Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

When we spilled out of the exit on the deck above, Ingo was waiting for us.

"So, everything went smoothly?" he said.

I looked at Haru and we both laughed, a tinge of hysteria in it. His trousers were ripped and my chest was marked with long, parallel cuts where my t-shirt had rucked up and allowed the floor of the duct to skin me like a cheese grater.

"Is the tracker down?" Haru asked him when we'd got our breath back, already heading off down the corridor. We were all carrying guns now, no need for careful timing any longer, only speed. There were three of us against a crew of four-hundred and thirty-seven. We needed them to make the obvious assumption, that with the tracker down we'd be making for the tender boats.

But we weren't going down, we were going up.

"The whole computer network has crashed," Ingo told us. "It will take them at least twelve hours to repair. I think more likely a day."

We turned a corner, then another. Two soldiers, and Ingo took them out without blinking, without even seeming to notice. The next turn and the woman came at us from a side corridor, looking startled. She hadn't been hunting for us but I shot her anyway, finger twitch on the trigger a mindless reflex in the fog of battle. The first bullet went clean through her shoulder, embedding shards of bone in the insipid watercolour on the wall behind her. White lumps in the white clouds over Botany Bay. I recognised her too late. A kitchen worker, just a cook, nothing to do with the soldiers chasing us. Collateral damage, I told myself bleakly, moving on. You couldn't stay and think about these things because it only got you killed, and then that was two dead bodies without one good reason.

He'd taught me that, too, on one of those rare times he talked to me about what he really did.

We killed seven more, moving on before their bodies even hit the deck. They don't matter, the Voice whispered to me, and I really wanted to believe it. Beside me Haru's eyes looked wild, Ingo's just blank. Then, at last, we were there. And no one was waiting for us, not one single guard, because the one ship they would never have expected us to take was the one we were already on.

I slammed the door shut behind us and twisted the wheel to lock it. This was another room designed to be secure. This'll show you, you self-satisfied bitch, I thought. You're not quite as clever as you think you are.

There were only two men at the controls, eyes heavy with tiredness, and they spun to face us just a second too late. Ingo's bullet took the one on the left and mine the one on the right, almost as if we'd rehearsed it. And then we had the bridge all to ourselves.

Stealing an ocean liner is much, much easier than you might expect. Ingo took one look at the controls and nodded, satisfied.

"You're sure?" I said.

He gave me that peculiar almost-smile of his. "Definitely."

Ingo's hands glided over the controls like a musician's, the crooked bones of them looking almost elegant as he worked. Far beneath us, a deep base roar began, the sound of the ship waking from its sleep. My stomach turned over in time to the engine. As soon as she heard that, Queen M would know exactly what we were doing and then every last soldier on the ship would be heading straight for us.

"Set a course and lock it," I said to Ingo then, to Haru, "Show me how to work the PA."

Haru's hands shook as he worked the dials, as if they'd be more comfortable holding a pencil and drawing things which weren't real. But after a second he nodded and mouthed ready at me.

"I need it to be everywhere and I need it to be loud," I whispered back, my hand over the mic. He nodded again and I took my hand away and began to speak. "Wake up," I said. "Wake up!" I waited a second, and then, "OK, I hope you have because there are two very important things I need to tell you. Firstly, the entire tracking system's been disabled. So if any of you have been thinking of taking a short – or indeed permanent – vacation, now would be the time to do it."

I could see Ingo looking across at me from the controls. His expression was mild but his actions were more violent, smashing his fist into the console, snapping leavers and twisting knobs until they detached entirely.

"The other thing you need to know," I told everyone on the ship able to hear, "is that we're currently on course for Cuba. The controls are locked and by my estimation we're going to make landfall in the not too distant future. Have a nice day." As soon as I'd switched off the mic I smashed it. No need to leave Queen M the means to tell everyone that I'm lying.

Besides, I wasn't. In two hours the Infected would be swarming all over us.

The instant Ingo was finished we bolted for the door and swung it open. If there were soldiers outside, we were finished. I was betting that pretty much no one was going to be obeying orders right now.

I was almost right. Soldiers had been waiting outside, two dozen of them. For a second, I was staring down the barrels of twenty different guns. Military and precise – exactly like a firing squad. Except that unlike a firing squad, these guys were looking us in the eye. They looked just about as frightened as we were. One of them said, "Is it true?"

I swallowed past a bone-dry throat and said, "Take a look for yourselves," but they didn't bother because something in my expression told them that yeah, it was the truth, and the twenty seconds they wasted checking it out could be the difference between making it out alive or getting up close and personal with one of the Infected.

The next instant they ran, all military cohesion gone. Now they were just individuals worried about their individual lives.

The ship was full of them. They weren't trying to stop us any more, now they were just in our way, clogging up the stairwells and corridors, feet heavy on the threadbare carpet. I smelt their rank, night-time breath as they pressed past me. Their faces looked pinched, almost yellow in the pale lighting, rodent-like. The ship wasn't sinking, exactly, but the rats weren't taking any chances.

They knew that there weren't enough tender boats for all the people on board. That was the biggest gamble of all, that we'd make it down there quick enough to get one. It had to be this way, everyone else knowing that same stark fact.

I saw Haru grabbed by a woman who was half his size but twice as desperate. She flung him aside and sprinted past him, then vaulted over the stair rail to drop two decks below. I heard the scream as her ankle buckled and broke but she didn't stop running. I thought I could see a jagged shard of bone poking through blue-black skin.

I hesitated for just a second, but I didn't stop. I knew Haru wouldn't have stopped for me. We weren't friends, just useful to each other. And if I got to the boat first maybe I could hold the others off long enough for Haru to reach it. Or maybe I'd head straight out.

I didn't get the chance to find out. Two more decks down and Haru had caught back up with me. He grabbed my hand as soon as he was in reach and I didn't snatch it away. There was a sort of comfort in it, this contact with a virtual stranger – even one I'd been quite willing to leave to die just a few seconds before.

Shots were ringing out above us and the second body that came falling down the staircase wasn't alive any more. I touched my own gun, pushed roughly into the waistband of my trousers, but I didn't pull it. In the crush of people as we plunged deeper and deeper into the ship it would have been useful as a cudgel and nothing else.

The noise level ratcheted up and for a moment I thought it was just the same old din of voices, and frantic breathing, and the occasional scream, but then I realised that it was also footsteps, hundreds of them, ringing out on metal stairs. We were almost there.