Looking at his wristwatch, it was now ten-past-eight. There was a comedian onstage, scheduled to tell jokes until ten-o-clock. Jack would most likely get a bite to eat after his set was finished and then retire to bed with the book he was still eager to begin.
The room’s waitress – another Filipino, as a majority of the serving staff seemed to be – brought over the drink he had ordered – another double bourbon, this time with coke. Jack took the drink and thanked the lady, before leaning back and listening to the rotund comedian’s latest foible.
“The wife and I were sat having a cup of tea with my mother-in-law the other day when, out of the blue, she says to me, ‘I’ve decided I want to be cremated.’ I said, ‘Alright, get your coat.’ ”
Jack moaned. Mother-in-law jokes. How original.
He sipped at his drink and glanced around the dim lounge. The attendance was high, with nearly all of the tables occupied. He spotted the family that had boarded before him, the middle-aged couple and their daughter. Their little girl was not the lively spirit she’d been earlier and was now laying limply across her mother’s lap, damp blonde hair matted against her forehead as she clutched her dolly against her chest. At first Jack assumed she was exhausted from the excitement of being on holiday, but the longer he watched the little girl, the more certain he became that she was unwell.
Periodically, the girl would let out a hacking cough followed by a pitiful moan. Each time it happened, the mother stroked a hand through her daughter’s and looked at the father worriedly. The two parents didn’t look much healthier than their child, though, and as Jack studied the rest of the lounge he saw that quite a few people seemed under the weather. The sneezing fits he had noticed earlier on the Lido Deck had now been replaced by a chorus of harsh, chesty coughs. Everywhere around him, sick people were rubbing at their clammy foreheads and bloodshot eyes, all looking extremely sorry for themselves.
Something wasn’t right, Jack thought to himself. There were too many people sick for it to be a simple cold virus.
Jack downed his drink and placed the glass back down on the table. Slowly, he began to rise from his seat. For some reason, he felt that any sudden movement would be bad. He took another look around the room, making sure that what he was seeing was correct and not an embellishment of his weary mind, but there was definitely at least one quarter of the barroom audience who were sick – maybe even as much as half.
Just as he was about to abandon his table and get somewhere less contagious, Jack was stopped by his Filipino waitress. “Is okay?” she asked him.
“Yes, fine. I’m just feeling a bit…claustrophobic.”
“You want I bring you glass of water?”
Jack shook his head. “No, thank you. That’s very kind but-”
The waitress shot forward into his arms, pushed by some great force. As Jack tried to steady the woman, he saw that Claire’s boyfriend, Conner, was the one who had shoved her. There was a wild spark of anger in his feral eyes.
“What the hell is your problem?” Jack shouted. “What are you on?”
Conner gave no answer. He rushed forward with his arms outstretched, grabbing at Jack’s throat. Jack choked and spluttered as the fingers wrapped around his windpipe, but it was only the shock and surprise that had distracted his reactions. He quickly regained his focus and stamped his heel into Conner’s instep.
But Conner carried on attacking as if he hadn’t noticed.
The lad continued to claw and wrench at Jack’s neck and even tried using his teeth as a weapon. Jack was confused, but not deterred by the lad’s ferociousness; he turned his body sideways and hooked Conner under his right armpit, then gamely flipped the lad over his hip in a basic judo throw. Conner went cartwheeling to the floor and stayed there, grasping at the air and disoriented. It was then that Jack heard the screams coming from behind him.
He spun around with his hands in the air. “It’s okay, everybody. Just remain calm. Everything is under cont-”
The entire lounge area was filled with panicking men, women, and children. They struggled and leapt over chairs as they tried to exit the room as fast as they could, but only ended up trampling one another. Even the rotund comedian was pushing and punching people out of his way. Dotted throughout the room, several groups of people were engaged in frenzied scuffles. The passengers were attacking each other, as if some spell had taken them all over and incited them to violence. The coppery tang of blood began to fill the air.
Jack turned to the waitress, still standing next to him. She’d remained rooted to the spot ever since Conner had shoved her in the back. Jack placed a hand on her shoulder. “What the hell is going on?” He had to shout the words at her, trying to snap her out of the daze she was in. It must have worked, because she blinked her eyes and seemed to come back to reality. But the only thing she did was flee, abandoning her duties and racing away into the crowd. A moaning from behind Jack made him quickly forget about her.
Conner was back on his feet, preparing for another attack. His eyes leaked blood. It coursed down his pallid cheeks in crimson rivulets. He was snarling like a rabid pit bull.
Jack wasted no time. He drove his fist forward as hard as he could while twisting his pelvis in order to get his full weight behind the blow. Conner’s nose spread wide and exploded as the punch connected, and Jack felt the fragile bones snap beneath his knuckles. Again, Conner behaved as if nothing had happened. He staggered back from the blow, but seemed entirely unaffected by any pain. He came straight for Jack again.
Jack swung his fists again and again and again.
And again...
His triceps eventually began to tire, he had thrown so many punches, and his hands were swollen and matted with gore; yet Conner’s shattered face continued to snarl at him. The lad’s arms continued to reach out and snatch at his neck. All around Jack, the room continued combusting in chaos. Members of security had run in to check out the disturbance, but were quickly tackled to the ground by the groups of crazed passengers. Jack couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw men and women who had themselves been attacked, now joining in the frenzy, as if they had somehow been converted to the cause.
It was time to retreat. Jack could not restrain Conner much longer with punches alone, and it seemed like the only way to put a stop to the lad for good would be to kill him, and Jack was not prepared to do that.
So he ran.
He pushed and barged his way between tables, chairs, and other passengers. Many people were also trying to escape the room, but many more were like Conner, bleeding from their eyes and snarling like animals. Several eyebleeders reached out for Jack as he dodged by them, but luckily their reactions were slow and their clumsy snatches too late. He reached the lounge’s exit and bounded through the open doors. Outside, bodies lay scattered throughout the corridor. Numerous adults lay weeping and moaning, nursing open wounds, which bled unimpeded onto the carpets. Those uninjured sought to help those who were hurt.
At the end of the corridor, Jack took a sharp right and barged through the double doors of the Lido Restaurant. The room inside was deserted, compared to the busy High Spirits lounge, but there was still a small group of would-be diners left in the room. Several staff members also stood around, looking confused. Some wore kitchen uniforms while others were dressed like waiters; all wore mortified expressions on their faces. They obviously had no clue what was happening outside, but the amount of screaming was enough for them to know it was something bad. Very bad.
“What is going on?” a burly man in a chef’s uniform asked.
“I have no fucking idea,” Jack admitted. “But we need to get these doors locked, right now.”
The chef gave no argument and hurried to the doors, where he quickly twisted the latch. He turned back to face Jack. “Okay, the doors are locked.”
“Good,” Jack said, wishing there was a barricade blocking the room rather than a flimsy pair of frosted-glass doors. “We need to get help.”
The chef s
hrugged. “What help?”
All of the people in the room gathered and looked at Jack for an answer, but he had none.
“I don’t know,” he had to tell them. “What do ships usually do when they’re in trouble? Don’t they send out a mayday or something?”
“Isn’t that planes?” a staff member said.
“Don’t know?” Jack said testily. “Isn’t it your job to know?”
“Hey, I’m just a waitress.”
“Yeah, I know, sorry.” Jack glanced back at the doors and flinched as another scream rang out close by. “Okay, we shove a load of tables up against this door and wait until we know more.”
“More about what?” someone asked from the back of the room. It was a female voice.
Jack stood on his tiptoes and looked over the crowd. “Claire? What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean? Where else would I be?”
“I mean, how come you’re not with Conner?”
Claire moved her way to the front of the group and looked at Jack with confusion. “He and his mates are having a drink in High Spirits. I was just about to join them, but I fancied a bite to eat first. What’s going on out there, Jack?”
“Everyone has gone batshit insane,” was his reply.
“What do you mean?” the chef asked.
Jack flapped his arms in frustration. “I mean, full-blown, Night of the Living Dead, crazy.”
Claire actually laughed then, despite the screaming outside. “You mean like zom-“
“Look,” Jack said, cutting her off. “I don’t know what the hell is happening. I just know that we’re in danger. We need to get those doors secured quickly. I’m not saying another thing until then.”
***
“Their eyes were bleeding?” Claire asked once the doors were sufficiently barricaded. “That’s crazy.”
“I know it is,” Jack said, sighing at the absurdity of what he was trying to tell these people. “But I’m telling you that there’s some sort of super-flu on this ship, and it’s turning people rabid.”
“What makes you think people are sick?” Claire asked. “It could have just been a fight breaking out.”
Jack looked her in the eye and spoke very slowly. “There was blood pouring down people’s cheeks like tap water. One of them came at me like a man-possessed. I must have punched the guy in the face a dozen times and he just kept coming. Can’t say I liked the guy before he went mental, but I’ve never given someone a beating half as bad as that and still had them remain standing.”
“You never liked him before?” the chef reiterated. “So you knew the guy who attacked you?”
Jack wished he could take back his words, but it was too late. He looked across at Claire and saw the understanding dawn across her face. She leapt up from her chair. “Oh my God. It was Conner, wasn’t it?”
Jack leapt up from his own chair to cut her off, but he wasn’t quick enough to stop her heading straight for the barricade of tables and chairs that the group had set up beside the door. Before anyone could stop her, she pushed aside a dining table and caused several more to collapse out of the way. She was going to open the doors.
“Claire, stop!” Jack shouted.
But Claire wasn’t listening. She unlocked the doors and managed to prise one open, just enough to get her slender body through the gap. Jack managed to grab her by the wrist just as she was about to disappear.
“Don’t go out there,” he warned her. “It’s dangerous.”
“I have to go. You’ve hurt Conner and I need to see if he’s okay.”
“He’s not. He is definitely not okay, but that isn’t my doing.”
“He needs me.”
“If you go out there, you’re going to get hurt.”
Claire seemed to hesitate, half in the door, half out.
“Just let her go,” said one of the other passengers from behind Jack. “We need to get those doors closed again.”
Jack couldn’t do that. He pleaded with Claire. “Just come back inside and we’ll work all of this out, okay? Whatever help Conner needs, he won’t get it by you placing yourself in danger.”
She seemed to mull things over and, eventually, her panicked expression softened. “Okay,” she said. “Just let go of my wrist and I’ll come-”
Before she could complete her sentence something seized her and made her scream. Jack had been about to let go of her wrist but now he clutched it even harder, pulled with all his strength. But as hard as he pulled, crying out with exertion, Claire failed to get free of whatever had her, until, just when it seemed his arms were about to fail, she flew into his arms.
The doors slammed closed as the other passenger threw themselves against it and started reforming the barricade.
Jack fell to the floor, with Claire a trembling in his arms. The girl was bleeding all over him.
“Jesus Christ!” Jack cried out, cradling Claire in his arms. “Goddamn it.”
Claire’s left wrist was hanging open, spewing blood like a geyser. Already, her eyes were misting over as shock seized her nervous system. The wound was deep and looked like a vicious bite. Jack shouted at the others in the room to help him – he needed towels to wrap the wound – but they were only interested in securing the doors. They didn’t know Claire and were not willing to help her if it meant endangering themselves. It was the way people always acted in a crisis; Jack had seen it enough times before.
Outside, the crazed passengers had become aware of the group’s presence inside the Lido Restaurant and were now hammering at the doors. Jack knew it wouldn’t take them long to bust through.
He looked down at Claire, wanting to reassure her that all would be okay, but it would’ve been pointless. She was dead.
Jack looked down at the young girl in shock. He eased her down onto the floor and hunched over her, ready to perform CPR. He pumped the heels of his palms against her chest rhythmically, trying to keep oxygen in her system while trying to jumpstart her heart. Every now and then, he would place his ear against her mouth and try to make out if she was breathing on her own.
“She’s gone,” the chef told Jack, grabbing his shoulder. “You can’t help her.”
“Shut up,” Jack growled, still aware that nobody had offered him any help when he’d asked for it. These people were selfish and he didn’t like them one bit. But he did like Claire; he wasn’t ready to give up on her. He scowled up at the chef. “Just shut your mouth and give me some space.”
“Hey, she’s moving,” someone said. “Look at her hand.”
Jack looked down at Claire’s twitching hand and was confused. She was definitely moving, but when he leant down by her face there was no breath coming from her nose or mouth. He must not be sensing it, so he moved his head closer, placing his ear right up against her lips.
“Gragh!”
Pain exploded at the side of Jack’s head. He pulled away and felt his ear rip clean away from his skull. Wailing in agony, he watched Claire chewing it between her blood-soaked teeth.
Everybody screamed.
Claire twisted and turned, then sprang to her feet like an animal. In many ways she looked just the same as before, but Jack could already see the wells of blood beginning to form in her eyes.
She came at Jack with her arms outstretched, exactly like her boyfriend had earlier, and he was so horrified by what was happening, that by the time he even managed to consider an appropriate response, Claire’s teeth had sunk her teeth deep into his windpipe.
Day 3
Jack awoke with a start. The fuzziness that filled his head and covered the back of his eyelids was a feeling he had not experienced for some time, yet it was vaguely familiar. The vibrations throbbing through his skull were akin to a hangover and Jack tried to remember if he’d gone for a drink after boarding the ship. Strange as it was, he only remembered going to bed as soon as he’d been shown to his room.
He sat up in the bed and blinked his eyes. The room was dark. There was a cube-shaped alarm cl
ock on the bedside table displaying the time in glowing, red numerals. It read: 1400.
He’d slept for twenty-four hours.
“Jesus.”
Jack got up and moved around the edge of the bed, headed over to the room’s exit, where he fumbled for a light switch that he somehow knew exactly where to find. The room lit up. His luggage had crashed against the wardrobe and woken him. The ship must have crested a tall wave. As if to confirm his suspicions, the room tilted and the luggage bashed against the wardrobe again.
Jack felt tired, disorientated – almost sick. Perhaps he was coming down with a cold. He had slept for hours, but still felt tired. He went over to the cabin’s porthole and looked outside. Beyond the Promenade Deck was the vast expanse of the blue-green Mediterranean. The ship was currently at sea.
Something hit the window causing Jack to leap backwards. He sighed when it only turned out to be a seagull perching on the ledge of his porthole. The bird stared in with its beady black eyes. Bizarrely, Jack felt like he’d met the creature before. The seagull had an expression of disapproval on his face and flew away a moment later.
Jack let out a yawn and decided to go for a shower. It was a strange morning so far and he wanted the hot water to help wake him up. After months of barely sleeping, finally getting some rest had left his mind muddled and confused. Once he was fully refreshed he would feel better. He was sure of it.
The small bathroom was cooler than the rest of the cabin and a breeze seemed to enter from somewhere and skim across the tiles. Jack reached into the shower and twisted the knob jutting out from the wall. The showerhead hissed and sprayed a freezing jet of water all over him, making him curse and yank back his arm. He decided to take a leak while the water warmed up.
His bladder bulged and took a long time to empty, but, by the time he was finished, the water in the shower had reached a few levels below scalding and he stepped inside gratefully. The heat was wonderful, fingering his flesh right down to the bone. It almost sent him to sleep and he had to lower the temperature a little to shock his system back awake.
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