by Trimboli, TJ
Until today.
Carefully, she made her way to the room next door to hers. She could see the door resting open, as if someone had broken in. It had been tough in the beginning. When the power went down, everyone got locked out of their rooms. Their magnetic key cards no longer working, other means had to be achieved to gain access. Below the slot for the key card was a tiny key slot for the Captain’s keys. He was the only one with access to every room on the ship. Hence, the search. None had turned up and wherever they were hidden had died with the captain. His disappearance was still a mystery. One Bobbi intended to unravel. Many had died before him but they always boiled down to either suicide or illness. Captain Jenkins was one of the first souls to disappear or die on the Voyager, during the infamous night riot. More bodies had turned up since then and each day, the paranoia intensified.
She couldn’t speak for the bottom dwellers but none of the gifted spoke to each other. That was the name they gave any who lived above the casino level. Gifted, as if anyone on this ship was gifted in any way, shape, or form. At first, she thought she was gifted, having been spared the cruel death like the mainlanders but as the weeks progressed, she realized how wrong she’d been. The only truly gifted people were the ones who went quickly, swallowed up by the creatures, or zombies, or whatever you want to call it. If any faced the truth, it would be that the last one thousand people left on this earth, on this ship, were sufferers.
Bobbi reached the door. She hesitated to push it open. Whatever was on the other side wouldn’t be pretty. Chances are, she was walking into another crime scene or a trap. Society was hanging on by a thread and the passengers were devolving into beasts with each passing day of starvation. In the beginning, the riots were easy to quell. They were infrequent and small enough in numbers, so she could deal with them. Since the rise of Kendra and her fearful rhetoric, all that changed. It started with beatings, children going missing, men attacking the fisherman. Then the murders began. With no computers, or forensics, or any tools from the outside world, it was virtually impossible to catch the murderer outside of seeing them actually do the killing. But she felt sure it was one of Kendra’s followers. She would work the bottom dwellers into such a frenzied state, nothing short of blood would quench their thirst. At least that’s what she thought, until the rapes began.
She stopped herself. She wouldn’t go down that road again. A thud in the darkness diverted her attention. Scanning the hallways with her candle, she saw the tiny figure at the edge of the hallway. She couldn’t make out the figure’s features but she knew it to be the same child that constantly appeared to her throughout the day like her conscious watching her every move.
“Wanna come into the light?” Bobbi asked knowing the kid would take off and she did just that. She always did. One day, the kid would reach out but today was not that day. She turned her attention back to the door in front of her.
Placing her hand on her holster, she kicked the door open. The light illuminated all but the beds. A dark red liquid crept out from under the bedspring. It stained the beige carpet. She lumbered into the room.
The flame of the candle danced before her, uncovering the scene ahead. A woman of middle age lay against the wall, her dull lifeless eyes staring out into the abyss. Her mottled hair had grayed in area’s, most likely brought on by the increased stress put on all the passengers. It was damp from the blood seeping down her face. The first suicide of the day, as far as she knew. Brains were smeared over the wall with the last thoughts the woman ever had. She had covered herself in blankets exposing only her face.
Bobbi took a step forward without looking. She paid for her error as she stepped onto shards of glass. She jumped back bellowing in pain. She wiped the shards off. Thankfully, none were large enough to do any real damage. If any broke the skin, or dug deep enough that she would require medical attention, it would become an entirely different ball game. The age of modern medicine was dead. The reckoning set them back hundreds of years.
Even the tiniest of cuts must now be taken seriously. Just last week, Bobbi had been making her rounds when a young girl fell down the stairs. She’d been horsing around with her friends and tripped. She broke three bones in her arm. Infection killed her in three days. On this ship, the tiniest mistake could lead to your death.
Bobbi glanced around the room for a pair of socks to discover it had been ransacked. The dresser had been upheaved, the mirror shattered. The couch had been slashed to a thousand pieces. The stuffing of the couch had concealed the glass on the floor. Channeling her inner Indiana Jones, she cautiously made her way around the glass towards the bed. A pair of socks would have to wait. The heat of the room caused the body to rot almost instantaneously. As she made her way towards the corpse, she had to cover her mouth the stench was so repugnant. She hadn’t eaten in forty eight hours, yet she felt her stomach twist and turn, whatever remained inside tried to make its way to the surface. She held strong, swallowing the bile.
She approached the body. It pained her to live in a world where this had become an everyday occurrence. After the first week, the dead began to turn up every day. Today, it would be every few hours.
I will put a stop to that.
She turned her attention back to the woman. The blankets breathed to life unexpectedly. She leapt back howling. She reached for her holster and had her gun out before rational thought finally found her. She relaxed her hand. Slowly, she reached out removing the blanket. A child lay in the woman’s lap. Its arms chaotically thrashing about. She placed the candle on the nightstand between the beds. Kneeling down, she cradled the infant into her arms. The baby was muddied, dirt covering its face. It wheezed. The harsh conditions of the ship deteriorated the child exponentially.
“Hey there. Shhh,” Bobbi spoke softly so as to not upset the infant. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. It’s quite a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, isn’t it?”
The babies flailing arms gradually died out and went limp, the coughing ceased, and finally, its heart pumped its last beat.
Bobbi made no attempt to resuscitate the child. What good would it do when this was the world they were resigned to now? She kissed the child’s head.
“I’m sorry this happened to you.” She wept.
CHAPTER THREE
VALENTINA
The Voyager swayed and rocked in its place, anchored miles off the coast of Italy. It helped Valentina start the day as she had every day prior—by vomiting. She held her head off the eleventh floor balcony retching down the side of the vessel.
God help it if anyone peeked their head out below.
She was one of the millions of unlucky humans in the world born with sea sickness. Luckily, she was born during a time when the good people of Earth were clever enough to design a patch to combatant that sickness. Unlucky for her, there were none left aboard the ship. A wave passed over and the ship dipped, leaving her with a feeling of weightlessness her stomach did not welcome. She reached for the balcony’s edge spitting up bile and water. She hadn’t puked up real food in ages.
Get a hold of yourself. Stop being so weak.
Closing her eyes, Valentina took a deep breath. She began to recite the different bodies of court pertaining to the Russian judiciary system, “The Constitutional Court of Russia is responsible for cases concerning conformity with the Constitution, judicial disputes between two or more federal bodies, and between members of the federation. The Supreme Court of Russia is the highest court and supervises inferior courts of general jurisdiction. Regional Courts…” She muttered continuing on for another five minutes. It was an old trick her father had taught her as a little girl to steady her nerves.
Valentina grew up in Novosibirsk, Russia and life was not kind to her as the years went on. She never became accustomed to the near constant cold weather that beat down on her. She was a sickly child for most of her adolescence, to the point that the other kids nicknamed her Khodyachaya smert’ which meant, walking death.
Her f
amily didn’t make it any easier on her. She was born to parents she quickly learned had no business siring a child. Her mother, Vladlena was a miserable, selfish woman. One who couldn’t go a day without lamenting about her husband robbing her of her life and her aspirations. She never wanted a child. She treated Valentina as you would a goldfish you win at a carnival; fun for a bit but after a few hours you find yourself waiting for the minute you can flush it down the toilet. Her father, Boris while a very stoic and stern man, treated her well enough to compensate for the cold gazes of her mother. He’d been a high ranking official to the leaders of Russia during the Soviet Union in the sixties. She could not remember any names, she was terrible with names. And it’s not like he would ever tell her about work or who he worked with.
He would never get the chance to either. Boris died of a heart attack at the height of the cold war.
She’d only just turned thirteen.
Time flies.
Now, with her anxiety attack settled, it was time to get to business. The sun had crested over the eastern seaboard. She covered the sun with her right hand counting the space between it and the ocean with her left. It was ten in the morning.
I’m late.
Dressing herself, she cleaned up as best she could. There were very few places left on this ship devoid of filth but she managed it.
A perk of leadership.
Not that she ever clamored for the role. She had been resigned to languish away as everyone else did while the captain formulated a plan. Then the captain disappeared or had been murdered during the night riot and she had been his second in command, so all eyes turned to her.
She made her way down the hallway, exchanging pleasantries with everyone she passed.
She made it a point to make herself available and known to everyone she was in charge of.
These people looked up to her, relied on her and she would not let them down. She’d been as good a leader as they could hope for on this ship. Stern but fair, calculated but not cold. Her father had raised her well enough for the task.
She exited the hallway climbing up the stairwell to the twelfth floor. There, housed the buffet room GRAB N GO. After the night riot, all food that was left over was transported here. With fifteen different shops, kiosks and restaurants on the ship in total, it was much too hard to set up guards at each location. Instead, they moved it all to one place. Easier to track, easier to guard, easier to keep from foe. Not everyone aboard this ship was so inclined to adhere to her rulings. However, she was no stranger to these kinds of proceedings. I was a judge after all.
Valentina strolled into the buffet room pleased to see that everyone was behaving accordingly. She scanned the rows of tables concerned to see that no one was talking to each other. No one did much of that these days, at least, not up here.
It seemed like they were just waiting to die.
“Come to lend a hand?” a voice spoke beside her.
She turned to see Becky standing behind the counter handing out the rations for the morning. Valentina smiled. She was happy to see it was Becky’s day behind the counter. The young girl had such a jovial way about her, it helped lift her spirits when she was feeling down.
Even without any makeup on, Becky lit the room up like the fourth of July. She was short and too skinny for her own good. Before they had to cut their calorie intake in half, but she made up for it with her smile. Her pearly white teeth were a beacon of light on this dark ship and her dimples could melt even the coldest of hearts.
Except my mother’s.
“How is proceedings?” she asked her. “Problems?”
“None really. It’s been a quiet morning. With the exception of Mr. Hibbards that is. He was acting out, cutting the line, telling me he saw people outside on the top decks again…Going on about mosquito’s and how they’ll bite the zombies and fly all the way out here to this ship, biting the people outside, transferring the plague to us. It all felt very macabre. The guards took him outside to get some fresh air. I swear he almost pissed himself.” She laughed.
“Do not worry yourself. Mosquito’s don’t travel this far out into open water.”
“Phew. Thank goodness for that. He almost had me swearing off fresh air for a while.”
“Mind if I give you a hand?”
“By all means. Could use the company.”
Valentina slid over the counter. She looked at the trays of food. They had shrunk considerably since the last time she’d been in to check.
How long ago was that?
The days all started to blend together.
“How are we doing on rations?” she asked.
“See for yourself.” Becky opened the walk in freezer. They peered inside to see that the once full racks of food had diminished to a third of what they started with.
“We have a solid three cases left of beets, beans, and soup, all canned still good to go. I use them as sparingly as I can, during emergencies when we don’t catch any fish. The toughest part is coming up with ways to keep everything chilled since we lost power. There’s only so many days fish will stay good without proper freezing. By the third day, we’re basically eating bacteria,” Becky informed her.
“Xao is doing all he can to restore power,” Valentina replied. “It’s tough without an engineer on board. You’re just going to have to make due. Besides, everyone survived back in the old days without any cooling systems for food. We’ll be fine.”
A man sitting in the corner enjoying his meal retched uncontrollably covering the table in a mixture of bile and blood. People scattered away from him. The man tried to stand but collapsed under his weight.
“Not all of us,” Becky said.
She’s right. Some of us won’t survive this ordeal.
Valentina resigned herself to the fact that not everyone aboard the ship would make it. It was a cold and radical way of looking at things but tough calls had to be made and she was the one who had to make them. And live with them. Each one she kept alive was one more piece of humanity that would continue on in the new world. She considered it an even trade. Her humanity for theirs. She motioned to the guards stationed at the door. They walked over to the projectile vomiter and helped clean him up. They supported his weight and helped walk him off to the infirmary.
One more to the list. How many is that now?
Morris snapped his fingers pulling Valentina from her thoughts.
“Anybody awake in there?” he questioned.
She looked him over. The man was becoming more animal every day. Most people tried to keep up some sense of hygiene but the day we lost power, so too went Morris’ cleanliness. His beard had grown in uneven, the sideburns, and chin providing most of the hair. It blotched in sections leaving some as smooth as baby’s bottom and others as dark as a Hasidic Jew’s curls. His odor stank worse than the rotting corpses of the fish in the freezer. It smelled like he bathed in month’s old pepperoni.
How this man became the leader of his people, I’ll never know.
He wore a Hawaiian themed button down, exposing his body. He puffed his chest out as a way to ward off predators she supposed. He would be almost tolerable if it wasn’t for the stench but sacrifices had to be made.
She needed him to keep the people together. Without him, she would lose the bottom dwellers. “Morris,” she replied indignantly.
“A quiet morning. It’s a nice change of pace from the normal agony of life, wouldn’t you say?”
“Stick around. It’s early. Problems down below?”
“Nothing a plate of food couldn’t fix.” He turned to Becky. “How about it love?” Becky resentfully put down her utensils, disappearing into the walk in freezer.
Morris and Valentina were left alone.
Morris gazed around to make sure it would stay that way and leaned in to whisper in Valentina’s ear, “Tension is higher than ever before. We need to come up with a plan of action to take against Kendra. She is tearing us all apart down there. I lost sixteen of my people last nig
ht. Sixteen! If things keep up the way they’re going, she’ll have control of the bottoms within the week. She’s dangerous. She knows the right things to say, about food, about water, about everything. After her sermon last night, three people dove off the ship. She’s out of control.
She’s…” Morris trailed off.
Becky pushed out the double decker cart filled with a few measly trays of food.
“What’s that?” he questioned.
Becky glanced at Valentina, nervous to give her response. “These are your rations.” She finally built up the nerve to say.
“Are you taking a piss?” He stared at Valentina. “I tell you tension is higher than ever. If I don’t give the bottom floors something soon I will lose them all and you give me this?” He grabbed one of the trays. There was barely enough to feed a third of the two hundred people he was in charge of. “Why are you trying to hand over my people to her?” He tossed the tray to the side. It shattered against the table top. The food ruined.
Valentina grabbed him by the collar pulling him in close. “Listen to me you putrid son of a bitch. They’re not your people. They’re not my people. They’re our people. No one is bigger than the other. Thinking like that makes you no better than Kendra and I swear to god if you ever waste food like that in front of me again, I will have you arrested and you will be put to trial. Do I make myself clear?”
Morris said nothing. He stared into the fiery hot eyes of Valentina. They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity then Morris finally replied, “Yes…sir.”
She let him go. “Everyone’s rations have been cut. It’s not just yours. Everyone up here is eating a third of what they are used to.”
“The gifted aren’t so gifted anymore, are they?” Morris looked around at the sad sacks.