The Last Passenger (14 page)

XXIII

Valkyrie

Day two

When Kate woke up the next morning, she immediately realized two things that were both quite unusual. The first was the complete silence that encompassed the
Valkyrie
. The only sounds came from the sea as it pushed past the ship’s hull. Nothing more. Not the wind across the rigging or the squealing of sea life or the splashing of waves. Nothing. Only silence.

The second thing she discovered was the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. The previous night she had been sipping coffee with Feldman on the deck of the ship in no more than a simple sleeveless silk dress. She had been neither hot nor cold. That morning, however, as she walked across the starboard deck toward the first-class dining hall, she was practically shivering in her wool sweater.

The fog had wrapped around the ship like a shroud over a dead man. Visibility was no more than thirty feet in all directions. As she walked Kate could make out the shapes of empty lounge chairs as they slowly materialized before her eyes like dark shadows from the mist.

Halfway down the corridor she spotted a man in a plaid suit sitting on one of the lounge chairs. He was smoking a cigarette and had a book in his hands. Before she could get close enough to see who he was, the man got up, flicked his cigarette over the railing, slapped a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, turned away from her, and began walking in the direction of the bow.

A straw hat? Who wears one of those in the middle of a fog bank?
Something about it didn’t make sense. She quickened her step, but by the time she got to the chair where he’d been sitting, he was out of sight.

Suddenly, she realized someone was running toward her. She almost panicked until she realized it was Carter.

“Good morning, Kate,” he said as he approached. The physicist was wearing a sweat suit, as if he had just run a marathon. “If it even is morning. With this damned fog you don’t even know what time it is.”

“It seems quite thick,” answered Kate.
And someone’s wearing a big straw hat in spite of it,
she thought to herself.

“Our three meteorologists are going bonkers,” Carter said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a sleeve. “They do nothing but pace back and forth between the weather station at the bow and the bridge’s radar. They’re so revved up I’m sure Captain Harper would love to toss them overboard. It’s a fog of intrigue, so it seems.”

“The captain thinks so, but Feldman doesn’t,” Kate replied as she looked off into space. “By the way, who was that man you passed earlier? The one in the plaid suit.”

Carter looked straight at her and blinked as if he had not heard correctly. “I didn’t pass by anyone.”

“That can’t be. He was heading right toward you.”

“I’ve been jogging this deck for twenty minutes, and you’re the first person I’ve come across,” said Carter. “I suppose it’s not a great day to go for a stroll. Nearly everyone’s inside. What did this guy in the suit look like?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at him. He was probably just a figment of my imagination,” Kate answered, flustered.

“Could be,” Carter said suspiciously.

Mortified, Kate noticed the physicist watching her with that “you-are-not-right-in-the-head” look, usually reserved for those who hear voices or believe themselves to be alien ambassadors. Or those who see things that aren’t there.

“I’m going to get some breakfast,” Kate said, trying to change the subject. “Would you care to join me?”

“I can’t. I need to shower. I’m getting together with Cherenkov in fifteen minutes. I’m hoping he’ll show me his Singularity calculations. They looked promising yesterday.”

“I’ll see you later then.”

“If you see the man in the plaid suit, don’t forget to let me know.” Carter bid her farewell with a burst of laughter and began running down the deck.

Kate was left alone on the walkway and felt thankful that, at the very least, the fog was hiding her blush.

Congratulations, Kate. You’ve acted like a complete fool,
she thought to herself.

Infuriated, she continued toward the dining hall.

Because of the fog, she nearly passed it by. But there it was stuck between the lifeboat stanchions and the deck railing: the straw hat with a blue sash around the cap. It was as if someone had stuffed it there so the wind would not blow it away.

Seeing it startled Kate. She looked around to see if anyone was trying to play a joke on her. For a second she thought about Carter, but he did not seem like the practical jokester type.

Carefully, she leaned out and grabbed the hat. It was surprisingly cold like it had been left outside all night. She held it in her hands, squeezing it to make sure it was real and not a product of her imagination. She turned it over and noticed there was a name embroidered on a label stitched inside the hat: Schweizer.

She repeated the name several times.

It did not ring any bells. But on the other hand, she had yet to learn all of the scientists’ names let alone all of the names of the crew. In total, there were some seventy people on board, and she barely knew a dozen of them. It could belong to any of them.

With the hat in her hands, she entered the dining hall and served herself breakfast from the buffet. Barely a dozen others were dining at that moment, and nearly all of them were crew members apart from a couple of scientists. There was no trace of Feldman, Moore, or Senka. Of course, there was nobody in a plaid suit.

Kate was tempted to ask if anyone knew a Schweizer, but she restrained herself. She had already acted foolish enough in front of Carter. She would have to find the owner of the hat another way.

She finished her breakfast as quickly as she could and then headed toward the Gneisenau Room. They had pushed the couches and rugs to one side and arranged a long table with several computer terminals. It looked like a cybercafe from the 1990s.

Only two people were using the stations, a middle-aged woman and one of the chemists who had wooed her so gallantly the night before. Each was absorbed in the numbers and readouts on their screens and taking furious notes. They hardly looked up when Kate took a seat to connect to Usher Manor.

The screen blinked a few times as a series of numbers rushed across the bottom. A few minutes later, little had changed.

Confused, Kate figured she must have made some mistake. Then, the screen flashed to life, and Anne Medine appeared with Usher Manor in the background. The young woman looked somewhat shy but also exhausted.

“Good morning,” she said. “We’ve been having some communication problems for a few hours now. I apologize for the wait. What can I do for you, Miss Kilroy?”

Kate blinked, surprised that the woman knew her name, but she supposed Feldman had supplied her with a complete file for each one of the participants on board.

“Good morning, Anne,” she said, adjusting her headset. “I need a favor. Could you tell me who Mr. or Mrs. Schweizer is? I have to speak with him or her about something. But I’m not sure if they’re one of the scientists, crew, or security.”

The video distorted and then cut out for a few seconds. When the signal returned Anne had a full passenger list in her hands.

“Schweizer, you said? Could you spell it for me?”

Burning with impatience, Kate spelled out the name. The connection cut out again, and the screen went black. She could hear a kind of distant banging in her earphones, almost like a hammer against an anvil wrapped in rags.

“
. . .
not on record,” Anne Medine said, reappearing. “I’m sorry, Miss Kilroy. There is no one aboard the ship by that name.”

“Are you sure?”

“No one on board has that last name.”

Kate thanked her and ended the call, dejected. As she left the room, hat in hand, she glimpsed a tiny detail. A small rust-colored spot marked the edge of the hat’s sash. It was like a smudged fingerprint, as if someone had quickly picked up the hat with something on his fingers before setting it down for the last time.

Kate was not sure why, but she would have bet anything the spot was blood.

She could have sworn it had not been there a moment ago.

XXIV

Tom McNamara’s troubles were piling up. For starters, he had lost one hundred quid the night before playing poker with the boys. Afterward, he had decided to drown his sorrows in more liquor and ended up passing out. For that reason, he overslept the next morning and proceeded to get lost twice in the hallways of the ship before arriving late to the changing of the guard, panting and distraught. To top things off, Moore had been waiting for him with fury in his eyes.

Tom was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, as were most of the men Moore had recruited. Of course, the pay was much better than in the army. Plus, the chances of getting blown up on the side of a dusty road or coming across a town bustling with hate-filled, bearded fanatics were far lower. Overall, working for Feldman was a fairly cushy job as long as you did not rub Moore the wrong way. Oversleeping was one of the many ways to do just that.

That was how Tom ended up pulling guard duty and how he found himself draped in shitty fog like a thick puree that seeped to the bone while everyone else leisurely strolled inside the
Valkyrie
, warm and sheltered.

Tom fished out a wrinkled pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one, but after a few puffs thousands of microscopic droplets of water infiltrated the tobacco until it no longer stayed lit. Furious, he tossed it overboard. As he was about to turn away, he noticed something move out of the corner of his eye.

He turned back, more fascinated than scared. A young woman of around thirty was walking on the deck, heading inside. She was wearing a black skirt that went to her knees and a red sleeveless blouse. Her hair was elaborately styled, reminding Tom of the actresses from the old black-and-white movies his mother used to watch when he was a kid. The woman wrapped her arms around herself. She looked as if she were freezing. She was walking quickly yet absentmindedly, as if lost in thought. Her high heels clicked rhythmically as she walked on the wooden planks of the deck.

“Hey,” Tom shouted. “Hey.”

The woman stopped and looked in his direction. The guard could see her eyes were puffy and red like she had been crying. Her mascara was running, and she had dark streaks down her cheeks. She watched him closely as if wondering what the hell he was. Her expression was blank like a tomb. Then, as if she were making a colossal effort to remember how, the woman’s smeared lips curved up in a tragic imitation of a smile.

The effect was horrifying. With her makeup-streaked face and an amorphous, blank smile, she looked like a demonic clown.

Then, the woman tilted her head like she could hear something he could not. Tom thought of how the kids in his neighborhood used to drive the local mutts crazy with a dog whistle. The woman suddenly seemed to lose all interest in Tom and turned in the direction of the superstructure of the ship.

“Hey,” he repeated. “Stop. Stop or I’ll shoot!”

The woman ignored him and disappeared into the fog. Without another thought Tom began running after her while he undid the safety of his AK-47. The woman was walking quickly toward an entrance on the bow, and she was about thirty feet ahead of him. Tom instinctively reached up to his shoulder where his walkie-talkie should have been to call for backup.

His fingers, instead, swiped at the air. Only then did he remember that, in the rush of the morning, he had forgotten it in his locker.

“Warning,” he shouted, hoping someone might hear him. “Here on the bow!”

The fog swallowed his shouts. Like trying to shout under water, the sound was muffled and died out after only a few feet. Tom cursed under his breath. He was alone in this, and it was his fault.

If he had not been so tired and hungover, he would have remembered to carry a whistle in his pants pocket. If he had not gotten so drunk the night before, his head would have been clear enough to realize that if he fired off a couple of warning shots, he would have immediate backup from half a dozen of his cohorts. If he were smarter, he would not have sprinted toward the dark door the woman had opened, and he certainly would not have gone in without first thinking it through.

But Tom was not that smart.

The doorway led to a hallway in the first-class service area. Those same hallways had been used by the crew in the thirties to attend to the needs of first-class passengers without them needing to spend more time than necessary in their areas. To one side, Tom noticed a staircase that led to the top floor. He hesitated a moment over which way to go, but then caught a glimpse of the woman rounding a corner just down the hall from where he stood. He ran after her.

They were in a part of the ship that had been restored but was not in use. On this particular voyage, there were not enough crew members aboard to justify using this section of the ship. He sprinted past empty cabins, a small lounge, and some bathing facilities. The air was rife with a heavy metallic scent, like that of an engine warming up.

Rounding a corner, Tom stopped. In the middle of a landing was a staircase that went down to second class. He knew there must be a makeshift steel door blocking the way. Tom himself had been there just the day before, putting the finishing touches on it by placing a sticker that warned anyone from breaking the seal.

But the door wasn’t there. There was no trace of it. Not one mark from the welding on the walls or a single scratch on the floor. Nothing.

It was like the door had never existed.

Tom swallowed and, for the first time, wavered. This was unsettling even for someone with as little imagination as Tom. But then he was reminded of how angry Moore had been that very morning and began thinking about the possible consequences of letting a rogue element loose in the depths of the ship.

He shuddered at the thought. Perhaps this was just an elaborate test Moore had set up to make sure he was alert. A sort of trick. That bastard was capable of stranger things.

Reassured by those thoughts, Tom began descending the staircase toward second class. Each step creaked beneath his boots with a sound that gave him away, but Tom remained unaware of that little detail. Just as he remained unaware that the metallic odor had become stronger and that the walls had begun to throb with a monotonous rhythm as he continued forward.

A cloudiness, like the fog outside, entered his mind. He was unable to think straight. He felt like someone was forcing a thousand images into his head at once.

This is not a good idea.
Nein
.

He stopped, perplexed. Had he just thought something in German? He did not speak a word of German. What the hell was going on?

Dizzy, he leaned against the wall. The vibrations ran up his body in waves, first through his hands and then up his arms and up into his skull, where they buzzed and reverberated with homicidal rage. A drop of black liquid fell on his forearm. He wiped his hand across his face and found his nose was bleeding profusely as if someone had turned on a faucet of blood.

Tom.

The woman’s voice was soft, sensual. Tom spun his head around slowly like he was trapped in a movie. The woman from the deck stood in the doorway of a cabin that was brilliantly lit and in perfect order. She beckoned him toward her.

Come, Tom. Come with me. Let’s have a good time together.

Almost catatonic, Tom stepped forward. One part of his mind was screaming in horror for him to get the hell out of there. He was vaguely aware that this area of second class was in perfect condition, not at all like the other areas he had seen in that sector. Had someone renovated without telling him?

Come, Tom. We can be alone down here.

The woman continued to beckon him forth, and he tried once more to come to terms with the travesty of a smile that was spread across her face. It was even more terrifying up close.

Fear finally took over. Tom made a herculean effort to step backward, and he shook his head in defiance. Before he realized it, his gun fell and clattered to the floor.

No.
Nein. Nein.

He turned around and began walking toward the staircase, each step quicker than the last. The walls began to pulsate more quickly, and that was when Tom knew there was something behind him. Something dark, malevolent, and voracious, watching him intently.

“Nooooooooo,” he shouted with a mix of desperation and anger as he tried to run.

The doors were a blur as he ran across the carpet. Darkness pursued him, getting closer by the second. Tom felt a cold, wet breath grazing the back of his neck. The mere touch made every hair on his body stand straight on end.

It was then that something happened.
It
was still behind him, but Tom felt as though he were gaining some distance. Perhaps it had decided to stop for some reason. Hope flickered in him, however dimly. He was going to escape. He was going to get out of there.

Turning the corner, he ran headfirst into someone. Both fell to the floor in a tangle and ended up rolling a few feet. When Tom looked up he was at the foot of a polished bronze clock running slow.

Hysterical, Tom let out a bloodcurdling scream as he braced himself and tried to protect his body. He looked over at the person he had run into and breathed a deep sigh of relief that echoed from the depths of his soul.

“It’s you, thank God!” he said choked with emotion. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see a familiar face.”

The other person helped him up and looked at him carefully.

“What happened?”

“Didn’t you see?” Tom shook his head in excitement. “The hall was shaking and tha
t . . .
that thing was chasing me, and the noise. Fuck, tell me you saw it!”

“I didn’t see or hear anything. I just heard some screams, and so I ran to see what was going on. That’s when I ran into you.”

“But I swear—” Tom stopped, furrowing his brow. “Just a second. What are you doing in this section? Nobody’s supposed to be down here. Mr. Feldman has strictly prohibited it.”

The other person shrugged and gave an ambiguous smile.

“We have to go. I need to tell Moore what’s happened,” he said, turning around and heading toward the staircase.

For that reason Tom did not see his companion remove a small, sharp scalpel from a pocket.

When the blade slit his neck and severed Tom McNamara’s carotid artery, the last thing to go through his mind was a feeling of profound dread for dying in that narrow hallway at the hands of another human being.

With that shadowy thing on the loose below.

Waiting.