Cryptophobia | Book 2 | Hell & High Water [Fear The Unknown]

by Henderson, G. D.

  “Glad to see you’ve grown some man balls”.

  “Love you too, Martha”, he replied sarcastically, “I’m beginning to miss the silent treatment you were giving us at the start of the trip. You’re far too chatty now for your own good”. He stripped down to his boxers and dumped his clothes next to the bed.

  “Have you no shame? Stripping in front of your mother-in-law”.

  “You’re a surgeon, I’m sure I have nothing you haven’t seen thousands of times before”. He grabbed his towel and headed off into the bathroom, locking it behind him. A few short minutes later, she heard the shower running.

  She sighed, the two of them were kids themselves, barely out of their mother’s wombs, trying to behave like responsible, mature adults, and yet failing miserably at it in all regards.

  His musty alcoholic smell had begun to drift around the cabin, even with the balcony doors open.

  “Honestly”, she muttered under her breath.

  1:10pm - 6 hours, 23 minutes since outbreak in London.

  Outbreak

  Irini rushed back to cabin 1062 from the infirmary carrying damp flannels, first aid items and more face masks akin to the one she wore on her face.

  This day was just not going well at all. First the attack on London and she didn’t even have the time to check to see if everyone was okay, her parents, her friends, her family; her hands were full just dealing with the issues popping up one after another on the ship.

  Her fiancé, the captain of the ship, unbeknownst to everyone else, was aware of the circumstances in London, but so long as foreign embassies in the Caribbean kept their borders open, it was probably better and safer to continue the journey there and disembark passengers where they then had the option to take an international flight back home. Five days spent returning to port offered little guarantee that they wouldn’t be held outside the docks and prevented disembarkment approval.

  So here they were, sailing on, the joyful and relaxed feeling aboard the ship shattered to pieces. What were people supposed to think and feel for the next four days of the cruise? There was nothing worse than being stuck in a situation you had no control over, feeling helpless about those you love in danger.

  She tried with all her might to empty her mind and push on, in order to prevent breaking down, distracting herself with the torrent of complaints, requests, questions, demands and fury that had consumed the past 3 to 4 hours.

  “Are you okay?” Came a familiar voice and Irini turned to find Faye standing there by the doorway.

  “About as much as I can be given the circumstances”, Irini replied.

  “Okay, I know it’s really stressful, hang in there. I’m here to help as well. It's one thing dealing with the aftermath of that news earlier, another thing with the possibility of a viral outbreak onboard the ship. This really is not our day. I can cover for you shortly if you need to make contact with family”.

  “Thank you, I really need that, I’m struggling to think straight at the moment”.

  Faye came over to help her with locating what she needed and took some of the weight off of her shoulders, by addressing the concerns of passengers, whilst she returned to the cabin.

  She stopped before the cabin, mask covering her nose and mouth and requested the door be opened, before stepping in to find three of the on-board doctors inspecting the sick couple and their son. The boy lay huddled into a fetal position on the bed, twitching and muttering something, covered in the blood from his nostrils. His mother sat at the edge of the bed also muttering something under her breath and holding her head in the palm of her hands. She, like her son, was twitching and shaking as though cold, despite having been wrapped in a thick blanket. The father just stood in front of the mirror, refusing to sit down, glaring at himself in the mirror. It was easily the creepiest thing Irini had ever seen and she had certainly seen some creepy shit.

  Why wasn’t he responding to anyone? Why wasn’t he moving? She had seen vain before, but this was an entirely new thing unto itself. What the hell was wrong with him?

  Young, but experienced on board assistant doctor Riki, accompanied by a fellow assistant doctor, were subordinates to the head doctor in the room and saw to the woman, both wearing gloves and face masks. They shone light in her eyes and as they did so, Irini could see that her eyes were dilated and she was sweating buckets.

  It was three that morning when she had called for assistance. Her son had started behaving worryingly and they had attempted to subdue him after a short erratic burst of madness, only to both be bitten by him and since then she and her husband appeared to have deteriorated too. Whatever their son had contracted, they seemed to have contracted too. It looked like psychosis, but it could be just about anything.

  The sombre atmosphere in the cabin was definitely putting them all on edge, no thanks to the London news, but even despite that, there was just something Irini didn't like about being in here, even for a virus, this family were displaying tremendously irrational behaviour.

  Why weren't any of them responding?

  “What do you think is the cause?” Irini asked, “Some of us came into contact with them earlier, will we have to be quarantined too?”

  “I can't be sure for the moment, we still haven't established what it is yet”, Dr. Riki’s co-worker replied, “They share some similar symptoms, but also seem to have their own, which doesn't make sense. Surely if they contracted the same virus, the stages would be exactly the same, if not, close enough for us to recognise a trend. They're all experiencing different types of emotional psychosis, the little one, fear, the mother, paranoia and nervousness and him…” the doctor turned to the father and husband “...I don't even know”.

  “What is she saying?” Irini asked Dr. Riki.

  “I don't know, it's unintelligible, it almost sounds like an entirely different language”, Dr. Riki replied.

  Irini crouched down in front of the mother and besides Dr. Riki to see if she heard what the woman was saying.

  “Ma’am, what are you saying?”

  The woman's dilated pupils darted all over the place and her words were muffled and croaked. Her long ginger hair draped down around her face, concealing her eyes and making her appear more ominous than she really was. The boy had three people attending to him, attempting to coax him out of the ball he had curled himself into. His muttering too was unintelligible.

  Irini returned her attention to the woman.

  “Ma’am, can you tell us when your boy started showing symptoms?”

  Suddenly the woman went silent and whispered something.

  “What was that, ma’am?” Irini replied, putting her ear closer.

  “Libera nos a malo...”

  “What?”

  With no warning whatsoever, she arched her head back and began an ear piercing scream, which seemingly startled everyone in the cabin except for the father and son. Irini shuffled clumsily backwards, startled by it.

  After momentarily staring in shock, the head doctor ordered them to hold and calm her down. As Dr. Riki and two others attempted to do so, others stood watching, uncertain of the best course of action for a mad woman.

  As though having sparked a series of madness, the woman's husband began smashing his head into the mirror with full force repeatedly. Some of the staff gasped and covered their mouths, whilst it took three full sized male staff to subdue the man and just when they thought they had, a female staff member screamed out.

  “The boy! He's standing!”

  Why had no one noticed? There he stood, pupils darting around, twitching seemingly non-stop now. He growled like a dog, before lunging across the cabin towards one of the men holding down his father, landing on the man's back and sinking his teeth deep into the man's shoulder.

  The man yelped and released the father to tackle the boy, but releasing the father only granted the father leeway to wriggle free and the first thing he did was to attack the two men holding him down, biting and tearing off the cheek of one of the men
in a grisly scene, leaving him screaming and holding his cheek in agony, before smashing the other man’s head into the cabinet.

  Other staff members backed off, unsure of how to intervene and frankly terrified.

  The male staff member and two female co-workers, huddled together in one of the corners of the cabin, him shielding his two fellow doctors with his arms.

  The father stood up to resume smashing his head into the mirror, whilst the staff member with the boy latched to his back screamed for help.

  “Don’t just fucking stand there! Help me!” Staff members reluctant to act, sprung to action, pouring into the cabin and attempting to prise the boy’s vice-like grip of the male staff member.

  His father had shattered the mirror with his head and blood stained the glass and poured down the sides and front of his face. Once he had done more than enough damage to himself and the mirror, he took his finger and began writing something using his own blood on the shattered glass.

  As if that weren't spine chilling enough as it were, the mother managed to free herself amongst the chaos and distraction, ripping off the ear of one of the staff members holding her down, with her teeth, before biting the throat of another, tearing away skin and spraying the bed with blood. One arm now freed, she pushed the petite Dr. Riki over with relative ease and sitting on top of the woman, went for her face. Dr. Riki screamed and tried to fend the woman off, but the woman swatted her hands away and struck at Dr. Riki's eyes with her fingers, digging them deep. Dr. Riki's agonized screams were enough to make anyone shudder.

  “Help her, admit!” Irini wailed, terror in her voice.

  Others attempted, but with so much going on, it was hard to ascertain who in the cabin required the most help. The woman dug her fingers deeper into Dr. Riki's eyes, spurting blood across the bed on either side, this despite others trying to pull the woman's hands off of her. Where had this woman found this incredible strength?

  Irini clambered to her feet and attempted to save Dr. Riki, but was punched square the face by the crazed woman and dropped to the ground with a bloodied nose, a male staffer grabbed her by the arms and carried her out of the cabin whilst others ran in to attempt to restrain the family.

  Holding her likely fractured nose with one of the damp flannels, Irini stood up and tried to see the commotion over the heads and shoulders of staffers and curious guests alike.

  Upon the mirror the father had written the words save our souls, before he was tackled once again by two staff members. This time he didn’t go down, grabbing one by the throat and lifting him off his feet, slamming him into the mirror. The father grabbed a loose shard of the shattered mirror and pierced it into the man’s throat, spurting blood across the cabin, over faces, over the walls, over the floor. People screamed, some fled, and others stood there in horror, too shocked to move.

  The boy ripped at the other staffer like a feral animal, those trying to prise him off and hitting him with anything they could find only further fuelling his attack.

  The hell was only just beginning however, as those who had been bitten almost instantly begun to show similar symptoms, twitching, spitting, smacking their heads against the wall or ground, scratching at anything nearby so much so that their nails were quite literally being ripped from their fingertips, tensing every muscle in their bodies so that their veins popped out and writhing in agony whilst clutching their stomachs as though undergoing epileptic fits.

  “What the fuck! What the fuck!” One man shouted.

  “Get the fuck out of the cabin!” Another shouted, directing his order at the doctors who were furthest away, but in order to do that, they’d have to get by both the mother and father. Dr. Riki’s screams were haunting as she thrashed helplessly, the mother digging out her eyes and thrusting her thumbs right into the back of her eye sockets.

  “She’s killing her! Fucking save Dr. Riki!” Irini screamed.

  Someone took a cabin provided iron and slammed it over the woman’s head, pointiest edge first, with all their might, freeing Dr. Riki of her grip and most likely breaking the skull of the woman, as she slumped down next to Dr. Riki unmoving.

  Dr. Riki lay there on the bed shaking and whimpering, both her eyes gouged out, bloody empty sockets where they used to be. Staff grabbed her and dragged her out of the cabin, as the staff huddled in the corner of the cabin saw their opportunity to escape across the bed. The male staffer went last to ensure the two women got out safely, but this worked to their detriment as opposed to favour, when thought to be dead or at the very least unconscious, the mother sprung back into terrifying action, grabbing one of the women and biting into the back of her leg, taking out a huge chunk of flesh and muscle. She screamed and threw herself forwards to the safety of the other staff by the door.

  The other woman was not so fortunate, as she fell off the bed startled by the woman’s outburst, right where two twitching members of staff lay and like crocodiles to a baby deer, they went for her. Ignoring her thrashing and screams, biting and ripping off any exposed and even non exposed flesh they could reach, her fingers, her legs, her face, her neck, her arms, she was mauled alive. The man, learning from their mistakes backed off, right back to the corner of which they had been previously standing.

  He was completely surrounded.

  Uninjured staff poured back out of the cabin, prioritising their own lives over those in the cabin; for good cause too, for the father during all of this, lifted a full grown man by the throat and sent him plummeting to a watery death over the edge of the balcony into the sea below.

  “Get out! Get out now!” One of the staff members stuck at the back shouted.

  “No, wait! Help me!” The male doctor cried. “Don’t leave me here with them!”

  It was every man and woman for themselves, as people fled in either direction down the corridors. The mother lunged at the one male staff member in the corner of the cabin and the rest left him to his demise, as the remaining few poured out of the cabin. The last thing they saw was his expression of terror and desperation, as he screamed out for help, tears running down his face. They slammed the door shut behind them and pressed their bodies against it to contain the infected inside.

  Hearing his desperate cries for help becoming sharp screams of agony, would probably be the most haunting memory Irini would ever have, amidst traumatising sights to last a lifetime.

  “Irini!” A male staffer snapped, as she stood, pasted against the opposite wall hyperventilating. She looked towards him, unable to say a thing, unable to move anything but her eyes. “Nod if you hear me”.

  She nodded.

  “Good. Listen carefully, I need you to contact the bridge and alert the captain of what you saw here and order everyone to get into and stay in their cabins”.

  She shook her head, she couldn’t move from that spot, terror overwhelming her, weighing her down like lead.

  “You have to find the courage, you have to go”.

  She shook her head again.

  “Irini, I need your help”.

  Suddenly there was a tremendous thud at the door, followed by the croaked voice of someone behind it.

  “We’re okay now… why don’t you let us… out”.

  Distracted by the voice and the banging, the male staffer had to call out her name to get her to pay attention again.

  “We won’t be able to hold them at bay forever, I need you to act, now!”

  “Come on… let us out”, came the croaked creepy voice.

  “Irini!”

  “Let… us… out! You fucking pieces of shit! You motherfuckers! Fuck you to fucking hell! Fuck you and everyone you love! I’ll rip out their fucking guts! I’ll tear their arms off and feed it to their children! I’ll roll your fucking heads across the ground! I’ll eat your hearts and snack on your eyeballs!”

  Irini was so horrified by the verbal abuse, that it was more than enough to spring her into action, but just as she departed, she heard one last thing.

  “I… I lost my temper…
that wasn’t like me… please let us out”.

  Irini, charged down the corridor, shouting at any curious onlookers to return to their cabins and shut their doors.

  1:18pm - 6 hours, 31 minutes since outbreak in London.

  8 minutes since outbreak aboard MS Hoots.

  Martha, having heard a tremendous ordeal seemingly occurring from outside their cabin, loud enough to even drown out the sound of the shower running, approached and opened the door. Panicked people ran down the hall, desperate to get away from something or someone. With no indication as to what had spooked them, Martha was left stumped.

  “What on Earth?”

  So determined were people to escape whatever the cause for concern was, they were prepared to push past others without regard for safety and consideration.

  Martha peered down the corridor, but saw nothing, nothing until Irini came running, covered in blood.

  “What is going…?” Martha began, but was interrupted.

  “Ma’am, stay in your cabin and lock the door. Do not come out, do you hear me, do not come out!”

  “Wait, what? Why?” But before she could hear and answer, Irini was already gone. Was this an elaborate prank? What was going on?

  Not certain she wanted to find out, Martha closed the door, locked it and rested her back against it, just as Edward stepped out of the bathroom, with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and another he used to dry his hair. He crossed the cabin and grabbed his clothes, before returning to the bathroom, leaving the door open. It was a second or two before he popped his head back out.

  “Are you okay?”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “I heard screaming outside the cabin. I opened the door to see what it was and people were running by in a panic, pushing and shoving. I just spotted Irini…”

  “The one tasked with taking care of you? What about her?”

  “She said to stay in the cabin and lock the door. She specifically said don’t come out twice”.

  “What? Did she explain herself?”