Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(21)

Ivor laughed. “Been a while since I had a sergeant calling me that. Takes me back.”

“You been retired long?”

“Good ten years now. I married Vicky two years before I signed out. Wanted to spend time with her. Have a family while I still had some lead in my pecker. A few years later we had this little gift from God, Heather.”

“Well, it’s good to meet you all,” said Jack. He turned to the doctor. “How is Heather doing, Doc?”

“I think she is stabilising, but we need to get her to a hospital as soon as we reach port. How did you know this was going to happen? All of your questions this morning?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack.“I guess I just had a bad feeling. But you’ve helped her, right? She’s going to be okay?”

“I believe so. As long as I can keep her heart rate under control.”

A noise from behind the doctor made everyone in the room jump. It was Heather on the examination table. She was having some sort of seizure.

Almost as soon as it had started, it stopped. Doctor Fortuné hurried over to the girl and placed his stethoscope against her chest, moving it around frantically. The concern on his face made it obvious that her heart was doing things it wasn’t supposed to. The doctor started performing CPR, pressing down on Heather’s chest and using a breath pump on her face. He kept at it for several minutes and Jack started to get worried. The girl’s parents beside him were frantic.

“Get away from her, Doc,” Jack said. “I don’t think you should be so close.”

Ivor shoved Jack hard. “What are you playing at, man? She needs help.”

Jack ignored the shove and rushed towards Doctor Fortuné, tackling the medic around the waist and moving him away from the girl.

Heather sprang up on the bed. She glanced around the room curiously, like a newly hatched bird. Vicky cried out with joy, raced across the room towards her daughter. There was no time for Jack to stop her.

Heather leapt off the table and met her mother in an embracing hug. Vicky squeezed her daughter tight, tears streaming down her face. “Thank God,” she said.

Then Heather bit into her mother’s neck, ripping her jugular vein in two. Blood arced high enough to splatter the florescent lights and cast spotty shadows over the room.

Ivor screamed, probably for the first time in his life if his tough military exterior was anything to go by. Doctor Fortuné was standing there stunned, but Jack pushed past him and acted fast. He grabbed Heather around the throat from behind and dragged her back towards the examination table. “Get something to tie her down,” he shouted at the other two men.

Jack had expected Ivor to resist him, but the Major seemed more than willing to comply. He and the doctor upended the room, looking for something to use for bindings. They eventually found several bundles of dressing tape and a roll of bandages. They quickly brought it over to Jack.

“Ivor, grab her feet, and I’ll get her wrists. Doc, you strap her down.”

The doctor ran the tape beneath the examination table and wrapped it up around Heather’s body in tight circles. The little girl kicked and squirmed against him. By the time he was done, Heather looked like an Egyptian mummy. The final roll of tape was used to bind her forehead to the table, keeping her head in place.

With one crisis over, Ivor’s focus turned to his wife dying on the floor. He dropped to his knees and cradled her in his arms. “Jesus Christ, we need to help her.”

Doctor Fortuné grabbed a bundle of gauze and bandages and did his best to cover the wound. The blood still seeped between his fingers, but it at least slowed down a little. The final thing the doctor did was inject her with something, which may have been a clotting agent. Ivor kept his hand tight against the wound, placing as much pressure as he could. The ex-army man didn’t need to be taught basic first aid.

“Is that all you can do?” Ivor shrieked. “You have to stop the bleeding.”

The doctor shook his head. “I cannot. I am not a surgeon.”

Ivor began to sob, holding his wife in his arms. The doctor looked shaken. Jack put a hand on his bony shoulder and turned him around. There was only a small window of opportunity to get as many answers as he could from the man.

“What do we do, Doc?” Jack asked. “What’s wrong with the girl?”

The doctor stood in a daze for a moment. He stared down at Heather on the examination table. The girl was gnashing her teeth as though she were chewing the very air itself. Her eyes were red and bleeding.

Doctor Fortuné placed his stethoscope against an area of the girl’s chest beneath the bandages. He moved the head of the instrument around for a few moments, then looked at Jack with a complete lack of understanding written across the creases of his face. “This cannot be,” he said.

Jack stared hard at the man. “What? What is it?”

“She has no heartbeat.”

“Are you telling me that she’s dead?” Jack asked. Such a thing was impossible, but it didn’t surprise him in the least. The doctor could have told him anything right now and he would have accepted it willingly. That was how horrifyingly bizarre his world had become.

The doctor took a penlight from his breast pocket and shined it into Heather’s eyes. She snapped and hissed as his hand got closer.

“What do you see?” Jack asked. “Why are her eyes bleeding?”