Sea Sick: A Horror Novel (23 page)

Ivor and his family became ill the night after boarding – yesterday.

Ivor’s daughter, Heather, is at a more advanced stage of infection – is that just due to her age?

Conner is another passenger that boarded the same day as Heather.  He’s also sick, but his girlfriend, Claire, isn’t.  That makes it seem unlikely that the early form of the virus is contagious as she would surely have been exposed by now – so was the virus initially transmitted in some other way?

Donovan worked for the world’s biggest drugs company, and was smuggling arms overseas, but he’s dead now – murdered, most likely, by Tally.

Tally probably killed Donovan and then made the false accusations about me so that I was hindered by Security – so what is she trying to keep me from achieving and how does Donovan factor in to that?

The ship is at sea and due to dock in Cannes tomorrow.  Why did Joma stop the ship today?  Why not back in Palma before the virus was even transmitted in the first place?

Jack felt like a blind man groping his way down an alley.  The answers were in front of him but he could not see them.  What was it that meant Claire was not infected but Conner was?  Why was Heather worse than the others?  Where onboard was busy enough, and cramped enough, to infect a third of the ship’s passengers?

What am I missing?

“Sir, can you come with us, please?”

Jack turned around to see four of the ship’s guards approaching him.  They didn’t seem like they were willing to talk. 

Jack threw a short uppercut to the closest man and then threw him into the others.  One of the guards dodged out of the way and managed to throw himself into a tackle.  Jack fell backwards but managed to apply a front face lock to the man, cinching
-
in a guillotine choke hold.  It was only a matter of seconds before Jack felt the guard pass out, but then he found himself trapped beneath the man’s bulk. 

Unable to move, Jack was helpless to resist arrest as the other three guards recomposed themselves and bore down on top of him.  They hoisted him up to his feet and started dragging him away.  Jack knew he was on his way to see the captain again.

1700hrs

Marangakis entered the room with same authoritative disdain that he always did.  This time Jack lacked the patience to show respect for the man’s position.  Jack rose up from his chair to meet the captain.  The guard in the room moved to restrain Jack but caught an elbow in the eye-socket for his efforts.  Jack grabbed the Captain with both hands, spun him around, and wrapped an arm around his throat.

“It’s time you and me went and made a call,” said Jack, yanking the Captain backwards towards the door.

“You’re in very deep trouble, Mr Wardsley.”

Jack squeezed the man’s windpipe and made him choke.  “Shut up.  How do we get to the Bridge from here?  We need to contact the mainland.  There’s something very bad aboard this ship.”

“What are you talking about, you maniac?”  The Captain fought against Jack’s arm but he was going nowhere.

“The Bridge?  How do we get there?”

“There’s a…there’s a ladder outside this room.  It leads to an elevator.”

Jack dragged the Captain backwards into the corridor, keeping his eyes on the guards that were pursuing him.  He found the ladder, which actually turned out to be a steep staircase. It led
up to a staff area which seemed to comprise of the ship’s surveillance rooms.  Jack saw an elevator just past the row of offices. He took the Captain towards it, keeping an eye on each of the doorways as he moved by them.  At the furthest office, the one before the elevator,
something caused Jack to halt.

Tally!

Tally sat in a small room that was lined by a bank of monitors.  She wasn’t looking at them and was instead inspecting her nails.

She’s bored.  She’s pulled this false accusation trick so many times that she’s tired of having to sit here every day while Security looks for me.  Ha!

Tally looked up and saw Jack through the glass pane in the door.  Her eyes froze on him and he saw the lump move in her throat.  He prodded Marangakis in the small of his back.  “Open it.”

“And let you terrorise the poor girl even more?  Never.”

Jack applied more pressure onto the lower discs of the man’s spine until he was crying out in pain.  Then he spotted a guard rushing towards him.  “Get back or I’ll snap his neck as easy as a twig.  DO IT!”  The guard stopped and took a single step backwards.  “Now,” Jack said to the captain.  “Open this door or I’ll leave you here a vegetable.”

Marangakis reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a navy-blue key card.  He swiped it against the door and a metallic click rang out as the magnetic lock disengaged.  Jack shoved the Captain hard in the back and the man fell forwards, his head smacking against the thick wood of the door.  Tally leapt up from her swivel chair as the two of them entered.

Jack kicked the door closed behind him and pulled at the handle to make sure that the lock had reengaged.  Marangakis fled to a corner of the cramped room and turned around to face Jack.  The expression on his face was one of outrage.  Jack couldn’t give a fuck.

“Stop all this right now,” the captain demanded.  “If you do not-”

“Sit down, shut up,” said Jack.  “I’m trying really hard to use violence as a last resort, but time is getting a bit tight for diplomacy.”

“J-Jack, what are you doing here?”  Tally trembled in front of him, bent at the knees like some frightened little girl.

“Cut the act, you lying bitch.  What’s your game plan, here?”

“W-what?  Just stay away from me.  HELP!”

“Leave her alone,” Marangakis ordered.

Jack pointed a finger in Tally’s face.  “She’s lying.  I never touched her.  She’s a part of what I’m trying to warn you people about.  There’s a virus aboard this ship and she knows all about it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Please, just don’t hurt me anymore.”

Jack took a step towards her, veins threatening to burst under the strain of his blood boiling.  He almost raised a hand to hit her, but kept his temper under control.  He leant in beside her and whispered so that only she could hear.  “
I’m going to make you pay for this.  I won’t let you wipe out the goddamn world.”

Before Jack could gauge Tally’s reaction to his words, Marangakis piled into him from out of his blindspot.  Jack’s feet tangled up and
he found himself being rammed backwards against the room’s desk.  He felt something sharp dig into his back, then dampness.  Marangakis pummelled Jack with fists, left and right, knocking his vision loose and disorientating him.  From the corner of his eye, Jack watched Tally flee through the door and several guards enter.

Jack struggled to get free of Marangakis’s grip before he was outnumbered.  He rolled, twisted, and managed to shrug the larger man away from him.  The guards struggled to surround Jack in the small room and he used that to his advantage.  He straightened up from the desk and winced at a stabbing pain in his shoulder blade.  He reached behind him and pulled loose a bloodsoaked pencil that had been embedded a half-inch into his scapula.  Jack thought about using it to stab Captain Marangakis, but decided against it.  If he injured anyone today it would be permanent.  Like it or not, the people he was fighting with were innocent and didn’t deserve to die. 

They still needed taking down, though.

Jack swung a fist and backhanded Marangakis across the bridge of his nose.  Then he reversed the swing into an overhand right and clocked the nearest guard in the jaw.  In the narrow space of the room, Jack was able to take down the other men, one after the other, by being sure to incapacitate them as quickly as possible while keeping control of the murderous rage inside of him.

The guards were soon dealt with and Marangakis was stunned.  The Captain was sat down on the floor like a wounded Teddy bear.  He looked up at Jack wearily.  “You’re a madman.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “but trust me when I tell you that I’m trying to help you – everyone.  Terrorists have released something monstrous onto this ship and if it reaches the mainland, we’re
not going to make it.  I don’t know who’s responsible,
but the only lead I had just ran out of that door.  I need to find Tally before it’s too late.  So please don’t stop me.”

The Captain looked at Jack with no indication that he believed him now any more than he had done the previous times they’d spoken.  Some things just couldn’t be accomplished in a single day. Convincing Marangakis of the danger aboard his ship was one of them.

Jack sighed.  “Just…if anything happens tonight, around eight-o-clock, at the first sign of danger…

Oh, I give up.  Look, just contact the mainland the moment you think anything is wrong.  Keep an eye on the passengers and in a few hours you’ll be wishing you’d listened to me.”

Jack examined the exit door to the room and saw that it opened from the
inside via a round push button on the wall beside it.  Jack raised a foot in the air and hoofed his heel against it.  The door unlocked itself and the plastic button ripped from its casing.  Jack opened the door and slid back into the corridor, satisfied that the broken button on the other side would be enough to buy him some time.

1800hrs

Time was running out fast.  Jack raced out onto the
Promenade Deck
and was faced with a setting sun above a dark blue sea.  If Jack didn’t do something soon, this would be the final sunset the world would ever get to enjoy before things went downhill.  He had two hours left.  Just two hours.  Jack prayed to God that Joma’s vision of the future had been wrong, because it was starting to feel very certain that failure would be the only outcome of trying to stop the virus.

There’s nothing I can do.  Tally got away, Marangakis won’t listen, and the passengers were infected yesterday.  What the hell can I do?  I’ve tried everything and nothing works.

Jack didn’t know how much more he had left in the tank;
maybe not even enough to make it through the next two hours.  He was tired, broken, and bleeding.  His back throbbed where the pencil had speared him and as he reached his hand around he felt cold kiss of blood against his skin.  He brought back his fingertips bloody and stared at them for a few moments, realisation setting in that the wound would
not simply go away as soon as midnight hit.

This time it’s for real.  Dying isn’t an option anymore.

Jack headed down the
Promenade Deck
and passed by a table and chairs.  A half-empty bottle of water lay discarded there and Jack picked it up, unscrewed the cap.  He poured the tepid liquid onto his hands and begun rubbing them together, washing away the drying blood on his fingertips.  As he did so, something seemed to click into place at the corner of his mind.  As his wet hands rubbed together, Jack was reminded of something.  He was reminded of the day he’d boarded.  There had been a man at the entrance to the ship, dispensing alcohol rub to the passengers.

But it wasn’t alcohol rub, was it?

Suddenly Jack found the answer.  He knew how the virus got aboard.  He knew that Claire had not been infected because she hadn’t boarded with her boyfriend, Conner.  Only Jack’s boarding party had been infected because the man with the dispenser had been there to greet them.  Poor little Heather got a double dose, thanks to the extra squirt her dolly got on its plastic hands (which explained Joma’s vision of a doll).  That’s why she had gotten sick so quickly.  The contaminated substance must have had a short exposure time, but she had been clutching the doll close enough that she would have breathed in or absorbed the additional dose.  Jack was uninfected because he had dodged by the man with the dispenser.  He hadn’t gotten a dose himself.

Jack shook his head. 
I never had a chance to stop this.  The people responsible for this never even boarded the ship.  They’re still out there now, hundreds of miles away in Majorca – maybe even further – and they have the deadliest virus known to man sealed up in a bottle of rubbing alcohol.  They could release it again, anywhere, anytime.  It probably won’t even matter if I stop the infection on this ship or not.
We’re all doomed as long as they’re out there.

But Jack was damned if he was going to give them an easy ride.  If infecting the passengers on this ship was their Plan A, then he was going to do his very best to make sure they were going to have to come up with a Plan B.  Hopefully there would be somebody else willing to fuck that one up, because Jack was done after this.  At least, he would be if he went through with the idea that was forming in his head.  The world might still have one last chance if he could do what needed to be done in time.

With a dry mouth, and a heavy heart, Jack headed for his cabin.  There was a bottle of Gen Grant there with his name on it.

1900hrs

Jack had retrieved the bottle of scotch from his luggage and brought it down to the
Orlap Deck
.  He’d also brought with him a blanket to cover Donovan up with.  It felt good to share one last drink with his drinking buddy, who had just been a man caught up in a bad situation, no different than anybody else on board.  Donovan was not an innocent man by any stretch of the imagination, but he was not responsible for anything that had happened since the
Spirit of Kirkpatrick
had set sail from Majorca.  Jack was not an innocent man either.  He had been a man consumed by rage, and perhaps always would be.  But at least now he had the chance to make up for his past mistakes, to atone for the lives he had taken, by doing something to save others.  Despite all that he had been through, starting with the loss of his soulmate, Laura, and ending with what he was about to do this very hour, Jack still valued human life.  Not everyone was evil like the thugs terrorising the streets of Britain or the terrorists that released the virus.  There were also good people, like Ivor and his family, Claire, Joma, and even Doctor Fortuné.  It was for people like them that Jack was willing to give his life.