Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(60)

Tally shook her head. “I’m going to see my daughter and you’re not going to stand in my way.”

Jack glanced at his watch. It was just after eight. The infected would be attacking any minute. The lives of the passengers above were about to come to an end, and this time there would be no coming back. Jack felt sorrow for them, but he now knew that their deaths had always been inevitable. There’d never been any chance to save them. What he needed to do now was make sure that their deaths were the only ones caused by the virus. Tally was the only obstacle currently in his way of achieving that goal.

Jack turned and ran, hopping between pallets as the sound of gunshots rang out behind him. If there’d been any doubts that Tally was prepared to kill him, they vanished now. Jack peeked out from behind a stack of boxes and was met by another gunshot. The bullet hit only inches away from his face and sent shards of plastic up in the air.

Jack crouched down and hurried toward the back of the cargo area. Tally had said that she didn’t know what Donovan’s plan had been to sink the ship, but Jack was pretty sure he knew. He reached the rear pallets of the cargo area and slid around behind them, using them for shelter. Tally had stopped shooting, which made it impossible for Jack to pinpoint her location without breaking cover and exposing himself.

Have to work fast.

Jack took out the keys he’d taken from Donovan before he’d draped the man with a blanket and inserted them into a nearby footlocker. He opened it up to reveal a collection of American assault rifles. Jack had never fired an AR-15 before and he hoped his military background was enough to help him through. He opened up a small green box on an adjacent pallet and pulled out a handful of rounds along with a magazine to load them into. After a quick look over his shoulder, Jack thumbed the rounds into the magazine and slammed it into the base of the rifle. He managed to locate the safety and disengaged it. Finally he pulled the charging handle and primed the weapon to fire.

Time to go to war.

“Don’t move, Jack. I don’t want to kill you, but you know I will.”

Jack had his back to Tally and was pretty sure she knew nothing about the rifles in the footlockers – or, more specifically, the loaded one he was now holding in front of him. “If you kill me,” he said, “then you’ll be responsible for billions of deaths, not just mine. Do you really want that? Is that really something you can be okay with?”

“You’re not going to convince me, Jack. I’ve made up my mind. My daughter is the only thing that matters.”


“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Jack span around and fired off three rounds into Tally’s stomach. She flew back, clear off her feet like her body was attached to bungee cords. The blood from her guts soaked the floor when she came to rest, but her eyes remained focused on Jack. She was not yet dead.

Jack walked up to her slowly, kicking away the pistol that lay only inches from her grasping hand. He pointed the rifle’s barrel at her forehead. “I’m sorry, Tally, but I promise you that this is the only way your daughter will ever be safe.”

He pulled the trigger.





2100hrs


The sound of people being butchered and torn apart on the upper decks was the only thing Jack could hear. It made him even more resolute about what he needed to do. As an explosion erupted from somewhere above, Jack thought about Claire and her unborn baby, cute little Heather with her dolly, and the two small boys racing around the decks. They would probably all be dead by now.

Jack looked down at the crates full of grenades he’d laid out next to one of the ship’s diesel engines. There must have been more than two hundred of the handheld explosives in total. Jack was no demolitions expert, but he was fairly certain that an explosion of that magnitude would be enough to cause a pretty significant breach in the ship’s hull. The Kirkpatrick needed to sink fast to prevent it being rescued by any nearby vessels. The virus needed to disappear without a trace below the depths of the Mediterranean.

There was one more grenade in Jack’s hand and he was looking at it through a haze. The Glen Grant had rendered him pretty inebriated, but he was still clear in his focus and lucid in his intent. From the moment he had gotten on the ship, there had only ever been one way he was going to leave it. He just hadn’t been aware of it until now. Whether or not Joma knew things would end this way didn’t matter now. It didn’t change what needed to be done. The only way the virus could be stopped was if every single person onboard died. There could be no survivors, and that meant Jack too.

He yanked the pin at the top of the grenade and felt the spring-loaded ‘spoon’ release in his palm. Once he dropped the grenade into the pile of explosives he would have just five seconds. Five seconds of life left to live; just five more seconds of pain and grief and anger. It was five seconds longer than Jack wanted or needed.

He opened his palm and let the grenade fall. It seemed to roll slowly through the air, bouncing into the crate and coming to rest amongst its brothers.

Jack started to count.

“One…”

I…

“Two…”

Love…

“Three…”

You…

“Four…”

Laura…

“Five…”



Day 250

Sixty-miles off the coast of France, Commander Harrington looked down from the foredeck of the Merchant Navy Bulk Carrier, Barstow. The rolling sea of the Mediterranean was littered with debris: passenger belongings, clothing, wooden fixtures of the ship, and scrap pieces of metal. While nothing had been determined yet, it seemed as though the passenger liner, Spirit of Kirkpatrick, had suffered some kind of explosion, perhaps from within the engine compartment. Harrington had been a seaman for many decades and seen such things before, but not with a passenger ship in modern times. With lawsuits being the way they were, safety checks on passenger vessel were beyond overcautious. It would remain to be seen what the cause was, but Harrington wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the explosion was deliberate.