Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(7)
Periodically the girl would let out a hacking cough, followed by a pitiful moan. Each time it happened, the mother stroked a hand through her hair and looked at the father worriedly. The two parents didn’t look much healthier than their child, and as Jack studied the room he saw that quite a few people seemed to be under the weather. The sneezing fits Jack had noticed earlier on the Lido Deck had now been replaced by a chorus of harsh, chesty coughs. Everywhere around him sick people were rubbing at their clammy foreheads and bloodshot eyes, all looking extremely sorry for themselves. Jack’s most conservative estimate put the number of ill people in the room at about one quarter.
Something isn’t right here. There’re too many sick people for this to be a simple cold virus.
Jack downed his bourbon and coke and placed the glass back down on the table. Slowly, he began to rise from his seat, oddly feeling that any sudden movements would be bad. He took another look around the room, making sure that what he was seeing was correct and not an embellishment of his weary mind. But there was definitely at least a quarter of the barroom audience that were sick. Paranoia was even starting to convince him that it may have been a full third. It was time to get out of there, Jack decided. The last thing he wanted to spend the week doing was nursing a horrible cold.
Just as he was about to abandon his table, Jack was stopped by the Filipino waitress. “Is okay?” she asked him.
“Yes, fine. I’m just feeling a bit…claustrophobic.”
“You want I bring you glass of water?”
Jack shook his head. “No, thank you. That’s very kind but-”
The waitress shot forward into his arms, pushed by some great force. As Jack tried to steady the woman, he saw that Claire’s boyfriend, Conner, was the one who had shoved her. There was a wild spark of anger in his feral eyes.
Jack snarled at him. “What the hell is your problem? What are you on?”
Conner gave no answer. He rushed forward with his arms outstretched, grabbing at Jack’s throat. Jack choked and spluttered as the fingers wrapped around his windpipe. Shock and surprise had distracted his reactions, but he quickly regained his focus by putting his years of training to use. He stamped his heel into Conner’s left instep and waited for the lad to back off.
But it didn’t happen.
Conner continued to claw and wrench at Jack’s neck and even tried using his teeth as a weapon. Jack turned his body sideways, hooked the lad under his right armpit, and flipped him over his hip with a basic judo throw. Conner went cartwheeling to the floor and stayed there, grasping at the air, disoriented. It was then that Jack heard the screams coming from behind him.
He turned around with his hands in the air. “It’s okay, everybody. Just remain calm. Everything is under cont-”
The entire lounge area was filled with panicking men, women, and children. They struggled and leaped over chairs as they tried to exit the room as fast as they could, but only ended up trampling one another. Dotted throughout the room, several groupings of people were engaged in frenzied scuffles. It appeared that the passengers were attacking each other – as if some spell had taken over them all at once and incited them to violence.
Jack spun on the spot, taking in the scene from all angles. While the room was too dark to see anything in clear detail, it was apparent that people were being hurt. The coppery tang of blood was thick in the air and the only sound he could hear was screaming.
Jack turned to the waitress standing next to him. She’d remained rooted to the spot ever since Conner had shoved her. He placed a hand on her shoulder.
“What the hell is going on?” He shouted the words at her, trying to snap her out of the daze she was in. It must have worked, because she blinked her eyes and seemed to come back to reality. But the only thing she did was flee, abandoning her duties and racing away into the crowd. A moaning from behind Jack made him quickly forget about her.
Conner was back on his feet, preparing for another attack. His eyes were now leaking blood and it coursed down his pallid cheeks in crimson rivulets. He was snarling like a rabid pit bull.
Jack wasted no time. He drove his fist forward as hard as he could while twisting his pelvis in order to get his whole weight behind the blow. Conner’s nose spread wide and exploded as the punch connected. Jack felt the fragile bones snap beneath his knuckles, but Conner behaved as if nothing happened. He staggered back under the force, but seemed entirely unaffected by the pain.
Jack swung his fist again and again and again.
And again...
Jack’s triceps began to tire. His hands were swollen and matted with gore, but Conner’s shattered face continued to snarl at him. The lad’s arms continued to reach out and snatch at him. All around Jack, the room continued to combust with chaos. Members of security had run in to check out the disturbance, but were quickly being tackled to the ground by groups of crazed passengers. Jack could not be sure, but he thought he saw men and women, who had themselves been attacked earlier, now joining in the frenzy, as if they had somehow been converted to the cause.
It was time to retreat. Jack could not restrain Conner much longer with punches alone. It seemed the only way to put a stop to the lad for good would be to kill him, and Jack was not prepared to do that. So he ran instead.
He pushed and barged his way between tables, chairs, and even other passengers. Many people were trying to escape the room as well as him, but most were now like Conner, bleeding from their eyes and snarling like animals. Several eye bleederseyebleeders reached out for Jack as he dodged by them, but luckily their reactions were slow and their clumsy snatches too late.