by Mark Woods
As they sailed off into the night, hoping for rescue, the six of them introduced themselves to each other and told each other their stories of how they had each come to be there on the ship.
Viktoryia, the ‘woman’ in the evening gown, claimed to be originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe and having fled to the States during the war, had somehow managed to become separated from the rest of her family along the way. Now, years later, she had discovered that a few surviving members of her family were still alive. They had also managed to escape, were now living in England and so had booked passage on The Bellastaria to go join them.
The young mother and her child were named Rosita and Sacha respectively.
They had both ended up on The Bellastaria, they told the others, because Rosita was ferrying her late husband’s body back over the water to his home in Norfolk, England so he could be buried in his family plot.
He had booked them all tickets for the cruise a few weeks before he died, but had been struck down dead before they could go in what could only be described as a horrifying and tragic accident.
A pane of glass, falling from a building that was finally being renovated after damage sustained during the war, had landed directly on him and decapitated him. Worse, their daughter, who had been watching at the time, had seen the whole scene play out in front of her, before her very eyes and had spoken nary a word ever since.
Rosita had originally hoped the excitement of coming on this cruise, of being away from the city where she had watched her father die in front of her, might do her daughter good - might do them both good, but also help her daughter get over the horrible thing she had witnessed. She had hoped it might provide her with a distraction, and hopefully maybe even start off the healing process – help her to start to try and come to terms with the loss of her father.
Instead, the cruise had just turned into a nightmare.
Determined to protect her daughter and get her to safety, even at the cost of her own life, Rosita had headed towards where she’d thought she had seen the lifeboats when she first boarded the ship. She had gotten all turned around in the panic, terror and confusion – and that was when Billy had found her.
She owed him her life, Rosita told him now, and not just hers but also the life of her daughter. Listening to her story, Billy could not quite find it in his heart to tell her that honestly, he didn’t think they were quite out of danger yet.
They might have escaped the death trap that The Bellastaria had quickly become, Billy thought, but they were not out of the woods yet, not by a longshot. Unless someone came to their rescue, all that he had really done by helping them onto the lifeboat was delay their inevitable death. Right now, it seemed to him, the chances were small of anyone ever finding them out here in the middle of the ocean.
But that was something for now, he thought, he would keep to himself.
The other girl on-board, the one who had joined them right at the last minute, was also seemingly a mute. Or at least, refused to speak a word, other than to tell them all that her name was Charlotte. She would only let Viktoryia close enough to comfort her and according to Wilfred, the man with the silver hand who had threatened him earlier, was probably, more than likely still in shock.
Jaqueline, for her part meanwhile, seemed to have got past the hysteria they had all witnessed her going through earlier.
Shortly after The Bellastaria had gone down, she had turned to Wilfred and in a whisper, asked him how he had really known how all that was going to happen, but knowing he couldn’t admit to being partly responsible for the ship’s sinking here in this lifeboat, surrounded by those who had barely escaped with their lives, Wilfred had continued to lie.
Instead of telling her the truth, simply he had done his best to try and fob her off.
I told you, he’d said to her, as he pulled her to one side so they could speak alone in what little amounted for privacy on this boat. Sometimes I just see things, I know things; sometimes they come true, and sometimes they don’t, and Jaqueline had seemed content with that for now.
After all, when all was said and done, it didn’t matter she supposed how he had known what was going to happen; in the end he had saved her and for that, she owed him her life.
The little girl, Sacha, had not moved from her mother’s arms in all the time they had been in the boat, and when Wilfred tried to approach her, her mother just clutched her tighter to her breast and held her away. Wilfred attempted to make conversation and determine they were both okay, but Rosita merely answered they were fine and that was that, though she continued to glare at Wilfred even when he backed away. It was almost as though she felt like she could not trust him and if he were being honest, Wilfred didn’t think that he blamed her.
After all, she did not know him from Adam.
None of them did.
Not a single one of them, if they were being true to themselves, really knew anything about each other, who amongst them they could trust. They were, after all, just a bunch of strangers brought together by a singularly unfortunate series of events, and the facts of the matter were, they were still not quite out of danger yet.
It was different for him, Wilfred thought. He had known what he was walking into when he had boarded the ship – even if the premature detonation of the explosive devices he had helped plant had taken him by surprise. For the rest of them, all of the others were each of them still trying to process and find a way of dealing with what each of them had seen and experienced back there.
It must be difficult, he thought, to have everything you think you knew about the world all thrown out the window, and to have your whole life ripped apart, quite literally, by creatures that all your life you’d been told should not possibly exist.
Wilfred thought he could just about remember what that felt like.
Before the war, and everything he had seen out there, he had felt exactly the same way himself.
Wilfred started thinking again about everything that had happened back there on the ship. He found himself questioning again why the explosive devices he’d helped plant might have gone off prematurely, and didn’t like the only answers he could come up with. The only thing he could think of was that a) either the timers on all the bombs had been faulty, or b) that they had gone off early deliberately and it had never been part of his superiors’ plan for any of them to ever escape. Not the Hunters who had helped set the bombs in the first place, and not any of the passengers - neither of which possibility was particularly appealing.
Either way, he thought, his bosses would certainly have some explaining to do if they were ever were rescued and he did make it back to home safety.
As a thick fog suddenly began to descend, seemingly coming out of nowhere, Billy produced a flare gun from one of the lockers at the rear of the lifeboat, and proceeded to fire off a flare.
The rocket shot up in the air, further than any of them could see, high above the approaching fog bank, and exploded in a crimson burst of light that momentarily lit up the sky.
“We should have gone after the other lifeboats,” Jaqueline muttered, half under her breath. “There’s safety in numbers and we might have had more chance of being rescued.”
“And what’s to say that any of the others who might have escaped on those other lifeboats were human?” Wilfred asked, deliberately looking at Viktoryia as he said this. “How do you know the other boats that managed to launch didn’t contain more monsters like those we left behind back on The Bellastaria?”
Wilfred thought he saw the young girl on her own – Charlotte, he thought her name was, from what he remembered of their introduction earlier on – shudder in the darkness.
“What were those things back there, anyway?” Rosita asked, the first time she’d spoken to all of them as a group since telling them all the story of how she and her daughter had ended up on the ship.
“Vampyre and Werewolves, am I right?” Billy said, looking directly at Wilfred, as though somehow knowing he might hold
at least some of the answers.
Wilfred ignored him.
“And how do we know that none of us here aren’t monsters?” the young cabin steward asked, continuing. “If you can believe the stories, can’t werewolves and vampires both disguise themselves as human when they need to? The better to walk amongst their prey undetected? If that’s the case, who’s to say that any one of us here can really be trusted? How do we know that any one of us here on-board isn’t secretly one of them, back there, just biding their time to slaughter us like cattle in our sleep?
“Tell me, how are we supposed to know? How are we possibly supposed to tell?”
“We can’t,” Wilfred said, looking over at Viktoryia again, but making sure not to hold his glance on her for too long so as not to arouse too much suspicion on her part that he might know more about her than he was telling. He had picked up something about her, a certain aura, the moment he had seen her and instantly known what she was. He had certain talents in that regard, and that was one of the reasons why the secret organisation known as The Hunters had first approached him and asked him to join them in the first place. They had done their research, and had learnt more about him in that short time than he had even known himself.
“I guess until we all get rescued, or picked up by another ship, the only thing any of us can do is sleep with one eye open…”
“Well, that’s very reassuring…” Jaqueline muttered again, once more only half under breath.
“And how long do you think that might be?” Viktoryia asked, addressing Wilfred directly as though somehow, without any kind of vote, he had been made the unofficial leader of their little group of survivors.
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Wilfred asked. “We can survive for several days without food if we have to, it’s water that will be the main issue. As soon as we run out of clean water to drink, that’s when we’re screwed. Dehydration will start setting in and the temptation will be to start drinking sea water – but as soon as you do that, you’re as good as dead.
“We’ve just got to hope and pray someone noted The Bellastaria went down, I suppose, or that someone issued a distress call. Otherwise we could be out here for some time – I have no possible idea right now how far away we might be from land, but I think we were quite far out when the ship exploded and started to go down.
“At least we have fuel,” Wilfred said. “For that at least will help us travel more distance and hopefully bring us closer to land, but we should probably turn off the engines and sail when we can so that our fuel reserves last us longer. As to what direction we should head in though, I really couldn’t say. I know some people claim they can tell where they are from the direction of the stars, but I’m afraid reading the stars has never exactly been my thing and in this fog,” he indicated around them, “we have no hope.”
“So, for the time being we’re stuck out here?” Billy asked.
Wilfred nodded.
“Swell,” Billy said. He was beginning to wish he’d stayed behind and taken his chances back in New York, he thought…
And it was right about then that the small petrol engine on their lifeboat decided to cut out.
***
In the end, as it turned out, they didn’t have to wait as long as they’d feared to be rescued as it wasn’t much more than a couple of hours before another ship somehow managed to find them.
Everyone else had all started to doze off, or at the very least were doing a good job of pretending to – including Jaqueline, who was cuddled up to Wilfred – but he had elected not to try and go to sleep because he still felt more than a little unsure about who else here on the lifeboat he could actually trust. He knew Viktoryia was definitely hiding something - for if he was wrong about her being a Vampyre, then he would eat his prosthetic hand – but he had no clue, for now, about any of the others and he had learnt only too well, over the years, to always err on the side of caution, and to always be prepared for the worst.
And so it was that instead of drifting off into sleep like the others, Wilfred had decided to spend his time watching over the dark-haired woman and the others on the boat, keeping a close eye on all of them.
The only one he truly felt certain about was Jaqueline.
Wilfred didn’t know if Viktoryia might possibly know what he was, a Hunter, but he knew if she decided he was a threat, she wouldn’t hesitate to dispose of him – tell the others he must have fallen overboard or something – which was why he was keeping his guard.
It was obvious what game she was playing.
She was playing the long game, and Wilfred didn’t think that she was stupid by any means.
She must know that even if another on-board the lifeboat were not who they claimed to be, the odds were still stacked against her and to reveal herself too soon would be to put herself in very clear and present danger. No, for that reason alone, she must know her best move right now was to play dumb, Wilfred thought. Play things subtle, and only reveal herself if she were left with little other choice and that made her a very deadly and formidable opponent.
All Wilfred could think about right now was reaching over Jacqueline and staking Viktoryia through the heart like the foul demon that she was – but this, as well, carried its own risks.
For one, if there was another on-board this lifeboat like her, one whom he had not as yet sussed out and detected, another who was not in fact actually human and instead something preternatural instead, then by revealing his hand too soon Wilfred risked exposing himself as a Hunter and putting not just his life, but also that of Jaqueline’s as well and anybody else who might still be human on-board on the line.
Like the little girl, Sacha…was he really willing to risk her life after everything else she had already been forced to endure, and at such a young age as well?
No was the answer to that question.
A firm and definite no.
For another, if he were to reveal himself – reveal his true nature and how he knew about Vampires – it would mean coming clean to Jaqueline and the others about his involvement in blowing up The Bellastaria and explaining to Jaqueline why he had lied to her back on the ship.
This was neither the right time, nor indeed the right place, for that.
And so it was that he, much like Viktoryia, for now was forced to bide his time.
The fog was just starting to lift, to dissipate as mysteriously as it’d arrived, when Wilfred first spotted the ship.
Dawn was still a good few hours away, but the first signs of light were just starting to emerge, somewhere far off towards the horizon when he saw it.
At first, Wilfred thought that he was seeing things – and that the image of the ship, no more than a silhouette at first, was no more than a mirage – but then, as the vessel slowly started to emerge out of the last dying embers of the fog, suddenly he began to realise what he was seeing was real.
“Ship…” he called out, his voice no more than a rasp from being so dry where all of them had agreed to try and conserve what little fresh water they had.
With no idea how long they might be stuck out here, stranded in the middle of the ocean, Wilfred had advised the others that they go sparingly on their drinking water; hold back and attempt to save what little food they had found in the lifeboat. Now, as a result, Wilfred was just beginning to feel a little hoarse, and more than just a little bit dehydrated.
Water, water, everywhere, he thought, but not enough to drink…and tried hard to suppress a giggle.
“Ship…” he called out again, a little louder this time, and then, “SHIIIIIIIIPPPPPPP!”
Everyone else sitting in the lifeboat with him all suddenly jumped awake with a start.
“Where?” Billy, the former cabin steward asked, searching all around him. “Where? Where?”
“There, behind you,” Wilfred said, pointing.
A great big, massive ship, some kind of trawler, began slowly emerging from behind them out of what was left of the fog.
The st
range thing was, it didn’t appear to have any markings on it, Wilfred noted, nor any way of identifying the ship. On the side of the vessel where a name would normally be seen, the name had been painted over, almost like whoever owned the ship did not want it to be identified.
“Thank God,” Rosita said, and crossed herself. “We’re saved!”
Don’t be so sure of that, a suspicious voice thought, inside of Wilfred’s head.
He could not exactly have said why, but the sight of the ship before him sent prickles down his spine and made him feel uneasy.
I don’t think we’re quite out of trouble just yet, he thought, and reached inside his holster for a reassuring feel of his revolver, as much to make sure it was still there than anything else.
“Are you okay?” Jaqueline asked, feeling him tense up beside her.
“Fine, just peachy,” Wilfred tersely answered back, but inside his head he thought, I don’t why, but I seem to have a very bad feeling about this…
***
The unmarked ship drew closer, ground to a halt, and then threw down a rope ladder so all of them could take turns climbing aboard.
As they all ascended up to the top deck, two at a time, Charlotte glanced around and noted it looked as though they were not the only survivors to have been picked up and rescued recently. There were several others on-board who also looked like they must have somehow obviously have managed to escape The Bellastaria, presumably on some of the other lifeboats that they thought they had seen in the distance shortly after the ship had sunk – and amongst those who had been rescued, at least one was familiar.
It was a face that Charlotte had foolishly hoped she would never see again for as long as she lived; someone whom she had wrongly assumed must surely now be dead, back there on what was left of The Bellastaria…and yet, somehow, for its own reasons, fate had somehow apparently brought them back together again once more.
Lukaas, Charlotte thought, and at the sight of her former lover, promptly fainted.
***