Douglas Child - The Wheel of Darkness

He made his way carefully down the Deck 9 corridor. Although there was nobody in sight, the distant screams, yells, pleas, and agonized sobbing were omnipresent. He couldn’t believe that the ship’s officers and security had virtually disappeared, leaving hospitality staff like himself at the mercy of these rampaging passengers. He had heard nothing, received no instructions. It was clear there was no plan to deal with a disaster of this scale. The ship was absolute bedlam, with no information to be had, the wildest rumors spreading like a brush fire in high wind.

Mayles slipped down the hall, the key clutched in his palm. It was his ticket out of this madhouse and he was going to spend it right now. He wasn’t going to end up being one of forty-three hundred people ground to mincemeat when the ship ripped its guts open on the Grand Banks’ worst shoal. The lucky ones who survived the impact would live another twenty minutes in the forty-five-degree water before succumbing to hypothermia.

That was one party he wasn’t going to attend, thank you very much.

He took another slug of the whisky and slipped through a door marked by a red exit sign. He ran down a metal staircase, his short legs churning, and paused two landings below to peer into the corridor leading to the half deck where the port lifeboats were housed. While the corridor was again empty, the shouts of frantic, angry passengers were louder on this deck. He couldn’t fathom why they hadn’t launched the boats. He had been part of the lifeboat drills and had ridden on a couple of freefall launches. Those boats were damn near indestructible, dropping into the water while you were safely buckled into a cushioned seat, the ride no rougher than a Disneyland roller-coaster.

As he came around the corner toward the outside half deck, the noise of the crowd increased. Wouldn’t you know it: a bunch of passengers had gathered at the locked lifeboat hatches, pounding and shouting to get in.

There was only one way to the port lifeboats and it was through the crowd. No doubt more frantic passengers had assembled around the starboard lifeboats as well. He advanced, still clutching the key. Maybe no one would recognize him.

“Hey! It’s the cruise director!”

“The cruise director! Hey, you! Mayles!”

The crowd surged toward him. A drunken man, his face afire, grabbed Mayles by the sleeve. “What the hell’s happening? Why aren’t we launching the lifeboats?” He gave his arm a jerk. “Huh? Why not?”

“I don’t know any more than you do!” Mayles cried, his voice high and tense, trying to pull his arm back. “They haven’t told me anything!”

“Bullshit! He’s going to the lifeboats—just like the others did!”

He was seized by another grasping hand and pulled sideways. He heard the cloth of his uniform tear. “Let me through!” Mayles shrilled, struggling forward. “I tell you, I don’t know anything!”

“The hell you don’t!”

“We want the lifeboats! You aren’t going to lock us out this time!” The crowd panicked around him, tugging at him like children fighting over a doll. With a loud rending noise, his sleeve came away from his shirt.

“Let go!” he pleaded.

“You bastards aren’t going to leave us to sink!”

“They already launched the lifeboats, that’s why there’s no crew to be seen!”

“Is that true, you asshole?”

“I’ll let you in,” Mayles cried, terrified, holding up the key, “if you’ll just leave me alone!”

The crowd paused, digesting this. Then: “He said he’d let us in!”

“You heard him!

Let us in!”

The crowd pushed him forward, suddenly expectant, calmer. With a trembling hand Mayles stuck the key in the lock, threw the door open, jumped though, then spun and tried to quickly shut it behind him. It was a futile effort. The crowd poured through, knocking him aside.

He scrambled to his feet. The roar of the sea and the bellowing of the wind hit him full in the face. Great patches of intermittent fog scudded over the waves, but in the gaps Mayles could see black, angry, foaming ocean. Masses of spray swept across the inside deck, immediately soaking him to the skin. He spied Liu and Crowley standing by the launch control panel, along with a man he recognized as a banking executive, staring at the crowd in disbelief. Emily Dahlberg, the meatpacking heiress, was beside them. The knot of passengers rushed toward the first available boat, and Liu and Crowley quickly moved to stop them, along with the banker. The air grew thick with shouting and screaming, and the horrifying sound of fists impacting flesh. Crowley’s radio went skipping and spinning across the deck and out of sight.

Mayles hung back. He knew the drill. He knew how to use these lifeboats, he knew the onboard launch sequence, and he would be damned if he was going to share one with a bunch of crazy passengers. Fighting between the mob and Liu’s group was intensifying, and the passengers seemed to have forgotten about him in their eagerness to get into the nearest boat. He could get away before they even knew what was happening.

Liu’s face was bleeding freely from half a dozen cuts. “Get word to the auxiliary bridge!” he cried to Dahlberg before the angry mob overwhelmed him.

Mayles walked past the violence, toward the far end. As he did so, he casually pressed a couple of buttons on the launch control panel. He’d get in a boat, launch it, and be safe and away. The GPIRB would go off and he’d be picked up by nightfall.

He reached the farthest boat, keyed open the control panel with a trembling hand, and began activating the settings. He watched the crowd at the other end, fighting with the banker and stamping on the now motionless forms of Liu and Crowley. A head turned toward him. Another.

“Hey! He’s going to launch one! The son of a bitch!”

“Wait!” He saw a group of passengers coming toward him.

Mayles jabbed in the rest of the settings and the stern boarding hatch swung open on hydraulic hinges. He rushed for it but the crowd was there before him. He was seized, dragged back.

“Scumbag!”

“There’s enough room for all of us!” he shrilled. “Let go, you morons! One at a time!”

“You last!” An old, wiry geezer with superhuman strength belted him aside and disappeared into the boat, followed by a surging, screaming, bloody mob. Mayles tried to follow but was seized and dragged back.

“Bastard!”

He slipped on the wet deck, fell, and was kicked into the deck rail. Grasping it for support, he pulled himself to his feet. They were not going to keep him out. They were not going to take his boat. He grabbed a man crowding in front of him, slung him down, slipped again; the man rose and charged him, and they struggled in a tight embrace, staggering against the rail. Mayles braced himself with his foot, stepping on the rail to gain leverage, while the crowd surged and fought to get through the narrow hatch.

“You need me!” Mayles cried, struggling. “I know how to operate it!”

He pushed his assailant back and made another lunge for the hatch, but those inside the boat were now fighting to close the door.

“

I know how to operate it!

” he screamed, clawing over the backs of those trying to keep the door open.

And then it happened—with the spastic, abominable acceleration of a nightmare. To his horror he saw the wheel turn, sealing shut the hatch. He grabbed at the wheel, trying to turn it back; there was a clunk as the release hooks opened—and then the lifeboat shot down the ramp, jerking Mayles and half a dozen others forward. He tumbled down the greased metal rails with them, out of control, unable to stop, and—very abruptly—suddenly found himself in a free fall toward the roiling black ocean, somersaulting in slow motion, head over heels.