Anika Rising (Gretel Book 4)

by Christopher Coleman

  “We’ll give him the courtesy of removing his friend. We’ll wrap him in a tarp or something.” Anika shined the flashlight in the long section of the container, outside of their cordoned off space. “Look at all this stuff and space. The rats will certainly be pleased.”

  Anika walked back to the man on the floor and flipped him over, slapping him across the face. He grunted once, sleepily, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  Anika lifted him by his shirt and thrust him on the bed against the wall. His eyes sprang to life and he instantly began shaking his head and pleading. “No. No, please.”

  “Give me the keys to this container,” Anika said, and the man motioned to his pants on the floor, a shameful reminder of how it all came to this point.

  Anika fished the keys from the pockets of the stained pants and then grabbed the leg of the dead man, dragging the corpse behind her as she walked into the main part of the container. With Petr beside her, Anika turned the beam of the flashlight to the sailor, who remained on the bed.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Kiet,” he answered.

  “What does it mean?”

  The man closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Honorable.”

  There was no need to point out the irony. “What do you do here on the ship? What is your position?”

  “I work the deck. Maintenance and cleaning.”

  “Will you be missed?” Anika held the man’s eyes, hypnotizing him like a python with a rabbit, daring him to lie.

  “I would have been missed by Balot, that is all. He was my super.”

  “I take it Balot is this piece of debris at the end of my arm?”

  Kiet nodded.

  “Where are your sleeping quarters? Give me a direction or a number? Who did you share them with?”

  “All of the quarters are centralized, aft and port side. We are 1C.”

  “We?”

  “We bunk in pairs.”

  “And who was your bunk mate?”

  Kiet stayed quiet, and the silence meant he was folding the last of his playable cards. He wouldn’t be missed for days, if at all, since his supervisor and bunkmate were one in the same.

  “You have no memory of any of this, Kiet. You don’t know what happened to your boss, or how you ended up in here. And if I or my acquaintance is ever asked about an incident on the ESC Mongkut traveling on these dates from the Old World to the Eastern Lands, I will know who reported it. His name is Kiet. A crewmember and a rapist. And everyone he has ever known will die.”

  Kiet’s eyes were like globes now as he listened to the threat, and he pushed his back against the container wall, pressing it as if he were trying to break through and send himself to the sea below.

  “I don’t need to ask if you understand, correct?”

  Kiet shook his head wildly.

  Anika held the flashlight on the man’s face for a moment longer, and Petr realized that Kiet couldn’t see them in the darkness, and that Anika’s words must have sounded like the voice of God.

  Anika nodded and Petr slammed down the makeshift container door, sealing in Kiet for the next few days. They stood and listened for screams from the room, cries for help, but ten minutes of silence passed without a whisper, and within another five minutes, Petr and Anika were outside the larger container on their way to find room 1C.

  PETR AND ANIKA MADE their way toward the center of the ship, the narrow paths forming a giant maze, the stacks of containers rising above them like skyscrapers. The redness of the steel was like the color of some distant planet, and the uniformity of them made it difficult to maintain direction.

  They had intended to find Kiet’s accommodations during the night, but it had simply been too dark to navigate the metal corridors, so they had camped in an empty, open container not far from their original quarters. By dawn, they were back on the deck, using the newly risen sun as a guide to find the proper room.

  “Where are we going?” Anika asked, following Petr, who had taken charge of this portion of the adventure. “You can’t possibly know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wait,” Anika whispered. “Do you hear that?”

  Petr didn’t

  “Stop here. There are men coming.”

  Petr eventually heard the approaching voices. They were coming from the opposite side of the container, over the maze wall where he and Anika stood.

  They watched silently as two crewmen entered the intersection, speaking loudly and laughing as they passed through and continued to walk toward the port side of the ship. Within minutes, a dozen more men followed, spaced out in groups of twos and threes.

  After the last group passed, Petr and Anika waited another minute, and, hearing no one else approaching, they crossed over onto the path the crewmen had just walked. They stared down the corridor in both directions. It was all clear.

  “I could smell food coming off of them,” Anika said, “and you could hear the glee in their voices. They’ve just eaten. The mess area must be this way.” She nodded to her right.

  Petr and Anika followed the reverse path of the crewmembers, and soon they came to a white, two-story box of a building with a metal stairway leading up to a second floor. There was a round, eye-level window on the first floor that looked into the building, and through it Petr could see the room inside was a kitchen—the galley. He took a step closer to the window and could now see that a pair of men were washing dishes and wiping down counters, obviously in clean-up mode.

  “We’ll need food,” Petr said, and then hesitated, scanning the length of Anika. “At least I will.”

  “I will need to eat food too, Petr. The other...the other cravings have waned. They’re almost completely gone. I promise. I had no desire to feed on those men back in the container room.”

  “Just a desire to kill them?”

  Anika paused, considering the question. “Yes. I did. But that would have been my instinct before. Before the potion and Marlene. I would have wanted to kill them both.

  The difference is, before I would have restrained myself. Out of fear. But that part is gone now, the fear. Because I’m strong. Stronger than most of the predators of this world—predators like those crewmen—so I no longer need to temper the instinct. I can simply kill who needs killing.”

  Petr understood. She was right. Her new strength had changed her behavior. It was probably the way all animals were wired, he thought, and humans were certainly no different. Over millennia, people had developed weapons for defense—guns and tanks and the like—but the body was also a weapon, and when one had been transformed into a killing machine like Anika’s, it was meant to be used not only to hunt, but to protect. And sometimes protection meant killing.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” Anika said flatly, shifting back to the matter at hand. “I’ll inspect the mess hall upstairs. If everyone has left, I’ll check the plates for any leftovers. If there’s nothing worthwhile, I’ll create a distraction for you. Some type of noise. If and when those two in the kitchen head up to investigate, you get into the kitchen. You’ll have to move fast. The door is there. Raid the pantries and try to keep it non-perishable.”

  This rapid-fire thinking was also part of the new weapon, Petr thought, the ability to clear away any ambient cloudiness of the mind and simply focus on the immediate problem. It was the type of mind everyone aspired to but few ever reached.

  He watched Anika scale the stairs, and within seconds he heard the sound of crashing metal. On cue, the men abandoned their tasks and followed the sound, and Petr was immediately through the deck door and in the kitchen collecting bread loaves and cans, using one of the trash bags that had been laid out on the counter.

  The bag was half-filled when he looked out the window and saw Anika coming back down the steps, frantically waving her hands toward her, signaling Petr to hurry. He nodded and held up the bag to indicate his current stock, and then took a step toward the deck door.

  “Hey!” a voice called.


  Petr stopped in his tracks, and then closed his eyes and sighed.

  He heard the man pause for a moment before leaving the bottom step, beginning his approach slowly from the stairway. “Drop the bag, fare-dodger.”

  “I paid my fare,” Petr replied, opening his eyes. He was facing the wall of the galley, standing directly in front of the window, about six feet from the man now. “But we had some trouble with our rations. It’s a bit of a story.”

  “We?”

  Petr winced at his mistake, but didn’t answer.

  “I suppose ‘we’ is who broke two of my plates upstairs?” The cook stepped in front of Petr, hands on his hips, studying the intruder from foot to head. He was at least six inches taller than Petr and a hundred pounds heavier. “I am correct in my supposition then?”

  “I’ll pay for the plates and the food.”

  “Will you? And how do you plan to do that?”

  “When we get to Cupchin. I’ll sell some of the things I’ve brought from home. You and the crew probably wouldn’t find value in them, but the locals there might.”

  The cook creased his face in confusion. “Cupchin? We’re not stopping at Cupchin.”

  “What?”

  The cook shook his head slowly, unblinking.

  “When was this change made?”

  “It was never part of the itinerary. I’m not quite sure why you would have thought that, seeing as you say you paid your fare to sail and thus would have been informed about the schedule.”

  The men who Petr paid for the container space had lied to him. They had told him they would have a chance to restock their supplies along the way, on day three at Cupchin, and he and Anika had planned to ration the food and water with that understanding. Two extra days without food would have been manageable, but water was something else. They may not have died, but it was a possibility.

  Petr stood before the cook in a quiet rage now, disgusted not only with the cook and the rest of the crew of the ESC Mongkut, but with his fellow man generally.

  “Trevor!” the man called, leaning his head toward the stairway. “Come down here. We have a fare-dodger.”

  “I paid,” Petr replied flatly, waiting for the other cook, presumably the steward, to come barreling down the steps with interest. But he never came.

  The cook was now completely blocking Petr’s view of the deck window, so Petr inched to his left, trying to catch a glimpse of Anika.

  She was gone.

  Petr assumed she had something to do with the steward’s absence in the galley, and he didn’t press his thoughts for another answer. Whatever had happened, he knew she was fine and he was glad she had fled. He could figure his way out of this. He could work the kitchen maybe, pay for the remainder of the trip washing dishes and sweeping floors. Certainly young men snuck onto these cargo ships all the time in search of work and adventure. There had to be a precedent for the situation in which he found himself currently.

  Anika, however, was not likely to fare as well if she were caught, not with the character of men that seemed to be a part of this ship. Petr’s hope was that she would find 1C and settle there for the remainder of the trip, locked inside, quiet, emerging only when the voyage concluded.

  There was no longer a layover in Cupchin, which meant the trip would be cut by a day from their original estimation. If the weather held, they should be arriving in the Eastern Lands in two days. And with Petr working the kitchen, he could find a gap in the day to sneak Anika food and water.

  “Do you know what we do with stowaways?” the cook asked, unsheathing a large butcher’s knife and holding it beneath Petr’s chin. “Trevor!” he called again to the steward, but still no reply.

  Petr swallowed. “Put me to work?”

  The cook smiled back at Petr. “Not exactly. We don’t like putting criminals to work on our ship.”

  Petr frowned. “So what then?”

  “It’s an old law of the sea we call overboarding. I’m sure you can imagine what it involves.”

  Petr shook his head.

  “No?” The cook gave Petr a look of mock confusion, as if moderately surprised that Petr wasn’t familiar with the practice. “Well let me explain. First, we tie your feet with a long piece of rope, and second, we throw you off the back of the ship.”

  “That’s not very creative.”

  The cook shrugged. “You’ll get dragged along for a while. Drowning slowly as you go. Pirates made a practice of this a few centuries back. Surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

  “And your ship’s master approves of this? Pirate punishments from the dark ages?”

  “He’s a by-the-book man. And the overboard punishment is technically legal and still on the books.”

  The cook laughed and then took one more check of the stairway leading up to the mess hall. He frowned at the empty well and then nodded his head forward toward the deck door.

  “Let’s go.”

  The cook grabbed Petr by the collar of his shirt and pulled him forward so that Petr was now in front of him, and then repositioned the blade of the knife to the base of Petr’s skull. He pushed him out the deck door and began leading him aft, toward the stern of the ship.

  “This punishment seems a bit antiquated,” Petr said. “I feel I have to say that. Perhaps there is another, more reasonable punishment for stealing a can of hash and a half loaf of bread?”

  “Antiquated, yes, but still applicable today. Haven’t done one in years, though, I’ll admit that. Most of the fare-dodgers caught word of the practice years ago and it’s become somewhat of a deterrent.”

  “I’ve told you three times now, I paid for my space. It was a stowaway tent. In one of the cordoned-off containers.”

  “Well then why aren’t you there now? You can’t get out from the inside.”

  Petr stayed quiet.

  “That’s a big secret, is it? Well then, with whom did you make these arrangements? Or is that a secret too?”

  Petr sighed and shook his head, still being pushed along quickly toward the ship’s rear. “They were two deck ratings, I think. I don’t know their names. They didn’t say much. If you can find them, I’ll point them out to you.”

  “Find who? You think anyone I find will admit to these payments? And risk their hanging in front of the master?”

  The cook had a point. This was always the risk with under-the-table arrangements.

  “We’ve only got four deck ratings in total, anyhow, and they’re all four bastards. You’ll be wasting your breath. And if it’s between you and them, the master’s gonna believe his crew. Anyway, stow, they’re all at work now, busy with the operations and earning an honest day’s pay. Maybe when they’re done tonight, coming back to the hall for supper, they’ll take a look out the rear and see you bobbing off the stern and then fess up about the whole transaction. Though it’ll be a little late by then.”

  “Only four?” Petr asked, struck by the small number of deck ratings.

  “Ship runs itself. Most containers do. Only got twenty-two crew total, including me and Trevor.”

  Petr thought of the dead rapist’s body in the container and of Trevor’s absence. “Twenty you mean.” Kiet was incapacitated but still alive, so Petr included him in the count.

  The cook raised the blade slightly against the back of Petr’s skull, piercing the skin and drawing blood. “What did you say,” he growled.

  Petr winced and took a deep breath. In the distance, maybe a hundred yards from where Petr and the cook now stood, a scream of torture rang, followed by silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Petr said, “I meant nineteen.”

  Chapter 22

  GET UP AND GET OUT.

  Tanja opened her eyes and could see clearly the left side of the empty laboratory; the right side, however, was clouded and pocked with stains of brown. She tried to swivel her head right, to locate the source of the voice that had just spoken, but the pain in her face and neck was unbearable.

  If you stay, the voice
whispered, you will die. Just like Marlene.

  Tanja thought of her daughter in a way that she hadn’t for centuries. The memories couldn’t be real, she understood that, it had simply been too long since she’d last seen her.

  But they felt real.

  She remembered Marlene as a little girl in the Old Country, ten perhaps, travelling with the village families, nomadically wandering the countryside every few years, trying to find a new home where they could settle permanently, away from the seemingly endless hordes of raiders and looters. Those were difficult times, she recalled, helpless for women, though the idea of helplessness was no longer a concrete one.

  Yet, in spite of the tribulations of that ancient life, there had also been joy. She could no longer capture that feeling in her waking hours, but she dreamt of it on occasion, waking to a tightness in her heart so gripping it felt like death itself. But it wasn’t death, obviously, it was something less tangible, something she understood before the blackness had overtaken her heart. The smoldering remains of love, perhaps.

  It’s not time.

  Tanja brought her attention back to the lab, and then tested the limits of her pain with first a shallow breath, and then, feeling the elements flow easily into her lungs, another, deeper gulp of air. The oxygen felt cool, medicinal, and she raised her arms straight, directly above her head, stretching them toward the ceiling as she shrugged the tightness and throbbing from her shoulders.

  So far, so good.

  Her face was a problem, however, and she knew by the faded ambient sounds around her that she had lost the ability to hear in her right ear. She could still see on that side though, mercifully, but the blood from her wounds had dried thickly and was clouding her vision at the moment.

  She wasn’t mortally wounded, she knew that much now, and, more incredibly, she was still free. But that wouldn’t last for much longer; her source had escaped, and that meant she was likely reporting all of this to the police at that very moment.

  Her source had escaped.

  It had never happened before. Never. Tanja had taken hundreds of human sources during her life—maybe a thousand—and she had never allowed one to leave. Neither out of mercy or through escape. There had been occasions when she’d had to kill her sources before the potion was finished, either because the locals had become too suspicious or the source had proven too unruly. But death was different—they all died eventually—for escape she had no precedent to learn from, no plan to deal with it.