Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(37)
The sea beyond the deck shone gold beneath the wide rays of the setting sun. Once it went down completely the ship would be surrounded by the featureless black of night, but right now it was pleasant.
Jack shivered at the thought of approaching darkness creeping towards the ship, ready to engulf it. He hoped Tally would turn up soon. There was something about the Sports Deck that sapped the strength from his soul. All the young life and joyful energy made him miss the world even more. Jack realised that what he wanted more than anything was to go back to his old life; he wanted to go back to where his actions truly mattered. Jack might have been jaded by his impotency as a police officer, but at least there was always the hope that he could do some good. But onboard this damned ship his actions were useless; his effect on the world was less than a mayfly.
Sitting there alone, surrounded by obliviously happy people, Jack found his thoughts turning to Laura. He didn’t want his mind to go there, but he was powerless to stop it. His memories came charging at him like a trainload of grief, crashing through his barriers and forcing their way into his consciousness.
His partner, Laura, was only just past thirty when Frankie Walker had shot her in the stomach. There was no need for him to kill her; he just did it for kicks. The decline of young morals in the United Kingdom seemed unstoppable. They f*cked each other indiscriminately, snorted drugs, attacked each other, and robbed old ladies from as young as ten years old. It was chaos. And it was getting worse.
But Laura had always seen the best in people. She believed in the inherent -goodness of society and that people would generally make the right decisions if given the chance. It was a na?ve outlook, Jack thought, but he sometimes envied her. It must have been a great comfort to see the world in such positive colours instead of the bleak black grime and sodden greys that he did.
Jack missed Laura’s smile; the one she showed only in private when the two of them were alone. But he knew that he would never get to see it. It had been erased from the world by the ills of a sick, decaying society.
Laura had died because she’d made the mistake of showing compassion for a husband who was trying to protect his family. The husband’s wife and child had been tortured and stabbed by a local gang. The husband had then gone and murdered one of the thugs in revenge. Laura and Jack had been given strict orders to take the man in – and they could have – but he had begged for one more night to finish what he’d started. The husband wanted to go after the rest of the gang and their leader, Frankie. Laura had said yes, and despite his better judgement, Jack had gone along with it.
Jack had known it was crazy the moment they’d stood aside and let the husband go. The only reason he went along with it at all was because he loved Laura – it made him weak and unable to do his job the way he knew he should. He should have been angry at her for that, but it was just who she was – and that was something he could never blame her for. He wished more than anything that he could go back to that evening and arrest the man before he had a chance to go on his rampage. Then no one else would have died that night. Frankie Walker wouldn’t have ended up cornered with a gun. Laura wouldn’t have been trapped inside a hospital room with him. She’d still be alive.
Jack’s eyes caught movement and he snapped out of his memories. Tally had entered the Sports Deck. She copped one look at Jack, then turned back around and tried to leave without him spotting her. She wasn’t quick enough, though. Jack ran after her.
He caught up with her in the corridor. She was hurrying away but hadn’t broken in to a run. Perhaps she never realised she’d been spotted.
Jack placed a hand on her shoulder and spun her around to face him.“Why have you been hiding from me?”
She shrugged free of his grip. “I haven’t been hiding. I’ve been coming here every night. You just haven’t seen me.”
“Okay,” said Jack, trying to stay calm. “Why have you been coming here instead of coming to see me? I thought we were friends.”
Tally laughed. It was a cruel sound. “We are not friends, Jack. We are just two lost souls floating aimlessly in the abyss.”
Jack wrinkled his brow and said, “But you were the one that said there was a reason for it all, that there was a way to stop it. We haven’t found the pathwalker yet. We can still stop all of this.”
“We have not found the pathwalker because he does not want to be found. Whatever is happening on this ship is nothing to do with me. I wasn’t chosen like you were, Jack. The only reason I’m even in this mess is because of my heritage. If I was not Romany then I would be as oblivious as everybody else. I wish I was.”
“Me too,” said Jack honestly, “but that’s not how life goes. When it starts raining shit, it’s not always up to us whether or not we have an umbrella.”
Tally looked at Jack like he was mad, but then she cracked a smile and shook her head, obviously angry at him for getting past her acrimonious shields.
“See?” said Jack. “It’s easier to face all this with company – I mean company that still remembers you every day. We shouldn’t be alone in this, Tally.”
“We’d soon get just as sick of each other as everybody else, Jack. Doesn’t matter how much I like you, I don’t want to spend the next thousand years with you.”
“So you admit you like me then? Here I was thinking you were avoiding me.”