I tapped on the wooden floor with the crowbar to get his attention. He whirled around, and his pale brown eyes opened wide with surprise when he saw me. He cried out and started toward me, then stopped when I raised the crowbar. I moved away from the door, giving him plenty of room to get by me, then motioned with the length of steel to indicate he should leave. He stayed where he was, staring hard at me, thinking about it. I had no idea what I looked like, but suspected that I didn't present too daunting a figure. But then, I was holding a crowbar, and that must have been daunting enough, because after another fifteen seconds or so of hesitation, he darted past me through the door and clambered down the stairs. I closed the door. The bolt-type lock on the door looked pretty frail, but it was better than nothing. I threw the bolt across, braced the crowbar under the knob, then staggered across the small wheelhouse to the control console.
My intent was to steer the tanker toward the relatively unpopulated east shore, where a railroad bed served as a buffer between the river and any houses. This would not only avoid a collision with any ships traveling up the deep channel, but should also enable me to make a hasty exit, since the momentum and mass of the tanker would drive its nose right into the riverbank.
But steering the tanker anywhere wasn't going to be easy, what with my blurred vision, trembling hands and knees, and nary a clue as to what the various controls on the panel under my chin did, or how they operated. At least a dozen red lights were flashing, and the feel of the ship under me was different, somehow draggy, as if the helmsman had reversed engines in an attempt to stop, or at least slow, the ship; that would be the logical action to take under the circumstances, but I couldn't be sure what had been done, or how to undo it. There was no wheel, but there was a stubby steel joystick on a track in the very center of the console, and I assumed this was a steering device. I moved it up and down, back and forth; the joystick moved without any resistance, which didn't feel quite right to me. I blinked, trying to focus my vision on the various lights on the console. There was a bright amber light to the right of the stick; by going up on my toes and virtually putting my nose to the light, I could just make out a switch below it, and a blurry sign that read AUTOMATIC PILOT. I flipped the switch and the light went off. When I moved the joystick again, there was some resistance. I pushed it all the way to the left, held it there.
I had no idea how long it would take for a vessel this size to change course, especially if its engines were reversed; but the tanker was still making headway, which meant it could still be steered. With the window totally smeared with oil and smoke residue, it was impossible to tell what was happening.
There didn't seem to be much more I could do, even if I was capable of doing it. And there was nowhere to go. It seemed as good a time as any to take a nap, particularly in view of the fact that I no longer felt cold; indeed, I no longer felt much of anything at all. The floor seemed very far away, so instead of trying to ease myself down on it, I just fell forward on my face. The noise level all around, over, and under me was increasing. Somebody was pounding on the door. Then the whole ship shuddered, and a very deep, grinding sound came up through the steel hull, through the superstructure, and vibrated inside my throbbing skull. I didn't care. I was warm all over, very sleepy, and filled with the most wondrous sense of well-being; I couldn't remember what it was I had been so excited about.
The last thing I heard, piercing through all the roaring, grinding, banging, and pounding around me, was a single gunshot, loud and seemingly very close, a sonic exclamation point to a jumbled paragraph of chaos that weighed down on me and pushed me into unconsciousness.
Chapter Twelve
I dreamt, wildly and at length, in vivid color and full stereo sound. The same drama over and over again.
I was on a cruise ship. It was sometime in the past, when April Marlowe and I had been in love; but instead of running away from her as I had done, I'd married her, which was what I had desperately wanted to do. We were on our honeymoon. April was somewhere below deck in our honeymoon suite, but at the moment I couldn't quite remember where that was, or how to get there. I was standing at a railing on one of three foredecks, dressed in a green tuxedo. Although the dozen or so scantily-clad bathers cavorting in the purple pool on the deck below appeared comfortable enough, I was cold. The brown sun was going down, and the couples below were starting to go inside to dress for dinner. April, I knew, was already dressed and waiting for me, but, try as I might, I couldn't remember how to get to our cabin. I couldn't remember how I had gotten out on this particular foredeck, and when I turned around I saw there was no door for me to go through, no way off the deck. When I turned back, I found I was alone in dirty twilight. And I was suddenly terribly lonely. I opened my mouth to call for help, but I could make no sound. The front part of the ship, so noisy only a few moments before, was now completely cloaked in silence, and I was unable to break it.
The waves on the brown-black sea had suddenly disappeared, and the surface was as smooth as glass. The ship seemed to be speeding up, heading straight toward the black hole in the sky where the sun had disappeared. I desperately wanted to find my way below, back to where my wife waited, where there was light and warmth and food and music and where I would not feel so terribly lonely. We would eat, and dance late into the night on the stained-glass floor of the ballroom, and then we would go back to our cabin and make love.
I looked down, found that my green tuxedo had inexplicably disappeared, and I was naked. I couldn't wander around the ship naked, especially when I didn't know where to go, but my tuxedo was nowhere in sight. I would have to look for it, but I couldn't move. I was growing colder, freezing.
The glass surface of the water around me abruptly began to buckle, crack, and crinkle, becoming ever uglier, a crusted black and brown expanse that heaved and collapsed and heaved again, spewing a foul-smelling gas. I had to get away. I spun around, found that the entire section of the ship behind me had disappeared. I was in the middle of a vast, open sewer that stretched to the horizon in all directions. I turned back, found that the rest of the ship was gone from before and beneath me. I was all alone, ankle-deep in the poisonous, black-brown sludge, and slowly sinking. There was nothing to do, no place to swim to even if I could make my way through the thick, fetid ooze. The bubbling mud came up to my waist, then my chin. I threw my head back, struggling for one last gasp of air before I went under. And then, suddenly, it began all over again.
I was on a cruise ship. .
That's how it went, on and on, over and over, for what seemed like years. When I woke up, I felt so bad that I was almost willing to go back to the world of my recurring nightmare, which was terrifying, but pain-free. I felt about as strong as a sponge with a hangover and couldn't even lift my arms off the bed in which I was lying. There were needles stuck in both my arms and a tube up my nose. I felt the urge to gag, but couldn't even work up the strength to do that. Garth and Mary were at my bedside, and when I opened my eyes, my brother got up from his chair and leaned over me.
'Mongo?'
'Grrrrmph,' I said, and promptly went back to sleep.
I was on a cruise ship. .
When I awoke again, the needles were out of my arms, and the tube gone from my nose, but I didn't feel any better. Garth, wearing different clothes, was still at my bedside. He was unshaven and looked like he had a three- or four-day growth of beard.
'You look like shit,' I said in a croaking whisper. Just the act of speaking brought up a foul, green and black taste of grease, medicine, and smoke, but it felt so good to be off my nightmare cruise ship in the savage ocean that I kept talking anyway. 'You smell too. Do you know how depressing it is to wake up in a sickbed to find a man who hasn't bothered to shave, with body odor and bags under his eyes, standing next to you?'
My little speech finished, I proceeded to have a coughing fit, which brought up more vile tastes, bile, and thick phlegm. Garth supported me with his arm, gently patted me on the back. When the spasm of coughing finally passed, he poured me a glass of water, steadied my head while I drank it down. I drank another, then lay back.
'Some of the doctors here thought you were going to die, Mongo,' Garth said simply. 'I told them they were wrong.'
'What did they think I was going to die of?'
'Oh, the combined effects of a dozen or so maladies. Let's see if I can't recall the highlights of the doctors' diagnosis. How about double pneumonia aggravated by smoke inhalation, severe exposure, and brain inflammation? There were a few other minor items.'
