Noah's Ark: Survivors (25 page)

“Great, so you’re a hero, you get elected captain, and two people are dead. I still don’t understand why you didn’t just stand for election. You could have won without killing anyone.”

“Elected captain? I wasn’t just elected captain. I’ve been given the biggest mandate to run this ship in any way I see fit. I was given a standing ovation. They chanted my name. I’m the people’s hero! And the only two people who could have challenged me are out of the picture. One is dead, and the other is guilty of a double homicide. Now there’s nobody to question the orders I give. Apart from these guys and a few more of my disciples. But they understand that I am on a God-given mission. They are faithful to the cause.”

“Where’s Lucya?” Jake didn’t want to listen to any more of this.

“Your girlfriend is safe. I won’t be harming a hair on her pretty little head, don’t you worry. I need her for the next phase.”

“What phase? What are you going to do to her?” Jake began to struggle in his seat, trying to wriggle free. He couldn’t move an inch.

“The next phase is the breeding,” Flynn said, and walked away.

Forty-Nine

L
UCYA
OPENED
HER
eyes. It made no difference, she couldn’t see a thing. She could have been anywhere, could even have been dead. The pain throbbing in the side of her head made her think otherwise, though. She had no idea what had happened to her. One minute she was leaving Jake’s cabin, the next, here she was.

She shook her head from side to side, as if doing so might shake out the fog of unconsciousness that lingered within, clouding her senses. Instead it just sent an explosion of pain through her skull. She screamed, but no sound came out. Something was holding her mouth closed. Duct tape? Whatever it was, it held fast. She breathed deeply through her nose and waited for the pain to subside a little. Collecting her thoughts, she tried to gauge her position. She was sitting, that much she could tell, but that was about all. Tentatively, she tried to move her hands. They were behind her back, and wouldn’t budge. Something was digging into her wrists. The more she tried to pull free, the tighter it got. She tried to move her feet. Exactly the same thing happened. She attempted to stand, but discovered that her legs had been bound to whatever it was she was sitting on.

Realising that moving was not an option, Lucya changed tack. Any attempt at movement only served to tighten her bindings, cause pain, and waste energy. She had to use her head. Her first task was to try and figure out where she was on the ship. Remaining perfectly still and silent, she listened hard for anything that might give her a clue. There were no sounds from the immediate surroundings. There could have been other people around, but they would have to be breathing very quietly not to be heard. The only noise wasn’t so much a noise, more a vibration. The throbbing of the engines idling at the bottom of the ship. Spending so long at sea, Lucya never normally noticed these vibrations or the noise as the ship cruised the world. It was always there in the background, like wallpaper. Too familiar to be remarkable. But that didn’t mean she didn’t hear or feel it. Unconsciously, those tiny pulsations were always being picked up by her senses, all the time. Everywhere she went, her brain was recording all sensory inputs. And so it was without any effort at all that Lucya instinctively knew from the intensity of the engine vibration that she was on deck nine. Deck nine comprised almost entirely staterooms. Mostly the larger, plusher suites, for those with substantial financial means. Aside from these cabins there were a few cleaning stores, and some technical rooms for accessing systems such as plumbing and heating. She had seen inside the cleaning stores and they were tiny, packed full of linen and cleaning products, so she deduced that she had to be in a cabin. All of the cabins on this deck had balconies. Even the inside cabins had balconies, overlooking Palm Plaza. Lucya smiled inwardly. Balconies were potential escape routes. There was hope.

Fifty

F
LYNN
HAD
TAKEN
up residence in the captain’s chair. He was looking out to sea.

“Get me someone who can drive this thing,” he yelled.

Jonas and Aki, the two heavies who had escorted Jake to the bridge, headed for the door.

“And a navigator. We need a navigator,” Flynn called after them before they were through it.

“You need a lookout, too,” Jake said. “I mean, unless you’re planning on crashing this ship.”

“Bring him over here, I can’t hear the son of a bitch from there.” Flynn waved a hand at his remaining henchmen.

The German and the Chinese-looking man came over to Jake’s chair. Taking a side each, they lifted it up, with him still attached, crossed the bridge, and dropped it down in front of the captain’s seat. It landed with a thud, jarring every bone in Jake’s body.

“What did you say to me, son?” Flynn was still looking out of the window.

“I said that if you intend to move this ship, and don’t want to crash it, then you’re going to need a lookout as well as a pilot and navigator.”

“Is that so? Well I guess we’ll have to hope the driver can do both jobs then, huh? Ought not to be too hard. I wasn’t watching the whole time we was out cruising, but I didn’t notice a whole bunch of obstacles to hit out there on the ocean.”

“What is the breeding?” Jake had to try and push for more. “What are you going to do with Lucya?”

“I told you not to worry about her. She’s going to be well looked after. She’s one of the lucky ones, pretty little girl like that.”

The other men on the bridge chuckled. Jake felt a mixture of fear and rage welling inside him.

“And what about me, what will happen to me?”

“Like I said, justice will be done. You’ll die, of course, but not by my hand. At least, not directly. Funny thing is, it wouldn’t have made no difference if you hadn’t been set up in my little plan there. Your days would still be numbered just the same. Just like nearly every other man on this ship.”

“You mean every other person,” Jake said defiantly. “Everyone is going to die, you included. This ship doesn’t have the fuel to sustain you. I guess Melvin never told you, we’re leaking fuel. You take this ship back the way we came and you’re going to find yourself stranded in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with no heat, no electricity, no way to prepare or store food. If you sail away from here, you’re killing everyone on board.”

“No, not quite everyone.” A smile spread across Flynn’s face. “Oh most of them are going to die, of course they are. Nearly all the men. Most of the women too, at least, all those over the age of thirty. Great job on that census, by the way, it made my job of finding the younger women a whole lot easier. And yes, Melvin told me about the fuel. Another great job. Death will come even more quickly than I had hoped. With no fuel, people will die of the cold, of hunger, of dehydration. Oh I’ll make a great show about how we’re all doing what we can to help them. It’ll provide them with some comfort in their final days and their final hours. They don’t need to know about those of us living the high life on deck twelve. Those of us for whom the food will never run out, the heat will never go off, and the water will never run dry.”

“You’re completely insane!” Jake felt his stomach turn.

Flynn turned to look at him, grinning. “No, son, not insane. Denounce me and you denounce the Lord, for I am doing His work here.”

“You’re condemning thousands of people to death with your actions. That’s not the work of any god, that’s an act of pure evil.”

“You’re wrong. We have been the evil ones. Mankind. We have brought about the gradual destruction of His creation. He gave us a world, a beautiful world. An abundant world, filled with wonder. And how did we thank the Lord for His gift of life? With our factories and our bombs and our pollution and our consumption and our disregard for our fellow men, and fellow creatures. We plundered it. We ruined it. And for that, we deserve to die.”

“You believe your god sent an asteroid as punishment for what we’ve done to the planet? You’re as crazy as Captain Ibsen. He wanted to kill us all, too.”

“You’re not listening to me, son. I told you, I’m not here to kill everyone. Most? Sure. But not all. See, the Lord spoke to me. He explained to me about the asteroid. Yes, it was punishment, in a way. But it was also sent to cleanse the world. To purge it of the scourge of humanity. Almost. But we were saved. He gave us a second chance. We get to start again. In time, the dust will go. The land will repair itself, become green again, safe again. It will be a new Eden, a new beginning.”

“With you in charge?” Jake closed his eyes, shaking his head.

“That’s old-world thinking. Nobody need be in charge. We’ll make a better world. A world based on respect and love.”

“Can you even hear yourself?” Jake fought to keep the anger within him. “A better world? Respect? Love? And how are you going to make this better world of yours? By killing thousands of innocent people!”

“Sacrifice is necessary. Billions have already died, what’s a few thousand more?”

“So why not you? Why don’t you sacrifice yourself? Because you know what? You’re right! In some sick, twisted way, you’re right. The sacrifice of most of the people on this ship would allow the rest to survive. For a time, anyway. So why don’t you do everyone a favour and sacrifice yourself, and your cronies here, right now, and leave the rest of us a few more resources?”

“Why not me? Because I am Adam!” Flynn’s expression had changed to one of pride, mixed with a little confusion, as if he couldn’t understand why Jake didn’t see what he saw.

“You’re what?”

“I am Adam. And these men,” he gestured to the other two men on the bridge, “and ten others like them, are my disciples.”

“Like Jesus? You think you’re Jesus? You think you’re the second coming? You’re even crazier than I thought.”

“The Lord spoke to me, after the asteroid. He told me my real name. That name is Adam. He told me that the world will be reborn. We will find our Garden of Eden. And with twelve others like me, we will start over. The men, and the women over the age of thirty, will be sacrificed. The younger women will join us in Eden, for the breeding. Together we will make a new world.”

Fifty-One

L
UCYA
WAS
ROCKING
from side to side. She was tied to a chair of some description, but she had soon worked out that the chair itself was not fixed to anything. She swung her weight from one side to the other. With each swing she felt two of the legs rise up from the floor, a little higher each time. As she swung in the opposite direction the legs thumped back down and those on the opposite side rose. The thud made by the chair legs hitting the ground was muffled. She was on a carpet, which meant she wasn’t in a bathroom or cupboard.

The momentum was gradually building. Another swing and she knew the chair would tip. She put all her effort into it, straining her head and trying to shift the mass of her body to the left. The chair’s right side lifted, tilted over. It teetered in perfect equilibrium for a second, two seconds. Lucya stretched her neck as far as she possibly could, trying to get every last ounce of weight to the left. Then the chair started to fall. It felt like it was going over in slow motion. A thought ran through her head: what if there’s something just to the left, something hard?

She hit the floor with another muffled thud. Her head bounced off the carpet. It may have been soft, but there was still a hard floor underneath and the impact sent bright flashes of light dancing before her eyes. The way that her hands had been tied behind the back of the chair meant that part of the back was now pinning her arm to the floor. All her weight was on it; she could feel it already starting to go dead as the circulation was cut off.

She tried moving her legs. They remained stubbornly stuck together, but there was a tiny bit of give in the legs of the chair that they had been attached to. The swinging had weakened the structure of it. She tensed her thigh muscles and then her calves. She pulled them towards her bottom, then tried flexing them out away from her. The tiny movement grew a fraction larger. She continued to jerk her heels and thighs backwards and forwards, squeezing and flexing, crunching and stretching. Her muscles were burning, but she kept on pushing, glad of all those evenings spent in the gym. Then, finally, a cracking sound. The legs had started to become detached from the seat of the chair. Now there was lots of give. One more squeeze between thigh and calf, and there was another crunch and the sound of splintering wood. Three of the legs had come free, and one had snapped in two.

Her legs were still bound together, but she could at least move them now. She straightened them out, and then with her feet she pushed herself round on her side. She tried to grip the floor with her feet, to pull herself towards the broken legs. Another push to turn herself, and her outstretched fingers touched on a split chair leg. Carefully, with a combination of her bound feet and legs, her fingers, and her head pressed against the carpet, she was able to manoeuvre her hand around the sharp piece of wood. The tightness of her bindings made moving her hands difficult, but she found she was able to position the splinter between her hands and the plastic tie that held them together. Very slowly, she started to saw.

Fifty-Two

“U
NTIE
HIM
,
NOW
.” Flynn waved a hand dismissively as he spoke.

Gunter and his sidekick approached. The German’s knife was pressed into service once more, severing the bonds that held Jake to the chair.

“Mr Jake Noah, for the murder of Melvin Sherwood, and another unnamed man, and the attempted murder of myself, I sentence you to exile from this ship. Take him away. Put him in that inflatable thing, the one he used before. Once we’re out of the fjord, cut him free.”

“You said you weren’t going to kill me. That’s a death sentence!”

“I said I wouldn’t kill you directly. I’m giving you a chance. Maybe you’ll find your own Eden, if you paddle long enough. If you survive long enough. Goodbye, Mr Noah. I’ll be sure to give your regards to that lovely little Russian girl, when I see her for phase two.”