Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(23)

A glass-cube paperweight sat on a nearby stack of papers. It seemed heavy. Jack wrapped his fingers around it and felt confident that it would do the job he needed it to. He hefted it through the air with all his might. It cracked against Vicky’s skull just as she turned to face him.

The paperweight was as solid as Jack had hoped it would be and he heard it shatter the woman’s skull. She crumpled to the floor like a curtain cut from its railing. Jack had come up against the infected dozens of times now, ever since his first encounter in High Spirits. It seemed like the best way to put them out of action was blunt-force trauma to the skull. He was sure of that now.

His first success had been the unopened bottle of Glen Grant from his suitcase, which he had used to bash in the face of an elderly woman when she’d attacked him in the corridors of B Deck. There had been many other incidents since then; ending with the glass-cube paperweight against Vicky’s skull.

Ivor lay dead on the floor, but Jack knew it would only be a matter of time before he was on his feet again, windpipe dangling down his chest but still snarling. The retired Major would have to be dealt with soon ,but there was a bigger threat at hand first.

Heather was still sitting up on the examination table, reaching out at Doctor Fortuné who was frantically cleaning his wound in a nearby faucet. Heather, who had just been declared medically dead by a professional, was almost free of her bonds now, with only the ones wrapping her legs remaining. Jack still didn’t have the ability to hurt the girl, regardless of whether she was dead or alive, so he grabbed more tape from a nearby cabinet and wrestled her back down to the table. He managed to secure her without being bitten and was confident that she would be held in place long enough for him to get his ass out of there.

Not that there’s anywhere to run.

Jack picked up the bloody paperweight from where it lay discarded on the floor. He turned to Ivor’s bleeding corpse and knelt down beside it. It felt wrong to bludgeon the skull of a dead man, but it had to be done. Jack raised the paperweight above his head, like a caveman brandishing a rock. He brought it down on Ivor’s forehead just as the old Major opened his bloodsoaked eyes. Jack was just sorry he hadn’t done it soon enough to spare Ivor from coming back.

Jack stood up and looked himself over. His red t-shirt was darker in patches where blood stained the fabric. He had it on his face and hands too. It stirred memories in him that he wished he could erase: memories of his partner lying dead in his arms, another innocent victim of humanity’s rotten core. Jack reconsidered if his fate aboard this ship was really as bad as he thought. It certainly was no worse than the life he’d lived before, with a lifetime’s experience of watching rapists and murderers go free. At least the infected had an excuse for their violence.

Jack placed the gore-encrusted glass cube down on the nearby desk and took in some deep breaths. Death surrounded him, the room was filled with it, and he felt nauseous. He also felt weary and disorientated, lost in an endless abyss of screaming terror and unbearable pain.

Something clamped down on Jack’s shoulder, making his trapezius muscle burn hot with searing splinters of agony. He spun around.

Doctor Fortuné was infected; and he’d turned. Stupidly, Jack had left his back to the man and had paid the price. He’d been bitten.

Jack punched the doctor away, then placed a hand to his ragged shoulder, felt blood coursing from the wound. Jack had been torn to shreds a dozen times by the infected passengers – a dozen different ways on a dozen different nights – but he had never been merely wounded. What would happen now? Was he infected with the virus too?

Of course I am. That’s how it happens: by being bitten.

Doctor Fortuné launched another attack. Jack dodged to the side and pushed the man to the floor, then made a run for it. He flung open the door to the office and sprinted out into the corridors of C Deck. He left the medical bay behind him and headed into the passenger section of the deck. It was filled with eyebleeders. They wandered between the cabins, dragging anyone uninfected from their rooms as they opened up to see what the commotion was.

Jack skidded on his heels, but his knees were weak and he tripped. He fell helplessly to the bloodsoaked carpet and ended up on his back, looking up at the chaos that surrounded him. People were being torn limb from limb, their flesh gouged by human teeth, children and adults both. Jack was powerless to help any of them – he always was. Every night he was an impotent witness of a thousand deaths. But tonight, for some reason, the eyebleeders were ignoring him.

And part of him knew why.

Jack’s vision went cloudy and a dull buzzing seemed to fill his skull. It was becoming hard to think…or feel. His entire body went numb. It was only a few minutes more before Jack lost all sense of himself and his eyes began to bleed. He got up off the floor and joined the shambling mass of infected.



Day 103

Jack woke up screaming. He leapt out of bed and immediately started trashing the room. He rammed his fists into the television, making them bloody with glass splinters. Then he ripped the bedside cabinets away from the wall and hurled them across the room. He kicked holes in the wall. He pulled doors off their hinges. None of it made him feel any better.

When security finally came to apprehend him, they locked him inside the ship’s brig and left him there. The tiny, square room kept Jack safe from the infection that night and he sat there in silence until he fell asleep at midnight.