The Adrift Trilogy: The Black River Page 10

  Two elderly women blinked at the four armed men as the doors opened, and Vega manufactured a smile with some difficulty.

  "I'm very sorry, ladies," he said through clenched teeth. "This lift is going down to the engineering decks. If you'll just wait here a moment—"

  "Nonsense, boy," one of the women said, and shouldered her way into the space between Vega and Saunders. "Lifts go up and down, haven't you heard? Come on, Edith."

  The second old woman nodded at her more forthright friend, and stepped inside the elevator.

  Just smile, Vega thought to himself. Get off on deck three and let them carry on their journey. The passengers are paramount.

  That was the Captain's phrase. The passengers are paramount. Vega didn't necessarily disagree, but the way the man had turned it into some sort of catchphrase, to be repeated at every opportunity, made Vega's teeth itch.

  Ferrying the old women down toward potential danger was not an option, whether the money they had paid to be there made them paramount or not. When it came to safety on the Oceanus, Steven Vega had rank, and his word was law.

  "Out!" he roared, and the wrinkled faces froze in surprise. When it became clear that the women were too stunned to respond, Vega drew in a deep breath, and roared again.

  "I said get out!"

  The women hurried from the elevator, and Vega heard them mumbling vague, shaky threats about taking the matter up with Vega's superiors.

  He stabbed the button to close the doors, glaring at the pensioners until the lift began to descend once more, erasing them from his sight. It seemed as though it was moving even slower than it had before.

  He felt the tension growing among the team.

  Vega watched as the digital readout meandered from five to four.

  And then the lights went out.

  And the lift stopped moving.

  They were between floors, and the glass offered no view of anything other than metallic walls. No light penetrated the lift, and he heard the men around him gasp in surprise as they were plunged into absolute darkness.

  "What the fuck?"

  Ferguson's voice.

  "It's just the lift," Vega snarled. "Any of you bring a flashlight?"

  His question was met by silence, and Steven Vega ground his teeth when he realised that the idiots he was travelling with were almost certainly shaking their heads in the darkness.

  He cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight, and then remembered that his phone had a flashlight app that would serve almost as well. He fished it from his pocket and frowned.

  The phone was dark, too, and no amount of fiddling with the infuriating touchscreen would coerce it back into life.

  This was not going to plan.

  "One of you, hand me your phone," he said gruffly, and heard rustling as the men checked their pockets.

  "My phone's dead," a voice said.

  Vega felt something in his gut then, a rolling queasiness he hadn't felt for a long time. A feeling like something bad was happening; something he didn't quite understand.

  "Mine too, Ste...Mr Vega."

  "And mine. And there's something else, as well. Where is the emergency lighting? In the event of a loss of power, there is a backup source that provides lighting to crucial parts of the ship. Including the elevators."

  Steven Vega grimaced even as a part of him congratulated Phillips for at least reading the security manual he'd been given when he got the job. He doubted many of the other security staff had bothered.

  Phillips was right. A loss of power to the elevator—hell, to all the elevators—was something Vega could have dismissed as a technical glitch. But a loss of power that extended to their personal devices was a clear sign that something on the ship was very, very wrong.

  There was only one explanation he could think of. It made no sense on the Oceanus, but...

  He felt at his wrist, locating the buttons on his wristwatch. One of them provided a soft blue glow behind the display so that the wearer could check the time at night.

  He pressed it.

  No response.

  It can't be.

  It's unthinkable.

  Why in God's name would this happen to a cruise ship?

  "My radio's dead, too," a voice said warily. Vega thought it was probably Saunders, but he wasn't paying attention. Too lost in his own thoughts, in trying to understand.

  The Oceanus was in the middle of the Atlantic, for fuck's sake. A long way from dangerous waters.

  It can't be.

  And yet it is.

  "What's going on here, Mr Vega?"

  Vega scratched at his chin thoughtfully, and suddenly found himself wondering if four firearms was remotely enough to defend a ship like the Oceanus.

  "I think," he said finally, "that we've just been hit by an EMP."

  14

  Elaine awoke in darkness so total, that for a moment she wasn't even sure she had opened her eyes.

  She stretched out, shaking the sleep from her muscles, and frowned. She knew she should have insisted that they not take a nap. Judging by how dark it was, they had slept far longer than an hour or two. They had probably missed the evening's entertainments already, and had maybe even slept through the opening hours of the Oceanus' three fine-dining restaurants.

  Elaine hadn't ever experienced fine dining. Even the meal served at the wedding had been the budget option. From a list of exotic-sounding dishes, she had been compelled to opt for chicken. When you were serving more than a hundred people, the difference in cost between Roasted chicken and Foie Gras quickly became substantial.

  The notion that she had missed out on the chance to sample haute cuisine—even if only for one night—irritated her, and she chastised herself for napping for so long. She and Dan only had twenty-one evenings to enjoy on the ship, and they had paid a hefty price to do so. Sleeping through one of those expensive evenings seemed like a terrible waste.

  She glanced at the window to her right, barely able to make it out. Night was falling fast, and it looked like it brought heavy cloud cover with it. There was no light from the moon and stars, and coupled with the darkness of the bedroom, it almost felt like she had awoken in an isolation chamber.

  She remembered that most things in the cabin operated on voice control.

  "Lights," she said tentatively, feeling a little foolish. Voice control sounded great in principle but, just like talking to her smartphone, it made her feel awkward. Once the novelty had worn off, she had disabled the option to ask her phone to do things for her. It just felt too damn weird.

  The lights didn't respond.

  "Lights," she repeated, a little louder. "Uh...lights on?"

  Nothing.

  Great, she thought. We got the moody voice control.

  She fumbled to her left, finding a small shelf set into the wall that served as a bedside table. After a moment of searching the unfamiliar surface with her fingers, she located the small bedside lamp, and switched it on manually.

  Darkness prevailed.

  A power cut?

  Is that even possible?

  Elaine sat up in bed, and reached out to wake Dan.

  And found an empty space. Cold sheets.

  For a moment, Elaine sat there, frozen, her palm in the space where Dan should be. Dark flickers of concern flashed through the back of her mind. Dan's behaviour had always had a certain...predictability to it, even before his illness made him retreat into his shell and refuse to come out. She loved that about him; the dependability. It was part of the reason she had fallen for him in the first place.

  So where is he?

  Elaine pushed herself up from the bed and found her summer dress on the floor. She slipped it on and shivered a little.

  Should I be cold?

  The thought popped into her mind from nowhere, but once it was there, it dominated. The air in the cabin felt freezing, as though the air conditioning had been out of action for a while.

  How long has the power been out? How long have I bee
n asleep?

  Elaine didn't wear a watch: her phone was her timepiece. She tried to remember where she had dropped her bag when she entered the cabin, but couldn't recall, and the darkness offered no clues.

  With the aid of the faint light coming through the window, she could just about make out the open doorway that led to the bathroom and the lounge and kitchen area. She moved forward cautiously, unsure of the layout, and stepped out into the living room.

  The reason for the cold became obvious immediately: the balcony door was wide open, letting the biting Atlantic wind rush into the cabin. Elaine stepped toward it, stubbing her toe on the low coffee table that was all but invisible in the darkness, and biting back a curse of pain.

  She hobbled out onto the balcony.

  No Dan.

  The concern that had been teasing her thoughts finally erupted.

  Dan had been suicidal, once; an awful period that had lasted for several weeks after he was discharged from the hospital. That had been a dreadful time for them both: Dan’s panic attacks were frequent and severe, and he became moody and unresponsive. At night, Elaine would lie awake in bed and listen to the man she loved being tormented by what sounded like terrible nightmares.

  Sometimes he would talk in his sleep, mumbling about the terrible black river; screaming that he was falling, or that something was coming for him. She asked him many times to talk to her about the dreams, but Dan point-blank refused. When once she asked him specifically about the black river, his eyes widened with remembered horror, and he had a panic attack so severe that it forced him to return to hospital for several days.

  For months, doctors had advised Elaine to keep an eye on her husband’s mood. They talked about post-traumatic stress. They talked about the possibility that if things worsened, Dan might need round-the-clock supervision. Maybe he would need to be in a place that could care for him, just for a while.

  They talked about suicide.

  Elaine refused to even consider the idea that Dan might need to be institutionalized. If Dan needed twenty-four hour supervision, it would be Elaine who provided it, not some stranger.

  Dan’s mood remained bleak for months, and more than once that terrible word popped into Elaine’s mind like an unwelcome guest.

  Suicide.

  Elaine didn't know if he could have gone through with it, but she knew from his dark moods and comments what was going on in his head. The thought that she might wake one day to find he had done it terrified her, and the memory of how that worry felt was something that she didn't think would ever wash out of her mind.

  He wouldn't...

  Elaine told herself to snap out of it. Those days were long gone. Dan was better, or getting better, at any rate. He was happy, if not quite yet whole. The panic attacks had almost stopped entirely. The therapy had a huge positive effect. Every day, she saw improvement, despite knowing the journey toward health was not at its end.

  He hadn't jumped off the balcony. No way.

  Elaine frowned.

  Her agoraphobic husband, alone in a strange place that she knew scared him half to death, had apparently gone for a walk.

  That can't be right.

  She wondered if she had underestimated just how much better Dan was feeling. It didn't seem possible. She knew the whole reason that Dan had navigated her directly to the bedroom and the inevitable nap was so that he could have time to process being in a strange place. It was a little like retreating to a safe nest, recovering from the ordeal of boarding the ship before he could summon up the courage to venture out among strangers once more.

  Elaine got it. The ship made him anxious. She had no doubt about it. He wouldn't just go out alone.

  And yet, apparently, that was exactly what he had done.

  Elaine stepped back inside the cabin, and made her way carefully around the coffee table, heading toward the part of the opposite wall that she thought held the cabin door, moving with her palms out in front of her.

  The door would be shut, she thought. It was electronic. If Dan had somehow decided to leave the cabin, he would surely have shut the door behind him. Come to think of it, Elaine thought that it shut automatically, like an elevator door. It needed the keycard to open it, right?

  Elaine nodded to herself absently, and felt along the wall until she found the doorway.

  The door was open.

  The power cut, Elaine thought. The doors must open in response to loss of power. That made sense. A power cut on the ship's maiden voyage was bad enough, but subsequently turning all the cabins into electronic prison cells was something else entirely. She could imagine the jokes at the Oceanus' expense. The glitzy launch of the cruise ship would be a laughing stock.

  Some poor bastard was going to get fired for this, she thought, and felt a pang of sympathy at the idea that someone would have to take the fall for the technical hiccup, but it departed quickly: trampled aside by a far more compelling thought.

  We might get a partial refund for this.

  Elaine felt a surge of hope in her gut. Despite the cost, she didn't regret the choice of honeymoon, not one bit. It had seemed so utterly right. So perfect that it had been Dan's suggestion, and Dan who drove the idea forward until it became reality.

  Dan, who had barely been able to leave the house. The honeymoon wasn't just a celebration of their marriage, it was a sign that her Dan was coming back to her. She wouldn't change a thing.

  Despite that, the Oceanus was expensive, and she couldn't help but feel a little dismay at the belt-tightening they'd have to do to pay it off. Any reimbursement, no matter how small, would help keep the credit card companies off their backs for a while. The power cut might be a blessing.

  She stepped out into the dark corridor, and immediately slowed to a stop. Without the feeble light offered by the windows, even her darkness-adjusted eyes could see nothing.

  Nothing at all. The corridor that she knew was there, simply did not exist. There was only darkness.

  And somewhere beyond it, somewhere through it, Elaine heard distant screaming.

  *

  The whole ship seemed to be screaming.

  Not screams of pain or horror, but of surprise, Dan thought. Mixed in with that, he heard mocking jeers. It was the response of a class of schoolchildren to the teacher falling on their arse. Dan imagined that there were plenty of people out there at that very moment, stumbling into each other; tripping over their own feet.

  The sudden plunge into darkness had a very different effect on him.

  He froze, and felt the hair on his arms standing up.

  Too many coincidences, Dan thought. There was too much weird shit happening for it to be unrelated. The body being thrown overboard, Mr Vega's bizarre armed response.

  The lights going out.

  The fact that he had even left the cabin in the first place.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  He was still standing just inside the security suite, still remonstrating with Katie, who was clearly becoming increasingly irritated with him, when the world went dark. It was almost like being struck blind. The walls and desks that he was surrounded by—and even Katie, standing just a few feet away from him—melted into the blackness.

  For a moment, he thought the darkness was in his mind; like the stress of the strange afternoon had caused something inside to finally snap.

  "Uh...Katie?"

  He flushed in the dark. He called out her name, with some part of him knowing that of course she was there, standing exactly where she had been a moment before. Still, he had to check.

  "I'm here," she said, and Dan let out an explosive sigh of relief. Katie sounded distracted. He heard her fumbling with something, knocking something to the floor.

  "What was that?" Dan said, and was unnerved to hear the anxiety clearly evident in his voice.

  "I'm just...looking for...aha!"

  "What?"

  "Flashlights," Katie said.

  Dan heard a click.

  And another.


  Silence.

  Darkness.

  Two more clicks.

  "That's strange," Katie said.

  "What?"

  "The flashlights don't work."

  "Flashlights? Plural?"

  "Not a single one."

  Silence.

  "Uh...do they have—"

  "Yes, they have batteries in them," Katie snapped. "They were tested a few hours ago. They all work."

  "So...what does that mean?"

  "I'm thinking."

  Silence.

  "There's no emergency lighting either," Katie said softly. "We should have emergency lighting right now. It runs off a separate power source."

  Dan could almost hear her frowning.

  "There's no way both systems should be down."

  Katie sounded like she was thinking aloud. Dan had, for the time being, run out of thoughts of his own, and so he let her continue.

  He heard fabric rustling.

  "And my phone doesn't work. Does yours?"

  "I don't have it on me," Dan said. He bit off the rest of the sentence which begged to be said. Because mobile phones tend to be useful only for people who occasionally leave the house.

  "I think we've been hit by an electromagnetic pulse," Katie said in a clipped tone, and Dan's mouth dropped open.

  Silence.

  Until Dan realised that Katie couldn't see how visibly stunned he was. He made a mental note to verbalise everything.

  "What?" he asked weakly.

  "An electromagnetic pulse, it's—"

  "I know what it is," Dan snapped, surprising himself. "I spend the better part of my life on the internet. What do you mean we've been hit?"

  "Can you think of any other reason why we’d lose power? To portable devices as well as the ship?"

  Dan had no answer to that.

  "Okay," he said. "Say you’re right. How have we been hit? Like...by a solar storm?"

  Silence.

  "Are you shrugging?"

  Katie coughed awkwardly.

  "I don't know. I guess. That's how they happen, right?"

  Dan rubbed his forehead. It felt like a headache was gathering momentum behind his eyes. Once more, he wondered if he had taken his pills, and once more he reminded himself that he had.