The Last Passenger (25 page)

XLV

In the hallway leading to the guards’ quarters, Kate watched as the shadows moved and felt a wave of fear swell within her. She couldn’t look away from the black mass that had swallowed the entire hall in darkness. In the gathering gloom, the outline of Carter on his knees could be seen against the darkness behind him, which was lighter than the one gaining on them. Kate struggled in vain to understand.

The shadow crept across the walls and ceiling. Each lamp it approached began blinking and turning a deeper, dimmer yellow before the light disappeared entirely.

“What’s that?” Senka asked, looking pale and shaking.

“I’m not sure,” Kate managed to say, unable to tear her eyes away from it, whatever it was.

Kate.

She screamed and fell to her knees.

Kate. You conceited bitch. Did you think you could get away with making fun of me?

“We have to get out of here,” Kate howled, struggling to stand up.

She grabbed a table, and a jar fell to the floor and shattered. Kate collapsed again and dragged Senka down with her. The two women landed in a tangle and gasped for breath. The air was too hot and thick to breathe easily. Once again the stench of burnt oil and rotting algae reigned, but this time it was stronger than ever. There was hardly any oxygen and small, colorful flashes of light danced before Kate’s eyes. She suddenly realized they were about to die.

You’re not going anywhere, Kate. He is not here. I’ve tricked him. He’s lost and can no longer see you. You’re mine.

Darkness began crawling toward her, devouring everything in its way. Kate was barely able to make out her own hands right in front of her face. The elevator at the end of the hall was too far to be a real option for escape.

You’ll be fine in the shadows, Kate. I take care of everyone. Here in the shadows it’s never cold. Never cold. It’s never col
d . . .

Something struck Kate’s shoulder. She screamed in agony but did not budge. Her head was buzzing, and forming clear thoughts became nearly impossible

She was struck again. Only then did Kate realize it was Carter. The physicist was dripping blood from every orifice on his head and was slapping her hard on the back in an attempt to make her get up. Tears of blood splotched his face grotesquely and made him look like a psychopathic clown.

“Run,” he panted, almost whispering. “Run.”

Carter held out his hand. He was holding a naval flare that looked quite old. Kate didn’t have time to ask him where he’d obtained it as the physicist tore the paper and pulled the ring in one swift movement.

In an instant the hallway lit up with such brightness that it hurt, as red sparks cascaded in all directions and cast off a dense, impenetrable smoke. The shadows flickered and trembled momentarily in fear of such a sudden and unexpected flash of light. The light broke the shadows into tiny pieces and illuminated the entire enclosure. A muffled groan quickly transformed into a bellow of fury. Carter was howling in pain as hundreds of tiny veins began bursting throughout his body like a string of firecrackers.

“Run,” he shouted as he stumbled down the hall, away from the elevator and toward the heart of the shadows.

The darkness was churning. Kate could see it swirling around itself. Carter, screaming in defiance, stepped into the shadows. The flare began to flicker out as soon as he entered the first layer of darkness, and the shadows advanced once more.

Kate helped Senka get up, and both women began running for the elevator, which was glowing dimly at the end of the hall. Those thirty feet seemed longer than a marathon. The shadows were hot on their trail and closing in on them quickly. Something wet and cold grazed their hair. One damp finger brushed Kate’s neck like the tongue of a dead fish, and she screamed in both terror and pain.

The elevator was only a few feet away. Just then, Carter’s defiant howl became one of infinite misery before being cut off as if someone had pulled a cord. The flare finally exhausted itself, and the shadows in the hall returned, hissing greedily and all the more black, like a starless sky on a cold, distant planet.

Senka and Kate entered the elevator, and as Senka closed the gate, Kate pressed the button. The door closed, and with a jerk they began descending into the depths of the
Valkyrie
.

On the other side of the gate came the sounds of a sigh of indignation followed quickly by loud knocking. Something was roaring in anger, and the knocking was turning into a frenzied cacophony. A piece of metal broke off the gate, fell on top of the elevator, and bounced around on the roof. Kate and Senka exchanged a look before embracing in fear. Kate thought she could hear Robert’s voice standing up to that dark shadow, but she couldn’t be certain. Perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her. Only one thing was for sure: the shadow had stopped paying attention to them and focused on something else.

Suddenly, the noises stopped. The feeling of sluggishness that had dogged them was slowly dissipating as the elevator sank deeper into the heart of the ship. The air seemed to become more breathable, and Kate was able to stand up straight without feeling like someone was violating her mind.

“I think it went away,” she murmured, trying to convince herself, as she labored to catch her breath.

“I think so,” Senka answered, looking up at the ceiling doubtfully. She pulled on the sweatpants and tied her hair back in a ponytail. Gradually, they seemed to be regaining control. “But I don’t think we can outrun whatever it is for much longer. We have to get off this ship as soon as we can, or we’ll be found sooner or later.”

“It’s not that simple,” Kate said. “We’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in case you forgot.”

“We could take one of the lifeboats.”

“And drift around six hundred miles from any land and in the middle of a storm?”

“How about we scamper about this damn ship without a plan until that thing hunts us down, Kate?” Senka’s Slavic accent was even more pronounced than usual. “Unless you have a better plan, we ought to go out to the deck rather than the storage holds. That’s the equivalent of hiding in the basement of a haunted house.”

“We have to go down to the boiler rooms. That’s the only hope we have of getting out of this nightmare.”

“Why do you think that?”

Kate stared at her. It wouldn’t be easy to explain that she had just slept with her husband a few hours ago and that he was the one who had told her. Not to mention that her husband had been dead for weeks. Even though the line between rationality and irrationality aboard the
Valkyrie
had long ago been tossed to the wind, it was simply too intimate to share.

“When you got me out of the brig, you freed me from reliving a horrible experience,” Senka finally said, a repulsive grimace contorting her otherwise beautiful features. “You have no idea what they had in store for me. I overheard them talking. Those sons of bitches. It’s all I’m able to remember.”

“What happened?”

“That’s it. They were just talking about what order they were going t
o . . .
Then, I remember being struck hard on the side of the head and the
n . . .
nothing. That is, until you kissed me.” Senka smiled openly even though her split lip made her wince. “So, either I’m crazy, or this ship is cursed. Both choices are equally scary. So if you want to go down to the cargo holds instead of venturing out on the ocean, maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.”

It was Kate’s turn to smile. The two embraced, silently affirming that they had one another’s backs.

Then, the elevator stopped with one final rattle, and the door opened.

XLVI

What awaited them looked straight out of a Bosch painting. A draft of fiery hot air whipped across their faces as the two stepped out of the elevator, far too shocked to speak. Kate’s inability to focus on any one thing was making her sick as everything whirled around her. She heaved, but all that came up from her empty stomach was bile.

The explosion of the stabilizing engines had sent a volley of lethal shrapnel across the machine room. The chief engine operator, tall and athletic, had been torn apart by the blast. The other four engineers had met the same fate, and now their bodies were sprayed across the room. The largest pieces of the remains looked like pincushions some sadistic giant had delighted in by poking them with splintered, twisted needles. Blood oozed out around the primary engines that continued to roar. It was hard to tell what smelled worse, the stench of burning oil and diesel fuel or the blood stewing on hot metal.

Both mental and emotional exhaustion dropped Kate to the floor. It was all just too much. She wanted to cry but couldn’t even muster the tears to do so. Her emotions had been disconnected or perhaps stamped out completely. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for a week. She wanted to wake up and realize it had all been a horribly vivid nightmare. But more than anything, she wanted to wake up and find Robert’s hot body next to her in bed.

“Are you going to make it?” Senka asked, leaning over her with a look of concern.

Kate shook her head. “This place. So many horrors. So much bloodshed and death, Senka. I can’t do this anymore.”

Senka took a couple of strides toward the middle of the engine room and stepped within an inch of the severed head of one of the engineers, its neck studded with many bits and pieces of steel.

“We have to do something now, Kate!” Senka said, the urgency in her voice betraying a hint of panic. “No one is around, so whatever it is we’ve come to do down here, now’s our chance to do it!”

Senka walked forward and stepped on a piece of lung that collapsed beneath her foot with a squishy sound. She didn’t even flinch. She just stared straight at Kate, looking more and more confused.

Then, Kate understood.

She can’t see it,
thought Kate.
She can’t see any of this.

“Senka, tell me what you see down here. Doesn’t something seem off?”

“The stench of metal,” Senka said and shuddered. “I remember I smelled something just like it just befor
e . . .
” Her eyes widened in terror, and her head whirled all around. “Do you think it’s here? Do you think that shadow’s found us?”

“I don’t think so,” answered Kate, getting up off the ground. She felt like she’d aged tremendously, like her soul had been weighed down by a sack of rocks. Something had changed within her, perhaps forever. She was trapped between two worlds. “It’s just the smell of the engines, Senka.”

“So what are we doing down here?”

“We’ve got to stop the
Valkyrie
by any means necessary.” She looked at her watch. The time of the last log entry had already passed. Whatever was going to happen—or, rather, whatever had already happened—was about to happen.

About to happen again.

“How are we going to do that? Do you understand any of this?” As Senka pointed to the multitude of gauges, levers, buttons, and indicators, her index finger brushed a dial that was soaked in blood and clumped bits of brain.

With both disgust and fascination, Kate watched how Senka didn’t even realize that her fingertip was slicked with someone else’s blood.

Robert,
Kate thought to herself,
now would be a great time for you to say something
.

As she paced around hoping to discover an answer to their problems, Kate kicked something that jingled across the floor. She followed it with her eyes and assumed it was a piece of shrapnel. But the metal was far too long and perfect. Intrigued, she took a closer look. It was a long screw, maybe two inches in length. It was perfectly greased and shiny. She wondered where it had come from. Then, the screw trembled a moment before beginning to roll, moving slowly, as if being attracted by a magnet.

At first Kate thought it was because the sea had been rocking the ship. But she realized the screw was rolling in the opposite direction from everything else, which was sliding in an avalanche of iron, flesh, and unidentifiable parts.

It was hair-raising. It defied all of the laws of physics. With a pang of sadness, Kate thought of how much Carter would have liked to see it.

The screw rolled against a steel grate on the wall and stopped there. There were five other screws sitting on a jacket. The jacket had been set neatly in the crack of the grate, conveniently propping it open.

Thank you, Robert.

“Where does that tunnel lead?” Senka asked as she helped Kate move the grate. The reporter shrugged, and Senka, a bundle of nerves, started to smile. “I don’t suppose there’s any screw rolling around in that passageway that will tell us what to do, is there?”

Kate’s only response was to start moving through the tunnel. The stench of burnt oil was stronger than anywhere else on the ship. The passageway narrowed down to a circular tunnel that only became more cramped and dark. Only then did Kate realize that neither of them had brought a flashlight. Their only option was to grope a path through the blackness.

The passage continued to narrow, and a severe wave of claustrophobia hit Kate. She could picture herself enclosed in that tiny passageway with hundreds of tons of steel and pipework above her head and only a plate of steel beneath separating her from thousands of feet of icy water. Ahead was only darkness, and behind Senka was blocking her only way out. The ceiling became dramatically lower and forced both women to continue by crawling.

Kate stopped. Her legs and arms were getting stiff. Her breath was getting shorter and more labored. Little fireflies of light pranced before her eyes in the darkness. She shut her eyes. Sweat was rolling down her back and sides, and her clothes were sticking to her body like a second skin. She was hyperventilating so much that she was on the verge of fainting.

I’m going to get stuck in here. We’ll be trapped, and that shadow will find us and devour us in this rat maze
.

“Easy, baby.” Robert’s voice burst into her mind and had an immediate soothing effect. “There’s just a little ways left. Have faith, Kate Kilroy.”

Her nerves relaxed, and she opened her eyes to see the faint glow of a flashlight flickering in front of her. She crawled toward the light, but her nostrils were assaulted by a new stench that overpowered the smell of burnt oil. It smelled like decay and charred flesh.

Kate then noticed that beside the flashlight was a bulge that was not moving. As she got closer she realized it was a human body. Kate armed herself with courage and crawled the final few feet until she was within inches the figure’s feet. She pulled on the leg, but the body did not move. The person was dead.

Trying to hold back her repulsion, Kate turned the face up. She was stunned to see the bloated, bloody face of Will Paxton. He was gazing at her with the same expression of shock and rage that would remain plastered on his face for all eternity.

“It’s Paxton.” Senka had crawled up to her side. Both women were quite skinny, yet they barely fit side by side in the narrow tunnel. “What the hell was he doing here?”

Kate grabbed the flashlight, which was nearly dead, and pointed it down the tunnel. They could make out the opening over the axle and the neat bundles of Semtex piled around the room as if some dangerous child had been playing there. The detonation wires hung out of each pile, ready to be connected.

“Paxton was the Wolf und Klee spy,” Kate whispered in disbelief.

“Maybe,” Senka murmured with a shudder, lost in her own thoughts. “Or maybe not. Maybe it was the
Valkyrie
that brought him here. Besides, the who is not as important as the why.” Pensively, Senka examined the piles of Semtex for a few moments. Finally, she nodded and looked sure of herself. “He wanted to render the axle useless, that’s for sure,” she said as she handled the detonators. She took a bundle of explosives and handed it to Kate. “But he was using too many explosives. If he had succeeded in setting this off, he would have blown a hole in the hull the size of a bus. We would’ve gone down in five minutes. There wouldn’t have even been enough time to deploy the lifeboats.” Senka frowned and began piling a few bundles of Semtex around the axle. “It’s strange,” she said. “Someone capable of handling this kind of material must know how much to use. I don’t get how he could have made such a dumb mistake.”

“Perhaps he wasn’t able to think clearly,” Kate speculated. “Aboard this ship it seems like there are times when your mind is thinking backward.”

“These three bricks should be enough,” Senka said. “The blast will twist up the axle and probably create a hole in the hull, but it won’t be serious. I’ll set the timer to go off in fifteen minutes. What do you think?”

Kate thought and then gave a nod. They would be able to get out of the engine room in fifteen minutes and take the elevator up to one of the outside decks. Once there they would be able to hide in one of the lifeboats hanging from the side of the ship. With a little luck they would go unnoticed until the moment the Singularity ended, and everything went back to normal. In the event that the madness continued, they could always drop the lifeboat to the water and hope to be rescued by some nearby ship.

Senka pressed a sequence of buttons and stuck the end of a detonation wire in the wax around the Semtex. At the last second, compelled by a sudden epiphany, she grabbed Paxton’s green cloth bag and looked inside. With a perverse smile she took out what looked like a metallic pin and connected it to the explosives. Then, very carefully, she dragged Paxton’s body over the bundle in the middle of the passageway, so that if anyone wanted to get to it, they would first have to move the body.

“This is a pressure detonator,” she explained and backed up on all fours. “If anyone tries to get to the bomb and moves the body, the whole thing will go off.”

When they got back into the engine room, Kate was gasping for breath. She took the stale, rotten air of the storeroom into her lungs because she had to, but after all that time trapped in the service tunnel, it smelled like the sweetest air on the planet.

She turned to Senka and smiled, but her heart shrank to the size of a pinhead when she saw the terrified expression on her friend’s face.

Before she even had time to think about it, Kate felt an insufferable pain in the back of her head, and darkness fell over her.