Chapter 13
11:35
Down in the galley on the 5th deck, the survivors conversed amongst themselves, Amy and Travis still oblivious to the fate of the world.
“Do we have any drinks aboard this ship?” Travis joked. He was technically old enough, as they were on International waters.
Alex pushed his chair back and stood up. “Sounds like a good plan. Let's go check. I could use a Daiquiri.”
“I'm good. I don't like alcohol too much. Corrupts the mind, if I had one.” Amy laughed light heartedly at herself.
“Same... I'll stay right here.” Sami didn't intend on moving. The two boys stood and turned to leave. Andrew looked at Sami, then at Alex and Travis and decided instantly where his best interest laid. He followed the boys.
After they had left, Sami looked back to Amy, who was staring at her.
“What happened?” Amy asked quietly. She knew that Sami had knowledge to what had happened on the Cruise Ship. Amy could read minds better then books, much better. Sami chuckled once, a definitive noise of meaning, then she looked away. “You're good at that.” She said.
Amy's face didn't change. Sami looked back at her. Amy's face had a concerned tone to it. She looked carefully into Sami's blue eyes. Sami had no intention of holding back information. They would probably be in this together, one way or another.
“The world has been destroyed.” She tried to put it bluntly as possible. Amy raised one eyebrow and then snickered.
“And I am the Queen of England,” she said sarcastically.
“May as well be. She's dead. Everyone is dead, all in one moment,” Sami continued, her voice carrying a tone of dread. “I am not joking with you Miss Grant.”
The last sentence hit Amy right in the head, at an astonishing rate. “Dead? That...” She paused. “That can't be true! We're both here now! What are you talking about!” Amy was growing rather nervous. Her mind began to race, trying to search for answers that may be hidden in Sami's messages.
Sami put her legs on the table and pushed backwards, leaning back in her chair.
“I'm no God. I have no clue why this would happen. I don't understand it either, nor does anyone else on this ship. It happened little over 24 hours ago. A big flash of light, then everyone was gone, except us few. It was mere chance we all met up. We all hopped onto this yacht and headed out to try to escape the torment of Melbourne, where the blast happened. Maybe it happened in all major cities, we don't know. We're going to Sydney next.”
Amy had no idea what to say. She was dumbfounded. “There has to be more survivors! I mean, look. Like, we're still alive! So there has to be more!” She was beginning to panic.
“Of course there is. That's why we're going from city to city, picking up more people. Martin, the kid that you just saw leave, is the pilot of this ship, that helicopter, and this little operation.”
“He's only like fifteen!”
“Eighteen. He acts like he's forty though, that's not a bad thing in times like this.”
Amy closed her eyes, trying to think more about the situation. She felt like this was just a bad dream and wanted it to go away. Then the big thing hit her, like a ton of bricks.
“My family! Does that mean they're all dead too?” She couldn't hold it in anymore; she burst into tears. Sami sighed and stood. She went around the table they were at and placed her hand on Amy's back comfortingly. Sami had always held a more sympathetic position to females.
“Bingo! Oh, we're in the money now!” Travis laughed triumphantly, staring into the bar. Alex grabbed a bottle of white wine and examined it carefully.
“This stuff is really old; it must all be worth a fortune!” he said in an astonished voice.
“Damn straight it is! Let's go take some of this back, there would be enough here to last five fricken years!”
Again, the silence prevailed. Andrew looked at Alex, who was looking silently at the floor. No words were needed, the quiet by itself told Travis that something was wrong.
“Where did you guys all buy this stuff? Mind if I take some of it as a souvenir?” His charming smile slowly diminished as he saw the grim expressions pasted on the two Australians.
“Is something wrong?” Of course there was something wrong. Everyone on the cruise had just disappeared. How could something not be wrong? But could it be possibly worse then what just happened on the cruise ship? Suddenly a thought came to Travis’ head.
“Um, who are you people?”
Finding this funny in a sick way, Alex started to laugh.
“Us, oh we’re just like you! Survivors! Survivors lost in the darkness, in a post-apocalyptic world!”
“What?” Travis was dumbfounded. “Your telling me that the world is ending? Please tell me that I am taking that way out of context!” He began to feel like Amy Grant had earlier, his heart began to race, waiting for a response.
“Yes you are. The world is not ending. In fact, the ‘apocalypse’ is now over. We are the remains. We have no idea what happened, all we know is that a lot of people died really fast, all over Melbourne, and we have a hunch that it may be global. We never knew each other until yesterday. We were all wandering around aimlessly, trying to find anyone alive. And low and behold, we all eventually met up and borrowed this here little beauty of the seas.” Andrew took the time to explain the situation calmly.
“No… no fucking way. That’s completely out of the question! There is no way that people just randomly disappeared! Why would that happen?” He began to perspire; Andrew moved in and guided him to a chair.
“Here you go mate, just take a little seat right here, and think about this. You’re still alive and there is nothing out there threatening us anymore. If you wish, you and your gal may join this little expedition. We have rooms for eighty or so.” Neither Alex nor Andrew was going to answer that obvious question for him. Travis, who was originally cheerful and optimistic, began to sob uncontrollably. Alex patted him several times on the back for comfort.
“Grieving has no set limit. Only time will tell when it’s time for you to accept a loss, or multiple ones. I didn’t take it lightly either. I cried all night last night, but I’ve gotten most of it out of my system. My family is gone, my friends, my dog. They’re all gone, and I need to accept that to make the feeling better.”
“Actually… I’d bet your dog is still alive. I saw a pod of dolphins this morning, and some seagulls. It seems animals have not been affected, only humans.”
Alex smiled. “That makes me feel a bit better, knowing little Ranger is fine. He was a German Shepard, only a pup.”
“How old?” Andrew pulled a stool out and sat at the abandoned bar next to Alex.
“Nine months. He’s just a fuzzy little guy, absolutely love him. It’s too late to go get him now of course, but I suspect he’ll manage fine on his own.” He finished the sentence with a dumb smile on his face. He continued. “Travis, this tragedy doesn’t have to be so bad. I hate to forget about my lost ones, but quite frankly, this expedition might be sort of fun. Our ‘captain’ is young like us; I imagine we’ll be traveling all over the world, exploring every little nook, picking up survivors.”
“Oh yeah?” Travis forced the words out, still choked by tears of grief. “What does he plan on doing with the ship?”
“Apparently he says we should form a makeshift government, pick up survivors that accept it, and work from there.”
Travis thought about this for a while.
“So you guys just started?”
“Yeah. We haven’t done much so far, we’re heading to Sydney I think, to pick up more survivors.”
“How do you plan on locating them?” Andrew smiled in his head. He had enticed Travis. This was truly going to be an adventure.
“Not so sure about that part. We can think of a way though.”
An idea popped into Alex’s head. “Why don’t we use the helicopter? If the world is supposed to be dead, you think the survivors would rush to the sound of the rotors.”
“That’s a great idea! We could pick them up and bring them back to the ship.” Andrew seemed enlightened by this simple concept. “City hopping.” He chuckled at his new term.
“Sounds good. I need Martin to teach me how to fly. He’s never flown a chopper until today, yet he seems natural at it.”
“What!” Travis looked up. “That kid that was flying us had no experience in a helicopter?”
“Apparently not. We tried to stop him from flying to you guys, because we were really afraid he would get hurt or killed. Most likely killed. Anyways, he went off, defiant as ever.”
“We were going to take the lifeboats out, but we really had no clue how to lower them… I guess we owe a lot to that guy.” Travis thought of ways to get off a cruise liner with two people. It was actually more difficult then one would think.
“We all do. He’s a natural leader and without him, we’d all be back in Melbourne, scavenging for food and looting stores.” Andrew tried to picture that in his head.
“I’d assume a lot of the survivors will be doing that,” Alex considered.
“It’s only natural. Are they supposed to wait at the local McDonalds, waiting for some surviving employee to find them? I bet if we don’t get to anyone, they will resort to a state of anarchy.”
Everyone felt a bit dimmed by that.
“I think this trap may be a little more dangerous then we thought… I never considered people shooting at us,” Andrew suddenly worried.
“I don’t think it will go that far,” Travis said quietly, closing his red puffy eyelids. “Besides, we have the sea as a firing range if we wanted to go that way. And more then likely, numbers too. Since there were so little survivors, I’d bet most people will be traveling alone, until they find someone that they don’t feel like robbing.”
“I agree. Besides, if we get into a firefight, we can just pack up, and head out of there on this ship.” Alex got up and walked over to a window. He hadn’t really observed where they were. This yacht was very big, more like a small cruise liner. There were forty or rooms, according to deckplans pasted on the wall every once in a while. Including the top helipad, there were 9 floors, all of them having something major on them. The bridge was on floor 9 as well, accessible only from 8 through a ladder.
Looking out the window, he could see the liner drifting away, still traveling it’s preset 20 knots wherever the Captain had it on his demise. Soon, it would run aground in New Zealand, crushing the shoreline, where it would then be looted by anyone in New Zealand, so it goes. At the moment, the yacht was anchored or at least stopped. The engines were not on, and they were not moving. Martin was asleep and, until he awoke, they would sit here, in their little patch of the ocean.
“We should head back to the girls. I’d assume Sami told Amy about our predicament,” Andrew stated blandly.
“Yeah, it seems like a thing she would do. Hell, she probably enjoyed saying it.”
“Why do you guys always talk trash about her?” Travis was wondering; he felt like he was left out of an inside joke.
“It’s just that she’s sort of a jerk. She always demands stuff from us, requires all of deck six to herself. All of it. That’s just stupid.”
“So I can’t go there?” Travis tried to make a mental note.
“Unless you want your guts fed to you, I wouldn’t recommend it. She seems to lighten up to Wellington a bit, but that’s it,” Alex muttered. He wouldn’t forget what she did to him. He looked at his watch, 3:40 PM. Time flies fast on the seas.
“I bet we’re going to have to change the times on our watches a lot,” Andrew laughed. “We should just go by GMT.”
“Probably will when we get official. Kind of odd saying it’s 9 PM, when it’s broad daylight though. I guess that’s how jet lag works.”
Sami and Amy were talking about the plans of this ship too. Amy said it sounded interesting; Sami said she didn’t care, as long as they let her do her thing. She said Amy was allowed on deck six whenever she wanted, because she had “common sense”. They were still talking when the boys returned with drinks.
“There is huge bar down on deck 7. A lot of the drinks are worth thousands of dollars,” Alex said, setting down two bottles of Champagne.
Sami eyed them suspiciously, then gave the act up.
“No sense in not enjoying it, if you are the last people on earth.” She popped the cork.
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