by Dayle, Harry
“Will you be okay?” she asked.
“I have to be.”
“It will be over quickly, and then we’ll be getting ready to sail.”
“I’m not sure which I’m looking forward to the least,” Jake said. He turned and left, Melvin a few steps behind.
The temporary morgue had been set up on deck one, below the waterline. It was a large storage area that could be configured for a variety of uses. It most often served for holding extra food, but that was something it would never do again, not now that it had accommodated human corpses.
Jake and Melvin found Grau and Barry waiting for them outside. Jake introduced Melvin to the entertainment manager, and then nobody quite knew what to say. There was an awkward, protracted silence, in which each waited for another to lead off. In the end Jake realised that as captain, he was probably meant to take charge.
“Well, shall we?” He moved to open the heavy steel door.
“Jake.” Grau put a hand on the door to stop him. “Are you ready for this? It’s not an easy thing to do, you know.”
“I know, let’s just get it over and done with.”
“Before we go in, you should probably put these on.” Grau fished around in the large pocket of his white coat and produced four sterile masks of the sort used in medical procedures. “They won’t do much, but they’re better than nothing.”
The four men covered their faces with the masks in silence. Jake pushed open the door and they stepped inside.
He hadn’t really known what to expect, he just knew it would be cold, and possibly a bit creepy. The fact he was wearing a mask alerted him to the idea it might smell, but he wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming odour of death. It wasn’t so much the smell of rotting flesh; the low temperature was keeping the bodies in reasonable condition. It was the burning smell that took him by surprise. Corpses that smelt like steaks, overdone on the barbecue.
“Jesus,” Melvin managed to say. Nobody else spoke.
There were more than two hundred bodies, neatly lined up in four rows on the floor. Each one was draped in a white bed sheet. The room was lit by fluorescent tubes, and even though the place was supposed to be sealed, flies buzzed around the lights and the covered corpses.
Barry noticed that some of the sheets had sticky notes stuck to them with tape. He walked over to the nearest and read the note.
“Beverly Stracken, Ohio. P. ID by Barry Stracken, husband.”
“P?” Barry asked.
“Passenger,” Grau replied. “All the information on the stickies is also recorded in a log book. We’ve got about eighty bodies still unidentified, but we’ve done much better than we thought. A lot of passengers have come forward to say they’ve not seen friends they made in the first days of the cruise. And a lot of the staff have been down here too, looking for friends and colleagues.”
“Those you’ve identified, you’ve photographed them, just in case? You know, any mistakes, or people lying about who they are?”
“Yes, all done.”
“So we have to photograph the others, and hope Barry and myself might be able to identify some.”
“Yes, but I warn you that it will be difficult.” Grau didn’t seem to know how to phrase what he was about to say; he was clearly struggling with the words. “Of those who remain nameless, many are too…damaged…by the ash. Their faces are no longer…intact.”
“I see,” Jake said, and wished he didn’t have to.
“Do we split up, take a row each?” Barry asked.
“No, you and I both need to see every unidentified corpse. We have a better chance of recognising them that way. Melvin, you can take the pictures,” Jake said.
Grau handed a camera to Sherwood and showed him briefly how to operate it. The four men walked over to the first unlabelled sheet.
“Ready?” Grau asked.
The three others nodded. Grau crouched down and slowly pulled back the cover. Melvin immediately vomited, just managing to turn away from the charred and blackened head quickly enough to avoid defacing it any further with the contents of his stomach.
“Shit, sorry,” he said, sniffing and wiping his mouth with the back of the mask he had pulled off just in time.
“Don’t worry,” Grau said, “we will clean that up later.”
Melvin took a deep breath, held it in, lined up the camera and pressed the shutter. Barry and Jake looked at each other, shaking their heads.
“Sorry, Grau,” Jake said. “No idea.”
The doctor replaced the sheet, and the group moved on to the next body in silence.
At the third body, Barry gasped. The face was twisted and contorted, burnt in an expression of pain.
“I know this one. Her name is Sarah. Sarah Grennan.”
He knelt down next to her, a tear running down his cheek.
“She worked in the theatre. She was a stage hand, but wanted to be on stage, acting. She had talent, but we didn’t have any positions for her to fill. This was her first cruise. I was sure we’d get her performing before long. She was 18. So young, so full of promise and hope.”
“I’m sorry, Barry, truly I am,” Jake said. He noted the name on a pad of sticky notes that Grau had given him, labelled it “C” for crew, and recorded the fact Barry had identified her. Melvin snapped a photo, Grau carefully replaced the sheet, and Jake attached the note.
It took them over an hour to work their way up and down the four long rows. Jake recognised several seamen, as well as one of Lucya’s deputy navigators. Barry proved the most useful, identifying eighteen of his staff. Six worked in the theatre, backstage. Eight worked in the bars and shops, and the rest were from the casino. With every positive identification, Barry wept silently.
After they had looked at the last unmarked corpse, Grau marched them back to the door. Jake noticed that he avoided passing in front of the last two bodies in the final row. He had no doubt that they were Ibsen and Hollen.
“Thank you, gentlemen, I know that wasn’t easy,” Grau said once they were back outside. “I’d recommend going outside for some fresh air before doing anything else. The smell of death…well, it can hang around, stick in your nose.”
Jake was thinking. “There are too many. We can’t hold a memorial service for all of them at once. It will take too long, and logistically, we can’t bring up over two hundred bodies on deck.”
“Do the bodies have to be present? Can’t we just hold a service for the dead? All those who perished back home and here on the ship? We could do that in the theatre,” Barry said.
“We still have to dispose of the bodies.” Grau looked worried. “Keeping them in there for much longer will present a health risk. You saw the flies.”
“We’ll have to send them overboard from the tender platform,” Jake said.
Melvin grimaced, but said nothing.
“It’s only one deck up, it will be more manageable. We’ll hold a service, tell the survivors that the deceased will receive a burial at sea, but we won’t give any more information than that. Nobody needs to know the details. Grau, can you organise moving the bodies?”
“I can try, but there are only three of us in medical, and we are stretched as it is.”
“I can find you some men to help,” Barry chipped in. “Some of the bigger guys are used to heaving beer barrels and the like.”
“Bodies aren’t beer barrels. Are you sure they’ll be okay with this?” Jake wasn’t convinced.
“Don’t worry, dude, I won’t ask just anyone. I’ve got a few people in mind, they’ll be discreet. I’ll send them down to you, Doc?”
Grau nodded.
“I’ll make the announcement then. Memorial service in the theatre in an hour,” Jake said. “See you guys later.”
Jake and Melvin headed back to the bridge as Barry wandered off somewhat in a daze. Grau returned to the cold store to clear up the mess on the floor.
Twenty-Eight
THE THEATRE WAS busy, but nowhere near as packed as it had been th
e previous day. A service to remember the dead wasn’t as big a draw as watching the apocalypse, streamed live via satellite. The atmosphere was decidedly different too. The tense disbelief of twenty-four hours ago had given way to resignation, but not quite despair. Those present talked in hushed whispers, as if the dead would somehow hear anything louder and be angry that it showed a lack of respect.
An elderly man in a black cassock took to the stage. He wore small, round glasses, but no religious symbols of any kind. A lectern had been placed at the front of the stage, complete with microphone. The minister approached and tapped it twice, sending muffled booming noises around the auditorium before clearing his throat.
“Ladies, gentlemen, children, we have come together today to celebrate the lives of those no longer with us.”
Someone in the front row burst into tears. Behind her, a child giggled nervously.
The minster spoke for ten minutes, trying to cover all bases, all religious beliefs, as well as getting in a word for any atheists and those who might be on the fence about the whole matter. He managed to fill the time with words, yet without saying anything of any consequence. When it was over, nobody seemed quite sure if they should say “Amen”, or give a round of applause. So they did neither, and the minister shuffled off, back to wherever it was he had come from.
“That was…weird,” a woman at the back said to the person next to her.
“Yes. Maybe it helped some people. Gave them closure.”
“Hard to have closure without a burial.”
“True. You know what’s really weird though?”
“What’s that?”
“The captain. I mean, where is he? He announced this service, but he didn’t show his face. You’d think he could make the effort to honour those who died on his ship.”
Twenty-Nine
THE PHONE RANG. Jake had been dozing off and the sound jolted him awake. He looked at his watch: ten thirty. He looked over at Melvin, expecting him to say something about sleeping on the job, but the man was slumped in a chair and snoring softly. He picked up the phone.
“Bridge.”
“Jake? Martin. We’re about to start the engines.”
“That’s…that’s really good news.”
“Yeah, whatever. Listen, there will probably be some vibration while we wind her up. Thought I’d better let you know in case anyone thinks the world’s ending, again.”
“Right, got it. Is there anything you need me to do? Can I help?”
“Nope, we’ve got it.”
A click, and the line went dead.
Jake looked around for Lucya, but she was nowhere to be seen. The idea of getting the ship underway sent a shiver of excitement through him. It was important not to get one’s hopes up, that he knew, but now the prospect of moving was imminent he couldn’t help himself.
There was a dull thud. Jake felt it through his feet more than he heard it. It was followed a few seconds later by another, then another. Then the vibrations started. Very low frequency at first, and very faint. Concentric circles formed on the surface of the unfinished orange juice in one of the glasses on the table.
“What’s happening?” Melvin was awake. He had gone as white as the icebergs outside.
“They’re starting the engines. The vibrations are normal.”
Jake picked up the handset on his console and his finger reached for the PA button. Another hand pushed it away.
“No,” Melvin said. “Let me do it.”
“What?”
“I’m here to represent the passengers, but nobody knows that. So we’ll kill two birds with one stone. I’ll announce the good news.”
“Oh I see, hero to the people?”
Melvin ignored him and grabbed the handset.
“How does this work anyway?”
“Speak into it like a telephone. Press this button to talk.”
Melvin took a deep breath. The colour was rapidly returning to his cheeks.
“Hello, this is, er, Melvin Sherwood. I am on the bridge representing the passengers on board. I bring you good news. The vibrations you are probably feeling are those created by the engines, which are being restarted. We will shortly be leaving, returning to the land, to find out what has really happened in the world.”
Jake rolled his eyes and mouthed at Melvin: “Not shortly, at least another hour!”
Melvin turned away from him.
“We don’t know what we will find, and there are undoubtedly difficult times ahead, but I believe that together we will survive…”
Jake flicked off the PA button, silencing the system.
“What? Why did you do that? I hadn’t finished!”
“Yes, you had. This isn’t the time for any ‘I have a dream’ speeches. Save those for later, when the going really does get tough.”
The vibrations had continued to grow in intensity, their frequency increasing too. The consoles on the bridge began to rattle alarmingly. Jake wondered if he should call down to the engine room, but thought better of it. Martin would take it badly, and besides, if there was a problem, the engineers were better off dealing with it than answering phone calls.
There was a knock at the door.
“Max, good morning, how are you?”
“Good, very good. It’s been a productive morning.”
He walked in and slapped down a sheet of paper on the map table. Jake picked it up and scanned it quickly.
“Ah, I take it this is your new security force?”
“Right. I talked to those ex-army guys and told them the plan and they were up for it before I finished explaining. I had more interest than I needed, so I got to pick the best of the bunch.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Melvin came over, clearly annoyed. “What security force? What plan? You’ve been plotting behind my back! This isn’t what we agreed!”
“Calm down, son,” Max said. “You disappeared off this bridge last night, it’s not our fault that you didn't stay around to hear what I had to say.”
Melvin was turning purple with rage. “You waited for me to leave! The meeting was over. Anything like this should have been discussed openly. You obviously didn’t want me involved. Well guess what? I am involved. If you’re putting together a security team then you need passenger involvement.”
“Now, listen here, young man—” Max started.
“Don’t ‘young man’ me, you patronising old tosser.”
“Gentlemen, please!” Jake held up his hands and stepped between the two men, who were getting dangerously close. “Let’s keep this civil. Max, you probably should have brought this up at the meeting, but I understand your reasons for preferring not to. Melvin, you did leave before Max, you took the chance that something would happen without you being here. So let’s all calm down here, okay?”
“I’ll calm down when I get passengers as part of the security team.” Melvin banged his fist on the table.
“The problem with that idea is Pelagios Line is liable for this ship and its passengers. Having employees take responsibility for security is one thing; we have insurance if anything goes wrong. We can’t start handing out that kind of responsibility to passengers, especially with no training.”
“Come on, Mr Noah, you know as well as I do that your insurance means shit now. And as for training, your crew aren’t trained security agents.”
“Actually, the sailors joining my team are all ex-army or navy. They’ve all got a level of expertise in dealing with difficult situations,” Max said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Well, there you go then. I know at least one passenger who’s ex-army. He’ll be as well trained as any of your lot.”
Jake said nothing for a moment, lost in thought.
“Jake, you can’t seriously be considering this?” Max looked shocked.
“We’ve already got a non-crew member on the bridge,” Jake said, and began pacing around the table. “There is a certain logic to including non-crew in your team. Arguably it’s more importan
t than having Melvin up here. Passengers in the security team would be more visible. It would show we’re being inclusive.”
“Passengers? How many are we talking here?” Max asked.
“I want one per deck, minimum,” Melvin said.
“No way!” Max shouted. “We only have one sailor per deck.”
“Perfect, so that will even things out nicely.” Melvin grinned triumphantly.
“No,” Jake said. “You can have one passenger on the security team. You nominate someone and Max interviews them.”
Melvin started to protest, but Jake cut him off.
“It’s Max’s team, he decides. That’s final.”
“And when we strike land and see that the company is finished, that you’re not employed by anyone? That we’re no longer crew and passengers, we’re all just survivors?”
“Then we can take another look at the situation,” Jake said.
Melvin considered the offer. He walked over to the main console, picked up the handset, and pressed the PA button.
“Stacey Martel to the bridge.”
Jake and Max looked at each other, surprised.
“You’re nominating Stacey for the job?” Jake asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Stacey’s a nice girl, but you’ve seen the size of her, the only way she could keep the peace is if she sat on someone. I called her up here to keep an eye on you two while I go and find my guy. Make sure you don’t plot anything else without me knowing.”
“Hey, listen,” Jake said suddenly. “You hear that?”
“What?” Max jumped, looking around on high alert, terrified that there was some kind of threat and he had missed it.
“Exactly! It’s gone quiet. The engines…the engines are running smoothly.”
• • •
Lucya stepped back from the bench and admired her handiwork. She was in a store room down in the bowels of the ship, not far from the engine room. Three of the four walls were lined with metal shelving, the sort often found in warehouses. Every shelf was filled with grey plastic crates bearing the Pelagios Line logo. They were labelled with descriptions such as “flares” and “life jackets”. There were several holes where crates should have been. These missing boxes were lying open on the bench in the middle of the room, next to Lucya’s creation. Their labels read “beacon spares”, “TX equipment”, “batteries”, and “silicone”.