Rye searched the ship for the means to kill herself.
She found shelves of barbecue equipment in a kitchen cupboard. She pictured Hyperion chefs organising a spit roast for the passengers. Handing roast pork baguettes to rich clientele as they stood in anoraks watching whales break water in the distance.
Rye toyed with the idea of releasing a propane valve then striking a match, but was too scared to go through with the plan. What if she didn’t die? The fireball from a couple of tanks would quickly dissipate. She might sustain third-degree burns. Lie immobile in a delirium of pain. She knew, from her own experiments, that a person subject to advanced-stage infection was tough to kill. It might take her days to die.
She found some extension cable but the cord was too thick to make a noose. She wished she had a gun. If she had a pistol she could sit at a window, press the barrel to her temple, then distract herself by studying the view. She could try to name the constellations and, as she did so, casually switch off the world like it was a TV show that no longer held her interest.
A wasted life. Lousy doctor, lousy parent. Easy to blame the drugs, but her life was a downward spiral long before the first taste of codeine. A debilitating malaise that dogged her since childhood. Each day poisoned by a deep conviction that nothing was worthwhile. No matter where she went, or what she did, she could never quite bring herself to give a shit. But maybe there was something she could do. A final moment in which she could vindicate her life.
She, of all the Rampart crew, could pass through the liner with impunity. If the shambling mutants saw Jane or Ghost they would seize them and tear them apart. Yet when Rye walked by they seemed unaware of her existence. Rye could wave a hand in front of their faces, click fingers, push them around. They didn’t react.
So maybe she should exploit her freedom to move around the ship and build a bomb. She had already found a cache of propane tanks. There must be reserves of diesel somewhere aboard. She still had a radio. She could warn the Rampart crew. Give them time to evacuate. Open the tanks, release the valves, flood the plant rooms with fuel then strike a match. There were a few Hyperion passengers out on the ice, but most were aboard the liner. She could incinerate them all. Fry the ship. Cleanse the island. And end her own life in an instant. An explosion of that magnitude would be instant extinction. The Rampart crew would watch from the rig. They would see the blast. They would appreciate the gesture. After all, Hyperion seemed beached for good. If it blew sky high, she would die a hero.
Woozy logic. A little voice warning that she wasn’t thinking straight. She was spiralling into fantasy. She would get everyone killed.
Rye looked for the diesel tanks.
She found a multilingual brochure. ‘Hyperion – Queen of the Seas’. A fold-out floor plan. She headed for the Staff Only plant zones of the ship.
She saw a man sliding along a corridor wall. He was shirtless. His back was a mass of spines. The eartips of a stethoscope hung from his trouser pocket.
‘Doc? Doctor? Can you hear me?’
No response.
‘My name is Rye. I’m a doctor too. What’s your name? Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?’
The man slowly turned to face her.
‘What’s your name? Tell me your name.’
‘Walczak. My name is Walczak.’
They sat in the stalls of the ship’s cinema. A ripped screen framed by a proscenium arch.
‘For a while I thought we had it contained,’ he said. ‘We locked infected passengers and crewmen in the clinic. We had them quarantined. But people didn’t want to hand over their relatives. They didn’t want to see them locked up with the screamers we had strapped to the beds. So they hid them in their cabins. Sons and daughters. Husbands and wives. Gave them aspirin, brought them meals, hoped they would get better. That’s how the virus spread. We formed a posse. A couple of officers, a few crewmen. We knocked on doors. Took people by force. Plenty of anger, plenty of kicking and screaming.
‘It was the same when it turned to war. Battles in the corridors, on the decks. Guys would confront a gang of infected people, all set to hack and burn, then realise their own wives and children were among the crowd. What would you do? Would you kill your children if it came down to it? I mean, do you have kids?’
‘Yeah,’ said Rye. ‘I have a son.’
They walked to the Grand Lobby.
‘This is where it kicked off,’ said Walczak. ‘This is where the carnage truly began. Everyone gathered for a banquet. Trying to forget their troubles. About thirty infected passengers broke out of the infirmary and headed this way. Blood everywhere. Stampede. It was mayhem. That was the point we lost control.’
Rye looked around. Upturned tables and chairs. Infected waitresses stumbled over broken crockery and flowers.
‘Could you do me a favour?’ asked Walczak.
‘Sure,’ said Rye.
He picked up a heavy statuette that had fallen from a wall niche. A dancing nymph.
‘Kill me,’ he said. ‘Do it clean.’
He sat at a cocktail piano. He played ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’. Rye stood behind him.
‘You’re pretty good,’ said Rye.
‘Yeah. Always wished I’d gone professional’
Rye killed him halfway through the third verse.
She searched corridors surrounding the engine room. She opened every door marked with a red flame emblem. Paint. Lubricant. White spirit.
She found the fuel tanks. A long gantry overlooked vats of diesel and lightweight marine oil. She tried to spin stopcocks but couldn’t get them to turn.
She descended steps to the tank hall floor. She hacked at the pipes with a wrench. A joint ruptured, a narrow copper coupling at the foot of a tank. Fuel glugged and splashed on to the deck plates. A slow leak, but if she returned in a couple of hours the floor would be awash with diesel.
‘Codeine.’ The dealer dealt two cards. Queen five.
Rye pushed the cards away. Fold.
‘So what did you do? Write phantom prescriptions?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sweet. Must be great to be a doctor. Kid in a candy store.’
‘I lost a lot of years. I paid a heavy price.’
‘Yeah. Well. Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ said the dealer. He took a silver cigarette case from his pocket, placed a cigarette carefully between his deformed lips, and lit it with a click of his Dunhill lighter. ‘There’s that line by Larkin. “All they might have done had they been loved.” Every one of us could have ruled the world if we’d got up early and done the right thing. But we limp around dragging our personal damage like a tourist schlepping a heavy suitcase through an airport. Blame your genes, your parents, your school. Just a long chain of cause and effect. Life was mapped out long before you were born.’
‘What is it about cards that makes people all priestly and sagacious?’
‘It’s like communion. Dishing out wafers. Dishing out fate. That’s the beauty of blackjack. Blind chance. A reminder that you’re not in control. You just sit back and watch the numbers dance.’
‘You can pretend that you’re not scared of dying. Personally, I’m terrified.’
‘Anything is better than this.’
‘Where’s the fifth bloke?’ Rye gestured to an empty seat. ‘There were five of you. Now there are four.’
‘Casper. A retired dentist. A pleasant man. A divorce, looking for love. That’s what he told me. Married thirty-five years. Wife took a bunch of cash and ran off with his brother. Didn’t seem too bitter about it, though. We had a lot of time to talk it through, back in the days when he had a mouth.