John ran at the car and threw himself at the bonnet. He hit it with a loud crash but the driver didn't stop.
He tried to get some purchase on the ground but his feet slid along the concrete as the car got faster.
He scrambled up the shiny bonnet towards the window. For a moment he thought he must have made a mistake; it wasn't Sanctuary behind the wheel. But then why hadn't the driver stopped. It took a moment for him to realise that someone like Sanctuary didn't drive himself around. He would be safely in the back telling his driver to ignore the man climbing over the moving car.
John banged the side of his fist against the window. It was reinforced otherwise it would have shattered. If he tried to shoot it with a pulse weapon he thought it would probably reflect back at him.
They reached the winding road. The car began to speed up and turn wildly left and right, trying to throw him off. It wasn't working.
John climbed further up the car, hoping but not expecting to find a weak point.
“Sir the vehicle has accelerated to a speed of sixty miles per hour,” said Timothy.
He was on the roof, hanging on by his finger tips. Ahead he could see the streetlights on the main road. He could feel the airspeed whipping against his face.
He pounded on the roof with an open palm. John had broken through steel with his bare hands but the roof barely gave at all.
The distance to the main road was reducing at a frantic rate and John realised he had to do something quickly. Getting in was apparently not an option so he would have to get them out.
They caught him off guard but even if he had known what was about to happen there wouldn't have been much he could have done about it.
He heard the car tyres screech beneath him. It felt as if the car itself had suddenly been pulled backwards while he remained stationary. He left the car roof. There was nothing but air beneath his feet.
Timothy was saying something but he couldn't concentrate enough to understand what it was
He focused on orientating his body into a position that would allow him to land without breaking every one of his bones. Tuck and roll, he thought to himself.
Then he hit the ground and discovered there was nothing he could do at all.
He felt the concrete tear through his clothes and into the skin on his arms and legs. His right cheek caught a stray stone which peeled away much of the skin there. He hit his head and he may or may not have lost consciousness. All he knew was that when he opened his eyes again he had stopped moving.
The car had stopped on the road about twenty metres away. It cast a long shadow behind it.
John tried to get up but he could barely move.
The rear door opened and a black boot emerged. It was followed by a leg and then the rest of Sanctuary followed.
“Didn't I give you a chance?” he said as he walked towards John. “You could have walked away from this and still felt like the good-guy.”
John tried to speak but all that came out was a moan.
Sanctuary stopped in front of him, looked down at him. “And here we are.”
“Here we are,” repeated John, pleased to find the medical nano's in his blood doing their job and rushing him back to health.
Sanctuary smiled down at him and reached into his jacket pocket. He took out one of the pulse weapons that John had seen at his house the previous day.
He pointed the gun at John's head. A direct hit would kill him instantly. All the nanobots in the world couldn't put him back together.
He squeezed the trigger.
Gregory Sanctuary flew upwards and back. By the time he hit the ground he was dead.
John rolled away and hit the recharge button on his phase pistol. He kept his eyes on the car and waited for the driver to get out. Instead the passenger door was closed from within and the car wheels screeched as the driver sped away.
John closed his eyes and allowed his body to fall limp. It was over. Whatever this had all been it was over.
27
John looked up as his office door opened and smiled when he saw that it was Marla. She was carrying a tray with three cups on it. She placed it on the table that had been added to the room since she had moved in. She carried one of the cups to the desk on the other side of the room and handed it to Stafford.
“Thank you Marla my dear,” he said as he took the cup.
Marla walked over to John's desk and kissed him on the cheek. “I need to go to work soon,” she said.
She'd managed to clear up the whole incident with the boat, had it blamed on some mechanical fault. The death of Gregory Sanctuary was more difficult to cover up but it turned out there were enough people that wanted him dead that the investigation could be tied up for years.
“Can you spare half an hour?” she asked with a wink.
“Staff?” he called across the office. He had relocated it to the basement where there was more room and where his partner would be able to get in without having to walk through downtown Wreathing.
He made a face like John had suggested they go outside and smell dog poo together. He really didn't understand human mating. “Just keep the noise down, I only just ate.”
He stood, took Marla by the hand and led her up to their bedroom for half an hour neither of them would forget in a hurry.
The Island
1
Samantha shifted the tray of drinks to one hand and leaned against the wall as the deck moved beneath her feet. The sea was rougher than she would have liked but she still had a job to do and the passengers wouldn't be happy if their twenty pound cocktails arrived half full. She waited until the floor levelled out and set off again. Above the thudding sound of the engine she could hear the clash of pots and pans and the clamour of voices as dinner was prepared.
The staff areas of the ship were quite different to anything paying passengers got to see. The paint on the walls was peeling and safety notices and bulletins had been plastered over the numerous cracks, in contrast, the passenger area was painted every year before the season began. In the staff area the ceilings were low and the corridors narrow, in the passenger area everything was wide and open. Samantha shared a room with five other girls and kept most of her belongings in the common area behind the kitchen. The passengers slept in small rooms as well but they only had to share with their family and there was plenty of room to store all of their belongings.
She reached the end of the corridor and shifted the tray into one hand again so she could use the handrail to pull herself up the stairs. She emerged in one of the kitchen / bar's where passengers could buy coffee and sandwiches. The food prep area was visible from the front so it was much better looked after than the kitchen down below. She smiled at Billy and Rachel as she passed them.
The dining room was quiet. It was only five o-clock so most of the faces were old or already drunk. A five piece band played classical renditions of popular songs listlessly in the corner. A few people looked at her as she passed, wondering if she had brought their order, some sighed and tutted when they realised she hadn't.
She stopped at the table of six men and started placing their drinks in front of them. They were all in their forties or fifties with pot-bellies and sun burned scalps because they hadn't listened to their wives when they'd said to wear hats. They hadn't known each other before the cruise began but had quickly discovered they would rather shoot pool and drink expensive cocktails than lay on the deck sunbathing with their wives. They continued their conversation about classic cars and ignored her. When she was done one of them tried to give her a crumpled note.
"Sorry sir, we aren't allowed to accept tips."
He looked a little red faced, or that could have been the sun again, and the five pound note disappeared back into his pocket.
She asked if there was anything else she could get them but there wasn't. She left them with another smile and told them to enjoy their drinks. Then she returned to the front house kitchen.
Billy was sweating over the coffee m
achine and Rachel was toasting a bagel. They didn't look up as the door swung closed behind her.
"How's it going?" said Billy.
"Not bad," she said. There was a gentle breeze in the small kitchen. "You?"
He shrugged and stepped back from the machine as it barked and spat out a handful of unground coffee beans. "Fucking thing."
"Here," she said and gently pushed him aside. She had worked in Starbucks for a few months before joining the cruise. She pressed a couple of buttons, slid a stained espresso glass under the funnel and a few moments later thick coffee poured out. It smelled strong and good.
"Careful," said Rachel. "You'll give him a complex."
"Fucking machine hates me," said Billy.
"You on late tonight?" she said to Rachel, stepping back so Billy could have another go at the coffee machine. Rachel was one of the five girls that Samantha shared a room with. She had short dark hair with a blue streak in it. When she wasn't working on the cruise she had a tongue stud and tattoos.
"Jack wants me on life guard duty."
Life guard duty was what they called the late shift because it mainly consisted of making sure people didn't drown in their expensive drinks or decide that a midnight swim was a good way to end the evening.
"That sucks," she said.
Suddenly everything was quiet. It was one of those strange moments where, looking back, it's almost like you knew something was about to happen. Samantha was suddenly aware that she couldn't hear any noise drifting in from the deck and that the radio which had been quietly playing in the galley kitchen had gone off.
The floor seemed to disappear beneath her. She moved in slow motion as if she was already underwater. She grabbed the work surface as the shot of expresso she had made slid off the side and seemed to hang in the air for a moment. Billy's mouth and eyes were open wide. Rachel's closed tight. Everything seemed to stop in a moment.
The espresso cup hit the floor and smashed, leaking thick coffee over the black and white tiles. The floor returned beneath her feet and her knees buckled. She looked up and saw Billy's head hit the corner of the coffee machine. She thought that maybe he was right, it did seem to hate him.
Then everything was back, the deck noise and the radio. Billy held onto the side and rubbed his head. "Fucking fuck," he said.
"You alright?" said Rachel.
Samantha looked up. Rachel was wearing more makeup than strictly allowed, still looking somewhat goth despite the rules. "I'm fine," she said, accepting her hand and climbing back to her feet. "Is that normal?"
Rachel shrugged. "Depends whose driving."
She could hear a lot of noise coming from the deck and thought she probably wasn't the only one alarmed by what had happened. Right now the deck hands would be fielding questions from worried passengers and giving out vouchers for replacements of spilled drinks.
"I better go," she said.
"You sure you're alright?" said Rachel.
She nodded. "You better see to him."
Billy's head was bleeding where it had hit the corner of the coffee machine.
Rachel tutted. "Lucky bastard, he'll probably get the rest of the night off."
Samantha smiled. "Let me know if you need a hand."
She walked back down the stairs and into the moist heat of the staff area. The corridors seemed narrower and the smells from the kitchen more suffocating. They were still three days away from land and she wanted desperately to feel something solid beneath her feet.
2
Jack hurried along the deck gripping the white railings as the ship rocked from side to side. He was sweating and he could hear his own ragged, choked breath in his ears. Passengers called to him from the deck above, wanting to know what was going on and whether they were going to get a refund. He ignored them. He reached the metal staircase that led up to the bridge. The railing stopped and he looked over the side at the swirling waves hitting the side of the ship. Jack was a big man and not particularly well balanced. He never liked climbing this precarious staircase but, when the sea was as rough as it had been today, it seemed even worse.
He took a deep breath and firm grip on the steps above. He climbed face down like a ladder and tried not to think about what would happen if the boat took another sudden dive. By the time he reached the top of the stairs his white shirt was drenched in spray from the sea and his heart was pounding. He typed his pass code into the pad by the door and went in.
There were three junior members of the crew looking out of the large front window. Jack had no idea what they were looking at, all he could see was grey water.
"Where's Captain Rogers?" he said.
A girl in a blue hat turned around. Her worried look concerned him almost as much as the nine-hundred pounds of refunds he'd had to authorise.
"The doctor is with him," said the girl. She didn't look older than nineteen.
"Doctor? Why is the doctor with him?"
"There was an accident," she said.
Normally there was a strict divide between the crew who actually managed the ship and the crew who managed passenger experience. They didn't get on and each freely admitted that they considered the others jobs over valued.
"Is he going to be okay?" said Jack. His head was swimming and his left arm felt too heavy.
The girl, he'd met her before and tried to remember her name now but failed. He had spent too many years surrounded by people with name badges and had lost the habit of remembering. "We don't know."
"Who's in charge now?"
"I am sir." A young man with a deep wooden tan stepped forward and offered Jack his hand. Jack ignored it.
He still couldn't catch his breath and could hear himself panting."So you can tell me what's going on?"
He withdrew his hand and Jack realised it had been a mistake to reject it. "We've hit some rough sea. It's nothing you need to worry about."
"You're worrying for me then are you? What am I supposed to tell my passengers?"
"Tell them there's nothing to worry about."
The conversation was apparently over as one by one the crew turned away from him. He left the bridge and climbed backwards down the stairs. He ignored the shouts from passengers and crew alike and ducked through the first door he saw with a 'Staff Only' sign on it.
He leaned back against the wall in the darkness and ran a hand over his greasy face. His chest hurt and he couldn't fill his lungs enough.
Jack wondered if he was having a heart attack but before he could decide he fell towards the floor. The cupboard that he had climbed into was tiny and he became wedged between the two walls. He tried to call for help but nothing came out.
3
At the end of her shift Samantha changed into her civi's and went up on deck. The sea had been rough all day but, so far, there hadn't been anything on the same scale as earlier.
Now it seemed almost calm and, as she leaned against the railing and listened to passengers talking as they passed behind her, she felt at peace. She remembered why she had wanted to join the cruise ship in the first place and despite what some of her old friends would say it wasn't just about running away. She could have escaped just as easily and much quicker on a plane.
"You okay?"
She turned around and saw Billy standing behind her. He was a good kid, and despite being within a year or two of each others age, she would always think of him as a kid. He had dark hair which was always a mess and he was tall which would have been a tick in the plus column for him if he wasn't also clumsy.
She smiled at him. "Alright Bill?"
He leaned against the rail next to her and for a moment they stared out to sea. She half-expected him to make some comment on how beautiful it all was at night when you could see the moon reflecting on the dark sea. Which it was, she didn't deny that, but that was such a cheesy line she worried she wouldn't be able to restrain herself from laughing in his face.
Instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out a roughly rolled joint. "You want so
me?"
"Where did you get that?" she said. Their bags and personal belongings had been thoroughly searched before they left Portsmouth.
"Mate of mine in Senegal," he said. "It's good stuff."
She thought about it and decided it might help her sleep. She nodded. "Okay. Where?"
Billy led her along the deck towards the swimming pool. At this time of night it was fenced off but he climbed over and offered her his hand. She didn't need it but took it all the same.
They walked a few metres more before she realised she was still holding his hand. She looked up at him and, in the dark, thought that he looked almost handsome.
"It's slippery," he said.
She pulled her hand away. "I think I'll be alright."
They walked past the swimming pools and past the surf machine, past the badminton courts and the sun loungers. They stopped at the rear railings.
Samantha leaned against them and looked down. A few couples were kissing on benches. In a few hours some of the more daring passengers would be doing a lot more than that. The official policy was that anything of that nature was banned, this was a family cruise, but in reality no one ever reported it to Jack.
"Here," said Billy.
She took the joint off him and inhaled deeply. The warmth of the smoke entering her lungs and the slow burn of the dope entering her blood stream. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation.
In the distance she could see storm clouds and, as she watched, a bolt of lightning shot out and struck the sea. The water around the ship remained calm and she couldn't find it within herself to worry.
She stood with Billy and they smoked in silence. She could almost feel, like an extra sense, his desire to reach out and put an arm around her. As the temperature dropped she moved closer to him and thought it might not be so bad to take him to bed for one night. But when he put his arm around her shoulder and rubbed her bare arm she knew that it wouldn't be fare. To Billy it wouldn't just be a mindless fuck and then wake up as friends the next day.
Three Stories Tall Page 16