There was nothing noteworthy that Jack could see, but from the way Donovan’s body was angled it seemed that he had been doing something with one of the metal footlockers. When Jack tried to open the nearest one he found that it was locked. He searched Donovan’s pockets, cringing at the feeling of the gelatinous flesh beneath the clothing, and eventually found a set of keys in the breast pocket.
Jack tried the keys one after another until he found one that fitted the nearest footlocker. The lid was heavy and he had to use both hands to lift it up. Once it was open, Jack couldn’t believe his eyes.
The crate was full of military grenades, packed into a bed of foam. They looked like standard NATO-issue HE grenades. Jack checked some of the other footlockers and found that they too were full of explosives and, in several cases, assault rifles and side arms.
What the hell is the world coming to, when a US pharmaceutical company is gun running for African Governments? This is madness.
Perhaps this is what I’m supposed to do¸ thought Jack. Maybe I’m supposed to stop these weapons reaching Tunisia.
Whether or not Donovan was a bad person, or just a man doing his job without asking questions, nothing good ever came from giving people guns. If these weapons were to reach Tunisia then they would most certainly result in people’s deaths.
But do these guns have anything to do with the virus? Or everything else that has been happening on this godforsaken ship?
Jack’s head had begun to ache again. It was time for a drink. Time to think things through.
***
Jack had chosen to visit the Voyager’s Lounge. It was obvious that Security was searching everywhere for him, and out of all of the places onboard, this was one of the quietest. So far Jack’s low-key disguise had managed to keep him undetected. He’d even managed to walk past a guard on the Promenade Deck without being noticed. It was likely that his accuser had described the clothing that he usually wore – red t-short and shorts – and not the clothes he was actually wearing now.
Jack had been in the Voyager’s Lounge now for a couple of hours and had downed enough whisky to make his body feel warm and content. He had made good use of the peace and calm to think about what his next move was. It was now pretty clear that the only person who truly had the answers was the elusive pathwalker. Jack still had no idea who it was – or even what it was – but he was going to make it his only priority from now on to find out. It was something that would probably be easier said than done, though, with Security on his back every day. There was even a chance that Tally had made the whole thing up just to mess with him.
Joma turned up for his shift, signifying that evening had arrived. Jack went up to order another drink. Thankfully it didn’t seem that the friendly bartender knew that Jack was wanted for arrest.
“What can I get you?” he asked, smiling.
“I think I fancy a pint now, please.”
Joma nodded. This time he didn’t offer to pour the drink on the house. Obviously, he didn’t recognise Jack with the baseball cap on. Joma stepped in front of the lager tap and began to pour the frothy draught into a spotless pint glass. It was then that Jack noticed something a little weird.
“What happened to your hand, Joma?”
Joma looked down at the wound on his hand and tried to dismiss it as nothing. “I burn myself in the kitchen.”
Jack looked closer. “Looks bad. Is that…is that wax?”
The wound on Joma’s hand was red-raw flesh mixed with a spotty patch of gleaming white substance. It looked exactly like a burn caused by molten wax.
Tally mentioned something about a candle. She said that all time spells require one.
Jack stared at Joma and noticed something else. The man had aged at least ten years since the day they’d first met. Joma was not as ordinary as he had first seemed.
Jack’s eyes went wide. “You’re the pathwalker!”
Joma seemed struck by an invisible blow. It seemed like the relevant action for someone who had just had their cover blown. He nodded at Jack and seemed defeated. “I think we should go somewhere and talk.”
***
In a back room, behind the Voyager Lounge’s bar, Jack took a seat in stunned silence on a small leather sofa-cube. Joma tipped away the pint he’d poured Jack and went and got him something stronger.
He handed over a new, smaller glass and then took a seat on the couch beside Jack. “You’re a whisky man, right?”
“You should know by now. You’ve served me enough times.”
Joma shrugged. “I guess, but you haven’t been by for a while.”
“What’s going on?” Jack asked, cutting straight to the point.
“I think you know,” was Joma’s reply.
“No,” said Jack. “I haven’t got a clue about anything. All I know is that some kind of zombie-flu gets loose onboard and kills everyone, every single night, over and over. Plus there’s a small arsenal of weapons in the hold of the ship along with a dead body. Oh yeah, and someone onboard keeps accusing me of attempted rape – most likely someone who I thought was my friend.”
Joma smiled and actually seemed to find Jack’s frustrations amusing. He raised one palm as if wanting to summon calm upon them both. “I apologise Jack for the turmoil I have brought down on you, but I assure you that it was necessary. It was only meant to be you that was conscious of the true reality, but alas there is a gypsy onboard that I did not know of.”
“You mean Tally?” Jack asked.
Joma nodded. “Usually I would be able to sense her kind, but she is not an avid follower of her own ancestry – it made her spiritual aura…diluted. If she was a regular practitioner of the magiks then I would have sensed her immediately.”
“So…what? Is Tally some sort of witch?”
Joma shook his head and laughed. “No, no. She is just from a people blessed with a natural resistance to magic. Her ancestors were probably close to what you call witches, but their methods are all but lost now. I have come across very few Romany that truly remember their old ways.”
Jack rubbed at his forehead and sighed. Things were getting into mumbo jumbo territory again and he didn’t want his natural cynicism to kick in and cloud his ability to listen respectfully. “What about Donovan?”
“You mean the American man running around the ship like a drunken cowboy?”
Jack laughed. “Yeah, until somebody murdered him.”
Joma’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows lowered.
“You didn’t know?” asked Jack. “I found him dead yesterday in the cargo hold.”
Joma nodded as if something had clicked into place. “The lower deck of the ship was outside the range of my spell. The hull of the ship is stuck in time, but the cargo area within is a vacuum where time exists as normal. There was not supposed to be anyone down there, but it would appear this…Donovan…was an unfortunate stowaway.”
“He was transporting weapons and cash to Tunisia to bribe the Government on behalf of Black Remedy.”
Joma shrugged. “Such things do not surprise me. But they are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. What is more concerning now is that somebody killed this man in the hold. The only possible suspect is-”
“Tally. I’ve already started to come to terms with that.”
“It could be no one else. If there were another onboard outside of the spell then I would know of it. Other than you, she is the only one.”
Jack drank his whisky and looked down at the floor. He still could not fathom why Tally would murder Donovan. He couldn’t imagine the petite, beautiful girl committing such a brutal crime.
That’s probably how she got the jump on Donovan. He never saw it coming.
“Why is she doing this? Killing Donovan and trying to set me up so I have to go into hiding? I don’t see what she has to gain.”
“I see many things, Jack, but unfortunately I cannot see a person’s motivations for doing something. Perhaps she seeks to stop you from succeeding in your tas
k.”
“Task? What task? If I am here for a reason I would really like to know why you didn’t just come find me on day one and tell me.”
“That would have been against the rules. A person cursed with the ability to see across the pathways is forbidden from taking direct action to change future events. I must let them play out, but you are not bound by those same rules. You can change things, Jack.”
“You’re saying you can’t get involved, but you can stop time?”
“Not stopping time-“
“Yeah, yeah, resetting it. I know.”
“By resetting the day, I am not directly altering events. I am just allowing the possibility for them to play out differently. You are the X factor that will decide where the future will lead.”
Jack stood up and stretched his legs. The backroom was tiny and featured only the sofa-cube and a side-table, so he walked up to the wall and rested his forehead against it. “Why me?”
“Because you’re alone.”
Jack turned back around. “What?”
“If you had a family onboard, you would not be willing to do the things you have done to find answers. You would have been focused only on their safety. Slowly, over time, you would have become broken by their inability to break free of the spell.”
“So the only reason I’m in this hell is because my life was already a tragic mess?”
“In a way, yes, but I also sensed that you were a protector: someone that values human life.”
Jack laughed. “Guess you don’t know that the reason I’m here is because I killed a bunch of people?”
Joma nodded. “Oh I know, Jack. When a man takes a life it colours his soul. I saw death on you the moment you boarded. Did they deserve it?”
“Yes,” said Jack without hesitating.
“Then that only proves that you are a man willing to do what is necessary. My assessment of you was correct from the very beginning.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
Joma stood up and walked over to Jack, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Save the world, my friend. That is what you are supposed to do. How exactly, I do not know, but once you find a way all will become clear.”
Jack was about to ask what the hell that meant, when a body came crashing into the room. It was another waiter from behind the bar. The terrified man was bloody and wounded, a wide gash running down the side of his neck. He tried to speak but could only manage to gargle on his own fluids before falling to the floor, dead.
“Shit,” said Jack, looking at his watch and seeing that it was twenty-four minutes past eight. “The infected have turned.”
We need to get somewhere safe,” said Joma. “I didn’t realise we’d been talking for so long. I should have locked the door.”
Jack looked at the splintered frame of the door and then back at Joma. “Well, I think that option’s come and gone now. We’re going to have to go out through the bar area.” Jack peered out through the gap in the doorway. “But there are a couple of infected people.”
“I can’t go out there,” Joma said.
“You’re going to have to. If we stay in here then they will eventually get in. Plus this dead waiter on the floor will be back on his feet again soon. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“You need to get them out of the lounge, Jack, and barricade the doors.”
“It will be easier if we just run.”
“I can’t take the risk, Jack. I can’t.”
Jack pushed the broken door as closed as possible and put his back against it. He looked across the small room at Joma. “Why not? Why can’t you leave?”
“Because if I die the spell is broken.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Then you want to be careful I don’t kill you myself. There’s nothing I want more than for this goddamn day to end.”
“If I die, then this is exactly how the day will end. Everyone onboard will become infected, and then it will get a whole lot worse. I’ve seen it, Jack. That’s what this whole thing is about. But if I die tonight then the spell is broken and there will be no hope left at all.”
There was no time for Jack to ask questions. One of the infected in the lounge had already spotted him peering out from the doorway and was coming over. It was an overweight man with a torn belly hanging out of his shirt like raw hamburger meat. He ran at Jack as soon as he rounded the bar.
Jack braced his back against the door, which shuddered as the fat man smashed against it. The door was broken, but secure so long as Jack stood up against it. He looked at Joma for answers. “So, what the hell should I do?”
Joma glanced around the room, but only ended up shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe, they will go away if we just keep them out of this room.”
The infected behind the door began to shriek like animals and Jack’s body was jolted as the weight against the door increased. The other infected passenger in the room had joined the fat man in trying to break in. Jack wouldn’t be able to hold the door against both of them for long. Joma ran up to help him brace it, but it was awkward for them both to find space and leverage.
“This isn’t going to work,” said Jack. “They’ll be in here as soon as we start to tire.”
“Maybe they’ll get tired first,” Joma suggested.
“I don’t think they’re like us. I think they can just keep going until something tears them apart. They won’t stop until we’re like them.”
The conversation became irrelevant when the dead waiter in the middle of the backroom floor began to twitch. The man’s fingers clawed at the carpet and a low moan started to escape his lips.
Jack felt his skin tighten up in terror as he realised they were about to be surrounded by infected on both sides of the door. “Your colleague is going to be on his feet any minute, Joma. We need to deal with him right now.”
“You do it,” said Joma in a voice so thick that it sounded as though he was on the verge of puking. “I’ll hold the door.”
“You sure you can hold it?”
Joma nodded.
Jack moved away from the door, fully expecting the two infected people to come crashing through it the moment that he did. Fortunately, Joma was just about able to hold it. Jack moved over to the waiter, who was beginning to clutch and kick at the floor in an awkward attempt to get to his feet. Blood dripped from the man’s eyes and merged with the dye of the carpet fibres. Jack did the only thing he could think of. He raised his foot and brought it down as hard as he could on the waiter’s head. The blow was met with a wet thud, but it wasn’t enough to do the job. Jack stamped again, crushing the infected man’s skull against the floor. Then he stamped again.
And again.
Eventually the waiter’s skull was a pulped mess against the carpet and Jack felt sick. Stamping on a person’s head was something he never thought he would ever do. He turned back around to face Joma and realised that he was about to lose his struggle to keep the door closed.
Joma stumbled backward and the door swung open. The two infected passengers piled in. Jack shoved Joma aside and met them both head on, planting an open-palmed strike against the overweight man. The blow was only enough to send the man staggering backwards a few feet to collide with the other infected passenger. Jack already knew that hand-to-hand didn’t work against them, but it could at least get them out the way.
“Joma, stand behind me. When I move, you follow. Understood?”
Joma scuttled behind Jack and stood an inch off his heels. “Understood.”
“Okay,” said Jack. “When these two clowns get close enough, I’m going to try and shove them aside. Then we run for it.”
Jack made himself rigid, ready to strike like a cobra. The two infected recovered from their disorientation. They came at Jack, screeching. Jack sidestepped them, shoved out with both arms, and managed to grab a hold of each of them. Their momentum took them over Jack’s outstretched leg and his arms shoved them off balance. They clattered to the ground in a heap of bleeding limbs and slippery fl
esh.
Jack bolted for the door and felt Joma close behind him. The lounge was empty as they entered it, but the reception area outside was not. There were almost a dozen infected passengers nearby. They were hunched over, occupied by the spasming body of a mutilated teenager. They hadn’t noticed Jack or Joma yet.
That all changed when the overweight passenger came stumbling out of the lounge’s office and let out an animalistic shriek. The noise alerted the others outside and all at once they turned to look into the lounge area. They saw Jack and Joma standing there.
“Shit!” Jack rushed over to the double doors of the lounge and managed to swing them shut just in time.
Bodies flew at the doors and rabid fingernails scratched at the wood. Jack turned the lock shut just as an arm came smashing through one of the glass panels of the door. A hand grabbed a hold of Jack’s collar and yanked him closer. The strength was alarming and Jack was unprepared to resist it.
His face ended up against the shattered window frame of the door and he could instantly smell the sweet, putrid tang of open wounds and bleeding flesh. From behind Jack, Joma cried out as the overweight man and his companion stalked him around the lounge. Jack needed to get free and help him, or everything he was fighting for would be for nothing.
Jack grabbed at the errant hand on his collar and yanked it away. The fingers became tangled in his shirt and kept a hold on him, so he braced his feet against the door and kicked out hard. His t-shirt tore and he went flying backwards, landing on his hip. The double doors seemed to be holding out, despite the frenzied arms that were coming through the broken window, and Jack felt it would be safe to abandon them momentarily. He scrambled to his feet just in time to save Joma from being tackled to the ground. The overweight man had gotten a hold of him and was struggling to take a bite; the back and forth tussle had sent both men off balance.
Jack tackled the overweight man just as Joma was about to fall over. Immediately Jack started to pummel his fists into the man’s pudgy face, not because he had any hope of incapacitating him, but because it would at least keep the fat bastard down.
Sea Sick: A Horror Novel Page 15