Sea Sick: A Horror Novel (19 page)

Then Jack ran – where the hell to, he did
not know.  He was in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and there was nowhere he could go that would be free of security’s reach.  There was a chance he could take them all down, but that was only if the team of guards was small.  For all Jack knew there could be a hundred members of security onboard.

He took the elevator up to the Broadway Deck and hurried through the jewellery store and onto the balcony of the theatre in the room beyond.  There was a couple drinking at the bar there, but nobody else around.  Jack considered sitting down in the corner and lying low, but it was too out in the open to remain undetected.  He was at a total loss and close to panic.  As a police officer he was far happier being the pursuer than the pursued.

Who the hell accused me of assaulting them?  A member of staff?

It dawned on Jack quickly.  It seemed that there was someone on the ship who was starting to get a habit for falsely accusing people of hurting her.

Tally?  She must have been
lying about Donovan, just like he told me.  Now she’s telling lies about me.  But why?  What’s the point?  Whatever she accuses me of will be forgotten at midnight tonight.

So what’s her angle?  What the hell is she playing at?

Jack heard concerned voices from outside of the lounge’s main door and decided it was time to get moving again.  He headed out of the rear door and entered the Lido Deck, knowing it would lead out past the 24-hour restaurant and out to the pool area.  Once he got there he would run out of ship and there’d be no place left to run.

As it turned out, Jack wasn’t even able to get that far.  Spread out throughout the pool deck were half a dozen security guards.  They spotted Jack the moment he stepped out into the sunlight, and then came towards him in unison, stalking him like lions after a wildebeest.  Jack held his hands up and decided there was no point in fighting them.  At least by allowing himself to face charges, he would get the full lowdown on what exactly he’d been accused of. Hopefully he would also learn
who
had accused him.

Although he already had a pretty good idea.

***

Security took Jack down to the brig.  He’d been there before; only this time they placed him
in a small interview room instead of a cell.  Walking in to meet him was Captain Marangakis. The man did
not look happy.

“Captain,” Jack acknowledged him with a small nod.

Marangakis did not take a seat at the table, but stood behind one of the chairs opposite Jack.

“Mr Wardsley?”

“That’s correct.”

“I’ve
been informed that you’re guilty of some pretty despicable behaviour aboard my ship.”

Jack leant forward across the desk and kept eye contact with the Captain.  “Now, you see, that’s where your facts begin to go severely wrong.  I haven’t hurt
anyone
. Whoever has told you otherwise is a liar.”

Marangakis finally took a seat.  He yanked back the chair and dropped himself down with such force that it must have hurt his rump.  “The accusation has been made by a member of my crew.  I see no reason why she would lie.”

“So it’s a
she,
then?”

“I’m sure you know very well.  You’ll be placed in the brig and handed over to the French authorities as soon as we make port.”

Jack laughed.  “And when the fuck will that be?  I’d love to know.”

The captain seemed confused by Jack’s reaction, which was hardly surprising.  “We’ll be there in a little over twelve hours.  I’d be in no hurry if I were you.”

“We’ll see,” said Jack.  “Do you want to show me to my room then?”

The captain nodded to a guard standing by the door.  The burly man stepped towards Jack and went to take him by the arm.  Jack stood up and shrugged away from his grasp.  “There’s no need to get grabby.  I’ll come.”

Jack went with the guard to the cell next door and allowed himself to be locked inside.  It was probably the safest place to be anyway.  Once the infected became violent they would wreak havoc on every area of the ship, but they wouldn’t be able to get inside the brig.  After what had happened to Donovan, Jack was starting to worry that
the spell was wearing off and that if the infected were to rip him apart, he might not get put back together again.  Despite how much Jack’s life sucked, he didn’t want to die.  He was getting too close to working things out.

The guard closed the cell door and locked it, leaving Jack to sit and contemplate.  His previous life, of walking the streets as a policeman by day and drinking himself into a stupor by night, now seemed like a distant memory; a fuzzy recollection of a vivid dream.  It would once have seemed impossible to think it, but Jack was actually starting to miss the life he had all but lost.  Given the chance, he would make more of it then he had.

Jack lay down on the room’s uncomfortable cot and closed his eyes.

He awoke a few hours later to the sound of screams and chaos.  From the bowels of the ship, the noise of passengers being torn apart was clear.  The eyebleeders were doing their thing on the upper deck.  Jack closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Day 236

Security took Jack away again.  He ended his night in the cell as he had the night before.

Day 245

For over a week now, the ship’s guards had come to arrest Jack, and every day he had gone with them peacefully.  His intention was to see how long Tally – if she was in fact responsible –would keep it up.  It appeared, however, that she was content to have him detained indefinitely.  For some reason she wanted his movements aboard the ship restricted.

But why?

Day 246

Jack got out of bed quickly and hurried to get dressed.  He selected some jeans and a white t-shirt from deep within his luggage, along with a baseball cap. He hoped that the change of clothing would allow him to move undetected by whoever it was making accusations about him. 

He slipped on his trainers and rushed out of his cabin.  It had been only a matter of minutes since he’d awoken and Jack was quick enough to get out of there before the Security goons came for him.  How long he could evade them, he did not know, but hopefully it would give him some time to find Tally and ask her some pretty serious questions.

Jack took the elevator down to the
Orlap Deck
, intending to make absolutely sure that Donovan was dead, but also planning to give the area a more thorough search to see if he could find anything helpful.

When he stepped out of the elevator, the cloying smell crept over him immediately, fingering at his nostrils.  Jack knew the odour was death,
he’d come across it many times before, mostly at the homes of lonely pensioners left to perish in their ice-cold flats with no one to check on them.  It was the smell of a corpse settling into the fabrics of its surroundings.

Donovan still lay dead at the back of the cargo area and had now started to decompose.  His flesh was waxy and mottled and his lips had started to fall away from his gums leaving behind a sneer.  The stink coming off of him was putrescence mixed with faeces and it made Jack’s eyes water.  He stepped over the body and examined the floor beyond.

There was nothing noteworthy that Jack could see, but from the way Donovan’s body was angled it seemed that he had been doing something with one of the metal footlockers.  When Jack tried to open the nearest one he found that it was locked.  He searched Donovan’s pockets, cringing at the feeling of the gelatinous  flesh beneath the clothing, and eventually found a set of keys in the breast pocket.

Jack tried the keys one after another until he found one that fitted the nearest footlocker.  The lid was heavy and he had to use both hands to lift it up.  Once it was open, Jack couldn’t believe his eyes.

The crate was full of military grenades, packed into a bed of foam.  They looked like standard NATO-issue HE grenades.  Jack checked some of the other footlockers and found that they too were full of explosives and, in several cases, assault rifles and side arms.

What the hell is the world coming to, when a US pharmaceutical company is gun running for African Governments?  This is madness.

Perhaps this is what I’m supposed to do¸
thought Jack. 
Maybe I’m supposed to stop these weapons reaching Tunisia.

Whether or not Donovan was a bad person, or just a man doing his job without asking questions, nothing good ever came from giving people guns.  If these weapons were to reach Tunisia then they would most certainly result in people’s deaths.

But do these guns have anything to do with the virus?  Or everything else that has been happening on this godforsaken ship?

Jack’s head had begun to ache again.  It was time for a drink.
Time to think things through.

***

Jack had chosen to visit the
Voyager’s Lounge.
  It was obvious that Security was searching everywhere for him, and out of all of the places onboard, this was one of the quietest.  So far Jack’s low-key disguise had managed to keep him undetected. He’d even managed to walk past a guard on the
Promenade Deck
without being noticed.  It was likely that his accuser had described the clothing that he usually wore – red t-short and shorts – and not the clothes he was actually wearing now.

Jack had been in the
Voyager’s Lounge
now for a couple of hours and had downed enough whisky to make his body feel warm and content.  He had made good use of the peace and calm to think about what his next move was.  It was now pretty clear that the only person who truly had the answers was the elusive pathwalker.  Jack still had no idea who it was – or even
what
it was – but he was going to make it his only priority from now on to find out.  It was something that would probably be easier said than done, though, with Security on his back every day.  There was even a chance that Tally had made the whole thing up just to mess with him.

Joma turned up for his shift, signifying that evening had arrived.  Jack went up to order another drink.  Thankfully it didn’t seem that the friendly bartender knew that Jack was wanted for arrest.

“What can I get you?” he asked, smiling.

“I think I fancy a pint now, please.”

Joma nodded. This time he didn’t offer to pour the drink on the house.  Obviously, he didn’t recognise Jack with the baseball cap on.  Joma stepped in front of the lager tap and began to pour the frothy draught into a spotless pint glass.  It was then that Jack noticed something a little weird.

“What happened to your hand, Joma?”

Joma looked down at the wound on his hand and tried to dismiss it as nothing.  “I burn myself in the kitchen.”

Jack looked closer.  “Looks bad.  Is that…is that wax?”

The wound on Joma’s hand was red-raw flesh mixed with a spotty patch of
gleaming white substance.  It looked exactly like a burn caused by molten wax.

Tally mentioned something about a candle.  She said that all time spells require one.

Jack stared at Joma and noticed something else.  The man had aged at least ten years since the day they’d first met.  Joma was not as ordinary as he had first seemed.

Jack’s eyes went wide.  “You’re the pathwalker!”

Joma seemed struck by an invisible blow.  It seemed like the relevant action for someone who had just had their cover blown.  He nodded at Jack and seemed defeated.  “I think we should go somewhere and talk.”

***

In a back room, behind the
Voyager Lounge
’s
bar, Jack took a seat in stunned silence on a small leather sofa-cube.  Joma tipped away the pint he’d poured Jack and went and got him something stronger.

He handed over a new, smaller glass and then took a seat on the couch beside Jack.  “You’re a whisky man, right?”

“You should know by now.  You’ve served me enough times.”

Joma shrugged.  “I guess, but you haven’t been by for a while.”

“What’s going on?” Jack asked, cutting straight to the point.

“I think you know,” was Joma’s reply.

“No,” said Jack.  “I haven’t got a clue about anything.  All I know is that some kind of zombie-flu
gets loose onboard and kills everyone, every single night, over and over.  Plus there’s a small arsenal of weapons in the hold of the ship along with a dead body.  Oh yeah, and someone onboard keeps accusing me of attempted rape – most likely someone who I thought was my friend.”

Joma smiled and actually seemed to find Jack’s frustrations amusing.  He raised one palm as if wanting to summon calm upon them both.  “I apologise Jack for the turmoil I have brought down on you, but I assure you that it was necessary.  It was only meant to be
you
that was conscious of the true reality, but alas there is a gypsy onboard that I did not know of.”

“You mean Tally?” Jack asked.

Joma nodded.  “Usually I would be able to sense her kind, but she is not an avid follower of her own ancestry – it made her spiritual aura…diluted.  If she was a regular practitioner of the magiks then I would have sensed her immediately.”

“So…what?  Is Tally some sort of witch?”

Joma shook his head and laughed.  “No, no.  She is just from a people blessed with a natural resistance to magic.  Her ancestors were probably close to what you call witches, but their methods are all but lost now.  I have come across very few Romany that truly remember their old ways.”

Jack rubbed at his forehead and sighed.  Things were getting into mumbo jumbo territory again and he didn’t want his natural cynicism to kick in and cloud his ability to listen respectfully.  “What about Donovan?”

“You mean the American man running around the ship like a drunken cowboy?”

Jack laughed.  “Yeah, until somebody murdered him.”

Joma’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows lowered.

“You didn’t know?” asked Jack.  “I found him dead yesterday in the cargo hold.”

Joma nodded as if something had clicked into place.  “The lower deck of the ship was outside the range of my spell.  The hull of the ship is stuck in time, but the cargo area within is a vacuum where time exists as normal.  There was not supposed to be anyone down there, but it would appear this…Donovan…was an unfortunate stowaway.”