Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(38)
Tally rubbed both her eyes with the palms of her hands. “God, Jack. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I just want it to be over. I want my life back. I have a daughter back home.”
Jack felt his jaw tighten. “Shit, Tally. You never told me that!”
The tears came quickly and unexpectedly so Jack went forward and held her. He wrapped his arms tight around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. If only there was something he could say…
“I need a drink,” said Tally in a voice muffled by the closeness of his chest.
“Okay,” Jack agreed. “We’ll go to the bar.”
“No. I can’t be around people at the moment. They just remind me of what I’ve lost. Do you have anything to drink in your cabin?”
Jack nodded. “Hope you like scotch.”
Tally wrinkled her nose. “I suppose it will do. Long as it will get me drunk.”
“Oh, it’ll do that alright.”
Jack took Tally to his room.
***
Half the bottle of Glen Grant was now gone and Jack’s vision was bleary. He’d been drinking now, every day, for a couple of weeks, but his tolerance never increased. Every night at midnight the day reset and Jack’s constitution reverted back to how it was the day he had first boarded. When you considered the fact that he was still aging, it seemed a little unfair.
Tally seemed as drunk as he was. She was lying on the bed beside Jack and stared, transfixed, at the television set. Toy Story 3 was playing on the modest LCD and a big pink bear was stomping around a playroom like a tyrant while the other toys cowered. Jack wondered if the film would make Tally miss her daughter, so he pressed a button on the remote and switched the channel to something else: an infomercial about Cannes – their ever unreachable destination.
“So are you going to tell me what happened, Tally? Why did you disappear on me?”
Tally rolled onto her side and looked at him. “I…just needed some time alone. Some of the crew go to the Sports Deck for a drink at night so I thought I would join them, try to forget about things for a while. It worked for a few hours the first night and I even started to have fun. It was only staff members up there and none of them were sneezing or coughing. I thought it would be a good place to stay during the attacks. But…”
Jack nodded. He knew the story already. “At 8PM a bunch of children showed up?”
Tally seemed to recall the memory in vivid detail. Wrinkles appeared across her brow. “Yes. A couple of the children were under the weather, so sat on the side-lines with their parents. A lot of adults were also very ill. I knew then that things were going to get bad.”
“And you were right,” said Jack, remembering the trapped children from his own experience on the Sports Deck.
Tally continued. “When the attacks started, some of the children started leaking…leaking blood from their eyes. A couple members of the staff locked up the healthy children in the football enclosure to keep them safe. Without thinking, I ran in after them. It wasn’t as safe as I’d hoped.
“We were trapped in there for hours, Jack, while mutilated children and their torn-apart families tried to get in at us. There was so much blood up against the glass that, after a while, I couldn’t even see anymore. I could just hear the moans and whining of the infected people. The dead people.”
“You think the infected are dead when they attack?” Jack had made the similar summation himself long ago – ever since meeting Doctor Fortuné.
Tally nodded emphatically. “I saw a man with his intestines hanging out. He kept tripping on them as he walked around the deck. There was no way he was alive. The infection kills them and then they get up again and start killing. It is evil, Jack. Whatever it is, and whoever created it, is pure, malevolent evil. Being with all those children, trapped and scared, while other children – dead children – tried to get at them, it… it broke me. I kept going back, hoping I could do something to stop it, but it happens the same way every time. There’s no way to stop it. And now I can’t get it out of my head, Jack.”
Jack looked at her and could see the damage written across her face. Even if things worked out, some way, in the end, neither of them would ever be the same. A part of their souls, their spirits, had been broken.
“I know,” he said to her. “I’ve changed too. I think it would be impossible not to have. We still need to put a stop to it, though. Someone is responsible and they need to pay.”
Tally nodded at him. It seemed as if she was finally back on his side. “You still think it has something to do with what is down in the cargo?”
“No,” said Jack. “Donovan showed me everything. He’s as clueless about all this as we are. The cargo is full of money and pharmaceuticals – normal pharmaceuticals. The money is just a payoff to some dodgy Tunisian official. Plain old corruption.”
“How can you be so sure he is telling the truth, Jack? He shot you.”
Jack shrugged. “I’ve spent the last two weeks getting to know the guy. He seems on the level.”
“Maybe it’s just an act.”
Jack frowned. “What are you getting at? What happened after Donovan shot me? He said that you two talked about things, so you know he’s like us, right? That he keeps repeating the day like us?”