Sea Sick: A Horror Novel (24 page)

He took another swig of the whisky and enjoyed the taste one last time.  The bottle was almost empty and Jack had drunk it so quickly that he was yet to feel its full force.  He figured being drunk would make things easier.

“Well, pardner,” he looked down at Donovan beneath the blanket.  “If there’s an afterlife and you’re already there, get me a drink ready.”

“Seems like you’ve already had enough to drink,” said Tally, appearing from behind the pallets of blue, plastic cash crates.

Jack stood up, unsteady on his feet from the whisky.  “Tally!  I ought to wring your bloody neck.”

“Try it,” she said.  “But I promise that this time the bullet will kill you permanently.”

Jack looked at the pistol in her hand and immediately recognised it as Donovan’s.  “How did you get that?”

“What?  This?”  Funniest thing.  When I first…
dealt
…with Donovan, I took his gun for protection in case you came after me, but I woke up the next day and it was gone.  Guess where I ended up
finding it.  Right back in Donovan’s holster.  Weird, because he wasn’t under the spell like we were, was he? He stayed dead when I killed him, but I guess the fact that the gun didn’t belong with me meant that Joma’s spell kept having to make a slight adjustment and put the gun back where it came from.  Interesting stuff, really. Would be fun to learn more about it, you know?  Pity Joma’s not able to give any more lessons.”

Jack shook his head.  “Why, Tally?  Why kill them?  Why keep trying to set me up for something I never did?  I thought we were friends.”

“A friendship forged through fire is brittle, Jack.  We are not friends; we are just victims of the same fate. My true friends, my family, my…daughter…they are waiting for me someplace else.  You won’t stop me seeing them anymore.”

“What are you talking about?  I thought we were both looking for a way to end this.  Donovan was too.”

Tally laughed and lowered the gun slightly.  She was too far away for Jack to reach her before she could raise it back again, though.  “Donovan wanted to end it, alright.  He wanted to end it all.”

Jack wanted to keep Tally talking so he remained silent, trying to inch towards her slowly.

“The night Donovan shot you, he took me hostage.  He knew all about the day resetting, and that he hadn’t really killed you, but he wanted to know who the hell we both were.  We spoke for the rest of the night and I told him what I knew, about the spell and a pathwalker being on board.  It seemed to be a relief to him that there were others besides him that knew what was happening.”

“Of course it was a relief.  We were all in this together, I thought.”

“Me too,” said Tally, “but then I found Donovan drinking himself to death in the Casino one night and he told me something.  He told me that he was going to carry on drinking and screwing as many women onboard as he could, but that when the whisky
stopped tasting good and the sex stopped being fun, he was going to sink the ship in order to kill the pathwalker and end the spell.  He wouldn’t tell me how; just said he had a plan.  I couldn’t let that happen.  I couldn’t stand around and wait for him to kill me and everyone else.”

Jack took a step towards her.  “So you killed him first?”

Tally raised her gun.  “And you’ll be next if you don’t step back.  I thought about killing you before now, but I guess I took pity on you and decided to stick Security on you instead.  I couldn’t risk you finding the pathwalker and making rash decisions.  I knew if I could just hold you off long enough the candle would eventually melt and the spell would end.  Then I could go home to my daughter, along with as much of the cash in these crates as I can carry.”

“Is this what this is all about?  Greed?”

“No, not at all.  That’s just a bonus.  This is about me being with my daughter again, plain and simple.  You finding the pathwalker would put that in jeopardy.

“But I found Joma. He told me what was at stake.  You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know that you found him.  I was watching you on the security cameras in the room where I was sitting.  Once I knew Joma was the one, it made it much easier to expedite things.  Now the spell is broken and you and I are going to sit tight until we reach shore.  I am going to see my daughter again.  Now back away, Jack, before I change my mind and just shoot you.”

Jack did as he was told and stepped back.  There would be no chance of him grabbing her before she could get a shot off.  She was too in control and he was beginning to feel sluggish from the booze in his system.“If this ship makes it to land, the whole world is going to be wiped out.”

“You don’t know that for sure.  Joma’s dream could have been wrong.  I’m not about to throw my life away and never see my daughter because of the nightmares of an old shaman.”

Jack shook his head.  “You know it’s true.  You were the one who told me about pathwalkers and their abilities in the first place.  You told me they were protectors.  Joma gave his life so that billions others wouldn’t have to.  Your daughter included.”

Tally seemed to hiss as she spoke.  “I can keep my daughter safe, don’t you worry, but I can’t do it stuck on this godforsaken boat.”

“You don’t get it, do you?  The virus on this ship is unstoppable.  If it gets off they’ll be no hope for anyone.  It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.  You must see that?”

Tally shook her head.  “I’m going to see my daughter and you’re not going to stand in my way.”

Jack glanced at his watch.  It was just after eight.  The infected would be attacking any minute.  The lives of the passengers above were about to come to an end, and this time there would be no coming back.  Jack felt sorrow for them, but he now knew that their deaths had always been inevitable.  There’d never been any chance to save them.  What he needed to do now was make sure that their deaths were the only ones caused by the virus.  Tally was the only obstacle currently in his way of achieving that goal.

Jack turned and ran, hopping between pallets as the sound of gunshots rang out behind him.  If there’d been any doubts that Tally was prepared to kill him, they vanished now.  Jack peeked out from behind a stack of boxes and was met by another gunshot. The bullet hit only inches away from his face and sent
shards of plastic up in the air. 

Jack crouched down and hurried toward the back of the cargo area.  Tally had said that she didn’t know what Donovan’s plan had been to sink the ship, but Jack was pretty sure he knew.  He reached the rear pallets of the cargo area and slid around behind them, using them for shelter.  Tally had stopped shooting, which made it impossible for Jack to pinpoint her location without breaking cover and exposing himself.

Have to work fast.

Jack took out the keys he’d taken from Donovan before he’d draped the man with a blanket and inserted them into a nearby footlocker.  He opened it up to reveal a collection of American assault rifles.  Jack had never fired an AR-15 before and he hoped his military background was enough to help him through.  He opened up a small green box on an adjacent pallet and pulled out a handful of rounds along with a magazine to load them into.  After a quick look over his shoulder, Jack thumbed the rounds into the magazine and slammed it into the base of the rifle.  He managed to locate the safety and disengaged it.  Finally he pulled the charging handle and primed the weapon to fire.

Time to go to war.

“Don’t move, Jack.  I don’t want to kill you, but you know I will.”

Jack had his back to Tally and was pretty sure she knew nothing about the rifles in the footlockers – or, more specifically, the loaded one he was now holding in front of him.  “If you kill me,” he said,
“then you’ll be responsible for billions of deaths, not just mine.  Do you really want that?  Is that really something you can be okay with?”

“You’re not going to convince me, Jack.  I’ve made up my mind.  My daughter is the only thing that matters.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”  Jack span around and fired off three rounds into Tally’s stomach.  She flew back, clear off her feet like her body was attached to bungee cords.  The blood from her guts soaked the floor when she came to rest, but her eyes remained focused on Jack.  She was not yet dead.

Jack walked up to her slowly, kicking away the pistol that lay only inches from her grasping hand.  He pointed the rifle’s barrel at her forehead.  “I’m sorry, Tally, but I promise you that this is the only way your daughter will ever be safe.” 

He pulled the trigger.

2100hrs

The sound of people being butchered and torn apart on the upper
decks was the only thing Jack could hear. It made him even more resolute about what he needed to do.  As an explosion erupted from somewhere above, Jack thought about Claire and her unborn baby, cute little Heather with her dolly, and the two small boys racing around the decks.  They would probably all be dead by now.

Jack looked down at the crates full of grenades he’d laid out next to one of the ship’s diesel engines.  There must have been more than two hundred of the handheld explosives in total.  Jack was no demolitions expert, but he was fairly certain that an explosion of that magnitude would be enough to cause a pretty significant breach in the ship’s hull.  The
Kirkpatrick
needed to sink fast to prevent it being rescued by any nearby vessels.  The virus needed to disappear without a trace below the depths of the Mediterranean.

There was one more grenade in Jack’s hand and he was looking at it through a haze.  The Glen Grant had rendered him pretty inebriated, but he was still clear in his focus and lucid in his intent.  From the moment he had gotten on the ship, there had only ever been one way he was going to leave it.  He
just hadn’t been aware of it until now.  Whether or not Joma knew things would end this way didn’t matter now.
It didn’t change what needed to be done.  The only way the virus could be stopped was if every single person onboard died.  There could be no survivors, and that meant Jack too.

He yanked the pin at the top of the grenade and felt the spring-loaded ‘spoon’ release in his palm.  Once he dropped the grenade into the pile of explosives he would have just five seconds.  Five seconds of life left to live; just five more seconds of pain and grief and anger.  It was five seconds longer than Jack wanted or needed.

He opened his palm and let the grenade fall.  It seemed to roll slowly through the air, bouncing into the crate and coming to rest amongst its brothers. 

Jack started to count.

“One…”

I…

“Two…”

Love…

“Three…”

You…

“Four…”

Laura…

“Five…”

Day 250

Sixty-miles off the coast of France, Commander Harrington looked down from the foredeck of the Merchant Navy Bulk Carrier,
Barstow
.  The rolling sea
of the Mediterranean was littered with debris: passenger belongings, clothing, wooden fixtures of the ship, and scrap pieces of metal.  While nothing had been determined yet, it seemed as though the passenger liner,
Spirit of Kirkpatrick,
had suffered some kind of explosion, perhaps from within the engine compartment.  Harrington had been a seaman for many decades and seen such things before, but not with a passenger ship in modern times.  With lawsuits being the way they were, safety checks on passenger vessel were beyond overcautious.  It would remain to be seen what the cause was, but Harrington wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the explosion was deliberate.

The time of terrorism isn’t yet over, it seems.

The Commander was no stranger to death at sea, but the thought of one-thousand passengers and five-hundred crew members sinking to their death
s
had left a numb space in his chest.  Civilians were not suited to terror.  They did not embrace it like servicemen did.  He pitied the suffering that they would have gone through as they realised their time was up. 
The worst kind of death is one you can see coming, even if only by a few minutes.

What the hell happened to you people?  There wasn’t even an SOS.

If it had not been for the fact the
Kirkpatrick
had gone radio silent, no one would have even known it had gone down.  If Harrington hadn’t been in the area, there would have been barely a trace that the ship had even been there.  Already the debris on the water’s surface was sinking beneath the waves.  His men were currently doing their very best to retrieve whatever they could before it was lost forever.

Midshipman Brown approached with his trusty clipboard in hand.  He saluted Harrington from a few yards away.  “Commander!  We’ve just received word that the French Coast Guard is just a few clicks out.  They’ve requested that we hand the situation over to them now and that we have their thanks for our quick response.”

“Typical French.  Don’t like the British stepping on their toes.  Okay, Midshipman, let the crew know we’re out in thirty.”

“Aye aye, Commander.”

Harrington took a stroll along the deck, glancing over his men and supervising the wrapping-up of their efforts.  They had divvied up the detritus they’d salvaged into separate containers: some containing scrap metal and parts of the ship, while others contained personal belongings that could later be claimed by the passenger’s families.  Harrington walked up to one of those containers now
and examined its contents.

There were many things inside: paperback novels, a jewellery box, and all sorts of other mundane possessions.  There was even a scorched police badge.  One thing that caught the Commander’s eye in particular, though, was a little girl’s dolly.  He picked it up and studied its angelic face while trying to imagine the child it must have belonged to. He felt his heart sag.  The child’s toy was a soggy mess and seemed to sum up the tragedy quite succinctly.  Its frilly dress had already started to succumb to the exposure to salt water and its small plastic hands had gone a sickly green as if some sort of chemical reaction had taken place.