But, again; that feeling.
He pressed his mobile to his ear, even as he raced down the central flights of stairs. ‘Davies.’ he said, ‘get a crew together and meet me down in engineering.’
‘Yes sir.’ came the reply.
No questions asked. Just like that. Good, reliable compliance.
Prior smiled. Briefly.
Engineering still seemed to be miles away. Another corner, another set of stairs.
He was near the aft portion of the ship now and entering those sections that were the dominion of the crew rather than the passengers. Those parts that appeared more stark, more sparse and much more military.
His phone rang.
‘Prior.’ he said, answering the call.
Nothing.
Static.
He raced back up the stairs he’d just come down, panting as he went. Still nothing. He looked at the phone; all six bars of signal had disappeared and the telecom signal pulsed with a digital urgency.
‘Shit.’
As he moved back to the steps that led down towards engineering Prior heard footsteps in the corridor before him. He strained to look up, scanning the darkness for further movement; to no avail.
Creeping forward and feeling his way with his hand, forced back against the wall by the impenetrable dark that seemed to gain in density with every single step, Prior found himself wishing he’d brought a torch!
The emergency lights that should have been guiding his way down here crunched in broken shards beneath his steel-toed boots as he struggled to press forwards. Who would smash the emergency lighting? And why?
There, again. Movement.
Ducking low, Prior did his best to keep quiet as he sprinted the hundred yards or so between them. At the last moment he dove forward, knocking the figure off balance and pinning him to the ground.
A painful fist in the face told Prior he hadn’t secured him as well as he’d first thought.
The pair scuffled, rolling across the floor, crashing into unseen obstacles as each tried to gain the upper hand. Each trying to pin the other.
Why wasn’t this guy simply trying to escape?
Prior suddenly found himself on his front, face pressed against the cold metal floor. He managed to swing his arm up and back, jabbing his elbow forcefully into the aggressor’s abdomen. The hulk grunted and fell back, giving Prior enough time to flip onto his back and raise his legs, tucking them tight into his chest.
As the grunting shadow lurched forward once more Prior kicked out, sending him flying backwards. He crashed over a desk and into the wall as Prior raced forward to grapple him into submission.
‘Fuck!’
He knew that voice.
At that moment a couple of junior security officers appeared in the corridor, LED torchlight blinding him.
And his assailant.
‘Guv’?’ The voice came from the man beneath him.
‘Davies?’ he questioned in reply, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the new light.
‘Fucking hell, sir, you haven’t half got a kick on you.’
Shit!
Releasing Davies, Prior pulled himself to his feet, dusted himself off and offered his hand to the deputy. ‘And you’ve got a bloody good left hook. Near dislocated my jaw!’
‘Sorry sir, I thought you — ’
Prior raised his hand, stopping him. The junior officers continued to stare in disbelief. ‘To be fair, I attacked you.’
‘I thought I’d better get down here as quick as I could,’ Davies said. ‘I asked Collins and Edwards to follow.’ The pair nodded at the mention of their names, ‘Asked them to bring some Maglites with them.’
Prior began to smile at the almost comic hilarity of the confusion, which gave way to a bass round of laughter between himself, Collins and Edwards; Davies soon adding his own dimpled chuckle to the mix, a gleaming grin on his broad face.
‘Are you ok?’ he asked, eventually.
Davies nodded, rubbing his ribs absently as he did.
Prior took two of the heavy-duty LED torches off the ginger-haired Collins, passing one to Davies. ‘You’re a stealthy bastard, Guv’.’ he said as they moved into the corridor and back towards the steps.
‘Don’t you forget it!’ Prior smirked, leading the way, ‘Did you try and call me?’
Davies shook his head. As did Collins and Edwards.
Sliding open the heavy iron, manual door, Prior pushed his way into engineering.
He was immediately hit by a wall of heat and scent; heavy, pungent. Sickening.
‘Shit! What is that?’ Davies said, pressing in behind Prior.
‘I don’t know. But, it doesn’t smell good.’
The four security officers spread out; checking all the small, dark spaces, the changing rooms and the main operations centre. It was so quiet. Prior could hear his heart pounding in his head, feel it throbbing in his aching jaw.
Absolute silence.
To be stood in the normally-bustling central hive of a ship like that and not to hear a single, solitary sound sent shivers tingling up and down Jonathan Prior’s scarred back. It was beyond eerie. It was out and out creepy.
Riiiing!
Prior jumped. Visibly. But so did Davies; now just ahead of him, sweeping left and right.
Riiiing!
‘Fucking hell!’ said Prior, picking up the phone. ‘You scared the living shit out of me!’ he continued, hoping — though only as an afterthought — that the recipient wasn’t Captain Andrews.
‘Prior? Is that you?’
It wasn’t Andrews. Thankfully. It was Roberts.
‘Yes. Yes sir, what’s up?’
‘I tried to call your phone, but something’s happened. It’s like the network’s gone down or — ’
‘But that’s not possible,’ Prior cut in, ‘is it? It can’t just go dead like that. There are backups — ’
‘Not if it’s been sabotaged.’
‘Really?’ Prior lifted his hand, signalling for Davies to wait for him. The deputy paused near the secondary control room, watching Prior in the dim light. ‘You think that’s what’s happened?’
‘Well, it would explain a lot. Like why the wall-phones work, but mobiles don’t. Even the satellite systems are out; internet, tracking, positioning, radio, TV. All down. Nothing.’
‘So, we have no communication with the outside world?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That’s shit. Do we know our current position? Does anyone else know it?’ Prior asked.
Davies rolled his shoulders and stretched, clearly feeling sore from their scuffle. Prior watched him bobbing from one foot to the other, stretching his calves.
The lad really couldn’t stand still for two minutes!
‘We’re working on it.’ Roberts’ voice snagged down the line, ‘Have you found anything down there?’
Prior shook his head habitually, ‘The lights are all smashed. And it stinks. There’s no sign of anyone.’
‘Well, that’s partly why I was calling you. We isolated the ID tag within the override codes and tracked it back to . . .’
Prior watched Davies sniffing around ahead of him like a cat; something had definitely caught his attention. Though he couldn’t see what it was from his current position, he could tell that it seemed to have the young security officer suitably perplexed.
‘. . . Blakely.’ Roberts continued, ‘He was behind the override, his codes reduced the delay on the doors and the CO2 release.’
‘Why?’
Prior looked up to see Davies move into the smaller control room.
‘I don’t know, but I think he might have — ’
‘SHIT!!’
Davies fell back out of the control room, tripping over himself in terror; horrified and clearly distressed. Dropping the phone, Prior ran to his side.
‘What is it?’ he asked. No response. Davies was simply pointing towards the room, shaking as he mumbled in strange syllables that sounded like another langu
age. ‘What is it? Marc?’ Prior continued, ‘Marc, look at me.’
‘I . . . I think it’s . . . Blakely.’
Prior placed the palm of his hand on the control room door, easing it open. A fresh waft of stink hit him; warm and scorched. He lifted his torch, flooding the room with a bluish pool of LED light.
‘Collins,’ he said, ‘get on that phone. Tell Roberts we found the source of the smell. We need a medical team down here.’ he coughed, ‘Now. And tell him Blakely won’t be answering any questions.’
He stepped into the small control room.
The window of the small booth that housed the engineering back-up computer was streaked with blood; smeared and splashed. The reinforced glass was cracked, but unbroken. And in the bottom of the cube, merged with the contents of the open metal cabinet, lay Blakely’s still-twitching, still-cooking, beaten and befouled body.
He was cut and bruised and had clearly been tied up at some point. His left eye was a pulped mass of congealing goo in his socket, a silver screw sitting snug amongst the remains of the optical organ; nestled down next to his bled-out tear duct.
What remained of Blakely’s face and hair could barely be considered human. He was a screaming skull dipped in wax; a Madam Tussaud’s reject!
This horrific monstrosity, this spectre that should have been a man, that had once borne Blakely’s now-melted face, was dripping onto the once-pulsing heart of the pc like some futuristic Giger-esque nightmare.
Prior fought the urge to vomit.
He turned away, unable to face the smell of the atrocity any longer. It was then that something caught his eye.
Up in the corner.
The monitor. It was the CCTV for engineering.
The camera was angled to capture the length of the next corridor; that which was sealed off. Which led to the main engineering control room.
It was difficult to make out in the dim light, the camera struggling to focus, but it looked to Prior as though the corridor had been filled with bags or sacks. Was this thing capturing in real-time? What were they?
Prior stared at the human-sized bin bags . . .
The human . . .
A cold sweat broke over Prior’s tense body as the awful realisation drained the colour from his face.
He dashed out of the secondary control room, leaping over Davies who was still quivering on the floor. He ran through the next room until he came slamming up against the seal-locked door. Holding up his torch, he found the glass hatch smeared with blood.
‘Davies!’ he shouted.
Though he didn’t want to, Prior knew he had to check. Pushing out a battered breath, he peered through the glass. Past the blood.
Shining a beam of light into the room, he could see that the bags — as he had feared — weren’t bags at all. Creeping slowly, as though it were unwilling to uncover the truth, his torch found boots, then legs and arms, then torsos, hair. Faces.
They were. They were bodies.
They were crew. Shipmates. Friends. Colleagues.
They were their bodies.
The light from Prior’s torch continued to seek out the faces of his friends until it could move no further. It had stopped and he couldn’t — for all the strength of his will — force it to move an inch further in any direction.
Haloed in the strange blue light of the torch, oddly angled and paler than usual, upturned as she struggled in a motionless frieze on her back, her eyes open and lips parted . . . he found the face of Rachel Adams.
Prior felt his knees begin to buckle, though he did not fall.
Rachel’s arm was outstretched, her palm open willing him to take hold, to pull her through the glass and the steel of the door into his arms. To pull her back through time. Back to life.
Davies was at his side. Catching him.
His legs had given out.
‘Rachel.’ he whispered.
‘Get this door open!’ shouted Davies, his voice still trembling.
The room was suddenly filled with people. More members of Prior’s own security team arrived with portable lighting rods, small petrol generators and hydraulic cutters. Medics arrived. He was pulled away from the door and propped up against a metal wall opposite.
A light passed before his eyes as the room descended into chaos. Someone was calling his name, speaking to him. But he couldn’t hear.
He didn’t want to hear.
And then the words punched through his numbed and grieving, semi-conscious brain. The words he had dreaded, but expected all along. How long had it been anyway? How much time had passed?
He didn’t need to hear those words . . . didn’t need them. He already knew.
If he was honest, he had known all along.
That was the bad feeling. The churning in the pit of his stomach; the clawing, gnawing, aching pulsing . . . thing that ate him up from the inside out.
‘Sir, they’re dead. They’re all dead.’
Chapter Three
17:24
Saturday 14th May, 2011
Christine stepped onto the wide corridor that led to Kelly’s lush and voluminous accommodation. It was a light corridor filled with pictures, paintings and plants. There were no plants in the corridors near her room!
And it wasn’t as though her room was cheap, either.
She had Kelly’s folder tucked under her arm and found herself leaning a little heavier than usual on the stick she hated to admit that she needed. She felt tired this evening.
As she pressed forward, Christine noticed that the door to Kelly’s room was open. She paused, uncertain as to whether she should look in, knock, or simply turn and leave. The less confident and more self-conscious, unadventurous part of her opted to bolt as quickly away from the room as her stick could manage. She hated that side of herself. It had never existed before . . . all that had happened.
Christine sucked in a breath and pushed her anxious, nervous other-self to one side. She moved towards the door, her heart racing. And peering through the gap she saw . . .
Blink.
Flicker. Clunk.
Darkness.
The lights went out and, after a moment, she realised that the strangely comforting sound of the engines had also ceased. They had actually ceased several minutes earlier, though she hadn’t really paid the absence any thought. But, now that the lights too had gone . . . that couldn’t be right.
She felt her heart begin to flutter and pressed her back against the wall, becoming increasingly terrified. She could no longer stand the dark.
As she searched awkwardly with her hand against the wall, Christine knocked over a wooden plant stand. Along with the vase that used to sit on it.
She cursed silently and struggled on, relieved when the emergency lighting — for all the good it did — finally flickered into existence.
‘Kelly?’ she called, annoyed at tremor in her own voice.
She pushed the door a little wider, but found herself suddenly very reluctant to enter. And this time it wasn’t a slightly anxious, nervous thing; something she could reprimand herself for and simply pull herself together. Now she was truly scared. There were no two ways about it. She was petrified.
The evening had already turned as dark as a winter night, though — again — she hadn’t really taken much notice before.
But, being here in the darkness, she couldn’t help but be confronted by the fact that it was unusually, even eerily dim both inside and out. She could see that beyond the glass and metal housing of the ship the sea was becoming increasingly violent.
But, then again, her stomach could have told her that much.
Thick and heavy storm clouds gathered and swirled beyond the French doors that led to the balcony. There were no stars twinkling and no moon. It was as though someone had reached up and tugged at an invisible pull-cord or flicked off some great, unseen light switch, plunging the skies into a vast and all-consuming shadow.
And it looked so much darker inside Kelly’s room than it was in the corridor
. And she really didn’t like the dark. Not since that evening.
Janet . . .
She swallowed hard, trying to bite back the memory before it took a hold of her. But it was too late.
The tears that threatened to break from her liquid eyes were a mixture of pure, irrational terror and the violent torrent of reminiscence. It was stupid — she knew it was stupid — even as she fought to control her breathing, as her heart raced and her chest heaved and her mind screamed out, begging her, spurring her to turn and run. Just run.
She knew there was no way that Thomas Butler could be inside that room.
Even still, the mere sound of his name rattling around her skull made her nauseous.
Hello Sweetheart . . .
‘No!’ she screamed, clawing at the wall to keep her balance as the ship dipped and rolled suddenly. Struggling, she released her grip on the folder, spilling the contents across the floor as she fell into Kelly’s room. ‘I will not allow myself to be ruled by the memory of you.’ she whispered, crawling on her stomach.
Afraid to lift her head, but unwilling to accept the rule of her fear she pressed forward, hand after hand deeper into the room until with a sudden sickness she felt the slick warmth of something like oil on skin.
And she knew from experience that it wasn’t oil.
‘Kelly?’ she whispered, reaching out to touch the cool flesh once more. She looked at her hand, rubbing her forefinger and thumb together and knowing the sickly scent of blood without the need for sight.
Suddenly the skies cracked electric blue as an epilepsy of lightning sheeted across the charged particles trapped within the dense and darkened atmosphere. A momentous clap — hot on the heels of the flash — soon turned to the deep boom of a bubbling roar that continued to roll even as another burst of silver-blue lit up the soupy sky.
Through the noise and the confusion and the haze of shock at seeing such a sudden and entirely uncalled-for meteorological out-burst, Christine raised her head to look out of the glass door. She caught sight of a group of variously sized canvases that stood in the corner of Kelly’s room.
Each was covered with painted strokes of some violent detail or other. Several were close to completion, while others had clearly been discarded.
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