The Last Passenger (17 page)

She leaned back to take her shirt off. The wet blouse fought to stay glued to her body, and it took a moment to peel it off.

The mystery woman had let her nightgown fall down to her ankles and was completely naked, smiling seductively. Her golden skin looked delicious enough to lick. Her nipples were large, dark circles, and she had a sexy little patch of blonde pubic hair that almost looked white.

The blonde reached out her hands and pulled Senka onto the bed without a word. They fell down side by side, and the mystery woman skillfully slipped off Senka’s panties. Her mouth ran ravenously toward Senka’s breasts and began licking her nipples with deliberate desire. Each time the woman’s lips pressed against Senka’s breasts, every last nerve exploded with pleasure. After a minute Senka began moaning faster. She watched as the woman kissed back and forth between her breasts with a rhythm that grew faster as her hands continued to caress her body up and down. To Senka’s great surprise, she exploded in a long electric orgasm that felt like freedom. She moaned in ecstasy and dug her nails into the woman’s back. The mystery woman was breathing in a deep and rhythmic fashion. Senka tried to turn her over, but the woman would not allow it. Instead, she continued down, tracing complex designs on Senka’s skin. At Senka’s navel, she paused briefly before kissing down to Senka’s sex, which was begging for attention.

The blonde teasingly licked everywhere around Senka’s clit before focusing solely on it, nibbling and sucking that little bit of pulsing flesh. Senka let out a long cry of pleasure. She felt as if all the energy in the universe were being focused through that little nub between her legs. She saw that the blonde woman’s hair was spread out over her abdomen as her face remained buried.

Every part of Senka’s body was on fire. Her legs quivered uncontrollably, and she felt another orgasm building up, this time a wave even bigger and more powerful than before.

Do you like it, Senka? Do you want more?

Senka could only whimper yes before she climaxed for a second time, this time with the force of a flood. She screamed out in total bliss as her back arched. Waves of pleasure traveled rhythmically down her body from head to toe in powerful bursts.

Soaked in sweat, she continued to shake uncontrollably. The blonde, leaning on her elbow, watched her lustfully.

Did you like that, Senka?

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Senka nodded, still unable to speak. A heavy, inevitable drowsiness had overcome her. It was getting more and more difficult to keep her eyes open. Her mind was clouding up and going dark like a city experiencing a blackout.

Before completely surrendering to sleep, she heard the woman get up from bed. A pungently sweet, tinny odor permeated the entire room. Senka was bleeding from her nose, though she did not know it. She was sprawled out on the mattress, naked and reeking of sex.

We love our friends, Senka. You’ve behaved yourself and did as we asked. This is a little present. We’ll take care of you.

Forever.

XXIX

Valkyrie

Day three

The loud steps outside Kate’s door woke her. It sounded like a group of people racing down the hallway. Over the noise she could hear excited voices but could not quite make out the topic of discussion.

In the cabin’s semidarkness Kate blinked and felt numb. She glanced at her watch, feeling disoriented. It was past midnight. She was still curled up in the corner where she had fallen after Feldman and Cherenkov left her room.

After she had heard that sinister laugh.

She had passed out after exhausting herself of all the tears she’d been storing up since boarding the ship. She was completely beat, miserable, and crippled by fear. But above all she felt terribly alone. With every passing moment she regretted more and more accepting this assignment. There was something intrinsically perverse about the
Valkyrie
, something that seeped through both crew and passengers like the stench of rotting fish. Out here in the middle of the ocean, there was nowhere to hide.

She got to her feet and winced. Her leg was asleep. She paced awkwardly around the room to get the blood flowing. Massaging her thigh, she heard two voices, one male and one female. The rhythmic jangle of jewelry accompanied the conversation, which was slowly fading as they walked farther away.

Kate looked at her watch again. It was late, but perhaps there had been a second round of dinner. All those crew members had to go somewhere. Her stomach grumbled with hunger.

She went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and washed her face. Then, she combed her hair and styled it, so it didn’t appear like she’d been asleep on the floor. Looking at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t help but notice the distressing dark bags under her eyes.

She went back into her room and put on slim-fit jeans and a blouse, over which she wore a corduroy jacket. It seemed to be getting only colder outside the
Valkyrie
. Once she was satisfied with her appearance, she slung her camera around her neck and, after double bolting her cabin door, walked down the hallway.

The corridor was softly lit, and a light hint of perfume floated on the air. As she walked toward the dining hall, she thought about how best to broach the matter of the straw hat with Feldman. Kate worried that he had lost some of his confidence in her. Perhaps Carter would be able to advise her on a different approach. Either way, she would have to talk to Feldman and Cherenkov again. She wanted to make it clear she was still worthy of trust and not mad as a hatter. She did not want to be left out of the loop under any circumstances.

As she neared the dining hall, the murmur of voices and music became louder and clearer. Someone was playing a tune not unlike what she had heard earlier that afternoon, only this time it sounded even better. Kate wasn’t sure, but it sounded like a Charleston.

When she entered the hall, the enormous chandelier was fully illuminated, casting blinding diamonds of light over the polished marble staircase. Three women Kate had never seen before were dressed like flappers and advancing up the stairs. One of them said something that made all three explode in laughter.

Kate stood there, stunned by the vague sensation of being trapped in an absurd nightmare. Looking around the room, her eyes landed on two men dressed in old-fashioned tuxedos who were smoking as they leaned against a wall, watching her closely.

Kate closed her eyes tight. She was dreaming. She had to be dreaming. She opened her eyes again, but nothing had changed. The lights, the noise, the stench of tobacco, the murmuring of voices leaving the hall. The taller of the two men leaned over to the other and whispered something into his ear. The shorter man laughed and then glanced back at Kate, watching her unabashedly.

Kate started walking, but her legs felt weak like they might give out at any moment. She was also short of breath. When she made it to the foot of the staircase, she noticed that the enormous potted palm was no longer on the landing, and in its place were three flags: two had swastikas set against a red background, and the third was the KDF flag.

Horrified, Kate stumbled back into one of the enormous wooden eagles standing guard at the foot of the staircase. Its open beak screamed out an eternal call of silent defiance. Kate’s gaze dropped to the wreath that the eagle clutched between its talons—an enormous wooden swastika sat in the middle.

“This can’t be happening,” she whispered in confusion. She sat down on the first step.

A waiter with a tray filled with glasses passed her by and gave her an inquisitive glance before moving on.

Feldman must be playing a joke on me. There has to be a hidden camera in here.

But the eagle was real. She ran her hands over the edge of the swastika. It was not glued or nailed into the wreath. It had been carved as a single piece. In order to alter the carving, they would have needed to tear out the entire staircase with an industrial crane. But before they could even do that, they would have needed to remove the roof just to get the crane in there in the first place. It was simply impossible in the middle of the ocean.

Kate dug her nails into her palms, and the pain was intense and distinct. It was no dream. She was awake.

“Are you all right, Fräulein?” The voice startled her. A waitress dressed in a black uniform and cap was leaning down, looking worried. “Would you like me to bring you a glass of water?”

Kate took a couple of deep breaths to calm her nerves. A woman who was either dead or had disappeared more than seventy years ago was offering her a glass of water. Or maybe it was a ghost. Kate forced herself to choke back the hysterical laughter that was threatening to erupt.

“Nein, danke,”
she answered in perfect German, automatically switching languages. “I’m just a bit dizzy. I’ll be all right in a moment. Really.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” she said, trying to give her best smile even though she knew it was a tragic substitute for a genuine one.

The woman nodded and left, but not without one last sidelong glance at Kate.

The noise in the hall became completely raucous when the band started a new song. It was an all-out celebration. Kate stood up and steadied herself on the carved swastika before starting up the staircase. She stared long and hard at the flags as she passed them but did not dare touch them. She was certain they were real, just like everything else around her.

The doors of the dance hall, which was usually closed off and dark, were open wide, and the space was packed with people. Couples were dancing the foxtrot while other groups of passengers moved back and forth on the dance floor, attended to by a small army of waiters and maids. On stage a seven-piece band was playing as if possessed. The party had swung into a groove. Champagne was flowing, and the passengers were red-faced and lively, wrapped in the cacophony of the celebration and the dense clouds of smoke. The laughter was uproarious, yet to Kate’s ears, slightly off, like everything was out of tune.

A woman with a blank look passed by her side, sending a chill through Kate’s body. Everything seemed so real. But there was
something
that did not fit even if she couldn’t put her finger on it. Despite the obvious fact that none of it could be real.

Kate considered the possibility that some vein had burst in her brain and that she had lost her mind. She wondered if she might not be lying in her cabin bed at that very moment, no more than a vegetable, declared by the ship’s doctor to be certifiably insane.

Kate grabbed a glass of wine from a tray as it was carried past her. She took a sip, tasting a fresh and bubbly white Riesling. If this were a hallucination, it was the most perfectly realistic one of all time.

A familiar face in the crowd caught her eye. It belonged to one of the chemists, and he was dressed in a fancy two-piece suit. Her heart beat faster. Seeing someone she recognized in the midst of this ghostly celebration made the wheel of unreality she found herself trapped on spin a little slower.
Kate dug deep in her mind to recall his name. He was Finnish; it was something euphonious and exotic. It started with “Lau.” Laukannen. That was it. He and another chemist had joked around with her the day of the first meeting. He was a kind, innocent-looking man with deep blue eyes.

Kate began walking between groups of revelers. As she passed through she noticed how conversations were coming to a halt and that cliques of groups had begun to talk in whispers. Dozens of eyes were on her.

Something was wrong.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection as she passed a mirror, and it dawned on her. Kate’s casual outfit stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of this formal 1930s party. Likely, none of those present had ever seen a pair of jeans in their lives. That is, if they were truly alive.

Ignoring the stares, she closed in on the chemist and his group. He was chatting in German with two women and a man. As Kate got closer they abruptly became silent.

“Hello, Mr. Laukannen,” Kate said in German. She leaned closer to him and switched to English, whispering, “To the lounge, quickly.”

The Finn was taken aback and looked exceptionally baffled. “I’m sorry, Fräulein,” he whispered back in German. “I do not understand you. I do not believe I speak your language.”

“Laukannen,” she murmured, shaking her head. The icy grip within her tightened.

“What’s wrong, darling,” asked one of the women, placing her hand on Laukannen’s shoulder as if asserting ownership. “Who is this woman?”

“I have no idea, love,” he replied, looking at Kate with mistrust in his eyes.

Kate stumbled away without a word and felt their glares pierce the back of her neck. If they assumed she had been drunk, her inglorious departure did nothing to counter that theory.

She was in the middle of the dance floor. People parted as she passed, as if they could smell that she did not belong. The sweetness in the air was almost suffocating, and yet, on this occasion, there was a hint of decay underneath. The hall smelled like everything in it was rotting. Kate was dizzy. She needed to get out of there.

As she left she saw Harper chatting with a group of passengers. The captain was dressed in his formal uniform and had a thick mustache on his face, which had not been there earlier that morning. Showing no sign of recognizing her, he suspiciously watched her pass.

He whispered something to a man at his side and then made a subtle gesture to the waiters standing along the wall at the back of the hall. Kate watched as two of them began walking toward her, making their way through the crowd.

With a gasp of terror she turned around and moved through the hall, trying to widen the gap between her and the waiters. Harper’s intense blue eyes hovered in her mind. It wasn’t just their cutthroat, merciless appearance. It was Kate’s certainty that earlier that day Captain Harper’s eyes had been brown.

XXX

Kate bounded down the staircase two steps at a time. On a whim she took hold of her camera and began snapping pictures in all directions. If this nightmare should ever end, she wanted to be sure it was real and that she hadn’t dreamed it. Or perhaps she needed definitive proof she was indeed crazy.

As she took the first shot, the automatic flash went off with a blinding blue light, which filled the entire hall and attracted a few curious glances. But Kate had better things to think about, as the two waiters who were after her had just reached the top of the stairs.

The young journalist caught sight of a door leading to a little hidden hallway. She made sure the waiters could not see her from the top of the stairs, and without a moment’s hesitation, she ventured into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

Laughter. The laughter of children came from the end of the tunnel. Kate ran forward and tried to find the source of the sound. The hall led to a room she had never seen. The wood-paneled walls rose to a height of a little more than six feet. Children’s frescoes depicting farmers, deer, and snowmen were hanging on all four walls.

A little antique carousel was spinning in the middle of the room. Horses, rabbits, pigs, and cats turned ceaselessly around the wrought-iron center. The saddles were marked with the KDF symbol. Each one of them had a little boy or girl on top, screaming joyfully. All around the carousel ran a waist-high rail, and to the side was the ride’s operator, who lackadaisically handled the controls as a military march blared from a gramophone. On a bench in the back, a group of middle-aged women were gossiping among themselves. Periodically, they would stop to look wearily at the children.

Kate glanced back. The door she had come through was still closed. She crept back and pushed the door ajar. She saw that the two waiters were still in the lobby, looking in every direction for her. Eventually, one of them ran off toward the bridge, and the other headed into the dining hall.

They had lost her. But she did not have much time.

Think, Kate, think. What are you going to do?

The obvious choice was to go back to her cabin and wait until the delirium subsided. That is, if it ever did. She wondered if Tarasov and his team at Wolf und Klee had been right all along. What if they had somehow gone back to 1939? Feldman, Cherenkov, and Carter had maintained that it was completely impossible. That it would violate the basic laws of physics. None of them was here now, however, seeing all of this.

Getting back to her cabin was not going to be easy. To get there she would have to cross through the lobby. The well-lit, crowded lobby with those two waiters chasing her. Not to mention her outfit would attract unwanted attention. She needed to find an outfit appropriate to the period.

As she took in her surroundings, Kate noticed a little girl who was sitting at the back of the nursery, completely alone and set apart from the noise of the rest of the children. She seemed focused, looking in Kate’s direction with contempt like kids do when something greatly displeases them. Brow furrowed, she began swinging her legs in her seat. It was not just her attitude that was different. Her clothes were much simpler than those the others wore. Instead of shiny leather shoes and a lace dress, she was wearing sandals and a gray linen dress that looked like it had seen better days. It was one or two sizes too big for her like she had inherited it from an older sister.

The girl lifted her hand and pointed straight at Kate. She remained unmoving, with her arm raised and eyes fixed on Kate. The effect was so shocking that Kate had to stifle the overwhelming urge to scream. She was on the verge of running away, but if she retraced her steps she would come across the two waiters and however many other people were now searching for her. The little girl lowered her arm before she cocked her head to one side like she was listening to something coming from far away. Despite the fact that Kate’s mental alarms were blaring, something drew her toward the girl.

She approached and managed to avoid the curious mothers, who remained seated on the bench. Kate kneeled down next to the girl, who stared at her without blinking.

“Hello,” Kate said. “May I sit beside you?”

The little girl nodded, legs still swinging beneath her seat.

“Why were you pointing at me?” Kate’s voice cracked, and her mouth was completely dry.

The little girl remained silent for a while and looked absently at the floor. Kate noticed that she looked malnourished and her left arm had a huge, ugly yellow bruise.

When Kate repeated the question, the girl turned to her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said very simply, her voice imbued with abject sorrow.

It was unnatural to hear such a small child use that tone of voice. It spoke of suffering, horrors, and unabated hardships. It spoke of lost innocence.

“I know,” Kate managed to utter. “I’m lost and I just want to get back to my cabin. You wouldn’t happen to kno
w . . .
”

The girl shook her head and looked sullen. “I don’t mean here,” she finally answered as she lightly stroked her bruise. “I mean now. You aren’t from here. You cannot be here. She will be very mad if she sees you.”

“She? Who? Why will she be mad?” Kate babbled out. “Who are you talking about?”

The little girl reached out and touched Kate’s plastic watch with pictures of animal heads and colorful beads. Her niece, Andrea, had given it to her as a present. The little girl looked at it with dreamy eyes as if she were imagining herself wearing it on her own wrist.

“Do you like it?” Kate asked, taking off the watch and handing it to the child.

The little girl took it in her hands with reverence as if she could not believe something so beautiful could exist. She ran her hands over the beads, enjoying the feel of the plastic like it was something exotic. Suddenly, her knuckles went white, and her fist shut tight. She looked up in terror.

“We have to go,” she said full of fear. “She’s coming.”

“She? Who do you mean?”

“She’s coming! She’s coming!” She stood up, clearly shaken. “The others will follow. We have to go.”

Without a glance back the little girl ran toward the door at the back of the room. Thinking about what to do, Kate noticed the same sweet, metallic odor that had become familiar to her. The smell alone made her stomach turn. The carousel had come to a stop, and all of the children silently stared at Kate with empty eyes. Their mothers had stopped their chatter to fix their attention on her. One had dropped her eyes to the floor, while another woman, who had been knitting, held her hands frozen in midmotion, like a statue.

Every one of the women had something in her eyes. Something alien. Something dark.

Kate’s blood turned to ice. Not waiting a second longer, she got to her feet and walked backward toward the door the little girl had used. Her right hand drifted toward her camera, which hung around her neck. A loud click-click-click echoed throughout the room as Kate snapped a flurry of pictures.

It was enough to set the chaos in motion. All of the children simultaneously began shouting at the top of their lungs. These were not normal screams, however. They were deep, savage shrieks, far too cruel to come from the mouths of children. They were rough and bestial. They were howls of warning.

There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she is. There she i
s . . .

The screams reverberated with such force that Kate thought her head might explode like a live grenade. She put her hands over her ears, but the collective noise sounded
inside
her head.

It hurt. It was painful.

Kate turned around and sprinted out of the room. A loud noise came from behind her like something being ripped, but she didn’t stick around to find out what it was. Her life, or perhaps her sanity, was at stake.

The door led to a long service hallway that was much simpler than the hallways in first class. At the end of the hall, she caught a glimpse of the girl and her terror-stricken face before she disappeared around a corner.

Kate sprinted up the hall, her camera bouncing hard against her chest. Something was chasing her, rounding each corner with what sounded like a watery gurgle.

This part of the ship was like a maze. The ceiling was a complex filigree of thick cables and metal pipes instead of the beautiful wood paneling adorning the other corridors. Every so often the hall forked, and it did not take long for Kate to be completely disoriented. Her only saving grace was the little girl running a few feet ahead. Kate knew that if she lost track of the girl, she would be hopelessly lost and at the mercy of whatever was after her.

Something heavy fell to the floor behind her with a tremendous clatter. Whatever was chasing her, it was getting closer. The hall lights were becoming dimmer as whatever it was began absorbing every ray of light, like a vast black hole of wickedness. The lights flickered and slowly went out. Gradually, the entire hallway was being swallowed into darkness as if the electric current had lost its intensity. Kate was blindly running, somehow panting and gagging simultaneously. Ahead of her the girl’s gray dress blended into the darkness. The long blonde hair that seemed to float above the ground acted as her only guide.

If you trip, you’re fucked, Kate. Watch your damn step.

She ran into the opening to a staircase that led to the lower decks, and Kate knew where she was. It was one of the points of access to second class. The little girl moved down the stairs with difficulty, her sandals clapping as she clung to the handrail.

“Wait,” Kate shouted as she tried to catch her breath. “Don’t go down there. It’s dangerous.”

The little girl ignored her and continued her descent. Kate hesitated, but the sounds of whatever was chasing her were becoming louder. She placed her weight on the first step. The staircase was completely black like the depths of a cave. There was no light at all, and the shadows seemed to be moving restlessly, waiting.

Another crash sounded closer. She could wait no longer and began to move down the stairs.

Into the darkness.