Annette handed Stanic a fresh sample tube. “If or when he comes back, please try again. It’s important to me.” Her face was already bruising on the side where she had caught the edge of the desk. Her voice fluttered with barely controlled emotion.
“Of course. I’ll do my best to get it back to you by the end of the day. Brad’s a fiery character, but he’ll calm down and return and do the right thing, I’m sure.” He turned to Duncan, who was sat on the desk getting his breath back. “Are you okay, Dunc?”
“Aye, I’ll be all right soon enough.”
“Don’t take it out on him, though. He’s as upset as anyone with all these deaths. He and Mike worked closely with each other for quite some time. Never been the same since he left.”
“All the more reason to let us eliminate him from the investigation,” Eva said. “His lack of cooperation will only make this process more difficult.”
“I know. I’ll talk with him later today. You have my word.”
With that, Eva left it in Stanic’s hands. She wasn’t convinced Brad was guilty, but she had learned that her first impressions weren’t always right. Despite the common idea that your instincts were often right, she’d learned that people had a million ways to screw with that. Evidence was what mattered, not feelings.
Eva and Duncan escorted Annette back to the medical facility so she could run the samples. Jim’s crew should have removed the bodies by now, and at least there she’d be under guard in case anyone decided to come back, though Eva seriously doubted it.
It seemed to her that the killer was tying up loose ends, killing anyone with connections to the information he sought to recover.
She didn’t feel better at that thought, wondering if she were the next target. She felt guilty about having Duncan or even Graves looking out for her.
What if one of them becomes the target?
Too many people close to her had already been taken away; she couldn’t cope with another.
Chapter 26
Jim sat back against his bunk and closed his eyes. He dropped the empty rum bottle onto the blankets, the dregs spilling out. With his head against the hull, he could feel the vibrations of the waves and the other ships and boats lashed to the destroyer.
Together, they created a percussive language of struggle.
The waves tugged at the boats, wanting to dislodge them from the mountain’s edge and take them out on a tide that ran from one edge of the world to the other. He thought about what that would look like from space.
The entire planet now blue with no landmass.
A smooth marble of purest cyan. A tiny, ugly dot stuck over the drowned remnants of Mexico. A rusting, decaying blight on an otherwise perfect surface.
He wondered how the flotilla would exist without him.
He saw Duncan and Eva potentially getting closer now that Mike was out of the picture; Duncan always did hold a candle for her. He never said as much, but he didn’t need to. Jim saw the way Duncan looked at Eva and the way he casually brought her up in conversation.
He wasn’t entirely against the idea. She was a fine woman, strong, determined, had her heart in the right place. If things were ending, Duncan couldn’t hope for a better partner than Eva.
Then there was Marcus Graves and his obscure plans. Jim could never get a real grip on his motivations. Graves was like a shadow: indistinct, unreadable, silent. Jim had often watched Graves watch everyone else, moving chess pieces in his mind, working out an advantage, planning five steps ahead.
What his ultimate end game was, Jim didn’t know.
Now that he and his goons had dealt with Susan Faust, Graves would have a clear run at taking over. Jim was too tired to fight any more.
Without Angelina and the hope she had brought, Jim had nothing left.
Not feeling drunk enough to embrace unconsciousness, Jim got up from his bunk, the messages from Angelina falling around him like the confetti of his photographs, and headed to his storage locker. He wanted to go to the bottom of the ocean, see what was down there. Stay there as long as the air would last and then…
He didn’t know what then. Didn’t care.
***
Jim put on his best “tired but happy” face as he passed numerous members of the crew on the way to the storage lockers. The room was empty. He approached his locker and fumbled with his keys. He dropped them to the floor with a clank and swayed forward as he bent down to retrieve them. After a few failed attempts, he finally managed to find the right key and open the door, to discover there was only one set of scuba gear from the three available, and his wetsuit wasn’t there..
He knew there was only one place for anyone to go with scuba gear: the sub. He checked his collection of keys and noticed he still had the key for the lock that he and Stanic had installed on the escape hatch.
But why would anyone go there?
The reactor was damaged. Jim remembered that day it arrived: there was a lot of excitement as everyone thought they were being saved by the US military, but when they realised the sub was coasting and didn’t respond to radio, the excitement had turned to anxiety. Inside, Jim had found the bodies of the crew.
Every single one dead.
Dr Singh, bless her soul, had inspected the bodies. Most were killed by a knife to the heart or had had their throats cut. But there were a number who didn’t display any physical wounds. At the time, Singh had postulated it was the infection.
The bodies were burned and set adrift in the style of the Vikings. Mostly to honour them, but also to reduce any potential spread.
The infection was already amongst the flotilla when the sub arrived, but Jim had always suspected that its arrival was a portent. The victims had increased in frequency since then. He was no scientist, but it seemed pretty conclusive to him that there was a definite correlation and probably causation.
So why would someone visit the sub now? It was just full of ghosts.
Only one way to find out.
He grabbed the scuba gear and made his way up onto the main deck. The wind had died down earlier, and the usual blanket of black clouds had thinned, allowing the red early evening sun to bathe the world in a rare warm glow.
Jim felt none of the warmth. Not even the rum could keep him warm. He had died too much inside for that. Taking off his trousers and jacket, he hefted the scuba tanks onto his back and tightened the straps around his chest and shoulders.
The tanks had enough to get to the sub and back if he was economical. But that didn’t concern him. He didn’t plan to come back. With the tanks in place, facemask on and regulator in hand, Jim descended a rope ladder hanging off the stern of the destroyer until his feet touched the cold water. He kept going down until he was treading water.
Regulator in mouth, he took one last look up at the Bravo, his home for the last two years, and said a brief goodbye before ducking his head under the water and diving into the darkness beneath the flotilla.
Chapter 27
Eva was grateful to Annette for managing to run the samples, even in the chaos of the medical facility. Jim’s crew had done a good job in removing the bodies and had cleaned the place up so as not to frighten any visitors for the other quarantined patients.
On their way out, Eva and Duncan thanked the husband and wife who stood guard. They were good honest people who had come in on a wrecked sailboat and had always remained loyal to Jim.
“They’ll do a good job,” Duncan said as they headed out of the Alonsa.
“I’m sure they will.”
“Eva, I’m sorry about Mike, really.”
“Thanks,” she said, unsure of what else to say. It bothered her that her feelings for Mike had seemingly become common knowledge, despite their secrecy and subtlety. She hadn’t spoken of her feelings for Mike with anyone. It didn’t entirely surp
rise her, though, given the way Graves had looked at her on the day of Mike’s departure. He had probably figured it out, watching her from the shadows.
They walked back to the Bravo in near silence. Duncan tried to start a few conversations about the weather and the work Stanic and his engineers were doing to help keep the flotilla going. She nodded, affirmed, tried not to be rude.
Her rib continued to pulse with new waves of discomfort, but she had got used to it and was learning to walk without jarring it too badly. It helped that the wind wasn’t blowing a gale as usual. Even the sun was shining. It seemed completely at odds with the events of the day. Where were the black clouds to mourn Mike’s and Dr Singh’s passing? Where was the rain to wash away the grief?
Even the Orizaba looked resplendent, the golden light bathing the rocks that jutted out from the calm sea around it. There wasn’t much trash on the surface, either. Most of it gathered at the flotilla’s edges or had been cleaned up by the eager teens wanting to do their bit.
As they passed through the various districts of the flotilla, walking across the makeshift sidewalks of driftwood and rope, stepping from one stationary vessel to the next, one thing remained common with every person they encountered: the rumours.
Jim had put out a bulletin announcing the deaths.
The speculation was wild; Eva and Duncan were bombarded with questions about who was likely to have done such a thing; when the killing would end; and why hadn’t she found them yet. And all this bubbled under the rumours that Susan Faust had killed herself.
Unusually, her people weren’t present out on the flotilla, spreading their hate from boat to boat. Even when Eva and Duncan passed their container homes on the container ship, they found them empty.
Duncan tried to distract them both from the attentions of the flotilla citizens with his nervous, infrequent words of encouragement. He was like a shy predator, hanging back behind his prey, reluctant to take what he wanted.
It was the worst of all polite conversation, loaded with unsaid thoughts and clear intentions, the general bad timing and awkwardness conspiring to obscure the message and keep it buried.
Although she had always felt an attraction to Duncan, she couldn’t help but feel like a terrible human being for even contemplating a relationship with him, considering Mike had been gone for just a few hours.
No, whatever might have been there from before Mike would have to stay buried.
“I want to check in on Danny,” Eva said.
“Of course, I’ll come with you.”
Another awkward silence, and as she predicted, Duncan the Quiet didn’t fill it, leaving it to her. At first she wasn’t going to say anything, but something inside rose to the surface.
“It was weird,” Eva finally said as they ascended the ladder to the front deck, passing the main gun and heading for the door to the interior.
“What was?”
“What I had with Mike.”
Duncan didn’t prompt her, just waited for her to continue.
She hated that he did that. She wanted him to say something to stop her from talking, prevent her from spilling out an essence of her real persona. But it was too late; her mouth was betraying her, the words spilling out.
“It was like there was this invisible barrier. At first I thought it was Jean, but he admitted his love for her had changed. He loved her as a friend and a mother to their son, but he didn’t feel any real closeness to her any more. They had grown apart, he said, become different people.”
“The flotilla does that to everyone in some way,” Duncan said as he opened the door to the bridge, holding it open for her to pass through.
She stepped inside; her mouth continued to run. “It made me doubt my feelings. I wondered if they were phantom illusions, clinging to something that was never truly there. And to make matters worse, when he came back, I was unable to confirm it one way or another. If I could have just spoken with him for one last time.”
“Love is distorted by life on the flotilla. It’s like it has this force field that drags things away from people, makes them think things that aren’t there, or wishing for things that were.”
“And what do you wish for?” Eva said, wincing as she took a heavy step through the narrow confines of the ship. It wasn’t just from her ribs; it was the blatant question she knew would bring yet more raw insight.
A clanging noise came from the door. Duncan spun and tried the handle, but it wouldn’t open. “Someone’s locked us in,” he said before shouting, “Hey! What are you doing?”
Duncan didn’t get a chance to continue when a glass bottle came down one of the chimneys to smash on the floor before them.
It wasn’t just a bottle, though; it contained a flaming rag and gasoline.
Eva screamed and fanned her hands in front of her face as the heat pricked her skin.
Flames spread out, rode up the narrow walls, sucking the oxygen from the confined space. Eva and Duncan turned away from the door and headed toward the officers’ quarters, amid shouting. When they reached the ladders that led down to the next level, Patrice and a group of six crew were at the bottom, blocking the way.
Behind them, his face smudged black with smoke, stood Danny holding a comic.
“What the hell’s going on?” Duncan asked.
“Faust’s people…” Patrice said, climbing up to meet them. “They’re attacking. There’s fires all over the ship. I’m trying to evacuate, but they’ve locked us inside.”
“What about the rear hangar door?” Duncan asked.
“Blocked, welded, I don’t know, can’t get it open.”
“What about the missile silo on the front deck?” Eva asked. “We could get up the gantry and out the silo doors?” She knew the gantry itself was empty of missiles, the ship having emptied its full load of ammunition in some conflict before it crashed into the Orizaba.
“We tried,” Patrice said. “Those bastards thought of everything.”
“Why didn’t you radio us?” Eva said, not even hiding her irritation. “You could have warned us before we got here. And why didn’t you just go out of the front door?”
Patrice shrugged and sighed with impatience. “It was blocked when we tried,” he said, trying to remain calm, but his face was reddening at her accusations. “And there’s no damned signal down here; they’re blocking the frequencies. Don’t you think we would have called for help if we could?”
Another crash and roar of flames came from behind them, near Jim’s office.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Duncan said. “Let’s try to work this out.”
Eva gritted her teeth as she climbed down the ladder and pushed through the crew to grab Danny’s hand, pulling him close. “Danny, you okay?”
The boy just nodded. Of course he wasn’t okay, she told herself. He lost both his parents and now this. “Patrice, are there any extinguishers left?” Eva asked.
The Frenchman shook his head. “All gone, used months and months ago.”
“Any other way out of this damned ship?”
No reply.
She could see flames flickering up from the end of the corridor that led to the recreation area and brig. That access would be blocked now.
Further up, towards the ops room and the bridge, smoke billowed.
Faust’s people had them trapped.
Danny started to cough as the air grew thick with smoke.
Eva stepped into the first cabin to her left and grabbed a pillow. She took off the pillowcase and ripped it in rough sections. Wadding a piece, she handed it to Danny. “Hold this over your mouth and nose. It’ll help with the smoke. She handed pieces out to the rest of the crew and Duncan and kept one for herself.
“We need to shut the doors and hatches,” Duncan said. “Keep it contained.”
“Let’s get out of here, head for the lower decks,” Eva said. “We close this hatch, it will buy us some time. We should be able to get under the galley and head to the aft machinery room.”
She led Danny through the low doorway and waited as everyone came through. She closed the door behind them, turning the wheel to lock it in place. The thick steel should hold the fire at bay for a while, she thought, and if anything, it should die down, as there wasn’t much to burn. It’d soon consume the oxygen in that part of the ship. But then she remembered Jim’s secret radio in his cabin.
“Danny, everyone, wait here for a moment, I’ll be right back.”
She reopened the door, choking on the smoke as she rushed to Jim’s room, recovered the radio, and zipped it inside her jacket. She didn’t know if it would ever work, or whether there’d be anyone to receive the signal, but she didn’t see the point of leaving it behind if there was still that small chance.
The flames had come down into the corridor now, feeding on the fabrics in the cabins. She joined the others on the other side and closed the door once more.
“Where’s my dad?” Duncan said as they made their way through a passageway leading to the galley.
Patrice shrugged. “No one’s seen him since this afternoon when he came back from the medical facility. I don’t think he’s on the ship.”
“But you can’t be certain,” Duncan added.
“Non, I guess not.”
SALT: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 19