“We need to make our way down to the lower deck, someone is lowering a lifeboat”, a woman in their group informed the others.
“Can you be sure the pathway down to it is safe?’ Another older man replied.
“Of course not, knowing our luck, we’ll probably get jumped the very moment we poke our heads out. They’ll gut us like fish and leave our corpses lying across the floor”.
“Fucking morbid and there’s kids here too, scare them to shit why don’t you”, someone else replied.
“Just being honest, might as well face facts”.
“None of us want to hear that shit, keep it to your fucking self”.
“You might not want to hear it, but wake up, this is fucking reality right now. An innocent man just got his skull caved in by a motherfucking axe, that's our fucking reality now!”
“It was an accident, an accident! I’m not a murderer!” Darren cried.
“You killed a man in cold blood! If not a murderer, what the fuck are you?” The woman snapped.
“Don’t you judge me, bitch! Don’t you fucking judge me!” He snapped back, “You were more than prepared to kill those crazy people as though they weren’t human anymore, that would make you a fucking attempted murderer!”
“One, intention or not, I’d have to had actually attempted to murder one of them to be an attempted murderer, jackass! Two, if they attack me first with the intention to kill, which they very much fucking were and still are, just in case you hadn’t fucking noticed, it would be considered self defence!”
“Okay, okay people, calm down. We’re all on edge, we all want to get off this ship, we all want to survive. What Bishop did was an accident, we all know that, he was terrified and with a fire axe in hand most of us probably would have reacted the same way. This is unusual, this is crazy and this is bloody scary, but if we stick together and keep our wits about us, we can get through this without losing another one of our own”, Adam interjected, trying to prevent infighting amongst the survivors.
“Well if we can get to that lifeboat down there before it sets sail for the open sea, we’ll at least have a lifeline”.
“Have you seen those waves? They'll capsize us”, the old man replied.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ll take my chances with the waves as opposed to being eaten alive”, she retorted.
“Well we still need a plan, out there we are vulnerable and we don’t know how those survivors will react to us”, Adam replied.
“The same way we reacted to those women who just joined us and their male companion most likely, one of us left with a particularly nasty headache”, the woman jested.
“Not funny”.
“What’s wrong? Too soon? Fuck off, don’t judge me. Everything is funny right now because this shit is straight out of a horror novel. This is all a bad dream I can’t seem to wake up from”.
Adam disregarded her, she was most definitely delusional.
He glanced around the room to find objects lying about, whether they would make for effective weapons was anyone’s guess, but it was all they had to go on right now.
“Grab anything you can find and follow behind me, we’re going to make it down there in one piece”, Adam ordered, taking control of a broken group.
Whether for lack of other options or his assertiveness, they began hunting for makeshift weaponry, returning to their little huddle shortly afterwards with an assortment of different objects, from metal cupboard doors to use for protection, to a jade statue previously perched in a corner. The two women and the children seemed most reluctant to participate and it shouldn't have come as a surprise, trust wasn't exactly at the top of their itinerary given the circumstances. Needless to say, they weren’t left with many other options for escape from this ship.
“Okay, now we make a move. When I give the go ahead we open those doors and make our way down the stairs. Stay as tight as possible, keep the youngsters in the middle and have your weapons ready for any spontaneous attacks. We have to be ready and prepared for anything because anything is a possibility now, okay? Ready? Get tight and circle the children”. They followed his instructions, hustling the two children into the middle, with the new fire axe wielder taking front and centre stage. “Let’s hustle, we don’t stop until we reach that lifeboat”. With that they made for the door, opening it and stepping out onto the upper deck. They were immediately met with strong cold winds.
They descended the metal steps and made their way across the lower deck, passing by funnels and deck chairs, soon coming across unnerving scenes of bloodied corpses littering the floors, torn to shreds. With sheer fortune they made it to the survivors attempting to lower the lifeboat, intact and unharmed.
“Stay where you are! Come no closer!” Shouted a man holding a flare-gun in hand.
4:15pm - 3 hours, 5 minutes since outbreak aboard MS HotS.
With Edward leading the way, Martha found it a challenge trying to keep up. On top of his pacing to contend with, there was the added pressure of having to be an extra pair of eyes. Why was she even here doing this? She never asked for this, she would never in a million years have even considered getting on this ship and now having been on one and experiencing this never in a billion years consider getting back on one… if she survived.
Martha didn’t need all this fuss in the first place, they could have
