Damien leant forward and prodded the knife into the back of the Landlord’s neck, making the man wince. “Give me the keys and then get the fuck out.”
The Landlord nodded and opened up the car door. He handed over the keys and slid sideways, hopping down to the ground below. Then he ran.
Damien giggled as he jogged after the heavyset man. He allowed him to get a few steps, getting a taste of freedom, before tackling him to the ground and straddling him. Damien raked the edge of his knife down the Landlord’s cheek and made him cry out as blood spilled from his split skin.
Damien leapt back up to his feet and stared down at the man. “Get. Up. Now.”
The Landlord made it only up onto his knees. He knelt before Damien, lacing his hands together and pleading. “Please, just let me go. I will make you rich beyond your dreams.”
“I already have your money.”
“I can get you more.”
“I have enough. Now get to your feet.”
“Please.”
Damien kicked the man hard in the face. He felt the crack of his nose and smiled grimly. The Landlord whimpered on the ground, blood pouring from his nose. “Pl-pl-”
“If you beg me one more time, I am going to stab you in both eyes. Now. Get. Up!”
Gingerly, the Landlord stumbled onto his feet, his hands out in front of him, ready to ward off further blows. But Damien wasn’t interested in hurting the man. He wanted the Landlord to hurt himself. That was the only punishment that would be sufficient justice.
“W-what are you going to do?”
Damien motioned back towards the Range Rover. “Get back to the car.”
For once, the Landlord didn’t argue. The man made his way slowly back to the vehicle. He stumbled and tripped over the craggy rocks hidden in the grass, but he kept on moving, too afraid to turn back.
When they got reached the Range Rover, Damien held the knife out at the Landlord’s face. “Open up the bonnet.”
The Landlord looked at him with confusion, but knew better than to argue. He headed around to the open passenger door and reached under the dashboard. The bonnet popped. “My people will be coming for me by now,” he warned. “The best thing you can do is get out of here while you can. You need to get your wound looked at.”
Damien looked down at his bloody stump and grimaced. The pain was phenomenal, but the thrill of what he was about to do made it manageable. “Don’t you worry about my pain, worry about your own. Open up the bonnet.”
The landlord sighed and went over to the front of the car. He hoisted up the bonnet and left it standing open. “Now what?”
Damien grinned. “Now you put your face on it.”
The Landlord raised both eyebrows. “What?”
“Put your goddamn face on the engine or I’ll peel your face off with this knife.”
“But we’ve been driving for an hour. The engine is red hot.”
Damien rolled his eyes. “No shit! You’re going to put your face on it and keep it there for thirty seconds. You do that and I’ll let you live. Fail and I’ll slit your throat. Your choice.”
The landlord folded his arms. “I won’t do it.”
Damien nodded. “Makes you a bit of a hypocrite, doesn’t it? I mean, all those people you forced into your sick, twisted games, and you’re not even willing to play them yourself. Well, my fat friend, it is time for you to practise what you preach.” Damien leapt forward with the knife and forced it under the man’s chubby earlobe. He wrenched and sliced until the appendage came away in his hand. The Landlord stumbled backwards against the front of the car, screaming and clutching his head, but Damien gave him no chance to feel sorry for himself. He grabbed the Landlord’s head and shoved the side of the man’s face down onto the hissing engine. The Landlord’s screams immediately turned to animalistic bellows. He struggled and thrashed, but Damien held him there.
“You have another twenty five seconds,” Damien said. “Take your face away before that and you die right here. You time starts…now”
Damien stepped back and let go of the Landlord’s head. To his pleasure, the man kept his face against the steaming hot engine, squealing like a wounded pig. His arms and legs thrashed wildly, but his face stayed on the superheated metal.
“That’s it,” said Damien. “Just twenty seconds left. You’re almost there. Nineteen…eighteen…seventeen…sixteen…fift-”
The landlord pulled his face away and staggered down to his knees. He put his hands up to Damien and wept. His face was a pink mess, skin ripped away, still sizzling on the engine. Exposed muscle glistened. “Please,” the man begged. “Please. It hurts too much.”
Damien nodded. “I understand. Not everyone is cut out for this. There has to be losers.”
He strode forward and slit the Landlord’s throat, leaving him to die face down in the dirt.
The only thing Damien thought about, while he stood there over a dead body in the brisk countryside of Scotland was how he felt nothing at all. He had just executed a man and he felt nothing. He had won the competition but lost part of his soul. He had entered the competition for humble reasons, but by the end, it had made him a monster.
Damien threw the bloody knife down on the ground and got behind the wheel of the Range Rover. As he drove away, he wanted to cry, but somehow he just couldn’t.
One Week Later…
“We still can’t get a fix on The Landlord, Mr Raymeady. It looks like maybe he went off the grid with the money instead of giving everybody their cut.”
Samuel Raymeady looked up from his mahogany desk and studied his employee with his charcoal eyes. “No matter,” he said. “In a few days, the money won’t even matter. There are much greater things ahead. It’s time to see some real change in the world. The time for punishing worthless sinners, one soul at a time, is over. It’s time to take a larger approach.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
Samuel smiled, his snake-like incisors glinting in the orange glow of his office lamp. On his desk lay a vast sheet of paper. It was the blueprint for a cruise liner his company, Black Remedy, owned: The Spirit of Kirkpatrick. “You’ll see,” he said, folding his hands on top of his desk. “You’ll see very soon.”
BOOK 5 OF 5
SEA SICK
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE RELAXING…
Police Officer Jack Wardsley’s life ended the moment his partner died, stabbed to death by a deranged druggie. Now, years later, Jack is a changed man. His recent record of police brutality and a reputation for not following the rules has prompted his seniors to give him an ultimatum: take a few weeks off, relax, and find some way to let go of all the anger – or find another job.
That’s why Jack is about to board The Spirit of Kirkpatrick, a cruise liner built for relaxation and fun. Pretty soon, however, Jack realises that a little R&R is the last thing he’s going to get. There’s a virus onboard, making people insane and it won’t be long before the entire ship is overrun with blood and death. There is nowhere to escape.
But just when Jack thinks his number is up, he wakes up in bed. It’s the same day as before, but will this time be different, or is the virus fated to escape again and kill all those aboard?
It won’t be long before Jack realises there are others onboard just like him – and that some of them know more than they’re letting on.
Day 1
The bus came to a screeching halt at the end of the pier, unloaded its passengers, and then quickly drove away, spluttering noxious black fumes behind it. The driver had seemed in a hurry ever since he’d picked everyone up from the airport.
The monolithic Spirit of Kirkpatrick was currently occupying more than nine-hundred feet of Palma’s dockland, sitting somehow majestically in the Majorcan waters despite its gargantuan bulk. Its multiple decks were stacked endlessly towards the sky, while portholes lined its red-painted hull like hundreds of staring eyes.
It was Jack’s first time on a cruise-liner, and he wasn’t looking forward to it at
all. Most people would have been excited to spend a week on a four-star passenger ship, hugging the beautiful coastline of the Mediterranean while taking in the sights, but not him. For Jack, relaxation – and even the very idea of enjoyment – was a function he’d lost the use of long ago. The only reason he was even there at all was because he had to be, the choice made for him.
An overly tanned holiday rep approached the group, her skin leathery and loose. “Good afternoon, everybody,” she said wit a Spanish accent. “I hope you all are ready for your holiday. Are you very excited?”
The group cheered.
Jack rolled his eyes, eager to get things over with, and to get away from all these overly enthusiastic holidaymakers. The leaky-nosed children and fondling lovers all looked at Jack strangely, no doubt wondering what a middle-aged man was doing on a family cruise all by himself. Honestly, he was wondering the very same thing. Once aboard, his plan was to find the quietest part of the ship and spend the entire week there, reading novels and drinking whisky. The other thing he intended to do was sleep – or at least try to. Rest wasn’t something that came easily anymore.
“If you’d all just like to come this way.” The leather-skinned holiday rep ushered everyone into a cramped vestibule on the dock. It contained a flight of narrow steps that led up to an enclosed gangway running alongside the ship. At the top of the stairs, Jack saw a row of tables, with more olive-skinned holiday reps sitting behind them.
The passengers were ordered to form an orderly line and wait for instructions. A cheap-suited gentleman eventually came to greet them, a sycophantic smile slapped across his smug, moisturised face.
“Hello, everybody,” he said. “Welcome to the Spirit of Kirkpatrick. My name is James and I’m a member of the customer service team. If you could all get your boarding passes ready, you will find a passenger number at the top. Can all passengers with a number beginning 02 or 03 follow Karen over to the far desk? Everyone else, please follow me to the near desk.”
Jack pulled out his boarding pass and checked the number: 0206606-B. The passengers split into two groups and he joined the queue leading to Karen. The woman’s desk was filled with bright blue squares, credit card sized pieces of plastic.
“Can I see your boarding pass, please?” one of the reps asked Jack. The name badge on his sky-blue shirt read: Brad.
Jack handed over his paperwork and waited while it was examined. Satisfied, Brad plucked up one of the plastic cards from the table and offered it to Jack. “Welcome aboard, Mr Wardsley. Someone will take you to your room once you are onboard.”
“Thank you.” Jack moved away to join the longer queue that had now formed further along. A wide hatch on the side of the ship had opened up and people were beginning to go onboard. Queuing directly in front of him were three young men. They talked loudly and impatiently amongst themselves, seemingly drunk. One of them, Jack noticed, sported a ridiculous haircut, full of shaven lines and childish squiggles. It made his skull look like a hedge maze. He was the loudest of the three and every other word was laced with profanity. Jack took a deep breath and tried to keep his calm. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the queue started moving and the three young men disappeared up ahead, barging their way, impolitely, to the front. With a bit of luck, the ship would be big enough that they wouldn’t cross paths with Jack again.
They had better hope so.
Now, a little girl and her parents stood in front of him. The mum and dad were muttering to one another, as if engaged in some kind of spat, but their little angel was oblivious to the tension. The girl was playing with a life-sized baby doll and pretending to feed it with a miniature milk bottle. Her golden pigtails and rosy-red cheeks made her the picture of innocence.
As the queue continued moving, Jack saw through the hatch entrance into the ship’s interior. Well-trodden, red carpeting led down a narrow corridor before entering into a wider area beyond. Midway down the corridor was a Filipino woman, checking people’s passes as they came aboard. Standing just outside of the ship’s entryway was a bearded man holding a plastic container. The tub seemed to be full of rubbing alcohol and the man squeezed a small amount onto each passenger’s hands as they entered the ship. The paranoia of swine and bird-flu, Sars, and Ebola, as well as a whole host of other overblown health scares, seemed to increase every year. Jack wondered what good, if any, a tiny dose of alcohol would do if a super-virus did manage to get aboard. It seemed like a naïve precaution to him.
The little girl and her parents took their turns with the alcohol, rubbing their hands thoroughly like surgeons scrubbing up.
“Can my dolly have some, too?” the little girl asked the bearded man with the dispenser. “I don’t want her to get a cold.”
The man seemed unmoved by the girl’s cuteness, but he obliged anyway and squirted an extra blob onto the plastic hands of the dolly. Jack smiled at the innocence of it all as he passed by the family and headed inside the ship. He skipped right by the man with the dispenser, feeling the alcohol rub was a waste of time, and instead showed his pass to the Filipino woman standing inside the corridor. She nodded her head and waved him through.
The open area at the end of the corridor housed an extravagant foyer with a staircase on the right and an ornate balcony overhead. On the left was a jewellery store and gift shop. Jack was hungry, so his focus fell immediately on a pair of smoked glass doors in front of him, with the words, OCEAN VIEW RESTAURANT, written above in green calligraphic script. From the sound of it, and by the shadows behind the glass, the restaurant was already heaving.
Jack’s group was probably the final intake for that day. Everybody else had probably arrived earlier that morning or perhaps even on a previous day. It made him feel like a newcomer to a party already well underway.
A crewmember noticed Jack standing aimlessly and hurried over to him, smiling warmly as he approached. The Filipino man’s gawky appearance and bemused expression made Jack think he was unused to greeting passengers, but was trying to make himself useful. His uniform was a light-blue waist jacket with a white shirt beneath, black bowtie and trousers. Dark hair, slicked back, made him look older than the thirty or so years he likely was.
“Hello, sir. Let me show you to your room. Do you have your boarding pass?”
Jack nodded and handed it over.
“Ah, okay. Cabin B-18. Is very nice – a double.”
Jack took the man’s word for it. He hadn’t booked the cabin himself and had only expected the bare minimum. If his superiors authorised the extra expense of a bigger room then he was grateful, but they needn’t have bothered.
“Right now we are on A Deck. We take the elevators down to B deck. This way, please, sir.”
Jack followed the man, rounding a corner beyond the staircase and entering into a slim hallway. On the right was a pair of brass-framed elevators where the crewman prodded at a silver button on the wall.
While they were waiting, Jack asked what the man’s name was.
He tapped his name badge that Jack had missed. “Joma. My full name is Jose Mariano Panalan, but you can call me Joma for short.”
Jack nodded, but found himself without a follow-up comment. An awkward silence began to crystallise, but Joma managed to stop it from manifesting fully.
“Can I ask what your name is, sir?”
“Jack.”
“Like the playing card, yes?”
Jack shrugged.
The elevator pinged and the doors opened. Joma took Jack gently by the arm and ushered him inside. “Is your first time on cruise, yes?”
“It’s my first holiday in ten years.”
Joma whistled in awe. “You must be excited then, no?”
Jack was about to answer that no, he was not excited, but reminded himself that the man was just making small talk, not offering therapy. “Yes,” he decided to lie. “Very excited.”
Joma stared at Jack, drilling into him as if he had a secret tattooed somewhere on his skin. “You not bring your wife?”
“I’m not married.”
Joma didn’t probe, which was good. They remained in silence as the elevator descended to B Deck. It was a relief when the doors finally opened again.
“This way,” Joma said.
Sconces lined both walls of the corridor and bathed the ceiling more than they did the deep red carpet, creating a strange, yet calming atmosphere. Joma padded along between the various cabins until he came to one and stopped outside of it. “18-B. This your room, sir.”
“Thank you,” Jack said, reaching into his pocket to find his wallet.
Joma waved his hand. “You no need to, sir. All gratuities included in your fare.”
Jack liked the sound of not having to tip. He’d been unsure about the etiquette aboard a cruise liner and it was a relief to find out what was expected, so much so that he decided to give the man a tip anyway. He’d been preparing to do so throughout the entire week, so if this was going to be the only time he was obliged to hand over money, he’d still be way ahead of budget. Jack gave Joma a five-euro note.
“This very kind of you, sir. You need anything at all, you come see Joma. He work the bar in the Voyager’s Lounge. It very nice and quiet. You have headache, you come to Voyager’s Lounge and Joma make it go away.”
It sounded nice. Jack thought there was a reasonable chance he could actually end up there one evening, which made it all the better that he’d gotten off to an amicable start with the bartender.
“Thank you, Joma. I’m sure I’ll see you there.”
“You settle in good now. Have lovely week, okay?”
“I will.” Jack turned away and inserted the plastic card he’d been given into a slit in the door handle. He was pleased when it disengaged the lock on the first try. He usually struggled with fiddly things.
His cabin was spacious, with a private bathroom and living room separated from the bedroom by a curtain. Jack had seen smaller bedsits in his time and was pleasantly surprised by the luxury. Also impressive was the fact that his luggage had arrived ahead of him. His bag sat on the floor in front of the wardrobe.
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