We’d somehow broken out of the compound inside Newark Airport, although I can’t exactly remember how. My mind was kind of fuzzy due to that mescaline shot and I felt as though some of my former personality had died in that stinking place.
Chandra
Yadav and I killed some time by playing chess on a few occasions but to be perfectly honest, my interest in moving small, wooden figures around a checkered board had slightly waned. Chandra suggested the times of the chess games and guilt tripped me into playing after I’d initially refused several times. I had the feeling he kept needling me to play to try and break me away from my inner turmoil. Also, probably for a little company and to gain the satisfaction of annihilating me at chess.
Chandra
Yadav was a very friendly, highly intelligent and warm human being. He was also far away from his homeland, initially originating from Delhi, India. He had immigrated to Glasgow, Scotland as a qualified doctor and we’d found him locked inside the city’s hospital, cowering, frightened and all alone.
During one of our marathon and frankly boring afternoon chess sessions, an Irish guy, Duffy as I remembered, burst into the communal mess deck with an expression of excitement spread over his face.
“We’ve spotted land, so we have,” he yelled, in his heavy Northern Irish accent. “On the starboard side. Looks like an island of some sort.”
Chandra and I exchanged apprehensive glances from opposite sides of the chess board.
“About fucking time,” I sighed.
Chapter Two
Duffy turned and rushed back out of the mess deck, presumably to continue to spread the news of the sighting of land.
Chandra continued to stare straight at me.
“What?” I asked. “It’s your move not mine.” I pointed to the chess board.
“No, forget about the game.” He waved his hand over the pieces, dismissing kings, queens, bishops and pawns alike.
“OMG, Chandra, are you feeling okay? You sure you haven’t been popping a bunch of those goddamn pills down in the medical store?” I mocked. “This is the first time you’ve ever wanted to quit halfway through a game.”
“Stop blaspheming, Brett,” he scolded, wagging his finger. “Don’t you think we should be going onto the upper deck to take a look at this sighting of new land?”
I breathed out a long sigh, as though I was considering his suggestion. In reality, I was itching to get up from the table and go outside.
“It would mean you forfeit the game though, right?”
“Yes, yes, whatever you wish,” Chandra said, nodding his head repeatedly in quick succession. “You drive a hard bargain, my friend. Are you certain you’re not part Asian?”
I snorted a laugh. “Maybe, somewhere down the line. Come on, let’s go check out the new frontier.”
We left the mess deck and scurried up ladders and walked through long corridors until we came to a hatch that opened onto the upper deck on the right side of the center of the ship. The breeze blew into our faces and ruffled our hair as we stepped out into the bright sunshine.
Several more passengers lined the covered over walkway along the ship’s side. They gazed into the distance across the rippling sea to a patchy brown and green line on the horizon. The ship was turning to the right so the bows pointed at the newly sighted land. Some of our fellow crew members squeaked excitedly as they hugged each other and pointed into the distance.
I felt an apprehensive uneasiness rise within me. Land. Since the dead had risen and the world had gone to shit, the land and most of the people on it had offered nothing but trouble, fear and too many near death experiences to count.
Maybe I should have been happier onboard the Russian warship. Perhaps my unhappy state was purely one of self loathing and inner selfishness. Would I rather be fighting for my life and scared shitless in some wrecked town or city, the undead crawling within a few inches of me than sailing around on a big ship without a care in the world? We had plenty of food, medical supplies, hot and clean running water, working toilets and enough weapons onboard to keep us going for a very long time. Why would we want to get off this ride and find ourselves in some god forsaken shit hole and being attacked from all sides by walking corpses or irate survivors?
All these questions were no-brainers. We should be staying where we were, onboard our ship.
“Shall we go up onto the top deck for a better look?” Chandra asked, breaking me away from my inner mayhem.
Some big Scottish guy, half drunk on excitement or Russian vodka or both, bustled into my back. I nodded at Chandra.
“Yeah, good idea. These guys right here are getting a little too energized.” I jabbed a thumb behind me.
We hustled our way along the walkway and climbed the ladder to the more open expanse on the top deck. The wind blew stronger but the view was slightly clearer. A few more clusters of people stood on the top deck, staring out to see in the direction of the land.
The ship’s bows swiveled and pointed directly at the small, shady blot on the landscape. Chandra and I shaded our eyes from the sun and studied the land strip ahead.
“Where do you think we are?” Chandra asked. “What country is that?”
I shook my head. “I have no clue. Let’s go onto the bridge and see if the geniuses in charge have got it all figured out.”
“Wait.”
Chandra grabbed my arm.
“Don’t you think we should leave them alone? They might not want us in there disturbing them.”
I stared quizzically at Chandra. “Hey, man, they’re not really in charge. We’re entitled to be on that bridge as much as they are. Don’t sweat it.” I nodded towards the bridge, situated further forward of the ship’s superstructure. “Come on, man.”
Chandra looked slightly apprehensive and maybe a little scared but followed me towards the starboard entrance to the bridge, the control room of the ship. I entered through the hatchway to a raucous noise of raised voices. Chandra followed timidly behind me and closed the door.
Smith, Thomas McElroy, Sammy O’Neil and
Colonel Oleg Chernakov stood hunched around a control desk in the center of the room. They pointed at an open map laid on the desk, glaring at one another and barking in guttural tones.
The bridge was surrounded by windows with an almost panoramic view of all directions. Only the view of the ship’s stern was blocked by the vast steel superstructure.
Connor Hannigen, another big set Northern Irishmen sat at the wheel at the front of the bridge. Several dials and levers surrounded him on the instrument panel on either side. He turned, exchanging nervous glances with two of his countrymen, Dunne and McDonnell, who stood each side of the bridge with their backs to the windows and arms folded across their chests. Dunne and McDonnell occasionally turned to the windows and glanced out to sea, raising a pair of binoculars each to scour the looming land.
Chandra hung back, looking nervous and skulking in front of the door. I approached the central desk, eager to know what all the commotion and heated row was about. Nobody around the desk acknowledged me as I joined the huddle of flustered men.
“I am certain we are here,” Chernakov barked, jabbing his index finger to a point on the map that I couldn’t see clearly.
“No, no, no, that’s totally the wrong place,” McElroy protested. “We can’t possibly be in that position.”
“Mac’s right,” Smith agreed. “We would have seen some other land by now if we were there.” He thrust his hand along the strip of the map that Chernakov had indicated.
“So where in the name of God are we?” O’Neil yelled.
I waited until there was a lull in the fiery confrontation. “What’s up?”
All four men turned and glanced at me as though I were a piece of poop they’d all just scraped off of their best shoes.
Smith sighed and nodded at Chernakov. “This fucking asshole has managed to get us totally lost in the middle of Christ knows where.”
The big, gray haired Russian soldier braced up, his cheeks reddening and his features contorting into a scowl. “I did not claim to be any sort of navigator. You abducted me and brought me along on your stupid quest. I would have been happier if you’d thrown me overboard before we left Ireland.” His voice remained low but the Russian accent was still noticeable through his hoarse, angry tone.
Smith jabbed out a finger, an inch from Chernakov’s nose. “Well, we can still arrange to throw you overboard, pal. Don’t you worry about that.”
“Gentlemen, please!” O’Neil interrupted, holding up his hands in an appeasement for calm. “This is getting us nowhere.”
“No, that dickhead is getting us nowhere.” Smith jabbed at Chernakov again.
Although I hated to admit it, Chernakov did have a point. He was a commander of a land force, only assisted by the Russian Navy, who probably had their own guys to operate the sophisticated plotting devices and high tech radars and sonar systems onboard. We were just a rag-tag bunch of nobodies trying to operate a modern fighting vessel. Hannigen knew how to steer and maneuver small ships around the waterways of Northern Ireland but sailing a warship across the Atlantic and guiding us to a specific Caribbean island was a whole different ball game.
I was just surprised we’d made it this far to…wherever the hell we were.
Also, I doubted the other Russian military we’d left behind in Belfast were simply going to allow us to take one of their prized possessions and breeze off into the sunset. They’d be coming after us. I didn’t know whether they had the capability of tracking our movements but it seemed a plausible scenario that they’d loom over the horizon on our tail at any moment.
Chernakov bit into his bottom lip and clenched his fist, glaring at Smith. He obviously wasn’t used to being spoken to in such an offhand manner.
“I swear, if you were in my command, I would have sent you to serve out your days in some godforsaken region.”
“Yeah, well things have changed,
jerk off
. We don’t live in the days of the Cold War no more,” Smith countered.
“Gentlemen, please,” O’Neil begged for calm once again.
I craned my neck above and between Smith and McElroy’s broad shoulders to take a sneaky peek at the map on the desk. I saw several light brown islands surrounded by a mass of light blue.
“Are we around the Caribbean?” I asked.
McElroy glanced at me and sighed. His forehead was sweaty and he looked concerned. “We think so, but we’re not sure quite where.” His gaze returned to the map.
“I see,” I said. Jesus, this really was like the old blindfolded game of
pin a tail on a donkey
.
The lunatics had definitely taken over the asylum. ‘
Let’s pick an island and head for it – do you know where you’re going? – Hell, no but we’ll make it. The old guys used to do it in their old sailing ships so why can’t we in our modern warship? – Can we decipher Russian Cyrillic? – Hell, no but we’ll take a best guess, son
.’
I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of the situation. What did it really matter what island we were heading to? It was either going to be friendly or hostile. Period. Just because the place had a name made no difference whatsoever.
“Best guess?” I asked.
More bad looks from around the desk.
“There are more than seven-thousand islands that make up the Caribbean,” McElroy said, as though he was trying to keep his temper in check. “We could be anywhere from the coast of Argentina, right up to the Florida Keys for all we know.”
Smith looked up and glanced out through the front windows of the bridge. “This looks to me like the Caribbean Sea someplace. The water is blue and clear, not like the South Atlantic near Argentina.”
I glanced away from the map and looked through the windows. The unknown island drew nearer. I saw clusters of green trees behind slabs of gray rocks in the distance.
Chernakov threw up his hands. “Ah, the sea faring expert speaks,” he spat.
Smith growled. “You better shut your mouth, asshole.” The finger jabbing started again.
“I say we are here.” Chernakov banged his thumb down on the map.
I leaned in between Smith and McElroy for a closer look. Chernakov indicated we were somewhere off the coast of Montserrat.
“Bullshit,” Smith spat. “If we were near Montserrat, we’d have sailed by and seen Antigua first.”
I inwardly questioned if anybody on this bridge, this control center of the ship, really knew what the hell they were doing. My reservations were immediately confirmed when Dunne made a whimpering sound from the port side of the bridge.