Alright so the adrenaline wore off.
I instantly felt tired, hungry and dehydrated. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate, and I think Akio could tell because he nodded and pulled a can of peaches from his bag and handed it to me. I smiled and gave him another hug as a sign of appreciation and devoured it.
Once I finished up, Jason came back up to check on a machine of some sort and I walked over to him. I wrote onto my notebook and handed it to him.
How come the power’s not on yet?
Kenneth is still working on it. He’s not a cruise ship electrician but he thinks he can figure it out. He just needed a bit more time. Maybe in like an hour or so? How you holding up? You eat something?
Fine. Ate can of peaches that Akio gave me. What did that man say to you?
He gave me a funny look before righting into the paper.
Honestly. Don’t trust him. Somethings off. Usually after an incident at sea, the Coast guard, Navy, and the Airforce arrive to evacuate passengers. But he’s not any of the above. It looks like he’s a private contractor or security forces. It’s like he knew we were attacked. Who brings a gun to a sinking ship? We asked him but he wouldn’t answer. He just lied and said he’s here to help us.
But he helped me get down here.
He should have evacuated you. You shouldn’t be here.
He said he needed to restore power to the ship, and I saw his entire team die.
David ain’t right in the head for bringing a teen girl down here. Listen, you need to go rest. Get your sleep. You’re safe here. We can fix the power. Ok?
I had to read it twice to get into my head as to what he was saying. I didn’t know whether or not he was worthy of trust but at the same time, something was telling me that he wasn’t all that bad. He could have left me all alone up there because I technically am a liability, but he didn’t. I just had to go along with what he was telling us and pray that we all made it through.
I looked up at Jason and nodded. He nodded back and began walking away leaving me to my thoughts. I didn’t have any service on my phone and the power went out after an hour of the attack.
Maybe the Captain was able to reach someone and tell them we were under attack?
I don’t know.
Whatever, it’s not like it was a bad thing that he did bring a gun.
I was about to go back to Jason and tell him what I thought when a bright flash and vibrations began all around me.
The power was back on.
I immediately pulled out my phone and tried to connect to the ship’s Wi-Fi, but it wouldn’t let me connect. It kept saying that I didn’t have service. I would have been frustrated but I was just super glad that the power was back.
The 3 men came back up and I could see that Kenneth and Jason were completely worn out. The SWAT dude, or David as Jason revealed his name to me, seemed pretty pleased with himself.
They touched a few of the dial pads on the machines, which I guess were generators or something and then began to talk to each other. David spoke nice and slow giving me a chance to read his lips.
“We need to go back up and reach the navigation bridge. I can use that to steer the ship out of this fog.”
I’m not sure what Jason said but I could see David’s reply.
“The fog is 210 square miles in diameter. Communications and satellites cannot penetrate though the density of the fog. We need to steer the ship outside of the area in order to be extracted.”
Jason spoke up but again, he spoke way too fast for me to understand but I could see that he looked a worried, but he seemed to agree with whatever David said. Eventually, David and Kenneth walked off towards the back leaving me with Jason and Kenneth. David sighed before taking out a map in his pocket and laying it on the ground.
He took a sharpie and drew a path from our room and into another hallway that led to an elevator. From there we would have to take it up to Deck 6 and walk across the bridge that overlooked Deck 5 in order to take the main elevator up to the last deck. That was the quickest way to reach the navigation bridge on Deck 1.
That looked pretty easy.
As long as we didn’t come across anymore of those creatures.
I looked over at Akio who just merely nodded and seemed to grip his weapon tighter. I think he looked kind of worried, but he seemed determined to continue to fight. Honestly, it kind of gave me hope for some reason.
It didn’t take long for us to ready up. Jason gave me a large kitchen knife and tried reassuring me that I wouldn’t have to use it because they were gonna keep them away from me. We just had to move as quickly as possible through the hallway.
Kenneth opened the door first while David walked out with his gun held out, ready to shoot any of them. Jason followed and motioned me to trail behind him while Akio and Kenneth were to watch our backs. The new hallway was lit up, but it was completely empty aside from the corpses of the poor workers.
I guess the light really repealed all of them.
I think the others could sense it too because David lowered his gun, and we began to walk faster, almost jogging to the elevator. By the time we were in the elevator, the 5 of us were sweating and out of breath as we squeezed to make room for each other. The doors opened up and David stepped out first before freezing and crouching while motioning for us to quickly get behind a pillar.
Fuck.
The light didn’t repeal all of them.
There was one of them crouched over a body right in the middle of the bridge. Her yellow sundress was stained in black and red crust, and she only had clumps of red hair sticking out of her scaly head. She seemed to be caressing the body’s head as if it recognized it somehow. I don’t think Jason nor David noticed it though because David seemed to be making hand signals telling us that on three, he would shoot, and we would have to run across the bridge to the elevator.
Jason nodded in agreement and gripped onto his weapon tighter.
David aimed at it and fired a couple of times causing it to fall over and writhe in pain and we all began to run towards it. I made the mistake of looking over the bridge and down onto Deck 5 to see hundreds of creatures swarming out of all hiding spots trying to climb their way onto the bridge. They were scaling up all around the walls and pillars, and several more managed to be on our tails.
One fell from the ceiling right onto Jason causing him to drop his weapon and fall on his back as the thing tried to bite him. David aimed his gun at it and began firing but another one came from the back and knocked him down. Kenneth grabbed my arm and began dragging me towards the elevator and I tried to stop him, but I dropped my knife among the chaos.
I think I was in shock because I couldn’t think of what to do.
The elevators were already semi-open because there was a body preventing the doors from closing before, but Kenneth kicked it in and pushed the button for the second deck. I stared at the bridge to see David and Jason under those creatures, but I could see Akio struggling to get his knife stick out of one of the creature’s abdomen. My senses returned and I tried to exit the elevator to rush towards them, but Kenneth slammed me onto the wall of the elevator as the doors shut.
I tried struggling but he just shook his head no. I was about to push him away when the doors opened to the 2nd Deck and we both looked into the empty hallway. He stepped out first and motioned me follow.
I didn’t want to but I did.
We made it this far.
It wasn’t fair for me to give up now.
Especially after leaving the boys to die.
I followed keeping my eyes peeled out for movement around me. I could see from the windows that we were still in that heavy gray fog. Eventually we reached the staircase up to the upper deck but instead of heading up there, we simply passed it.
I curiously followed him until we reached an employee’s only section with a sign that said Security Only. We walked through the door to see that multiple security camera feeds and a couple of desks with scattered files. Kenneth went ahead and walked towards a room in the back, leaving me alone to investigate.
I think this was the room that Jason must have been trapped in when it all started. I could see the cameras were still live and I saw thousands of those things roaming throughout the ship.
I didn’t understand it.
Why was it that certain ones seemed to shy away from light sources like flares but others didn’t mind?
Then it hit me.
The ones roaming around were still wearing clothes and had remnants of their former humanity. They were still undergoing the transformation to whatever the end thing was. I immediately ran over to one of the monitors and begin clicking around to see if there were any recordings.
Sure enough, there were. I immediately clicked on the one from the first day and reversed it to around the time that I was asleep and focused on the camera that faced Deck 5. Around 8:19pm, most of the men started covering their ears as if they heard something loud that hurt them while the women seemed to stare off into the distance. A couple minutes later, they started undergoing something that looked painful as their bodies contorted into unnatural positions as claws, scales, and teeth ripped through their skin and mouths.
It didn’t take long for them to start attacking those around them. I was about to turn it off when I noticed something peculiar near the fountain.
It was my mother running along with my father and my brothers as my sisters trailed after them in the chaos.
Only something was different about my sisters.
They seemed to be running almost animalistic, no longer coordinated the same way as they usually did. My youngest sister, Isabella leaped onto my brother Damien’s back and they both fell over. My father ran over to try to get her off but my other sister Gina grappled onto his neck and dug her little mouth onto his neck releasing a gush of blood. My mother ran away from all of them, pushing my little brother Jason onto the floor to fend for himself.
Luckily for him, 4 other creatures came from nowhere and tore into her while Jason ran off into the direction of a small group of men fighting in the distance.
Could my little brother still be alive?
My emotions got the better of me and I had to take a breather because the lump in my throat was starting to hurt and my vision was getting to blurry to see properly. I took a step back and decided to organize the papers laying all over the floor to distract myself when something caught my attention.
It was a security booking file.
I opened it and a photo fell out.
It was the body of a beaten and strangled naked woman, in a bed in one of the cabins. That wasn’t exactly what made the world stop.
The perpetrator’s name and photo.
Kenneth Silverstone.
The very same man that was in the security office as me.
He must have been freed or they never got a chance to capture him during the chaos. I was about to walk away and into the hallway when I felt a hand over my mouth and a barrel onto my temple.
I could see through the blackness of a monitor that Kenneth had a gun pointed at my head. I trembled in fear but somehow I grabbed a pen and dug it into side and pushed him off. I raced towards the door and pushed the door wide open, running towards the elevator but I felt my hair get yanked and I was slammed onto the floor. I tried to get up and run again but Kenneth was too strong for me to fight against and he managed to drag me back into the security office.
He got on top of me and began to grope me in places so I started trying to push him off me but I gripped my arms tightly. I could smell the disgusting odor of his body and especially his mouth as he angrily yelled at me.
I didn’t know what he was saying, nor did I care.
He stopped for a second and looked up in fear as something tackled him onto the other side of the room, leaving me to get up and fall backwards behind a desk. Whatever my savior was, was ripping him into pieces and chunks flew all across the room.
I wanted to exit the office quietly, but I was in shock and completely frozen. I could only watch as the thing that killed Kenneth crawled over to slowly and slowly. I closed my eyes and prayed for a quick death as an act of mercy but instead I felt a scaly hand stroke the side of my face. I opened my eyes to see one of those creatures looking at me…as if it pitied me.
It tilted its head and continued to stroke my face. The skin of her face was becoming more translucent, just like those that came from the side of her face, and it had scales on the side of its cheek. Her hair was starting to thin, and her teeth were getting smaller and sharper, like that of some fish. She even started to smell like ammonia that overpowered the blood that she was covered in.
She suddenly stopped and faced the door as if she heard something and she ran off through the doors leaving me laying there to return to reality. I quickly got up and moved the desk to block the doors from opening again. I shut off the lights in hopes that it went away for good and nothing else would come back.
I didn’t know what else to do. When I was with Jason and Akio, the mission was to reach the navigation bridge to steer the ship away from the fog. But I don’t know how to steer a car much less a cruise ship.
That was something I would have to figure out later.
Right now, I need to return to the camera feeds and see what happened to my little brother.