by David Sachs
Even in the battle for their lives, there was something in Lee’s words, the voice, that cut Rick. As if Lee were mocking him in front of all the sentries, the Theater, and his wife. He may not have been as strong as Lee, and sure, Lee was the leader and protector. But Rick was no coward, and Lee would have been dead a long time ago without his help.
51
After the incident with the spies, the Colonel rethought his assassination plan and decided he needed to improve the odds. Golding had a far more powerful weapon than he, but Warrant had two advantages:
Lee Golding didn’t know about his gun.
They controlled the electrical grid.
He would visit Brenda and arrange a new tactic: At midnight, Brenda would kill the power everywhere around the Theater. The galley, however, would be lit up. This wouldn’t require new work: they had secured power to all the galley circuits, only most were kept off to conserve energy. Brenda could turn those lights on.
Killing the other lights, in the Theater and hall, while leaving the galley powered would be a challenge, and possibly a dangerous one. Mostly, it would take time.
So Colonel Warrant didn’t wait, he went unarmed to get Brenda started.
Warrant had a route that he had considered safest in evading unwanted notice, but he was always on guard. There weren’t any safe routes to the aft of the ship. The lighting was dismal. Through the service corridors there was no emergency lighting, and only the low level lighting from the few stairwells broke the darkness. Warrant counted out those breaks.
As he passed one, a vision appeared in the space of the opening. Then the monster was upon him, a hand at his throat and three hundred pounds of body weight forcing him against the wall. Warrant knew who it was. He wondered why he hadn’t been shot. His hand went to Lee Golding’s face, but the bigger man pulled back and slammed him into the bulkhead a second time.
“Kill him!” he heard a woman’s voice whisper desperately.
Warrant couldn’t fight. Lee Golding was on top of him, crushing his lungs. He felt how weak he was. He grasped and struck at the monster in the dark, but to no avail. The breath escaping his mouth he knew would not come back in. The blood coming up his throat, coughing out, was life leaving him. His body had rarely failed him before. His had been such an effective machine: a body always able to manage the tasks assigned to it, a body that could be trusted to perform. He knew he could not sustain the effort he needed. He’d been starved for weeks. Now he was dead.
Lee Golding sprung back to his feet from the body, his knees unsteady. He spun and landed against the wall. He could hear his breath echoing in the space. His breath. His life. The other one gone.
“I killed the Colonel,” Lee said. “I did it.”
The wall seemed to lean, like he was strapped to an almost upright operating table, moving through strange angles. He regained his balance and was loose in the space. He felt weightless, bouncing.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t shot him. It had happened so fast. They’d heard the Colonel and stopped in the stairwell. When he saw the Colonel, the Colonel turned, and he sprung at him. Instinct, again.
“How will they know?” Jessica asked.
“Jessica, I did it,” Lee said.
“I know, Lee. I know what you did. But how will they know? His people? What good is it if they don’t know? Lee – you’re hurting me.”
He saw he was squeezing her arms.
He wiped his hands on his pants and realized they were slick with blood.
52
Gerry lowered himself down a dark stairwell in a part of the ship he hadn’t been to in weeks. Funny that, they’d been here less than a month and he had routines, routes he took, places he stayed. Despite the relentless boredom, he no longer explored the ship. Now it was obviously wiser to stick to one’s territory, but even before the raid on the galley, when there was no war on the ship, he had found a rut.
He had the gun in his belt, in back. He knew how to use handguns. He was in a state of bloodlust. He wanted nothing more than to kill someone. In the dark stairwell, he could not stop from seeing the back of Corrina’s head, her face tucked into his shoulder.
She was shuddering as she spoke.
“He was young. He had a baby face. Big eyes, big lips. He had a red striped t-shirt and he smelled awful, like vomit.”
He wasn’t one of the Atrium crowd. He might be in a room, but most of them came out to the Atrium eventually. Gerry couldn’t remember a red striped t-shirt on a boy like that. There were three places where he’d most likely be.
The bar. Travis had told Claude about it, Claude had told Gerry. Gerry had seen a few guys over the weeks that took their own carts of food, obviously okayed by Hesse. So Gerry figured that’s where those guys went; the rest must just stay put and get the food brought to them.
Second would be the solarium. The Theater peace freaks. Gerry had asked around and learned where they were camped out.
Finally, the Theater. That would be the last place to try.
Gerry knew he was at the right deck from the stairwell. There was a smell here unlike anything else. Vile. Rotted. “He smelled awful, like vomit.”
There was light in the portholes along the hallway, and there was the bar. The stench was more intense yet as he approached the yawning entrance. It was quiet, but not silent. There was noise of movement. When Gerry came around the corner to see the full bar, he saw dead and living mixed at the tables. The flesh of the living, or moving, was as discolored and rotted as the dead. There were flies. He wondered where they came from. Life feeds on life, but it thrives on death.
There were medical vials and needles on some of the tables. Hard liquor bottles.
“Hey,” a man said as Gerry stepped past his table.
The man was hunched over, his head on the table, his arm flopped on the table as well.
“Hey,” the man said and Gerry stepped over to him.
“Food?” the man said. “Dave is dead. We need food. Dave is dead.”
Gerry stepped away and continued his tour of the place. Others reacted, raising their heads and regarding him. Some of them smiled. Others still half-asleep. But there was no crying here at least.
There was no red t-shirt.
He looked behind the bar. A young woman lay dead. All the shelves were empty.
Gerry turned and walked past the tables to the door.
“Hey,” the man near the door said.
Gerry turned but did not stop.
“I’m a doctor.”
Gerry stopped then. His long frame doubled over, his head dropping towards the man, staring at that near dead face, the yellow eyes and grey skin. This was the man Travis had worked with, all those weeks ago. This was that handsome, strong, assured man.
“Yes,” Gerry said. His hand went on Dr. Conrad’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“Awesome,” Conrad said.
Gerry was frozen there, staring at that zombie face. Then he backed away with his feet, so that his hand fell off Conrad’s shoulder. He turned and left and did not slow his pace until the stench was behind him.
The anger was still an engine within him, but he had many stairs to climb to the solarium, so his pace did slow. He saw the back of her head again in the dark.
“He was young. He had a baby face. Big eyes, big lips. He had a red t-shirt and he smelled awful, like vomit.”
He walked through dark hallways, all his muscles tense, expecting anything. As he had as a boy out too late, trying to make his bedroom without disturbing his mother, passed out on the couch in front of empty wine bottles and a lipstick smeared glass. As he had as a teenager, robbing the corner grocery store with the cheap lock on the rear door. As he had as a young teacher, carrying on an in-school affair with Deirdre, the girl with the off-the-shoulder sweaters. As he had just two years ago, staying over in Corrina’s apartment and sneaking past Darren’s bedroom before dawn, and four weeks ago, exploring the halls of the Festival of the Waves after the pira
tes had smashed their engines and killed the millionaire.
When at last he arrived at the solarium, his eyes had to adjust to the light, even the grey light of this day. He saw a room covered and walled in filth. He vomited. He kept his hands to his knees, holding himself from falling into the mess. As he recovered, he heard voices.
He followed a clean path across the floor to the restaurant, where sick individuals sat haphazardly and clutched at their stomachs. They looked dirty and messed up. Many were in bathrobes or underwear.
Some of them turned and saw him. Some smiled. He knew they knew he was not one of them, but he felt welcomed. Then he saw a red striped t-shirt.
The young man was about fifty feet away, across a tangle of others and several restaurant tables. Gerry walked a wide path.
The boy was with an older woman. Gerry could see the two, see it was his mother. He had a baby face. Big eyes, big lips.
These two weren’t wet or in underwear or bathrobes. They were new. The more he saw the boy, the more he hated him and wanted to kill him.
A moment behind everyone else, Gerry looked to the far side of the room. Even behind the group, Gerry had no problem seeing Adam Melville, nearly a head above everyone else. Adam Melville spoke and everyone listened.
“Things are going to start happening,” Adam Melville said. “We need to talk about these things.”
“Those we left have taken the food from others. Hundreds of people are starving to death in one place, while another hundred are starving more slowly in the other. One side has a gun, the other side has desperation. The conflict is inevitable, and it will be complete.
“Things are going to get very bad on this ship. And you have to ask yourself, why would God put us here in a lose-lose situation? Now, we’re sick and pained, and all I can think of is a dog with an electric collar that shocks to get him to stop doing something. I think God is telling us what he wants us to do.
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ Jeremiah. God does not want his servants to die in this furnace. My God is for the strong, strong enough to face the truth, not run and hide from it like rats with bloody claws. We have to see, and face, that all those things that we see and touch are unreal and temporal, and that what is invisible is all that is real and eternal.”
There was an energy in the air. Gerry felt this. This giant’s voice was like an electromagnetic field, attracting all it touched. Gerry wanted to dismiss him as nuts, but he couldn’t deny. There was something about Adam Melville that made him seem special: touched. A conduit to something. Gerry’s cynicism softened. Just enough to want Adam Melville to be special, to have a message for them. But it was a daydream ended again with the sight of the boy, and no voice outside could still the one inside that demanded life’s blood.
“We had to suffer to be saved. But God doesn’t want us to keep suffering. God wants us to come home,” Adam Melville said.
The boy and the woman clasped hands. All he had to do was lift the gun and press it against the boy’s back and shoot. His hand tensed on the gun, and he felt his whole body as a weapon. His mind was burning. The woman leaned her head on the boy’s shoulder.
A great struggle took place within Gerry. In an instant, the fight was over, the gun replaced in the waist of his pants. He wiped his eyes, tensed his body one more time to rid himself of the fighting spirits, and regained his calm. He wouldn’t shoot the boy now. He had him. He’d have the chance again. He didn’t have to kill him in front of his mother. The rage listened to reason within him. He would have him alone soon.
Yes, God wants you to come home, Gerry thought. I can help.
53
Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see
Blue birds
Singing a song
Nothing but blue birds
All day long
Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Noticing the days, hurrying by
When you’re in love, my how they fly
Travis had Darren in his lap. Corrina sat in the chair to Travis’s right. Claude Bettman played piano and sang. Travis didn’t know if Claude knew what had happened to Corrina. Actually, he knew Claude knew, but he didn’t know if he’d been told. He once again felt warm towards Claude, as a healer, as a safe place. The song could have been sung to make it an insult. It could have been bright and happy and made Corrina quite mad. But Claude played it so that the piano was a meditation, walking above the line between happy and sad.
He sang it with the anguish in his voice of someone who had been on this cruise ship. It was a lament of the Israelites in Babylon, a picture of beautiful Zion sung in an honest voice that told how away Zion was. To Travis, it was an embrace of Corrina that he couldn’t give her. He didn’t know if Professor Claude knew she loved Irving Berlin music. But he knew enough.
Travis had considered searching for Gerry, but he’d realized the futility of it quickly. Gerry wouldn’t be long, and Colonel Warrant’s mission could wait another hour. He had all night to get in position. Travis wondered if Gerry had gone to the Theater. They might have lost both Gerry and the gun. Or Gerry might have made Warrant’s mission obsolete.
So Travis stayed with his family and waited. Nothing to do but wait and listen to the music.
Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on.
The door from the deck crashed open and with it the sounds of the wind howling. In the grey silhouette was Lee Golding with Colonel Warrant over his shoulders. Lee Golding bent and jerked and tossed Warrant off to the ground. He stepped in over the body and his wife came in behind him. There were the usual handful of groups and solos spread around the lounge, and they reacted with one long, loud wordless exhalation
“That’s your Army boy,” Lee Golding said. “He wanted war. Well, he got it. For God’s sake, the rest of you be smarter than Army boy.”
Travis was on his feet moving in when he realized he was the only one.
“Take it easy, man,” Professor Claude said.
“You’re sick!” Travis said. “You’re worse than the pirates! You’ve never felt so good about yourself, have you?”
Lee Golding held the gun up, but casually.
“Note that I could kill you. I could kill your kid and your wife. Note that I do not. Yet. It will be for all of you to decide. You can stay here, and live as best you can as long as you can, and hope. If you want to kill yourself, the ocean’s out there. Don’t drag everyone into your suicides.”
A shot came from elsewhere in the salon, and the wall-length window behind Lee Golding exploded. Screams came from the two score refugees here who dove for the ground, or burrowed into the hidden couches in their booths.
Travis was on the floor and crawled on his belly back to his booth, wrapping himself over Darren and Corrina on the floor. Lee Golding was on his knee, looking for cover and the shooter. Jessica crouched behind him. He had his gun up. He didn’t know where to fire. He began to back up out the door, pushing Jessica behind him. He switched the gun to automatic fire. He rose to his feet, one arm grabbing Jessica, the other holding the gun up behind him. He fired a burst randomly. The other gun fired again, a distinct voice in the room. Lee Golding screamed as he disappeared from sight.
Gerry sprinted across the lounge, past his wife and her son, and Travis. He went out the door, scanning the deck.
The room was immediately colder as the wind filled it through the open window. Heads popped up between the booths. Gerry returned.
“He’s gone,” Gerry said. “We’d better get down to the Atrium. He could come back.”
With the howling wind, the group seemed silent as they gathered themselves together and quickly made their way from the room that had changed so quickly from a shelte
r to a corrupt and dangerous place.
Gerry and Claude and Travis looked at each other, and turned and went back to throw Colonel Warrant’s body to the sea. Claude and Travis picked him up while Gerry covered them with the gun. Darren and Corrina waited by the door. Darren did not cry now.
Lee and Jessica ran along in that wind, astern. The ship had grown much more dangerous for them. There was another gun. Lee Golding was no longer super-powered.
54
Brenda White never knew of Warrant’s plan to kill Golding. She knew only her work.
Brenda had been, for weeks, a Dr. Frankenstein, working in a dim windowless lab, more and more isolated and alone. She was a tourist on the cruise, and she felt like a tourist in this lab. Communications and power generation were far from her expertise. She was writing freshman Kirchhoff diagrams trying to get the best bang for the buck from the emergency generators. It wasn’t much.
She wondered if the there was a Nobel Prize in Foraging and Scavenging Unknown Technology.
After the initial epic work on power and water, she’d devoted herself these several weeks to communications. Here the equipment had been pasted together from the remnants of the original radio room. It had been painstaking, working out methods to bypass or recreate destroyed circuits had been a devil’s task. After days of frustration she’d changed tactics, working out her own equipment from first principles. The ship had had two distinct physical systems for satellite communication, one for the on-board phone and data connections, one for Internet use. Brenda combined the systems, and where she found broken elements, she bridged them from scratch rather than attempting repairs.
Brenda worked long hours again. She’d begun talking to her tools and equipment. She’d built special relationships with her multimeter and soldering gun.
She had been in this room a long time, but now she would go back to the Atrium, because she just might have a working receiver. For the first time, she felt her work might save them, might get them off the ship.