Triton (19 page)

An atrium punched upward through decks four and five, their balconies crammed to the edge with linen-clad tables. Sparkling wine glasses and silverware lay strewn across the floor.

“Brynn, you doing okay down there?” Jake said over the radio.

“Fine, I just . . . I thought I saw something,” she radioed back.

“Leave it, Brynn,” crackled Cedar’s voice. “Get back up here ASAP. We’ll regroup and check it out together.”

“Coming now,” she said, for once grateful for her brother’s overprotectiveness.

Beyond the dining room, a dark hallway tunneled back to the elevators—her escape.

The lights in that hallway had been flickering bad when she first walked into the dining room. By the looks of it, they were now out completely, and the corridor receded ominously into the depths of the ship, pitch black.

Just great.

There’s nothing down here, Brynn.
Just your imagination.

She started across the dining room toward the tunnel. Behind her, the automatic doors shut with a whiff. The sound startled her. She spun, and a wine glass crunched under her tennis shoes. She flinched back, struck a table, and sent a dozen plates and wine glasses clattering to the floor. The noise sent her tearing across the dining room like a scared rabbit.

In the dark hallway, she stumbled over the velvet rope and faceplanted into the carpet.

Real cool, Brynn.

She felt her way down the rest of the hallway in the dark and at last reached the elevators, glowing like beacons. On a different circuit, no doubt. She reached for the button, but a flicker drew her eyes further into the darkness, where the mazelike passageways veered deeper into the ship’s gloomy interior.

A corridor branched out of view off the main hallway, gaping like a black throat—and she shivered. No way was she going in there.

Yet her finger hesitated on the button. What flickered? Who’s shadow had she seen in the kitchen?

The answer was just around the corner.

But if she waited for Cedar to investigate, it could vanish. She might never get another chance. And until she knew for sure what lurked out there, the unknown would eat away at her sanity.

Skin tingling, she pulled out her cell phone, switched on the flashlight, and—with a deep breath—ventured into the darkness.

What are you doing, Brynn?

The moment she rounded the corner, she spotted the source of the light. Stateroom doors marched into the murky blackness, all of them dark.

Except for one.

An orange rectangle glowed around a single door. Lit from within. When the rest of the hallway was in a blackout.

She crept forward, mesmerized. Unable to pull back. Her cell phone illuminated the room number: 834, an unwanted interior stateroom at the bottom of the ship.

She pressed her ear to the metal. She heard noises inside . . . a hissing, like someone whispering fast.

The sound raised goose flesh.

There was someone inside, some
thing
inside. Something that didn’t belong.

A sudden wave of fear reduced her to quivers. Do it now, Brynn. Prove you’re not a scaredy-cat. With trembling hands, she raised the master key to the slot.

A crackle from her jean shorts made her heart leap. The radio hissed. Panicking, she reached down to mute it, when the voice finally came through. Cedar’s voice.

“Uh, guys,” he said. “I think you’re going to want to see this. Room four twenty-five, deck ten. Take the first hallway on your left, then the second right. I found someone.”

Saved
.

She ran back to the elevators.

The corpse in
stateroom 425 strained the mattress’s springs to their limit. Obese was an understatement; the man’s pale belly nearly spilled off
both
sides of the bed.

“Heart attack,” was Jake’s assessment, “That’s why he wasn’t taken.”

Cedar sniffed the air. “At least he doesn’t smell.”

“Probably takes a few days before he starts rotting,” said Naomi. “Should we . . .”

“Just leave him,” said Cedar. “Who knows what kinds of diseases he’s got.”

“We can’t just leave him,” said Brynn. “We have to pay our respects.”

“Brynn, you pay your respects to people you
know
. Not strangers . . .” he trailed off, though, and cast a concerned glance around the room. Then he headed for the door.

“What now?” said Jake.

Cedar stood out in the hallway and peered both ways. “Where’s Sky?”

“Sky, come in
 . . . can you hear me?” said Cedar into the walkie-talkie, fighting panic. He released the talk button and listened.

No reply.

With each passing second, the ache in his stomach sharpened to a sting.

“Sky, what’s your status?” Jake radioed next to him.

Nothing.

“Sky Wilkinson, come in,” said Cedar.

“Some areas of the ship have bad radio reception,” said Naomi. “She might not hear us.”

“Decks five through seven,” said Jake. “That’s where we sent her.”

Cedar lowered the walkie-talkie and glared at him. “That’s where
you
sent her.”

“We each took three floors,” said Jake. “There’s no reason to believe there’s anything hostile out there . . . maybe she just turned her radio off.”

“She’s smarter than that, Jake.”

“Or it ran out of batteries.”

“Naomi, which floor did she get off at?” said Cedar. “Seven or five?”

“Seven.”

“Working her way down,” he said. “She’s probably still on deck seven.”

They took the elevators down and emerged in an elevator lobby identical to the ones above and below, giving Cedar an ominous sense of déjà vu.

“Sky!” He yelled her name up and down the deck seven hallway. Jake headed to the starboard side and did the same.

No reply.

With a twinge of anxiety, Cedar imagined her wandering alone through the mazelike corridors. No, she had already proven herself; he trusted her. She could handle anything on the ship.

It wasn’t
on
the ship he was scared of.

He squeezed his radio to his mouth. “Sky, answer me . . . are you on deck seven?” Next to him, Brynn’s walkie-talkies spit out his garbled message.

“Everyone turn off your radios,” he said. He called her again. “Sky, come in.”

“I heard something,” said Brynn. “Up the hall. Call her again.”

“Sky, where are you.” The moment his voice cut off, he heard it too—the echo of his own voice, laced with static. From inside one of the staterooms.

He tore up the hallway, the others in tow. “Sky, we’re coming,” he radioed.

“. . . e’re . . . oming,” hissed on the other side of a cabin door. Room 128.

“Here.” He took the key from Naomi, slotted it, yanked the handle. The door banged open. A blinding glare from the balcony forced him to shield his eyes—the sunset, bleeding along the skyline.

“Sky?” Cedar’s foot landed on something hard. He froze inside the doorway, ragged breaths cutting his throat—and lifted his heel off Sky’s walkie-talkie.

Where she had dropped it. But stateroom 128 was empty, locked from the inside. The others filed in behind him.

“We need to search the ship,” Cedar stammered. “This room,
every
room . . . every room on this goddamned boat.”

No one moved. No one met his gaze, they just stared at the abandoned radio.

“Did you idiots hear me?” He shoved past them back into the hallway. “I said search the ship—”

“Stop it.” Jake grabbed him by the shirt and thrust him up against the wall, his eyes fierce. “You know what happened to her; that room was locked from the inside.”

Cedar pried Jake’s fingers from his shirt. “It was your fault, asshole. You sent her off alone. Now help me find her . . . she’s on this deck.”

“She’s not even on this ship,” said Jake, releasing his hold and letting him crumple to the floor. He turned away. “We shouldn’t be out after dark. Get back to the bridge, everyone; there’s nothing else we can do.”

“What about Sky, huh? You’re just going to leave her out here . . . leave her as bait for the aliens?”

“It’s too late for that,” said Jake, marching up the hall. “They already took her.”

The Holy Bible

They already took
her.

The words crawled nightmarishly through Brynn’s mind late into the night, and she squeezed a little closer to Naomi’s sleeping body.

Who
took her?

And were they next?

She recalled the inexplicable glow coming from stateroom 834 on deck three. Damn her, she should have checked when she had the chance. Now, the unknown still lurked out there.

But something else nagged her.

The Hebrew warning she had translated earlier . . . that last word. At first, she had assumed it meant
the
giants
.
Beware of the giants
.

Thinking back, she wasn’t so sure.

At four in
the morning, starlight shone through the bridge windows and glinted off the carving knife in Cedar’s hand.

He raised the blade and stared at his ghostly reflection in the steel, polished to a mirror sheen, then at the lump at his feet—Jake, all by himself off to the side, eyebrows and knuckles clenched even in slumber.

Their incompetent leader.

The one responsible for losing Sky. At the thought of her absence, Cedar’s lungs strained for air, like they couldn’t quite lift his chest. She had vanished and left an empty space inside him. And Jake was going to pay for it.

How would events play out after Cedar sliced his throat? Brynn would get over her dead boyfriend; she was his sister after all, loyal to the end.

But Naomi’s loyalty resided with Jake. Fear might keep her in line for a day or two, but eventually the girl’s self-preservation would win out and she would rise against him.

He’d have to sleep with one eye open for the rest of the cruise. Until what? Until they reached the Eastern Seaboard and found a continent full of deserted cities? He needed her on his side.

He could claim Jake attacked
him
first. Killing him out of self-defense was pardonable. It would take time, but he could convince her.

Still, he wasn’t worried about the politics; he was a born politician.

No, he dreaded the guilt.

Guilt burned forever, left permanent scars. It wounded for life.

He knew. Because for eight years, his mom’s death had gnawed tirelessly at his stomach lining like a red-hot iron.

Eight years, and not a day he didn’t travel back in time to relive it, to change it. To give himself instead. Always in vain.

So maybe the guilt wouldn’t matter. He already had the maximum dose. Jake’s death would hardly light a match in an already roaring inferno.

He was already going to hell.

Cedar dropped to his knees, clutched the knife in both hands, raised it over Jake’s heart—and glimpsed a sliver of moonlight in the blade.

With all his strength, he plunged the knife down and buried all eight inches.

Jake’s eyelids sprang
open. Next to him, just inches from his head, the hilt of a kitchen knife still wobbled from its thrust into his pillow.

He bolted upright, his heart thumping, and glanced between the knife and his assailant, Cedar—now hunched over to the side, trembling. He swallowed. “You had your chance, Cedar. Just now, you had your chance. Why didn’t you do it?”

Cedar straightened up slowly and starlight gleamed off his lean, well-muscled back. “Because I don’t kill people anymore.”

“Is this about your sister?”

“Don’t talk to me about my sister, you pervert.”

Adrenaline still burned through Jake’s veins. “It’s about Sky?”

Cedar swiveled around, and his blue eyes glowed ominously in the darkness. “You sent her to that deck, Jake.
You
sent her down there.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

Cedar chuckled. “Why?” he scoffed. “All you ever do is try to save our lives. You’re blameless. You’re a hero. You never do anything wrong.”

“You want to be like me? Then make a choice.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“You have a sister who adores you,” said Jake. “You have a girl who’s in love with you. You have four people here who trust you with their lives—what more do you want?”

“It’s not that easy, Jakey-boy.”

“You didn’t kill your mom,” he said.

Cedar smirked. “As if hearing that from you is going to make a shred of difference. But thank you, Jake. Seriously. I can always count on you to give a hundred and ten percent effort.”

Jake stared at him. “What are you doing? There’s four of us left on this cruise ship. Everyone’s
gone
. None of that matters.”

“It matters to God.” Cedar yanked the knife out of the pillow and flung it across the bridge. It clattered somewhere in the wings. “Go back to bed, Jake. I trust you with my sister. That’s what you needed to hear, right?”

“It’s
her
you need to trust.”

“I know,” he muttered, receding into the night. “I know.”

“Cedar,” Jake called, halting him a few feet out, “thank you for changing your mind.”

Cedar pivoted. His grin hung in the darkness. “I didn’t. I just missed.”

“New rule,” said
Jake, once the four of them had woken up. “From now on, no one goes anywhere on this ship alone. We stay together. If we have to split up, we go in pairs. Never by yourself. Got it?”

They all nodded.

The next day passed in glum silence. Jake hardly needed his rule. With Sky gone, no one dared venture off the bridge. Yesterday had been crystal clear, but today an atmospheric haze reduced visibility to under twenty miles. The afternoon melted into a brown sunset behind them and gray dusk spread before them.

“Something’s wrong,” Naomi said, making a slight starboard adjustment to their course.

“What do you mean?” said Jake.

“The ship, the ocean . . . it doesn’t feel right.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I don’t know. It just feels like something’s wrong.”