Blood Cruise: A Deep Sea Thriller (24 page)

49.

The entire ship rocked and shook from the impact. Maggie didn’t need confirmation of what had happened, but she pressed her throat anyway.

“Tumbler?” she called out. No response except the ominous hiss of empty static. “Balls?” Still nothing. “Skanks? Dipstick?”

Maggie’s hand fell away from her throat and she forced herself to keep moving. She leaned heavily against the wood paneling of the passageway, her eyes locked onto the stairs ahead of her that would take her back up to the bridge. She was halfway there when the ship suddenly began to list heavily and she found herself thrown against the opposite wall.

“Staggs,” she muttered, realizing something must have happened to the captain with the way the ship felt out of control.

The yacht continued to list then suddenly it angled hard and Maggie fell to the floor. She began to slide down the passageway, going the wrong direction from the stairs she needed to get to. However, that was quickly rectified as the ship leveled out then started angling the complete opposite direction than before.

She rolled onto her stomach and reached out as she slid towards the stairs. As soon as she reached them, she clamped her hands on the bottom of the spiral banister, locking her fingers in place as the ship leveled out and returned to the previous angle.

Waves. They were climbing and falling over waves. The storm was in full force and they were right in the middle of it. There was no way a second helicopter was going to get to her, to them, in time before the yacht went down, especially with whatever damage happened when the helicopter above crashed.

But Maggie shoved those thoughts from her mind. The mission was over. The package was not going to be retrieved, that was plainly, and belatedly, apparent. Even under ideal conditions, she doubted her team would have been able to take down and capture the creature. It was enormous. Much larger and considerably more intelligent than the reports she had been given. It was a doomed mission from the start and she and her team found that out the hard way.

When the yacht leveled out once more, Maggie pulled herself up and started climbing the stairs. As the angle changed again, she let herself half fall “down” the stairs until she reached the landing that should have been above, but was suddenly below. Again the yacht leveled and Maggie hurried down the short passageway to the open bridge door where water poured in from outside.

She threw herself inside the bridge, her hands grabbing onto the brass railing by the dash, as the yacht started climbing the next wave. That time she could see what the ship was battling and her mouth hung open at the sight of the massive wave in front of her. The view became nothing but pitch black water then pitch black sky as the yacht climbed and climbed until it crested the wave.

Rain streamed in on top of her and she realized that half the roof was missing, most likely sheared off by the helicopter crash. As the yacht began to descend the other side of the wave, Maggie braced herself against the dash. Something slammed into her, almost knocking her legs out from under her, and she looked down to see an unconscious Ben crammed against the backs of her calves.

When the yacht hit the valley of the wave, Maggie let go of the rail, knelt, undid her belt, then strapped it through one of Ben’s belt loops before she slid it back through hers and buckled it tight, cinching them together.

“Hang on,” she yelled as the yacht started to climb again.

She held Ben about the waist and closed her eyes as they reached the summit of the wave and the yacht balanced precariously then dove over the other side.

It was the most terrifying drop she’d ever experienced and she’d trained extensively in airborne extraction techniques, so for her stomach to suddenly visit her throat was no small thing.

Ben groaned against her as she held them both to the railing. Water rushed up to meet the bow of the yacht and then washed over them, nearly filling the bridge before it drained back out.

“Hold on, babe,” Maggie whispered in Ben’s ear. “Just hold on. It’s gonna be over soon.”

Another climb and Maggie was about to close her eyes when she saw something out on the main deck. It could have been debris, equipment that had come loose, anything, but Maggie’s brain refused to put it in any of those categories.

Then she saw the something lift its bloody head as it slid down the deck to slam into the yacht’s superstructure.

Nick.

The son of a bitch was alive and trying to survive the nightmare of the storm.

Several thoughts raced through Maggie’s mind, but she finally landed on one: he was her asset, she was his handler, and if she lived she could at least return with him in hand. It was small comfort considering the failure she’d endured, but it was better than nothing. That and he was her boyfriend’s best friend.

She kissed the top of Ben’s head then reached up and slapped him hard.

“Uh…” Ben muttered.

Maggie slapped him again.

“Whaaaaaa?” he groaned as his one eye flickered open.

“Babe, we need to move,” Maggie said. “Nick needs us.”

“Screw…him…” Ben sighed and his eye fluttered closed.

Maggie took a deep breath then squeezed Ben’s hand where his fingers had been. His eye shot open and he screamed.

“Jesus!” he shouted, his eye wide with pain. “What? Why?”

“I need you to walk with me,” Maggie said, gripping his chin so he looked right at her. “We have to get Nick and then get below. If the yacht doesn’t fall apart, or sink, we may live through this.”

“Yeah, yeah, live,” Ben said. “Great.”

“Hey!” Maggie shouted in his face. “Are you folding, Blogger Boy? Did you just quit this hand and cash in all your chips?”

“No,” Ben said.

“Good,” Maggie replied. “Then let’s get moving.”

“I meant no as in don’t use poker metaphors to motivate me,” Ben said and smirked. “You just can’t pull them off.”

“Shut up,” Maggie said and kissed his cheek as she helped him with a half drag of a walk to the bridge door. “And hang on tight. Shit’s gonna get weird out here.”

50.

The wheel in the middle of the hatch door was slippery as shit, but Nick managed to hang on by looping his arms inside and hooking his elbows around the metal. As the yacht dropped again, he knew what was coming and he took a deep breath just as the ship reached the valley and half the ocean slammed into him, crushing him up against the hatch.

He coughed and gagged, spitting seawater from his mouth as the yacht began another climb. He knew he had maybe seconds to do what needed to be done and he started yanking at the wheel, using all his strength to turn it to the left and get the hatch open.

But there was one problem, the yacht was a very expensive craft and had a hundred safety features built into it. One of those features was an emergency lockdown of all hatches if the ship’s sensors picked up on any type of breach. Such as half the bridge being sheared off.

As long as the yacht had power, which it still did due to its exceptional, duel Caterpillar 3512C DITA-SCAC engines and the backup diesel generators that were designed to survive hurricane conditions.

In essence, Nick found the features that were designed to keep him alive and safe inside the yacht were going to kill him since he was stuck outside the yacht.

He screamed at the hatch, pounded his fists against it, and then started crying as the yacht crested the wave and began to fall again. He looped his arms back through and waited in midair, his feet dangling below him as the ship dropped at a near ninety-degree angle.

“I’m dead,” he said to himself. “I am so dead and I lived a shitty life.”

Everything went dark as the yacht hit the bottom of the wave and Nick found himself almost completely submerged for about two seconds. Then the ship righted itself, because for sixty-five million dollars it sure as hell better, and Nick was once again gagging and coughing up seawater.

He let out a string of curses and tried the wheel one more time. It moved. He was so surprised that he let go. But the wheel continued to move and he couldn’t figure out why until he saw the face peering at him through the porthole. Maggie’s face.

“Open up!” Nick screamed. “Get me inside!”

Maggie yelled something back at him, but he couldn’t hear a word of it. Then the hatch bucked under him and he realized what she wanted.

Nick rolled to the side and the hatch was pushed up and open. Maggie reached for him and they grasped each other by the forearm so she could pull him inside. He almost tumbled down the passageway that loomed below him like an open shaft, but the yacht had reached its apex and was leveling out for another fall over another wave.

He was on his knees, gasping for breath, as Maggie tugged at his arm.

“Get up, idiot!” she yelled. “Help me get this hatch closed!”

Nick looked up at her then felt the yacht begin to tip and he pretty nearly pissed himself as he realized he was inside the ship, but so was half the ocean going to be if they didn’t get the hatch closed. He forced himself to his feet and turned to the hatch, reaching outside with Maggie to grab the interior wheel and yank the opening closed.

That was the theory, at least. The actual practice was considerably flawed as Nick saw Ben strapped to Maggie’s side, a rag jammed in his empty eye socket and his wounded hand clutched to his chest. Nick registered the missing fingers right away and he couldn’t stop staring at the scorched and blistered stumps, no matter how much Maggie screamed at him to pay attention and move his ass.

Then they were plummeting down the wave and it was all he could do to brace himself against the wall and keep from falling out of the open hatch. Maggie was next to him, with Ben jammed between them, their backs pressed to the wall, their bodies supine as the yacht raced to the bottom.

“Your freezing up probably killed us,” were the last words Nick heard before the ocean came inside the yacht and propelled them up the passageway and slammed them into the far wall, crushing them up against the paneling. Nick’s lungs burned as the water filled the ship and he said every prayer from every religion he had ever learned but never believed in.

51.

Wedged into a corner of the passageway, Ben awoke to nothing but pain and panic. He rolled over and began to vomit, his body soaked with seawater. The same seawater that was coming out of his guts by the gallon. Between burps, he looked over and saw Nick doing the same thing, the man’s arm twisted through the brass railing halfway up the wall.

“Get it all out,” Maggie said next to him and pushed up onto her hands and knees. “Try to cough out as much as possible and press it from your lungs.”

Ben tried to respond, but instead of words, saltwater spewed from between his lips. His body shuddered and shivered from the cold wind that whipped through the passageway, turning his soaking wet clothes into forms of torture that almost rivaled what he’d endured under the hands of Tony Giraldi. Almost.

His hand throbbed, but probably not as much if he’d been warm and toasty. His head was nothing but one dagger stab of agony after another. Just the simple act of letting his chin rest on his chest was excruciating.

“Storm’s over,” Maggie said as she stood up. She braced herself against the wall then leaned down and pulled Ben to his feet. “We need to assess the situation and make contact so they know we’re alive.”

“They?” Ben croaked, his eye a pleading beacon of confusion and distrust. “Who are they?” He stepped back from Maggie. “Who are you?”

“My handler,” Nick said as he found his voice and struggled to his feet. His legs wobbled and he fell to his knees, saltwater splashing up from the puddles that pooled on the passageway’s floor. “She handles me.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Ben said. “How about you explain it to me?”

“Not now,” Maggie said. “There’s time for that later. First, we have to—”

“Assess and make contact, I heard you,” Ben said. He took a few cautious steps and then stopped, his lungs protesting against the exertion. After a few gulps of fresh air, he kept moving. “It’s morning.”

Nick and Maggie followed behind him as he pushed open the broken hatch and moved out into the frigid air coming off the Pacific Ocean.

“We need to get up to the bridge,” Maggie said, turning around as she got outside. “Oh.”

Ben knew the tone in her voice. He reluctantly turned, his reluctance more because his body protested every single movement than honest reticence in fear of what he’d see, and stared up at the spot where the bridge should have been. What he saw was a half-collapsed wall and a bench covered in torn leather he would have rather forgotten about.

“No sign of the chopper or my team,” Maggie sighed.

“The waves washed it all away as soon as we hit,” Nick said. “I got thrown free against the bridge then bounced off the main deck.” He clutched at his side. “Ow and yay.”

“What now?” Ben asked.

“There are auxiliary controls in the engine room,” Nick said. “Radio, navigation, stuff like that.”

“Stuff like that?” Ben snapped. “Don’t you even know what your own boat has?”

“Yacht,” Nick said and tried to smile, but failed miserably when he looked Ben straight in the face. “Um, yeah, I know my own boat. We can call for help down there and sit tight until the Coast Guard gets here.”

“There won’t be any Coast Guard,” Maggie said. “I’ll make the call and my people will come get us. No other way to handle this.”

“Whatever,” Ben said. He stepped in a puddle of seawater and glanced at Nick. “Why aren’t we sinking?”

“We could be,” Nick said. “But we seem to still have power, so the bilge pumps must be working.  Staggs always said he felt safer on this ship than he did on land. Now I see why. That storm could have sent us down to Davey Jones’s locker, but it didn’t. The gods have favored us.”

Ben huffed derisively at Nick’s flippant use of sea slang then moved slowly across the deck of the slightly listing yacht. He looked out at the waters and shook his head then regretted the movement instantly.

“Calm seas,” Ben said. “Like glass.”

“Weather is weird, Benny Boy,” Nick said, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder.

Ben started to shrug it off, but stopped as he stared at a dark spot a few yards out in the water. Nick looked at him then followed his gaze.

“Oh, piss,” Nick said. “Is it the thing? Oh, shit, it’s the thing, isn’t it?”

“What thing?” Ben asked.

“What thing? Have you lost your damn mind?” Nick exclaimed. “The giant freakin’ octopus that killed everyone on this boat, I mean yacht, and nearly killed us except the storm tried harder, but we survived and…and…” He stopped talking and pointed, jabbing his finger at the shadow in the water.

“It’s just kelp,” Maggie said. “You can see the bladders bobbing up and down. The storm uprooted it and pushed it to the surface.”

Nick nodded like he understood, but kept pointing. Ben grabbed his arm and shoved it down.

“Come on. Let’s get below,” Maggie said, her voice firm and uncompromising.

It was her teacher's voice. Ben knew it well. Except what he didn’t know was the person using it. Not anymore. Not after what all had happened.

“Below,” Maggie ordered and Nick hopped to and moved quickly to the hatch.

Ben stared at Maggie for a second. Maggie stared back.

“We don’t have time,” she said quietly. “Please, Benjamin.”

“Sure
,
Mag
s
,” Ben replied and moved past her, his hand to his chest, his face on fire. “Since you said please.”

It was slow going getting down to the auxiliary controls in the engine room. Many of the passageways were impassable, their walls bowed and blocking the way, or their floors destroyed and nothing but gaping holes to fall in. Nick had joked they could save time and just jump in one of the holes and probably land outside the engine room door, but no one laughed, not even Nick.

They kept moving until they finally reached the engine room.

“You know what’s weird?” Nick asked.

“Are you fucking kidding me with that question?” Ben snapped.

“Where are all the Carls?” Nick asked. “I haven’t seen a Carl in like forever. Those bastards had better not have taken the lifeboat.”

“Forget the Carls,” Maggie said. “I need to make that call right now.”

“Radio,” Nick said, pointing to a console in the engine room against the wall next to a row of dials and pressure gauges.

As Maggie moved quickly to pick up the handset and dial in the channel, Ben looked around the room.

“Shouldn’t an engine room have engines in it?” he asked.

“This is the 21st century, man,” Nick said. He stomped his foot on the floor. “The engines are below, sealed off and protected from the sea. This is called the engine room only because it has the controls in here.”

“Huh,” Ben said and found a metal chair in a corner he could collapse into.

His mind barely registered the words that Maggie was saying as she spoke to someone on the other end of the radio transmission. He caught a couple like “mission failure,” “threat risk,” and “international incident.” None of that meant a damn thing to him. The world he thought he lived in with Maggie apparently was built on fiction and falsehoods, so he had no idea wha
t
anythin
g
meant anymore.

“Engines are at three-quarter power, but still holding steady,” Nick said as he tapped a computer screen built into the wall. “At least I think that’s what this means. It could mean the engines are three-quarters dead, but I think lights would be blinking if that was the case.”

There was a thud and sloshing sound from directly above them. Ben and Nick looked up as the thud happened again. Maggie froze in mid-sentence, her thumb on the transmitter button of the radio handset.

“I need to call you back,” Maggie said. “The operation may still be on.”

“Oh, man,” Nick said. “It didn’t leave. It stayed and has been munching on bodies and doing whatever it is giant octopuses, or octopi, or octopussies, or whatever, do when they rip a ship apart and kill everyone on board.”

“Octopus?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, dude, octopus!” Nick snapped. “Where the hell have you been these past few hours?”

“Getting tortured on the bridge,” Ben said and held up his wounded hand then pointed at his face. “Where the hell were you when this was going down
,
Nichola
s
?”

“Quiet, both of you,” Maggie hissed. She pointed up as they heard the distinct sound of heavy limbs slapping on the floor above. “What room is that?”

“I don’t know,” Nick whispered. When Maggie glared at him, he held up his hands and shrugged. “I don’t. If it doesn’t have a bar or a bed in it then I don’t really care what room it is.”

Maggie patted herself down and shook her head. “I have no weapons,” she said. “Not that they would do much good.”

“No weapons to fight a giant, bloodsucking octopus.” Ben smirked. “My whatever she is girlfriend doesn’t seem to have a weapon to fight a giant, bloodsucking octopus. You can’t make this shit up, folks.”

“Who are you talking to?” Nick asked.

“Myself, asshole,” Ben said. “Because talking to you two is way too fucking confusing.”

“Keep your voice down,” Maggie snapped. “It may leave the ship if it thinks everyone is dead or gone.”

“The giant fucking octopus? Is that what may leave the ship?” Ben said, his voice rising. “Hey! Doc Oc! We’re down here! Come and get us, you big piece of sea shit!”

Maggie and Nick gaped at him.

“He’s lost his mind,” Nick said.

“Yeah,” Maggie agreed and moved towards Ben. “Benjamin, listen to me very carefully, you have to calm down. I think you are going into shock and—”

“Shock? SHOCK!” Ben roared. “I am so past shock that I’ve entered an entirely new—”

His words were cut off as two tentacles punched a huge hole in the ceiling and started sweeping the room. Maggie grabbed Ben and threw him to the ground, covering his body with her own. Nick screamed and dove for the door, missing spectacularly and smacking his head into the base of the wall next to it.

Maggie grabbed Ben by his arm and yanked him out into the passageway as two more tentacles came shooting down into the room. Nick was crawling on his hands and knees right after them. The three stood quickly and started running down the passageway, heading deeper into the ship.

“Where are we going?” Ben cried.

“The hold!” Nick yelled. “There’s a lifeboat in there we can use to get the hell off this boat! Yacht! Dammit!”

The ceiling behind them exploded into a thousand fragments of teak and oak and mahogany. Wooden shrapnel pelted their backs as they reached the next corner and hurried around. Ben felt blood trickling from his shoulder, but he didn’t dare stop to inspect the wound. And after having his eye gouged out with a knife and his fingers sliced off, a big splinter wasn’t exactly on his pain radar.

Nick led them down one more set of stairs, a set that was thankfully stable and not about to come unbolted from the wall, and shoved open a door that Ben recognized. It was the door that he and Maggie had come through from the other side when they’d first entered the yacht. Except now the hold held only one speedboat and it didn’t look too sea worthy.

“Ouch,” Nick said as he stared at the cracked and broken vessel. And what was strewn across it. Bodies. Dozens of them, their limbs twisted and tied together.

“Found the Carls,” Nick said.

“That had better not be the lifeboat you were talking about,” Ben said.

“What? Oh, hell no,” Nick said, turning away from the grotesque sight. “The lifeboat is through here.”

They walked along the hold’s small platform and came to a wide hatch. Nick grabbed the wheel in the center of the hatch and struggled to turn it.

“You’d think they’d make this easy since it’s for emergencies,” Nick said.

“You’d think it would be kept up above since it’s for emergencies,” Ben mocked.

“That would be ugly,” Nick replied. “Rich people hate ugly more than they hate death. Come on, man, you’ve met my mom. She’d rather slit her wrists than wear last season’s outfits.”

“Move,” Maggie said as they heard the sound of shearing metal echo down from above. “No time for you two to blabber on.”

She pushed Nick out of the way and yanked on the wheel. It protested, but then gave and turned freely. She yanked open the hatch and revealed a small space barely big enough for six people.

“I guess the crew has their own lifeboat?” Ben asked.

“The crew goes down with the ship, dude,” Nick said. “Haven’t you seen Titanic? Of course, the crew are all a bunch of bloody pretzels right now, so they aren’t going anywhere except out a monster’s asshole when it returns and eats them up. You think the thing will dip them in mustard?”

“You are not as funny as you think you are,” Ben replied. “That is just bad taste, dude.”

“I don’t care,” Nick said. “I’m scared shitless and just trying to keep going, man.”

“Get in,” Maggie ordered.

The two men complied and she followed them inside. The space was pure white with two long, red benches. The walls were covered in ocean survival gear, none of it looking like it had ever been touched except for maybe a yearly inspection. There were small portholes along the top of the walls with a single, small windshield at one end of the lifeboat just above a wheel and console of controls.