Claire fought to restrain Conner, who looked as though he might take off like a rocket. She glanced back over her shoulder at Jack and shook her head at him. “I thought you were a police officer. Why are you causing trouble?”
“Police officer?” Conner grunted. “Come on, baby, let’s leave this pig alone. He’s messed up in the head, innit. Not worth getting arrested for.”
The two teenagers headed down the stairs and disappeared. Jack turned his attention to the elderly lovers kissing against the railing for few moments and wondered what their story was. Had they been in love for decades or were they both widowers who’d met each other later in life? Who knew?
Jack lay back in his lounger and smiled. The altercation with Conner had been pointless, but had given him a small sense of satisfaction. It was enough of a break from the usual doom and gloom to re-motivate him towards solving the mystery of the ship. As soon as Tally arrived, he would go back down to that cargo hold and make Donovan give him the answers he needed. Until then, he was going to lie back and enjoy the sun. Because, if Donovan managed to shoot him again, it may just be the last bit of sun Jack ever got to see. There was something comforting about that.
***
Jack awoke in the dark, alone and shivering. The moist, salted air skimmed across the deck and brushed his face. He often fell asleep on the sun deck, but assumed this time Tally would wake him up. For some reason, she hadn’t turned up.
Maybe Donovan shot her in the head and she’s dead – really dead.
Jack prodded at the bruising on his chest and huffed in pain. His gunshot wound was a mere abrasion, but what if Tally had taken a bullet to the brain? Or even if she’d healed, would bruising be enough to stop her waking up?
Jack checked his watch and saw that it was a little after eight – almost time for the infected to attack. There were limited areas onboard that offered safety, and even those would become overrun eventually. The passenger cabins were the most secure, able to withstand the nightly terrors for the most part. Jack thought about going to his room now, where there was a bottle of Glen Grant with his name on it. He couldn’t risk getting hurt tonight, not after waking up with residual bruising from his previous night’s fate.
He stood up and breathed in a deep lungful of sea air. The view from the ship was the familiar unending darkness of a night at sea. If he really was in Hell, it was at nighttime that he truly felt it. The world became absent once the sun was gone.
It would be happening soon. Jack needed to hurry. His cabin was two decks below and the elevator was slow. He raced down the stairway to the pool area and headed for the Promenade Deck. Probably less than five minutes now until the attacks began, but Jack was confident he could make it to his room.
He hurried inside the corridor and summoned the elevator from the lower decks.
The elevator began to rise.
Arrived at Jack’s floor.
The doors opened.
And someone pointed a gun in his face.
“Hello, pardner. I was hoping to bump into you again.”
Jack’s eyes went wide. “Donovan?”
***
Donovan escorted Jack down to the cargo hold, the gun buried against the small of his back the whole time. If it went off, Jack’s spine would be shattered. And it might just stay that way.
Jack stepped out onto the steel walkway and headed left under the directions of his captor. They were heading towards the blue crates and the other pallets belonging to the Black Remedy Corporation. The plastic boxes had been pulled free of their cargo area and placed on the floor in parallel lines. All of them were open, displaying millions of dollars in US currency.
“Beautiful, ain’t it?” Donovan said seriously.
Jack took it all in with bewilderment. “What is it for? Why have you put it all out on display?”
Donovan lowered his gun, although kept it where they both could see it. “In the interest of openness, Jack. Think you and I both want some answers.”
“Okay. You think maybe we can be open without the gun?”
Donovan seemed to think, before holstering the gun inside a leather slip on his belt. “Fair enough, but you just behave yourself, you hear? You already know I’m not afraid to use it.”
Jack’s eyes went wide as something occurred to him – something that should have been obvious the moment Donovan stepped out of the elevator. “You mean you remember-”
“Blowing your ribcage to pieces? Yeah, I remember, alright. Yet, here you are now, all alive and such. Ain’t it odd?”
Jack was short of breath. “How…how long have you been reliving the day?”
Donovan headed between two pallets and reached into the shadows behind them. He came back with two folding deck chairs and set them out side by side. They each took a seat. “Let me see now… Guess it must be a good six, seven months now. How ‘bout you?”
Jack shook his head. “I lost track, but probably about the same. How come I’ve never seen you before? I mean, up until the last couple of days.”
“I have a job to do, to stay here and keep an eye on all this money. I take my profession very seriously, pardner.”
Jack looked around at the bare and desolate space and could barely believe it. “You’ve just been sitting down here on your own for half a year?”
“That about sums it up. Figured whatever’s gone wrong will right itself soon enough. Least I used to think so, until I met you and your lady friend, that is.”
“Tally? What did you do to her?”
“Nothing,” Donovan looked ready to go for his gun at the merest hint of aggression, so Jack stayed quiet. “After I shot you dead, the girl backed off. We had ourselves a little chat and discovered that we’re in the same boat – figuratively speaking. Which is why I’m now a little more willing to…cooperate.”
Jack leant forwards. “You mean you’ll answer my questions?”
“If you’ll answer mine.”
“Deal.”
Donovan got up from the chair, making Jack flinch, but then stepped away and went over to the same pallets from where he’d gotten the deckchairs. This time, he came back with a bottle of bourbon whisky.
Jack grinned. “I think we may have just gotten off on the right foot.”
“You a whisky man, Jack?”
“Scotch usually, but what you have there is close enough.”
There were no glasses, so Donovan took a swig and handed over the bottle. Jack took a swig, too, and gasped as the liquid burned his gullet. He glanced at his new companion curiously. “What time do you wake up every day?”
“6AM, same as I have my whole life. It’s a sin to waste the day.”
“I wake up much later than that. In fact, I wake up eight hours later than that.”
Donovan whistled. “I’d expect as much from a listless teenager, but a grown man…? Now that’s a crime.”
“Well, you could say I had a few problems even before I came aboard this goddamn ship. That’s not really important now, though.”
“I guess not. What do you make of all this, Jackie? Your girl said we were under some sort of spell, that some fella hiding onboard is pressing the cosmic reset button every night.”
“Every night at midnight,” Jack added.
Donovan took another swig of the bourbon then cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t rightly stay up as late as that. I like to get my head down by ten each night. Sleep makes the man.”
Jack chuckled. “Maybe that’s why I feel like such a shattered mess.”
“You got things on your mind, Jackie?”
Jack took a longer swig from the bourbon and lost his breath for a moment. Eventually, he nodded but gave no answer to the man’s question. There was no way he was willing to trust Donovan with the absolute truth just yet. Not until he got some answers of his own. “What is all this money for, Donovan?”
“From what I understand, it’s a bribe. A harmless, run-of-the-mill payoff.”
Jack frowned. “To whom
?”
“Tunisian Government.”
Jack swallowed, tried to follow. “Why would Black Remedy be sending a load of US currency to North Africa?”
“Because the people there just overthrew their president. There’s a new guy in town that’s a little bit more with the times. He has plans to start a new Tunisian health service – much like your National Health Service. Black Remedy wants to ensure that they get the contract to supply said service. Tunisia’s currency isn’t worth a damn internationally, hence the US cash.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Sounds like this new president is as corrupt as the old one.”
Donovan smiled in amusement. “But at least this guy’s a corrupt democrat. That’s about as good as a country like Tunisia can hope for at the moment.”
“So what then,” Jack asked, wanting to get the full picture. “You’re supposed to deliver the cash to a person?”
“After the ship finishes its itinerary of the Mediterranean, it’s heading to Algiers and then on to Tunis where the cash will be collected at the docks. There’re a few pallets of pharmaceuticals as well to act as samples for the new health service, and some other bits and bobs I won’t go into.”
“So that’s it?” Jack said. “All this money, the drugs, and you with a gun, is just down to a bunch of corporate corruption?”
Donovan set the bottle of bourbon down on the floor between his legs and leant his elbows on his knees, looking Jack in the eyes intently. “That’s about the gist of it, pardner. Truth be told, I don’t have any more of a clue about what’s going on than you do. I’ve been sitting down here, day after day, thinking this whole thing was about me – supposing maybe I was in a coma or something. I figured I was stuck in some sorta weird dream.”
“I wonder why you haven’t been affected like everybody else.” Jack pondered. “Tally said that I was probably chosen by whoever cast the spell, but what’s your role in all this?”
Donovan shrugged. “Now that I’ve met you, Jackie, my best guess would be that whatever Hoodoo this practical joker has been casting doesn’t extend to the cargo hold. I mean, why would it? There’s not supposed to be anybody down here. My being here is a secret. I figure it takes a lot of effort to cast a spell that messes with time itself, so why stretch it further than you have to?”
“You really think that the cargo deck is unaffected?”
“In actual fact,” said Donovan. “I can pretty much prove it.”
“How?”
Donovan picked up the whisky bottle from the floor and sloshed the liquid inside. “Because, Jack, tomorrow morning when I wake up, this bottle will still be empty and I’ll have to go upstairs and buy another one. The ship’s been sailing nowhere for months now, but anything that happens down here stays just the way I leave it.”
Jack stared down at the half-empty bottle in shock. The more he learned, the weirder it all became. If what Donovan was saying was true, then the lower deck of the ship was a sanctuary from the spell. Time existed here as it was supposed to. It didn’t make complete sense, but it was another valuable piece of the puzzle. Knowledge was power and Jack had a feeling that he needed to know everything he could to have any chance of getting out of this mess.
“What about the virus?” he asked Donovan. “Black Remedy has to be behind it.”
Donovan shrugged. “I know nothing about it, you have my word. Seems kind of counter-intuitive, if you ask me. If the ship is overrun with a lethal biohazard, there isn’t going to be much chance of the cargo reaching Tunis, is there? Whoever caused the outbreak is unlikely to have anything to do with Black remedy.”
Jack sighed. “Then I’m shit out of answers. I was hoping these crates would be full of diseased monkey parts or phials of glowing green liquid. Would have made things simpler.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Jackie.”
Jack waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I guess I just need to go back to the drawing board.”
“Perhaps. But not tonight, pardner. Tonight we drink and make merry.”
“I don’t have time for that.”
“Like hell you don’t. I’ve been isolated down here for over six months. You’re going to have a knees-up with me tonight, even if I have to shoot you to keep you here.”
Donovan was obviously joking about shooting him, but Jack thought the invitation wasn’t the worst idea he’d heard lately. It would be nice to take a break for just one night. Upstairs, the passengers would already have started tearing each other apart. It was too late to try and help them tonight, not that he’s even planned to.
“Okay,” Jack said, picking the bottle of bourbon up off the floor. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get off this fucking ship?”
Donovan grinned at Jack and said, “I’ll go get a flu shot.”
***
“So how long have you worked for Black Remedy?”
“Not long.” Donovan’s voice was approaching a full-on slur now. “I was a prom-promis…promising young boxer once, if you can believe it. I got hurt pretty bad, before I ever got the chance to…belch!...to really make it. I could have been a contender, maybe make a comeback, but my girl was against it. In the end, I just did what made her happy.” He shook his head and sighed. “Then my girl up and leaves me a year later and both my parents pass on within the same decade. If it wasn’t for shit luck I’d have no luck at all.” He took another swig on the bourbon and spoke in a croaky voice. “Anyway, started doing private security when I hit twenty-five-or-so. Been doing it ever since. Black Remedy is just the latest in a long line of gigs. The pay is good, but not as good as if I’d been a professional fighter. Don’t that just suck?”
“Yeah, that sucks,” Jack admitted. “Still, least you were good at something. My whole life has been the epitome of average. Average kid, average teenager, average police officer, and not much else.”
Donovan looked at Jack with bleary eyes. “You…you’re a cop? That’s not average. That’s honourable. You p-p-protect people.”
Jack shook his head, which made his drunken vision tilt to and fro. “That’s American cops you’re talking about. British cops spend most of their time dealing with drunks, wife-beaters, and bad drivers. We never do anything to make a real difference. Goddamn justice system protects the criminals more than it does the public. It’s become cool to be a thug in the UK.”
“Then why…why don’t you…why don’t you do something about it?”
Jack laughed. “You think it’s that easy? I’m just a sergeant. No one listens to me. Anyway, I did do something.”
Donovan leant forward. “Oh really? What did you do, Jackie?”
“I killed a bunch of drug-dealing scumbags. Took them out while they were all lying around stoned. One of them even started giggling while I slit his throat. Never seen anything like it in my life – not even in the army. Drugs make people so screwed up that they laugh at their own murder.”
Donovan was looking at Jack with wide, worried eyes. “That’s stone cold. You just rolled up and killed them all, no kidding? The hell got into you?”
“My partner was shot to death,” Jack said, feeling both angry and upset by the thought. “She was trying to help a family being terrorised by a bunch of yobbos. The leader was a lad called Frankie Walker. The sonofabitch shot my partner in the goddamn hospital while she was checking on one of his victims. When I got there she was lying up against the wall in a pool of blood, already dead. Her face had gone grey, like it was made out of ash. She was a beautiful person, Donovan, and this Frankie snuffed her out like a cigarette butt. He was dead at the scene, too – shot by his own brother. His gang remained on the streets, though, still intimidating people and acting like they owned the place. I dealt with it.”
Donovan didn’t say anything. He just looked at Jack and shook his head sympathetically. It was the first time Jack had spoken about his actions outside of the force. To speak about such things freely would have sent him to prison. His superiors had found o
ut what had happened from a not-yet-completely-dead witness at the scene, but they covered it up, lest the public condemned the entire service. Most of Jack’s colleagues were partly glad that a prolific street gang had been taken out of action, and there was little sympathy for the victims, but the men and women Jack once considered friends were now suddenly very afraid of him. He became isolated and angry, a loose cannon with nobody to remind him of the rules. The decision to protect Jack by covering up his crime proved to be a mistake. He had only gone off the rails even further and was now untouchable by virtue of the secret that bound him and his superiors together.
“You must have loved her a lot,” Donovan said eventually. “A man doesn’t feel that much rage unless he’s failed to protect the woman he loves.”
Jack nodded. “We’d been together a little while, but had been hiding it from our colleagues. We were saving enough money to get a house and then Laura was going to quit the force and have a child with me. I lost everything.”
“And someone had to pay?”
Jack nodded. “I don’t regret it.”
“Well, I don’t blame you, pardner. Seems that the world gets worse and worse each day. Bout time some good folks started fighting back. Still, how the hell did you get away with such a thing?”
“I didn’t. I got suspended from the force, under the guise of bereavement – having my partner killed and all – and they stuck me in therapy for six months. I started drinking and stopped looking after myself. Eventually, after a couple years of watching me self-destruct, my bosses authorised a budget to send me on this cruise, to try and break me out of the emotional tailspin I’ve been in. I get the impression it’s their final gesture of kindness before they finally discharge me. Tell you the truth; if things ever go back to normal, that’s just what I want. I can’t do the job anymore. I’ve seen how little justice there is in the world and I can’t be a part of a broken system anymore.”
“I hear ya. Ain’t no place left that hasn’t witnessed the evil of man. Bad guys all over.”
The BIG Horror Pack 1 Page 95