Текст книги "The Flood"

Автор книги: David Sachs

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

34

In the morning, Vera sat with them in the piano lounge. She too had been sick, and Travis was struck by how she’d wasted away. The winds were gone outside, and the air pressure seemed to change. Vera spoke.

“When I was a girl, I was in the Siege of Leningrad. For two years, we were alone, trapped by the Nazis and their bombs. My house was destroyed. My parents killed, my brother. I was spared. I wondered why. I tried leaving; there was a caravan crossing the ice of Lake Lagoda. The Germans bombed the lake. I fell in the water. It was a miracle. I survived again. I was a beautiful young woman– then I was an animal, living in rubble, scavenging.”

At first Vera had seemed focused, speaking slowly, as if considering how best to reach her point. But she began to seem tired and disconnected, rambling.

“Two years like this. The bodies littered the streets, dead from starvation, from the cold, from the bombing. You don’t imagine what you can think when you are so hungry, when death seems so certain, not just for you– for everyone.

She paused and considered what she had said.

“There were cannibals then. I wondered sometimes how we did not all kill each other. But we had the Nazis to hate. But why would any God have saved me from Nazis and winter and hunger to bring me here?”

While she spoke, Corrina had pulled Darren towards her, but he struggled away from her breast to face the old lady, listening seriously. When she finished, Claude looked at the boy.

“And your dad thinks I’m the party-pooper, huh Darren?” he said.

35

Days after Travis’s visit to the Bowels, Hesse found him at dinner and pulled him into the office.

“I need your help with something,” Hesse said.

Travis nodded.

“We’ve had suicides,” he paused to catch Travis’s eyes, then continued. “There’s a fair number that we know of, maybe a dozen. I’m sure we’ll find more. People come and tell us when they’ve found the source of the smell down the hall. There’s no way we can keep it from spreading. The rumors, I mean. That will make things worse. But we can keep people from seeing it, and seeing how many there are.”

“What are you asking me to do?”

“I need you to take a few guys who can keep their mouths shut and get rid of the bodies. Do it after the daytime crowd disperses and everyone’s in their hiding places.”

Hesse gave him a list with directions and a flashlight.

“What’s happening with the communications?” Travis asked.

“Soon,” Hesse said. “Soon.”

The same confident I’ve-got-a-plan tone he had for everything, Travis thought. But Hesse did have a plan. He’d expected this, too.

Travis took Claude and Gerry to visit the staterooms on his list.

There weren't any lights in the rooms. The emergency lighting only lit the hallways, and only enough to walk by. Gerry circled the first room with the flashlight.

“On the couch,” Travis said.

The man sat upright on the couch, his head at an awkward angle. They could see the blood, dried and browning. He had slit his own throat. The knife rested on the couch, just out of his grip.

“I suspect an inside job,” Claude said.

“No way,” Gerry said. “The butler, in the library, with a razor-sharp wit.”

Travis looked at the wound. He’d gotten the air pipe but not the arteries. This had been slow and painful, and he would not have been able to scream.

Travis wondered why Hesse had asked him to do this. What was there in Travis that he would be chosen out of everyone as the perfect guy to clean up suicides? The question bothered him.

Travis and Gerry took the arms and legs. This was a less expensive stateroom than Vera’s. There was no balcony to throw him off of, as there had been for Vera’s husband and the man who had killed him. The windows were sealed. Claude led the way with a flashlight, out of the cabin, down the hallway. There was no promenade or foredeck at all on this level, so up a flight of stairs they carried the dead man. It was heavy work, and they paused several times to rest and adjust their grips, but they met no other passengers on their route. Out on the deck, the soft rain and breeze cooled them satisfyingly. They hurried across the deck, and without pause, lifted the man over the rail and dropped. There was no sound after that except their own heavy breathing.

The next was a couple. They rotated so that they took turns with the body and the flashlight.

“There’s something romantic about a double suicide,” Claude said.

“I’m not that into commitment,” Gerry sputtered.

At the railing, Professor Claude said, “Why couldn’t they just throw themselves overboard anyways?”

“There’s something of the exhibitionist in a suicide,” Gerry said.

“Yeah,” Claude said. “They’re making an argument. We get it. Life sucks.”

As they walked back to the next spot, Travis shined the flashlight on Claude’s face.

“So who do you like in the World Series this year?” Travis said.

“I think we can pretty much eliminate the Yankees and Red Sox,” Claude said.

“And the Braves and the Orioles and the Marlins,” Gerry said. “Could be the Rockies' year. Remember how the Saints played a season away from home after Hurricane Katrina?”

“Yeah,” Claude said. “Ain’t life unfair?”

Next came the teenagers. They did not joke in that room. Two dead, and a lot of blood. They looked beautiful.

One had evidently killed the other, then done himself by the wrists. The knife was on the floor. It looked like his had been painful and slow. There was a balcony here, and the work was done quickly.

Travis wondered at the trauma he’d seen in the last few years of his work, the nightmare of Sudan and nightmares of it since, the loss of his love and family, guilt, and now this, and still he fought. His life had been unhappy for three years since he’d lost Corrina, but somehow he still fought for it. Would Corrina? They both had Darren to fight for. Kids didn’t kill themselves. Not often. He’d never seen one as a paramedic. Darren, the indestructible, saving all their lives.

The last one was at the opposite end of the ship. They were forced to take a circuitous route around the sealed compartment, outside again, inside again. The night was becoming late, the moon and a slice of star-filled night were just visible in a chasm in the cloud cover; the moonlight lit up the chasm walls so that they could see the full depth of the clouds above.

“They uncovered some archaeological ruins in northern Peru,” Professor Claude said. “The remains of a human and animal sacrifice. Fifty children and as many llamas. This village literally sacrificed its future. For something. What do you imagine was bad enough that they’d sacrifice their kids for god’s mercy?”

He laughed a haunted laugh. “Same DNA, same DNA.”

When they entered the final room the stench was horrible. This one had been sitting for days. They found him in the bed, killed with medication, an empty bottle on the nightstand.

“Oh,” Travis said, as the flashlight passed over the man’s face, “crap.”

The other two did not bother to ask, they waited.

“The ship surgeon,” Travis said.

“Huh,” Claude said. “Physician, heal thyself.”

On the walk back they realized they were passing by the Theater. They were outside the back doors and Claude held the flashlight on the sign for a moment.

“The next bodies we’ll be tossing will have bullet holes,” Professor Claude said.

“Just stop!” Travis said. “I hear this from you over and over, I’m sick of it. I feel your voice pecking at the back of my brain.”

“That’s the truth!” the Professor said. “And I imagine if I put money down right now that things were going to get worse before they get better, neither of you gentleman would pick up that bet.”

“Well, your money’s no good here, Darkness,” Gerry said.

Travis laughed, the spell broken.

“You’re a pretty funny guy, Gerry,” Claude said. “But you’re still only a rebound husband.”

That night, Travis lay on the carpet in the piano lounge, his son sleeping above him on the plush curving bench of the booth. He had nightmares again.

In the morning, Travis felt haunted from the night’s chores. At the Atrium, he saw Doctor Joel Conrad waiting for food. He looked awful, his skin was a bad color and his eyes were bloodshot.

Before Travis could approach him, there was a scream.

“FISH!” a man shouted.

They all turned to see a group of men on the stairs, smiling all.

“FISH!” the man screamed again. He held a basket teaming with headless fish.

“We’ve got nets full of clean fish,” the man yelled. “We’ll eat well tonight! We’ll need a few more volunteers so any of you good with knives, please come by the kitchen after breakfast… if you’re not too busy.”

There was a cheer from the crowd, and Travis saw Hesse cheering too.  It had a sharp effect. Travis felt it in himself and knew everyone around him felt it. He guessed that they couldn’t possibly catch enough fish to feed everyone, but the ticking clock in their galley would slow down, at least.

It was good news, so rare, it thrilled them.

“Have you been back to see the baby?” Joel Conrad said, coming next to Travis.

“No,” Travis said.

“Pneumonia,” the doctor said. “She could hardly breathe last night. I put her on antibiotics. I’ve been to see her this morning and she already seems a bit stronger. She was able to feed again, at least.”

Travis felt sick himself at this news. Did God have to do this too?

The ghastly doctor grabbed Travis’s arm. His grip was still strong.

“We delivered that girl,” the doctor said. “Death will have to tear her from my hands.”

Travis smiled. It was good to see fight left in the good guys.

36

Lee and Rick spent days sounding out the crowd in the Theater. People were upset. There was anger at the Atrium for being in control when things went wrong. They were convinced that the other group was giving them the short end of the stick. It was a suspicion that had grown and fed on itself each day and each incident, seeded here and there by Rick and his wife, who loved to talk.

Soon, it became impossible to imagine that they weren’t treated as an unwanted burden on the main group, bound to get secondary service in all cases; in food, in use of the electrical power, fresh water, in any kind of warning or communications on anything going on– like the lifeboat panic. If they weren’t being sacrificed yet, they would be soon, they were sure of that.

Since the run on the lifeboats, Rick and Lee’s talks had pushed more and more of their group to that attitude. There was a growing desperation that whatever chance they’d had before the run on the lifeboats was greatly diminished. For days, Rick and Lee listened. They judged their peers, what types of ideas they had.

When they began organizing, first Lee and Rick confirmed those they guessed would follow them easily. Then they picked from that pool the ones to draft. Lee avoided Adam in his recruitment. Adam had led a few more prayer sessions, at random intervals. It bothered Lee that he didn’t at least go somewhere that everyone didn’t have to watch. Lee didn’t trust Adam anymore. He was angry too, like Adam had ruined what could have been a great friendship.

Lee and Rick took thirteen men and seven women to raid the central galley.  No one else was told.

There was great excitement about the enterprise.

At last, they were doing something. They had taken upon themselves the action to save their group.

They went at night, when the dinner cleanup in the galley would be over, and there would be only the two guards.

It was very dark. They crossed over the sealed section on the open Sky Deck, in pairs, to avoid alarm if anyone were out for a stroll. They reunited in an unlit service stairwell as soon as they were beyond the sealed section. They went slowly and quietly, along corridors less traveled. The ship's main Aquarium Restaurant was spread over two decks, with the lower floor opening to the Grand Atrium. The galley and food storage was below the restaurant, one deck below the Atrium.

Outside the galley, they went terribly slowly. Lee and another man were in front. Lee walked out of the darkness, and could see into the open door of the galley. He walked in. There were two guards, in a set of rooms barely lit by emergency lamps, with many shadows.

“Get on the floor,” Lee said. He didn’t even hold up the gun hanging from his shoulder, but the guards saw it.

They lay on the ground. The man behind Lee signaled for the others to come in. Some had rope, and they went to tying up the guards.

“What are you doing?” one guard said.

“We’re saving ourselves,” Rick said.

“Are you going to make us starve?”

“Get them in the closet,” Lee said.

The two men were stuffed in a storage room, their mouths taped to keep them quiet.

None of the raiders were familiar with the galley, so the work was slow. The facility was massive, and not all visible at once. There was a lot to take in. They found that one side of the galley had been emptied out, and everything that was left was consolidated on the other side.

They worked in pairs, looking for food cupboards and storage areas, and through each refrigerator and freezer. Rick darted between each group as they made a basic accounting of what they had found.

He grabbed Lee.

“There’s not much,” Rick said.

“Everything we can carry,” Lee said.

They began arranging trolley carts, throwing on enormous hunks of meat in freeze-dried plastic packaging. There were cheeses and sacks of potatoes and vegetables. They took flour, pasta, eggs, milk, buns, and sauces. There were a lot of condiments. They found metal trays full of the fish catch, filleted and frozen.

Eleven carts went back, slowly through the halls in the dark, much more so being carried up seven flights of stairs before running astern on the Sky Deck, and carrying them back down to the Italian galley. The first flights of stairs took them under two minutes each. The last few, five minutes or more, with carts dropped and picked back up, food falling and being found and restacked by the light of cellphones.

They left two of their team behind, to pack the frozen foods in the Italian restaurant’s freezer.

On their return, the galley raiders sent a scout first to ensure that nobody had noticed their activity. So it went, as they brought three trips of food down to the little galley near the Theater. What was left then in the main galley was not much, but they still argued over going back a fourth time. They were exhausted, wearing through even the adrenaline of the night. Still, Rick, soaked through with sweat, wanted everything.

“If we leave them something,” Lee said, “they won’t attack, not right away. It’ll give us time to prepare defenses. This took way longer that I expected. If the next shift of guards gets up there and finds their friends tied up, in the galley, they’ll set a trap. Just be satisfied with what we got. We should’ve kidnapped one of those cooks though.”

They went downstairs, into the backstage entrance they normally used.

Lee stepped up to the Theater stage in the last dark before dawn. He called loudly for attention and began speaking. Only the track lighting along the aisle stairs was on at night, so that Lee could be just barely seen on stage.

“Everybody wake up and listen.”

He only had to say it once, in his full stage voice, and wait a moment to know he had their attention.

“There’s not enough food on this ship for everyone. Some people are going to get food and live long enough to get rescued, some people are not and are going to get sick and die. That’s the fact. I sure didn’t like it that other groups were in charge of that decision. I don’t know what’s gone on over there, why it is, but they’re half-wild. It was those guys that ran off, those guys that stole the food, those guys that left us to die here. They’re animals. They’ve been dealing with rapes and suicides. Animals. We weren’t going to leave those people in charge of our fate anymore. We’ve brought the food back to our kitchen here.”

There was a lot of noise and many shouted all at once.

“Are we still going to share it?” someone asked.

There was angry discussion going on across the Theater, trying to make sense of this newest development.

“You’re not listening,” Rick said, walking up on the stage. “There isn’t enough food. We have the choice to live or die. Don’t you understand that we’ve been caught in the biggest disaster that’s ever hit America, or the world maybe? Do you think anyone is going to blame us that we took the food instead of waiting for them to cut us off? The only thing that matters is living and dying.”

“And anyone who disagrees,” Lee added, “can leave now, because you aren’t welcome, and you aren’t getting any food, and you can tell them down there that they’re not getting any food. This is war now. If you want to live, you fight for it.”

“I won’t,” Adam said.

He stood alone, near the top of the main seating, but all those who sat in the balcony or could not see him knew who it was.

“We are still men,” Adam said.

“Then you’ll die,” Rick said quickly.

“We will all die,” Adam said. “But you will die wrong. I won’t.”

Adam began walking down the aisle.

“Friend,” Lee said, “I’m saving the lives of everyone here.”

“No,” Adam said, “you’re destroying them. And I never was your friend.”

He turned. Now he could see the entire Theater, even if only the outlines of people in the dark. He did not need to stand on the stage; he was a stage.

“Look at you all,” Adam said to the rest. “You blind mob. You pack animals. You cast off your self into the mob, and think right and wrong can be cast off as well. This is your choice. If you think it’s worth killing hundreds of innocent people so you’ll have a better shot to live a few days longer, stay here with him. If you believe in God, if you believe in decency, and that there’s anything in the human heart more important than how many beats it has left, then come with me.”

Every little couple, family, or group seemed in intense deliberation.

“This is the time to decide,” Adam said, “What do you stand for?”

He slowly began walking down the aisle to the open door at the bottom. Others stood in their seats as if to follow, and then, here and there some did: individuals, couples, and families.

Of those that stayed, some watched the ones leaving, others turned away, or hid their families from watching.

A man yelled for his wife. She was in tears, walking awkwardly down the aisle, as others scrunched themselves up to let her pass. The man called for her, exasperated.

“You’re wrong!” she shouted back. “You were always wrong!”

In the hall in front of the Theater, Adam gathered over forty people. They spoke very little, each consumed with the events moving their lives.

“I know a place we’ll be far from here,” Adam said.

They followed him up the dark stairs, up, up, so many flights of stairs, to the Sky Deck, then along that open space to the structure at the very edge of the ship, the solarium tower adjoined to the blasted bridge. Up one more flight there, they found the glass-enclosed hall dark under the cloudy sky.

“We’ll stay here,” Adam said.

“But what will we eat?” someone said.

“We’ll talk with the group in the Atrium. They’ll get the food back. There are still much more of them in the Atrium.”

“But he’s got a gun!”

“There aren’t so many of them now, most of them left in the lifeboats!”

“I thought we left them so we wouldn’t be fighting over food. What did we leave for?”

“Go back then!” Adam snapped. “Do you think things will be easier with those scorpions? Golding was right– at least one of the groups will die. But who has any reason to guess which it will be? Or whether, in the end, they won’t all die? Who wants to stake their soul on it? Look out there!”

He pointed out the glass walls at the black sea and sky.

“This is what God has given us. Uncharted waters. We thought we understood the earth. Our own arrogance. We do not understand our own bodies, even. We think that, because such-and-such has never occurred before that it won’t occur. But the world can die in a day. Every day of existence is uncharted territory. Every civilization on earth has a flood story. None of them saw it coming– there is no special warning that you live in momentous times.”

He was so strong and full of energy, it seemed the fight with Lee Golding and the long walk up had only woken his full power. Then his voice dropped– the energy he projected was still there, but it was suddenly controlled very tightly.

“Let’s capture this moment. Let’s all remember how it feels to be this scared, this desperate, this far from human society.”

They slept there. In the morning, when the sky became a lighter grey, but still before the sun could be seen, Adam took two others and went down to the Atrium.