The mammoth wave slammed down onto the deck, and Gavin’s world turned upside-down. He tumbled and careened. He gasped for breath as the bow aimed skyward, and he fought to clear the saltwater from his eyes. Upon regaining positional awareness, he found that he had washed back to the bulkhead at the rear of the deck. Somehow he had managed to maintain hold of his pistol. Keeping to a kneeling position, he lifted and fanned the weapon across and in front of him. Nothing. The beast was nowhere in sight.
Gavin dropped his hands, still fighting for breath, and laughed into the gale-force wind.
“Fuck you, beastie!”
He had begun shivering uncontrollably, and knew that if he did not get inside and get his core body temperature up, his victory would be short lived.
Holding to the bulkhead for support, Gavin stood and made his way back to the access door. He slipped inside and with some effort, succeeded in shutting off the access way just as another deluge of seawater struck.
Gavin fished the radio from his belt and keyed the mic. “This is Findlay. Got it. Got the sonofabitch. Now I just need to get warm.” He gave his location.
Doctor Vovchenkin would have him sorted in no time. There was still much to do, an investigation to be conducted. Shivering uncontrollably, Gavin forced himself to his feet, stuffed the Glock under his life vest and into the pocket of his snowcoat, and with slow, shuffling steps walked the short hall to the stairwell.
A voice issued from his two-way: “Physician is en route. Over.”
Gavin smiled. He was a survivor. Always had been. He reached the stairwell landing and turned, preparing to descend, but there was something on the landing. Something large and dark, waiting. It was a wolf with black fur, still wet, hunched over so that Gavin could smell its fetid breath, and see bits of flesh and gobbets of viscera stuck in its bared fangs. Saliva foamed and dripped, as for a breathless moment Gavin stared into the creature’s eyes. He beheld there an ageless malevolence, an unspeakable force from a time beyond memory, an elemental presence, ancient as the ocean that raged outside.
The beast turned its head sideways, opened its jaws wide and lunged.
Chapter Fifteen
There was a marked difference in the stark white and steel sterility of the crew areas compared to the décor of the passenger spaces. Alexander had little time to muse on the contrast as he jogged down the metal stairs, removing the rifle from his duffel bag. He had clipped the walkie onto his belt.
After descending two flights, he came to a short hall that intersected with a much larger passageway. He stepped into the space—duffel bag on his back, the Nosler held in his right hand, barrel pointed skyward—and was greeted with one long corridor running what seemed to be the entire length of the ship. It was deserted, save for yet another headless corpse, this one in blue coveralls, lying several meters aft, the head cast further down, both amidst a widening pool of blood. The bulkhead was splattered in crimson.
But which way had the beast gone? As he looked closer, Alexander spied bloody prints…
Just then the satellite phone rang. Alexander sighed heavily and answered. “Yes.”
“Have you been compromised?” his father asked in a voice completely detached from emotion.
“No.”
“But you have lost containment.”
Alexander glanced warily up and down the hall for any sign of the beast. Nothing. He replied in a low voice: “The target turned.”
Silence. Then: “Say again.” It was as close as Alexander had ever heard his father come to befuddled.
“I said the target has turned.”
There was a longer stretch of silence. The forward half of the ship rose upward, forcing Alexander to widen his stance. Finally his father continued: “Coast Guard is en route. Are you capable of completing the objective?”
As on many occasions, Alexander wished Father would just speak plainly. “Which bloody objective? Termination of the target or retrieval of the pills?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued: “The pills are in my possession.”
“And what of the target?”
The vessel dipped steeply. “I’m tracking now.”
“If faced with being compromised or completing the objective, abandon the objective. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” This directive did not come from any concern for Alexander’s safety. His father and those he answered to had quite obviously come to the conclusion that the pills were now more important than the lives of those onboard the ship.
“I expect frequent status updates,” the voice said, but at the same time another voice was coming over the radio on his belt.
“Signing off,” Alexander responded and ended the call. He heard the man on the walkie say something about “Got the sonofabitch. Now I just need to get warm.” A brief silence, then: “I’m at the crew deck access.”
Did they think the creature was dead? Unless it had been washed overboard, which would admittedly solve a great deal of Alexander’s problems…
“Physician is en route, over,” a voice answered on the walkie.
Alexander looked once more up and down the hall, then walked to take a closer look at the bloody prints. They were smeared, but distinct enough for the hunter to see that they were directed toward the bow of the ship.
Much further down the corridor Alexander spotted a mass of some kind. He ran and soon came to the remains of a laundry cart. It appeared the beast tore through it.
Sounds echoed through the passageway then, heavy footfalls on steel. The noise was coming from further ahead, the forward section of the ship. The hunter dropped to his right knee and propped his left elbow on his left knee. He tried to steady the rifle with his left hand as the ship tossed.
The noise had ceased. Alexander considered that the beast might be able to smell him, but felt confident that the masking scent would remain effective. Pain flared in Alexander’s arm on top of the damned pain already in his shoulder. He gritted his teeth and for a moment, the only sound was the creaking of the ship and his own breathing. Then he heard the footfalls again, in some stairwell out of his sight, descending. There was a panicked squawk followed by a thump, as if something large landed heavily. Alexander stood and moved quietly forward.
At the corridor’s end, close upon the port side, Alexander discovered another stairwell. Scattered among the steps were droplets of both water and blood, leading downward. Silently, the hunter followed, steadying himself as the ship rocked. Somewhere outside and high above, thunder boomed.
***
One flight down, the hunter found a mauled but still living Yuri Vovchenkin, the physician. So much for his high hopes of the wolf being lost at sea. The beast had leaped, tore out most of the contents of the physician’s stomach, and moved on. Yuri’s intestines lay coiled and looped about him. The physician stared with wide eyes, his breath catching in ragged gasps. He was gripping a hypothermia blanket in one hand. Faintly Alexander heard a woman scream, a wail that was abruptly cut off. As delicious as the physician’s suffering was, Alexander could not tarry. He reluctantly pushed open the door, stepped over the dying man and into a crew hallway. The physician would not survive his wounds, would not heal and become infected with lycanthropy.
Alexander traversed the passage toward the ship’s aft and soon came to an open door. More bloody tracks led into a back room of the infirmary. He continued forward into the admitting area where he came upon a woman, face up, wide eyes glazed, a gaping hollow in the right side of her neck and above the right clavicle. Alexander imagined that she had tried to run but was overtaken, the beast clamping its jaws at a downward angle on her neck and trapezius and ripping out a massive chunk. She was still bleeding out but was most definitely no longer among the living. He moved on through the area he had earlier navigated when leaving the doctor’s care, to the metal staircase. All the while he was careful to aim the rifle ahead of him.
On deck one he stopped and listened for screams. Hearing nothing, he continued on to the forwar
d passenger staircase. The tracks were becoming trickier to follow, as the wolf was apparently leaping entire flights of stairs at a time, racing upward. Just what the mutt was after, the hunter did not yet know.
***
There was a lingering… something inside the beast. A sense of some unsatisfied intent. For the moment, all other impulses were set aside. There was a place, a destination…
Up. Up.
The beast emerged in an open space and stopped. There were a multitude of smells, signatures, but there was one, stronger here. It was familiar. And pleasant.
It continued slowly, still adjusting to the motion of the earth beneath.
Feed.
Soon. Soon enough it would feed again, spill more of the divine essence. But first it must investigate, satisfy this particular impulse.
It came to a long open place, and further down, to a barrier. The smell was strongest here but the beast could sense that the other it sought was not here.
This other is no longer important. This other is food.
It did not seem right. No, this other was… special.
This other is food. ALL others are food. OBEY.
The feeling faded. The beast searched within for what instinct had driven it here, but the sensation was lost. The wolf could no longer remember why it had come.
Others were near. There was a sound, a barrier opening, and one of the others was… not protected.
Feed.
***
Sal Spears was worried. Vera had been fighting a headache for fifteen minutes now. They had remembered to bring all of her medications, except for the Coumadin, a blood thinner that Vera had been taking to prevent clotting and a possible stroke.
Vera mumbled something Sal couldn’t hear as he sat on the bed and slipped a t-shirt over his head.
“What?”
She repeated, louder: “The captain said we shouldn’t leave our cabins!”
“Pah.” Sal waved his hand dismissively. “I’m just going down the hall to see if Ginny has aspirin. What, I’m gonna go overboard?”
“You might fall. We’ve been rocking something fierce.”
Sal stood, placing one hand on the nightstand to steady himself. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you don’t want me running off to see another woman in the middle of the night, is what I think.”
“Please. You wouldn’t know what to do with her if you caught her.”
“Ha!”
Vera had her palm over her forehead. Sal stepped into his slippers. He shuffled to the door and turned back before opening it. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, call the president.”
“We’ll throw a party.”
Sal stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He held a hand to the bulkhead to steady himself as the ship pitched, looking down at first as he made his way toward Ginny’s door. Halfway between his cabin and Ginny’s, he looked up, and for a long moment, simply frowned, mouth hanging open. It was impossible, what he was seeing. It had to be some crazy kid in a costume, some kind of silly prank… but it looked so real. And as it stepped forward he glanced down at the thing’s legs. The way they bent backward, no human could walk that way. He looked up once more and knew that the monster standing before him, its fur matted with blood, its eyes shining like amber jewels, was very real.
Sal Spears said a prayer and emptied both his bowels and his bladder as the dark wolf closed in.
***
Ginny had waited, and waited, but no one came. The captain had come over the PA and asked everyone to stay in their cabins and avoid the common areas, supposedly because of the storm, but she knew better, didn’t she?
The drunk woman whose cabin she was currently sharing (“Peggy,” as it turned out) had sobered up a great deal. But along with her cognizant improvement came a full state of panic. She had paced around the room, wondering why no one was coming, why there were still dead people outside her door, and most of all wondering just what the fuck was wandering loose around the ship, killing people. Peggy’s anxiety was making Ginny crazy. She had called twice more to the purser’s desk, but ominously, the phone just rung and rung.
This of course had only heightened Peggy’s distress. She was sitting on the bed, rocking back and forth, muttering, “Gonna die, we’re gonna die oh God we’re gonna die.” Ginny had calmed the woman as best she could, but there was no consoling her, would be no consoling her until someone got her answers.
“I’m going to the purser’s,” Ginny finally announced.
Peggy was as white as the towel animal on her couch. “You can’t go out there! Whatever killed those men might be there!” Her voice was petulant.
“It’s gone.” Ginny wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew. The last thing she wanted to do was walk through that dim, corpse-choked hallway… but she had made up her mind. You can do this. She walked to the door, took a deep breath, turned the handle, stepped into the hall, and let the door close behind her.
“No, don’t—” But Peggy’s voice was cut off, and Ginny knew there was no way in hell the woman would come after her.
The smell of her own vomit struck her nostrils and she had to fight not to puke again. Her throw-up had run down the wall and mingled with the blood on the now-crimson carpet. Ginny held her nose, stepped cautiously past the crumpled body at the opposite cabin door, and made her way to the end of the hall where she had entered and first seen the corpses.
Just keep going. You got this.
As she continued forward Ginny tried to get her mind off of the death and the stench. She wondered if the passengers at the show would be held in the theater. What about folks in the casino? Were they being told to wait? If so, what excuse was being given?
Ginny passed the fire door and stopped just for a second, breathing air that didn’t stink of puke and blood and shit. Made it out. Everything’s okay. Keep going. She walked out to the elevator banks and around to the next hall, then picked up her pace, rushing down the eerily silent passageway, senses alert. The hallway rose in front of her and suddenly it was like walking a treadmill on the uphill setting. She reached out, steadied herself, and hurried on. Soon she came to the forward staircase as the ship dove.
When she ran up to deck two, she emerged so that the starboard-side doors that led to the internet café, chapel and further toward the theater were behind on her left. The fire doors were closed. The purser’s desk was ahead and to her left, and the piano bar was just beyond. There was a Filipino man in a white outfit standing at the closed doors. When he saw her, he rushed forward.
“Ma’am, all passengers must remain in their cabins…”
As the man reached out to guide her by the arm, she pulled away and jutted a finger in his face. “There are fucking dead people on deck one! Your security people! I’ve called and called the purser’s desk.”
The man glanced nervously toward the empty purser’s desk. “I assure you we’re doing all that we—”
“Spare me the bullshit! Look, I know, okay? I know that there’s… something running around loose, but you can’t just leave dead people in the hallways.” Without warning, tears poured from her eyes.
Don’t have a breakdown. Keep it together.
Just then the man’s two-way radio squawked: “Situation is still bravo. Repeat, situation is still bravo.” Ginny didn’t know what that meant but it didn’t sound good.
Another man came running. He had blond, curly hair and was slightly overweight. His cheeks were flushed and he was sweating. Ginny glanced at his name badge and was surprised to see this was Rocco, the annoying cruise director. When he spoke, she recognized the voice, though the smarmy quality it once held had evaporated.
“We have to keep these areas clear, ma’am, please.”
Ginny looked out to the starboard porthole, where the churning waves rose and fell. At one point as the ship surged high enough to allow a view of the ocean, she could see a white vessel, large, but still significantly smaller than the Rapture, not far away
. Coast Guard?
“Where’s your cabin?”
Ginny tore her eyes from the porthole. “Deck five.”
“I want you to take the elevators right here and go straight to your cabin, okay?”
Refusing to move an inch, Ginny replied: “And I want to know that something’s gonna be done about the dead people on deck one.”
Rocco threw a wary glance at the Filipino man. “We’ll take care of it, I assure you.”
With one more look at the porthole and a seething stare at the two men, Ginny walked around the bank of glass elevators and hit the button. One of the cars was already waiting. The light flashed and the doors opened. Ginny could hear Rocco saying something about heading down to the infirmary as she stepped inside.
She pressed the button for deck five and then watched the two men as the elevator ascended. Rocco walked away toward the staircase out of view. The Filipino man went back to his post at the closed fire doors.
A pleasant female voice announced “deck five” and the doors opened. As Ginny stepped out and crossed to the port side hallway, staggering to maintain her balance, a shot rang out.
***
Alexander had followed the bloody prints all the way up to deck five and over to the port side. At one point a voice on the radio had declared that the situation was still “bravo.” Yeah, it would bloody well remain “bravo” until he put a bullet in the abomination’s skull.
He had stepped into the portside cabin hallway, rifle already raised, and saw the hound with its right hand buried in the guts of some codger… no, not just any codger. Sal, that was his name. The helpful geriatric. As Alexander watched, the wolf had lifted Sal up against the bulkhead, lining the old boy’s neck up with its own jaws.
The Turning Page 18