by Dayle, Harry
“Bring him over here, I can’t hear the son of a bitch from there.” Flynn waved a hand at his remaining henchmen.
The German and the Chinese-looking man came over to Jake’s chair. Taking a side each, they lifted it up, with him still attached, crossed the bridge, and dropped it down in front of the captain’s seat. It landed with a thud, jarring every bone in Jake’s body.
“What did you say to me, son?” Flynn was still looking out of the window.
“I said that if you intend to move this ship, and don’t want to crash it, then you’re going to need a lookout as well as a pilot and navigator.”
“Is that so? Well I guess we’ll have to hope the driver can do both jobs then, huh? Ought not to be too hard. I wasn’t watching the whole time we was out cruising, but I didn’t notice a whole bunch of obstacles to hit out there on the ocean.”
“What is the breeding?” Jake had to try and push for more. “What are you going to do with Lucya?”
“I told you not to worry about her. She’s going to be well looked after. She’s one of the lucky ones, pretty little girl like that.”
The other men on the bridge chuckled. Jake felt a mixture of fear and rage welling inside him.
“And what about me, what will happen to me?”
“Like I said, justice will be done. You’ll die, of course, but not by my hand. At least, not directly. Funny thing is, it wouldn’t have made no difference if you hadn’t been set up in my little plan there. Your days would still be numbered just the same. Just like nearly every other man on this ship.”
“You mean every other person,” Jake said defiantly. “Everyone is going to die, you included. This ship doesn’t have the fuel to sustain you. I guess Melvin never told you, we’re leaking fuel. You take this ship back the way we came and you’re going to find yourself stranded in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with no heat, no electricity, no way to prepare or store food. If you sail away from here, you’re killing everyone on board.”
“No, not quite everyone.” A smile spread across Flynn’s face. “Oh most of them are going to die, of course they are. Nearly all the men. Most of the women too, at least, all those over the age of thirty. Great job on that census, by the way, it made my job of finding the younger women a whole lot easier. And yes, Melvin told me about the fuel. Another great job. Death will come even more quickly than I had hoped. With no fuel, people will die of the cold, of hunger, of dehydration. Oh I’ll make a great show about how we’re all doing what we can to help them. It’ll provide them with some comfort in their final days and their final hours. They don’t need to know about those of us living the high life on deck twelve. Those of us for whom the food will never run out, the heat will never go off, and the water will never run dry.”
“You’re completely insane!” Jake felt his stomach turn.
Flynn turned to look at him, grinning. “No, son, not insane. Denounce me and you denounce the Lord, for I am doing His work here.”
“You’re condemning thousands of people to death with your actions. That’s not the work of any god, that’s an act of pure evil.”
“You’re wrong. We have been the evil ones. Mankind. We have brought about the gradual destruction of His creation. He gave us a world, a beautiful world. An abundant world, filled with wonder. And how did we thank the Lord for His gift of life? With our factories and our bombs and our pollution and our consumption and our disregard for our fellow men, and fellow creatures. We plundered it. We ruined it. And for that, we deserve to die.”
“You believe your god sent an asteroid as punishment for what we’ve done to the planet? You’re as crazy as Captain Ibsen. He wanted to kill us all, too.”
“You’re not listening to me, son. I told you, I’m not here to kill everyone. Most? Sure. But not all. See, the Lord spoke to me. He explained to me about the asteroid. Yes, it was punishment, in a way. But it was also sent to cleanse the world. To purge it of the scourge of humanity. Almost. But we were saved. He gave us a second chance. We get to start again. In time, the dust will go. The land will repair itself, become green again, safe again. It will be a new Eden, a new beginning.”
“With you in charge?” Jake closed his eyes, shaking his head.
“That’s old-world thinking. Nobody need be in charge. We’ll make a better world. A world based on respect and love.”
“Can you even hear yourself?” Jake fought to keep the anger within him. “A better world? Respect? Love? And how are you going to make this better world of yours? By killing thousands of innocent people!”
“Sacrifice is necessary. Billions have already died, what’s a few thousand more?”
“So why not you? Why don’t you sacrifice yourself? Because you know what? You’re right! In some sick, twisted way, you’re right. The sacrifice of most of the people on this ship would allow the rest to survive. For a time, anyway. So why don’t you do everyone a favour and sacrifice yourself, and your cronies here, right now, and leave the rest of us a few more resources?”
“Why not me? Because I am Adam!” Flynn’s expression had changed to one of pride, mixed with a little confusion, as if he couldn’t understand why Jake didn’t see what he saw.
“You’re what?”
“I am Adam. And these men,” he gestured to the other two men on the bridge, “and ten others like them, are my disciples.”
“Like Jesus? You think you’re Jesus? You think you’re the second coming? You’re even crazier than I thought.”
“The Lord spoke to me, after the asteroid. He told me my real name. That name is Adam. He told me that the world will be reborn. We will find our Garden of Eden. And with twelve others like me, we will start over. The men, and the women over the age of thirty, will be sacrificed. The younger women will join us in Eden, for the breeding. Together we will make a new world.”
Fifty-One
LUCYA WAS ROCKING from side to side. She was tied to a chair of some description, but she had soon worked out that the chair itself was not fixed to anything. She swung her weight from one side to the other. With each swing she felt two of the legs rise up from the floor, a little higher each time. As she swung in the opposite direction the legs thumped back down and those on the opposite side rose. The thud made by the chair legs hitting the ground was muffled. She was on a carpet, which meant she wasn’t in a bathroom or cupboard.
The momentum was gradually building. Another swing and she knew the chair would tip. She put all her effort into it, straining her head and trying to shift the mass of her body to the left. The chair’s right side lifted, tilted over. It teetered in perfect equilibrium for a second, two seconds. Lucya stretched her neck as far as she possibly could, trying to get every last ounce of weight to the left. Then the chair started to fall. It felt like it was going over in slow motion. A thought ran through her head: what if there’s something just to the left, something hard?
She hit the floor with another muffled thud. Her head bounced off the carpet. It may have been soft, but there was still a hard floor underneath and the impact sent bright flashes of light dancing before her eyes. The way that her hands had been tied behind the back of the chair meant that part of the back was now pinning her arm to the floor. All her weight was on it; she could feel it already starting to go dead as the circulation was cut off.
She tried moving her legs. They remained stubbornly stuck together, but there was a tiny bit of give in the legs of the chair that they had been attached to. The swinging had weakened the structure of it. She tensed her thigh muscles and then her calves. She pulled them towards her bottom, then tried flexing them out away from her. The tiny movement grew a fraction larger. She continued to jerk her heels and thighs backwards and forwards, squeezing and flexing, crunching and stretching. Her muscles were burning, but she kept on pushing, glad of all those evenings spent in the gym. Then, finally, a cracking sound. The legs had started to become detached from the seat of the chair. Now there was lots of give. One more squeeze between thigh and calf,
and there was another crunch and the sound of splintering wood. Three of the legs had come free, and one had snapped in two.
Her legs were still bound together, but she could at least move them now. She straightened them out, and then with her feet she pushed herself round on her side. She tried to grip the floor with her feet, to pull herself towards the broken legs. Another push to turn herself, and her outstretched fingers touched on a split chair leg. Carefully, with a combination of her bound feet and legs, her fingers, and her head pressed against the carpet, she was able to manoeuvre her hand around the sharp piece of wood. The tightness of her bindings made moving her hands difficult, but she found she was able to position the splinter between her hands and the plastic tie that held them together. Very slowly, she started to saw.
Fifty-Two
“UNTIE HIM, NOW.” Flynn waved a hand dismissively as he spoke.
Gunter and his sidekick approached. The German’s knife was pressed into service once more, severing the bonds that held Jake to the chair.
“Mr Jake Noah, for the murder of Melvin Sherwood, and another unnamed man, and the attempted murder of myself, I sentence you to exile from this ship. Take him away. Put him in that inflatable thing, the one he used before. Once we’re out of the fjord, cut him free.”
“You said you weren’t going to kill me. That’s a death sentence!”
“I said I wouldn’t kill you directly. I’m giving you a chance. Maybe you’ll find your own Eden, if you paddle long enough. If you survive long enough. Goodbye, Mr Noah. I’ll be sure to give your regards to that lovely little Russian girl, when I see her for phase two.”
The anger within Jake exploded. He drew in both his arms, pulling the two men restraining him in close, and then threw them outwards. It all happened in a split second, and the energy he put into the movement was enough to send both men staggering. He immediately drew back his hand, clenched his fingers into a fist, and rammed it into Flynn’s abdomen. Jake had never hit anyone before and had no idea what to expect. Even so, the resistance in the tensed muscles his hand connected with took him by surprise. Flynn was no slouch, he kept himself in shape. If the punch caused him any pain, he didn’t let it show. Before Jake could pull back for another shot, he felt his arms being restrained. He didn’t put up a fight, he knew it was pointless.
“When you drop him in that raft, take out the oars,” Flynn said. He turned and sat back down in the captain’s chair. “And if you see the other two, tell them to hurry up with finding a driver. Let’s burn some fuel.”
Jake was marched off the bridge. The journey back down through the ship was not as quiet as that from the theatre an hour earlier. People were out and about. Word of events had got around, and even those who had not witnessed the shooting were aware of what had happened, even if their grasp of the facts was not entirely accurate. Most people simply stopped and stared at Jake as he was marched along by his escorts. Some jeered. A few shouted “murderer!” One spat. But at no time did Jake try and protest his innocence, he knew there was nothing to be gained by it. A thousand people believed that they had seen him shoot and kill. He hoped he might at least see Silvia, or Barry, or Grau. They might believe him. They knew him well enough to know he would never take a life, at least not in the way he had been framed. Ibsen had been a different matter; that was self-defence. The memory of the fight in his cabin, and how it had ended, turned his blood cold. He was a killer. He had taken another man’s life. Was it so hard to think he would do it again? The realisation made his legs go weak. He stumbled and fell.
“Get up,” the German grunted.
Jake couldn’t get up. His head was spinning. Being framed, having people who didn’t know him think that he was the gunman, that was something he could just about cope with. But having his close colleagues, his friends, believe that he was capable of this? That was too much. And Lucya? The thought of Flynn and his plans for her sent him over the edge. He began to shake uncontrollably, face down on the floor.
“I said get up!”
His convulsions were making it hard to breathe. He didn’t care. He wanted to die, right there and then. He knew he should never have survived the asteroid. That he had survived but not stopped Ibsen before he’d killed Hollen just deepened his guilt. Hollen would have made a great captain, he would never have let all this happen. A confusion of thoughts coursed through his mind. A sharp blow to his ribcage sent a wave of pain through his body. He felt a rib crack. His breathing became even more laboured.
“Get up, or I will kick the life out of you,” the German growled.
He was bent over Jake, speaking directly into his ear. Apparently unwilling to wait for him to comply, and with the help of his silent counterpart, he hauled Jake to his feet.
“Now, walk!”
The pain in his side overrode all other thoughts. A small crowd had gathered, jeering and calling out.
“Murderer!”
“You’re pathetic, they should kill you right here!”
“Why did you do it?”
“Coward!”
Something snapped in his head, clicked everything into focus. He couldn’t change these people’s minds about what he had done, but he could go out with his head held high. Better to be remembered as defiant to the last, than as a coward. With considerable effort, and even more pain, he put one foot in front of the other and took a step. Then another, and another. He looked at the crowd of people. Tried to speak. The words came out in short bursts, between gasps for air.
“I didn’t…kill anyone…I was framed… Believe what…ever you want…but I beg you…choose a new….a new captain…he’s evil…Flynn is evil.”
A punch to the kidneys made any further speech impossible. He was in too much pain to try and make words. Besides, it was clear that the few words he had managed had fallen on deaf ears; the blow he’d just taken was met with spontaneous applause and cheering.
The rest of the walk down through the decks felt to Jake like it took a lifetime. The lower in the ship they got, the fewer people they encountered. As they reached deck two, Jake felt the familiar vibrations of the engines spinning up to full operating speed.
Fifty-Three
WITH A SNAP, the tie binding Lucya’s hands together gave way. She had lost all feeling in her left arm but, with her right arm in front of her, pushing against the floor, she brought herself back into a sitting position. Immediately she felt the blood rush back into the previously trapped limb. The numbness was replaced by a tingling which became so intense it was painful. She swung the arm backwards and forwards, trying to recover some sensation. With both hands now free she was able to grab another piece of smashed chair leg. It made short work of the tie holding her feet together. She tried to stand, but the cord that was bound around her legs and the seat of the chair restricted her movement too much. Trying to work it down her legs so that she could step out of it didn’t help, it was tied too tightly. She picked up the sharp piece of broken chair again, and began sawing.
It took a good ten minutes to sever the cord, but finally she was free. She struggled to her feet and, with her hands held out in front of her, carefully and quietly she stepped forwards.
In the time she had taken to free herself, Lucya’s eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark and she could just about make out silhouettes and outlines. She was fairly sure she was in a bedroom, given the large and flat shape in the middle. She headed for that first and, reaching down to touch it, her fingers made contact with a thick, puffy quilt. Rounding the bed and feeling her way as she went, she walked gingerly towards where she thought the door should be. Before her outstretched hands detected the extremity of the room, her knees came crashing into something low and hard. The noise of the impact sent her heart rate soaring. She froze, holding her breath for what seemed like an eternity, terrified that someone would come charging in to see what had happened. But nobody came to check on her, and the only sound was that of the blood pumping through her ears. She lowered her hands and discov
ered that her route had been blocked by a chest of drawers. Working her way sideways along the furniture for a few metres, she eventually found the unmistakable texture of the door.
With the tips of her fingers she lightly explored the surface until they alighted on the handle. She put her ear to the door and listened intently, trying to determine if there was someone on the other side. Once again, the only sound she could hear was that of her own heart thumping, firing adrenaline around her body, preparing her for a fight. Ever so slowly, she turned the handle, covering it with her free hand as if doing so might mask any noise. But there was no sound. The well-maintained mechanism turned smoothly and silently. With the slightest of tugs the door came towards her. A vertical bar of light from outside streaked across her face. She glanced behind her and saw that the window had been boarded up, explaining the lack of daylight in the bedroom.
Lucya turned back to the door, pulled it open a little more, and peered through the gap. Beyond it was a sitting room. Although much brighter than the bedroom, it wasn't well lit. Curtains had been drawn across the balcony double doors, letting through only a dim glow. A sofa and two chairs were arranged around a low table. Someone was sitting in one of the chairs, facing towards Lucya. She recognised who it was at once.
“Tania!” she exclaimed in a loud whisper.
Fifty-Four
FOR THE SECOND time that day, Jake stepped onto the extendible steps which led to the platform normally used for boarding the tender. This time though, there was no tender, only the inflatable life raft that he himself had ordered be tied up there.
“Down.” The German prodded him in the back.
He looked around helplessly, half hoping to see someone, anyone, come charging out onto the steps to save him from his fate.
