“Oh, and let me guess, now you’ve found Jesus,” she said, giggling to herself.
He turned back around, looked in the mirror, and stared into his own dead eyes. “That’s right, Angel, laugh it up.”
“So, every night you go out there and give your evening sermon to smaller and smaller audiences, only now you’ve found God. Do you honestly think these captains of industry and their families see this as anything other than what it is? You know why people booked the apocalypse package on this ship, and it was nothing to do with finding eternal salvation. Oh sure, you’ve got a few believers, but each day that goes by, each dish that’s scrubbed from the menu, you get less and less people showing up until it’s just going to be you preaching to an empty auditorium. These people are just about as far away from any sense of what that book is about as the devil himself.”
Noah put the Bible back down and finished knotting his tie. “As I said, you wouldn’t understand.” He turned in his seat to look at her. “There are some good people on this ship. I know I’m not among them, but now, finally, I think I can help them. I think I can help them find peace and help them find the salvation they need, and if I can do that, then maybe my life won’t have been such a waste after all. Maybe I can at least do something good before I nestle down in that special place in Hell that’s been reserved for you ’n’ me.”
Angel burst out laughing. It was not mocking laughter; it was general hilarity, which hurt Noah even more. Her augmented breasts jiggled up and down as her stomach heaved. “Oh my, that is just priceless.”
Noah remembered back to the time he had first seen her in his father’s shoe shop. He had been stunned mute by her beauty, but now all he felt was disgust. He knew that the heart that beat beneath those warm, supple breasts was colder than one of Neptune’s moons. “I’m happy I can bring you amusement.” He stood up, put on his jacket, picked up the Bible and went to the door. “I’ll see you at dinner,” he said, walking out of the room. He could still hear her laughter as he walked down the corridor.
Angel continued laughing for a full minute after Noah had left. She remained there on the bed for a while, as naked as the day she was born, and then suddenly jumped to her feet. She had another meeting with Troy, this one would not be like any other, and it was best that it came before dinner than after.
Angel never just threw on clothes. Everything she wore was purposeful, considered, calculated. She put on a pair of tight-fit Vivienne Westwood jeans and placed a gold chain around her neck. The pebble-sized locket dangled just above the shadow that denoted the beginning of her ample cleavage. She walked across to her wardrobe and selected a white Reiss blouse, put it on and then made sure that enough buttons were open so that people’s eyes would be drawn to the sparkling locket. It was a carefully crafted ensemble, just classy enough to remain on the right side of sexy without looking trampy. She smiled in the mirror, a well-practised smile, the one that wowed moguls and statesmen alike. She spent a few more minutes toying with the idea of wearing a pair of heels but in the end opted for a pair of six-hundred-dollar Prada pumps.
Finally, she was all set, and she went to the door, turning to look at the room before heading out. How many more nights would she need to spend here?
Angel made her way down to the loading bay. It was a lot quieter than it had been earlier on in the day. This time Troy was not waiting for her when she arrived, but, instead, one of his burly crewmen greeted her.
“Ma’am,” he said, nodding his head.
“Why hello, and who might you be?”
The man was in his late twenties, well-built, well-tanned as if he had spent most of his life outdoors. “I’m Jacobs. The captain asked me to escort you to his cabin.”
“The captain? Well, we’d better not keep the captain waiting now, darlin’, had we?” she said, looking Jacobs up and down.
The younger man flushed red. “Err, no ma’am. If you’d follow me, please.”
“Oh, I’d just about follow you anywhere, sweetheart.” Jacobs laughed nervously and led Angel across the short gangway.
He took her below deck and knocked three times on the door to Troy’s cabin. “Come in,” came the response.
Jacobs opened the door and ushered Angel through with his hand. “Why, thank you, darlin’,” she said, stepping inside.
The door closed again behind her. Troy was pouring whisky into three waiting glasses. “I’m sure you’ve met Beatrice before,” he said.
Angel looked at the young woman perched on the chair she had occupied earlier in the day. “Mrs Jackson? I didn’t realise you were … joining us.” The young woman turned bright red with embarrassment.
“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty head, sugar. I’m just here for a quick meet with Troy, and then I’ll leave you two to your evening.” She looked down at the floor. “Well, I know things are hard, but have things got so bad that we have to have plastic sheeting instead of carpet?”
The young woman laughed politely. “Troy was just telling me how the cabin was going to get a new coat of varnish tomorrow and he didn’t want it dripping.”
“Uh-huh, well, I’m sure Troy just thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”
“Here we go, ladies,” he said, handing the two women glasses with a thick dark purple liquid in them.
“Now what in heaven’s name is this?” Angel asked, locking eyes with Troy.
“Well, now. This is my own special recipe blackberry whisky sour.”
Angel did not relinquish her stare. She looked beyond Troy’s brown eyes, beyond his false smile and deep into his soul. She brought the glass up to her lips and paused, sniffing at its contents. Finally, she took a drink. “Well now, isn’t that just the most divine thing that’s ever been put in a glass? Where’s yours, hun?”
A smile threatened to appear on Troy’s face as he finally broke eye contact with Angel and walked back to pick his drink up. “I prefer my whisky straight up,” he said, grabbing his glass and taking a drink.
The two of them turned towards Beatrice, who was just watching the thick purple liquid as it swilled slowly around the glass. “What’s wrong, sugar?” Angel asked.
“Err, I’m not really much of a drinker. My daddy doesn’t really approve of ladies drinking.”
“Well, hasn’t your daddy heard o’ something called women’s rights? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, sweetheart, and let me tell you, I’ve seen your daddy fall down drunk plenty. Maybe he’s just worried you’ll like it too much and he’ll have to share.”
Beatrice laughed. She had a nice laugh, a sweet laugh. She was twenty-two years old, very precocious, very innocent, very easily led, and as she pictured her father falling down drunk, she raised her glass. “What’s good for the goose,” she said and took three big gulps before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. It took a second for her taste buds to catch up, and her eyes widened. “Goodness gracious.”
“Ain’t that something?” Angel asked.
“It most certainly is that,” Beatrice replied, taking another big gulp. She rolled her tongue around her mouth and smacked her lips together. “It’s got kind of a coppery aftertaste.”
“Here,” said Troy, throwing a glance towards Angel, “let me put a little more syrup in that for you.” He walked across and tipped the blackberry syrup bottle, making the drink turn an even deeper purple.
Beatrice took another drink. “Mm, that’s better. Sweet.” She continued to look at the drink like a child who had just discovered a magic potion.
Angel’s brow creased, and she looked towards Troy who just shrugged his shoulders. “So darlin’, how do you feel after your first grown-up drink?”
“Feels warm going down. I can feel it. It feels … nice.”
“Yeah, that’s how it’s meant to feel.”
Beatrice took another drink and smiled. “It feels as though—” Suddenly she couldn’t talk any more. She looked at the glass in her hand, but now it seemed as though it were a million
miles away, almost as if her hand didn’t belong to her anymore. Troy said something, then Angel said something, but they seemed to be speaking another language. Beatrice watched as the glass was plucked from her fingers by Troy’s big sun-browned hand. Where was he going with her drink? Then that warm feeling, it wasn’t as warm anymore. In fact, it was downright cold ... freezing. The iciness started deep inside somewhere, she couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Was this what it was like to get drunk? She thought she liked it at first, but now she was pretty sure she didn’t. She didn’t like it at all. With the cold came fear, fear the likes of which she had never known before. It was as if something was in her body with her, something dark, something evil. Every second it was getting stronger, this feeling that something didn’t belong, this feeling of being invaded, violated. What was happening to her? She was losing herself, to what she did not know, but she was definitely disappearing like the sun behind a cloud. No, like the moon. The frigid, desolate, lonely moon up in the sky. That was it. She was like the moon being cloaked in an eternal biting blackness. She felt a single tear run down her cheek, she felt it kiss the corner of her mouth as it rolled onto her chin. Then Beatrice didn’t feel anything … ever again.
“So how long is this meant to take?” asked Angel, completely unaware of what was going on inside Beatrice.
“Shh!” Troy said, holding a finger up and staring towards the young woman sitting on the bed.
Beatrice ... what was Beatrice, remained there, like a sculpture. The colour had drained from her skin in little more than the blink of an eye, and the iciness that had enveloped her now hung in the room like freezing fog. A shiver went down Angel’s spine as she looked towards the young woman half fascinated, half horrified. Troy reached for the long-bladed hunting knife from his belt and stood in readiness.
The pale figure on the bed coughed once, twice, and each time blood spluttered from its mouth then it closed its eyes. It remained there a moment longer, and when it opened them, they were no longer human eyes. Shattered ebony pupils danced on the surface of milky grey orbs as the creature first turned its head towards Troy then Angel. Spoilt for choice, uninhibited by the weapon in Troy’s hand, the Beatrice thing pounced.
Angel screamed. It was the first time she had ever been up close and personal with one of these things. The prospect of Troy failing and leaving her alone in the cabin with what was, in essence, a true monster scared her half to death, but it was a groundless fear. Troy had dealt with his fair share of monsters. He brought the knife up in a blur, and the creature fell like a goose shot from the sky. The body landed on the plastic-covered floor with a heavy thump, and it was all over.
Troy wiped the blade off and returned it to the sheath on his belt. Blood had splattered over his hand, and he quickly washed it in the sink, over and over, to make sure there was not a single trace left.
Angel just stood, looking down in horror at the dead creature then up towards Troy. “I thought you said they didn’t bleed.”
“No. I said they hardly bleed. When they’re freshly turned they bleed a lot more than ones that have been turned for a while.” He finished cleaning his hands, stepped over what had been Beatrice and walked over to where Angel was standing.
She looked at him, finished the rest of her drink and handed the empty glass over. “Want another?”
“What do you think?”
“Why did you kill her? Why didn’t you use her like the others?”
“You think we gather them one by one? We lure a bunch of them into a cage and trap them there until we need them. Gathering them one by one is a surefire way to get your ass bitten.” He handed the glass back to her. This time the drink was amber, no blackberry.
Angel gulped it down. “Well, at least we know it works.”
“And then some. So, it’s roughly a minute from ingestion to BOOM!”
“How much did you use?”
He reached under a serviette and pulled out a syringe with red fluid in it. “Not much.”
“If their blood is coagulated, how can you get it in a syringe?”
“He opened his wardrobe and brought out a blender. Smoothie anyone?”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Well, if you are, do it now, while the plastic’s still down.”
“Ugh!” Angel held her stomach. “What do we say to Mr Urqhart when he asks where his daughter is?”
“It’s not really a big deal, is it? We’re notching about two suicides a week at the moment. Poor Beatrice just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“How the hell did you get her down here in the first place?”
“She’s been sweet on me for some time. I asked her if she’d like to come on a tour of the ship and she couldn’t get down here fast enough.”
“What happens to her now?”
“Now she becomes fish food,” he said with a grin.
“What are you so happy about?”
“Why, your accent darlin’,” he replied, mimicking her. “Now that you’re good and scared, it’s all gone and disappeared.”
“Fuck you, Troy.” She gave him a glare then mellowed a little. “So, where do we go from here?”
“Well, I’m heading there with a few of my people. We’re going to be poor refugees. If these suckers are still taking in strangers after all this time, I’m going to take advantage of that. Get a feel for the place, figure out the best way to do this,” he said, pointing to Beatrice.
“You mean like tainting a water supply or something?”
“No. We don’t want to be poisoning the things we’ll need when the place is ours, but if we study them for a few days, we’ll figure out exactly what we have to do.”
“Okay, but I’m going with you.”
“What’s the matter, Angel? Don’t you trust me?”
“Not for a second.”
chapter 10
“Help!” Lucy gasped as she woke from another nightmare. She had been having them for a few days, ever since John had passed. She waited for a moment before reaching out to feel Mike’s warmth. Her hand found nothing but cold bedclothes. She reached for her torch and switched it on. Mike’s side of the bed was empty, and Lucy began to get an uneasy feeling. A few months before, Mike had suffered some kind of breakdown. He had begun to hallucinate. One night, Lucy had gone downstairs to find him in conversation with Fry. She had not admitted witnessing it until long after the event, but now she was worried she was going to find the same thing happening again.
She made her way down the stairs quietly. A sinking feeling consumed her as she approached the living room. She stood in the doorway for a moment and saw Mike sitting in the same chair he had that night she had found him. Only this time, he was not talking; he was silently looking out of the patio doors over the bay.
“Don’t worry, I’m alone, Fry had an appointment,” he said.
“Funny boy. Couldn’t you sleep?”
“No.”
“What’s on your mind?” Lucy asked, walking into the room and sitting in the other armchair.
“I was thinking about John and how quickly everything can just turn upside down.”
“Life’s always been like that, Mike. That’s why you need to make the most of every minute.”
“Yep, that’s pretty much what I was thinking,” he said, picking up a glass and taking a drink.
“What you got?” He handed it over to her and she sniffed the contents before taking a drink. “Jesus. It’s like paint stripper.”
“Haven Arms vodka.”
“I think I’ve just gone blind in one eye,” Lucy replied, taking another drink and handing the glass back to him.
“You get used to it.” The two of them sat in comfortable silence for a moment.
“Well, as long as you’re okay, I’ll head back to—”
“There is something else.”
“What? What is it?”
“When we went to Loch Uig, do you remember our conversation in the woods?”
Lucy
took back the glass and took another drink. “We had lots of conversations.”
“There was one in particular.”
“Look, Mike, there was a good chance we weren’t going to come out of that alive, and I was never going to hold you to something—”
“So you do remember.”
“Getting a marriage proposal isn’t something you really forget, no matter how it happens.”
“I suppose not.”
“But as I said, Mike, it’s—”
“I couldn’t go through with it,” he blurted.
“You don’t have to explain.”
“No, I do. I couldn’t go through with it, not without Em here. I couldn’t go through with it knowing that I’d driven her away, not sure if she had started a new life somewhere or whether she was in a gutter at the side of the road. I just couldn’t.”
“Let’s change the subject, there’s no need to apologise, I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, standing up and walking across to where Lucy was sitting. He crouched down in front of her. “I couldn’t go through with it then, but since she came back, it’s been on my mind, constantly. I want us to get married.” For a moment, Lucy couldn’t breathe. She sat there in shock just looking at Mike in the moonlight. Her eyes were as wide as saucers as she did everything she could not to cry. Mike got down on one knee and pulled something out of his dressing gown pocket. He slid it onto the fourth finger of Lucy’s left hand. “It wasn’t really much of a proposal last time, but Luce, will you marry me?”
Now Lucy could not hold back anymore, and the tears began to flood from her eyes. She looked down at her finger to see it was real, a gold ring with a large sapphire, black in the moon’s rays, set between two diamonds. It was beautiful. She shuffled forward, threw her arms around Mike and squeezed. As the side of her face pressed tightly against his, he could feel her warm tears against his skin. “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” she whispered then squeezed even tighter.
Safe Haven (Book 6): Is This The End of Everything? Page 9
