“Allegedly,” Jack corrected the man. “Tally has made an allegation. That doesn’t make it true. As for Doctor Fortuné, with all due respect, he has no idea what he’s up against. No one has ever seen anything like this virus before.”
Marangakis huffed. “This mysterious pathogen of yours gets better and better, doesn’t it? I suppose you’re going to tell me next that it’s more contagious than AIDS and deadlier than cancer.”
“You don’t catch AIDS, Captain. You catch HIV, which develops into AIDS. The virus onboard this ship makes AIDS seem like a sore throat. You have to take me seriously.”
“No,” Marangakis said. “I do not. This is my ship and you are my prisoner. You will be taken to the brig and detained until I can hand you over to the French authorities.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Whatever you need to do, but please just put a call through to the mainland and warn them to take precautions. Tell them I’m a terrorist, for all I care, but take what I’m saying seriously. Please.”
Marangakis examined Jack, focusing on his face. He let out a sigh and clasped his hands together. “You realise that if I do as you ask, they will add terrorism to your list of offences. If you make empty threats about a virus onboard, you’ll be in a great deal more trouble than you are already in.”
Jack just wanted to put a stop to the festering evil onboard this ship once and for all. “I’m telling the truth,” he said. “Just, please, accept the chance that I might be right. Warn the mainland.”
Marangakis cleared his throat and stood up from his chair. “Fine, but on your head be it, Mr Wardsley.”
The captain left the room without a further word and Jack was taken to the cell that he was beginning to think of as his.
***
The infected attacked the passengers at a little after eight as usual. Jack knew there was nothing he could do to prevent the deaths onboard, but that wasn’t the point anymore. This was a ‘big picture’ problem now, and all that mattered was preventing all that death from spreading into the world. Jack hoped with all his being, that as midnight came and the ship grew quiet, morning would finally come and start a new day. If that happened then the future would be corrected and Joma, having seen it was so, would retire his spell. The ship would reach the coast of France with all passengers dead – except for Jack locked safely away in his cell – and the authorities would take adequate precautions to contain the virus. This could all be over in a matter of hours.
Day 248
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Jack saw the alarm clock flashing 1400 on the bedside and smashed his fist against it. The unit shattered and his hand came away bloody. But the pain was nothing compared to the frustration he felt. The best chance he’d had to end this thing had been a failure. Whether the captain had simply ignored his pleas to contact the mainland, or if he had done so and the authorities still hadn’t been sufficiently prepared to contain the virus, the spell was still in place. Only Joma could tell him why. Only Joma could tell him whether or not his actions had been worth a damn.
Jack got dressed in a hurry and left before the guards came. He was in no mood to tussle with them today. Every hour he wasted would kill Joma a little more, and he was getting tired of all the dying.
He still didn’t know where to find Joma during the day, but he didn’t have time to wait around until the evening, so he headed for the Voyager’s Lounge. When he got there, he approached the barman on duty.
“Hey, there. I was looking for Joma.”
The man was polishing a glass with a stringy rag. His English was nowhere near as good as Joma’s. “He not here till half-seven, my friend.”
“Do you know where I could find him now?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t know. He a quiet man. He keep to himself.”
“Do you know which is his cabin?”
The barman gave Jack a suspicious look and placed the glass down on the bar. “I can no tell you that. You will have to speak to him later, here.”
“Please,” Jack said. “I really need to speak with him. It’s important.” He slid a hundred euros across the bar, the first time he’d used money since visited the ship’s casino.
The barman frowned, but then relented. “Okay, but you no cause trouble. His cabin C14.”
Jack thanked the man and headed for C Deck.
The elevator seemed to take forever to descend and Jack almost leapt out into the corridor when the doors finally opened. He was now in the middle of C Deck, and all the lower-numbered cabins were at the fore. Jack headed for number 14 cautiously, aware that the guards would probably be searching for him by now.
When he finally reached the door, he knocked quietly.
There was no answer.
He knocked again harder. “Joma? Joma, are you in there?” He leant against the door, placing his ear against the wood to listen. As he did so, the door swung open. The lock had been busted. “Joma? Are you okay? Call out if you can.”
The room had been witness to a struggle. The television was knocked into a strange angle and the room’s telephone was hanging by its cord. At the back of the room was a small table, where a thick white candle stood as its centrepiece. The wax had melted down to a length of about only three-inches and the flame had gone out. He could tell by the thin trail of smoke still filtering from its blackened tip that it had been extinguished recently.
Jack’s guts turned over when he noticed the blood on the bed.
He took several, creeping steps across the room, following the blood trail that led over the far side of the bed. He had a bad feeling.
Joma lay dead in a thick pool of his own blood. It seemed to still leak from a deep crater in the side of his head. The murder had been recent.
Jack dropped to his knees beside and shook Joma’s body. “Damn it, Joma, you can’t be dead. I don’t know what to do. I need more time.”
Joma opened his eyes. They were blood shot, not focusing properly, but they were alive. “Jack…”
Jack couldn’t believe it. “Joma! Yes, it’s me. What the hell has happened?”
Joma’s eyes closed again, but fluttered back open gradually. “T…t…”
“Tally? Are you trying to tell me that Tally did this?”
“T…Tomorrow. You only have…tomorrow.”
And then he let out one final breath before fading away like the melted candle on his table. Joma was dead. The spell was broken.
Day 249 - 1400hrs
Jack woke up with a start. Today was his last day before tomorrow. Today was his last chance to save the world. He fought against the urge to stay under the covers and accept whatever fate chose to bring, but he could not allow himself to sit idle while the fate of billions rested in his hands.
Damn Joma for putting him in this position.
If Jack was going to try to stop the virus one last time, then he had to get going. The security guards would arrive soon and they would waste time he could not afford to lose. He headed over to his suitcase and hoisted it up onto the bed. He yanked out half its contents and laid them on the bed. Of the things that lay in front of him, Jack’s eyes came to rest specifically on the unopened Glen Grant bottle. The liquid inside sang to him, but he covered the bottle with an evening shirt. Better to keep a clear head.
The next thing he examined was his paperback book. It was crazy – and almost ironic – that in all the time he’d been stuck aboard the Spirit, he had never managed to make it past the first page.
The final thing his eyes fell upon was something he’d almost forgotten he’d brought along with him. The small leather wallet lay open on his bed, a silver shield and crown above a slogan, which read: SERVING-PROTECTING-MAKING A DIFFERENCE. On the opposite side of the wallet was Jack’s identity card for the West Mercia Police. Once upon a time, the small wallet had meant everything to him, then it had meant nothing at all. Now it seemed to matter again. He’d taken an oath once, to serve and protect the innocent by bringing the guilty to justice. That oath applied now more tha
n ever. Jack was a police officer, and it was his job to do what needed to be done.
He got dressed and left his cabin, knowing it would be for the very last time. He took the familiar elevator upwards and stepped out into the familiar corridor with the familiar laundry cart on his right. He walked towards the Promenade Deck and skipped, mid-stride, as the ship tilted expectedly. Stepping outside, he turned immediately to his right and put a hand up.
“Hey! Hey, lads.”
The two boys stopped in their tracks, a mere second before they would have collided with him. Jack smiled at them both and said, “You kids be careful now, you hear? Don’t want you falling overboard and getting eaten by a killer whale.”
The two boys giggled and then walked away calmly, keeping their speed within sensible levels. It was the first time they’d ever listened to him.
Jack went in the same direction, towards the pool area. He needed to be wary of security looking for him, but there was someone he wanted to speak to one last time. Before he went upstairs to speak to Claire, though, he strolled over to the edge of the pool just in time to catch the young boy about to go skin to his knee. The boy tripped over his own feet, but fell right into Jack’s arms. The mother came rushing over to thank him. With that task completed, Jack headed up to the sun deck.
Claire lay sunning herself beside the empty lounger with the green towel. Jack grabbed the towel, balled it up, and threw it into the sea, happily watching it sink beneath the waves.
“I…er, think that belonged to someone,” Claire said.
Jack sat down on the lounger. “It’s been here a really long time,” he said. “Nobody is going to miss it.”
“Did you have to throw it overboard, though?”
Jack shrugged. “I didn’t like the colour.”
“Fair enough.”
“Claire?”
“How do you know my name?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just listen to me, okay?”
Claire looked worried but remained quiet.
“Something is going to happen tonight and I want to know that you and the baby are safe when it happens.”
Claire’s worried look changed to full on fear. “What? How…”
“I know I’m frightening you, but it’s important you just do as I tell you. If tomorrow comes then you’ll understand why.”
“If tomorrow…what?”
“Be in your cabin by eight-o-clock tonight, okay? Make sure you are nowhere near Conner. Conner is sick and so are lots of other people. Stay away from them all.”
“You’re frightening me. I’m going to call someone.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Claire. You want to have this baby because you know you’ll make a good mother. I think so, too, but you don’t need to be with someone who treats you the way Conner does. You deserve better. You can do it alone, so don’t stay with him just because you’re scared.”
Claire was speechless, but something in her eyes suggested she was taking Jack seriously. She was probably wondering how he knew all of these things about her life, and hopefully that was enough to unnerve her into staying in her cabin.
Jack looked her in the eye. “In about ten seconds, Conner is going to turn up and question you about why you’re talking to me. Then he’s going to ask you to come look with him to get hotdogs. I know this and everything else that is going to happen today, which is why I want you to stay in your cabin tonight. If you ever want to see Leeds again, you have to lock yourself away.”
Conner appeared on cue and stared at Jack suspiciously. “How you doing, mate?”
“I’m good,” Jack said. “I was just about to move along.”
“Sounds like a good idea, mate.” Conner let out a sneeze then turned to Claire. “Come on, babe. I need you to look after me, I feel like shit. We’re all getting hotdogs downstairs.”
Claire glanced at Jack for a split second, and he saw the shock in her eyes that his predictions had come true. He just hoped he’d done enough to keep her safe tonight. Because tomorrow was finally on its way.
Jack got up from the lounger and passed by the old couple kissing on the balcony. Despite being sick of the sight of everything repeating over and over, he had to admit there were certain things he would miss. Ironic, that he had prayed for the day to end but, now that it was, he was sad to see it go. There was comfort in the things he could predict with certainty. The unknown was terrifying.
1500hrs
As Jack moved around the ship, it became clear that Tally had set security on him again. If he even managed to succeed in stopping the virus, he would have a bunch of jumped-up sexual assault charges to deal with once he reached the mainland. Wherever Tally was hiding, she’d have hell to pay if he ever found her. He’d trusted her.
Cared about her.
Jack wondered again if Tally was the one behind the virus. A young Romany girl didn’t fit the typical mould of a terrorist, but then who knew what was going on in a person’s head? Terrorists could change colour and religion over time, but they were all the same breed of fruitcake in the end. Hatred for humanity was not exclusive to any one kind of people.
After leaving Claire on the sun deck, Jack snuck aboard the Mariner Deck, where he evaded a pair of security guards by stepping through into the Lido Restaurant. Being the largest eatery onboard, and open twenty-four hours a day, Jack wondered if the virus had been transmitted via the food. Was there a way he could find out if anything had been contaminated? He looked around the self-service buffet carts, at the trays full of chips, spaghetti, fish fingers, chicken nuggets, beef curry, and a whole host of other edibles, and realised that there would be no way of telling. It wasn’t like he was going to find a glowing green pork chop on a bed of pus-filled maggots. He had a matter of hours to do something to help the passengers onboard, and prodding through several dozen buckets of cheap food was not going to be a sensible use of time.
Jack estimated an infection rate of about a third of the total passengers. No members of staff seemed unwell, which made it a safe assumption that the staff-only areas were exempt as possible locations for the outbreak. Come to think of it, he had also seen staff eating inside the Lido Restaurant throughout the day, so that made his theory about the food being contaminated ever more unlikely.
Ivor and his family were sitting at a table in the corner. Their little girl, Heather, was sicker than anybody. She might be the key to solving everything. If Jack could find out how she caught the virus, he might have the answer as to how everyone else caught it. Then he might have half a chance to get things under control before it was too late.
He took a seat at Ivor’s table. Poor little Heather was as sickly as ever, snoozing restlessly in her mother’s arms. Vicky looked ill herself – and mortified – while Ivor wore his usual stern expression that Jack knew was just a front of a frightened father.
“How are you folks doing?” Jack said.
“We’ve been better,” Ivor replied in a gruff voice. “Who are you?”
“Officer Wardsley.” Jack offered his hand. “I understand you’re all planning on fleeing to Germany?”
Ivor’s jaw dropped and Vicky began to sob.
Jack put his hands on the table and smiled. “Don’t worry. No one else knows that you’re here. I just wanted to say that I agree with what you did, Vicky. Nigel Moot was an evil man and deserved to die. As a mother of a young daughter, what you did was understandable.”
Vicky looked at Jack as though she were hallucinating him being there. “T-thank you.”
“May I offer you some advice, though?”
“Yes…please.”
“Forget about it. Put what you did behind you. If you don’t, it will eat away at you until you’re a broken mess, trust me. What you did was a moment of madness, but anyone else would have done the same. Don’t let it change you. Your daughter needs you.”
“Why are you saying all this?” Ivor demanded. “Is this some sort of trick to get my wife to confess?”
Jac
k placed a hand on Ivor’s shoulder. The man’s skin was clammy and hot beneath his shirt. “No tricks. I just wanted to let you know that I hope everything works out okay for you all.”
Ivor said nothing. He just studied Jack.
“Your daughter looks pretty sick.”
Ivor grunted. “It’s just a cold.”
“Do you know where she caught it?”
“No. Children often get sick when they travel.”
“How long has she been under the weather?”
Ivor shrugged, seemed irritated. “Since last night. We’ve all been feeling a little unwell. It’s just a cold.”
Jack took a moment to think. Last night. Vicky got sick the evening they all boarded, which was yesterday. Why hadn’t Joma cast his spell a day earlier if that’s when everything started? How was Jack supposed to prevent something that had already begun?
He stood up, feeling beaten but not yet down. “One last question, Ivor. There’re a lot of people who have come down with the same cold your daughter has. Do you have any ideas about how it could have spread to so many people?”
Ivor shrugged. “I’m not a bloody doctor, man. I suppose, if I thought about it logically, the most likely place to catch a cold is in high traffic areas. Places where people are bunched together. The lifts, restaurants, maybe the tunnel we all queued in before coming onboard.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully, mulling it all over. “Hey,” he said, “you know there’s a doctor on the lower deck, right? You should take your daughter down there now to see if there’s anything to make her feel a little better.”
Ivor nodded. “We were just discussing that.”
“Good, the doctor’s name is Fortuné. He’s a smart man. Goodbye, both. I hope your daughter gets well soon.”
Jack left the family alone for the last time.
1600hrs
Jack looked at his watch and grimaced when he realised it was approaching four-o-clock. Just over four hours until the infection reached its final phase. With each second that passed, it seemed more and more unlikely that Jack would find a solution. He had few facts to go on, but he listed them off now.
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