Blood Cruise: A Deep Sea Thriller (18 page)

36.

Every single inch of the passageway’s floor outside the vault was covered by body parts. Not in a haphazard way, but in a deliberate, jigsaw puzzle complexity where each part was nestled perfectly against the next.

Nick, Niya, Mikey, and Chip stood at the end of the passageway, none of them brave enough to set foot off the stairs onto the floor, and stared with open mouths at the scene. The vault was only a few yards away, but may have been miles distant for all the observers cared.

“The package is in there?” Nick asked. “In that vault? The vault that’s standing open in the middle of Jeffrey Dahmer’s personal game of Tetris? Well, I wish you all good luck. I’m getting the fuck out of here now.”

“You’re staying right here, Sheeran,” Mikey said and pressed the barrel of his rifle into the small of Nick’s back. “In fact, you get to go first.”

“Ms. Romanski called point,” Nick said. “And I have always been a ladies first kind of gentlemen. It’s not exactly fashionable in the Pacific Northwest; in fact, you can get your ass handed to you for it, but I guess I’m old fashioned when it comes to manners.”

“That pussy smell is now you, Mr. Sheeran,” Niya said as she knelt on the stairs and plucked a small flashlight from the grip of a severed hand.

Flashlight on, she placed one foot down on a split open torso and tested its stability. The torso held her weight and she took another step, her other foot coming down on a thigh. Cautiously, placing every step with careful planning, Niya made it halfway to the vault before she turned around and gave the three men a reproachful look.

“You will be joining me,” Niya said. “Or I explain to Mr. Giraldi that the men he has hired are spineless and weak.”

“I’ll totally own up to those names,” Nick said. “Even if I don’t work for Giraldi. Spineless and weak I can live with.” He flapped his hands at the horror puzzle before him. “This shit? Nope. Big, fat nope. Not living with this.”

“Then you can die,” Mikey said as the barrel of the rifle moved from the small of Nick’s back to the depression at the base of his skull.

“Not if you want to get off this ship,” Nick said and slowly raised his hand. “Only one that can pilot the speedboat, remember?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Mikey said.

“Yeah, we’ll figure it out,” Chip echoed.

“Get your goddamn asses off those stairs and over here,” Niya snarled as she pointed her flashlight and a .45 at the men. “All three of you or I drop you right here and you can become part of this morbid art installation.”

Nick grumbled and mumbled obscenities as he stepped onto the bodies, trying to follow the path Niya had already taken. His left foot slipped in a rib cage and he pulled it out quickly, but ended up losing his balance and tumbling over into an elaborate arrangement of forearms and middle fingers.

Coated in blood and gore, Nick started crawling his way across the bodies until he was resting against the open door of the vault.

“I win,” he gasped as he tried to wipe congealed blood from his face, but only ended up smearing it around and making it worse. “Oh, Jesus Christ, this is nasty. So nasty.”

Mikey and Chip were a little more capable in their journey, but both still ended up taking a fall or two and were nearly as gore splattered as Nick when they reached the vault. Niya shook her head and gracefully walked past them all into the vault, her .45 up, with flashlight held underneath, both pointed ahead of her.

“Watch above,” she said as the stepped into the cavernous space. “There’s a hatch over that tank.”

“Tank?” Nick asked as he followed her inside. “All of this is over a tank? Shit, I could of found you guys a tank. I know a guy in Israel that has like three on hand right now.” He stopped talking as he saw the huge tank of bloody saltwater that occupied a good amount of the vault’s space. “Oh, that kind of tank.”

“I am not surprised to see this here,” Niya said. “Not after finding the ink.”

“The tank is open!” Mikey exclaimed and he spun around in a slow circle, his rifle jerking this way and that. “The package is loose! The package is loose!”

He fumbled his radio from his belt, but ended up dropping it into a thick pool of blood at his feet.

“Are you serious?” Niya asked as she walked back to him and retrieved the radio from the blood. She wiped it on her tights then clicked the transmitter button three times.

“What do you have for me, Mikey?” Tony’s voice asked.

“It’s Niya,” Niya replied. “And we have an empty saltwater tank. Your package is not here.”

“I wouldn’t call that tank empty,” Nick said. “There’s certainly something floating in there.” He walked towards the tank while Niya continued on with the radio conversation.

“I assume the package was some type of octopus?” Niya asked. “And not your usual sushi menu variety?”

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure,” Tony responded. “Yeah, I was told it was some genetic engineering project that was hijacked, making it that much easier for me to boost, but I never was told what kind of animal they were playing with. All I was told was to wait for the signal.”

“You didn’t think that was important?” Niya mocked. “That perhaps knowing that you were acquiring a creature with incredible intelligence, physical strength and dexterity, and camouflage ability might be good info to have?”

“I know it’s worth nine figures,” Tony said.

Niya had been following behind Nick, but the mention of nine figures stopped her in her tracks.

“High or low?” Niya asked.

“Very high,” Tony said. “Almost ten figures.”

“That’s high,” Nick said over his shoulder as he approached the tank. He stopped a few feet from it and shone his flashlight against the glass, but the beam only reflected back at him. “Crap. Gonna have to climb that ladder.”

“You’ve been shitting bricks for the past hour, but now you’re going to climb right up in that tank?” Mikey asked. “There is something wrong with you.”

“I have been told that on more than a dozen occasions,” Nick said as he took a deep breath and walked to the ladder on the side of the tank.

“Be careful,” Niya called after him.

“The tank is empty, right?” Nick replied. “I mean, something big enough to take out a ship filled with heavily armed men would be easy to spot hanging out in its aquarium, yeah?”

“Did you not hear me say that an octopus is a master at camouflage?” Niya responded.

Nick paused halfway up the ladder.

“So it could still be in there?” Nick asked. “Just waiting for me to grab onto whatever this big thing floating in here is?”

“Yes,” Niya replied.

“Okay then,” Nick said and started to climb back down.

“Tell him I have Blogger Boy with me. He keeps climbing or I shoot his friend,” Tony announced from the radio. “What was he doing?”

“He was about to fish out a corpse from the tank,” Niya said.

Nick took a second look at the thing floating in the saltwater and shivered. “That’s a corpse? Shit. I didn’t think it was a corpse.”

“What did you think it was?” Niya asked.

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “Not a corpse.”

“Grab it,” Mikey ordered. “You heard what the boss said, grab it or the blogger gets a bullet.”

“He’s not that good of a blogger to keep calling him that,” Nick said. “He’s great at cards, but is a barely passable writer.”

There was a garbled response on the radio.

“What was that?” Niya asked.

“The blogger heard that and says for Nicholas to go suck his own dick,” Tony laughed. The laugh stopped quickly. “But, yes, get the corpse out of the water. Now.”

“Shit,” Nick said as he reached the top of the ladder and leaned over the tank. “This is gonna suck.”

The body floating in the water was draped in a white lab coat, but that was about all the detail Nick could make out. It was no wonder he didn’t recognize it as a corpse considering how warped and twisted it was. It almost looked like something had tied the limbs together. But that wouldn’t be possible without pulverizing the bones inside each.

Nick felt like he was quite the hero for not throwing up again as he snagged the lab coat and pulled the body to the edge of the tank. He was also fairly proud of himself for not falling into the bloody water either.

“Gonna need some help,” Nick said as he yanked and yanked at the corpse, but couldn’t get the leverage to get it out of the saltwater.

“Leave…it…”

“Oh my shit!” Nick yelled as he nearly fell from the ladder. He grabbed onto the top rung and spun around. “Did you guys hear that?”

“Yes,” Niya said as she moved quickly over to a pile of bodies stacked against the wall. She stared at the bodies until one of the heads blinked back at her. “Here!”

Mikey and Chip hurried over and helped pull the man from the pile. None of them looked surprised to see him missing his legs from below the knees. They did look surprised when they spotted the makeshift tourniquets on the man’s thighs.

“Who are you?” Niya asked, kneeling next to the man as she eased him onto the floor. “What happened here?”

“Wagner,” Wagner replied. “Leave…the…body… The thing…won’t…like you…touching it.”

“Good enough reason for me,” Nick said and jumped down from the ladder. “I really don’t want to be here when whatever it is comes back.” He looked at Wagner. “The thing is gone, right?”

“Yes,” Wagner whispered. “Up.”

They all looked up at the closed hatch above the tank.

“Up where?” Nick asked. “Because there’s no up here.”

“It…closed…the hatch,” Wagner said. “Put…Glouster in its…cave…then left.”

“Put Glouster in its cave then left,” Nick said. “Yep. Totally makes sense.”

“Shut up,” Niya snapped and her .45 centered on Nick’s chest without her turning her attention from Wagner. “Who made it?”

“O…A…S…” Wagner replied.

“You’re OAS?” Niya asked. “You don’t look OAS.”

“What’s OAS?” Nick asked.

“Shut the hell up,” Mikey ordered, his rifle joining Niya’s pistol in the pointing at Nick’s chest.

Nick held up his hands and took a couple of steps back.

“N…C…D…C…” Wagner said. “I… Stole…creature…”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Niya said. “This very much looks like NCDC’s style. Too much blood for OAS.”

“At the risk of getting shot, would someone please tell me what’s going on?” Nick asked.

Before anyone could respond or shoot him, a loud clanging and thud from far above echoed down through the ship to them.

Niya looked at Nick. “What was that?”

“How should I know?” Nick asked.

“Go check it out,” Niya said to Mikey and Chip. “I think we’re being boarded.”

“We don’t answer to you,” Mikey said.

“Mr. Giraldi?” Niya asked into the radio.

“Yes?” Tony replied. “What did you find?”

“OAS project stolen by NCDC,” Niya said.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Tony replied. “But sounds expensive.”

Niya shook her head and let loose with several long phrases in Ukrainian that didn’t sound like she was praising Tony’s intelligence. “What do you see? I believe we have company, so some eyes would be helpful.”

“We don’t see anything,” Tony responded. “No, wait. Hold on. What is that? Let me get back to you.”

“No, I need you to tell your men to listen to me and go check it out,” Niya said. She waited for a response, but none came. “Giraldi? Giraldi!”

“See? We don’t work for you,” Mikey said.

Niya dropped the radio on top of Wagner’s chest and pulled her other .45. Mikey didn’t even come close to getting his rifle swung around before a slug went sailing past his cheek.

“I don’t miss,” Niya said. “Go see what’s up on deck or you are useless to me.”

“I’m going,” Chip said, backing out the vault quickly.

“Smart man,” Niya said. “Mikey? Are you a smart man?”

“You and me, babe,” Mikey said as he followed Chip. “When this is over, it’s you and me.”

“Looking forward to it,” Niya said. She waited until they were out of the vault then relaxed and put her pistol back in its holster. She looked up at Nick.

“Hi,” Nick said, giving her a short wave. “Mind if I stay down here?”

“Not at all,” Niya said. “You can help me search this vault.”

“For what?” Nick asked.

“For the real treasure,” Niya said. “Research. Look for files or computers. Maybe USB drives or a tablet or something.”

“Fun,” he said as he stared at the gore that coated everything. He nudged a stray hand with his foot. “Super fun.”

He continued nudging things with his foot, refusing to dig his hands in the gore for a real search. He pushed a hacked apart thigh to the side and blinked a few times as he looked at the USB drive that just sat there. Nick knelt and snatched up the drive, jamming it in his pocket.

“Hey!” Niya called out, causing Nick to jump a foot in the air. “I found something.”