Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

I didn’t stop. I ran straight for him, with whatever adrenaline I had left inside. With all my fear of never seeing Asher again, of dying right here, of the worms that might be growing inside me, of the baby that might already be dead—I used all of this to run straight toward him. He lost a moment to surprise and another one to pulling up his gun, and I hit him. He was like a wall.

I didn’t hit him with nearly enough energy to send him over the edge of the rails. He took the blow and spun, yanking the gun up. I managed to shove it back down so his hand couldn’t get ahold of the trigger. We spun together, wrestling over the gun, whirling around each other until we’d changed spots like dancers, the barrel of the gun still pointing at the floor. I saw Hal near as we whirled and Claire leaned over and caught the soldier’s neck from her perch on Hal’s back. I half expected her to snap it, while I tried to leverage his rifle out of his hand. I saw her lips move and knew she was trying to say something to him with her voice, but between the engines and his armor, he couldn’t hear; he still fought me. So she kissed him instead.

Suddenly I’d won my fight. His hands reached up to clutch his throat, and the gun dropped, forgotten in breathless terror.

I watched him slide to the floor as though he were sinking into water, his lips the only visible part of him with all the armor on, turning from pink to a hypoxic shade of blue. She’d kissed the air out of him, asphyxiating him on dry land.

The soldier forgotten, Hal turned toward the package of C-4 affixed to the wall. He did something nimble with his fingers and unfastened a timer, still clicking along even though it wasn’t attached to anything anymore. He showed it to me.

We had seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds on the clock.

I turned in stunned horror—and I could see another row of C-4 packages affixed between the ribs of the ship on the other side. Eight in a row.

We’d never get to all of them in time, no matter how fast we moved—much less if we did it at Hal’s speed. If we tried, we’d die.

I looked back to Hal, who’d already moved on down to the next bundle of explosives. “One side will have to be good enough,” he shouted at me.

If only one side of the ship took on water, not both, it would at least buy us some time. The Maraschino would sink like a leaf, instead of a rock.

“Go get Emily—run!” Hal shouted over his shoulder. I nodded and raced back down the catwalks, reluctant to leave him behind, but scared shitless at the thought of sharing this much space with so much seawater.

“Come on, come on, come on—” I found Emily under her desk and scooped her up, even as she fought to stay behind. Sharp pain radiated out from my shoulder, and I ignored it.

“We can’t leave them!”

“We’re not! They’re meeting us!” I said, even though I was unsure. I shoved her through the doors to the engine room and kept going.

They told you to never take the elevator in an emergency. I looked for the doors marked STAIRS down the hall and ran for them, hoping that Hal would do the same. How far away would be safe? Was anywhere?

The sound of the engine room faded as we raced down the hall, passing sign after sign saying we were almost to the stairs, until my own panicked panting was the only thing I could hear. How much time had passed? Where were Hal and Claire? I closed the most recent set of doors behind us; they were fire doors like we’d had at the hospital, and ought to buy us some time.

Then chimes rang out overhead, and a voice I recognized started speaking in a different language. “Ang barko ay kailangang lisanin, pakiusap, gumawa ng paraan para makapunta sa isang ligtas na lugar at gawin ito sa maayos at mahinahong pamamaraan.”

Asher was alive. Tears of relief filled my eyes—and I saw Hal and Claire coming at me down the hall. I opened up the door for them, flagged them in, and slammed it shut, for all the good it would do.

“Aceasta nava este evacuat. Vă rugăm să face un fel de punte barca de salvare într-o manieră ordonată.”

Hal threw his shoulder against it. “Keep going!” He waved Emily and me on.

“Not without you!” Emily screamed, taking hold of his free arm.

“Hierdie skip ontruim. Maak jou pad na die reddingsboot dek in ’n ordelike wyse.”

Claire looked down at something she held in her hand. “We don’t have long now. Brace yourselves!”

“This ship is being evacuated.” Asher’s warning was finally in English. “Please make your way to the lifeboat deck in an orderly fashion. Edie—I’m meeting you there.”

My heart leaped up into my throat just as Claire yelled, “Hang on!”

The C-4 they hadn’t gotten a chance to disarm went off. The roar of the engine room caught up with us, like a plane landing on our heads. The fire door bucked and threw all of us back, blown open by the pressure of the explosion below, and almost instantly the ship started listing to one side. I imagined the bottom of the Maraschino broken open like a piñata, and the dead sailors below dropping like gruesome candy, pouring into the sea.

Hal got up first. I was too dumbfounded with horror.

“Go go go!” he shouted, staggering up, I could read his lips. Claire was still clinging to his back. I swept up Emily again, who was screaming; I could see her mouth open wide. But I couldn’t hear her, because my head was buzzing like it was full of bees. Together we raced through the final doors and reached the stairs.

The remaining crew members who were alive were like us, alerted either by the explosion or Asher’s warning, swarmed upward like so many rats. We were at the bottom of things, having started at the lowest floor. I was sure there was shouting, but I couldn’t hear it; my head still rang like I was standing too near a church bell. I held Emily close as humanity pressed upward above us, panic blocking all the doors.

“Edie!” Claire called, just a step behind me. Her voice could cut through the sounds in my head.

“We’re here!” I shouted back. I picked up Emily on every other step, swinging her forward like a cane. Every time I moved her my shoulder stung.

“Don’t stop!”

I wasn’t planning on it! But I didn’t say that to her, because to say it would be to use air to do anything else but breathe, and breathing was all I could manage right now as we raced from floor to floor. People who hadn’t made it, who’d been broken by the escaping mob, gunshot, or mentally bereft by the worms, reached out, trying to grab hold of us so we could help them. It was what I imagined it would be like if I were to run out of hell, with endless hungry hands reaching out for us either side, and the stairs slippery with blood.

I thought could taste salt in the air, but I didn’t know if it was from above or below. I didn’t want to look back—I was scared I’d see the sea coming up behind me. No matter how much air was trapped on board the Maraschino, it wouldn’t be enough to keep us buoyant for long.

There was a pause from somewhere up above. It rippled back in line as people stuttered to a stop, hitting one another. I halted before I hit someone, and felt Hal against my back. The staircase started to drift higher on one side. We needed to get off the stairs before they became unusable, before instead of stairs they turned into a slide back down.

“What’s going on?” Hal asked—I could only hear him because his mouth was near my ear and he was shouting half-deaf-loud. And then I heard a sound that cleared out all the others in the hall, the sharp staccato of a gun, cutting through all the fuzz inside my brain.