A Town Called America (36 page)

In the pool area, after the soldiers got Rick out of the water and placed him in handcuffs, they led him to a stateroom that had been retrofitted to be used as a cell.

In the engine room, Billy and Robbie heard soldiers outside trying to gain access.

“They know we’re here,” Billy said, just as a flame from the other side began to cut through the door that had been sealed after L.J. and Chuck had returned.

“Everyone get in that room over there, and close that door,” Robbie ordered.

Moments after Billy’s men were in an adjacent room, with the door closed behind them, the door that led to the engine room fell to the floor after the welding had been cut. Gunfire instantly erupted, with bullets striking the computer screens, controls, and equipment; M.M. soldiers were shooting blindly into the engine room.

Billy and Robbie were the only ones who had remained in the engine room when the soldiers poured in. Three, six, ten…they kept coming and coming until there were more than a dozen.

Billy and Robbie had their swords drawn and were engaged in an epic fight that would be remembered for years to come—a fight that would appropriately be known as the Slaughter on the High Seas.

Back to back, both men were destroying soldiers one after another. Robbie pushed his sword through one soldier and came around hard, hitting another over the head with the hilt, just before Billy ran his sword through the soldier with an under sweep.

“Billy, the wall,” Robbie said.

They moved toward the far wall, away from the door through which M.M. soldiers continued to pour. Once they reached the wall and had created some distance between themselves and the M.M.,
Robbie looked over at the soldiers, screaming as loudly as he could while revealing his sharp teeth and nails.

His skin was aglow, with a light fluorescence running through his veins, and his eyes were black. The soldiers were backing up on top of one another in fear of what they were witnessing. Some covered their ears in pain from Robbie’s deafening scream, while others scattered in any direction they could.

After just a couple of minutes, only Robbie and Billy still stood. Robbie had torn the entire group of soldiers to shreds. Blood and body parts covered the engine room; the floor was slippery, and the walls were dark red.

Out of the entire group of soldiers, the only ones who had remained were those who stood just beyond doorway, but before they could escape, Billy drew his two revolvers and shot them down.

On the other side of the door, Billy’s men stood silently, listening to the fight. They had no doubt that Billy and Robbie were now dead. After hearing so much screaming, they knew there was no way they could have survived.

Moments of silence turned into minutes, so they slowly opened the door to find a scene of pure horror. None of them ever had seen anything like it, and to their astonishment, Billy and Robbie were still standing. In the middle of the room, covered in blood, they were smoking cigarettes.

Robbie had returned to human form, as he couldn’t risk any of the men seeing him in his vampire state. At least for now, his true nature would remain a secret.

“Listen,” Billy told the group, “the explosives are set, but there’s a change in plans. I, along with two others, will take the bridge. Robbie, get everyone else back to the refuel vessel as fast as possible. Mike, you stay here, and when we call you, get that engineer out of his handcuffs and have him do what he needs to. Then get to the refuel vessel as quickly as possible. They’ll wait for you as long as they can.”

“You got it,” Mike said.

Robbie took the men out of the engine room, past all the bodies, and headed to the refuel vessel, while Billy and two others moved to the bridge. No swords or knives—now it was time for guns.

Eventually they got past the few soldiers they had run into and made it to the bridge. Once there, they moved in and took it so easily that at first they thought it had to be a setup.

“Everyone, get on the floor now!” Billy commanded the M.M. soldiers, as his men moved in and pushed them to the ground. “No, not you,” he said, grabbing the ship’s captain by the back of his collar. “Anchor up now!”

When Billy picked up the radio and called the engine room, Mike answered.

“Pull the anchors up,” the captain said calmly into the radio.

Moments later, after the engineer, with Mike’s gun to his head, pushed a few buttons on a keyboard, a blue light blinked on a monitor on the bridge; the words on the screen indicated the anchors were being drawn.

“I want a heading of one hundred ten degrees,” Billy told the captain.

“I don’t know who you are or what you think you know about cruise ships of this size, but if we go to one hundred ten degrees, we won’t have enough time to turn before we hit the oil rig.”

“Don’t think, sir,” Billy said calmly. “Just do as you’re told. Next, Captain, you need to order an evacuation of the ship, starting with everyone on the bridge.”

“You heard him,” the captain yelled to his men. “Get up and get the hell out!”

All the bridge personnel stood and fled as the captain flipped a black switch that controlled the ship’s intercom system. “This is your captain. I’m ordering a complete evacuation of the entire vessel at this time. Discontinue your current tasks, and depart the vessel in a orderly manner. Nothing will follow.”

“Captain, I want full speed ahead,” Billy demanded.

The captain’s hands shook as he picked up the radio and ordered the ship to twenty-two knots. After twenty-five years on the ocean, he knew today would be his last day at sea. He stood up a little taller, clenched his fists, and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes,
he stood with his back straight, eyes forward, and hands gripping the large wooden wheel.

If I’m going to perish today, I’ll do it with honor
, he thought.

The ship’s enormous engines turned with a slow, steady rumble. The engine room was abuzz when the smokestack on
The Gem of the Seas
puffed dark smoke. Mike and the engineer left the engine room after the captain had followed Billy’s order for full speed ahead. They made their way to the rear of the cruise ship to meet Robbie.

Rick was still in his stateroom cell, with two guards posted outside. As soon as they heard the evacuation order, however, they abandoned their posts. The moment Rick knew they were gone, he used a paper-clip to manipulate the lock, and thirty seconds later he was out of his handcuffs and smashing the door with a fire extinguisher.

Rick ran down the hall, yelling for Chris; he knew that the next five minutes was going to tell if the intelligence from L.J. would prove to true or false. Finding her on the enormous ship was a shot in the dark, but he wasn’t leaving until he knew for sure.

“Chris, Chris, its Rick. Where are you?”

He leaned against a wall, trying to figure out what to do.

Rick, my love, you always come for me
.

Rick heard Chris’s voice, but when he turned around in the hallway, she was nowhere to be found.

“Chris, where are you?” he yelled again.

I’m locked in a room 3014. The door is reinforced; I can’t get out
.

By then he knew the voice was in his head. She was using her mind to talk to him. He hated when she did that, but this time he was glad she had.

Rick looked at the numbers on the wall: 3000–3039. Looking to the left, he took off down the hall in a dead sprint until he saw the door he was looking for.

“Chris, are you in there?”

“Yes, I need you to get me out of here.”

Rick slammed the door several times with his shoulder, but it didn’t budge.

“Hold on, Chris.”

He ran back down the hallway until he saw what he was looking for, a red fire ax. After breaking the glass, he ran back to the door of room 3014 and chopped at the hinges with all his strength, but it wasn’t doing any good. He wasn’t even making a dent.

Angry and determined, Rick felt his body begin to change, just as Chris had done so many times. He never had received instruction or coaching, and no one knew his secret other than the person who had bitten him. Rick had freely requested that he be turned into a vampire, but Billy never had allowed it. In fact he told Rick that if he ever did drink from a vampire’s blood, he would kill him himself.

Late one evening, after Billy had refused to allow Rick to change, Rick spoke with Robbie, who took Rick aside and allowed him to drink from his blood. The only reason Robbie allowed it was because he knew that if they were going to pull off a mission of such magnitude, they’d need all the help they could get.

As Rick had been bitten so recently, everything was still new for him. Things were so different, and he felt unstoppable, as if he had taken an amazing new drug he couldn’t get enough of.

With a couple of swings of the ax, he hit the hinges so hard that he broke the head of the ax off its handle, along with the hinges.

Control
, Rick thought.
I need to maintain control
. Before the door fell, Rick took a deep breath, cleared his mind, and forced himself to change back into his human form. After everything he’d done—how he had treated Chris—the last thing he wanted was for her to know he was now a vampire.

On the other side of the doorway, Chris stood, looking at Rick with a smile. She felt just as she had all those years ago when she was lying
on the floor in that fancy house, and Rick had come back to her after being gone for so many weeks.

She ran into Rick’s arms; embracing, they kissed passionately. Chris suddenly stopped and pushed herself an arm’s distance away from him, realizing he was completely naked.

“Don’t ask,” he said.

Rick and Chris ran as fast as they could down the hallway toward the staircase. Rick knew that the bridge had to be empty by then and that his men probably were at the refuel vessel with L.J. He also knew they were running out of time, as the cruise ship more than likely was now headed on its course for the oil rig.

They ran through a long hallway before Rick and Chris stopped at the pool, where he retrieved his pants. As soon as he put them on, they once again were in a dead sprint. Then it happened. Rick, rounding a corner, was struck in the forehead harder than he’d ever been hit. Suddenly everything went black.

FORTY EIGHT

O
n the oil rig, the eight vampires were gathered when one of their generals informed them they had a problem aboard
The Gem of the Seas
.

An explosion had been reported on a small boat that had been between the cruise ship and the oil rig. After that the oil rig had lost contact with the cruise ship, which was now headed straight for them.

“When did this happen?” Mr. Magnus asked calmly, displaying a fake smile.

“Sir, an officer aboard
The Gem of the Seas
informed me that the situation was under control, but—”

“General, are you telling me we’ve lost our ground forces and our ship, and now we’re about to lose this oil rig?”

“Mr. Magnus, I…I don’t know what to say.”

The general’s body lay on the floor after Mr. Magnus had ripped his throat from his neck.