Jack glanced at his watch. It was just after eight. The infected would be attacking any minute. The lives of the passengers onboard were about to come to an end and this time it was for keeps. Jack felt sorrow for them, but he now knew that their deaths had always been inevitable. There had never been any chance to save them. What he needed to do now was make sure that their deaths were the only ones caused by the virus. Tally was the final obstacle in his way of achieving that goal.
It was time to end this.
Jack turned and ran, diving behind pallets as the sound of gunshots rang out behind him. If there’d been any doubts at all that Tally was prepared to kill him, they now vanished. There was no persuading her.
Jack peeked out from behind a stack of boxes and was met by another gunshot. The bullet hit only inches away from his face and sent shards of plastic up in the air. Jack crouched down and scurried toward the rear of the cargo area. Tally had said that she didn’t know what Donovan’s plan had been to sink the ship, but Jack was pretty sure he knew what the cowboy had been planning.
He reached the rear pallets of the cargo area and slid around behind them, using them for cover. Tally had stopped shooting now, which made it impossible for him to pinpoint her location without breaking cover and exposing himself.
He had to work fast.
Jack took out the keys he’d taken from Donovan’s body earlier, before he’d draped the man with a blanket. He inserted them into a nearby footlocker now, and opened it up to reveal a collection of US assault rifles. Jack had never fired an AR-15 before, but he hoped his military background was enough to help him through. He opened up a small green box on an adjacent pallet and pulled out a handful of rounds along with a magazine to load them into. After a quick look over his shoulder, Jack thumbed the rounds into the magazine and slammed it into the base of the rifle with a satisfying clink. He disengaged the safety and disengaged it, before pulling the charging handle and priming the weapon to fire. It was time to go to war.
“Don’t move, Jack. I don’t want to kill you, but you know I will.”
Jack had his back to Tally and was pretty sure she knew nothing about the rifles in the footlockers or, more specifically, the one he was holding against his chest.
“If you kill me,” he said, “then you’ll be responsible for billions of deaths, not just mine. Do you really want that, Tally? Is that really something you can be okay with?”
“You’re not going to convince me, Jack. I’ve made up my mind. My daughter is the only thing that matters.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Jack span around and fired off three rounds. Tally flew backwards, clear off her feet, as if her body was attached to bungee cords. Her blood soaked the floor where she came to rest on the metal walkway. Her eyes remained focused on Jack, not yet dead.
Jack walked up to her slowly, kicking away the revolver lying only inches from her grasping hand. He pointed the assault rifle at her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I promise you this is the only way your daughter will ever be safe.”
Tally spat blood at him.
Jack pulled the trigger.
2100hrs
The sound of people being butchered and torn apart on the upper decks was the only thing Jack could hear now. It made him even more resolute about what he needed to do. As an explosion erupted from somewhere above, he thought about Claire and her unborn baby, cute little Heather with her dolly, and the two small boys racing around the Promenade Deck. They would probably all be dead by now.
He looked down at the six crates full of grenades he’d laid out next to one of the ship’s diesel engines. There must have been more than two hundred of the handheld explosives in total, and while Jack was no demolitions expert, he was fairly certain an explosion of such magnitude would be enough to cause a pretty significant breach in the ship’s hull. The Spirit needed to sink fast to prevent it being rescued by any nearby vessels. The virus needed to disappear without a trace beneath the depths of the Mediterranean.
There was one grenade missing from the crates. It was in Jack’s hand and he was staring at it in a half-sober haze. The Glen Grant had rendered him pretty inebriated, but he was still clear in his focus and lucid in his intent. From the moment he had boarded this ship, there had only ever been one way of leaving it. He just hadn’t been aware of it until now. Whether or not Joma knew things would end this way didn’t matter now. It didn’t change what needed to be done. The only way the virus could be stopped was if every single person aboard the Spirit of Kirkpatrick died and disappeared. There could be no survivors.
Jack yanked the pin from the top of the grenade and felt the spring-loaded ‘spoon’ release into his palm. Once he dropped the grenade into the pile of explosives he would have only five seconds. Five seconds of life left to live, five more seconds of pain and grief and anger. It was five seconds longer than he wanted or needed.
Jack opened his palm and let the grenade fall. It seemed to roll slowly, bouncing into the crate and coming to rest amongst its brothers.
He started to count.
“One…”
I…
“Two…”
Love…
“Three…”
You…
“Four…”
Laura…
“Five…”
The Next Day
Sixty-miles off the coast of France, Commander Harrington looked down from the foredeck of the Merchant Navy bulk carrier, Barstow. The rolling sea of the Mediterranean was littered with debris: passenger belongings, clothing, wooden fixtures of the ship, and pieces of scrap metal. While nothing had been determined yet, it seemed as though the passenger liner, Spirit of Kirkpatrick, had suffered some kind of explosion, perhaps from within the engine compartment. Harrington had been a seaman for many decades and seen such things before, but not with a passenger ship in modern times. With lawsuits being the way they were, safety checks on passenger vessel were beyond overcautious. It would remain to be seen what the cause was, but Harrington wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the explosion was a deliberate terrorist act.
The commander was no stranger to death at sea, but the thought of one thousand passengers and five hundred crewmembers sinking to their deaths left a numb space in his stomach. Civilians were not suited to terror. They did not embrace it like servicemen did. He pitied the suffering they would have gone through as they realised their time was up. The worst kind of death was one you could see coming, even if only by a few minutes.
What the hell had happened to those people? There hadn’t even been even an SOS. Whatever had happened had happened quickly, suddenly. If it had not been for the fact the Spirit had gone radio silent, no one would have even known it had gone down. If Harrington hadn’t been in the area, there would have been barely a trace that the ship left. Already the debris on the water’s surface was sinking beneath the waves, removing all trace that a ship had ever floated there. His men were currently doing their very best to retrieve whatever they could before it was lost forever.
Midshipman Brown approached with his trusty clipboard in hand and saluted Harrington from a few yards away. “Commander, we’ve received word that the French Coast Guard is just a few clicks out. They’ve requested we hand the situation over to them and that we have their thanks for our quick response.”
Harrington smirked. “Typical French. Don’t like the British stepping on their toes. Okay, Midshipman, let the crew know we’re out in thirty.”
“Aye aye, Commander.”
Harrington took a stroll along the deck, glancing over his men and supervising the wrapping-up of their efforts. They had divvied up the detritus as best they could, sorting it into separate containers: some containing scrap metal and parts of the ship, others containing personal belongings that could later be claimed by the passenger’s families. Harrington walked up to one of those containers now and examined its contents.
There were many things inside: an Andy McNab paperback novel, a
jewellery box, and all sorts of other mundane possessions. There was even a scorched police badge. One thing that caught his eye in particular, however, was a little girl’s dolly. Harrington picked it up and studied its dented face, trying to imagine the child it had belonged to. He felt his heart sag. The doll was a soggy mess now and seemed to sum up the tragedy quite succinctly. Its frilly dress had already started to succumb to the exposure to salt water and its small plastic hands had gone a sickly green as if some sort of chemical reaction had taken place.
Harrington decided to take the dolly with him and made a personal promise to himself that he would find out whom the toy had belonged to. It would be difficult, he knew, because whatever secrets the Spirit of Kirkpatrick had to tell were now well and truly lost beneath the sea, but he could at least try.
Captain Harrington turned on his heel and addressed his crew. It was time for them to leave. “Let’s get back to the mainland, seamen. I don’t want to think about what happened here anymore. We’ve been around enough death and misery for one day. Time to call it a day”
Two hours later, Commander Harrington felt a cold coming on.
PLEA FROM THE AUTHOR
Hey, Reader. So you got to the end of my book. I hope that means you enjoyed it. Whether or not you did, I would just like to thank you for giving me your valuable time to try and entertain you. I am truly blessed to have such a fulfilling job, but I only have that job because of people like you; people kind enough to give my books a chance and spend their hard-earned money buying them. For that I am eternally grateful.
If you would like to find out more about my other books then please visit my website for full details. You can find it at: www.iainrobwright.com. Also feel free to contact me on Facebook, Twitter, or email (all details on the website) as I would love to hear from you.
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About The Author
Iain Rob Wright is one of the UK's most successful horror and suspense writers, with novels including the critically acclaimed, THE FINAL WINTER; the disturbing bestseller, ASBO; and the wicked screamfest, THE HOUSEMATES.
His work is currently being adapted for graphic novels, audio books, and foreign audiences. He is an active member of the Horror Writer Association and a massive animal lover.
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Copyright
* * *AN SG HORROR RELEASE* * *
Part of the SALGAD PUBLISHING GROUP
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HORROR PACK VOLUME 1 copyright 2015 by Iain Rob Wright
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