SALT: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 11

  “It’s possible. But what, I have no idea.”

  “Must be something valuable if they’re willing to kill for it.”

  “I guess so. Oh, by the way, how’s Danny? Is he being looked after?”

  “Yeah, he’s with the crew on the Bravo. They’re teaching him how to play poker.”

  “Good, good. Listen, don’t tell him about this. I don’t want him to worry.”

  “Sure.” Jim placed his hand on the door handle. Turning back to face Eva, he added, “If you remember anything, let me know, won’t you?”

  “Sure thing, Jim.”

  Jim headed out into the cold night with a maelstrom of thoughts floating around in his head. He was quickly losing his grip, and at that very point he started not to care.

  He decided that when he got back, he would just release Frank and Susan and let whatever would happen, happen.

  Why should he bother trying to hold these people together when they didn’t trust him? If they wanted to hide secrets and fight among themselves, so be it.

  As far as anyone knew, they were the only humans left, everyone else drowned or dead through starvation and disease. If this lot wanted to end humanity, then who was he to stop them? Was there any reason to go on anyway?

  Living aboard a floating collection of junk was no real life.

  And even this small number of people couldn’t agree on how best to live.

  Perhaps it was a sign that humanity’s time was up.

  Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps it is.

  Chapter 15

  Eva woke to excited voices. Each syllable caused a stabbing pain in her head. She rolled over and winced, crying out. It all came back to her then: Ade, the wound in her side, Duncan, Dr Singh… she felt her stomach cramp as her head spun.

  “Marcus, she’s awake.”

  Shaley’s familiar face looked in from a low doorway. It dawned on her then where she was: Marcus’s yacht. The fine wood-panelled berth with the roof-mounted lights and plush furnishings reminded her of when she had first been here at Marcus’s request. That was one of her first days on the flotilla. It was also the day she learned that Marcus was a thoroughbred scumbag. That she was here, in his bed, made her want to vomit.

  “Give me some privacy,” she said to Shaley as he ogled her from the door.

  She realised she was almost naked beneath the sheets, just her panties and the wrappings around her ribs.

  Had they undressed her? The thought of them seeing her naked made her skin crawl.

  “I said get the fuck out.” She threw a pillow at Shaley. It struck him and fell to the floor. He gave her a sly grin before closing the door.

  Fucking creep.

  “Leave her alone, Shal,” Marcus called out from the living quarters. “Eva, there’s some clean clothes on the nightstand. I hope they fit; they were all I could find at short notice.”

  On the nightstand she found a pair of wool socks, jeans, a woman’s T-shirt and a large, baggy blue sweater. She lifted them off the nightstand, smelled them, expecting rank sweat, but to her surprise they were freshly laundered and clean.

  It took her fifteen minutes to put on the clothes, feeling a stabbing pain in her ribs every time she twisted or bent over. Sweat covered her arms and face by the time she finished. She sat back on the bed and rested her head in her hands, waiting for the pain to subside.

  A knock came from beyond the door.

  “You okay in there, love?”

  “Yeah, Marcus, I’ll be right out, just give me a few moments.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Although she was likely drugged with antibiotics and pain meds—which were clearly wearing off by now—she could have sworn that Marcus was actually sincere in trying to help her. She wondered then if he knew about Ade and the lost USB drive? Was this just his way of softening her up before interrogating her, demanding where the key was? Would he lose his cool and take out the loss on her?

  Suddenly she felt exposed, at risk.

  She looked around for a weapon, wincing as she bent down to check inside the small cupboard space beneath the bed and the drawers of the nightstand. She found a pen and a small pewter ornament of a yacht. That was no good. But the pen could be useful. She’d once stabbed a member of Baltimore’s leading crime family in the neck with one when he had tried to overpower her in an alley.

  If her aim was right, she could hit an artery.

  She hid the pen up the sleeve of the sweater.

  Marcus, along with Shaley, Tyson, and Shaley’s wife, Catherine—or Caff as they called her—were sat on cream-covered settees around a large table. They were playing cards. Small plates of fried seaweed and sushi sat next to mugs of tea. The sun was shining brightly through the yacht’s windows, a light drizzle of rain tapping out a steady rhythm on the glass.

  “Here she is,” Marcus said. “The survivor. Glad to have you back, love.”

  “You look like shit,” Tyson said before turning away with disinterest.

  Marcus cuffed him across the face. “Have some damned respect, Ty. You’re on my boat. We keep it civil. Understand?”

  “Not where that bitch is concerned.”

  “Get over it, Ty. Your balls will heal soon enough.” The group laughed at Tyson’s testicular expense.

  Jesus, Eva thought, why’d I have to wake up to this lot?

  “Why am I here?” she said as she sat in the space next to Marcus, which he indicated with a tap of his hand and a welcoming smile. The smile of a shark just before it’s about to kill something, she thought.

  “I happened to stumble upon Duncan last night and heard you weren’t well. Decided to bring you someplace comfortable. You’d only catch something you don’t want in Singh’s place.”

  “That all?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, there was a few things we need to discuss.”

  “About Ade,” she said, uncomfortable with the “family” staring at her. Catherine, or Caff, hadn’t said a word, just glared at Eva like she was a piece of dirt. “He…”

  “Yeah, we know, love, poor bastard’s fish food.”

  “I’m sorry. I tried, but it happened so fast… I couldn’t…” She hung her head and took a deep breath. Ade was one of the good guys, despite his association with Graves’ lot.

  Marcus put an arm around her shoulders. She recoiled, pushing him away, but he held on and hugged her anyway. Speaking into her ear, he said, “I know you did your best. It must have been awful; I understand, okay?” He let her go, and they locked eyes.

  Was there sincerity there or subterfuge? She could no longer tell, her once-honed wits dulled from years off the job. Her instinct told her not to trust him, but his actions thus far had proven opposite. Her dad had always told her to take people at face value, give the benefit of the doubt, but then he mostly dealt with cows and fields of potatoes.

  Much easier to take that attitude when you weren’t running down crime bosses and murderers, or stuck on a flotilla with some wannabe gangsters.

  “What now?” she asked, wanting to get this little meeting over and done with.

  Catherine spoke first, surprising Eva. Her fierce expression had softened. She brushed the long blonde hair from her face and brought out the files Eva had recovered. She pushed across a couple of pages from one of the manila folders. “They’re the only ones not encrypted,” she began. “I went through each page and found these among them. They’re like journal entries of some sort.”

  “From the submarine’s second in command,” Marcus said. “And get this: the submarine weren’t no ghost ship when it turned up. There were two survivors.”

  “Wait, what? No fucking way,” Eva said. “Jim had always said it arrived with the crew dead. He wouldn’t lie about that.”

  “I don
’t think old Jim’s as squeaky clean as he’d like everyone to believe,” Marcus said.

  “But,” Catherine interjected, “from the notes, it appears Jim might not have even realised. Do you remember the first volunteer that left us?”

  Eva shook her head. “I came after the second had left.”

  “Well, I do,” Marcus said. “Worked in engineering. Ran the place before Stanic turned up. And, crucially for this little mystery, worked with Mike.”

  “So, what does that mean?” Eva asked.

  “Before Mike left,” Marcus said, “he came to me, as I explained previously, but he got wind of these files from this first volunteer guy, his name escapes me now. Anyway, he told Mike about his journal and how it went missing, and he wanted to recover it. Said it had important information in it. So, Mike, being the curious sort, searched for it, and found this package here, along with the USB drive, in a safe on one of the yachts.”

  “So Mike has sat on this information for over a year?”

  “Nah, he didn’t find it until recently. When he left, the first volunteer gave him a piece of paper with a code on it. Mike had been trying to figure it out ever since. The volunteer said it was crucial Mike found it.”

  Eva looked at the files spread across the table. She pieced together the events so far, realised that when Mike had found this cache, the killer, whoever it was, had also found out and was trying to recover the information.

  “You realise that someone has killed two people already because of what we’re looking at here,” Eva said. “I doubt they’d stop. They’ve probably got the USB drive, which means we can’t decrypt this.”

  “Yeah, that is a bit of a shitter,” Marcus said. “But now we have all the files, we might be able to crack the code.”

  Eva looked at Marcus and his cohorts, suppressing both laughter and indignation. Marcus had street-smarts, sure, but none of them around the table had the kind of mind capable of decrypting top-secret documents.

  “No offence, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible. Look at the paper; it’s official US government letterhead, from the sub. Military. I doubt they’d use anything that could so easily be decoded. There’s a reason this person has killed two people already.”

  “And we can assume they have the key. They’ll want this next,” Marcus said. He had a glint in his eye that Eva didn’t like.

  “You’re not thinking of using it as bait, are you?”

  “Why not? This shit’s got to be important. I want that USB drive. I want to know what’s so important about these files that both the volunteer and Mike abandoned this place and someone else is willing to kill for it.”

  “And you could be next,” Eva said.

  He shrugged. “Not if we get them first.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, let’s think about this logically. If it’s the same guy that blackmailed Frank, we know he’s American. We also know the key to the sub was copied, so it’s likely someone who knows how to work metal, perhaps someone in engineering.”

  “Wait,” Eva said. “If you’re suggesting the killer made the key, how did Mike get it?”

  “It was with the stash Mike found in the safe.”

  “Well, if we’re only going by the evidence,” Eva said. “We’re potentially looking at one of five men in engineering.”

  Catherine chimed in, “Are we discounting the women there?”

  “Yes,” Eva said. “The footprints on the trawler were definitely men’s.”

  “So,” Marcus said. “All we need to do is work out which one it is.”

  “Unless they find us first,” Catherine said. “I don’t like the idea that they know we’ve got this. It’s not safe. I don’t want anything to do with it. We’ve survived this long; I don’t want to get thrown overboard by some nutter.”

  Marcus took her hand in his. “You’ll be perfectly safe, Caff. Trust me. Have I ever done you or the family wrong?”

  “Plenty of times. You’re a reckless bastard.”

  “But that’s why you love me, right?”

  Eva got up and fetched a glass of water from the jug on the side. All Graves’ family crap was making her feel nauseous, and not a little sad from the grief of losing her own family. Did he realise how privileged he was to still have most of his family with him?

  It seemed especially cruel to her that they were only still together because they were smuggling goods on a boat at the time. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay clearly didn’t live in the real world. She’d seen it pay so much of the time. You only had to look at the bankers who got away with the crash, their bonuses afterwards bigger than ever. With a grim thought, she realised that ultimately, with the drowning, there was a whole lot of justice dispensed along with the tragedy. But justice or not, she’d turn back time in an instant if she could. The world was a better place with people in it, even if some of them were scumbags.

  “Right, I’m gonna go get Frank,” Marcus said, checking his watch. “You lot keep all this safe. Eva, you need anything?”

  “No, I’m okay. Thanks for the clothes and the water.”

  “My pleasure, love. Make yourself at home. You’re welcome here as long as you want.”

  Eva wanted to give him the thanks and no thanks response, but despite the hideous company, she didn’t feel capable of leaving the confines of the yacht. It was a great deal more comfortable than her cabin, and at least here she had other people around her in case the killer decided to pay her a visit while she was incapacitated.

  But then she thought of Danny.

  “There’s one thing you could do for me,” Eva said.

  Marcus raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “While you’re on the Bravo, can you check in on Danny? Make sure Duncan and the others are looking after him. He’s lost his radio, so…”

  “Sure, I’ll let him know you’re still looking out for him.”

  “Thanks.”

  Marcus gave her a wink and left the cabin.

  Tyson followed behind him, leaving Eva alone with Shaley and Catherine.

  The atmosphere changed instantly. Catherine gave her an awkward smile before it turned to her usual scowl. Eva didn’t think they would try anything while Marcus was gone, but she didn’t know for certain. She made sure the pen in her right sleeve was in place, letting it drop into her palm.

  Chapter 16

  Jim stared at the radio’s screen. Still no response. It shook in his hand. He’d been up all night trying to send a message, but nothing arrived, and nothing came back. A sob broke from his throat. He dropped the radio to his bunk and lay down.

  Their only hope had gone. His only hope had gone.

  “Why me?” he said into his pillow, muffling the words. “Why us?”

  He didn’t know why he was questioning it.

  Since the drowning, nothing really made sense any more, despite the illusion of order, hope, and survival. How had he even come to be in this position? Why did the people of the flotilla vote for him? He was a hollow man, after all, incapable of the role—a pretender.

  Perhaps Frank had been right to try to take him out with that gaff hook. Perhaps he deserved it. He thought about Graves’ ultimatum and realised it was already morning.

  For the first time since he came back during the night, he noticed the sun shining outside the porthole, making the tips of the ocean glow white and yellow.

  Floating trash caught the light and sparkled like gifts, but they were just remnants of a bygone era. It was the usual stuff: sports balls of various kinds, boxes, timbers from broken houses, and plastic. Always so much plastic.

  It seemed humanity’s legacy didn’t amount to much.

  All that time and energy to make useless, plastic crap.

  Wars fo
ught to control access to oil reserves so developing countries could build factories and make more pointless plastic rubbish for the consumers.

  He blinked and looked away from the sea of trash and gathered his radio together, hiding it back behind the secret panel, replacing the false rivets with his knife. He stood up, looked at the knife in his hand, and thought about Graves and Frank and Faust.

  Barely remembering how he got there, or whom he had passed along the way, Jim found himself standing outside the cells.

  Both Frank and Susan Faust were asleep on their cots. Just slit their throats where they sleep, they won’t even know…

  Two problems gone, like the cities and the homes.

  Just more trash dealt with and thrown out.

  Two thorns cut from the branch and disposed of. Just two cuts…

  Frank’s head was inches away from the bars. Jim could just reach in and finish him right there with one single cut. Jim approached closer and gripped a bar with his left hand, the knife shaking in his right. He focused on Frank’s exposed neck, mentally pictured the cut, the futile struggle and the end of one of his problems.

  Somewhere in the real world, Jim vaguely recognised Duncan’s voice.

  He turned away to see Duncan facing Tyson and Graves.

  Duncan said something and tried to hold his arms out, but Tyson threw a vicious overhand right hook, catching Duncan on the chin, sending him crumpling to the floor with a heavy thud that rumbled up Jim’s feet.

  The two thugs were on Jim in seconds, but not before Jim placed the knife inside the holder on his belt to hide his guilt.

  Graves stalked close, his faces just inches from Jim’s, his breath smelling of fish and seaweed. Tyson glared at Jim from over Marcus’s shoulder.

  “Frank’s still in the cell,” Graves said, his voice low and dangerous. “It’s morning, Jim.”

  Jim backed off and thought about reaching for his knife again, but they’d be on him too quickly, but seeing Duncan in a crumpled heap made his hand shake with fury.