Max stood, and when he shook his head, the distress in his eyes confirmed the woman wasn’t going to make it. He ran to the next victim, knelt down, and searched for a pulse. The man’s chest injuries were so extensive several rib bones jutted from his bloody flesh like mangled fingers. He must’ve been dead, because Max was up again and moving onto the next person in a flash, who also looked to be dead.
Three dead passengers in a space of about twenty yards.
It took a certain person to remain calm when all hell was breaking loose. Max was one of them. Gabby was another. She was a great reporter. So good that her career projection had had some of her competitors making unfounded suggestions that she must have slept with her superiors to rise up the ranks so quickly. That had only driven her to work harder.
Even before the plane had hit, Gabby had known the bloodshed was going to be extensive. But glancing around and seeing the number of people who weren’t moving confirmed she’d underestimated how bad the carnage would be. There was no telling how many fatalities there were in the decks below. Their deck had been hit with just an engine and other minor debris, but after it’d ricocheted off the water, the bulk of the plane had slammed into the decks below.
Two thoughts blazed through her like forked lightning.
Did the plane damage the hull?
Are we sinking?
She strode to the outer railing, leaned out and gasped. “Oh my God.”
Although it would’ve been the photo of her career, it didn’t offer the level of elation something like that usually would. The impact had carved a huge hole in the side of the ship. One dangling life raft was on fire and several others were gone altogether. Black smoke spewed from the wreckage, confirming that either the ship was on fire or the plane was. Or both.
Shit! Why isn’t there a siren?
Surely the Captain would’ve sounded the horn.
Why aren’t the staff commanding everyone to report to their muster stations?
“Max!” she yelled. He was kneeling before a little girl who was screaming for her mother. She was about six or seven years old and was wearing a pink polka-dotted swimsuit. A streak of blood stained her neck.
Gabby strode to him and touched his shoulder. “Max.”
“What?” He leaned in to examine the little girl’s wound.
“This is serious, Max.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know. I think the ship will sink.”
His gaze shot to her and with clenched teeth, he indicated to the girl with his eyes. “Jennifer can’t find her mom, Gabrielle. I need you to stay with her while—”
“Oh no, no, no.” Gabby shook her head. “You’re not leaving me.”
“People need me.” He’d given up his paramedic career a decade ago, yet Max always jumped in when aid was needed.
“I need you.” Gabby glared at the intensity in Max’s eyes, pleading with him to make the right decision.
“Stop it, Gabrielle. People are dying.”
“Max!” She spoke with forced calm. “A hell of a lot more people are going to die if this ship sinks.”
“It’s not sinking. The siren would’ve sounded.” Max turned back to the little girl. “Where did you last see your mom?”
The girl glanced at her side. “She was right here.” Tears streaked down Jennifer’s cheeks. A sob burst from her throat. “Now she’s gone.”
“Okay. It’s all right. Now tell me, what was your mom wearing?”
As the little girl described her mother’s floral dress, Gabby wanted to scream. They didn’t have time for this. They should be getting their kids. They should be putting on life jackets and racing to their muster station.
Everyone should be.
Max glared at Gabby. “Jennifer needs you.” Max unclasped Jennifer’s fingers and placed the small palm into Gabby’s hand. “Look after her.”
“Max. I mean it. Don’t go.”
He stood, pecked her cheek, and then raced down the stairs like an elite gymnast.
As Max moved from one bloodied body to the next, Gabby’s feet were glued to the artificial grass. The carnage on her level was nothing compared to on the party deck beneath theirs. Blood was everywhere. Mangled bodies were too.
A steady stream of people flooded into the area below via a set of double doors next to the bar. Every one of them had the same reaction. First was mild inquisitiveness. Next came gasps of horror. Gabby spied a teenager who seemed to be using her phone to take photos.
It was the impetus she needed to unroot her feet from the floor.
“Hey, Jennifer, let’s see if we can find your mom.” Clutching her tiny hand, Gabby led the girl down the stairs, and as Jennifer’s wide-eyed gaze shot from one bloodied corpse to the next, and her complexion faded to deathly pale, Gabby conceded that Max was right. Their children did not need to see this.
But it wasn’t just the graphic scene that was distressing. It was the agonized screams. A lot of people were in horrific pain and the unbearable cries around them had Gabby’s stomach churning. It didn’t matter how many times she’d heard it—the sound of a person screaming in absolute agony was the most sickening of all.
She tiptoed around rubble, careful not to step on any blood, or outstretched fingers, heading toward the teenager in the denim shorts. The girl must’ve sensed her approach because she spun her way, glanced up and down Gabby’s body, but promptly looked away.
“Hey.” Gabby noted the phone’s screen was indeed illuminated. “Is your phone working?”
“No.” She chomped on purple chewing gum as she spoke.
“I can see that it is.”
“Only the camera.” She bulged her heavily made-up eyes.
Gabby wanted to slap the cockiness right off her pretty young face. “Everyone else’s phones have stopped.”
“So?” The girl zoomed in on a bloody body and snapped a few photos.
“Where were you when the plane crashed?”
“In the toilet. Go figure, huh?” The girl shuffled toward another victim and Gabby scanned the bedlam for Max.
It’d been a long time since she’d seen him in this capacity. While she avoided the bodies, he dived in, not afraid to get his hands covered in a stranger’s blood.
She glared at the staff who should be helping him. Several were still standing behind the bar and judging by their stunned expressions, and lack of action, they obviously had no idea what to do.
The bitter stench of blood filled the air.
Many were dead. Many more were critically injured, some beyond hope. Yet Max was the only person who was doing anything.
The two barmaids, whose only problem just ten minutes ago would’ve been running out of little cocktail umbrellas, were sobbing hysterically as they knelt beside the bloody corpse of their colleague who’d taken the full impact of that exploding mirror.
They would be in shock, but that was no excuse.
They should be taking control.
It was probably the same on the lower decks, especially the dining area, directly below. The buffet had opened just minutes before the plane had hit. One minute, passengers could’ve been deciding between Atlantic crab claws and caramelized beef cheeks. Next minute they could’ve been fighting for their lives. Or worse. Dead.
“You.” Max pointed at a woman wearing a tiny white uniform. “Come help me.”
Gabby recognized her. The young barmaid had made her children chocolate milkshakes a few nights ago. But the chirpy young crew member who’d babbled non-stop while she’d made the calorie-overloaded drinks was gone, replaced instead with a fragile woman who looked set to crumble to pieces at any second.
Max had a convincing way about him, and although the barmaid’s eyes had her looking like she’d seen a zombie, she still ran to his side. “Place your hands over this wound. Keep the pressure.” Max grabbed her hands and showed her what to do, and to Gabby’s surprise, despite the horrific amount of blood, she did as instructed.
�
�Where’s the Captain?” Max asked her.
“We don’t know. We can’t contact the bridge.”
Gabby’s mind skidded to what she’d noted earlier. Every single piece of electronic equipment on the deck had died. The lights. The music. The movie. Their phones.
The cruise ship had been in trouble before the plane even hit.
An escalation of voices caught her attention and Gabby turned as seven crew members and a security guard burst through the double swinging doors.
“Jesus Christ.” The guard’s bulging eyes scanned the carnage as he strode to the two crew members who were still demonstrating utter incompetence by sobbing hysterically.
Holding Jennifer’s hand, Gabby coaxed the girl forward, aiming toward the new group’s hasty huddle. Despite the surrounding bedlam, she still managed to catch snippets of their dialogue.
“. . . Captain’s dead.”
“No . . . heart attack. . . . pacemaker. . .”
“EMP.”
“. . . stopped. . . engines. . . nothing.”
“No coms . . .”
Gabby’s mind snagged on the EMP acronym. Electro Magnetic Pulse. Several years ago, she’d covered a story on a bunch of crazies who were preparing for the end of the world. The Preppers, as they’d called themselves, had garnered enough supplies in two shipping containers they’d buried beneath the ground to create a life-saving compound. They’d estimated they could live like that with a dozen personally selected friends for ten years.
Ten years! She couldn’t even imagine why they’d want to.
They’d gone into extensive detail when explaining the Electro Magnetic Pulse phenomenon to her, and at the time, Gabby had believed they were completely nuts. But the story had rated well. Audiences loved the crazies.
Now, though, she wasn’t so sure they had lost their minds.
An EMP strike would explain why everything had stopped. The lights, the music, their phones had all shut down at exactly the same time.
It would also explain why the plane had fallen from the sky. Even though its impact was some time after the power failed, it still made sense. Planes didn’t just plummet straight down; they glided. The most famous one was the A320 that Captain Sullenberger had landed in the Hudson River. If her recollection was correct, he’d had about four or five minutes after his engines failed to land that plane. However, the difference there was that Sullenberger hadn’t lost all power; he’d still had some control. The plane that hit the cruise ship would have been completely incapacitated after the EMP strike.
That pilot hadn’t stood a chance. Nor had all those passengers.
The effects of an EMP attack would also explain why nobody had triggered the emergency sirens—there was no power to do so. Gabby recalled the Preppers keeping two-way radios and other critical electrical equipment in a contraption they’d titled a Faraday cage. Basically, it was a metal box that shielded the contents from a gamma blast.
It would explain why denim-shorts-girl still had a working phone. She’d been inside the ship, in a toilet, when the EMP had hit. Gabby’s hopes were growing. The bulk of the ship was its own Faraday cage. She may get her hands on a working phone after all. If so, she’d be able to find out what the hell was going on.
And she’d be able to relay her story directly to headquarters.
A young crew member staggered through the doors, launching Gabby from her burgeoning wave of hope. But the second she recognized the woman, fear whipped up Gabby’s neck like a viper. It was Priscilla, the young crew member who was in charge of the kids’ club. Tears streaked her flushed cheeks and her wide, darting eyes screamed her distress.
Gabby launched Jennifer up to her chest and as the little girl strangled Gabby’s neck, Gabby ran to Pricilla. Each step was like she was wearing cement boots.
Gabby clutched Pricilla’s arm, digging her nails in. “Where are the kids? My kids? Sally and Adam. Where are they?”
Pricilla’s eyes bulged. Her lips trembled. “They . . . they were doing a Pokémon hunt?”
“What?” Gabby’s heart exploded in her chest. “Where?”
“I don’t know.” Pricilla jammed her fist to her mouth as if stifling a scream. “I can’t raise them on the walkie-talkies. They could be anywhere on the ship.”
“Oh my God.” A strangled cry burst from Gabby’s throat.
Chapter Six
“Jesus Christ!” Gunner leaned over the port side rail in an attempt to assess the damage to the stern. Clutching the metal, his heart hit locomotive pace. His eyes snagged on every critical aspect. The plane had punched an enormous crater into the mid-to-rear sections of the ship, and the tail jutted out the side like the end of an arrow. Black smoke spewed from the wreckage.
None of the runners he’d sent earlier had returned, and without comms, or closed-circuit television, he had no idea what the hell was going on. There would be fatalities—there was no doubt about that. It was his job to make sure there weren’t any more.
Before the setting sun stole all visibility, he had to inspect the damage himself.
He strode back inside and eyeballed Sykes across the dimly lit room. “Sykes, you’re in charge of the bridge. Continue with visual surveillance and mayday calls.”
“Yes, sir.” Sykes saluted and aimed his binoculars out to the blackness beyond the window. The waxing moon was about to be the only light. It was hardly enough. If a petrol tanker was right in front of them, they’d have no chance of avoiding it.
If pirates were to attack, they were all dead.
He turned to Jae-Ellen. Her wide eyes radiated fear. Or shock. Maybe both. Pauline’s expression was exactly the same. Ignoring their distress, he did a curt nod, hoping to portray confidence. “Right. You two come with me. Let’s go.”
He led the way out the door and down the stairs to the eleventh deck. He had hoped the emergency lighting in the interior of the ship had been insulated from the EMP.
He was wrong. It was completely dark.
The urge to run full tilt toward the devastation was powerful but stupid. Instead, he maintained a hasty stride with his hands held forward to avoid colliding with anything. He was heading for Petals, the buffet restaurant at the stern.
His brain snagged on the timing of the crash. Mealtime. The buffet restaurant would’ve been heavily occupied. There could be dozens of fatalities.
His heart lurched. It could be hundreds.
But the damage to Petals wasn’t his greatest problem. If the extent of that smoke was anything to go by, then he could have another emergency on his hands.
A fire on a ship was a catastrophe.
“Sir.” Jae-Ellen cleared her throat. “Why didn’t the emergency lighting come on? Aren’t they on a separate system, designed to never extinguish?”
Her question was an intelligent one.
The answer was terrifying. The ship’s wiring was its central nervous system.
And that made an EMP attack its worst enemy.
His brain scrambled for a way to put that into words that didn’t terrify them any more than they already were but that also didn’t insult their intelligence. “An Electro Magnetic Pulse is different to any other kind of nuclear explosion. It’s unlikely to be seen or felt by humans. But it is hell on electronics. This ship is crammed with extensive wiring that connects every digital aspect to the bridge.”
Gunner’s hands hit a wall and he glided his way toward the stairwell he recalled was to his right. “An EMP strikes in two stages. The first one is a super-strong radio wave that overloads and burns out any electronic devices it encounters. The second stage instigates cascading failure as the electromagnetic pulse shoots along every connecting electrical cable. Emergency lighting is all over the ship. It just needed one of those lights to be hit with that super-charged pulse for it to zap all the connecting wires. It’s a domino effect. Take out one, take them all out. System-wide blackout.”
“Jesus!” Jae-Ellen’s breath hitched.
“So . . . so you d
o believe it was an EMP strike, sir?” Pauline’s voice was barely audible, drowned out by crippling emotion.
As he launched up the stairs, the railing guiding his way, he considered her question. He’d been thirteen when he’d told a lie that’d ruined his family. Ever since then he’d committed to telling the truth. He just hoped his two senior crew members could handle it. “If just the ship had been affected, we could’ve attributed the blackout to some kind of system failure. But add in the demise of that plane and it puts the situation on a catastrophic level. One that the world has never experienced before. So yes, unfortunately, I do think it was an EMP.”
Jae-Ellen made a noise like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Oh my God.”
“What’re we going to do?” Pauline’s shrill voice bounced off the stairwell walls.
He wanted to look them in the eyes and portray the integrity he’d been faking for decades. But it was impossible in the blackened stairwell, so he kept going. At the top landing, he crossed the carpeted hall and headed for the exit doors. “We must do our best. That’s all I ask. But we’ve got to keep it together. For the sake of the passengers. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Gunner had strolled the length of the ship at least a hundred times since he’d boarded twelve days ago. It usually took about ten minutes.
Now, he did it in three.
The second he pushed through the outer doors he was hit with a sound that had his gut contorting. People screaming. With the diminishing sun’s waning light, he bolted along the deck, heading toward the cries with his heart in his throat. It would be bad. He just had to brace himself. Act cool. Calm. In control; like a Captain should be.
He failed.
His first sighting of a victim had his own silent screams blasting at his ears.
It was a passenger from the plane. The poor woman hadn’t stood a chance. She’d been still strapped in her seat when she’d catapulted into the gelato stand. A shattered pane of glass had punctured through her chest, pinning her and the chair to the refrigerated counter.
Waves of Fate | Book 1 | First Fate Page 5