Dead Calm (31 page)

“That must have been the guy we capped at the front
door,” one of Jones’ men chimed in.

Cage studied the door and then asked his demolition
man, “Can you blow this without killing everyone inside?”

Studying the lock, he answered, “Piece of cake,
sir.”

After moving the soldiers out of the way and having
the captives gather at the far end of the cellblock, the door was
blown with no trouble, and the people inside were freed. The
occupants consisted mostly of county workers and their families who
had taken refuge in the building. A bonus came when Jones found
that an older, rather mousy looking woman was the County Clerk.
They had her escorted down to where his men were searching the
records room while the rest of the group was moved outside into the
parking lot and fresh air.

As the last of them were filing over to where the
medics waited to check them out, Cage overheard part of a
conversation that Jones was having with a good looking brunette he
was escorting.

“-and it seemed like something was directing them,”
she said.

“Directing who?” Jones asked.

“The dead. It was like something was making them move
around,” she replied.

Jones looked skeptical and the woman threw her hands
up in the air and said mournfully, “No one believes me.”

Cage spoke up, “I might. Tell me what happened.”

Seeing Cage's rank, the woman clammed up. Shaking her
head, she told him, “It was nothing. It only happened once
anyway.”

“No, really,” Cage insisted. “Tell me what happened.
Anything we learn about these things could end up saving the lives
of my men.”

Reluctantly, the woman started talking. “I was up on
the roof getting some air a few weeks ago, and I thought I heard
the sound of a truck engine so I started looking around. I wanted
to make sure someone was really out there before I said anything. I
didn't want to get everyone's hopes up for nothing. But anyway, I
look down at all those things wandering around in the parking lot.
There must have been a couple hundred of them. All of the sudden
they kind of formed up and started moving to the right. It wasn't
anything organized or anything. They all just started moving that
way.”

The woman pointed to the far side of the parking lot
and then pointed to the near side as she added, “Then they all
moved to this side. Once they were there, they all moved back to
the far side. After that, they broke up and started milling around
like they normally do. It was so eerie seeing them act like that. I
felt like all the hair on my body was standing on end.”

Careful that she didn’t see them, Cage and Jones
exchanged a look of disbelief after the woman finished her story,
both knowing that the dead were only mindless pieces of meat
wandering about in search of food. While they did congregate in
groups, there was nothing organized about them. Unless they had a
focus, like meat on the hoof, they spent most of their pathetic
existence roaming about looking for something to shove in their
mouths.

Jones gave a small shake of his head and shot Cage a
look. To no one's surprise, since the dead had started coming back
to life, mental illness had increased proportionately. The insanity
and horror that everyone lived with, combined with a lack of food
and water if you were trapped, often brought on hallucinations.
Both Cage and Jones had rescued people who told them of seeing
Jesus, the Devil, the Loch Ness monster and aliens landing in their
backyard.

Jones laid his hand on the woman's arm and guided her
toward the medics, leaving Cage standing near the shattered front
doors of the City Hall as he planned their next move. Undisturbed
by crazy tales of synchronized dead, his mind was already looking
at a mental map of the town while he planned where to have his
scroungers search next.

Consumed by this task, the crazy story that the woman
told him was quickly forgotten.

Chapter Sixteen

The Dead Calm:

Tick-Tock pointed to the empty slot in the
velvet-lined case and said, “That's where the spare lens is
supposed to be, but it's not there. This is fucked up. I should
have checked it before we came out.”

Steve looked at the Calm of the Seas floating half a
mile away and cursed Reverend Ricky. After receiving the sextant
the previous day, he and Tick-Tock had given it a cursory
inspection. Everything had appeared to be in order, and they laid
plans to go out and get a fix on their position. This morning, they
had taken The Usual Suspects far enough from the cruise liner so
Tick-Tock could shoot the sun without interference. As soon as he
held the sextant up to his eye though, he realized the lens was
cracked. He assured Steve that this was not a major problem since
all sextants came with a spare. Then it had become a problem.

“That bastard's got the spare lens,” Steve said
vehemently. “I feel like going back and shaking it out of him. For
some reason he's slow walking us and trying to keep us here.”

“Maybe he thinks you’re cute?” Tick-Tock suggested
with a smirk.

“You're only funny to you, Tick-Tock,” Steve shot
back.

Looking at the empty water stretching out around
them, Tick-Tock said, “Well, it's too wet to plow and I can't
dance, so unless you want to go fishing, we might as well head
back. It'd be nice to know exactly where we are but I think I’ve
estimated our position well enough to find land. Once we hit the
coast, the charts we’ve got are accurate enough that it shouldn’t
be a problem figuring out whether to go north or south.”

Still angry, Steve said, “Fuck that. I’d rather carve
a new lens out of Ricky's fat ass.”

Tick-Tock laughed and said, “I know how you feel but
you need to take it easy. You're the steady influence on our little
group. If you go off half-cocked then we're screwed. We have to
keep our priorities straight.”

Steve took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah,
you’re right.” A thought suddenly struck him and he said, “Maybe
that's what Ricky's trying to do. Provoke us into doing something
so he can justify ordering his people to come down on us.”

Tick-Tock thought about this as he cranked the engine
over. When it had warmed up, he slowly eased the throttle forward
and said, “Kind of makes sense. But what's his end game? I mean, if
he wanted to try and wipe us out, he could tell his people we were
sent by Satan to drag their souls down to Hell or something. He
could call down some kind of half-assed Christian jihad on our
ass.”

Steve shook his head, “I don't know. Regardless of
what Ricky wants, I think it's time we took off. We’ve got just
about everything we can get from the ship, and I’m tired of playing
games. Everyone's rested up, so let's go. We can make for land and
try to find Corpus Christi or some other big city and see if we can
find a military unit or someone in authority we can turn Cindy over
to.”

Tick-Tock asked, “When do you want to leave?”

“No later than tomorrow morning,” he answered. “I’d
prefer taking off as soon as we can get everyone's ass on board The
Usual Suspects, but there's still a few things we need to take care
of.”

“Like Ricky?” Tick-Tock asked.

Steve nodded. “We’ve got to at least warn his people
that the ship's sinking. Heather wants to take Ricky out and so do
I. If we get the chance, we'll go for it, but that'll be the last
thing we do before we leave. Ricky definitely needs to go.” Steve
laughed and added, “The population's been depleted so much that it
means statistically there should be fewer assholes around. If we
weed some more of them out now, the human race will be better off
when it rebuilds. The world doesn't need people like Ricky
around.”

“There will always be people like Ricky around, so
why bother? Kill one and a dozen take his place,” Tick-Tock pointed
out.

“Don't be such a downer, Francis,” Steve said with a
smile.

Even though they were the only two on the boat,
Tick-Tock cringed and looked around as if someone might have heard.
“You promised you'd never let anyone know my real name.”

Innocently, Steve said, “But I didn't tell anyone
that your name is Francis, Francis. It's just us out here.”

“You're an asshole.”

“So, are you going to help me take Ricky out and let
his people know that the ship's sinking?” Steve asked. “Or do I
tell Susan that your real name is Francis Aloysius Beauregard the
Third?”

“You'd stoop to blackmail?” Tick-Tock asked, to which
Steve grinned and nodded maliciously. Tick-Tock laughed and said,
“I would've helped anyway.”

“I know,” Steve replied. “But I still have to give
you a ration of shit now and then, Franc-.”

“Don't say it.” Tick-Took warned him, “Or you're
taking a swim.”

The two men traded insults all the way back to the
Dead Calm.

As Tick-Tock eased the sailboat up against the side
of the ship, Steve had just finished telling him to learn Spanish
so he could be lame in two languages when he noticed something that
put a damper on their fun. Pointing at the gunwale of the sailboat,
he said, “I didn’t see it when we left because we were jumping
down, but I see it now. The ship has settled almost two feet since
we first boarded her. Remember how we had to board her from the bow
of the sailboat where it curves up? Now we can practically climb in
from the side.”

Tick-Tock immediately saw the difference in height
between the bottom of the hatch and the top of the gunwale and
said, “That's not good. I'd say at the present rate, this baby's
gonna start taking water on in a big way in about three or four
days. After that, she'll go down fast.”

Looking at the hatch, Steve said, “That settles it,
were not staying on board any longer than tonight. Tomorrow morning
at the latest, we’re out of here.” Steve eyed the remaining area
between the water and where it would start pouring into the Dead
Calm as he considered his decision. “That doesn't look like we’ve
got a lot of room to play with. You think it'll stay afloat until
tomorrow? You said it’d take two or three days to flood. Is that a
guess?”

After considering the question, Tick-Tock replied,
“Based on what I know about ships, unless something drastic fails
we should be alright. These liners have dozens of safety features
and hundreds of watertight compartments. Unless we hit an iceberg,
we should be fine. From just looking around the parts of the ship
we’ve been on, I’ve noticed that almost all the hatches are closed.
That'll keep any flooding to a minimum. If we get a chance, we
might want to check out the decks below four and see if they're
flooded. We can't close this hatch though or we won't be able to
get to the sailboat.”

Steve considered what he knew about ships and it
concurred with what Tick-Tock said. He’d catch up with Brain later
and ask him, just to be sure. As a precaution, he’d keep someone on
board The Usual Suspects so they could cast off if the Dead Calm
did start to go down. If the cruise liner sank, it would pull their
only means of transportation with it.

Steve grabbed the case containing the sextant and
went in search of Heather. He found her sitting with Mary and
Sheila at one of the tables in the dining room and explained their
problem. Pulling out the sextant to show her, he was interrupted by
Mary who said, “What's the big deal, just grab another one. There's
got to be at least a dozen of them.”

Exasperated, Steve held out the instrument and asked,
“Do you even know what this is? It's a sextant. These aren't just
lying around everywhere.”

“Maybe they're not lying around everywhere,” Mary
shot back in a condescending tone, “but there's a whole bunch of
them in a store called the Brass Eagle. I was just in there
yesterday and saw them with my own eyes.”

Reciting from memory, Mary sounded like she was
reading from a sales brochure, “Nautical sextant in designer
display case. Sextant fashioned from solid brass with silver inlay.
Hand tooled scene depicting a nineteenth century whaling ship on
the cover. Nine hundred twenty-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents.
U.S. Dollars.”

Steve's mouth dropped open in shock. He looked at
Heather, who was also awe struck, then turned back toward Mary when
the ridiculousness of the situation hit him and started to laugh.
First, they were trying to get a sextant and then worrying about
finding a lens, when of all the people on board, Mary had come
across a dozen on one of her shopping sprees.

He saw Mary getting angry at his laughter, so he
said, “I'm not laughing at you, Mary. I swear I'm not. In fact you
just earned your keep for this entire trip.”

Suddenly realizing what he'd just said and knowing
that Mary would try to take advantage of it, he added, “I mean
you've earned your keep up to now.”

Not exactly sure of what she'd done but wanting full
credit for it, she replied, “It wasn't easy. I work hard at what I
do.”

“Yeah, shopping,” Steve said. “But this time it looks
like it paid off.”

Steve laughed again and Heather joined in. Seeing
that Mary was starting to get angry again, he said, ''Take me to
the Brass Eagle, Mary. You da bomb, baby.”

***

Brain followed the lithe figure down the darkened
hall, concerned they were getting too far away from deck four. When
the person in front of him told him there was a satellite radio
stowed near the bridge, he hadn't hesitated to make the journey.
He'd dropped everything to go in pursuit of the treasure. Now he
wasn't so sure it was such a good idea. Even though there were only
a few hundred of Reverend Ricky’s followers scattered about the
ship, he expected to run into at least one of them by now. Instead,
all the passageways were deserted. It was spooky.

Fingering the .45 caliber pistol in its holster at
his hip, he realized that in his excitement they hadn't made an
effort to conceal themselves. They had used the grand staircase
instead of the elevator shaft to access the upper decks. Besides
being worried about being spotted by Ricky’s people, now that he
thought about it he wasn't sure if Susan and Cindy had seen them
go, since they were watching the stairs on deck four. Thinking
about it for a second, he realized the angle was wrong. No one
could have seen that they left.