The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (28 page)

I sprint for the door. The sound of my feet on the open deck sounds like thunder in the quiet night. If there are any Draugar on the ships below, or within earshot, the collective will have a pretty good idea of where I’ve gone.

Metal squeaks behind me. I’ve got company.

That was fast.

As I pull open the staircase door, I look back and see the metal deck door swing open. Dead feet step onto the deck, but I’m hidden from the zombie’s line of sight. If I can get this door closed before they—

A groaning croak comes from the staircase.

I shout in surprise as a woman dressed like some Disney princess rushes up the stairs and clutches my sweater. We spill backward, out onto the deck. My back strikes the rail, and I start to tip over it. If not for the woman’s hooked fingers holding my sweater, I would have toppled over the rail and fallen fifty feet to the deck of the neighboring ship.

The woman’s strong arms yank me forward. Her teeth and parasite-filled tongue go for my neck. I use the woman’s strength against her, turning her pull into my push and slamming my forehead into her face. The blow crushes the woman’s delicate nose. It doesn’t cause any pain to the parasites, but the force of it knocks her back and untangles one of her hands from my clothes. Unfortunately, the same attack that has saved my life has also knocked me senseless.

I blink away the lights dancing in my vision in time to see her coming at me again. Thick blood oozes from her ruined nose. Her mouth opens wide. Her wriggling tongue emerges with a length that would impress Gene Simmons. But this time, I don’t need to use my head to fend off the attack. I’ve got a free arm. And I use it.

The punch’s force doesn’t come from any kind of learned fighting technique or any advice doled out by the Colonel. It comes from instinct and is powered by a mixture of abject fear and righteous anger, which in this case is a winning combination. The uppercut punch strikes the woman’s chin, driving her jaw up. Teeth meet and sever flesh weakened by burrowing parasites, and the tongue flies free, dropping over the rail.

The sudden removal of her tongue seems to confuse the Draugr. Before she can recover, I take the collar of her frilly yellow dress, pull her forward, and sidestep. Her waist folds over the rail. Her feet come up, and she flips out into space. Two seconds later, there’s a wet thud as the woman completes the world’s worst dismount.

Thumping feet put a damper on my victory. Five Draugar pound down the deck toward me. Their loping run looks like something out of
Planet of the Apes
.

After escaping through two doors and closing the second one behind me, I find myself at a T-junction. To the left is an endless hallway with doors lining either side. Some have trays of food set
outside them. Some have Do Not Disturb placards hanging from the knobs. To the right is more of the same. Doors.
More fucking doors!
I swear the designer of this ship must have had a door fetish. I suppose it’s possible. Some people get their rocks off by dressing like stuffed animals, so why not doorknobs? Or maybe it’s the wood grain? Or hinges? Whatever the reason, this seems excessive. The hall must run the length of the ship.

The door behind me shakes as the pursuing zombies careen into it.
They must have fallen down the stairs
, I think. In another second they’re going to open that door, and on my busted ankle there’s no way I can run away fast enough.

Fuck it
, I think for the third time since Willem and Jakob picked me up at the bar. I don’t really want to fight these zombies. Not only am I exhausted and wounded, but the sword will be hard to use in the tight hall. There’s no room to swing sideways with any strength, and if I swing over my head, I’m likely to lodge the blade in the seven-foot-high ceiling. But it’s not like I’ve got a choice.

I turn around, backing up a bit, draw my sword, and wait for the Draugar.

W
hile the door handle jiggles, a blotch of bright red on the blue and gold rug right by my foot catches my attention. It looks like a credit card, but where the number should be, there’s a
Poseidon Adventure
logo.

It’s a room key.

I glance at the doors running down both sides of the hall. Specifically the doors near me.
Could it be?

The door handle turns all the way. I have just seconds before the latch pops and they spill into the hall and see me.

My ankle protests when I squat down and snatch the card from the floor, and it screams when I stand quickly and lunge to the door. I shove the card into the lock of the nearest door and pull it out. The little lights on the lock stay red.

Damnit!

I hobble to the next door, fifteen feet down the hall. Without looking back to see if I’m about to become a meal, I put the card into the lock and pull it out. The lights glow green. There’s a mechanical whir and click. I shove the door handle down, push into the room, and quickly close the door behind me. I slow the door just before it slams shut, then carefully bring the handle back up so the lock engages silently.

In a few more seconds, I hear footfalls and grunting voices. Soon, I hear hands running along the wall, the door. They’re looking for me.

I stand at the door, trying not to breathe, though my body craves air. Each breath is shaky with panic.
Slow down
, I tell myself.
Breathe.
I pull in a long, slow breath and hold it for several seconds before letting it out again. My panic ebbs. My breathing slows. I’m quiet and in control.

Bang!
The door rattles.

I hop away from it but manage not to make any sound.

The door handle shifts up and down, but without a keycard, the Draugar won’t be able to get in.

Which is good.

Not so good: I might be stuck here.

The water probably works, so I can last awhile, though not too long without food. But none of that matters, since Jakob and Willem are planning to turn this ship into the world’s biggest bonfire. They might wait for me, but when I don’t show, they’re going to assume I’m dead. Staying in this room means dying for sure.

A body shifts across the door, bangs on it one more time, and then moves on. More bangs resonate from farther down the hall. They’re testing all the doors.

They have no idea where I went
, I think with some relief. If they keep moving, I can leave and be on my way. Not that it’ll be easy. The ship is now crawling with packs of zombies who have a hard-on for Jane Harper, the Queen slayer.

When the shifting, banging, and footfalls of the Draugar fade, I lock the brass swing-bar door guard and retreat farther into the room.

I don’t have much time to dawdle, but the relaxing space draws me in like a saucy siren luring mythological sailors to their doom.

The space looks like your average hotel suite, but it is a good number of square feet smaller. The queen-size bed, still nicely made by whichever cleanup crew scoured the floor last, takes up at least a
fourth of the space. The rest of the room is taken up by a couch, a wall-mounted desk, and its chair. A dinner-platter-size round window is at the far side of the room. I make a mental note to stay away from it. The room is lit by a single bedside lamp, which was left on. If I move too close to the window, any watchful eyes outside might see me.

A red pillow sits at the front of a four-pillow wall leaning against the bed’s faux maple headboard. At the center of the embroidered
Poseidon Adventure
logo is a chocolate.

I sit on the bed and place the sword next to me. With the practiced hand of a woman who used to be a teenage girl with boy trouble, I strip the wrapping off the chocolate and pop it in my mouth. The creamy pleasure feels almost wrong—decadence on a death cruise. It melts away my tension, and I feel myself leaning back.

I stare at the plain white ceiling while I suck on the candy. In the emptiness of my view, guilt washes over me. I should be working on a plan. Or at the very least, fighting for my life. Not eating chocolate and lying on a bed!

The bed becomes uncomfortable. I sit up and consider spitting out the chocolate, but I’m not that much of a sadomasochist. I chew the chocolate quickly and swallow.

When I push myself, my hand strikes something solid. A TV remote.

The large flat-screen is mounted to the wall. I look at the remote, then the TV again. There could be news about the ships. Or about the survivors who got away on the lifeboats. Hell, it would be nice just to see some people whose faces aren’t peeling off. My finger rubs the remote’s power button.
I could mute it
, I think.
I could—quit pussyfooting around.
My inner monologue puts the kibosh on my emotional craving for distraction.

And without the distraction, I remember that my ankle is throbbing.
Going to have to take care of that
. I scour the room for luggage and find none. The only thing of note is an awful framed print of multicolored ships and anchors, like some kind of cruise-themed Warhol painting.

I head for the double closet door embedded in the wall next to the front door. Inside, I find four drawers full of men’s clothing, a rack of more clothes, shoes, and a variety of other typical vacation sundries. I take the bottle of ibuprofen and toss it on the bed, too. Then I turn my attention to the minifridge next to the drawers. The door opens with a tug, revealing two bottles of water. I take one out, twist off the top, and chug. I toss the second on the bed. I’m about to close the door when I see a small ice unit. I open the secondary door and pull out the miniature ice tray inside. After recovering a sock from a drawer, I sit back on the bed, fill the sock with ice, and remove the shoe from my injured foot.

There’s some bruising and swelling, but it’s not nearly as bad as I thought. I place the ice against the injury and hold it for as long as I can bear, which actually isn’t that long. Not because the ice is too cold, but because the ship could go up in a ball of fire any moment now.

When I remove the ice, the swelling has gone down. It’s still going to hurt, but I should be able to function. Remembering the ibuprofen, I pop the cap, shake four pills into my hand, and chase them down with a swig from the second water bottle.

Putting my shoe back on hurts. A lot. So much so that I nearly repeat my “fuck it” catchphrase and go barefoot. But I push past the pain and tie the laces. Once the shoe is tight, the pressure actually feels good.

I stand and test my weight. Not great, but better.

I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be
, I think.
Well, almost.

After a quick pit stop in the bathroom, which is barely big enough to bend over in, I head to the door. There’s a map of the floor on the back of the door. At least eighty rooms stretch from the front of the ship to the back, then wrap around and continue on the other side. Four well-marked exits lead up and out to the exterior deck above, but there are also three larger stairwells at the center of the ship leading to the bars, shops, and casino—one at the stern and two at the forward end. The stairs nearest the center show an entrance to a long section of the ship’s core labeled “Maintenance.”

That’s where Steven said they would be able to access the ship’s fuel tanks.

With a destination in mind, I unlock and quietly open the door, and then just stand there, listening.

Not a sound. If there are any zombies waiting for me, they’re not moving or breathing.

I poke my head out like a wide-eyed panicky gopher popping out of its hole, chance a quick peek left, then right. Nothing. The hall is empty.

Actually, that might not be true. Many of the lights have been broken, and everything after the first fifty feet is plunged into darkness on the right. I need to go left, which is good, but anything could be hiding in the murk on the right. Of course, I’ve already exposed myself, so there’s no real reason to stick around.

I head left and move as fast as I can. I get only ten steps before a voice from behind stops me. “Well, howdy there, Raven.”

It’s not so much the phrase that turns me around as it is the voice and accent. “Talbot?”

I hold my
katana
out in front of me, ready for anything.

Except for what I get.

“Your engine’s running, but ain’t nobody driving,” he says.

“What?” I say, confused by the statement. I’m pretty sure he just called me stupid, but I’m not sure why. “Come out where I can see you.”

“This ain’t my first rodeo,” he says. “Why don’t you come here?”

This isn’t Talbot
, I remind myself. I saw him get infected. Saw the worms. It’s his body, but it’s not him.

“Come out,” I say, growing angry at the fact that the Draugar are using my friend against me. “Now.”

“Well, don’t you think the sun comes up just to hear you crow.”

“Stop it,” I growl. The way they’re picking Texas Talbotisms from his brain is really starting to piss me off.

“Big hat, no cattle.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“You’re as full of wind as a corn-eatin’ horse.”

That’s it.
I raise the sword and step toward the darkness.

“It’s so dry the trees are bribin’ the dogs.”

That doesn’t even make sense!
I speed up, aiming for the shifting shadow I can see just a few feet beyond the darkness. If I swing at an angle, I can put a lot of power into the blow and hopefully connect with his head.

The shifting figure steps forward into the light.

All of my plans unravel.

I stop moving.

My jaw drops.

The sword lowers.

Some part of my mind snaps.

It’s Talbot.

But not.

T
albot’s body is whole and hale. His gun is holstered on his hip. His mustache twitches in the same way. And his voice seems unchanged. His eyes, like all Draugars’, are white, but that’s not the source of my horror. It’s that his feet aren’t touching the floor.

Talbot is floating.

He moves a step closer.

Not floating
, I realize.
He’s being held. But by what?