by Perrin Briar
The skull gave way easily to the club, leaving a crater where the man’s face had been. Once was enough, but Jordan raised the club and brought it down again. Water splashed and turned red. Shards of shattered cranium pinged off the walls. Soon Jordan was pounding the water where a head used to be.
Jordan’s arms burned. He could no longer lift the chair leg. Blood and a thick green pus clung to the leg’s engravings and oozed down the vine grooves like a blood gutter on a sword, spilling over his gloves. Jordan sobbed, drawing in wracking breaths that shook his whole body.
Joel put a hand on his back. “You did well.”
“It’s not that,” Jordan said. “Until now I never really believed the world had changed, at least not as you all told me. I guess I secretly believed the world was as I remember it. But now…” He stared into the dead black eyes that gaped from the crushed skull. “Now I know the world really has changed. Everyone I knew is gone. And here I am, smashing it to smithereens with the leg of a destroyed chair from a forgotten world.”
Joel said nothing, letting the moment linger. Once Jordan was ready, they moved about the corridor destroying the brain of each floater they found. The water tinged the color of red wine with flecks of yellow pus.
And then they stepped into the engine bay.
19.
“They’ve been down there an awful long time,” Anne said, peering at Light through the binoculars.
Stan sighed. It was the fifth time she’d said it. “No longer than you were yesterday.”
“That was different.”
“How is it?”
Anne shook her head. “It just is.” She peered through the binoculars again.
“No matter how hard you try you’ll never see through the hull with those binoculars. X-ray vision doesn’t come as standard.”
Anne smiled, but the tension didn’t leave her eyes.
“They’ll be fine,” Stan said. “Don’t you think they would have made contact with us if there was a problem? The Lurchers will all be dead, and there’s nothing left to harm them.”
“It’s not the Lurchers I’m worried about.”
At that moment there was a loud screech, like a girder under too much pressure.
Anne raised the binoculars, heart pounding in her ears. She scrubbed Light left to right, looking for what could have caused that god awful noise. She felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up into Stan’s wide white eyes, his gnarled finger pointing at Light’s stern.
“I don’t think you’re going to need those binoculars, love,” he said.
She looked up. Her blood felt like it had frozen in her veins.
The stern was sagging into the water like an old man setting himself on the sofa. The front lifted up, water dripping from the bow, poking its nose up at the sky. Anne grabbed the walkie talkie that Stan clutched tight to his chest.
“You have to get off the boat!” she shouted into the walkie talkie. “It’s sinking! Do you hear me? It’s sinking! Get out!”
Static answered her.
“Joel? Jordan? Are you there?”
Still no answer.
“If you can hear me, get out now.” Anne gave Stan the walkie talkie. “Keep trying to contact them.” She ran to the crank and pumped it as fast as she could.
Stan broke from his stupor. “Wha… What are you doing?”
Anne didn’t look up from the crank. “I’m going down there.”
“You can’t. The boat’s going to sink.”
“They’ll die down there if no one warns them. Take care of Stacey and Jessie. No matter what happens, keep them safe.” The gangplank had extended to about halfway. Anne looked at the gap, judging it.
“What about your armor?” Stan said. “You can’t go without armor!”
“It’ll slow me down.”
“But-”
“We haven’t got time to argue.”
“But you haven’t extended the plank fully yet!”
“I’ll jump it.”
“But if you fall…”
“I won’t fall.” Anne put her foot on the plank, judged the distance one last time, took one stride and…
Tonk! The hollow thud rung out across the ocean.
Anne hit the deck. Mary stood over the unconscious Anne with the frying pan in her hands. She poked Anne’s stomach with her foot. There was no reaction.
“What did you do?” Stan said, stunned.
“Me? Why, I didn’t do anything.” She handed the pan to Stan, turned and left.
20.
The ceiling was choked with pipes. They darted this way and that, overlapping and doubling back on themselves like a magic eye picture. Levers and buttons protruded from the walls. They had been chewed and gnawed on, down to nubs. One was smeared with chunks of festering lung where an oblivious Lurcher had impaled himself on it. The water on the floor shimmered with filmy rainbows, the product of a leaky pipe. Joel tapped a dirty dial that had ‘Oil Level’ written across it. The needle pointed to ‘Empty’.
“No oil,” Joel said. “Beautiful.”
Joel ran his eye over the engine, following the mass of metal the way an expert tracker pursued wild game. He got down on his belly and pulled himself under the pistons and belts. He rolled onto his back and located the alternator after only a few moments’ inspection. He took the tools out of his pocket. Within minutes he had worked the alternator free.
“Here, take this,” he said, extending it to Jordan. He pulled himself out from under the engine and wiped his hands on the T-shirt of a Lurcher’s corpse. “Let’s get the hell out of here. This place gives me the willies.”
Jordan put the alternator into a special pocket they’d sewn onto his chest. They walked toward the door. They both performed a peculiar move, their hands moving to the side as if in an attempt to regain their balance.
“Whoa,” Joel said. “Did you feel that?”
“Yeah,” Jordan said, peering around at the room. “Felt like the floor was moving.”
Joel raised the walkie talkie to his mouth. “You guys, anything exciting happening out there? Guys?”
Static answered him. Then the static fizzed and a voice like a ghost from another time crackled. “…off the boat!” More static. “…hear me? It’s sinking!”
The word was a starting pistol. They beat a hasty retreat for the door.
Light lurched again, this time forcing them forward, smacking into the door, then it pulled back, and the water in the corridor rushed toward them as the stern was pulled deeper below the waterline. The prow pulled upward, and the water in the corridor rushed with the sound of a raging river. It hit them in the chest, forcing them back, but they clung with white knuckles to their hand holds. A Lurcher sailed past and into the engine bay. The water buffeted the doorstep, rising in a cool spray. The ferry rocked back to its former position, the water flowing back toward the stairs with a whooshing sound like the sea over pebbles at the beach. The water came to a standstill.
Joel took his hands off the doorframe with great caution, as if by letting go he was going to get sucked into the depths. “I think she’s stable.”
“But for how long?”
“Who knows. We’d best get out of here fast.”
They waded out into the water. Joel’s arm reached out, blocking Jordan. “Wait.”
Jordan looked at what had arrested Joel. The Lurcher corpses floated, clinging together, forming one large mass. Their thick black congealed blood floated on top of the water, pus and other body fluids speckling the surface like a pizza.
“Whatever you do,” Joel said, “don’t swallow any of the water.”
Jordan grimaced. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
Joel launched into the water first, performing the breast stroke with powerful thrusts. Jordan, a less experienced swimmer, walked as far as he could while keeping his feet on the floor, then doggy paddled his way across the surface, careful to keep his head above the waterline. The black bloody mess clung to his cheeks and neck. He push
ed a Lurcher away with a tentative finger. He gasped a mouthful of air, holding his breath, and paddled on. Joel sailed through the water like a snake, without apparent effort.
Jordan felt himself dip lower. He could smell the blood, feces and rotting flesh. He came to a stop, treading the water a moment, cursing himself for not having taken swimming lessons, or if he had, cursing himself for having amnesia and forgetting them. He pressed on.
Something somewhere in the ship splintered, snapping in half the way a tree sounds giving way to wind in a torrential storm. Joel was already at the stairs, pulling himself from the swamp water. It clung to him like a second skin.
The water tipped over to one side. The Lurcher bodies floated past him. The water level rose. Jordan kept a close eye on the roof as it approached with breath-taking speed. He turned his face as far from it as he dared without risking the blood caking him. He stopped rising, the water sloshing around as if deciding what to do next. Joel was shouting something, but Jordan was too preoccupied with keeping his face out of the sludge to hear. The room tipped forward, and Jordan was taken by the tide, driven at great speed toward the stairs, which loomed like the stairway to hell. He slammed into them, the sharp corners stabbing into his flesh, threatening to snap his bones.
The room twisted again. The water changed direction and Jordan was forced off the stairs. He grabbed the railing, but lost his slippery gloved grip and fell toward the Lurcher cesspool below, falling into the grinning empty skull sockets awaiting him.
Something grabbed him by the collar and lifted him bodily out of the air and dumped him on the stairs. Jordan, soaked neck to foot, panted and did not move. Joel, likewise exhausted, lay beside him.
Joel was red up to his chin like he was wearing a nineteenth century high neck collar, thick globules of God-knew-what clinging to his skin. “Remind me… to give you… swimming lessons… when we get out.”
Joel reached for something at his waist, confused when his hand came away empty.
“What is it?” Jordan asked.
“The walkie talkie. It’s gone. I must have dropped it.” He looked out at the Lurcher cesspool around them, the water red and lumpy with ejaculated body fluids.
21.
“It’ll be easy going up to the next level,” Joel said as they climbed the last few stairs to the vehicle storage room. “You wait and see.”
Jordan pushed the door open. It creaked on rusty hinges. They froze at what they saw.
The vehicles had slid to the far wall, jamming together into an impenetrable wall of metal and smashed glass. Tyre skid marks covered the area like Indian war paint, the hand brakes having long since given up their fight with gravity.
“I’m waiting,” Jordan said, “but I don’t see.”
“Where are the stairs up to the next level?” Joel said, ignoring Jordan’s sally.
“They should be behind that delivery van over there.”
“That’s great.” Joel walked toward the vehicles. “You don’t happen to be able to walk through walls by any chance?”
“Maybe.” Jordan pointed to his head. “But I might just have forgotten how to do it.”
Light rolled to the left. A Hyundai i40 broke from the other cars and slammed into the wall. A Harley Davidson followed it. Decapitated wing mirrors slid along the floor.
“We’ll never get through them without getting mashed,” Joel said.
“We don’t have to go through them,” Jordan said. He climbed onto the roof of a Mercedes.
Joel smiled. He climbed onto the boot of a Nissan Micra and then onto its sloping roof. They jumped from one vehicle roof to another, taking their time to judge the distance before they made it.
Light jittered, shaking beneath their feet. Car windows trembled in their frames. Jordan and Joel froze, waiting to see what the ship would do. It stopped, and they continued to hop from roof to roof.
The room banked again, suddenly this time. Joel crouched down, gripping the roof as the car slid and smashed into a Volkswagen Beetle.
Jordan likewise crouched down, but lost his grip. His car collided with a Mini. He was thrown clear and bounced across the Mini’s roof, hitting the floor with a fleshy slap. The Mini was propelled toward him. Jordan looked over his shoulder.
The coach was three meters away. He rolled. The Mini’s wheels resisted the movement, grinding against the white floor panels. A convertible smacked into the Mini from behind, causing it to jolt forward. Jordan didn’t stop rolling. The Mini loomed large, a shadow of oblivion. Jordan came to a stop, his eyes clamped shut. There was the sharp smack of two powerful forces colliding. Jordan could smell something sharp and wondered if it was the scent of death. He opened his eyes.
Blue. That was all he could see. Both before him, and racing off into his peripheral vision. Blue. The wing panel of the Mini was pressed up almost against his nose, the smell was oil from the car’s seeping underside. It had slammed into the side of the coach just as he had rolled beneath it. Jordan breathed a sigh of relief and lifted his head, smacking it on a low-hanging pipe. “Ah!”
“Jordan!” Joel called from somewhere amongst the scrapyard. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Jordan touched his head and checked for blood. There was none. He crawled out from under the coach.
“When I saw the Mini take after you I thought you were a goner.”
“I almost was.”
Light gave a juddering cry, like it were in its death throes, metal bending to its absolute limit.
“That does not sound good,” Joel said.
Then came a sound soft and barely audible, like a whisper on the wind. It grew to the volume of a trickling stream, then to the frantic rush of a river.
“That doesn’t sound too good either, does it?” Jordan said.
The stairwell down to the maintenance bay gurgled and spurted as water rose up to the car storage level. A few Lurcher bodies floated on top. Prancing white-maned surf leapt from the stairwell and dashed toward them.
Joel and Jordan ran. They made a hasty b-line through the maze of cars, vaulting over bonnets and crawling beneath undercarriages. The rush of water roared in their ears. Wheels squealed, metal bent and snapped, and glass exploded as the wave swept everything up in its path. Cars were carried like Tonka toys, serrated body parts thudded into bonnets and vehicle roofs. The wave swept under the coach, lifting it and pushing it over onto its side, then forced it shrieking along the floor. The coach pushed the vehicles forward like a giant snow plough.
Just ahead was the door to the next level. Jordan weaved through the final few vehicles. Water sprayed the back of his neck, sending goose bumps racing up and down his body. Joel threw the door open. Jordan barreled past. Joel slammed the door closed the instant the water descended on them. Huge fists of water banged against the door, water spilled in through the doorframe.
22.
Jordan and Joel tore up the stairs. The door bulged inward, and then flew open, the doorknob cracking the wall. The roar of the waves was deafening in the enclosed space. The water passed through the grating with ease, bubbling up like lava from a volcano, licking their boots.
Their heavy boots clanged in deep rhythmic echoes as they ascended each flight of stairs. The howl of the raging swell quietened, but Joel and Jordan weren’t aware of it as they pumped their legs as hard as they would go. They were ascending the final flight of stairs when Light gave another ear-bursting cry, and the boat turned again.
They slammed into the wall, the wind driven from their lungs. Joel and Jordan stretched and grabbed hold of the doorframe as Light twisted. Jordan’s feet left the ground and floated toward the wall opposite. He felt like a worm on a hook. His stomach trailed behind him. Light groaned to a halt, settling down once more. Jordan climbed through the doorway, and then helped Joel up.
“I feel like I’m in a washing machine,” Jordan said.
But Joel didn’t hear him. He was looking at something inside the lounge. “Now that’s not somethin
g you see every day.”
Two dozen benches ran in two equal-sized rows from floor to ceiling. Jordan raised a hand against the blinding sunlight that beat down from the window that was now in the roof, muting the pastel colors of the lounge’s interior. The light fixtures ran the length of the left hand wall like a railroad track leading nowhere.
“Light has turned completely on her side!” Joel said. “Ain’t that something?”
As Joel walked into the room there was a sound like sand crunching under his feet.
“Joel!” Jordan said. “Freeze!”
Joel turned. “What? Why?”
Joel looked down to find he was standing on a glass window that covered the entire floor. On the other side of the glass the deep turquoise of the ocean filtered into the deep darkness of beyond. Bubbles floated up from Light’s most recent roll, a million pricks of light that rose up in wobbly lines to the surface. The window was laden with the detritus of everyday ferry usage: empty crisp packets, used tissues, and magazines lay like discarded sprinkles. But that wasn’t what so grabbed their attention.
Long translucent fingers spanned the surface like a roadmap, all lines leading to Joel’s feet. The glass was thick, but at some point it must have taken a severe knock.
Joel’s face bleached white with the knowledge that should he fall through, there would be no finding his way back. Beads of perspiration poked up through his skin.
“What shall I do, Jordan?” Joel said, hardly daring to move his lips.