White Water Black Death: The terrifying new cruise ship thriller Read online

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  Copyright. Shaun Ebelthite.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Contact – Day 4 10.52pm

  Contact – Day 5 12.05am

  Contact – Day 5 12.32am

  Contact – Day 6 6.12pm

  Contact – Day 7 6.57am

  Contact – Day 8 1.54am

  Contact – Day 9 3.55am

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  The handrails are the perfect place. On the stairs especially. Forty-two. That’s the average number of times a passenger will touch the handrail in a day. The sodden cloth leaves it shiny, slimy, but it dries quickly. I know, because I’ve done this one thousand seven hundred and sixty-four times, on one hundred and twenty-six handrails every day since the symptoms started. The morning is best, after the graveyard cleaning. It’ll be hours before they’re disinfected again. I also like the irony. I take my bucket and my cloth while everyone is sleeping and re-tread the steps of the housekeepers. Nowadays I sneeze into my hand as I go, wiping it along the rail. I say nowadays, it’s only been a week. It feels much longer. Time slows when you feel like this, like you’re dying. Almost as long as my six month contract, almost as long as each day before my new life. In my old life I was a nameless face among many shades of brown, a temporary screw in a great machine of temporary parts. Six months to a year, that’s how long contracts are here. They discard you like a flimsy receipt when you aren’t needed anymore. They don’t realise how much damage a nameless face can do. If a plane can be a missile, why can’t a cruise ship be a biological weapon? I cough into my hand now as well. If I feel the need to throw up, I do it in the bucket. It all ends up in the same place. On the handrails. Because they’re the perfect place for contact.

  Contact – Day 4 10.52pm

  Pleasure yacht, de-masted, two persons onboard.

  Geneva considered the note the first officer covertly showed her when she entered the bridge. He grinned conspiratorially at her in the red glow of the chart table as he did so, glancing at his captain’s turned back.

  She had as much right to see the note as Captain Nathan Warwick. ‘Full access’ was what Rachel Atkinson had promised. The CEO of the cruise line was desperate for the free publicity a review by CruiseCritique could provide, and Geneva was happy, for now, to oblige.

  She had even put a positive spin on their three-day delay in the Azores. A news story filled with quotes from passengers about the helpful crew, the five-star hotel, the discount on a future cruise, had been read by thousands.

  It was actually a four-star hotel, but who would notice? She’d been ordered to play nice.

  “The captain is deciding whether we should alter course to lend assistance,” Andre told her. The first officer’s voice was low, barely audible above the hum of the air-conditioning and the creak of the old ship. It was a noise as constant as the crackle of the radio. There were a multitude of other noises she couldn’t distinguish. The bleat of an array of electronics.

  “Aren’t we required to, by international law?” she asked, having to lean in to make herself heard.

  “We’re the closest vessel by a small margin.” Andre also leaned forward and Geneva felt her face flush in the darkness. He was attracted to her. The soft lighting of the chart table no doubt helped.

  Geneva listened to the sound of Nathan’s fingers drumming in the darkness on the other side of the bridge.

  “We’ll be sailing right into it if we change course to help,” she heard Rachel say.

  “She can take it.” Nathan’s tone was as reassuring as a wet towel.

  White water burst explosively over the bow into the deck lights.

  “Symphony, Symphony…” the VHF crackled on the other side of the bridge.

  The yacht asking for help again, the man’s voice dissolved into static.

  Although she couldn’t see it, Geneva could feel all eyes on the bridge turned to the captain, waiting for his decision. Even Rachel seemed to be holding her breath.

  The CEO of the cruise line moved toward her, Geneva could hear the dull tread of her heels on the linoleum floor.

  “You may get another story out of the voyage after all,” she said lightly, as though the tension during dinner had never happened.

  The importance of the news story would depend entirely on the nationality of the men they were rescuing.

  “Do we know anything about the yacht?” Geneva asked, hoping Andre would be able to tell her, but he’d joined the captain.

  “We haven’t been able to establish clear voice contact with them beyond the initial distress call,” said Rachel. “The captain thinks their radio may have been disabled, something to do with the aerial.”

  “Has he made a decision, are we going to help them?”

  “Oh he definitely will,” said Rachel, glancing in his direction. If Geneva hadn’t known better, she would have thought she saw affection on her face. “It’s an ancient tradition, to help others at sea, he won’t be able to resist.”

  Not for the first time, Geneva had the distinct impression of watching a puppet master. Rachel didn’t need to give orders, she made suggestions.

  “How much will it cost for us to change course and look for the yacht?” she asked. Rachel cared most about the bottom line, and in an industry awash with razor thin profit margins, Geneva was surprised to see her so calm.

  “Oh, we won’t need to look for it,” said Rachel. “The EPIRB will take us right to it. As for the cost, between you and I, I’ve already gone into the red on this crossing after that delay in the Azores. What’s another couple thousand on fuel?”

  Geneva lifted her face and smiled in response, thinking for what must be the hundredth time in the past two weeks, how utterly fake Rachel’s laugh was. She also hadn’t answered the question, which was annoying. Geneva didn’t like pressing for an answer.

  It was undignified.

  She watched Andre’s silhouette move toward the captain and slipped away from Rachel, moving into the darker shadows at the back of the bridge.

  “You could let the old man decide,” Andre said, a smirk in his voice.

  Geneva glanced in Rachel’s direction. She was still at the chart table, listening to an officer explaining something on the map. Andre had given her the nickname after she took umbrage to being called the old lady. At least that’s what he’d told Geneva during a bridge visit last week.

  “It’s my decision, not Rachel’s,” Nathan said, Geneva could hear him tapping the control console again.

  Andre shifted nervously.

  “Thank you, Number One,” he said as Andre placed a mug of coffee in front of him. He sipped sparingly, gripping the control console for support, breathing heavily. It caught Geneva off guard. Every other time she’d seen him in the last week or so, he’d moved with the eagerness of a teenager in a games arcade. Nathan usually filled the bridge as though he could exist nowhere else.

  “Alter course to 295 and let them know we’re coming. Enter it in the log.” He looked at the clock at the front of the bridge, white spray slapping the row of large rectangular w
indows and stood very still, head down as though about to pass out.

  Geneva half hoped he would. It would make a great lead for any story she got out of this. Captain of luxury cruise liner collapses while responding to emergency. Clickbait. She’d only reveal in the second paragraph that the emergency was aboard a yacht, not the ship itself.

  The Symphony shouldered a larger than normal swell, shuddering slightly. A former ocean liner turned cruise ship, she was taking the weather in her stride. Geneva imagined her lean bow carving through the trough. She had an irrational soft spot for these old girls.

  “I’ll email Hamilton and let them know we’ll be delayed,” Andre said as the ship’s motion changed, settling onto her new bearing. Nathan looked up, apparently recovered.

  He said something quietly, it sounded like ‘we’re screwed either way’ and Geneva moved a little closer, half wondering if she could get away with crouching next to the helm.

  “This storm would have delayed our arrival in Bermuda at any rate,” Nathan said. “It’s coming up from the equator. Instead of running around the top of it, we’ll have to run to the south after picking up these men.”

  “Let’s hope the engines hold out.”

  Nathan didn’t respond. For a moment, Geneva feared they’d both realized she was eavesdropping.

  “We’ll need to maintain this speed for several hours longer than planned, ask the chief if he has any concerns, will you? I’ll be in my office, you have the bridge.”

  Nathan’s office sat directly behind the bridge, with an adjoining door. Geneva had to sprint indecorously into the pantry in the darkness as a shard of light swept the bridge when the captain opened it.

  She stood in the pantry, breathing in the smell of stale coffee, waiting for her heartbeat to steady itself and grinning like a bride. It was years since she’d been a real journalist.

  Light played across the bridge once more. Geneva heard Rachel’s voice. She looked out of the pantry and saw the CEO standing in the doorway. Dressed for dinner, she looked almost glamorous on the austere bridge.

  “Andre can’t raise the yacht,” Rachel said, the first officer was still talking into the VHF, distracted for now as Geneva moved along the back wall of the bridge. “No luck on the sat phone either.”

  “How did Andre know the number?” Nathan asked.

  “I gave it to him.” Rachel smiled. “I Googled it. It’s a hired yacht, long term charter. The company in the Azores had the number on their website. I like to be useful up here in your maritime world.”

  “You run my maritime world.” Through the gap between Rachel and the door, Geneva saw him re-arrange papers on his desk, grinning.

  “Oh come now, Nathan,” Rachel stepped into the office, one hand pushing the door closed behind her, but Geneva made it across in time to slip a finger in the way, almost sacrificing a nail. She held it ajar just enough to let very little light out, while still being able to hear the muffled voices within.

  The things I do for a story.

  “I’ve told you why I had to invite her along for this cruise,” said Rachel, Geneva could imagine her red lips spread in a fake flash of charm.

  “I don’t like having journalists on my bridge.”

  “I know, neither do I, but we need this Nathan. I need her.”

  “If this goes wrong, if we can’t find them I mean, it could look bad in the press,” said Nathan.

  “There’s no outcome where we don’t look like heroes for trying, Nathan. Your career isn’t hanging in the balance.”

  “You’re not the one who gave the order to turn back into a major storm system.”

  “What on earth were they thinking sailing into this?” Rachel changed the subject, a tactic she tended to use heavy-handedly.

  “My thoughts exactly. Must be amateur sailors, though even amateurs would check the forecast, surely?”

  Rachel didn’t answer, instead her tone of voice changed, suddenly businesslike. The old man.

  “How long will we take to reach them, and do you think they have any chance of, one, being found, and two, safely making it aboard the Symphony?”

  “We’ll reach them before sunrise. As to getting them on-board, we’ll have to throw a rope ladder over the side and use our beam to create a lee. I’d rather not launch a boat in this. I’ll use the tender door.”

  “I agree with you one hundred percent, you know that,” said Rachel. Geneva pressed her ear harder against the crack, watching Andre and the only other officer on the bridge, both distracted with looking after the ship. “I just wish we weren’t already in the red. Three extra tons of fuel an hour and Richard undermining me at every turn…”

  So the rumours were true.

  “You made the right decision asking him to come along.” Nathan’s voice was placating. “It wouldn’t have looked right, a special fifteen year anniversary cruise without the COO.”

  “Which is why I need Geneva, apart from her ability to bring me passengers.”

  “You’re walking a fine line,” said Nathan. “You can’t control the media like you can the crew.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Geneva bristled.

  “People say journalists are like vultures,” said Nathan. “They’re more like cockroaches - somehow able to get anywhere there’s a morsel of a story to feed on, but only embarrassing if anyone takes notice.”

  “It’s been more than a decade, Nathan, let it go.”

  “Sao Paulo was…”

  The shrill ring of the bridge phone cut off his voice at the same time that three prolonged blasts of the ship’s foghorn shattered the air.

  A single word echoed on the PA, intended to rouse the crew without unduly alarming passengers. It had the opposite effect, making it seem like the crew were hiding something. “Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. Portside.”

  Geneva leapt back as Nathan burst out of the office, his eyes wide in the sudden light. A man facing his worst nightmare in these seas.

  7.48pm

  The feeling of being trapped, of being suffocated by the effort to communicate, was one to which Aaron had grown accustomed, but on some nights it was more odious than others.

  He had resigned himself to listening to, rather than actively engaging in, the conversation around the dinner table in the Rhapsody Restaurant. Meeting new people made him stammer worse than usual. He had to think clearly about what he was about to say, sometimes mouthing it silently to himself before saying it, making spontaneous repartee difficult.

  Sarah to his right was around the same age as Aaron and had set about finding out his life’s history as soon as they sat down.

  “I much prefer a buffet!” she’d told him by way of introduction before the entrees.

  Rachel had prepared a set menu for them. Sarah read it, looking unimpressed.

  “The problem with this gourmet food is that it’s never enough,” she said in a whisper, leaning in as though they already knew each other. “So are you also travelling on your own?” she asked, breaking open a bread roll.

  Aaron formed the word first in his mind. “No.”

  He would have preferred to just shake his head. “I’m Rachel’s… son,” he said.

  Sarah raised her eyebrows, looking across the table at Rachel, who was holding forth, twirling her wineglass on the tablecloth in a practiced manner that Aaron had seen her do countless times at various functions. “I’m actually the CEO, so I don’t own the ship, myself and my shareholders do, along with a board of directors. Seaborne is unlike any other cruise line….”

  “Are y-you also on winter break?”

  Sarah lunged forward in an abrupt laugh, as though she’d been punched in the stomach. “I suspect our lives are very different,” she said, still smiling. Aaron felt like he’d missed the joke. “So you’re in college? What are you studying? Actually, I don’t care. Tell me who you are, what are you most afraid of? Sorry, I guess that’s kinda intrusive.”

  It was the open-ended nature of the question that Aaron dis
liked.

  “Socialising.”

  Sarah smiled again. “I could have guessed.”

  By the time the mains arrived, she’d become withdrawn, making little conversation and constantly checking her phone. Aaron was certain there was no cell reception this far out, but the ship did have Wi-Fi.

  He must have offended her with his one-word answers and inability to look her in the eye.

  Aaron wanted to enjoy himself the way Rachel kept saying he should, but he’d found the crossing so far to be rather boring. Cruising was a social holiday, and so far he’d been doing it in isolation, with the occasional coffee or lunch with Rachel every few days.

  There were only so many times he could watch passengers play Charades, or watch movies and order room service in his cabin, before the novelty wore off. Most passengers spent the days by the ship’s pool, trying on varying shades of pink, at least before the storm had caught them.

  Aaron avoided the sun. He didn’t want to be any darker. He knew he shouldn’t think it, but he did.

  There were a small number of passengers the same age as Aaron aboard the ship. They spent the days on the pool deck and the evenings in the ship’s nightclub. Aaron had waded into its throbbing depths on the first night of the cruise, after the sail away party.

  He hadn’t gone back. He’d discovered in his teens that all black men were good dancers. This information had been imparted well-meaningly during a house party.

  He tried to think of something to ask Sarah, to redress her assessment of him as an unfriendly, boring, awkward tool, but every question had too many consonants in it.

  Perhaps she was just seasick.

  “I like to meet as many of the passengers as I can,” his mother was answering a question, her body moving in time to her ship, “so I hold these little dinners every night with a different table and to keep things fair I mix it up so all of us are strangers. Except Aaron and I, of course,” she added with a distilled laugh. “But that’s just for tonight.”