by Perrin Briar
“Well, I’d better get ready,” Anne said after eating. She headed below deck. Joel caught up with her.
“Anne,” Joel said, speaking in a hushed whisper, “can I have a word?”
They moved into the main living area. The suitcase full of their salvaged goods sat on the sofas, their innards open, contents spilled across the dining table.
“Anne, I want you to stay here.”
Anne blinked as if she’d been slapped. “What? No. I’m coming.”
“There’s no point in all of us being at risk for no good reason.”
“There is good reason – the more of us there are the better.”
“Not this time. The Lurchers will all be dead.”
“You hope. What if they’re not?”
“I want you to keep an eye on Stan, Mary, and the girls.”
Anne folded her arms and looked away.
“Anne, we need you here.”
“What if something happens?”
“Then I’ll feel relaxed knowing you’ve got my back.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “This isn’t about you. This is about what’s best for all of us.”
Anne, after a pause, nodded, but she still wasn’t happy. “Fine. But next time you get to babysit.”
“Fair enough.”
Jordan finished off his last sausage. When Joel and Anne emerged from below deck, Joel was wearing his armor, and Anne wore a heavy frown.
Joel approached Jordan and said, “Are you ready?”
“Just about.”
Anne helped Jordan with his armor. She pulled the fastenings, tugging them as tight as they would go, cutting off his circulation. She glared at him, daring him to complain. He didn’t. That only made her angrier.
Stan cranked the gangplank. It extended with all the slow energy of impending doom. Only one hook of the gangplank fastened onto Light’s soft decking, the other hung suspended in mid-air. With the added weight of the water in the engine bay, Light had listed even further during the night. The stern had been pulled down, forcing the bow to lift up from the waterline.
Jordan and Joel crossed the gangplank, Jordan with a lot less apprehension than the day before, though still not quite with the same confidence as Joel.
As they walked across Light’s deck toward the bridge, Jordan sidled up to Joel. “Do you think Anne will do as you asked?”
Joel looked at Jordan out the corner of his eye. “How would you know what I said to Anne?”
“The temperature dropped ten degrees whenever she looked at you. And, she’s not here.”
Joel smiled and eyed Jordan with newfound respect. “There’s no telling what Anne will do.”
From Haven’s deck, Anne watched them disappear out of view as they stepped into the bridge and went down the stairs. The rattling sound of Stan winding the gangplank back in echoed the twisting of apprehension in Anne’s gut.
18.
Nowhere was Light’s listing more obvious than on the vehicle parking level. The square box shape of the vehicles somehow heightened the lop-sidedness of the room. But the vehicles had not moved, their handbrakes holding firm.
Joel opened the door that led to the stairwell. They caught the strong salty iodine smell of the sea that they previously could not smell until they were at the bottom of the stairs. They shared a look.
“You don’t suppose the door could have snapped open under the pressure?” Jordan asked.
“The Lurchers having escaped and organized a nice welcome party for us?” Joel raised his knives. “We’ll have to go down and see.”
Four steps from the maintenance floor, Joel’s boot set foot in water, soaking him to the ankle. He crouched to see down the corridor. His flashlight revealed the water was deep at the stairs, then tapered off and became shallower as the incline reduced, the water only barely stroking the door’s bottom. It was shut.
“That’s disappointing,” Joel said. “No welcoming party.”
Joel waded into the pool, the deepest pointing up to his waist. He kept his arms above the waterline. As he emerged from the pool, the water ran down his waterproof pants, dribbling on the water’s surfaces then the floor as he made his way to the locked door.
Water leaked from the edges of the doorframe, thin rivulets that joined the pool on the floor. The decapitated body beside the door hadn’t moved, but now it looked like an ancient totem, a dreadful warning to strangers of the horrors yet to come.
“Listen,” Joel said.
There was no groaning, no scratching, only the trickle from the doorframe. But still Jordan felt uneasy.
“Are you sure we should open the door?” Jordan said.
Joel gave him a flat stare. “This was your idea, remember. We can’t turn back now.” Joel put his hands on the wheel lock. He leaned all his weight into it, the cords in his arms straining against his skin. He stopped. “Blimey, it’s on tight. Give us a hand.”
Jordan took hold of the wheel too.
“Ready?” Joel asked. “On three. One, two…”
They put their full weight behind turning it, their faces turning red with exertion. They expelled painful grunts of air. The wheel cried out as if in pain, then only squeaked as it haltingly gave way. Water spilled from the doorframe in wide channels, running down Jordan’s leg. They stopped.
“One more turn should do it,” Joel said, out of breath. “When this door gives, it’s going to open pretty fast. We’ll need to move quick. Are you ready?”
Jordan nodded. They braced the wheel again. They barely twisted two inches before something inside the door snapped with a sharp crack. The door flew open, tossing Joel and Jordan aside like ragdolls. The water spilled over them, rushing forth from the door like a mighty river had burst its banks. Lumps like clotted cream spilled through, splaying out in all directions, eviscerated on the sharp steel stairs, their heads scalped, the limbs hooked about the stairs torn from their sockets, thick blood oozing and spreading out over the surface.
The corridor was packed with bodies like monstrous rotting lily pads. The water level was up to Jordan’s chest now. At the deepest area at the stairs he wouldn’t even be able to keep his feet on the floor.
The room shuddered and a sound like a giant angry monster filled their ears. A light bulb fell from its holder, splashing in the water. Dust sprinkled the surface.
“What was that?” Jordan said.
“I don’t know,” Joel said, “but it doesn’t sound good.”
They waited a moment, but the event did not repeat itself. A body in a blue boiler suit floated between them. Her long blonde hair spread out around her head like a halo. Jordan put a hand out to touch her.
“Don’t go near it,” Joel said, causing Jordan to start. “Stand back.”
Joel approached the body and brought his knife down on the back of its head. The flesh and bone gave easily, like a rotten apple. The knife sunk into the skull, the cross guard thumping the bone. Joel turned the body over. Her skin was white, bloated and waterlogged, the face pale as trodden snow. The eyes were closed. She had perhaps been in her mid-twenties.
“She looks like a regular person,” Jordan said.
“Don’t let that fool you. She’s a monster. They all are.” He nodded to the other bodies, floating like trash. “Disable the others.”
Jordan looked at the unmoving bodies. “They’re dead.”
“We’ve made that mistake before,” Joel said, wading over to a body wearing a Tottenham Hot Spurs shirt. “We didn’t check them, assuming they were dead. They came up behind us and…” He slammed his knife into the back of the football fan’s head. “Almost got us. Don’t let their appearance fool you.”
Jordan waded over to the body of a man lying face down in the dark water. He wore a red rain jacket and blue jeans. His skin was pallid and bloated, the hair on the back of his head was so fine and thin his lumpy scalp could be made out beneath it. Jordan raised his chair leg in both hands above his head. He looked over at Joel who plunged his knife into the
eye of a young girl no older than eleven. Jordan turned back to the man in front of him and prepared to bring the weapon down… It slipped from his fingers and slapped the water behind him.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” Joel said. He stood at Jordan’s shoulder with the discarded chair leg in his hands. “Your life, as well as ours, depends on it.” He put the leg in Jordan’s hands. “The first time is always the hardest. It’s easier not to think of them as human. Stan reckons they’ve regressed to some former animal state, to the time before we became self-aware. I’m not sure I believe that, or even if I understand it, but I do know they want to kill us. And they won’t stop unless we kill them first.”
Jordan raised the chair leg to shoulder height. Joel moved to turn the body over. Jordan wanted to protest, but the words stuck in his throat. The face had been torn, the flesh hanging by strips. His nose was a bloody ruin, bitten or else ripped off. The inner cavern of his nostrils was dark and covered in a thick slimy membrane. Blue veins coursed under his skin like thick ropes. The eyes stared up at the ceiling, mouth hanging open, the jaw skewed at an unnatural angle. The face actually made it easier for Jordan because the thing before him did not look human. Jordan brought the chair leg down.
The skull gave way easily to the club, leaving a crater where the man’s face had been. Once was enough, but Jordan raised the club and brought it down again. Water splashed and turned red. Shards of shattered cranium pinged off the walls. Soon Jordan was pounding the water where a head used to be.
Jordan’s arms burned. He could no longer lift the chair leg. Blood and a thick green pus clung to the leg’s engravings and oozed down the vine grooves like a blood gutter on a sword, spilling over his gloves. Jordan sobbed, drawing in wracking breaths that shook his whole body.
Joel put a hand on his back. “You did well.”
“It’s not that,” Jordan said. “Until now I never really believed the world had changed, at least not as you all told me. I guess I secretly believed the world was as I remember it. But now…” He stared into the dead black eyes that gaped from the crushed skull. “Now I know the world really has changed. Everyone I knew is gone. And here I am, smashing it to smithereens with the leg of a destroyed chair from a forgotten world.”
Joel said nothing, letting the moment linger. Once Jordan was ready, they moved about the corridor destroying the brain of each floater they found. The water tinged the color of red wine with flecks of yellow pus.
And then they stepped into the engine bay.
19.
“They’ve been down there an awful long time,” Anne said, peering at Light through the binoculars.
Stan sighed. It was the fifth time she’d said it. “No longer than you were yesterday.”
“That was different.”
“How is it?”
Anne shook her head. “It just is.” She peered through the binoculars again.
“No matter how hard you try you’ll never see through the hull with those binoculars. X-ray vision doesn’t come as standard.”
Anne smiled, but the tension didn’t leave her eyes.
“They’ll be fine,” Stan said. “Don’t you think they would have made contact with us if there was a problem? The Lurchers will all be dead, and there’s nothing left to harm them.”
“It’s not the Lurchers I’m worried about.”
At that moment there was a loud screech, like a girder under too much pressure.
Anne raised the binoculars, heart pounding in her ears. She scrubbed Light left to right, looking for what could have caused that god awful noise. She felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up into Stan’s wide white eyes, his gnarled finger pointing at Light’s stern.
“I don’t think you’re going to need those binoculars, love,” he said.
She looked up. Her blood felt like it had frozen in her veins.
The stern was sagging into the water like an old man setting himself on the sofa. The front lifted up, water dripping from the bow, poking its nose up at the sky. Anne grabbed the walkie talkie that Stan clutched tight to his chest.
“You have to get off the boat!” she shouted into the walkie talkie. “It’s sinking! Do you hear me? It’s sinking! Get out!”
Static answered her.
“Joel? Jordan? Are you there?”
Still no answer.
“If you can hear me, get out now.” Anne gave Stan the walkie talkie. “Keep trying to contact them.” She ran to the crank and pumped it as fast as she could.
Stan broke from his stupor. “Wha… What are you doing?”
Anne didn’t look up from the crank. “I’m going down there.”
“You can’t. The boat’s going to sink.”
“They’ll die down there if no one warns them. Take care of Stacey and Jessie. No matter what happens, keep them safe.” The gangplank had extended to about halfway. Anne looked at the gap, judging it.
“What about your armor?” Stan said. “You can’t go without armor!”
“It’ll slow me down.”
“But-”
“We haven’t got time to argue.”
“But you haven’t extended the plank fully yet!”
“I’ll jump it.”
“But if you fall…”
“I won’t fall.” Anne put her foot on the plank, judged the distance one last time, took one stride and…
Tonk! The hollow thud rung out across the ocean.
Anne hit the deck. Mary stood over the unconscious Anne with the frying pan in her hands. She poked Anne’s stomach with her foot. There was no reaction.
“What did you do?” Stan said, stunned.
“Me? Why, I didn’t do anything.” She handed the pan to Stan, turned and left.
20.
The ceiling was choked with pipes. They darted this way and that, overlapping and doubling back on themselves like a magic eye picture. Levers and buttons protruded from the walls. They had been chewed and gnawed on, down to nubs. One was smeared with chunks of festering lung where an oblivious Lurcher had impaled himself on it. The water on the floor shimmered with filmy rainbows, the product of a leaky pipe. Joel tapped a dirty dial that had ‘Oil Level’ written across it. The needle pointed to ‘Empty’.
“No oil,” Joel said. “Beautiful.”
Joel ran his eye over the engine, following the mass of metal the way an expert tracker pursued wild game. He got down on his belly and pulled himself under the pistons and belts. He rolled onto his back and located the alternator after only a few moments’ inspection. He took the tools out of his pocket. Within minutes he had worked the alternator free.
“Here, take this,” he said, extending it to Jordan. He pulled himself out from under the engine and wiped his hands on the T-shirt of a Lurcher’s corpse. “Let’s get the hell out of here. This place gives me the willies.”
Jordan put the alternator into a special pocket they’d sewn onto his chest. They walked toward the door. They both performed a peculiar move, their hands moving to the side as if in an attempt to regain their balance.
“Whoa,” Joel said. “Did you feel that?”
“Yeah,” Jordan said, peering around at the room. “Felt like the floor was moving.”
Joel raised the walkie talkie to his mouth. “You guys, anything exciting happening out there? Guys?”
Static answered him. Then the static fizzed and a voice like a ghost from another time crackled. “…off the boat!” More static. “…hear me? It’s sinking!”
The word was a starting pistol. They beat a hasty retreat for the door.
Light lurched again, this time forcing them forward, smacking into the door, then it pulled back, and the water in the corridor rushed toward them as the stern was pulled deeper below the waterline. The prow pulled upward, and the water in the corridor rushed with the sound of a raging river. It hit them in the chest, forcing them back, but they clung with white knuckles to their hand holds. A Lurcher sailed past a
nd into the engine bay. The water buffeted the doorstep, rising in a cool spray. The ferry rocked back to its former position, the water flowing back toward the stairs with a whooshing sound like the sea over pebbles at the beach. The water came to a standstill.
Joel took his hands off the doorframe with great caution, as if by letting go he was going to get sucked into the depths. “I think she’s stable.”
“But for how long?”
“Who knows. We’d best get out of here fast.”
They waded out into the water. Joel’s arm reached out, blocking Jordan. “Wait.”
Jordan looked at what had arrested Joel. The Lurcher corpses floated, clinging together, forming one large mass. Their thick black congealed blood floated on top of the water, pus and other body fluids speckling the surface like a pizza.
“Whatever you do,” Joel said, “don’t swallow any of the water.”
Jordan grimaced. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
Joel launched into the water first, performing the breast stroke with powerful thrusts. Jordan, a less experienced swimmer, walked as far as he could while keeping his feet on the floor, then doggy paddled his way across the surface, careful to keep his head above the waterline. The black bloody mess clung to his cheeks and neck. He pushed a Lurcher away with a tentative finger. He gasped a mouthful of air, holding his breath, and paddled on. Joel sailed through the water like a snake, without apparent effort.
Jordan felt himself dip lower. He could smell the blood, feces and rotting flesh. He came to a stop, treading the water a moment, cursing himself for not having taken swimming lessons, or if he had, cursing himself for having amnesia and forgetting them. He pressed on.
Something somewhere in the ship splintered, snapping in half the way a tree sounds giving way to wind in a torrential storm. Joel was already at the stairs, pulling himself from the swamp water. It clung to him like a second skin.
The water tipped over to one side. The Lurcher bodies floated past him. The water level rose. Jordan kept a close eye on the roof as it approached with breath-taking speed. He turned his face as far from it as he dared without risking the blood caking him. He stopped rising, the water sloshing around as if deciding what to do next. Joel was shouting something, but Jordan was too preoccupied with keeping his face out of the sludge to hear. The room tipped forward, and Jordan was taken by the tide, driven at great speed toward the stairs, which loomed like the stairway to hell. He slammed into them, the sharp corners stabbing into his flesh, threatening to snap his bones.