Текст книги "The Flood"

Автор книги: David Sachs

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

44

Travis found the Colonel alone in Hesse’s office, and they waited together for Hesse to return. Hesse and Brenda White were doing their own recon work, checking for safe routes to the emergency power room, hoping Travis would have give them a bit of a distraction. Travis waited with Warrant.

“Brenda’s stayed behind,” Hesse said when he returned. “She doesn’t want to have to keep crossing that gun.”

“Anything touched?” Colonel Warrant said.

“Not really, no,” Hesse said. “I don’t think they’ve found it.”

“If they haven’t found it, they haven’t looked,” Colonel Warrant said.

“It’s a big ship,” Travis said. “That room’s a needle in a haystack.”

“Not at all,” Warrant said. “They’re not looking. So what are they doing?”

“Waiting,” Travis said. “They’ve no plans, honestly it doesn’t seem like the concept of a plan to get themselves off the ship has even occurred to them. Like they’ve convinced themselves that only some of us can get rescued, so if they can outlast us, they WILL get rescued.”

“Anything else?” Warrant asked.

“They’ve got a lot of bullets left,” Travis said. “I saw some magazines on Golding. But it’s still only one gun. Golding’s sharing it, at least with that little guy, his name’s Dumas, maybe with some others. The gun was in the galley with Dumas when I went there, and then they took me down to Golding at the Theater.”

“How close did you get before they found you?”

“Well, there’s just no way to approach the Theater or the galley without being seen. The galley’s wide open, with glass walls and they have sentries around the Theater. Except, I was noticing the Theater doors are really heavy doors, without windows. So I wonder if there’s any way to isolate the outside sentries, take them out without getting any attention, or just shut them off from the Theater somehow.”

“How does Golding seem?” Colonel Warrant asked. “And the other guy he gives the gun to, Dumas?”

“They’re nervous,” Travis said. “I think they feel that since they have the food, we’re coming after them.”

“Well, they’re right,” Hesse said. “But they must know we’re fishing, so they don’t know how long we can wait.”

“I don’t think they have anything specific planned against us,” Travis said. “Anything more, I mean.”

“They will,” Colonel Warrant said. “Stupid can’t last forever. We’ve got to act soon.”

“Even if we took the galley when the gun wasn’t there,” Hesse said, “even if we got all the food back here, what’s to stop them from taking it again? They’ve got the gun.”

“We need to take out the gun,” Travis said. “It’s the only way.”

“He’s right,” Colonel Warrant said, “we can kill Golding, or we can kill all of them, or we can let them kill us. I think you’ll agree, the most palatable option is the fat man.”

“So how do we kill Golding?” Hesse said.

“I have a gun,” Travis said.

If Travis had said he had a nuclear weapon or an escape rocket he would not have gained a more powerful response. Both men froze, their eyes and mouths open wide.

“Colt 1911,” Travis said. “From a dead pirate. Seven bullets.”

“HOOOOOORAH!” the old Colonel cried out.

Hesse fell back in his chair with his arms spread wide, laughing.

The Colonel clapped his hand and stomped his foot, and a painting fell off the wall, the glass smashing and they all laughed. They were intoxicated with hope.

They made him confirm several times the existence of the gun. When they began to calm, Travis told them he’d found it and had kept it hidden since.

“So how do we do it?” Hesse said.

“I’ll do it,” Travis said. “I’ll kill him. I hate the guy.”

He did too, he thought. He had an actual enemy he wanted dead. That was a first.

“Do you know how to fire a gun?” Colonel Warrant said. “Never mind. You’ll have to trust me. I’m very good with a pistol. I’ll show you my trophies when we get home. I’ll kill the fat man.”

“If we’re gonna do this, let’s figure it out now,” Hesse said. “Time is not our friend.”

“The restaurant is one deck above the Theater, and aft,” Colonel Warrant said. “There are three staircases that are clustered around there. Now, there’s one hall on the restaurant level where all these staircases arrive. There’s an open view of it from the bathroom. If I can get in that bathroom-”

Travis shook his head. “They’d see you from the restaurant. They can see that whole hall if they’re looking that way.”

Hesse thought a moment. “You said they brought you down to the Theater, did anyone stay in the galley?”

“Yeah,” Travis said. “There was another guy there.”

“What about Theater side?” Hesse said to Warrant. “Travis managed to see the sentries without being seen, maybe you could.”

“Very risky,” Travis said. “I think to keep a real watch for Golding coming out, you’d be spotted eventually. Besides, I think he uses the rear entrance, from the backstage area. There’s a sentry there too, but there are definitely hiding places around the corner from the sentry. If you just waited, you could ambush him there eventually, you’d hear him coming.”

Colonel Warrant tapped his fingers quickly on the table. He was sitting, Travis was sitting, Hesse was standing, moving around, looking out at the Atrium mob and the faces that occasionally looked back at him hoping for something.

“Alright,” Warrant said, “give me the gun.”

“I haven’t got it with me,” Travis said. He’d been waiting for the request so he answered without pause.

“Well, where is it?” Warrant asked.

“Hidden upstairs.”

“OK,” Warrant said. “I’ll do this tonight, in the dark. I’ll get in position and wait there till morning.”

“Do you think going alone is best, or would you want a point man?”

Warrant thought.

“No,” the old soldier said at last. “Two people is just twice the chance of being heard or seen. I’m better alone.”

Then he smiled and showed all his yellow teeth and silver caps.

“I’m going to kill that fat man,” Colonel Warrant said.

Travis left. He would return with the gun for Warrant tonight.

Golding, he thought, gonna getcha!

Up at the lounge, he saw Darren and Corrina sitting alone. As he got closer, he knew something was wrong. Without knowing why, he ran to them. Corrina burst out crying, and he put his arms around her. There were red marks all around her beautiful long neck. Darren just sat quietly and looked away.

“Just a boy. He was just a boy,” Corrina whispered into Travis’s ear.

45

 

He pressed her to his chest, knowing only the urge to protect her. She sobbed once more, then inhaled and held it, looked up and seemed to be waking, realizing where she was. She pushed Travis away, crying louder. He began to loosen his grip, trying to understand. She hit him in the chest. Someone grabbed his shoulders and threw him hard backwards and he saw it was Gerry, putting himself between Travis and Corrina. Travis instinctively reached to throw Gerry away when he saw the look of terror in his son’s eyes, watching.

Travis backed away. What had happened? His family had been hurt, he knew. Now he had to stand back and let Gerry deal with Corrina. He raged at Gerry in the instant, then saw again his son and calmed. Overflowing with worry for him he grabbed Darren and held him tight. A dumb, sad expression on Travis’s face, he smothered the boy, his right hand going up to the back of Darren’s head, rubbing it and rocking it. He turned Darren so that Travis could look down into his face, and he felt himself breaking seeing the sadness of his son.

The six-year-old face was blank, but Travis seemed to see cracks deep down in the wet, red eyes. Travis felt as if someone had taken away his most precious thing, and that which he felt he owned most securely. He had nothing now that was his.

Travis’s own face showed less and less emotion, the longer he looked at the blank and loose face of his son, and he hardened in accepting the irreversibility of what had happened on this ship. Nothing that could have happened to their homes or to the world could have changed them like what had happened on this ship.

“He hit Darren,” Corrina was saying quietly to Gerry, but Travis could hear. She was calming her breathing, trying to hold back the crying, “Darren was there the whole time.”

That was all she said. She quietly began crying again, her shoulders hunched up to her ears, coming forward and shielding her lowered-face. Her face was blotched with dried blood and wet with tears and snot.

Gerry too held her close, and she again pushed off him. She turned and hid her head in the couch. Gerry sat next to her rod still. He was trying to control his own rage. It was like being submersed, trying to swim out as a wave tossed him around and around. It was a feeling he’d not had since his teenage years when rage was all he knew. He wanted to destroy somebody’s face. He was a skinny man but strong, his wiry muscles were all tensed. He was being torn to pieces, pitying his wife and longing to erase her pain, while bursting with red energy to beat somebody.

He became aware again of the presence of Travis, of Claude who had come in with him and stood well back from the scene, of the dozen or so others in the lounge who were watching, none even bothering anymore to pretend to not.

He bent his head down to hers and their foreheads touched, so that they each looked down and not into each other’s eyes. She allowed it. Finally, he cried too. But the violence in his belly did not cool. He didn’t want to leave her, and time seemed to just flow by without touching them, he and her, Travis and Darren. At some point, Professor Claude had disappeared from their circle.

Others came and went from the lounge.

Finally Travis picked up Darren and left. The two victims were one to him, his family, but he knew Corrina didn’t need him and Darren did. He felt guilty even to be calculating that much to guide his actions, as though the proper thing would be to turn into a beast and tear off for blood. He couldn’t turn it off, his calculating.

They walked a long way without much talking. Travis held him close and rubbed the back of his head and said, “It’s alright. It’s alright,” knowing nothing better to say or truer than that lie.

They passed someone in a hallway that Travis recognized from the Atrium. Otherwise it was deathly quiet. They found a stairwell that was closed to the world and they climbed up to the Resort Deck. Then they walked further forward in a hall banked all by glass on one side. They went into the spa and Travis still held Darren as he sat down in an upright linen chair. Darren felt cold. Travis wanted to heat him up, but he felt so cold himself, like his furnace had shut down. His heart was broken, and no more heat emanated from there.

“I love you,” he said. “Darren, I love you so much. I’ll be here for you, always.”

“Will this ever be over?” Darren said.

Travis was struck by how that beautiful voice was just as it sounded yesterday, and before any of this started. It sounded just the same but the boy was so different.

“I don’t know,” Travis said. “I don’t know what will happen but I will never leave you and I will protect you.”

He kept on that way and imagined he was speaking to Corrina. For a moment he faltered, his voice halted and he held his breath at the sadness that he couldn’t even do this for her. He recovered himself and kept on, and he felt somehow stronger to be telling his son something he knew was true. He knew just how much was false, how much changed with circumstance, but he saw that love was a basic fact and immovable.

He held Darren quietly a long time. Darren was still sick and his breathing was labored. Travis looked out over the pool and realized it was different. It was clean. Someone else was using his pool, and they had found the chlorine.

He looked at Poseidon, still in the shadows, staring with milky white eyes over the room.

“You didn’t,” Darren whispered.

“What?” Travis said.

“You didn’t protect me and mommy.”

Yes, he had broken his promise to his son. The ship had done that to him as well. This ship made right action impossible. He had failed to protect his most loved ones and they were broken. He had sat back and waited to be saved, trusted in God and in other humans to keep them safe. He had the second gun on the ship, he alone, but he hadn’t used it. That gun was part of the family now. But to what end? To what end did they struggle for each breath? They fought like roaches for crumbs.

The world out there had always been awful, he knew that this had been the rule of life, and their modern American bubble, the tiny bubble of their time and place, was popped. The rule of life was pain, and it was also the rule that those that loved the most endured the most.

Since Darren had been born, Travis had understood that love brought happiness and terror. Life with his beautiful wife and their gorgeous boy was intoxicating, but nothing beautiful lasts. If he’d had a mission in life, it was to protect this fragile child from the specter as long as he could. The child was broken, Travis had failed.

Three years ago, his wife left him and his father died in the same week. He had just returned to work in New York after taking leave for his Sudan mission, so he could not take any more time off his job. When he buried his father, his wife was there, with his son. She walked by him in the line of mourners.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

She gave him his son to hold and walked away, and Travis held the little boy in the car to the graveyard, putting him down only to lift a shovel and throw dirt on his father’s coffin. At some point, his son and wife were gone.

The day after he buried his father, he was called to a fire scene in Williamsburg, an old warehouse converted into loft condos. The fire was put out while some people were still trapped in their rooms. Travis was part of the team finding survivors and bodies. He came upon a man alone in his room, lying on the floor, moaning. Smoke came from his body.

“You’re going to be alright,” Travis said.

He took the man’s arms to drag him from the room, and the skin came right off him. Travis fell, and heard the man breathe out one last time.

That had been the worst week of Travis’s life, until this.

Time seemed lost to them. It became night and Travis realized it when he saw the ship’s white strobe lighting like a false full moon on the bottom of a low cloud. He was struck with guilt for being away from Corrina for so long, and for keeping Darren without eating. As they walked back the hallway was dark, there was no emergency lighting along the floor here and the cloudy sky offered little solace for them through the glass wall. Travis could sense the inner wall along his left shoulder and walked straight, never stumbling. The staircase too was dark. He held the railing and they descended.

Corrina sat next to Gerry, but there was a gulf between them. Gerry sat staring, his chin on his fist, his elbow on his knee, looking absolutely frozen. Travis thought of the statue The Thinker.

Corrina was on her feet coming at them, it seemed, without even having looked up to see Darren coming. She took him gently from Travis’s arms. The boy put his arms around her and patted her on the back and they seemed to just drift, as though they were blowing away altogether in a wind. The mother and son were each broken and spilling out, and only together did the leaking stop.

46

 

Lee’s spies were refugees. A third-year student from Fordham College and a grocery store clerk from Yonkers.

They approached the Atrium walking the hallways quickly but not in any way looking suspicious. Colonel Warrant had been described to them in great detail, and they had seen photos of Hesse and Travis from Rick Dumas’ cell phone. They took the long way around, finally approaching the Atrium from forward on the ship and reversing back. Here and there they ran into folks they hadn’t seen in some time.

They had dismissed the idea that they’d be recognized. Before the raid, they had each spent time around the ship, they didn’t feel their faces would seem new to anyone. Yet as they came from the stairs onto the Atrium floor, and the dull grey light of the skylights so far above, they felt their otherness all the same; they seemed healthier, stronger than those they passed by. There was a rotting stench in the air, like the place was dying. The mucousy coughing filled the air at all times, like crickets chirping at night. The spies were scared now, but excited.

They closely examined the first few old men they saw, imagining Colonel Warrant, but the weakness of those they met could not match the description Rick Dumas and Lee Golding had given.

There was the office, where they’d been told it would be. Inside were Hesse and the Colonel.

The student and the clerk paused in a small encampment of several groups about fifty feet from the shop front. That was as close as they dared. The silence in the room was oppressive. The grocery clerk scanned the faces and saw utter resignation. The difference to his own community in the Theater was stark. They had each passed the same amount of time on the Festival, yet those in the Theater were still alive, still spoke to each other, found ways to pass the time. These hundreds were walking dead.

The student was not watching the Atrium, but the office. This was John Hesse, who Lee Golding had railed against. That Hesse who had anointed himself to protect them all and failed, that had allowed a panic, and the loss of the food and fuel with the lifeboats, who had shortchanged the Theater just because they were out of sight and who ultimately hadn’t found an answer to the big question: How would they get off the boat?

The student didn’t see it. There was something in the face of this Hesse that contradicted that history. Hesse had that look, like someone who didn’t make mistakes. Even in the positions each camp was in, the student’s side had the food and the gun, yet he wondered if he wouldn’t feel safer with this Hesse.

Hesse was speaking to Warrant but no sound escaped the office. The face turned and the student could see his eyes. This man did not look starved, scared or resigned.

The student seemed lost in the image and shocked to see Hesse out of his seat and coming through the door into the Atrium floor, their eyes still locked. He was coming towards them fast, getting bigger and more real.

The student turned and ran. The clerk saw his partner go, saw Hesse and Warrant break into a run and turned too, but too late. As he took his first steps, Hesse already was on him bringing him down.

Now there was life in the crowd, the clerk thought as he saw the feet jumping all around him and felt the weight of Hesse pressing down his chest and head into the floor.

The Colonel was after the other, up the stairs.

“Stop him!” Warrant yelled.

A man above them on the stairs reacted confusedly, stopping in his steps as the student burst past him.

Up one flight, two flights, Warrant stayed with the boy, and then without second thought, he gave up the chase. The student looked back and saw Colonel Warrant falling against the wall in exhaustion, grasping his chest. He was gone. He ran until he reached the exterior promenade. It was empty and he continued at a jog around the big bulk of the ship, home to the Theater.

He thought of that Greek guy who ran home to tell his army of some battle somewhere then dropped dead. They named the marathon after him or something. When he finally reached the backstage level and slowed to a walk he broke out in a sweat. Through the security, knocking on Lee Golding’s dressing room, he was soaked. No shirt to change into. Ever.

Lee Golding emerged quickly, wearing his gun. The door was open and the spy could see Lee Golding’s wife watching from inside the room, reclined on the couch but very much alert.

“They got Wells,” the student said. “He knew, Hesse, he just looked out his office and he knew, he came right after us and they got Wells.”

Lee Golding’s face drooped.

“Did you learn anything?” was all he could think to ask.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Lee Golding’s big hand came over his face and he shook his head. He was getting a sick feeling. He grabbed at the blonde beard that had grown in around the original silver goatee.

Why was there only bad luck, this stupid, useless bad luck to get in the way of everything?