Escape The Dark (Book 1): Dark Tides

by Fawkes, K. M.

  Sara returned with a length of rope. “This is all I could find,” she said, holding it out to Artem.

  He nodded. “It’ll work. Adam, help me hold him.”

  “No!” Cody screamed. “You’re not going to tie me up! You’re not!” He scrambled to his feet and backed away from them.

  “Get him inside,” Artem said, moving to the left and waving the others away from him, indicating that they should fan out.

  Sara stepped in front of the pool and hot tub, and Adam moved to the right, hoping to keep his friend from plunging over the side again. If he goes into the water again, he thought, feeling sick at the idea, I’m not going to be able to go in after him. I’ll have to let him go.

  He’d promised Cody that he’d never abandon him. He had promised.

  Now he picked up the rope that Artem had dropped on the deck. He would tie his best friend down. He would keep him here. He would force him to stay put until reason and common sense prevailed. He was not going to let Cody down.

  Artem closed in on Cody, and Cody backed away into Sara, who caught him by the arm. He threw her off violently and she skidded back across the deck and landed in the hot tub.

  “Are you okay?” Adam yelled.

  She came up sputtering. “I’m fine. Get him!”

  He tossed her the rope and dived forward, pinning his friend beneath his own body. For a moment he thought he had him, but Cody shrieked “No!” and tossed Adam away again. He got to his feet and sprinted for the stairs that led up to the third deck.

  Shit, Adam thought. He’s going to jump. Oh my God.

  But the splash never came. Instead there was a slam.

  Artem, Sara, and Adam looked at each other. Then, as if by unspoken agreement, they turned and ran for the stairs.

  Adam reached Cody’s cabin door first. He hammered on it frantically. “Let me in, Cody!” he yelled.

  “No!”

  “Just me, okay? Doesn’t have to be the others. We can talk about this.”

  “Get away!”

  “He has a balcony in there,” Sara said softly, and Adam knew she was thinking the same thing he was.

  “Nothing we can do about it,” Artem said. “If he jumps this time, he jumps.” He took Adam firmly by both shoulders. “Don’t you go in after him again.”

  Adam hesitated.

  “Damn brave of you,” Artem said. “But you can’t sacrifice your life for someone who’s determined to throw it away with both hands.”

  “He’s not—”

  “He is. From the moment we got on this boat he’s been ready to give up the fight. There’s a reason he doesn’t listen to the news reports when the rest of us do.”

  “It’s because he can’t take it,” Adam said.

  “Exactly,” Artem agreed. “He sees what this new world consists of, and he can’t stand it. Jury’s still out on whether there’s any peace or happiness left for any of us, but if there is, I guarantee you your boy in there doesn’t want any part of it. He’s finished.”

  “What do we do, then?” Sara asked.

  “We go downstairs,” Artem said. “We have our dinner. We wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Adam didn’t know if he even wanted to hear the answer.

  “Wait for him to decide,” Artem said. “One way or another, he’ll make the call. He’ll either come out of that room and start behaving like a normal person, or…”

  “Or not,” Sara said quietly, and Artem nodded.

  Dinner was usually the best part of Adam’s day. It usually provided a welcome distraction from all the other terrible things that were going on around them. Today, though, it was impossible to take his mind away from what had happened. Even once he’d changed into dry clothes and was holding a big bowl of Sara’s best oatmeal with sugar on top, all he could think about was Cody.

  Would his friend jump from his balcony?

  Would he come out embarrassed and apologetic, begging for forgiveness?

  Or, when he came out, would he still be ranting about hell?

  “Was he hallucinating?” Sara said after a long stretch of quiet, and Adam knew her thoughts had been dovetailing with his own.

  “I think so,” Artem said.

  “So he’s crazy.”

  “I don’t know if he’s flown over the cuckoo’s nest entirely,” Artem said. “He might just be having, you know. A snap. A mental break.”

  “So you think he could still come back?” Adam asked.

  “Son, I have no idea what might happen,” Artem said. “We’re in uncharted waters here.”

  “Maybe we should go back to the mainland,” Adam said.

  Artem raised his eyes. “Not you, too?”

  “No, not me,” Adam said. “Him. It’s not really safe to have someone like that on a ship, is it? Where everything’s so confined? If he loses it, who knows what he might do. He’s a danger to us. Not just himself.” It killed him to say it.

  Artem was clearly surprised. “You’d be willing to leave him on the mainland?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Adam said. “I have no idea what I’d do.”

  “Uncharted waters.”

  “Right. But I think…I don’t know. We need to think about it. Either he needs to go on his own or else I need to leave with him. You two shouldn’t be forced to put your lives in danger over this.”

  “Our lives are in danger no matter what we do,” Sara pointed out reasonably. “And neither of us would be on this boat at all if it weren’t for Cody. He’s right about that much, at least. If anyone’s going to get off, it should be us.”

  “Like hell.” Artem turned and spat over the side. “I’m not going back to the mainland. You see what they’re doing. You see how big that fire is. We’d be dead in a day.”

  “Well, we can’t steal Cody’s boat out from under him.” Sara sounded exasperated.

  “Sure we can,” Artem said. “Cody and Adam stole food from that tanker, didn’t they? We’re not above stealing to survive. We’ve already proven that.”

  “That was different,” Sara said.

  “Why was that different?”

  “Because…because the people on the tanker were dead. They weren’t going to use the food. Cody’s still alive.”

  “He wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Adam,” Artem said. “If he wants to die, let him. If he thinks this boat is hell and that we’re forcing him to stay, I say we give him what he wants.”

  “And what about Adam?” Sara asked.

  “What about Adam?” the captain huffed.

  “You know he’s going to get off the boat with Cody. You know he will. He jumped when Cody jumped. What does that tell you?”

  Artem turned to look at Adam. “Is she right?” he asked. “Are you getting off if Cody gets off?”

  Adam shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

  “Decide,” Artem said. “You’re an adult. This is a matter of life and death. Choose to live or choose to die.”

  Adam closed his eyes. “I want to live,” he said. “I’d stay. God help me, I’d stay.”

  He felt sick inside at the thought. This scenario was exactly what Cody had feared—that the three of them would get together and decide, without including Cody in the conversation, to abandon him to the death that was spreading over the earth. It didn’t seem to matter that Cody had brought them to this point through his own paranoia and rash actions. This was the thing Adam’s friend had feared, and now it was coming true.

  I would be dead if it weren’t for him.

  He would have died if not for me. The debt is repaid.

  No. It didn’t work like that. Saving Cody’s life didn’t let Adam off the hook for the fact that Cody had saved him by bringing him aboard in the first place. It only made the knots between them tighter and more intricate.

  Staying behind when Cody got off the boat would destroy him.

  He would do it. He wanted to live. But it would eat him up, and he would never be the same.

  “Look at him,” Sa
ra said. “Look what you’re doing to him.”

  “Christ,” Artem breathed. “What are we going to do?”

  “You have to keep Cody aboard,” Sara said. “We have to.”

  “We can’t.”

  “We’ll lose our fucking humanity if we don’t,” Adam said.

  There was quiet for a long time, a quiet so deep that Adam could hear the waves lapping against the sides of the yacht.

  “We’ll tranq him,” Artem said eventually.

  “What?”

  “There are sedatives in the medical kit. We’ll tranquilize him. Then we can tie him up. Once we’ve done that, we’ll be able to talk to him. When he comes back to his senses—if he ever does—we’ll let him go. If he doesn’t, well…at least he’ll be alive.”

  Adam swallowed hard. He hated this plan, but it might be the best they could do.

  “All right,” he agreed, steeling himself for what lay ahead.

  Chapter 17

  For a long moment nobody moved, and they all waited to see what had happened. In the wake of the blasts, all thought of the drugged drink that had been the purpose of this evening had fled Adam’s mind. But now his friend was drinking. Would it work?

  It occurred to him suddenly that they’d never discussed what would happen if it did. Would Cody black out right away, right there on the deck, or would there be a period of delay during which he and the others could try to get Cody back to bed?

  Did anyone even know?

  Cody looked up at them, an odd expression on his face. Then he looked back down at his drink.

  “What did you say this was?” he asked slowly.

  “Didn’t you like it?” Sara, for the first time tonight, sounded nervous about Cody’s response.

  He raised the cup and sniffed it. “Something’s wrong with it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Artem asked. “I thought it tasted fine.”

  Cody looked up at them suspiciously. “Was this drink drugged?”

  Adam’s heart sank. He knew.

  Artem tried to look surprised. “That’s crazy.”

  “Now you’re calling me crazy?” Cody asked. “I’m not the one going around drugging people.”

  “Cody, there wasn’t anything in the drink,” Sara said, sounding shaken.

  “Oh, God, don’t lie,” Cody said with a strangled sort of laugh. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not stupid, Sara. I could taste it. Just tell me why.” He turned to Adam. “Why would you do this? Why would you turn on me like this after you promised you never would?”

  Adam was at a loss for words. He knew the situation was rapidly falling out of control. Someone had to say something to get things back on track, to calm Cody down enough that they could proceed to the next phase of the plan. But what was he supposed to say? We drugged you so that we could tie you down, because we don’t trust you?

  “I’m not turning on you.” It was all he could think of. And really, it was true, wasn’t it? He had agreed to this plan to protect Cody’s life. “I care about you, Cody. I want you to be safe.”

  “Bullshit.” Cody threw his cup down. It bounced once and landed in the pool. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re trying to take my boat.”

  “We’re not trying to take the boat,” Sara said. “We’re already on the boat. It doesn’t even make sense. How could we take it?”

  “You want to throw me off,” Cody speculated, his head darting from side to side, his eyes growing steadily more frantic.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, boy,” Artem said. “You threw yourself off not twelve hours ago. If we’d wanted you dead we could have let you get on with it.”

  “Then…” Cody’s eyes grew wide. “You sabotaged it, didn’t you? You killed the engines! You killed the power!”

  “Cody, no, why would we even want to do that?” Adam heard the pleading note in his own voice.

  “Because you’re vindictive sons of bitches!” Cody yelled. “I’ve seen you together, plotting, trying to figure out things you can do to me. Ways you can get away from me. This is part of it! You sabotaged the ship because—because you have a way off, don’t you? Someone is coming to pick you up and take you somewhere safe, and you think you’re going to leave me here, on this floating rock in the middle of the ocean!”

  “Son, get some sense,” Artem growled. “Look at the mainland. The power’s out everywhere. None of us could have done that. Come on, now.”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me that way!” Cody shrieked

  It happened before Adam could make a move to stop it. Cody dived across the table and landed on Artem, driving him back. Artem wrapped his arms around Cody, clearly making an effort to catch and contain him, but the rage driving Cody was apparently more powerful than anything Artem could supply. The two men fell backward, stumbling across the deck, Cody howling and Artem struggling to get his feet back under him.

  There was a sickening smack as Artem’s head struck the railing on the side of the ship, but Cody seemed not to notice. Nor did he slow his attack as the captain slid down to the deck as if he’d been deboned, landing in a heap.

  He’d been knocked out, Adam thought, shock rooting him to the spot. He watched as Cody began to pummel the captain with his fists, striking him in the face, one knee planted hard on his sternum.

  “Artem!” Sara cried.

  “Cody, stop it!” Adam yelled, finding his voice. “Get off him! What are you doing?”

  “I’ll kill him!” Cody half screamed, half sobbed. “I’ll kill you all! How dare you? How dare you?” I brought you aboard my ship to save your lives! I wanted to help you, and you betrayed me, every one of you! You plotted against me, you sabotaged my boat—if you wanted to kill me you should have just done it! You didn’t have to toy with me like this! You’re monsters! All of you are monsters!”

  “Nobody wants to kill you!” Adam cried. “Get off of him!”

  “You’re the biggest monster of all, Adam!” Cody yelled. “You think I don’t see what you do? You wanted me to believe you were my friend! And you never were, were you!”

  “Cody, just stop it, just—”

  But Cody’s rage appeared to be past containing. He let out a howl and punched straight down into Artem’s face. The captain’s body tensed, then sagged, and a trickle of blood began to run across the deck toward the place where Adam and Sara stood.

  Adam grabbed his friend by the arm and wrenched him off of Artem. He managed to wrestle Cody backward several feet and pinned both his arms behind his back, but Cody was frantic, Adam’s size advantage completely neutralized by the intensity of Cody’s struggles. His arms twitched in Adam’s grasp, as if he was still trying to swing at Artem, as if he was unaware that he’d been pulled away.

  Adam felt his grip begin to slip. “Sara!”

  She had run to Artem’s side and was kneeling beside his head. “Adam—he’s not breathing!”

  It was information Adam simply couldn’t process right now. There was no room in his mind or his heart. “Help me!” he cried. “Help me hold him!”

  “He killed Artem!”

  “Sara, I can’t hold him by myself—!”

  Adam let out a grunt as Cody’s elbow met him in the solar plexus. One of Cody’s arms suddenly swung free. Cody dug in and dragged Adam several feet across the deck.

  Then Sara was there, arms around Cody’s neck and chest, pulling him back. She was short, too short to reach comfortably, and Adam dropped to his knees, pulling Cody down with him so that Sara could get a better grip. Adam quickly locked down Cody’s free and flailing arm again.

  “What do we do?” Sara sounded panicky. “What do we do?”

  “Just hang on,” Adam said. “Those drugs are bound to kick in soon, right?”

  “We don’t know that,” Sara said. “Artem—” Her voice broke on his name. “Artem didn’t know how long they would take to go into effect. It could be hours. I can’t hold him that long, Adam.”

  As if to emphasize her point
, Cody jerked in Sara’s arms. She and Adam dragged him back down with considerable force. Cody’s head smacked into the deck, and Adam found he wasn’t particularly sorry about that, especially as Cody continued to struggle against them.

  “He’ll run out of steam eventually,” Adam said, feeling desperate. “He’ll have to.”

  “Adam…” Sara’s eyes kept returning to Artem’s body and to the pool of blood in which he lay. “He’s dead. Artem’s really gone.”

  “Hey,” Adam said sharply. “Don’t look over there. Keep your eyes here. Keep your focus here. We’ll deal with that later. We can’t afford to worry about it now.”

  “How can you be so single-minded?”

  “I have to be,” he said numbly.

  Cody had now begun to drum his feet against the deck like a toddler having a tantrum. Adam guessed that meant that his friend knew—had accepted—that he wasn’t going to get free. What remained of his struggle must be coming from anger, or maybe just from all the adrenaline in his body. “We’re wearing him out,” he said.

  Sure enough, Cody stopped swinging his arms like battering rams and began instead to push Sara’s arm, trying to get her to release him. She looked up at Adam.

  “Can you hold on?” Adam asked.

  “He’s not pushing very hard.”

  “The drug must be taking effect. Don’t let go. We’ve almost got him.”

  Sara nodded and held on steadfastly.

  Cody kicked three more times, then lay still. His eyes slipped closed.

  “Wait,” Adam said. “Wait.”

  They held him down a full minute longer, waiting, making sure, before letting him go and gingerly sitting back.

  “The drugs kicked in?” Sara asked shakily, hugging herself.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Was he supposed to pass out?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam said. He felt nauseous and ill at ease. “I’ve never tranquilized anyone before, you know.”

  “Should we…should we tie him up?” Sara asked. “That’s what Artem…I mean, that’s what we planned.” She swallowed hard. “That’s what he would do, right?”

  “We’ll take care of Artem in a minute.” Adam closed his eyes and did his best to steady himself. Sara was falling apart. It was obvious. He couldn’t blame her, not after everything they’d been through tonight. He felt like falling apart himself. But someone had to keep it together here. Someone had to keep them moving forward.