The Russians had seemingly diverted from their original schedule and we were now heading in a totally different direction. I decided I had to find out for myself what newly laid plans our captives had in store.
Chapter Forty-Five
I winced when the soles of my boots squeaked on the vinyl floor surface. Still, no Russian guards came running. I padded slowly to the crook in the corridor and peered around the corner. Nobody occupied the space along the ship’s walkway and I wondered if the Russians had completely deserted the vessel and had simply left us to our own devices. Maybe they’d abandoned the idea of a new world, boarded the other warship and gone home.
My musings were abruptly interrupted by a loud, nasal voice blaring from the public-address speaker, high on the wall in the opposite corner. I didn’t understand what the voice was saying but the tone sounded slightly panicked, as though the guy doing the talking was under considerable stress. Finding out what was happening without the use of a translator or anybody telling me, was going to be a tough task.
I decided to press on and crept around the corridor corner. I always imagined warships to be full of red colored wheel valves and pumping steam pistons, like in those old black and white movies, but this thing was totally different. The décor primarily consisted of bland white vinyl walls and blue vinyl floor tiles. I trod carefully by some open doorways, peering into the dimly lit rooms beyond. They were offices of some type but completely unoccupied.
The sound of shouting from somewhere up ahead caused me to duck into one of the empty offices. I stood behind the half closed door, leaning my head around slightly so I still had a view of the corridor. Two Russian sailors charged by the office, too preoccupied and too anxious to notice me. The nervous, worried expressions on their faces told me all was not good in their world.
The sailors ran down the corridor, the way I had come from and I wondered what the hell they were doing. They weren’t armed but they looked spooked, like something big was going down. Their obvious anxiety only added to my burning curiosity.
I moved cautiously out of the office, heading away from the direction the sailors went. I needed to take a look outside to see what was going on out there. The ship rocked violently to the right, the motion throwing me against the corridor wall. I slammed into the vinyl surface and then slid down the wall while gasping for air. A muffled booming sound echoed from somewhere above me and the ship seemed to jolt from side to side, almost as though we’d run aground.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, sliding upright with my back pressed against the wall.
I carried on moving further down the corridor, this time at a faster pace. Time was of the essence, yet again. I wanted to see for myself if we were in any immediate danger.
The corridor continued into the distance but I stopped at the bottom of a double set of walkways, ascending up to the next deck level. The walkway was recessed slightly, away from the main drag of the corridor. I noticed a red fire extinguisher and a red bladed axe inside a glass fronted locker behind the stairway. Leaning forward with my hands on the steps, I took an upward glance. Nobody seemed to be around the walkway summit. A door banged shut from somewhere behind me and I heard raised voices in Russian dialect.
I took a brief glance over my shoulder and heard approaching footsteps, moving at a rapid pace. I had two options – break from cover and head back to the refugees mess deck or climb the ladder and hope I’d stay undiscovered. I decided on the second option.
Trying to keep the noise to a minimum, I scuttled up the walkway, keeping in a hunched crouch. I heard the Russians still talking in loud voices, pass by below me as I reached the walkway summit.
Glancing around my surroundings, I noticed a steel gray door, with a wheel positioned in the center to my right. Another corridor sprawled directly in front of me and I heard the sound of hushed voices from various rooms adjacent to the passageway. I stayed in a crouch, listening to the mutterings. The speakers talked then ceased, as though they were listening to incoming information, then relaying the messages in turn to others. It was quite an achievement that the Russians still had radio communications.
A few more closed doors stood to my left, so I plumped for the wheel controlled door hatch to the right. Slowly, I crept across the floor space to the steel gray doorway. Another sudden rocking motion caused me to lose my balance and roll over, literally head over heels. Luckily for me, the ship’s roll took me in the direction I wanted, towards the steel door. I tried to keep silent and ignore the pain as I crashed against the hard surface, my right shoulder taking the brunt of the force.
I gripped hold of the wheel at the center of the hatch and hauled myself to my feet. Wincing, I rolled my shoulder and opened and closed my fingers to check my limbs were still in working order. When I’d sufficiently recovered, I slowly turned the wheel in the center of the door. The steel lock disengaged, making a slight grinding sound.
A blast of freezing cold wind blew into my face as I pushed open the door a tiny crack. I glanced behind me, hoping the breeze hadn’t traveled into the communication offices further down the corridor. Nobody came to investigate; they were probably preoccupied with their own tasks. I turned my attention back to the small gap in the door.
The noise of the ship whooshing through the sea was the first thing I heard. The salty smell carried in the breeze blasted through my sinuses. I took a glance along the walkway and realized I was positioned at the right side of the ship. Smith had taught me some nautical terminology in the past and I remembered the right side of the ship was referred to as starboard.
The walkway I looked out onto was covered by the steel sheeting of another deck above me. No Russians occupied the immediate vicinity and I was covered from view from the deck above, so I stepped out through the doorway and engaged the wheel lock from the outside. I knew I was pushing my luck with every advancing step but I wanted to check the Russians weren’t preparing to dump us into some damn war zone.
Waves from the sea below bashed against the side of the ship, sending up a shower of spray washing over me. I tasted the saltiness on my lips and squinted against the bracing sea breeze blowing into my face.
The ship was in the middle of another sharp turn and I rocked against the steel guard rails, running along the ship’s side, the only barrier between me and the sea.
I instinctively ducked down when the chatter of machine gun fire rasped from somewhere on the deck above me. I couldn’t figure out what the machine gunner’s target was or where they were aiming.
The ship completed the turn and I had a clear view of our destination. Smoke billowed into a slate gray sky from red brick buildings dotted amongst a flat landscape. Several tall, motionless cranes stood around the port and I saw another gray Russian warship alongside the jetty, around a mile in the distance.
The whole place looked as though hell had been unleashed. Fire and smoke ripped through the port’s buildings and scores of undead roamed around the dock. I saw Russian military personnel aboard the docked warship, trying to fight off an army of ghouls on the upper decks. The Russians were heavily outnumbered and even though they had firearms, they were struggling to make any sort of impact. The military guys were bunched together in small clusters but were rapidly losing numbers under the mass of zombies.
I still couldn’t see the machine gunners aboard my vessel but saw their illuminated tracer bullets battering into the undead that were swarming the port. The boom of a huge gun sounded above me and again I instinctively ducked down. The shell from the massive gun on the deck above me slammed into some flat roofed buildings on the shoreline and obliterated the structures, amid a cloud of smoke, fire and big slices of flying concrete.
I couldn’t figure out where we were. The terrain was flat and still coated in a dusting of snow but the timeline was all wrong for our proposed Norwegian destination. Why were the Russians leading us into a zombie besieged port? The only explanation I could think of was we’d been diverted to try and assist their comrades aboard th
e beleaguered vessel docked in the harbor.
Whatever the outcome, the situation didn’t bode well for us refugees. Maybe our captors would try and use us as cannon fodder against the mass of undead.
The ship skimmed onward through the waves, towards the carnage on the jetty. I didn’t know whether to stay put and watch the horrific scenes unfold or to rush back down below decks and warn the rest of my party. But what could I possibly achieve on my own? What would I possibly gain by telling Batfish and Wingate and all the others that we were heading into Armageddon in some unknown port? I’d only accomplish making them all more scared and worried than they already were.
“You could always jump over the side, swim ashore and make a run for it.”
The voice from behind caused me to rapidly swivel around.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” I sighed. “Not you again.”
Chapter Forty-Six
My alternative self stood on the walkway in front of me, ridiculously dressed in a Russian Cossack uniform, complete with long gray coat and tall wooly hat with flaps at the sides and front.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“What am I doing?” I rasped. “What the hell are you doing here and why are you dressed like that now?”
“I’ve come to lend a hand,” my alternative self said with a smirk. His words were almost drowned out by the wind and the overhead machine gun fire. “And I’m dressed like this to pay homage to our Russian friends.” He then spoke, I can only assume in a mock Russian accent. “An artel's pot boils denser, comrade.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” I snapped.
“It’s a Russian saying, you moron and it means ‘with a helper, a thousand things are possible.’ Don’t you know anything, man?”
“Look, I don’t have time for this shit right now,” I groaned. “I got a million things going through my mind, we’re about to dock in god knows where and all I know is, it’s full of damn zombies. I don’t need any of your bullshit.” I pointed to the shoreline and hoped I hadn’t raised my voice so much that the gun crews above had overheard me.
My other self shook his head. “Why do you always have to be so damn rude?”
I sighed in exasperation. My alternative self had helped me in the past but he was also guilty of leading me down dangerous paths. So I never quite trusted him or knew whether he was telling the truth or feeding me a crock of total horse shit. Hell, I didn’t even know if he was for real or just another bad hallucination, conjured up by my twisted mind.
“Just say what you’ve got to say and get the fuck out of my face,” I growled.
“Ooh, Bretty boy,” my other self mocked in a high pitched tone. “Who’s acting like the big tough guy now Smith has ridden off into the sunset?”
“Leave Smith out of this,” I spat. I didn’t want him using Smith’s departure as another form of abuse. He certainly knew how to push my buttons. I glanced up and down the walkway to check nobody had been alerted to our conversation. “Listen, I can’t stand here arguing with you all day. What do you want?”
My other self grinned with self satisfaction, knowing he’d annoyed me, yet again.
“Talking of Smith, he may not be as far away as you think, pal.”
Now I knew he was bullshitting. Smith was long gone from…wherever the hell we were.
My alternative self raised his arms above his head and gazed out across the open sea. He seemed to be attempting a dramatic pose. “I see a long voyage, a long passage for you and a few of the others.”
“Ah, please,” I groaned. “We already know we’re headed to Norway. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Another boom shook the whole ship as the big gun fired another shell onto the port. I flinched and stooped slightly. The stench of cordite wafted on the breeze and another building on the shoreline crumpled under the impact of the explosion. When I righted myself and glanced to my front, my alternative self was gone.
“What in the hell was he talking about?” I muttered.
My thoughts about my imaginary foe or friend soon evaporated as the ship drew closer to the port. I heard the frantic screams and shouts for help from the Russians onboard the besieged vessel, combined with gunfire and moans and cries from countless undead occupying the jetty and the nearby ship. Bullets pinged through the air in every direction, burning ghouls plummeted off the jetty into the sea, smoke from burning buildings and clouds of cordite hung thickly in the air.
The ship I was onboard steered towards the zombie infested ship. I didn’t know whether they planned to draw alongside the vessel or dock beyond its bows. We veered so close to the other ship that I could see the hysterical expressions on the remaining Russian’s ship’s company. The zombies onboard the vessel scowled at me as we drifted by the hull.
I didn’t want to be part of this chaotic situation but I couldn’t bring myself to head back below decks. What would happen if we were trapped in the mess deck if our own ship was overrun? It would be a certain, slow death. But alternatively, I couldn’t simply stand by while Batfish, Wingate, Spot and Chandra were caught up in the mayhem.
I needed a gun, a weapon of any kind. I’d lived for the last…god only knew how long with a weapon at my side and now I felt vulnerable and naked without one. My panic and stress levels rose to maximum as we brushed by the adjacent ship and neared the jetty. Fuck the Russians and their vision of a new world, fuck this place and fuck everybody. I was going to arm myself and take out anybody who tried to stop me.
I stood for a couple of seconds, forming a crude plan in my mind as the ship veered towards the dockside. Footsteps clumped across the metal deck above me. The Russians were obviously preparing to land the ship ashore somehow.
“Fuck it,” I spat and turned back towards the door hatch behind me.
Chapter Forty-Seven
I crept back through the corridor and down the staircase towards the fire locker situated behind the steps. The communication guys seemed to be a little more animated with their garble as I slinked down the staircase. The fire locker wasn’t sealed so I pulled open the door and took out the axe. At least, I’d have some form of protection from whatever shit storm was coming our way. I decided to head back for the mess deck and warn the others. Maybe we could arm ourselves with whatever came to hand and somehow break out of the ship’s confines. Crude plan as it was, we couldn’t simply wait below decks for our fate to be hanging in the balance at the hands of the Russians. From what I’d witnessed, they really didn’t give a crap whether we lived or died.
I moved slowly back into the corridor, trying to remember my route back to the refugees mess deck. The ship’s layout looked so similar and I had a hard time remembering how to backtrack the way I’d come.
Russian voices echoed from the corridor on each side of me. I was stuck in the corridor with the furthest office door still way ahead of me. I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Should I just attack them with the axe and accept my inevitable fate or surrender?
I felt I had an obligation to the rest of the party so I decided I’d take the placid option. Two Russian sailors trudged towards me from my right with concerned expressions on their faces. One of them carried a metallic black revolver and he looked totally shocked when he saw me standing in the corridor. He stopped moving and aimed the firearm directly at my head. His colleague muttered something and shuffled up behind him.
I dropped the fire axe to the floor and held my hands above my head. My plan was foiled at the first phase.
“All right, guys no need to shoot me,” I called. “I’m just a little concerned with what’s going on out there.” I nodded to the side of the ship for emphasis, but I doubted if they understood what I meant.
The guy holding the revolver screwed up his face in anger and grunted something at me. His unarmed colleague stepped towards me with an equally menacing expression on his face and I knew I was probably ripe for a physical beating from these guys.
I sighed, accepting what was coming. I
t wouldn’t be the first time I’d been beat up on since the apocalypse began. I remembered reading the influential author George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ in English classes at Brynston High School and the last few lines in that novel always stayed in my mind. He alluded to how once the farm was overrun by the enslaved animals against their evil human captors, that they were now all on an equal level. But some animals were deemed ‘more equal than others.’ I knew exactly where old George was coming from when he wrote that book.
“Listen, there’s a whole bunch of undead out there,” I said, trying to reason with the guy as he stomped towards me. “You’d be a whole lot better off if you were out there helping your comrades.”
The Russian sailor holding the revolver upturned his mouth in an ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude. He strolled towards me, backed up by his buddy and I braced myself, expecting a whack in the face with the pistol butt.
Two more Russian guys marched along the corridor in the opposite direction from behind me. They were dressed in long khaki coats and peaked caps, looking hassled and stressed. The sailors stopped in their tracks when they saw the other military guys approaching. They both took a backward step away from me with concerned expressions on their faces.
“There’s a whole load of trouble out there,” I muttered to the approaching new guys, who I guessed were high ranking officers. I was simply trying to avoid the inevitable beating.
The two guys in the khaki uniforms barked some orders at the sailors and the naval men muttered a response, then fled back down the corridor, the way they’d come from.
I eyed up the two men standing in front of me. They were both young with intense blue eyes, elongated faces and hooked noses.
“You shouldn’t be out here, scum,” one of them sneered in broken English.
I shook my head. “Sorry, I was looking for the bathroom and I got lost.”
The Left Series (Book 5): Left On The Run Page 21