Authors: James F. David

Ship of the Damned (18 page)

BOOK: Ship of the Damned

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W
es didn’t want to use Elizabeth, but was reluctant to use Margi since she had been slow to recover from the last integration. He had little choice, however, since it could take weeks to track down another person tuned in to the ship dream. He decided to evaluate Margi, hoping that her brief normal dream had made her stronger. Wes had booked a motel room near the campus for Margi, but when he called to ask her to come to his office there was no answer. After calling repeatedly for the next two hours he and Elizabeth went to the motel.

Wes knocked several times, but Margi didn’t answer. The motel had interior halls, and there was no window they could peek through.

“She could be out somewhere,” Elizabeth suggested.

“She’s too exhausted to go anywhere,” Wes said.

“I don’t think she would have gone home without telling us. Your experiment was her only hope,” Elizabeth said.

“I’ll get the manager,” Wes said.

The manager wasn’t on duty, and the assistant was reluctant to let Wes into a rented room. Wes explained their concern for Margi’s well-being, but even then Wes had to show every piece of ID in his wallet before Mr. Waltham would agree to check.

Mr. Waltham knocked repeatedly before using his pass key. Opening the door slowly, he shouted into the room.

“Ms. Winston? Are you here, Ms. Winston? It’s the assistant manager, Mr. Waltham.”

Finally, Mr. Waltham pushed the door open wide enough for Elizabeth and Wes to squeeze past. The bathroom was to the right as they entered; Elizabeth paused at the closed door, knocking. Wes continued into the room. There were two queen-size beds. Both beds were made, although one was rumpled as if someone had lain on top of it. Personal items were scattered around the room, and Margi’s suitcase was in the closet, clothes hanging from the rod above.

“Mr. Waltham, we need to open the bathroom door,” Elizabeth said.

Wes joined Mr. Waltham and Elizabeth at the bathroom door. Mr. Waltham again knocked several times, calling to “Ms. Winston” before he used a small hook on his key ring to spring the bathroom lock. With a click, the catch released, and again he began the calling routine. He stopped abruptly when he smelled the foul odor. With an assertive shove, Elizabeth moved ahead of the assistant manager, pushing the door open. Taking two steps in she turned to the bathtub and gasped. Wes stepped in next to her, and Mr. Waltham followed. Margi was floating in the bathtub, face up, eyes closed, head submerged. Her bowels had released when she died and the water was fouled with her waste. She floated lifeless in the brown soup, her nude body already beginning to bloat.

Mr. Waltham gasped, then hurried out to the phone to call for paramedics. Wes estimated that it was at least twelve hours too late for help.

He turned away, sickened by the sight and saddened by his inability to help Margi. He stepped back into the hall; before Elizabeth followed, she took a towel and covered Margi’s body.

“Was it suicide?” Mr. Waltham asked.

Wes shook his head. “They’ll have to do an autopsy, but I don’t think so. She had a sleep disorder. I suspect she slipped into a coma and drowned.”

Mr. Waltham was not listening, either dwelling on the horror of what he had seen or contemplating the impact of the death on his occupancy rates.

Elizabeth pulled Wes aside.

“You’ll have to use me in the integration now,” Elizabeth said.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Do you want Anita to end up like Margi? Or me?”

“You’re too sensitive to … to whatever it is. That last session affected you more strongly than the others. Margi dreamed of the ship for seven years before it killed her. That last integration equalled two years’ worth of
Margi’s dreams. I’ll find a solution to this, Elizabeth, without risking you. I’ll enter the integration with Anita and Wanda. Shamita can control the meld.”

“There’s no reason to believe you’ll respond any differently than I did,” Elizabeth said. “You could end up receiving the dream. If we’re going to solve this we can’t both have our sleep disrupted.”

Wes searched for other options, but none came to him. They hadn’t seen anyone in the dream when Elizabeth was in Anita’s dream by herself It was only after they integrated the three dreamers with Elizabeth that the details had emerged. Wes doubted that Wanda and Anita alone would be sensitive enough. The reception increased exponentially with the addition of each dreamer.

“All right, Elizabeth, we’ll integrate with you, but as soon as you find Ralph you get out. No exploring.”

“Agreed,” she said.

The elevator opened at the end of the hall and the paramedics emerged, Mr. Waltham following behind, wringing his hands. There was nothing the paramedics could do, but Wes respected the fact that they wouldn’t take Mr. Waltham’s word that Margi was dead. There was hope until they decided there was no hope. That was the way he thought about Elizabeth and the dream. Wes estimated that Elizabeth had no more than a few weeks before she, too, slipped into a coma and drowned in her bathtub. Remembering Margi’s bloated body, he vowed not to let it happen.

PROFESSOR

D
awson brought them in off the ship’s deck and down into its interior, past crew berths and aft toward where the hangar should be. Then he stopped just before a staircase and waited until they all caught up.

“We’re almost there,” Dawson said. “It’s one deck down.”

Peters and Compton checked their weapons.

“Don’t kill them,” Dawson said. “They won’t hurt you.”

Evans grabbed Dawson by the front of his shirt, pulling him to within inches of his scarred face.

“Don’t tell me they don’t like to hurt people.”

“It wasn’t my people. It was the Crazies that hurt you.”

“I won’t let them hurt you, Robin,” Ralph said.

Still holding Dawson’s shirt, Evans turned to Ralph, splitting his hatred between the two men.

“Let him go, Evans,” Jett said.

Evans ignored him until Jett rested his hand on his gun.

“What’s happened to you, Jett?” Evans said. “You’re nothing like your reputation.”

“I get the job done, that’s why I’m in charge,” Jett told him.

Peters and Compton listened to the exchange with interest.

“When we get to the bottom, we’ll have to put our hands up,” Dawson said.

“Like this?” Ralph said, sticking his arms up and banging his knuckles on overhead pipes. “Ow!”

Jett’s team waited for his response. He could only push them so far before they rebelled.

“We’re going down those stairs ready, not with our hands in the air,” Jett said.

“They’ll kill you,” Dawson said. “They know you’re coming. They’re ready for you.”

“How could they know we’re coming?” Evans asked.

“They won’t hurt you,” Dawson said quickly.

“How?” Compton said, jamming her gun in Dawson’s ear again.

“I told them. Margolin—he’s one of us—he can hear what I’m thinking. I told them about you so they would get out of the way. I didn’t want you to kill anymore.”

“Back the way we came,” Jett ordered.

“It’s too late,” Dawson said. “They’re behind us too.”

“It’s a trap,” Compton said.

Without being told, his team spread out, guns covering both directions of the corridor and up and down the stairs.

“Pick a direction,” Evans said, “and I’ll punch a hole through them.”

“You can’t win,” Dawson said. “There are too many of them. We have a fire thrower, and kinetics like you.”

Jett knew his team would never go down those stairs with their hands in the air, and he also knew Dawson was underestimating his team’s chances of getting through the Specials. With Evans’s psychokinetic power and their weapons, he guessed two, maybe three of them would make it, but Ralph wouldn’t.

“I’ll go down,” Jett said. “The rest of you can stay here until I’m sure it’s safe.”

“Dawson stays,” Peters said.

“Ralph goes,” Evans said.

“Can I, Nate, can I?” Ralph said.

“Sure, Ralph,” Jett said, knowing it was the best way to keep him alive.

“Can I hold the sides going down?” Ralph said. “It’s kind of steep and I don’t know if I can do it with my hands in the air.”

“Sure, Ralph,” Dawson said. “Be careful when you put your hands up at the bottom so you don’t bang your knuckles again.”

Ralph thumped himself on the side of the head, saying, “How could I be so stupid?” Then he started down the stairs, Jett following.

At the bottom Ralph turned left as if he knew where he was going. As soon as Jett’s head cleared the bulkhead, Jett he could see that Ralph was walking toward someone. A black woman stood at the end of the corridor. She was plump and wore a green apron with white pockets over a blue dress with tiny white polka dots.

“Hihowyadoin?” Ralph said, hand extended.

Just as Ralph reached her the woman disappeared.

“Where did she go?” Ralph asked. “Did you see that, Nate? She’s a magic person or something.”

Ralph reached the junction and then looked left and right.

“Oh, there she is, Nate. This is the way.”

“Put your hands up,” Jett reminded him.

“Oh yeah,” Ralph said, then lifted his arms, banging his knuckles again.

Jett raised his hands, managing to spare his knuckles, and followed, turning the corner to see the woman in the green apron halfway down the corridor. She disappeared again when Ralph reached her.

“That’s neat,” Ralph said. “How does she do that?”

There was an open hatch to Ralph’s right, and he looked in.

“There you are,” Ralph said, then stepped in.

When Jett got to the hatch, Ralph was shaking hands with a group of people. Jett leaned in cautiously, catching sight of men standing to the right and left of the hatch. Making sure they could see his hands, he stepped through. Men on either side poked him in the sides with crude spears made from pipe. Others aimed crossbows at his chest. The men were mostly sailors, but there were civilians too, wearing a mix of every kind of clothing including farmer’s overalls, a polyester suit, and a tuxedo. They were a wild-looking bunch, some with facial tattoos, others wearing necklaces made of copper shell casings, nails, or in one case forks. More wild still were their eyes, which were bright and distant, making Jett wonder if he hadn’t fallen into the hands of the Crazies.

“Take his gun,” someone commanded.

They pulled his gun from his holster, but the cable kept it attached to the backpack.

“He’s got it wired on,” one of the sailors said.

“Get a pair of dikes,” another said.

“I can take off the harness,” Jett said. “If you let me put my hands down.”

“Slowly,” one of the sailors ordered, pressing the spear into his side.

Jett released the latches on the harness, letting them slide the backpack
off. He kept the hip unit, hoping they wouldn’t think it was a weapon. They looked it over, but left it when they couldn’t see any danger.

“Go on in,” one of the sailors said. “But move slowly.”

More men with crude weapons parted in front of him, letting him and Ralph enter. The room was a machine shop with lathes and drill presses. There were bits and pieces of other machinery around the room which looked as if they had been cannibalized, and there were piles of pipe and buckets filed with wedges of galvanized pipe. Thirty people filled the room, mostly bizarre and crudely armed sailors in denim work uniforms, but behind them were a dozen women in a bewildering variety of clothes. The middle-aged black woman in the green apron was there, and next to her a woman wearing a skirt with a hemline just below her knees and the kind of nylons with a seam up the back of the leg. The woman next to her was young, maybe twenty, and wore a pink mini-skirt and matching sweater with white boots that came to her knees. Behind the women Jett saw children peeking out around their legs. One boy was about ten, two girls maybe five and two. Knowing that he planned to destroy Pot of Gold, the presence of the women and children made him uncomfortable.

They watched him with a mixture of emotions: anger, hatred, fear mostly; but some expressed hope. The crowd parted, clearing a path to a metal table. An object sat on the table, shaped like a ship, but filled with multicolored wires. Behind the table was a man wearing thick glasses with wire rims. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and gray slacks. He looked fifty, and was thick around the waist. Balding, his little remaining hair was combed across the bald spot in thin lines, making his scalp resemble a musical score awaiting notes. Ralph had finished working the crowd, shaking every hand, and now reached the bald man as Jett approached.

“Hi, I’m Ralph, what’s your name?”

“Nice to meet you, Ralph. I’m Walter Kellum.”

Hearing Kellum’s name, Jett flashed back to the meeting in Woolman’s office. He remembered them talking about corporations and foundations that might have the resources to develop the technology to create a Pot of Gold. Dr. Lee had said that “not even the Kellum Foundation” was supporting that kind of research. Now Jett found a Kellum inside Pot of Gold, although he didn’t know what it meant.

“This here’s Nate,” Ralph said.

“Nice to meet you,” Kellum said. “I’ll bet you’ve come for your missing aircraft carrier.”

BOOK: Ship of the Damned

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