared back through it, with Jake a step behind.
“Where does this go? I thought I knew this ship, but I never even noticed this door before,” he said.
“Yeah, well, us engineering boys like to keep a few secrets. Here, quick way down. Let’s go.”
Martin promptly disappeared.
Jake looked round, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light. He was in a tiny room, little more than a cupboard. There was no natural light, just a glow coming up through a hole in the floor. Also protruding through the hole was a metal ladder. Jake peered down to see the chief engineer sliding down it at high speed.
“Come on!” Martin called up. “Not scared, are you?”
Jake didn’t have time to be scared. He wrapped his hands around the tubular sides of the ladder, put his feet either side, released his grip slightly, and felt himself plunge into the depths of the cruise ship. The descent was exhilarating and terrifying. It lasted only about fifteen seconds, and he arrived with a considerable thud, his knees buckling under the heavy landing. He found himself standing in front of an open door, and he instantly recognised what lay on the other side: the engine room. Martin had already gone in. Jake followed.
“Here, use this.” The engineer was pointing at a box on the wall. It was labelled “Emergency Address System”.
Jake flipped up a protective plastic cover, paused for a second to compose himself, and then pressed down the button marked “Talk”.
Four
THE VOICE BOOMED out throughout the ship. It rang out in the theatre, now empty. It echoed through the casino, heard by only a few souls who had come in to collapse on the comfortable chairs. It reverberated through every deck, inside and out.
“This is First Officer Jake Noah. This is an emergency. I repeat, this is an emergency! The dust cloud that follows the asteroid is headed for this ship. All passengers and crew must get inside now. The cloud is molten rock and will burn anyone and anything it touches. I repeat, everyone must take shelter inside the ship now. Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest exit and get back inside the ship.”
He let go of the button, thought for a moment, then added: “Deck thirteen may not be safe from the dust. Try and get to the lower decks for protection.”
Outside there was a stunned silence. Heads and eyes turned to scan the sea. Somebody somewhere screamed. It was as if a touch paper had been ignited. The scream quickly spread, and with it, panic. There was a stampede as hundreds of people tried to pile through small single doorways. Some fell and were trampled upon without a second thought. Many made it inside, but just as many weren’t quick enough. The dust cloud had already arrived.
At first it looked like snow. Dark grey flakes, floating lazily in the air. It was pretty, in a way. Pretty, but deadly.
/> Maisie Warwick was the furthest from a door, and so the first passenger to feel the force of the asteroid’s poisonous payload. The recently divorced mother of two had come on the cruise to celebrate her newfound freedom. Years of physical and verbal abuse from her ex-husband were at an end. This trip marked her new beginning, a new life. She looked at the scrum of people pushing, kicking, and fighting their way to the door and knew she would never make it. Turning to look at the first flakes of dust as they glided gently towards her on the breeze, she smiled. A flake landed on her forehead, burning through the skin instantly. As it cooled, it embedded itself into the bone of her skull. She didn’t have a chance to scream as more flakes dusted her, burning holes through her clothes, and through her flesh. She was dead within seconds, a pile of charred flesh and bone on the wooden deck.
Then the full force of the cloud hit the ship.
• • •
Deep in the engine room, Jake and Martin were oblivious to the carnage being wreaked on the outer decks. They were spared the smell of burning bodies. They were saved from hearing the terrible screams.
On the bridge, Lucya wasn’t so lucky. She had made it back just as Jake had finished putting out his emergency call. The place was nearly deserted. The ship had dropped anchor as the news of the asteroid broke. A skeleton crew were supposed to be present at all times, no matter what; company regulations were very clear about that. Such rules were of little concern now though, and every last crew member had abandoned their post, in search of a television screen on which to see the horrific events unfold. The theatre, the casino, the crew bar, anywhere with a live feed and some space.
Lucya walked onto the bridge just as the dust cloud hit. It came from the rear. The prevailing wind had, until then, been in the opposite direction. Had that not been the case, Lucya would have been killed instantly as the bridge windows blew in. As it was, only those windows that wrapped around the deck to provide rearward visibility were hit. Small in number they may have been, but they still sprayed an impressive amount of glass across the room as they exploded with the force of the wind and dust. Lucya instinctively threw herself to the floor. Searing heat roared into the room. It lasted ten, maybe twenty seconds, and it stopped as abruptly as it had arrived.
When she was sure it had passed over, she got to her feet and made her way to the front of the bridge. Looking out over the decks below, she saw destruction and devastation. Most of the lifeboats were on fire, and smaller fires were burning on most levels. The pristine white paintwork of the Spirit of Arcadia, the flagship of Pelagios Line, was blackened and charred, making her look more like a navy vessel than a luxury cruise liner. Bodies littered the decks. Some were on fire, some were still moving, but barely. She couldn’t bear to look; there was nothing to be done to save them. Instead she took a deep breath, and assessed what needed to be done most urgently. The burning lifeboats represented the greatest hazard. The smaller deck fires were blowing themselves out, but the lifeboat fires could spread. She ran over to a control desk and quickly located the release button. Hesitating for only a second, she hit it with the full force of the palm of her hand.
Nothing happened. It was only then that she realised that the usual blinking lights of the console and the whirring and chattering noises of the radar were absent. The bridge was devoid not just of crew, but of its own mechanical and electrical life. Everything lay still. Motionless, and silent.
• • •
The Spirit of Arcadia was equipped with three gigantic diesel engines. Two were used for propulsion, and lay idle. With the anchor down there was no point wasting fuel keeping the motors ticking over. The other, smaller engine drove the electrical generator that kept the ship’s systems running. A life support machine for the three thousand people aboard. Something was clearly very wrong with this engine, though. Within a few seconds of the dust cloud hitting, it started to emit an ear-splitting whine. To begin with, it sounded like a washing machine gearing up to run a spin cycle. The noise quickly increased in intensity though, and then it began to vibrate.
“What the hell?” Jake looked around anxiously.
“Sounds like the exhaust is blocked. We have to shut this thing down, now!” Martin said, sprinting to the other side of the room. He fiddled with chunky black plastic knobs, twisted graduated rotary dials, then stepped back and scratched his head.
“Problem?” Jake walked over to join him.
“I don’t understand, it’s not responding to the manual controls.”
The noise continued to grow louder, the men having to shout to make themselves heard. It was becoming intolerable, to the point that they wouldn’t be able to remain in the engine room much longer without risking permanent hearing damage. Jake spotted a glass cabinet on the wall. Inside were safely helmets, goggles, and ear protectors. He took out two sets of the bright red headgear and passed one to the mechanic. Martin gave him a sideways look that suggested health and safety was for other people, but as the sound ratcheted up another notch he grabbed the protectors and snapped them over his head. He tried a few more combinations of buttons, shrugged his shoulders, and walked back towards the huge motor. The vibrations had become so intense, the huge power plant was now visibly shaking.
Martin held out his forefinger and traced a line in the air. Jake watched, following his eye line until it alighted on a copper pipe, painted white. The pipe entered the underbelly of the engine, and Martin was tracing it backwards. It ran up the side of a supporting metal post, along the low ceiling, and then along the wall. Just before it disappeared through a bulkhead it made a U-shaped detour, at the bottom of which was a bright red lever. A small padlock prevented the lever from being operated. A glass box next to the lever contained a key. Martin walked over to the box, picked up the tiny hammer attached to it with a chain, and smashed the glass. He removed the key, unlocked the padlock, threaded the loop of metal out of the catch, and pulled the lever closed. At first nothing happened. Then, slowly, the whining noise started to drop in pitch. The vibrations of the engine reduced, becoming more of a rattle, before finally abating altogether. The beast of a motor was dying.
“Emergency fuel cut-off,” Martin said, cocking his thumb at the lever.
“Aren’t you supposed to know where that is without having to look?” Jake asked.
“Sorry, Officer.” Martin emphasised the second word a bit too much for Jake’s liking. “We would have covered it when we took delivery of this ship. Never had cause to use it since then, so yeah, I probably should know where it is, but I can’t remember everything I did five years ago.”
“You think the dust cloud blocked the exhaust?”
“Could be. That would explain the noise. If enough dust blew down the funnel it could have caused this.”
“There’s an easy way to unblock it, right?” Jake feared he already knew the answer.
“Oh yeah, sure. Someone has to climb down the funnel and clear out the gunk. You volunteering?”
“Engineering isn’t my strong point, as well you know. I think I’ll leave it to a professional,” Jake said.
“Well, whoever does it, they’re going to have to do it soon. Without that motor turning, this ship’s got no power, and that means no heat, light, fresh water, or sanitation.”
“Aren’t there batteries or something?”
“For emergency systems only. We can bring the bridge online if we need to. The emergency PA system too, as well as some emergency lighting in some areas.”
“Okay, get the PA working, but leave everything else off for now. We don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck without power, so we should conserve what we can.” Jake turned to leave.
“So you’re in charge now, huh?” Martin called after him.
Jake turned and looked at him.
“Captain Ibsen is in charge, I’m just trying to offer my advice,” he said.
“Your advice is noted, First Officer Noah,” Martin said, before turning back to his console and fiddling with more butt
ons.
Five
THE DUST CLOUD had completely vanished. The sky remained grey, the sun partially blocked by more dust higher in the atmosphere. In the half light, Lucya made her way to the exterior of deck ten. Most of the lifeboats were tethered on this deck, and they were still burning furiously. One fire had already spread and the wooden surface of the deck itself was burning. A number of people, Lucya couldn’t see if they were passengers or crew, were already tackling that blaze with fire extinguishers. She sprinted to the first lifeboat, found the manual release handle, and tried to crank it. The instant she touched it she felt the skin on her hand melt. She pulled her hand away instinctively, leaving skin on the hot metal, charred and blackened. She screamed in pain, looked round for some way of easing the burning, but saw only more flames, hot metal, and burning bodies. Swallowing hard, she turned back to the crank. She pulled off her jacket, wrapped it around the handle, and pulled it round towards her. To her relief, the lifeboat gave a jolt and started to descend towards the sea. It took all of her effort, but after several minutes of winding, the small craft hit the water with a hiss and a fizz. One last tug on the handle and the steel cables were released. The lifeboat floated free, away from the Spirit of Arcadia.
“One down,” Lucya said to herself, “fifteen more to go.”
• • •
Jake returned to the bridge, taking the more conventional route via the stairs. This place was home to him, it was where he spent most of his working day as first officer. He’d always thought it a soulless place. He was no stranger to ships and boats, having a captain for a father. But this bridge had none of the character or the romance of older vessels. There was no great wooden wheel, no impressive high-perched captain’s chair, no beautiful polished brass instruments. This bridge looked more like a cross between a call centre and the control room of a power station. It was all clean lines and sleek grey control panels with embedded screens. Two rows of four consoles dominated the space. They filled almost the full forty-metre width of the room. The ship was largely automated, so the consoles weren’t designed to be manned by more than a handful of people. The absence of human presence only heightened the lifelessness of the place.
