“I… I can't even fathom this, my head is still processing it all”, her father stated.
Rachel went silent.
“I don't think it's a terror attack, what I saw didn’t look like a terror attack, it looked like a riot”, Lori pointed out.
“You said you saw… people mauling each other?”
“It sounds fucking insane, but yeah, that's exactly what I saw”.
“Get my phone please, Lori, I need to see this for myself”, Rachel requested.
Christine stood on the balcony taking in the fresh air and trying to calm herself down. It was rather overcast and looked as though bad weather was abound.
Since their argument, she hadn't seen or heard from Edward and it was beginning to make her tetchy. She hadn't slept properly for two nights now and regretted calling for that meeting. She now faced the very real prospect of divorce and a messy one at that.
Inhaling and exhaling exercises helped, but only temporarily, they weren’t going to solve her problems and sooner or later she'd have to confront them.
She did go in search of Edward last night, worried sick about him, this in spite of her mother's advice. Her efforts turned up nothing however, as for all those who had seen him, none could pinpoint where they had seen him last or where he might have gone next.
It seemed ironic that he could only be somewhere on this ship in the middle of the ocean, yet she had searched high and low to no avail. Where could he have possibly vanished to?
Her mind reverted to the worst case scenarios, what if he had jumped off the ship? Would anyone even know? If she reported him missing, would they take it seriously?
Struck with fret and unable to think straight, she stormed back into the cabin and picked up her phone.
“What are you doing?” Martha asked, sat over on the sofa.
“I'm going to call him”.
“That'll be the second call this morning, not to mention how many times you called yesterday and the day before. Take a hint, maybe he doesn't want to see you and after the mess you two made, frankly I'm not surprised. You should be calling a marriage counsellor or better yet, a divorce solicitor”.
“Even if he hates me with every bit of his soul right now, I want to hear his voice, I want to know he’s okay”.
“You said the same thing an hour ago before you tried calling him. The biggest mistake you ever made was letting that man into your life, you should have kept him at arm’s length”.
“Like you did dad?”
“I did what was best for myself and for you. You saw for yourself the type of person he was, a layabout, a leech, nothing but a sperm donor”.
“That’s perhaps how you saw dad and every other man, that’s not how I saw my husband or my marriage”.
“Your marriage was a sham”.
“My marriage was… is sacred, my husband is my best friend and life partner, we’ll never be what you and dad were”.
“No, you’ll just lie to each other instead, hide your insecurities and subsequently hurt each other, all for what?”
Christine paced back and forth as she held the phone to her ear, trying to ignore her mother’s hurtful words and hopeful that Edward would answer her call this time”.
Martha sighed.
“You are hopeless”.
“Hey Edward… I’ve apologised over and over, please just answer my call, please. Call me back and say something, anything just so I know you're alright”, Christine pleaded, evidently talking to his answering machine. She hung up and stared at her phone.
“Have you asked that daughter of yours?” Martha asked, “Maybe she'll know, she seems to know everything about you two, more than you apparently know about yourselves”.
“I… I can't talk to her”.
“You're being childish. It seems as though she is the only adult amongst you. Not that it needs to be explained, but she only snapped back because you pushed her into a corner, it's only natural”.
“So did you”.
“You're her mother, regardless of what or who she is, it's your role to protect her, and instead you've driven her away”.
“Like you did me, mother? You're the last person to lecture anyone, believe me. Besides, you and her don’t have the rosiest relationship either”.
“I'm not her mother, it's you she'll look more towards for support and guidance. I did my very best by you as I knew how to, so don't you dare start that talk”.
Christine laughed.
“Yeah… right. Was that your best? Barely paying me attention? Holding me up to impossible standards?”
“I was a perfectionist, my industry relies on it and I strived towards it to be respected and revered in a world dominated by males, so excuse me if I didn't just want you to be another mollycoddled privileged brat who expects the world to come to her, which you've evidently shaped out to be, all the things I fought so hard to not be, needy, pathetic. You don't even know how your daughter found out about your activities, so blinded were you by your need for affection”.
Fighting the urge not to swear at her mother and put her in her place, Christine didn't dignify her mother with a reply. In some part she was right, right about all of it, she had no idea Rachel knew what she knew and if she had known, would she have called a truth revealing meeting? Furthermore, was not hiding her truths just a reflection of the very person she loathed. Her mother was right, she was pathetic, and she just hated being exposed for who she really was.
Fighting the urge to break down in front of her mother, her eyes averted to her phone notifications, something she had been disregarding in her efforts to locate her husband. One from SBC, or Sun Broadcasting News in particular caught her attention.
“There was a terror attack on London…”
“What nonsense are you spouting now?” Martha snapped back.
“I'm being serious, look”, Christine replied, rushing over to sit beside her mother. She switched on the Wi-Fi to read the article and read it out loud to her mother.
“I… I don't believe it”, Martha murmured, slouching back into the seat in shock as Christine showed her picture after picture, video after video.
“My God… all those people, it’s like hell on Earth. Heavenly father, please protect those people, including those who have sinned. Protect my family and friends and those who do not live according to the bible”. There would certainly be a great deal of repenters today, you could bet your bottom on that. “Is there anyone you need to reach, mother? I'm going to check up on friends and colleagues”.
“Maybe the hospital, but that can wait. Do what you must”.
“Okay”, Christine replied and dialled in the first number on the long list of London friends and associates.
12:00pm - 5 hours, 15 minutes since outbreak in London
Lori endlessly cycled through videos on the video sharing site, Vyou, captivated by the magnitude of the chaos in London, disregarding her data roaming charges. If this hadn't fucking ruined the holiday spirit, she didn't know what would.
“Chaos London, attacks on London and London MET are trending on Chirper. In fact the top five trends are all dedicated to the events in London. One of them is some girl documenting the whole thing. It's horrific!” Rachel exclaimed.
“I know… I’m just looking at these videos of poor people running from others. Some of the things I have seen so far are making me feel physically sick, but I just can't seem to avert my eyes”, Lori replied.
Edward remained silent as he checked his phone, he had been silent for the past few minutes now, so the two women had almost forgotten he was there with them, at least until he quite abruptly stood up.
“I have a few calls to make, so I think I'll be heading back to my cabin. Thank you for making sure I was okay, girls. I appreciate it tremendously. Rachel, you shouldn't have had to find me in that atrocious state, I was an embarrassment to you and most of all myself. I am thoroughly ashamed. When I heard about your mother, I… just wasn't in a rational state of mind. It'
s pathetic, shows weakness and resolves nothing. I need to talk to you mother. I can't guarantee anything positive will come of it, but I can’t avoid confronting her forever. I'm a complete mess at the moment, but from this day on, it’s restart”.
“That’s… good to hear, dad”, Rachel replied gazing up at him.
“First thing on the agenda, washing myself off, I'm sticky and disgusting’.
“You can say that again”, Rachel replied, no longer looking his way. She was a little too preoccupied with a video of a man peering out of the window of a double-decker bus and filming using his phone. Lori glanced over, fascinated by the sounds coming from Rachel’s phone.
“I’ll be taking my leave”, Edward announced and made his way out of the cabin, the two women paying him no heed.
The people on the bus appeared panicked and hysterical, as the bus, stuck in traffic found itself surrounded by fleeing people running in the opposite direction.
“You're seeing the chaos as I see it folks, this shit is as real as it gets and unreal at the same time. You couldn't make this shit up!” The man declared for the camera. Suddenly he spotted one particular man being chased by a woman and zoomed in for a closer look. What he captured would surely go viral even before Vyou had a chance to remove it for breaking guidelines.
The woman lunged at the man like a cat to a mouse, slamming him onto the bonnet of a car and pinning him down with a superhuman strength unlike anything Lori had ever witnessed. Here was a six foot man being slammed and held down by a woman only three quarters his size and less than half his mass. She grabbed his face in the palm of her hand and slammed the back of his head into the windscreen as he tried to fend her off. The man filming and others around him gasped in shock at what they were witnessing.
“Shit, she has this dude pinned, what the fuck?” The man filming continued.
The woman continued smashing his head into the windscreen until it began to crack behind him and eventually splitting open his skull like a watermelon, to the eruption of screams on the bus. As he lay there semiconscious and losing the strength to fight back, she leaned in and ripped his throat out with her teeth, spraying blood everywhere.
“Ho… ly fuck!” The man filming yelled, as screams only grew louder and more hysterical around him, especially with the sound of glass smashing. More crazed people akin to that woman, threw themselves through the windows of the bus with a complete absence of self preservation and just below the man recording, people could be heard trying to escape, crying out for help, trying to fight back, all in vain.
“Fuck this shit, it's time to go”, the man proclaimed, ejecting from his seat with an invigorated sense of purpose and determination and making his way towards the staircase of the bus, just as more crazy blood covered people stormed up with missing limbs to meet them. That's when the video cut short, the fate of the man left up to interpretation. The video was uploaded 20 minutes ago and with no follow up, one was left to assume the worst.
“That was… intense”, Rachel proclaimed.
“Understatement. What happened to him? Did he survive? My brain just won’t allow me to believe what I’m seeing, it’s too much!” Lori confessed.
“Me too. What happened to those crazy people? They looked possessed”.
“I don't know”.
“I’m scared, Lori. I’m worried sick, about my friends, about my family still at home, about everyone”.
“I know how you feel, but we can’t lose our heads. Now what’s the first thing we should do?”
CHAPTER 14 - CHRISTINE, MARTHA & IRINI
12:21pm - 5 hours, 35 minutes since outbreak in London
. . .
. . .
Having finished making her calls to frantic friends and panicked associates, Christine needed to clear her head, so she decided to take a walk and tend to her mother's blouse whilst her mother called the hospital.
This was all too much and taking a walk would probably result in very little, especially given the hysteria right across the ship at the moment, but it would at the very least ease her mind a little.
She did wonder what sort of ship proceedings there were for these sort of unforeseen circumstances. Would they be able to return to port? Were there procedures in place for if they weren’t allowed to disembark either at their own port or any other country’s? Worst case scenario, what were the diplomatic ramifications for docking at a foreign country they had already travelled most of the way towards?
Perhaps she was getting ahead of herself, she thought, leaving the cabin with the blouse in hand.
Just as she had thought, mass hysteria like she had never witnessed before. Those aboard were demanding free Wi-Fi so that they could continuously connect with family members and friends, others sought someone to distract their screaming children whilst they attended to problems back at home, it was all absolutely preposterous. There was the time flights were grounded throughout Europe because of the volcanic ash threat and she was stuck at a foreign airport for hours at end, but that was about it.
She arrived at the corridor of the number 1062 and noticed several members of staff standing guard outside a cabin door with face masks akin to what doctors wear.
As she drew closer, she quickly realised that this was the cabin she was supposed to visit to resolve the saga of the blood stained blouse. Bemused, as well as nosey, she stopped before the staff and the closed door to ask what was going on.
“Ma’am, you can't go in there. Their son seems to have contracted a virus and is having cold sweats, has gone pale, is twitching profusely and his nose won't stop bleeding”, a male staff member explained.
“Ah, okay, well I only need to collect something from the mother for this…”
“Ma’am, as I said, you can't go in there, his parents appear to have contracted it as well, which means you could, so in the interest of your safety and that of everyone on board, we have quarantined them to this cabin until further notice”.
“Are you serious? They just have to stay there the duration of the trip?”
“Precisely”.
An on board doctor dressed head to toe in medical garb, shoved past her repeatedly saying “excuse me” and entered the cabin, opening the door just long enough for her to catch a glimpse of the ginger haired boy in a fetal position on the bed, shaking and twitching erratically as what looked to be his mother sat next to him holding her head and shaking whilst his almost deathly pale looking father creepily stared at his own reflection in the mirror twitching, not unlike his son.
As the door slowly closed, his eyes caught hers and they locked. It was a mere fraction of a second, but it felt like an eternity, a terrifying absence of sanity and seething with the hatred of a man who had been wronged.
The image imprinted on her mind sent a chill right down her spine.
She returned to her cabin feeling even more anxious and uneasy than before.
“Back so soon?” Her mother enquired as she walked through the door.
“Something is going on, that family has quite literally been quarantined in their cabin. Staff are blocking their door”, Christine replied, placing the blouse on the counter besides the door.
“I knew it, they've contracted something”.
“What do you think it is? Ebola maybe? The man who stopped me said the little boy has cold sweats, went pale, was twitching non- stop and his nose keeps bleeding”.
“Twitching you say? Doesn't sound like all the exact same symptoms, but it could be, or something entirely new”.
“This is too much”, Christine said with a sigh. “Did you reach the hospital?”
“It's just ringing, I'll try again shortly”.
“I need to de-stress, I'm going to get a pampering at the spa, I really hope it’s open, all this bullshit is too much to bear and is doing nothing to sustain my youthful gleam”.
“Language, woman of the lord”.
“Yes, mother, I know, but I deserve a break today”.
“Seems you
were taking a break long before today, adultery and all that”.
“I don’t need you to question my commitment to God, thank you very much”, Christine replied, collecting the bits she needed for the spa.
“It’s not me you have to worry about, my daughter”.
Christine sighed, collected the last of her things and left the cabin.
12:37pm - 5 hours, 51 minutes since outbreak in London
The beep of the keycard attracted Martha’s attention and the door began to open.
“Back again? You’re a nervous mess toda…” Martha began speaking without waiting to see who it was, stopping short when she realised it was Edward and he most certainly wasn’t a pretty sight. “So you’re alive then?”
“Not now, Martha”, Edward replied, exasperatedly.
“You look like utter shit. Have you seen yourself?”
“I know, I don’t need you to remind me”.
“Have you cleared your head, or did you come back here looking for trouble? If you’re looking for Christine, she went to the spa”.
“I wasn’t, but I’m glad to know she can think about getting spa treatment when our marriage is on a precipice”.
“In her defence, she spent the last two days looking for your ass, despite my advice not to, but it looks like you had a right ol’ time”.
“I was distraught, so I almost drank myself into a coma, but thanks to my daughter, I didn’t, nor did I get into a fight like I could have, since you’re going to probe. Also, I’m not here to seek trouble, I just want to clean myself up and get some proper sleep and then try to fix my marriage, because lord knows, after today, if you’ve heard, nothing is worth staying angry over”.
Cryptophobia | Book 2 | Hell & High Water [Fear The Unknown] Page 13
