The Turning (Book 1)

by Micky Neilson

  Now as the animal angled its maw and shot in, closing its teeth around the geezer’s neck, Alexander raised the rifle butt to his shoulder, left arm supporting, and sighted the wolf’s head. The pain in his arm and shoulder was exquisite, and his aim was anything but steady. He squeezed off a round just as the ship hit a particularly gargantuan wave, and the shot tore through the back of the beast’s left wither instead of its skull.

  With practiced speed, Alexander ejected the shell and shot the bolt forward to load the next round. The wolf had already dropped poor old Sal and broke for the hall and out of sight.

  This was what he had waited for. This was what he existed for, struggled for and risked everything for: the thrill of the hunt, the anticipation of the kill. This was when he felt most alive. With a grim smile tugging at his lip, the hunter gave chase.

  ***

  An instant after hearing the shot, Ginny reached the end of her hallway. She saw the man, that same man from Brandon’s room. He was running away, but she could tell it was him by the splint on his left arm. He had a rifle, and as soon as she registered who he was, he was gone.

  Then Ginny saw Sal.

  The old man was sitting against the bulkhead between his room and the next cabin door. His head was lying on his shoulder and his eyes were still open, though they offered only a glassy, empty stare. His arms were limp at his sides. Blood coated the front of his white t-shirt, some draining from his mangled neck, and some spreading from a ragged, gaping wound just under his chest.

  Ginny stood frozen, disbelieving. Had he done this? Had it done this—the thing that had once been Brandon? How many more people were going to die because of what he had become?

  The ship rocked. The door to Sal’s room opened and Vera stepped out, holding the doorway for support. She took one look at Ginny and started to smile but then her eyes darted down to Sal. Her mouth grew wide as she sucked in breath; her hand flew to her chest. She swooned and fell back into the cabin.

  ***

  Pain.

  Hot, searing pain. White agony.

  The beast was running, but not the natural way, not the way it was used to. The flame spreading through its left wither and forelimb made this impossible. Regardless, it pressed on: down, down, down.

  It came to an open space where it smelled food, much food, but there was a barrier. The food was not accessible. No matter. Blood was what it truly needed.

  Blood is the divine essence.

  It ran the other way, through spaces that smelled like smoke, smelled like others even though there were none there. It ran and ran until it came to a kind-of-familiar place, a large empty area where it could look up and see high, high above, and for the moment, it forgot about the pain.

  There was an other in this place. The wolf could smell its fear. The other was just there, waiting.

  Kill.

  The beast ran and leaped atop the other, and tore at the soft part with its teeth, the part that would crunch and twist within its maw.

  The blood was warm, and it was good.

  Yes. More.

  It sniffed at the barrier behind where the other had been, and it smelled more others, far away. Then the pain returned. White-hot, burning.

  Movement.

  The beast stood and walked to the center of the space, looked up, and saw a cage. The cage was coming down and in it the wolf could see another. The other saw it, too, and its eyes went wide. The wolf could not smell this other’s fear but it could see it, could sense it. The cage came down but the barrier did not go away. A barrier on the other side opened, closed. And then… then the cage began to go up. The other was getting away, was running.

  Chase.

  ***

  Jessica Rollins had spent enough time waiting for Grandma and Grandpa. They should have been back from the show. “Don’t worry, Jessie, we’ll come back right after the production,” they’d said. “Production.” Whatever. She was tired of looking after Tommy. He was asleep anyway. So, she had decided to go and see just what the hell was keeping them. Yeah, the captain had said everyone should stay in their rooms, but so what? She was fifteen, for Christ’s sake; she was old enough to make her own choices.

  Nan and Gramp being late had given her time to finish Analeese Montgomery’s new book, Dark Instinct. As she walked the hall on deck seven to the glass elevators, she was still pissed off that Josephina had chosen Filipe over Raphael. She could totally see Raphael and Josephina spending their lives together, but Josephina and Filipe? Really?

  The ship was tilting like crazy, up, then down, up, then down. It was actually kind of cool. Thank God she didn’t get seasick. That would suck hard. She went to the elevator lobby, hit the button and stepped into the closest glass elevator; as the doors closed behind her she walked to the railing that circled the inside of the glass and held on, looking down at the piano bar as she descended. Totally weird to see it empty.

  As the elevator neared the bottom she looked over to the far side of the bar (was that port or starboard?) towards some closed doors. There was something there, hunched over on all fours like a dog eating out of a bowl. It stepped back and swung its head around, looking right at her with bright yellow eyes.

  Holy freaking shit.

  It was like a Wolven from one of Analeese’s novels, like the way she described Filipe when he went through his change.

  Oh my god oh my god oh my god…

  Whatever that thing was, it looked very pissed off, and very hungry.

  The elevator hit bottom and the doors started to open.

  Oh hell no.

  Jessie mashed the “door close” button repeatedly. She felt like she might pee her pants and she was shaking like a freak.

  The doors closed and the elevator started back up. Jessie dug her room key out of her back pocket as she stepped to the glass. That thing stood up, ran and jumped, first onto the top of the farthest elevator, which was on the bottom and hadn’t moved, and then to the middle elevator right next to her, which was not moving either but was a few floors up. Then just as she arrived at floor seven the crazy-ass thing jumped on top of her elevator.

  The doors opened and she ran faster than she had ever run in her life, so fast that she thought her legs wouldn’t be able to keep up and then she would tumble and then that thing would be on top of her, ripping, clawing…

  She nearly ran past her own room door. Her hands were shaking so bad she couldn’t get the stupid key into the slot, and then she heard a thumping. The thing was at the other end of the hall.

  How the shit?

  It had to have jumped from the top of her elevator onto deck eight, run all the way to the stairs and down and now it was here, charging at her and if she didn’t get her door open in like .5 seconds, this thing was going to eat her.

  ***

  No no no no no…

  Temporarily pushing the grisly demise of Sal from her mind, Ginny sprang to action, stepping over the prone form of Vera and pulling her the rest of the way into the room.

  The old woman was unconscious. Ginny’s mind raced: she tried to recall what she had learned in High School, when they took CPR. It all seemed like a lifetime away.

  She’s going to die!

  Think, think, think…

  Check for breathing, right? Ginny placed her cheek to within a half inch of Vera’s nose and mouth. She felt no air, and she couldn’t see a rise and fall in the woman’s chest.

  She’s not breathing. Oh shit she’s not breathing.

  Okay, CPR then: how did it go? Chest compressions and then mouth to mouth, right? She had heard one of the girls at the savings and loan talking a few months back, saying that the guidelines had changed, but she couldn’t remember what the new rules were. You should have listened. Crap. What if she screwed up and made things worse?

  She’s not breathing. Things can’t get worse. You can do this.

  Ginny leaned forward on her knees, put her left palm on Vera’s breast bone, right palm overtop and pushed downward in short
bursts. She couldn’t remember how many she was supposed to do—twenty, thirty? Somewhere around twenty-five she stopped, put her left hand on Vera’s forehead, right hand on her chin, put her own mouth over the old woman’s, and blew.

  She repeated this process three times. How much time had passed?

  Come on, come on…

  By the fourth set she was exhausted, and as far as she could tell, there had been no change. She brought her fist down on Vera’s chest once in a hard strike, in frustration. Tears poured down her cheeks. It was too late; too much time had gone by. She laid her head where she had struck, sobbing…

  And almost had a heart attack of her own as the old woman’s body arched upward. Ginny shot up as well, as Vera sucked a long intake of air. The breaths that followed came in rapid, halting gasps. Vera was breathing once again, but she was far from out of the woods.

  Ginny tried every number on the phone: infirmary, purser’s desk, room service, steward... nothing. She thought maybe if she could go by the glass elevators and shout down in the atrium she could get someone’s attention. It would mean going back out there, passing the mangled remains of Sal, and risking a run-in with… him? It. Don’t think about that right now. Just focus. She needed to get help, or Vera would soon be joining Sal.

  ***

  Even wounded, the wolf was much faster than Alexander would have thought possible. Unfortunately, he was reasonably certain that his shot had been a through-and-through. Fortuitous it would have been had the bullet remained lodged in the beast’s anatomy, for the silver would have poisoned its system. Even so, such a demise would have taken time, precious time that the hunter could no longer afford.

  He raced for the stairs and down, tracking both the noise of the descending mutt and the occasional blood droplet. He took the steps as quickly as he was able but was no match for the wolf’s bounding leaps.

  By the time he reached deck two, the creature was nowhere in sight. Coming off the stairs and directly to his right led him to the closed doors of the dining area’s upper level. An open passageway forward led through a cigar bar toward mid-ship. That seemed the only logical route; however, Alexander was careful to remain vigilant, for the beast might also be hiding, nursing its wound and waiting to strike from the shadows.

  Though his left arm protested fiercely Alexander kept it raised, holding aloft the rifle’s forestock. He fanned the barrel ahead of him as he navigated the empty bar, and made his way cautiously through another seating area, finally emerging into the atrium.

  There he noticed two things at once: there was a mauled corpse lying to the far side, just opposite his position in front of closed fire doors. He also registered in his peripheral vision a flash of motion to his left. Spinning, he beheld the wolf leaping from the middle glass elevator, which was stopped just a few floors up, onto the roof of the last lift, occupied by a young girl who looked as though she just might expire from fright.

  The lift stopped and the girl disappeared. As Alexander brought his sights to bear, the wolf leaped from the car roof to one side, over the railing and onto the next highest floor.

  In that instant, his satellite phone rang.

  Alexander exhaled heavily as he answered: “What?”

  “Is your house in order?”

  Perhaps it would be if you would piss off for more than five minutes. “Working on it.”

  “Not good enough. Coast Guard is boarding as we speak.”

  The hunter turned to the porthole. As the ship reared above the waves he could just make out a Coast Guard cutter.

  “I’ll adjust as necessary,” Alexander answered and ended the call. Time to reassess his strategy. He had hoped to kill the hound before the guard’s arrival, but such was not to be the case. Now matters became a bit more complicated. Rotten luck for the girl, whoever she was; no doubt she would soon join the growing list of casualties.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jessie Rollins used one hand to steady the other. Still, she kept missing the key slot. She could hear that thing, galloping like a freaking horse, closing the distance.

  The key went in but in all the craziness she forgot that you had to pull it back out again before the little light would turn green. She was sobbing now, her bottom lip trembling in the way that Grandma always teased was so cute, but nothing about her would ever be cute again if she didn’t get the goddamn door open now!

  That thing was a black mass on her left side, racing toward her like a comet as she jammed the key in and yanked it out, shoved the handle down and jostled herself into the doorway. She heard jaws snap and felt several strands of her long red hair get yanked right out of her freaking skull as she screamed, spun around, shut the door, and turned the bolt.

  She was a blubbering mess, and she had peed herself, but she was still alive. For now.

  “Why did you yell?” Tommy asked from the top bunk bed.

  Just then there was a massive impact against the door and Jessie was sure that the thing would come right through, just knock the stupid door right off its hinges and then eat the both of them just like that cross-dressing wolf from Red Riding Hood.

  The door rocked again. Jessie screamed and backed up, glancing at her brother. Tommy had worked his way into the corner, knees tucked tight to his chest. His eyes were nearly perfect circles.

  There were long scratches on the door now as the crazy-ass animal was actually trying to claw its way in. She would see it, any second now; those claws would shred the wood like paper.

  And then, just as suddenly as it all started, it was gone. No slamming, no clawing, nothing.

  The only sounds were Jessie’s moaning, a low whine from Tommy and a long, deep rumble of thunder.

  Slowly, Jessie took little steps toward the door. She had to know, had to be sure. She got really close, her head shaking as she pressed her cheek to the door and looked through the peephole.

  If this was a scary movie, this would be the part where that thing would come right through the door and get me.

  She waited, the sound of her breathing loud in her ears, but nothing happened. Then there was a noise, a heavy thump followed by a gurgling cry.

  It seemed that maybe her and Tommy had been spared, but someone else hadn’t been so lucky.

  ***

  Coast Guard Lieutenant Tony Blackwell had been distracted for most of the day.

  It had started off fairly standard—random boardings, equipment inspections, measuring nets. They had boarded a crab boat that had gone outside its designated fishery… nothing that required deep concentration, but up here, even the smallest lapse in judgment could cost someone their life. Especially in a storm like the one they were having now. Fortunately none of the guys had seemed to notice his inattention. But Tony knew, and that was enough. The Coast Guard motto, after all, was Semper Peratus—Always Ready. It was difficult to be always ready when your mind was a million miles away.

  As far as excuses went, Jen was a damn good one. No, scratch that; she was the best. Jen had been the love of his life. The ONE. The end-all be-all. Of course that was almost twenty years ago, before she met and married a physical therapist from Alberta.

  There had been other women in his life. He was a decent looking guy—six foot, two hundred pounds, athletic. Yes, there had been a few other women, but there was only one Jen. There would only ever be one Jen.

  He had pined over her for almost half his life, and though both of them felt that there was a kind of unfulfilled destiny between them, Tony had kept a respectful distance. They had kept in touch. Emails, the occasional phone call, birthday and Christmas cards… but this morning Tony had received the phone call that—though he would never wish ill will on anyone—he had secretly waited all these many years for: Jen was getting a divorce.

  She had talked once or twice about a separation, but Tony had always been careful not to get his hopes up. This, however, this was the real deal; he could hear it in her voice.

  And so he had been distracted. But, the boardings had
been successful and now… now he had a new case to focus on. He had briefed his team on the cutter Liberty: someone had brought an animal aboard the Rapture and there had been casualties. Upon first hearing this, he thought perhaps a poisonous snake was the culprit, but as more intel became available, it became abundantly clear that they were dealing with something much bigger, and much more dangerous.

  Tony had maintained communication radio checks with Chief Engineer Armando Alisante for the last half hour. The crew did not have eyes on the supposed animal, and there were now seven dead that the Chief Engineer knew of; that included the ship’s physician and the security personnel all the way up to the ship’s security officer. The more the lieutenant heard of the situation, the more it didn’t sound like an animal at all. The whole scenario struck Tony more like the execution of some strategy. But of course it was also possible that the apparent pattern was simply a matter of the casualties being those who first responded to the reports of distress. Either way, he and his men weren’t taking any chances. All eleven members of his team were fully geared: flak vests, batons, shotguns and sidearms.

  The plan was to go in with two five man squads: Alpha squad fore, Bravo squad aft. They would spread out from top to bottom, sweep and seal off each section—including crew areas—as they cleared them, and meet amidships.

  After setting off from the cutter, their RHIB, or rigid hull inflatable boat, had hooked up to the Rapture’s tender port, at which point Tony’s team boarded with the assistance of a few deckhands and crewmembers. They met Chief Alisante at the nearest crew door. Tony made the Chief aware of the team’s authority as everyone began their ascent to the I-95; he put Jen from his mind as the Chief informed him that they still had no location for the alleged animal.