“Everything dies, Professor Mather.”
1
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Dan Bellamy shut his eyes, searching for some sort of calm, but memories lurked in the darkness, waiting for him like a starving predator.
Stalking him like wounded prey.
*
“Are you sure that you want to go through with this? You don’t have to, you know; not for me. I’d be happy to spend our honeymoon right here, as long as we’re together.”
Elaine smiled, and he was struck by her beauty for the thousandth time; the way her eyes lit up when she looked at him. She was telling the truth, he knew. She would be happy with that, and she wouldn’t resent him for letting his illness taint what was supposed to be the best vacation of their lives.
“I’m sure. You deserve it, and I need to give it to you. A proper honeymoon, I mean.” He rolled his eyes and chuckled when Elaine arched a salacious eyebrow. “Defuse those eyebrows immediately,” he said in a mock-stern tone, and they both laughed.
“I’m serious,” he said earnestly, leaning forward and taking his fiancé’s hand. “I know it’s scary, and I know it’s a big step—”
“A ‘big step’ for an agoraphobic is picking up milk from the nearest store,” Elaine said, and the smile faded from her lips, just a little. “You’re talking about taking a cruise! Three weeks trapped in a giant floating box with thousands of other people, and no way for you to escape from it; no way to get home. That’s far more of a giant leap than a big step, and you know it.”
He nodded.
“You’re right. But I have to do this, El. Not just for you; for me, too. I have to beat this. Normal people go on honeymoons; they take cruises without a second thought. All I want is to be normal again.”
“We’ve talked about the N word,” Elaine said sternly, and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.
“Okay, okay,” he said, mock-flinching away from her. “Not normal, then. Healthy. Better?”
Elaine surprised him by darting forward again, this time planting a kiss on his lips.
“Much better,” she said. “I have my doubts about you doing this, but—”
“So does my therapist,” he interrupted with a grin.
Elaine ignored him.
“—but, if you’re determined, then I believe you can get through it. You know I do.”
She left a little extra emphasis on those last two words, her eyes sparkling with excitement, and he felt his heart swell with happiness.
Elaine had protested when he first raised the idea, reeling off all of the perfectly rational reasons why a man with his condition absolutely should not book a cruise, but he knew as he looked into her eyes that, deep down, she wanted to say ‘yes,’ and that she was just being cautious; protecting him. That was the way it had been, ever since the attack: every decision, no matter how small, had to take how Dan might react under consideration. His illness had done that to her—to them both—but he could see the excitement in her eyes now; the flicker of hope. Of course she wanted to take a cruise.
And, as much as the prospect of actually going through with it unnerved him, he found to his surprise that on some level, he wanted to as well. The more he thought about it, the more right it felt. Scary, sure, but in a good way. Different to the terror that had crushed him for too long; this was a fear that felt healthy and positive and, yes, even conquerable.
He’d endured over a year of therapy, and had sampled more medications than he could count. Klonopin and Zopiclone and Mirtazapine and Fluoxetine and others whose names he couldn’t even recall. One by one, the doctors took him through the drugs, searching for the elusive combination that would quiet the shrieking in his mind. The process of trial and error, they informed him, was regrettable but necessary. It was, after all, impossible to predict how any one individual brain might react to treatment.
As a result of the search, his mood had oscillated wildly between despairing numbness and a hyper-alert state of anxiety. The only constant amid the chemical chaos had been the fear; insidious and resilient, the cockroach of the emotions. For two years, it was as though his fight or flight response had been permanently engaged, constantly yelling at him to pay attention to the fact that he was unsafe. Eventually, submerged by a tsunami of modern and alternative medicine, even the iron grip of that clammy dread had started to weaken.
Progress. Real and tangible.
It had been more than six months since his last seizure, and on more than one occasion in recent weeks he had left the house all by himself, venturing out into the world for a few giddy moments.
Above all he was feeling a little better. Maybe enough that he was ready to take that giant leap forward. Ready to finally overcome the crippling condition that had shaped his life ever since a street thug buried a knife into his skull. All that was left was for him to actually do it. Take action; get back out into the world and live again.
“Earth to Dan. Come in, Dan. Over.”
Elaine waved at him and grinned. He had been lost in his thoughts for several seconds. He blinked, and returned her smile.
“I am determined,” he said. “This won’t set me back, I promise you. This will help fix me. Besides, have you seen the brochure? The ship is massive. I’m sure that if I get too freaked out, there will be plenty of places for me to hide away from the normal folks.”
He smiled as Elaine pursed her lips. The N word again.
“I’ll be like the hunchback of the Oceanus,” he said with a laugh. “Lurking in the shadows, scaring the normal passengers.”
He pulled a face, and Elaine giggled despite herself. She always admonished him for making jokes at his own expense, but in the end, she always giggled.
“Come on, El,” he said brightly. “Let’s book the tickets. It’s just a cruise, right? I mean, how scary could it possibly be?”
She threw her arms around him and hugged so fiercely that he feared for his ribs, and he knew then that the debate was over. Cost be damned, fear be damned. It would be the honeymoon of a lifetime. The one this wonderful woman deserved.
And it would fix him.
He hugged her tightly, burying his face in her hair and breathing in her scent.
No.
Not her scent.
Blood.
He pulled away from her, and saw Elaine’s once-beautiful, sparkling eyes fixed and glassy. Her mouth hanging open in a silent, terrified scream.
And the creature hulking behind her, its hideous talons hooked underneath her jawbone, beginning to pull, and—
*
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
His eyes flared open, his mind retreating from the once-joyous memory as it became toxic.
Back to the nightmare of reality.
Somewhere, the shipping container had sprung a leak. Just a little one, by the sound of it, but it would be enough. The air in the dark space was finite, and each drop of water that forced its way through the battered steel walls merely accelerated the end.
For Dan, it couldn’t come soon enough.
He wished over and over that he had died on the ship; that he had been torn apart in a single, merciful instant when the Oceanus finally exploded. Because when it came down to it, a choice between a moment of pain and a lifetime of it wasn’t much of a choice at all.
And pain was all that Dan had left.
His body was wracked by it: in addition to the bright chasms of fire that a taloned hand had ripped across his chest, his body felt like it was covered in bruises. When the container had been thrown clear of the blast, Dan had tumbled around inside like a ragdoll, crashing into the metal walls and colliding solidly with the man who shared the dark, sinking prison with him.
Herbert Rennick.
Herb was a talker, and apparently hadn’t considered the fact that every word he uttered used up more of the container’s dwindling oxygen. Or maybe he didn’t care either. He sounded young—certainly
younger than Dan’s twenty-nine—and terribly afraid. Maybe that was why he kept talking. Maybe to Herb, the silence was the scariest thing of all.
Dan didn’t want to talk.
Didn’t want to listen.
The darkness in the container was absolute, like being buried alive, and when he tried to tune out Herb’s incessant chatter, he found that the only thing his eyes had to look at was the past. Yet, no matter which happy memory he tried to conjure up for his mind to retreat to for these final minutes of his life, what he saw was Elaine’s face as it had been in her own final moments; her absolute terror when she realised that she was about to die, alone, at the hands of a creature whose very existence was an impossibility.
I could have saved her.
You were busy crying and falling apart; busy being Pathetic Dan. You should have saved her.
He grimaced.
Didn’t want to think, either.
All he wanted was to wait for the end in peace.
He tried to clear his head. According to his therapist, it was possible for a person to remove themselves from their thoughts and feelings, to become no more than an impartial observer in their own mind, and, through that detachment, to find some respite from emotions that might otherwise overwhelm or paralyse. The trick was simply to focus only on the physical world, on physical sensation: the texture of a coin in your hand, perhaps, or the taste of a breath mint. To concentrate on anything that wasn’t torturous introspection.
In a therapeutic setting, the technique—mindfulness—had yielded some modest rewards for Dan. In the container, things worked out differently.
That was, perhaps, due to the smell. It was difficult to focus on clearing his mind when every breath he took delivered the sickly-sweet odour of charred meat.
Herb’s arm.
Shortly after Herb had first started to talk, he had explained to Dan that his arm had caught fire back on the Oceanus, and that he couldn’t even feel it.
“No pain. I think that means the nerves are all burned away, right? Second- or third-degree burns, must be,” Herb had proclaimed. He had almost sounded proud of it. “Guess I’ll need a skin graft. Do me a favour and call me an ambulance, mate?”
Herb had laughed at that, before descending into a violent coughing fit. The fire—and the smoke—had apparently damaged more than just Herb’s skin.
Dan didn’t respond.
The minutes wore on.
He remained impassive as Herb ranted about his father and about what he called The Great Lie. How his dear old Dad was responsible for the deaths of thousands. Charles Rennick, Herb said, was a servant of darkness.
The entire Rennick family was a part of a global cult which Herb referred to as the Order. A network of families which had existed for thousands of years, keeping the existence of vampires secret; feeding them when they awoke from ‘hibernation’ and covering up the catastrophic results. His father’s next move, Herb said confidently, would be to throw himself at the mercy of the rest of the vampires, to beg forgiveness for the sacrifice that had gone so disastrously wrong. More souls might have to be offered—perhaps a lot more—and the Order would find some way to bury it. They always had.
It can’t be allowed, Herb had snarled. We have to stop it, he said, over and over. The world has to know. We can fight them.
Dan said nothing.
None of it mattered. What mattered was gone, and dwelling on the reasons for the loss—or even dreaming up implausible ways to avenge it—was a raw, scraping sort of pain. When he allowed himself to think about her—about that beautiful, terrified face in the darkness—it felt like a part of his mind was being taken from him; peeling away like the burnt flesh on Herb’s injured arm.
Better to focus on nothing.
He counted his breaths, trying to tune out Herb’s incessant muttering.
In, out. In, out.
He wondered how many more he had left to take.
In, out.
In.
Out.
Finally, even Herb fell silent, and Dan knew the reason why: the air in the container felt like it was getting thicker. His breaths were becoming shallower, he realised. More rapid, like each inhalation couldn’t quite deliver the required amount of oxygen to his bloodstream.
Not long now.
He shut his eyes in the darkness and did his best to think of nothing, letting his final minutes slip away.
And then the damn doors opened, and scraps of fading moonlight illuminated the interior of the container as a chill wind blasted fresh oxygen into Dan’s lungs. Cold, grey rain fell outside—the tail end of the storm that had ripped the sky apart for several hours—and even before he stepped wearily from the container, Dan recognised the rolling steel of the Atlantic Ocean in the distance.
He was on another ship.
Still alive.
And there would be no peace.
*
Herb was already outside the container, snarling at somebody that Dan could not see. He followed the bigger man out in a daze, stepping onto the deck of a boat that was much smaller than the one he had left hours earlier.
He shivered at the cold; the rain soaked through his clothes in an instant. He was still wearing shorts and a faded T-shirt; what he had jokingly called his honeymoon outfit less than twenty four hours earlier, when there had been somebody to laugh at his lame gags. When he had been capable of making them.
Now, his honeymoon outfit was bloodstained; the thin fabric reeked of death and did nothing to keep the biting wind at bay.
Yet, despite the searing cold, Dan felt his internal temperature rising inexorably; the emotions that he had tried so hard to suppress spiralling beyond his control in an instant.
Herb pointed a gun at a broad-shouldered man who looked to be in his early sixties. The older man knelt on the deck, his head bowed.
“I’m not going to kill you, Dad,” Herb said. “I couldn’t. You’re family. Blood. To some of us, that actually means something. I wish I could kill you, but I can’t.” He turned and tossed the pistol toward Dan, who caught it instinctively. It felt remarkably heavy in his hands.
“That guy can, though.”
For a moment, Dan just stood there, stupefied. He was dimly aware that there were several people clustered somewhere behind him on the deck. Their hostility when he caught the weapon was an invisible hand that pressed into his back, but he could not focus on them; only on the man kneeling on the deck before him, his piercing grey eyes wide and trained on the gun that Dan clutched in uncertain fingers.
This, then, was the servant of darkness that Herb had ranted about in the container. Dear old Dad. Charles Rennick, the man who had sentenced the three thousand souls aboard the Oceanus to death.
The one who was responsible for—
Dan saw her face in his mind again, twisted by animal panic; dying alone.
He dropped his gaze to the weapon, watching it tremble in his grip.
His first instinct was to use the gun on himself; to grant himself the oblivion that had been so cruelly snatched from him at the last. Once, he had thought he could go through with killing himself; had believed that suicide was the only way to stop the terrible pain that buzzed in his head incessantly. But he had made a promise that he would never go through with it.
A promise.
Tears filled his eyes; blurred his vision.
He lifted the gun unsteadily.
Kill him.
For her.
He choked back a sob as grief and despair overwhelmed him, and aimed the gun at the old man’s face.
Kill them all.
The thought erupted into his shattered mind so easily; so naturally. Kill them all. Just like that. He pictured himself pulling the trigger again and again, could almost see the perforated bodies dropping around him. The blood. His mind pitched alarmingly; a feeling like a rollercoaster cresting a huge drop and plummeting toward the ground. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed through him.
Dan’s hands shook w
ildly, and the air around him congealed. Suddenly, his chest felt like it was being crushed in a vice, and each attempt to draw in a breath lodged white-hot razors in his throat.
Familiar sensation.
Crawling up my neck.
Unsafe. Get away.
Must get away.
Adrift on the terrible black river, surging and boiling; carrying me toward something awful. Something unstoppable, and—
His head felt like it was cracking open; as though the contents were seeping out, expelled like toxic waste.
She’s dead...
Dan blinked, and suddenly he wasn’t seeing an old man kneeling in front of him anymore; wasn’t seeing the ship and the falling rain. He wasn’t even seeing the face of his dead wife. All were gone, torn away like a band-aid; reality submerged beneath a terrifying vision of cascading dark water.
The black river roared, and the dam that he had sought to build with medication and therapy finally crumbled.
Dan’s mind began to flood.
Somewhere through the tears and the blackness that ringed his vision, spreading like a cancer, he vaguely understood that Charles Rennick was rising to his feet, grasping for the gun frantically.
Dan squeezed the trigger, and the back of Rennick’s head exploded. He died instantly, but when his body collapsed to the deck in the blood and the rain, Dan stood over the corpse and fired again.
Again.
Again.
And with each bullet fired, the corpse at his feet twitched, and the darkness in Dan’s mind intensified.
After the fourth shot—which took out most of Charles Rennick’s jaw—Dan felt the gun slipping from numb fingers that no longer seemed to belong to him, clattering to a deck which he could no longer see.
The world tumbled and spun as the boiling black tide swept away his thoughts.
Foul water in my mouth—
Can’t breathe—
Dan bent double and retched as a flare went up in his mind; white-hot pain that lanced across the back of his skull. His jaw clenched involuntarily and he bit deeply into the soft flesh of his cheek as his neck began to spasm.
Adrift 2: Sundown Page 2