Regers retraced his steps back out of the engine room and slunk down the hall.
He poked his head around the corner of the passenger area, stuffed the gun in his belt behind his back, gripping the blood-dripping rod. A proven instrument of death. Gila’s and Biggs’s voices drifted to his ears.
“Where’re Flip and Regers?” came Biggs’s snarl. “Go see what’s taking them so long.” Gila left with a grunt.
The thug stopped in the hall. “Regers, there you are, what—” Regers smacked him in the side of the head with the rod when he came around the corner. Gila slumped lifeless. Regers crouched, his muscles rigid.
Two down, two to go.
Biggs must have heard the soft, fleshy sound because he rushed out into the hall, just as Regers ducked back, pulling out his gun. Biggs was unprepared for the bloody, slumped corpse of Gila and gave a gobbling cry.
“You fucking rat bastard, Regers. You’re dead!”
He fired off a burst, turning the galley wall into a honeycombed mess. The passengers bolted from their seats, frightened out of their minds. Amidst a fury of pounding feet and wild yells, Regers remained deathly quiet. He backtracked toward the starboard deck. Let the dumb fuck shout and scream all he wanted, give himself away. Though he doubted Biggs was that stupid.
He wasn’t. Biggs was creeping around the fringes of the starboard deck somewhere, like a shitweasel.
Regers was momentarily confused as to where the fucker was. Last he’d spotted him, he’d ducked under the railing somewhere below the line of the windows.
Regers rushed by the rows of seats of scattered, frightened passengers, his machine gun ready to ream human flesh. A movement to his left. Metal hit glass amidst a volley of gunshots. Biggs, the bastard, was trying to distract him, lure him into an ambush.
A flick of motion at the edge of his vision. In instinctive self-preservation, Regers fell nose to the floor as a rifle pulled up through the broken glass of the starboard deck and unleashed a red line of fire where he’d last been standing. A dark figure flashed out of the companionway.
Fucking Biggs. Forget him. Impossible to take him down in his rat-in-a-maze position. He had to come up with another plan.
Regers’ head swam, zoning out to la-la land in a sudden comfy daze. A dangerous place to go. He shook off the glassy film from his eyes and concentrated on the task at hand by sheer force of will. What was that crud Choko had given him? Probably the only way these lowlifes had the nerve to keep up their mass butchery was to chug bam capsules.
The shoreline was a mile away. Through the shattered passenger windows, he could see long beaches and low boulders that the waves had rolled up and eroded for millennia.
Regers raced to the pilot cabin. He pointed the gun into the cockpit, glimpsed the navigator hunched over the controls, mumbling to himself, blood caked on the back of his head where Biggs had smacked him with the rifle. The captain lay sprawled in an inglorious heap on the floor, long dead.
“Head to the shore!” Regers ordered the navigator. “Beach this bus!” He wrenched at the wheel in spite of the groggy man who gazed at him with glassy eyes of despair. Eyes that now blinked with purpose. “W-What happened back there? I heard shots.”
“Salvation is what, Chief. Don’t talk. Just do what I tell you.”
The navigator nodded and swung the wheel the other way. Hard to the right while Regers ran off, careening down the hall, grumbling under his breath.
More gunshots echoed through the ruin of the ship and the sounds of passengers screaming and dying to Bigg’s half mad rampage of staccato gunshots. Regers cursed. Biggs would kill everybody on this ship before this was all over. Maybe a blessing that Marise was isolated in that room.
Regers ducked back in the littered hall, hoping to waylay Biggs. Choko stumbled out of his love nest, zipping up his pants. Regers felt a blind rage seize him. He aimed his gun. The gangster caught a glimpse of Regers with his machine gun. “You damn fucker!” His hand seized his gun, lifted, black trigger firing.
Too late. Regers peppered the bastard’s chest and gut full of holes. Choko gasped, sagged. He gurgled monosyllables as he fell forward, like a sack of wheat.
Regers ran over and knocked the gun out of the lowlife’s fingers. He smashed his head with the heel of his boot, stomped on the neck, crushing every bone and artery to make sure there was no margin of error.
Regers grinned in triumph. Choko would never bully and rape again. He licked his lips. Three down, one more to go…
He moved on swift feet, wrenched open the door to the baggage room.
Marise hunched naked in the grey shadows trembling like a wind-tossed leaf. She rocked, defeated, her sleek, perfect sun-browned body seeming very doll-like in the watery light streaming through the window. The cumulative horror of the past hours was too much for her to bear.
Regers scrambled over to her side, his mouth dry. “Get dressed, Marise.” He lifted her to her feet, feeling her cringe under his touch. He winced as she struggled feebly in his grip. Snatching up her tattered clothes, he pushed them into her hands. She stood almost comatose, her mouth gaping open at him like a shucked clam, her lipstick smeared, hair tangled, unable to say a word.
Regers grimaced. He bit his lip. A fierce wave of anger swam in his chest. Nothing he could do. Choko had paid the price…but had left behind another innocent
