The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (30 page)

I understand the fifteen minutes part, but not the “before Jakob blows the ship” part. I look at Willem. “The hell is he talking about?”

“My father stayed behind,” he says. “To detonate the C4.”

What?
“C4?”

“He had it with him the whole time,” Willem explains. “I didn’t know until we got down there. It’s not much, but it’s enough.”

“This is bullshit,” I say. “C4 can be remote detonated. We are not leaving your father behind!”

“Jane,” Willem says, his voice quiet.

“What!” I shout.

“He was bit.”

“No…” I say. “No…” Tears return to my eyes. I point my
katana
at Steven. “Give me the keycard.”

Steven looks at Willem.

“Give me the fucking keycard, or you won’t make it to the top of the staircase.”

Steven removes the keycard from his neck. “Geez.” He tosses the card toward me, but Willem snatches it out of the air.

“You can’t,” he says.

I give him a shove. “The hell I can’t.”

“The C4 is on a timer. It was set for twenty minutes when we left.”

“And if he turns before the time is up?” I say. “They’ll know about the explosives. They’ll know how to stop it.”

Jakob would have thought of that. Something doesn’t add up.

Willem shakes his head. “I put it out of reach. They can’t stop it. Jane, we don’t have much time.”

I hold out my hand. “I didn’t get to say good-bye to my father. I’ll be damned if I’m not going to say good-bye to yours.”

Willem’s eyes tear up.

Whatever Jakob is up to, Willem is definitely not trying to trick me. He’s barely holding it together. But I don’t want to just say good-bye to Jakob, I want to know the truth. Plus there is another small problem. “Did he give you the key?”

“The what?”

“To the
Raven
,” I say, trying not to get angry. Willem is shaken by the loss of his father, and I’m not quite as harsh as mine. “The key. Boats work like cars. Without it, we’re stuck here.” I’m sure there’s a spare on the ship, but I’m not sure where, and Willem’s frown suggests that he doesn’t, either.

A communal groan echoes from the hallway, as though giving voice to the pained expression on Willem’s face.

“Guys,” Steven says, his voice a warning. “I think whatever is out there is coming this way.”

“When it gets close, use the Molotov to hold it off,” I say with a shake of my open hand.

Willem deposits the card in my hand and follows it up with a brief kiss. “Hurry,” he says. “I can’t lose both of you.”

I give him a Viking nod. It’s all I can manage without bursting into tears. Then I jam the keycard into the locking mechanism and open the door.

T
he maintenance tunnel is cramped, filled with long white pipes that branch out in every direction. I hurry forward, glancing into a room on the left as I pass. The room contains lockers full of equipment and an array of breaker boxes. Water and shit aren’t the only things contained in these pipes.

“Third door on the left,” Willem says from behind. “There’s a hatch. He’s on the next level down.”

“If I’m not back in three minutes,” I say, “leave without me.”

“Not a chance,” he replies.

The knowledge that my slow return could cost Willem his stubborn life spurs me on. The smell of gasoline strikes me when I pass the halfway mark. It grows stronger the farther I go. By the time I reach the third doorway, a headache blooms. I’ve always had this problem with gasoline. Even when I was a kid. Waiting in the backseat of my father’s Impala while he filled the tank was something of a torturous experience. I complained about the resulting headache just once, though. To confess discomfort from something as intangible as the scent of fuel—something the Colonel’s nose delighted in—was basically asking for a lecture on what the human body can endure when the spirit has the will to endure pain.

As I push through the noxious vapor in search of Jakob, I realize my father was right. Again.

Bastard.

The room contains more pipes, panels, and cables, but none of it matters. There’s an open hatch in the floor at the center of the room. A ladder leads two levels down.

Jakob is nowhere to be seen.

When I reach the bottom floor, I turn around, and there’s Jakob just five feet away, his back turned toward me. The white walls are metal and featureless. These are the fuel tanks, one to either side of the ship, each containing roughly twenty million gallons of highly explosive fuel. Mounted on one of the walls is a brick of C4 about the size of my fist. It’s primed, wired, and ready to blow. The gasoline scent comes from a horizontal geyser of gasoline spraying into the hallway beyond Jakob, where a single hole has been drilled. The powerful drill, its bit a ruined mess, lies on the floor at Jakob’s feet.

I take a breath, intent on saying his name, but the fumes tickle my throat and I cough instead.

Jakob whirls around, swinging his sword with a battle cry.

I duck and feel the blade pass over my messy hair. It strikes the ladder with a clang.

Jakob’s eyes go wide when he recognizes me. “Raven! What are you doing here?”

Before replying, or taking another breath, I pull my sweater collar up over my mouth and cup my hand over it. I take a breath, lower the collar, and speak. “I think I should ask you the same thing.”

“Did Willem find you?” he asks.

“He told me you were infected.”

Jakob puts his hand over a wound on his neck, covering it, but not before I can see the clean slice. “Yes,” he says.

“You were bit?” I ask.

“We were ambushed,” he explains. “There were five of them. It was a silly mistake.”

“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” I say. “If you had a parasite inside you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You weren’t bit. You cut yourself on purpose.”

He doesn’t reply verbally, but he does remove his hand from the wound, which is clearly superficial, but would have bled a lot when it was fresh.

“Why?” I ask.

Jakob holds up a detonator switch. “The range is poor. There are too many metal walls.”

I let go of my sweater collar. That Jakob is willing to blow himself to bits keeps my attention far from my personal discomfort. “There is no timer, is there?”

“I am the timer,” he says. “The timer on the explosive is a digital watch. Willem is a smart boy, but he knows nothing about modern weaponry.”

“And you do?” I ask.

“I spent the past months with Klein and Talbot,” he says. “I was educated.”

“You never planned to return, did you?” I ask.

“The Draugar are my family’s respons—”

“Shut up!” I shout and punch his shoulder. “I don’t want to hear about your stupid family. I don’t want your excuses. Or reasoning.”

Jakob looks disappointed. “What do you want, Raven?”

“Jane,” I say.

“What do you want, Jane?”

What do I want?
That’s a good question. Part of me wants to chew him out. To tell him he’s a fool. That his martyrdom is the most idiotic
thing I’ve ever heard of. But I know the man. He won’t be moved. He’s committed. He’ll see this through to the end. And I respect him for it. And I’m grateful because he’s helped me understand my own father more fully. Having experienced what I think is one of the worst scenarios any human being could live through, I now know that there is not only a place in the world for people like my father, but a need for them. And soon there will be one less old codger around to protect us.

A vision of Jakob and the Colonel causing hell at the pearly gates, demanding entrance, lightens my despair a touch. Of course, I’m not sure either of them believes in God, or even if I do, but if that damns them to the abyss, heaven help the devil if the two of them find each other.

With a pained smile, I step forward and wrap my arms around him. “To say good-bye.” I try to control my tears and quivering lips but fail pitifully.

He wraps his big arms around me and squeezes.

“I understand,” I say. “I understand everything.”

He squeezes me one last time before pushing me away. He wipes the tears from his own eyes. “Go. Take care of my son.”

“Also,” I say, extending a shaking hand, “the keys.”

He looks confused for a moment, and then his eyes light up and he’s shaking his head, grumbling Greenlandic insults at himself. He digs into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys attached to a small yellow float that would keep them from sinking. A seaman’s keychain. He plucks a large, worn silver key from the bunch. “It’s this one.”

I take the keys. We share a final smile, and I back away to the ladder.

“I’ll wait twenty minutes,” he says. “But if they find me down here—”

“You do it,” I say. “Even if it’s five minutes from now. You do it.”

“Good-bye, Jane,” he says.

I take hold of the ladder. “Good-bye, Jakob.”

“Iluatitsilluarina ukuaa,” he says.

“Iluatitsilluarina,” I reply.
Good luck.
I don’t recognize the second word he used, but if I stop to ask, I might not leave. Or have time to leave.

Before I break down and weep like a nancy, I set my jaw, give Jakob a look that says,
See you in the next life
, and climb the ladder as fast as I can. When I reach the top, I look back down. Jakob’s not there. He’s not just staying, he’s leaving. His son. Helena. And me. If I saw him again, I might just decide to stay. Or he might decide to leave. And if that happens, they win.

I close the hatch and lock it.

The sprint back to the stairwell hatch feels agonizingly slow, but it’s only thirty seconds before I reach fresh air again, and another ten before I reach the door and swing it open.

Shouting voices greet my return.

“Light it!” Willem shouts.

“I’m trying!” Steven says. He’s flicking a half-size translucent red lighter and having little luck with it.

I step between them, take the lighter from his hand.

“It’s almost here!” Steven shouts.

I can hear the thumps of the monster’s hands and feet on the floor, walls, and ceiling. It’s definitely approaching, but after getting stabbed, sliced, and axed, the Queen is being a little more cautious.

They have no idea
, I realize. While we’ve got a ticking clock motivating us, the Draugar believe we’re simply trapped and are in no rush to kill, capture, or devour us.

I look at the lighter and see that there’s no fluid left. While that’d be the end of it for most people, I’ve spent an inordinate
amount of time around pot smokers and know all the tricks. I place the metal shield in my mouth and bite down hard on it with my molars. The metal bends and snaps free. I spit it out and hold the lighter up. “Get ready,” I say.

Steven brings the Molotov close.

I hold the button for just a second, then give the wheel a firm twist with my thumb. With the metal shield gone, the last of the lighter gas is allowed to escape. At a centimeter tall and the width of a pencil lead, the flame is insignificant, but it’s enough. The alcohol-soaked rag lights quickly.

Steven moves to the hallway.

Then he steps into it.

“I can’t see it,” he says. “It’s too dark.”

I can still hear the army of footsteps. It’s close. “Just throw it,” I say, moving to the ascending staircase with Willem.

“Steven?” The voice is feminine. Sweet.

Fuck.

“Shamaya?”

“It’s not her!” Willem shouts. “Throw it!”

“Steven, I missed you—”

Something about this statement snaps Steven back to reality.

The living train rushes forward.

Steven throws the bottle. It crashes on the floor, setting the hallway ablaze and lighting the living train rushing toward him. Shamaya leads the way, arms outstretched. She shrieks as the flames set her ablaze, but the monster doesn’t stop. It slams into Steven and continues past. His horrified screams make me cringe, but they’re quickly drowned out by the anguished wail of the now burning bodies rushing through the fire.

Willem and I watch the mash of bodies flow past for just a fraction of a second before turning and bolting up the stairs.

Two flights later brings us to the main deck. A group of three Draugar spots us and head our way, but we never even slow down to look at them. We charge down the first hallway we find and head starboard. Rushing. Panting. Slamming into walls. Our retreat is anything but quiet. But at this point, we don’t really care.

Willem crashes into a door, fights with the handle, and then throws it open. Cold air rushes over us. We head out into it.

“Do you see it?” Willem asks, looking to his left.

I turn the other way. “Here!”

The harpoon fired from the
Raven
is still embedded in the wall, pinning the Draugr woman to it. She’s alive but unable to move. That doesn’t keep her from reaching for us or from transmitting our location to the hive.

With a grunt, Willem swings his ax and removes the woman’s head. The collective knows we’re here, but they won’t know what we’re doing. Or where we’re going.

I step onto the rail, take hold of the wire, and prepare to wrap my legs around it.

“Hold on,” Willem says, looking over the rail, toward the
Raven
.

My view is upside down, but I can still clearly see what he’s seeing.

Nothing. There is a pile of bodies at the front of the ship, lit by the fleet’s array of halogen bulbs and spotlights, but Klein and Helena are nowhere in sight.

The
Raven
has been abandoned, or worse, overrun.

I
look back at the empty forward deck of the
Raven
. Helena and Klein are missing, but I don’t see any active Draugar, either. There could be a mob of living dead waiting for us belowdecks, but there’s no way to find out. The sound of approaching feet reaches my ears.
Doesn’t matter
, I decide.
If the Raven is lost, we’ll take it back and bug out before—oh my God, I’ve become my father.

I swing my feet up and lock my legs around the wire. Willem quickly undoes my belt. I’m about to complain when he wraps it around the wire and buckles it again.