Ivor and his family became ill the night after boarding – yesterday.
Ivor’s daughter, Heather, is at a more advanced stage of infection – was that due to her age?
Conner is another passenger who boarded the same day as Heather. He’s also sick, but his girlfriend, Claire, isn’t. She boarded a day earlier. She hasn’t caught the virus from Conner, so it seems unlikely the virus is airborne.
Donovan worked for the world’s biggest drugs company and was smuggling arms overseas. He was murdered, most likely by Tally.
Tally made false accusations about Jack, to hinder his movements onboard. Why? And how did Donovan factor into her agenda?
The ship is at sea and due to dock in Cannes tomorrow. Why did Joma stop the ship today? Why not back in Palma, before the virus was even transmitted in the first place?
Jack felt like a blind man groping his way down an alley. The answers were in front of him, but he could not see them. Why was it that Claire wasn’t infected but Conner was? Why was Heather worse than everyone else? Where onboard was busy enough, and cramped enough, to infect a third of the ship’s passengers?
What was he missing?
“Sir, can you come with us, please?”
Jack turned around to see four of the ship’s guards approaching him. They didn’t seem like they were willing to talk.
Jack threw a short uppercut to the closest man and threw him into the others. One of the guards dodged out of the way and managed to throw himself into a tackle, but Jack managed to apply a front face lock and cinch in a guillotine chokehold. It was only a matter of seconds before the guard pass out in his arms, but then Jack found himself trapped beneath the man’s bulk.
Unable to move, he was helpless to resist arrest as the other three guards recomposed themselves and bore down on him. They hoisted him to his feet and dragged him away. Jack knew he was on his way to see the captain again.
1700hrs
Captain Marangakis entered the room with the same authoritative display he always did. This time, Jack lacked the patience to show the man respect. He rose up from his chair and grabbed the captain with both hands, spinning him around and wrapping an arm around his throat. The two guards in the room were taken too much by surprise to act,
“It’s time you and I went and made a phone call,” Jack said, yanking Marangakis towards the door.
“You’re in very deep trouble, Mr Wardsley,” Marangakis said defiantly.
Jack squeezed the man’s windpipe and made him choke. “Shut up. How do we get to the Bridge from here? We need to contact the mainland. There’s something very dangerous aboard this ship, and I don’t mean me.”
“What are you talking about, you maniac?” Marangakis fought against Jack’s arm, but he was going nowhere.
“The Bridge? How do we get there?”
“There’s a…there’s a ladder outside this room. It leads to an elevator.”
Jack dragged the captain backwards into the corridor, keeping his eyes on the guards who were pursuing him. He found the ladder, which actually turned out to be a steep staircase. It led to the ship’s surveillance rooms and security offices, and Jack saw an elevator further down. He dragged Marangakis towards it, keeping an eye on each of the doorways as he moved past them. In the furthest security office, the one right before the elevator, something caused Jack to halt.
Tally!
Tally sat in a small room lined with a bank of monitors. She looked bored, inspecting her fingernails. Jack shook his head in disgust. She’d pulled the false accusation trick so many times now that she had become tired of having to sit there every day while security looks for him. Accusing a man of rape had become routine and pedestrian.
Tally looked up and saw Jack through the glass pane in the door. Her eyes widened immediately.
Jack prodded Marangakis in the small of his back. “Open it.”
“And let you terrorise that poor girl even more? Never.”
Jack applied more pressure onto the lower discs of the man’s spine, until he cried out in pain. A guard rushed to intervene, but Jack shouted. “Get back or I’ll snap the captain’s neck as easy as a twig.”
The guard stopped and took a single step backwards.
“Now,” Jack said. “Open this door, captain, or I’ll hurt you.”
Marangakis reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a navy-blue key card. He swiped it against the door and a metallic click rang out as the magnetic lock disengaged. Jack shoved the captain hard in the back and he fell forwards, head smacking against the thick wood of the door.
Tally leapt up from her swivel chair as Jack entered.
He kicked the door closed behind him and pulled the handle to make sure that the lock had reengaged. Marangakis fled to a corner of the cramped room and turned around to face Jack. The expression on his face was one of outrage. Jack didn’t give a fuck.
“Stop all this right now,” Marangakis demanded. “If you do not-”
“Sit down, shut up. I’m trying really hard to use violence as a last resort, but time is getting too tight for diplomacy.”
“J-Jack, what are you doing here?” Tally trembled in front of him, bent at the knees like some frightened child.
“Cut the act, you lying bitch. What’s your game? What are you playing at?”
“W-what? Just stay away from me. HELP! God, please help me.”
“Leave her alone,” Marangakis demanded.
Jack pointed a finger in Tally’s face. “She’s lying. I never touched her. She’s a part of what I’m trying to warn you about. There’s a virus aboard this ship and she knows all about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, just don’t hurt me again. I have a daughter.”
Jack took a step towards Tally, veins threatening to burst under the strain of his boiling blood. He almost raised a hand to hit her, but kept his temper under control, and instead leant in and whispered to her. “Your daughter would be ashamed of you. That’s if you even have one.”
Before Jack could gauge Tally’s reaction to his words, Marangakis piled into him. Jack’s feet tangled up and he found himself being rammed backwards against the room’s desk, where he felt something sharp dig into his back, followed by dampness. Marangakis pummelled him with meaty fists, left and right, knocking his vision loose and disorientating him. From the corner of his eye, Jack saw Tally flee through the door while several guards came inside.
Jack struggled to get free, but he was outnumbered. He rolled and twisted, managed to shrug the captain away from him. But the guards surrounded him inside the small room.
Jack winced and straightened up from the desk. He reached around behind him and pulled loose a blood-soaked pencil that had been embedded in his shoulder. He thought about using it to stab Captain Marangakis, but decided not to. If he injured anyone today it would be permanent and, like it or not, the people he was fighting were innocent. They didn’t deserve to die.
They still needed taking down, though.
Jack swung a fist and backhanded Marangakis across the bridge of his nose. Then he reversed the swing into an overhand right and clocked the nearest guard in the jaw. In the narrow space of the room, Jack was able to take down the other men, one by one. In a wider space they would have overwhelmed him.
Captain Marangakis was slumped on the floor, looking like a melancholic Teddy bear. He looked up at Jack wearily and said, “You’re a madman.”
“Yes, I am, but trust me when I tell you that I’m trying to help you and everyone else. Terrorists have released something monstrous onto this ship and if it reaches the mainland, we’re not going to make it. And when I say we I mean the entire human race. I don’t know who’s responsible, but the only lead I had just ran right out that door. I need to find Tally before it’s too late. Don’t try to stop me.”
Marangakis looked at Jack with zero indication that he believed him at all. Some things just couldn’t be accomplished in a single day, and convincing Marangakis of
the danger aboard his ship was one such thing.
Jack sighed. “Look, just send out an SOS to the mainland, okay? Keep an eye on your passengers and in a few hours you’ll be wishing you’d listened to me. It might be too late for most of us, but you can still save a lot of people if you just a warning.”
He turned and raced back into the corridor, needing to find Tally before it was too late.
1800hrs
Time was running out fast. Jack raced out onto the Promenade Deck and was faced with a setting sun above a dark blue sea. If he didn’t do something soon, this would be the final sunset the world would ever get to enjoy. He had two hours left, and he prayed to God that Joma’s visions of the future had been wrong, because it was starting to feel like there was no way to stop the virus reaching the mainland.
Jack didn’t know how much more he had left in the tank. He was tired and bleeding. His shoulder throbbed where the pencil had speared him and, as he reached his hand around again, he felt the cold kiss of blood against his fingertips. This was one wound that wouldn’t be healing itself at midnight.
He headed down the Promenade Deck and passed by a table and chairs. A half-empty bottle of water lay discarded there and Jack picked it up, unscrewing the cap. He poured the tepid liquid onto his hands and begun rubbing them together, washing away the blood on his fingertips. As he did so, something seemed to click into place at the corner of his mind. As his wet hands rubbed together, Jack was reminded of something from a long time ago, but was in fact only yesterday. There had been a bearded man at the entrance to the ship when Jack had boarded. The man had been dispensing alcohol rub to all the passengers coming onboard.
But it had never been alcohol rub, had it?
Finally, Jack knew how the virus had got aboard. Claire hadn’t been infected because she boarded the day before Conner. Only Jack’s boarding party had been infected because of the bearded man dispensing the virus right onto their hands. Poor little Heather had got a double dose, thanks to the extra squirt her dolly got on its plastic hands. Joma’s vision of a doll now made sense, but it was of no help. It was too late to help those infected. Poor Vicky would turn at eight o’clock, same as she always did. The only reason Jack hadn’t been uninfected was because he had dodged past the bearded man and gone straight aboard.
He never had a chance to stop this thing. The man responsible had never even boarded the ship. He was still out there somewhere, hundreds of miles away in Majorca, or maybe even further. He had dispensed the deadliest virus known to man and could probably release it all over again some place else. Even if Jack managed to stop the virus onboard reaching the mainland, then it could mean nothing, for the virus was already on the mainland – in the hands of a bearded man so callous that he would infect a child face-to-face.
Jack shuddered, but damned if he was going to play along with a scheme to infect the earth. If killing the passengers on the Spirit was the bearded man’s Plan A, then Jack was going to do his damned best to make sure the sonofabitch was forced to come up with a Plan B. Hopefully, there would be somebody else willing to get involved next time, because Jack was done after this. At least, he was going to be if he went through with the idea that was forming in his head. The world might still have one last chance, if he could do what needed to be done in time.
With a dry mouth, and a heavy heart, Jack headed for his cabin. There was a bottle of Gen Grant there with his name on it.
1900hrs
Jack had retrieved the bottle of scotch from his luggage and brought it down to the cargo hold. He’d also brought with him a blanket to cover Donovan up with. It felt good to share one last drink with his buddy, who had just been a man caught up in a bad situation, no different to anybody else on board. Donovan was not an innocent man, by any stretch of the imagination, but he was not responsible for anything that had happened since the Spirit of Kirkpatrick had set sail from Majorca. Jack was no innocent man, either. He had been a man consumed by rage, and perhaps always would be, but at least now he had the chance to make up for his past mistakes, to atone for the lives he had taken by doing something to save others. Despite all he had been through, starting with the loss of Laura and ending with what he was about to do this very hour, Jack still valued human life. He was still better than the monsters who had released a virus onto a ship full of passengers.
There were good people onboard the Spirit; people Ivor and his family, Claire, Joma, and Doctor Fortuné. It was for people like them that Jack was willing to give his life.
He took another swig of the whisky and enjoyed the taste one last time. The bottle was almost empty and he had drunk it so quickly that he was yet to feel its full force. He figured being drunk would make it easier, less frightening.
“Well, pardner,” Jack looked down at Donovan beneath the blanket, “if there’s an afterlife and you’re already there, get me a drink ready.”
“Seems like you’ve already had enough to drink, Jack.” Tally appeared from behind the pallet of blue, plastic crates full of cash.
Jack stood up, unsteady on his feet, yet clear in his anger. “I ought to wring your neck.”
“Try,” she said flatly. “But I promise that this time the bullet will kill you permanently.”
Jack looked at the revolver in her hand and immediately recognised it as Donovan’s. “How did you get that?”
“What, this?” Funniest thing. When I first…dealt…with Donovan, I took his gun for protection in case you came after me, but I woke up the next day and it was gone. Guess where I ended up finding it. Right back in Donovan’s holster. Weird, because he wasn’t under the spell like we were, was he? He stayed dead when I killed him, but I guess the fact that the gun didn’t belong with me meant that Joma’s spell kept having to make a slight adjustment and put the gun back where it came from. Interesting stuff. Pity Joma’s not here to explain it.”
Jack shook his head. “Why, Tally? Why kill Donovan and Joma? Why set me up for something I never did? I thought we were friends.”
“A friendship forged through fire is brittle, Jack. We are not friends; we are just the victims of fate. My true friends, my family, my daughter, they are waiting for me someplace else. You won’t stop me seeing them again.”
“What are you talking about? I thought we were both looking for a way to end this. Donovan was, too.”
Tally laughed and lowered the gun slightly, but she was too far away for Jack to reach her before she could raise it again. “Donovan wanted to end it, alright,” she said. “He wanted to end it all.”
“What do you mean?”
“The night Donovan shot you, he took me hostage. He knew all about the day resetting and that he hadn’t really killed you, but he wanted to know who the hell we both were. We spoke for the rest of the night and I told him what I knew, about the spell and a pathwalker being onboard. It seemed to be a relief to him that there were others besides himself that knew what was happening.”
“Of course it was a relief. We were all in this together, I thought.”
“Me, too, at first,” Tally said, “but then I found Donovan drinking himself to death in the Casino one night and he told me something. He told me that he was going to carry on drinking and screwing as many women onboard as he could, but that when the whisky stopped tasting good and the sex stopped being fun, he was going to sink the ship in order to kill the pathwalker and end the spell. He wouldn’t tell me how; just said he had a plan. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t stand around and wait for him to kill me and everyone else.”
Jack took a step towards her. “So you killed him first?”
Tally raised her gun. “And you’ll be next if you don’t step back. I thought about killing you before now, but I guess I took pity on you and decided to stick security on you instead. I couldn’t risk you finding the pathwalker and making rash decisions. I knew if I could just hold you off long enough the candle would eventually melt and the spell would end. Then I could go home to my daughter, along with as much
of the cash in these crates as I can carry.”
“Is this what this is all about? Greed?”
“No, not at all. That’s just a bonus. This is about me being with my daughter again, plain and simple.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. Joma told me what is at stake.”
“I know. I was watching you on the security cameras in the room the captain put me in. Once I knew Joma was the pathwalker, thanks to you, it made things much easier to expedite. Now, the spell is broken and you and I are going to sit tight until we reach the shore. I am going to see my daughter again, Jack. Now back away, before I change my mind and just shoot you.”
Jack did as he was told and stepped back. There was no chance of grabbing her before she could get a shot off. She was in control and he was beginning to feel sluggish from the booze in his system.
“If this ship makes it to land,” he said, “the whole world is going to be wiped out.”
“I’m not about to throw my life away and never see my daughter because of the nightmares of an old shaman. Joma could have been wrong.”
Jack shook his head. “You know that’s not true. You were the one who told me about pathwalkers and their abilities in the first place. You told me they were protectors. Joma gave his life so that billions of others wouldn’t have to. Your daughter included.”
Tally seemed to hiss as she spoke. “I can keep my daughter safe, don’t you worry, but I can’t do it stuck on this godforsaken boat.”
“You don’t get it, do you? The virus on this ship is unstoppable. If it reaches the mainland they’ll be no hope for anyone. It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I’m going to see my daughter and you’re not going to stand in my way.”
The BIG Horror Pack 1 Page 102