Chucklers (Book 1): Laughter is Contagious

by Jeff Brackett

  Moving slowly, he pulled harder, putting enough of a gap in the outer door that he could see into the corridor outside. And still there was no outcry nearby.

  Looks like the coast is clear, Tallant. Now move your ass.

  Still holding the inner doors with foot and shoulder, he shoved the outer doors far enough apart that he could catch the left one with the same foot holding the inner door, and slid his right leg out through the gap. Wriggling clumsily, he slid onto his back, one leg holding the elevator doors, one leg hanging out into the corridor, and bracing the opposite doors with his shoulders, he shifted his hips farther into the corridor, and slipped his right arm through as well.

  Walking his shoulders across the floor of the elevator, he tried to get his head through next. But no matter how he tried, there was no way to bend his neck enough to get his head out without letting go of the doors with his shoulder. He was going to have to let go with his left leg and slide out feet first as the door began to close, pivot his body, and push himself out, all while the door was closing.

  And if he got hung up, he ran the risk of breaking his neck as his body dropped and his head stayed inside the elevator.

  Laughter down the corridor reminded him that time was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Taking several deep breaths, he exhaled to minimize his chest, swung his left leg out, pivoted on his butt and slid out, scraping his back on the edge of the elevator floor and banging his forehead on the door as he slipped free. He collapsed to the floor awkwardly and fiery agony on his back told him he’d likely lost some skin, but that concern was overridden as stomping footsteps and laughter sounded to his right.

  Whipping his head that way, he saw three men running past. One of them saw him lying on the floor and stopped in his tracks. He pointed and screeched laughter, as if seeing Tallant on the floor was the funniest thing the man had ever seen. His companions must have noticed he had stopped because they joined him in a matter of seconds.

  Ignoring the pain in his back, Chris scrambled to his feet and ran without thinking. The wide, brightly carpeted stairway was in front of him and he didn’t hesitate. He took the stairs two at a time, only realizing after the second step that he was heading back upstairs instead of down. Laughter behind told him there was no going back.

  Chris ran for his life.

  Chapter 20

  August Grappin

  Frolicking

  Gus followed the girl with the single free breast as she, and a growing number of other teens from the pool, cavorted through the ship. They joined with groups from the ship’s game rooms, putt-putt course, and other entertainment venues on the upper decks. They danced and played, occasionally encountering someone who didn’t understand.

  When that happened, they would try to play with the newcomer, showing them how much fun they were having. Sometimes, the new person would join them in their frolicking, laughing and dancing alongside the family. Other times, a newcomer wouldn’t understand, no matter how hard everyone played with them. But even then, there was entertainment.

  Chapter 21

  Charles Griffe

  A Study in Red

  Charlie could hear his pursuers as they poured into the stairwell two floors above him, and his chest tightened with panic. He fumbled at the wall before him and felt a door handle. Yanking the door open, he lunged from the pitch darkness of the stairwell onto Deck Fifteen.

  The sight of electric lights ahead befuddled him for a moment, and he paused, confused. Evidently the power outage didn’t cover everything on the ship. Sounds of laughter and footsteps from the darkened stairwell above reminded him of the gravity of his situation. He wasn’t terribly familiar with the layout of the ship, and was more than a little bit startled at the sight of a series of side-by-side outdoor basketball courts before him. The miniature, stadium-style lights illuminated the fight that was playing out on the nearest of the three courts. A group of about a dozen teens wielding golf clubs, milled about a smaller group of four men dressed in gym shorts. The teens shrieked in joy as they pounded the men.

  One of the adults appeared to be holding his own. He had managed to avoid most of the gangsters, and held one of them before him as a shield. Charlie heard the hooting and laughter of his own pursuers, reminding him again that he had a decision to make. Should he chance the deck before him, or try to outrun them down the stairs for another deck or two?

  The sound of shoes slapping hard on the stairwell behind him caused him to turn. One of the kids, an older teen with a silver ring in his lower lip, had leapt over the railing of the stairs and onto the landing behind him. Without thinking, Charlie stepped out onto the court and turned to shove the door closed behind him. He cursed as the pneumatic door closer kept him from shutting it quickly enough, and the kid behind him slammed his shoulder into it, knocking Charlie backwards. There was no way he was going to be able to keep them out. He would have to chance the basketball courts.

  He stepped away just as Lip Ring

  grabbed his sleeve. Charlie heard someone screaming like a little girl, and he jerked his arm back in a panicked attempt to extricate himself from the kid’s grip. The annoying screaming was distracting, and he wished whoever it was would just shut the hell up. Wide-eyed and terrified, he yanked his arm repeatedly, finally breaking free, and turned his head to the basketball court to see every head in the area turned to look at him.

  Over it all, he heard his dad's voice, "Stop screaming, you pussy!"

  The malicious laughter from the thugs increased as they looked his way, pointing at him and slapping their knees as Charlie realized that Dad was right. The incessant screeching was coming from his own burning throat. Embarrassed and furious, he managed to bring his shrieking down to a whimpering keen as he turned back to the leech that once again tugged at his sleeve. Anger and shame gave him strength, and he jerked his arm free, kicking at the kid with all his might. Lip Ring fell back, and Charlie ran into the chaos of the basketball court.

  Laughing at him, a kid with what Charlie now realized was a putter from a miniature golf course, lunged toward him. At the same instant, the sounds of the rest of the gang from the bar on Deck Seventeen told Charlie that his pursuers were pouring in from the stairwell behind him. He decided there was no time to hesitate. He dropped his shoulder and drove into the kid before him just as the putter slammed down. Dropping as he did was all that saved him. He felt the shaft of the club hit his back, but the actual head missed him, and Charlie’s tackle did its job.

  The kid went sprawling, and Charlie barely slowed. His high school football days briefly entered his mind as he sprinted through the crowd. Two more club brandishing youths ran at him, and he feinted left, then right. Their putters tangled together as he left them in his wake.

  “Over here!” To his left, Charlie saw the only remaining adult survivor of the brawl on the basketball court, frantically doing his best to fend off the advancing crowd around him. The man desperately spun to keep his captive between himself and the clubs of his attackers, but it was no use. Even as Charlie watched, the other kids continued to swing at him, uncaring of the fate of their companion. One putter smashed into the man’s arm where he held his human shield in place, while another drove into the shield’s skull, caving it in and spraying blood all over the man holding him.

  All the while, they continued to laugh and cheer. But not so loud that he couldn’t hear the man’s desperate plea. “Help me!”

  Charlie didn’t pause. He darted away from the crowd… away from the man who fought hopelessly for his life. There was a gap in the crowd behind the attackers who were paying attention to the easy prey as he began to scream for his life, and Charlie drove through. He dodged and spun when he could, avoiding contact, doing his best to avoid drawing attention to himself. And whenever he couldn’t see an opening, he made one, slamming his adult frame through the smaller teens like a wrecking ball.

  He’d never been so effective in football, but his desperation and larger size gave him a clear advan
tage. If only Coach could see me now.

  Finally, he cleared the mob and turned triumphantly. Self-congratulation gave way to disbelief, then desperation as he saw that his dash through them had attracted the attention of just about every teen who wasn’t already directly engaged in pounding the life out of the screaming man who had finally collapsed to the polished floor. The number of his pursuers had now swelled well past the original crowd in the stairwell, adding the thugs from the court to their number, and Charlie now had nearly thirty maniacally laughing teens hot on his tail.

  He looked ahead. The end of the outermost court was before him. A set of double doors in the wall beneath the Observation Deck was his only hope of escape. Panting a bit now, Charlie glanced behind at the raucous pursuit. Looking ahead again, he calculated he would barely make it to the door ahead of them.

  God, please let the damned things be unlocked.

  He reached the doors and pushed. For a panicked second, nothing happened. Then he realized they opened toward him. Bracing against the left door, he yanked the right one open and slipped inside. He pulled the door closed with all his weight, straining against the pneumatic door stop. He got it closed and looked out the inset glass window at the mob just as they hit the doors. Charlie braced his feet and pulled, desperately trying to keep them closed, but he knew there was no way he could win a tug of war against so many of them. Ironically, there were so many teens pushing forward that they impeded one another’s progress as the ones in front tried to pull the doors open, even as the ones behind pushed forward.

  He looked around frantically for something to slide through the door handles, and his eyes stopped on a mop in a rolling cart at the wall behind him. But with the constant pull from the other side of the door, the mop might as well have been on the moon. There was no way he would be able to let go of the door to reach it, without the jeering horde pouring in behind him.

  Then he noticed the door on the other side of the room. It was a single door, not another double like the one he was currently frantically trying to keep closed. Straining to maintain status quo for the moment, he looked once again at that door. He looked at the mop. His feet began to slide, and he knew he was losing the battle to keep the doors closed. Taking one last straining breath, he yanked the doors inward once more and then let them go.

  He turned, took the three steps to the mop, grabbed it by the handle, and used it to slide the rolling container of water toward the kids as they rushed into the room, tripping the first few to make it through. Hanging onto the mop, he sprinted to the door across the room, yanking it open, then slamming his weight into the door again. Damn these pneumatics! He got the door mostly closed and shoved the mop through the door handle, getting as much of it behind the doorframe as he could before he turned and ran the ten feet to the short stairway to the Observation Deck above the basketball courts.

  The door behind him boomed once, twice, and on the third time, he heard the snap of the mop handle as the door came open. But he was already at the top of the stairs by then, and emerging onto the deck above. He looked around as he ran. There was no time to stop and analyze his options. He was figuring this out as he ran.

  There was a short metal railing surrounding the raised observation area where people could watch the various activities on the deck below. Beneath him and behind, were the basketball courts. The courts were surrounded by the outer hull of the ship to one side, the wall with the doors through which he had entered, the wall with the double doors through which he had just escaped, and a Plexiglas wall down the length of the courts opposite the ship’s hull. On the other side of the Plexiglas was a huge drop-off, where several decks of cabin balconies overlooked the ship’s central boardwalk below.

  There was no escape that way. Charlie kept running. He didn’t know where he was going other than away from the stairs behind. Teens began pouring from the stairwell like ants from a carelessly kicked anthill. And in the meantime, Charlie saw he was running out of Observation Deck ahead. There was a partition surrounding a small raised platform ahead, and lacking any choice, he drove himself toward it. Six short steps up, and he found himself standing on a precipice overlooking the boardwalk below. Frantic, he looked back and saw the kids less than twenty feet away.

  He looked down and saw several nylon harnesses with the words Zip Line embossed on them. Beside them were half a dozen metal contraptions that looked like pulley rollers with handles to either side. The label on the wall identified them as trolleys. He looked up. Sure enough, a metal cable hung just over his head, and extended across the vast open emptiness above the boardwalk nine decks below.

  The first of his pursuers reached the steps below him. He did a double-take at the boy’s hair… shaved on the left, bright purple on the right as he giggled up at Charlie. There was obviously no time to strap on a safety harness. Charlie snatched one of the trolleys off the hook and slammed it into the kid’s head, knocking him back into the growing mass of pursuers, slowing them for the split second Charlie needed to slide the open bottom of the trolley over the cable. Seating the trolley wheels firmly, he kicked up the safety bar between himself and the emptiness, and launched himself into the air.

  Desperately, he clung to the handles of the trolley, hoping his grip would hold as he flew through the darkness into whatever awaited him at the other end of the zip line. Once again, Charlie screamed like a little girl.

  He screamed as he shot away from his pursuers.

  He screamed as he clung to the trolley for dear life, flying through the inky blackness over nine decks of emptiness, terrified that his grip would fail and he would plummet to his death.

  And that thought made him more conscious than ever of his fragile grip on the handles of that trolley, and he felt every muscle in his hand reflexively tighten until he feared they would cramp and make him fall anyway. That made him scream even more.

  He screamed until he slammed into the padded wall at the other end of the zip line, and fell unceremoniously on his ass just in front of the entrance to Deck Sixteen’s starboard side mini-golf course. He looked back, wide-eyed and terrified at the abyss he had just crossed, suspended by little more than wishful thinking.

  As he looked, movement to his left reminded him that his pursuit was still on the move. He scrambled to his feet, forcing his shaky legs to move him forward once more. He appeared to have gained at least fifty yards on his pursuers, and he saw the Plexiglas double doors that led to the snack bar just past the putting green before him. He sprinted for the doors, snatching up a couple of putters laying on the ground as he staggered past. Slipping through the doors, he pulled once more against the pneumatic door-closer until he was able to slide the putters through the handles. He finished just before the first of the kids reached the door.

  Charlie was startled to recognize the kid. Purple Hair was evidently faster than his companions, and reached the door several seconds before the rest of the crowd. Charlie jumped back, as the wide-eyed, laughing thug yanked on the door, only to have it catch against the improvised door lock. He looked down at the putters, then grinned at Charlie through the clear plastic.

  “Clever little piggy!” He cocked his head to the side, eyes wide and utterly lacking in any semblance of sanity. “Little pig, little pig, let me in!” Then he shoved his face into the Plexiglas, flattening his nose as he squealed like a frightened piglet. “Squee! Squeee!” The pig imitation mixed with laughter as the kid alternated between the two. He bled profusely from an open wound on his forehead, and Charlie realized it was from where he had hit the kid with the zip line trolley. As Charlie watched, the teen deliberately smeared a crimson trail across the Plexiglas, violet locks sticking and mixing with the blood, spreading it even more across the door. Charlie was momentarily hypnotized, watching the macabre scene as Purple Hair giggled and oinked, all the while painting his obscene abstract art project——A Study in Red, A Painting with Blood on a clear canvas, using human hair on plastic.

  He was startled out of
his reverie as the other teens arrived in a seething mass, slamming into the doors and the clear plastic walls of the snack bar. They laughed, evidently finding the first kid’s piggy imitation hilarious, and they began to do the same. Within seconds, dozens of teens were giggling and squealing at him, and the hair on the back of Charlie’s neck raised at the eeriness of the sound. He backed away until he stumbled against a table and turned to look around.

  He studied the snack bar, nearly sobbing with relief at the sight of the starboard side stairwell on the back wall. As he wove his way through the tables scattered across the floor, his pursuers began pounding on the wall, and Charlie briefly wondered how long he had before the Plexiglas broke. He looked back at them as he reached the stairwell. The doors still held, but it looked like the putters were beginning to bend. Charlie shouldered through the door and down the stairs once more.

  WEDNESDAY

  NOVEMBER 23

  Chapter 22

  Lt. Cdr Frank Jameson

  Jayhawk 6152

  “Bahama Queen, this is Coast Guard Search and Rescue. Please respond. Over.” Jameson waited several seconds more before trying again. “Bahama Queen, this is Jayhawk Rescue Helicopter Six One Five Two with Coast Guard Search and Rescue out of Freeport, Texas. Please respond. Over.”