“I tried calling them, but they haven’t picked up in some time, nor have they texted in a while”.
“You really need to learn to text back. What was the last thing they replied? Where are they? Or at the very least, where were they?”
She raised her phone to her face and skimmed through her messages.
“The last thing Rachel texted me was that she was in a room after having escaped an air duct they crawled through”.
“So they might still be okay, I’ll call them”. He pulled out his phone, hushing Martha before she could utter another word. The phone rang for a while before there was a click and Lori picked up.
“Mr Heart? We’re here, we’re okay… sorta”.
“Thank god, where is Rachel? What do you mean sorta?” Edward replied.
“We just… we’re just shaken up is all”.
“Stay strong, girls. Where are you? We need to reunite and from there find a way off this ship, most likely the bridge. We’re not exactly swamped with options but we’ve gotten this far and I’ll be damned if we don’t all get out of here alive”.
“I don’t know exactly, we’re with a group of survivors and they…”
“They?”
“Never mind. We’re with a man named Adam”.
“Adam?” Why did that name sound familiar? Edward decided not to pay it much mind, he knew too many Adams, it wasn’t exactly an uncommon name.
“Yeah… we’re going to make for the bridge or find someone who knows how to operate the lifeboats”.
“We’ll meet you at the bridge then. Do you have a weapon?”
“Not much, we have a fire axe”.
“Fire works well, they don’t seem to be fazed by physical assaults”.
“We’re already talking about them as though they’re not human”.
“You saw them, that violence, that ferocity was anything but human. Think about your own safety now, lose sight of that and you’ll end up one of them or dead like the corpses littering the ground”.
Lori went silent on the line, giving Edward enough time to hear the commotion in the background.
“We’re going to get to you, head to the bridge, okay?”
“Okay”.
“Oh and Lori”.
“In case something happens and I don’t get a chance to talk to you again, do you love my daughter?”
“Huh, oh, erm… yeah, I do, very much. I’ll make sure she’s okay, I promise”.
“I trust you. Tell her we’re all okay and I guess we’ll see you on the other side”.
“Okay, I will do”.
“Be safe, keep us in the loop”.
“You too”, she hung up.
3:55pm - 2 hours, 45 minutes since outbreak aboard MS HotS.
“Someone you know well?” Adam asked Lori.
“My girlfriend’s father”, one of the two new women replied, nervously looking around. Having barricaded the door, the survivors were now left contending with the fire exit door on the opposite side of the room before those crazies broke through.
One of the girls shielded the two children from harm, whilst the other stood guard of them all. Would they be able to trust him given the recent circumstances? Clearly not all the members of his group had made themselves trustworthy, especially if like they had all seen, a person could just go swinging a fire axe around without regard for whether or not it was a sane person they were swinging at. It was already difficult enough just trying to survive, the last thing they needed was an aura of distrust amongst their own.
“We got the door open, let’s get the hell outta here”, someone shouted from across the room, grabbing the fire axe and keeping it well away from the man with the nervous disposition.
“We should get going. You’ll be safe, I’ll personally make sure of it”, Adam assured them.
His prime concern was those two children, thrust into a world of danger and violence at such a tender age. They reminded him of a daughter, wife, three rabbits, a cat and two fish he had left behind in Cardiff. He wanted to make it back to them alive at any cost.
He outstretched his hand in order to help them and they simply disregarded him, fair play, they still didn’t trust him, but at least they were listening, having gathered the children and hustling them towards the fire exit door.
Following behind, Adam’s gaze kept darting back towards the door they had barricaded. How long would it hold and would they get far enough away before it could no longer do so?
Only last night he had been laughing and serving drinks to happy punters, tequila shots, double vodkas and whiskeys on the rocks.
Adam had been a barman long enough to recognise that a drink said a great deal about a person, their personal circumstances, their frame of mind, heck, even the experiences they had faced. There were happy couples young and old, singles drinking alone to focus on or to drown out emotions, long term friends and even relatively new ones. All of that meant nothing now, for in but the blink of an eye they were ensnared by this never ending nightmare.
Shutting the emergency exit behind them and obstructing the door with a trolley - it certainly wasn’t much, but time wasn’t on their side - they found just a few metres away, they followed the emergency corridor around to another door that led to a different room overlooking the deck below from a balcony with a metal staircase that led down to it.
As they peered through the window they could see that the weather had drastically deteriorated, with higher waves and a dismal overcast sky. These
