Alright, so today was a new day. It turns out the crew member’s name is Jason. The pudgy lady who was angrily yelling at me is named Laura. Bless her heart but she’s a real nasty one.
There are 3 others, a man named Kenneth who is older than dirt and keeps giving me creepy looks whenever there was no one around. A young woman named Elizabeth who was quieter than a mouth and seems to be in some sort of shock state. She does nothing but blink and ask the same question. According to Jason, she keeps asking for her Ben. I asked him who Ben was and he thinks it might be either her son or husband, but she won’t confirm.
The third one’s name is Akio, but we don’t understand him because he doesn’t speak any English. He also doesn’t write nor read English.
Jason seems to be the only one that really takes his time to communicate with me. He asked me how I made it this far and he was surprised when he read my response.
“I was asleep. Woke up in the dark and stumbled over my grandfather’s body. Think he tried to wake me, but he died before he got to me. Tried not to make any noise by feeling around me. Vibrations tell me if I make noise and if they’re near me. What are they?” I wrote.
“Not sure. Yesterday, the ship floated into some gray fog and we heard some awful screeching noise that seemed to come from all around us. It’s almost unbearable to listen to. Sounds like millions of babies in pain mixed with screaming cougars. When I looked up, I could see some women transforming into those things.”
“How many women?”
“Like a good 80-90 percent. The rest of those things came from the sides of the ship. Within minutes, most of the passengers were torn apart. I was locked in the security room down the hallway when it happened. I was trying to reach the navigation bridge to see what the captain’s orders were, but I overheard them being attacked. Communications stopped working and then the ship completely went dark like an hour or two after.”
“Why do you think it’s only women?” And why only some of them?” I asked genuinely curious. Nothing about that made any sense.
“Dunno. I asked Laura and Elizabeth and they said they heard some sort of song instead of the awful screech the rest of us could hear. But they only heard it for a minute before it turned into the same awful screech as the rest of us. Tried asking them about it for more but Laura is a bitch about it and Elizabeth went into a state of shock.” He slid the notebook back towards me and as I was about to write back, we were interrupted by Laura who angrily yelled at the both of us. I’m not sure what she was saying but Kenneth joined and pretty soon, the three of them were yelling at each other.
Laura pointed at me, and Jason shook his head no before taking a deep breath. After a couple of minutes, Kenneth agreed to something because he nodded his head before throwing a glass off a table. Laura looked relieved and began to walk away and I looked at Jason who just shrugged before motioning me to give me the notebook.
“Kenneth is an electrical engineer. We managed to convince him to see if he could take a crack at the ship’s emergency generator to power this ship up. We need the generator activated to power the navigation bridge. I need to find a way to fix communications, if not then we could use the security cameras to see where those things are.”
I didn’t know what to write back to be honest. If he and Kenneth were to go back out there, there was no telling if they would even come back. Even though I didn’t know Jason all that well, I didn’t want him to die.
I looked at him before giving him a simple hug which he returned back.
It took about an hour for Jason, Kenneth, and Akiro to make makeshift weapons from stuff they found around the safe room. I’m not even sure how they managed to convince Akiro to go with them on that suicide mission, but he knew he had to go. Both Jason and Akiro had a broom shaft that had kitchen knives attached to them using duct tape. Kenneth had a metal bat that had 2 kitchen knives attached to the end and he had some of the flares that had kept those things away.
There weren’t really that many goodbyes considering that no one really knew each other but I felt slightly sad when I saw Jason and Akiro leave through the doors that Laura held open. She slammed them shut after they turned around the corner.
I walked towards the corner and grabbed a can of peaches that I was trying to open earlier when I saw that Laura had run right past me, almost pushing me, towards the staircase. I looked behind me to see that the doors had been torn wide open, with a dozen of those things coming through. Elizabeth didn’t even seem to care and instead remained motionless as one of those things had grabbed her by the arm and slammed her into more of them. I didn’t even bother to continue to look as she was torn apart before running down to where Elizabeth was.
I fell down the flight of stairs but didn’t stop to think about the pain. I ran towards the first room that I knew Elizabeth was in but the door was locked. I banged on it frantically and I could see her silhouette shake at me to go away so I ran towards the end of the short hallway.
I managed to stuff myself into one of the dryers that was used for towels and carefully shut the door behind me.
I was stuck in there for hours trying to feel if it was safe enough for me to exit, but eventually I fell asleep. I woke up hours later, feeling warm and I decided to be brave and slightly open the door to see what was out there.
I carefully opened the door, hoping that it was silent enough for me to exit but as soon as I had, I could see one of those things crouched in the corner. The light coming from Elizabeth’s lamplight in her room, now illuminated the hallway and it revealed that there were actually two of those things hunched over a body.
Elizabeth.
I was about to shut the door closed again when I saw that there was a flashlight on the floor near me, close enough for me to reach but far enough where I would have to open the door wider to reach for it.
I quietly took a deep breath and reached for it, trying hard not to move the door so fast that it would make a sound. I think I was failing though, because as I moved, I could see that one of those things was twitching its ears. I shot my arm and grabbed the flashlight off the floor, and I almost fell forward.
Instead, the two things ran up the stairs as if they heard something else up there giving me the chance to shut the dryer door.
I have my flashlight and my notebook giving me a chance to write and reflect on today’s events. If the lights have not turned on yet, I will go search for Jason and Akiro myself tomorrow because I cannot bear to be alone in this darkness.
Wish me good luck.