ISBN: 9781624886263
Chapter 1
Jack was confused and couldn’t relate to where he was. Somehow he had become completely encapsulated in some kind of material. He felt trapped; wedged into a narrow, confining space. He struggled to get loose and finally, his hand managed to escape from the binding cloth. He reached out; trying to grasp anything he could find to help him pull free. He was getting very claustrophobic and everything seemed to be moving up and down and back and forth. As he continued to struggle, he started getting queasy. He could feel the panic starting to well up inside. “Let me go. Get me out of here,” he yelled. Then he remembered; he was on a yacht. As he clawed the fabric away from his face he could see that he had gotten wrapped up in his sheets and fallen between the wall of the yacht and the bunk.
He managed to get himself into a standing position and was able to peel the clinging linens away from his body. As the last of the cloth fell to the floor, he lost his balance. Trying to catch himself was futile. He fell onto his bed; bounced, and hit his chin on the foot of the bunk. Finally, he was free. He crawled across the floor trying to get his bearings. He reached the door to his cabin and started to run outside. He had to get some air. Just as the door opened he realized he was naked. He struggled into his shorts as quickly as he could. Half blind with sea sickness and totally confused; he ran to the stairs and frantically scrambled up the steps to the open deck. The deck was bouncing and rolling, as the Marauder was tossed around, plowing through the heavy seas.
Just as a precaution, Jack strapped on one of the life jackets hanging on the rail. “Might be foolish, but you never really know,” he muttered under his breath. The fresh air seemed to clear his head and his stomach started to settle into a reasonable amount of grumbling.
It was still night time, but the full moon created such a beautiful view of the dark, powerful ocean. “It’s hard not to love this view, even though it’s so dangerous,” he thought.
He worked his way toward the bow, holding onto the lifelines as he moved forward. The spray was getting him soaked, but it also refreshed him. As he moved forward, he noticed there was no one else on deck.
“That’s strange,” he muttered.
He looked around, trying to see if anyone was hunkered down, to get out of the weather. But there was simply no one else about.
As he reached the bow, he looked up into the bridge. “That’s funny,” he thought. “There aren’t any lights on up there.”
In the pit of his stomach, he started to get a weird feeling. It was like a premonition, but not something he could grasp. His mind wrestled with what he was seeing. But logic wouldn’t let him accept it as a possibility. He could feel the panic was starting to build again.
Quickly working his way back to the stairway, he climbed up to the upper deck. Entering the bridge, he stopped short. “Now, this is impossible,” he declared to the empty room. “Somebody’s got to be driving this thing.”
The massive cruiser was running itself. There was no one anywhere to be found. He reached for the light switch, only to realize that it didn’t work. There didn’t seem to be any power at all. Then he noticed the control panel was black, not a single instrument was illuminated.
Maybe they had an auxiliary bridge. “Yeah, that must be it,” he tried to convince himself. “I wonder where it could be.”
He heard the engines of the sleek yacht, coming from deep within the hull, and he felt their vibration in his feet. It reminded him of the vibration he had felt so long, sitting at that terrible desk, next to the elevator shaft. Nine years of trying to concentrate on the phone, while the stupid elevator tried to make my desk walk across the floor. Nothing could be any worse than that.
“That’s really the reason I’m here now,” he rationalized. “Anything to get away from that dead end job as a financial planner.” All he ever did was tell other people how to invest their money, so they could enjoy the good life.
He helplessly looked around the empty bridge, and then at the crashing waves, as they rose up and washed across the deck. “This, sure as Hell isn’t what I expected!”
Nobody back home would ever believe that I’d just take off, like this. But here I am. At least I’m doing what I wanted to do and not what everybody else told me to do.
He looked around the empty bridge and gazed out at the rolling sea trying to figure out what to do next. He wondered around the empty deck, realizing he might be in serious trouble. His mind was reeling, trying to understand what was real, and what was just his imagination.
Finally he went back down the stairs to the second deck and started looking for anyone he could find. He knew he had to find out what was going on. He went into the main galley, expecting to find someone there. He was very disappointed to find it was completely empty.
There’s always somebody in here, grabbing a cup of coffee. Where could they possibly be?
Not understanding what he was doing, he walked over and felt the coffee pot. It was stone cold. It felt like it hadn’t been used for days. He knew that was impossible; they always had hot coffee in the galley. The cabin boy had told him so. He knew he had just been in the galley a couple of hours before he went to bed; it was full of people sitting around drinking coffee.
He went back up the stairs to the top deck, going directly to the Captain’s quarters and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. Louder this time. Still no answer. He tried the door handle and, to his surprise, the door slid quietly open.
“Hello,” Jack shouted. “Anybody here?”
“HELLO,” he yelled. “ANYBODY HEAR ME?”
Still there was no answer.
He walked slowly into the cabin and looked around. Everything seemed normal. The lights were on, but the quarters were empty. He saw a half empty bottle of whiskey sitting on the desk, with an empty glass next to it. In the ashtray, he saw two, half smoked cigars, one with the ash still hanging from the end, like it had just burned out.
As he passed the desk, he noticed the Captain’s log was open, an old-fashioned pen lying on top of it.
He couldn’t resist, he leaned over and read, ‘Just set auto-pilot. Something is going on; there’s a commotion out on the deck. Somebody must have brought some fire crackers on board. Lots of them, it sounds like.’ He noticed the last entry had been made at midnight, just a few hours ago. He felt a cold chill running down his back.
Fire crackers? I wonder?
He slipped out of the cabin, thinking how foolish he would look if anyone caught him snooping around the Captain’s cabin in the middle of the night. Then, that weird feeling, deep down in his gut told him something was terribly wrong and no one was going to see him anywhere tonight.
He realized he had not seen a single person since he came up on deck. In fact, he had not seen a single person since he left his cabin. “Well, of course it’s the middle of the night,” he reasoned. “But there were always people on the deck or in the galley.”
He realized he had never seen the Captain anywhere on the yacht, except in the bridge, the galley, or going to his quarters. He must have somewhere else to go. He certainly isn’t in any of those places.
“Okay,” Jack said to himself, “let’s think this through rationally. There is no way that everyone could disappear from a boat this big, in the middle of the night. So, there must be something I’m missing. Oh shit,” he scolded himself. “You stupid fool; they’re still in bed. Just because you woke up in the middle of the night, doesn’t mean everyone did. The boat obviously has an auto-pilot, and the Captain has just set it up to run itself. That’s got to be it.” He laughed. “The Captain’s probably somewhere playing poker with the crew.”
As he was trying to talk himself into believing that everything was all right, he wandered down into the main cabin. He started knocking softly on doors, hoping to find someone awake. But no one answered.
He pushed on the door of the cabin next to his own. The door swung quietly open. The lights were on. He looked around and saw no one was in the room. He could see that someone had been in the bed that night. The covers were all disarranged, and the pillow had a dent in it, where someone’s head had been lying earlier. The bathroom door was closed, so he went over and knocked on the door.
“Hey, hello,” Jack yelled out, “is anybody in there?”
There was no answer, just an eerie quiet.
He went to the next cabin, only to discover the exact same thing. The door was unlocked, the lights were on, the bed had been slept in, but there was no one in the cabin.
Jack realized his lights had been on, too. “I’m sure I turned those off before I went to bed.” He thought. “How did they get back on?”
Cabin after cabin, opening door after door, hoping beyond hope, that someone would be there. But every cabin revealed the same thing. With each empty cabin, his apprehension became greater, and with each empty cabin, his panic grew.
This is impossible. I’ve heard of the Bermuda Triangle, I wonder if that has anything to do with this? No, stop it. There has to be a logical reason. People don’t just disappear in the middle of the night, not like this. Oh yeah, smart guy, then where are they?
He went back to the bridge, and sat down in the dark, in the Captain’s chair. “Figure it out. You were a boy scout, so how prepared are you for this?”
Jack thought back to his scouting days, when his troop had been snowed in, during a freak storm, and how they had pulled together to survive in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His troop had been out on a week-end camping trip, when an unexpected snow storm rolled through during the night. The next morning all of the tents looked like big piles of snow. The doors were blocked, and the kids all thought it was still night time because it was so dark inside the snow covered tents. Jack had to go to the bathroom, so he had gotten dressed in the dark and opened the tent flaps. That’s when he saw the wall of snow, blocking the entrance. He woke up his friend, Mark, and the two of them dug the snow out enough so they could get outside. When they stood up, the snow was up to their chest, and it was a bright sunny day. Jack and Mark started to yell, and they heard voices coming from the piles of snow scattered around them.
“What the Hell am I thinking about that for now?” He scolded himself. “There isn’t anybody here that’s going to yell back,” he thought. “And Mark isn’t here to help me now. And the Air Force certainly isn’t going to send in any choppers this time.”
The reality of the situation sunk in. He knew he had to be certain he looked on every deck and in every room. There just has to be somebody else on this boat.
He discovered a door going down to the lower deck, deep within the belly of the cruiser. He climbed down the stairs, and found himself in the engine room. He realized very quickly when he opened the door that it was just like the rest of the cruiser. No one home. The twin diesel engines were running smoothly, filling the room with the rhythm of their power. Shaking gently on their large rubber motor mounts.
The engines are running, so the crew has to be down here somewhere. I know these things don’t just run by themselves.
Next he inspected the lower deck. He found the crew’s quarters, near the stern of the yacht. “Not bad,” he thought, as he saw the windows stretching across their cabin looking out toward the back of the yacht. He noticed their bunks did not appear as if they had been slept in. They were still made up, and although the lights were on, just like in the other cabins, there was no one there. He moved forward in the lower deck, going from room to room, checking out every space he could find. He found a pantry containing food. He found another room that was locked with a padlock. He pounded on the door, but there was no answer. “I don’t think they could have locked themselves in there anyway,” he said, with a self-effacing grin, as he looked at the padlock.
He continued to work his way forward, looking in every single storage room, mop closet, tool shop, and parts area, until he had reached the bow of the yacht. Jack realized he had spent almost an hour and a half going from one part of the cruiser to the other. Finally, he had to admit to himself that everyone was gone, and he was alone on the big yacht, as it plowed through the towering waves.
What in the world was I thinking, giving up a nice apartment in New York. Was I crazy, or what? Walking away from a job I’d had for almost ten years! And for what, to chase a dream and end up on a runaway yacht bound for who knows where, in the middle of the night? I must have been out of my freekin’ mind.
Climbing back up to the bridge, he absent mindedly flipped the light switch, as he entered the cabin. The lights switched on and all of the instruments appeared to come to life. He was so startled that he almost turned the switch off again.
Jack went over to the Captain’s chair and looked at the instruments. He wasn’t a Captain, he wasn’t even a sailor. He was just a passenger and didn’t really have a clue as to what he was looking at.
The question of what had happened to the other passengers and crew was so unimaginable, that he couldn’t get his mind around it. He had searched every possible place on the boat that a person could be. Every single light, in every single room, had been turned on. He could logically understand there was no one else on the boat, but he just couldn’t accept it emotionally. It was just impossible, yet here he was, sitting in the Captain’s chair, all alone.
He looked at the instruments and recognized some basic things. There was what looked like a radar screen, with a line circling around and around. There was nothing else on the screen so he assumed that meant they weren’t going to run into anything.
He recognized the compass and the speedometer.
“Hummm, we’re going 18 miles per hour, or is that 18 knots,” he wondered aloud. “Is a knot faster than a mile per hour, or is a mile per hour, faster than a knot? Hell, it doesn’t make any difference,” he said disgustedly, “whichever it is, I’m going that fast, or that slow.”
He saw the fuel gauges, and recognized that they had two full tanks of fuel.
“How could that be,” he muttered, “it’s been at least 48 hours since we left Sarasota, and the engines have been running that whole time. Maybe it’s that Bermuda Triangle stuff again.”
While sitting on the bridge, wondering what to do, he realized the yacht had a radio. “How stupid is that, of course it has a radio.”
The headphones hung on a hook next to the console. He put on the ear phones, and started listening. It was as quiet as the cruiser. Not a sound. He looked for the controls and found a switch on the console. He flipped it on and continued to listen. He started moving the dial one click at a time, trying to hear anyone, anything. Still, not a sound. He picked up the microphone and pressed the button on the side, “May Day, May Day,” he said into the microphone, as he watched the dials on the console. There was no movement on the dials, and he wondered why it didn’t work. He clicked the dial to the next frequency, and repeated his ‘May Day’ call. Finally, he had moved the dial completely around the available channels, but there was no response from anyone. Not a sound. He felt like he was not only alone on the cruiser, but maybe the only person left in the world.
Jack ran out of the bridge and down the stairs to his cabin. “How stupid,” he thought, “I’ve got a cell phone!”
Entering his cabin, he looked around, and saw his suitcase in the corner where he’d left it. He pulled it open and grabbed his cell phone. “I can just call somebody and get some help.” He felt cheered up.
He pressed the button to turn on his phone. The screen lit up and displayed “Welcome.” Jack grinned. He waited and watched as the screen suddenly went blank; a message appeared saying, “No Service Available.”
“Crap,” he muttered. He started back up the stairs to the upper deck. “Of course, the stupid thing wouldn’t work down here surrounded by metal.”
As he reached the upper deck, he anxiously looked at the screen, waiting for the message to clear so he could call for help. Nothing changed. The screen continued to display the “No Service Available” message. “This damn thing never works when you want it to,” he muttered.
As he sat back in the Captain’s chair, wondering what he should do next, the sun slowly lightened up the eastern sky. As the sun rose, the sea seemed to smooth out. The waves became gentle lapping splashes against the forward bow. Jack realized he was going toward the sun. That meant he was going east. “He should have been going south, if he remembered anything at all about geography. They were supposed to be headed for Tortola. That would have been south of Sarasota, where he had boarded.”
Jack looked around the bridge, and noticed the charts along the wall. He pulled out the Caribbean chart, and located Tortola on the map. “Okay,” he muttered. “When we left Sarasota, we’d have to go south to get around Florida, and the Captain must have headed east to get around the keys. That must be why we’re headed that direction now. But where in the Hell is the Captain? And why isn’t anyone else on this boat?”
As Jack walked by the console, he checked the fuel gauges again. They had not moved.
They must be broken. A cruiser this size certainly can’t keep running, without burning up fuel.
Jack found a pair of binoculars in a cabinet in the bridge. He raised them to his eyes and slowly started scanning the horizon looking for anything or anyone.
He saw a school of dolphins, off the port bow. They seemed to be having a really good time, running with the cruiser. As he watched, they moved closer and closer to the yacht, and began playing in the wash off the bow.
How lucky you guys are, at least you have each other to keep company.
His mind was racing, “Here I am, on a hundred and eighty foot runaway yacht, all alone in the middle of nowhere. We were supposed to be going to Tortola, a three day cruise. It’s already been over two days. According to these charts, we should almost be there. Surely, somebody will notice we’re missing.”
I guess, I’m not missing, I’m right here, and the yacht is right here, so no one will know anything is wrong! I can’t raise anyone on the radio; I can’t see anything; and I don’t even really know which way I should try to go.
He looked at the compass again. “Okay, we’re going east, so, if I want to go back to where I came from, all I have to do is turn this thing around, and go back the other way,” he rationalized. “But, if I try to turn it around, then I’m going to have to take if off this auto-pilot. I’m going to have to learn how to steer this thing myself. How long will I be able to do that? Hell, it might be two days before I run into anybody,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s just too much to think about.”
Seeing the auto-pilot switch on the console, he realized the green light probably meant that it was engaged. He started looking for auto-pilot documentation in the cabinets. He thought if he could just figure out how to use that, he could find a solution to his problem.
He felt claustrophobic. He realized he hadn’t been out on the deck, since it had gotten light. Jack left the bridge and went back down the stairs. As he stepped out onto the deck, he looked down, and saw patches of red on the deck. He could see footprints in the smeared blob, and as he looked, he realized they were his own footprints. He reached down and touched the red smear. It was still damp. Whether it was paint, or blood, he couldn’t tell. But, inside, he knew what the answer had to be. He searched the deck, and found small shell casings here and there. Jack had shot a .22 when he was a kid, and even those shells were bigger than these were. What kind of shells could these be?
As he was inspecting the deck, he saw the traces of blood all around the steps going up to the bridge. He could see where the waves had washed a lot of it overboard, during the night, but there were still a lot of stains on the deck.
He walked around the deck again, trying to make some sense of what he was seeing. “There must have been over fifty people on board. They couldn’t have all died, could they? That runabout is still strapped to the deck, so they didn’t leave that way,” he said to the empty deck.
He ran back up the stairs to the bridge and looked at the radar screen again.
If someone killed all of those people, how did I escape? Are they going to come back to try to take the yacht? Why in the world would someone kill all those people, and not steal the yacht? If they weren’t going to take the yacht, why would they take the time to throw all the bodies overboard? Something is really strange about all of this.
The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that he had to do a more thorough search of the vessel. He believed he had to know every square inch of this yacht if he were to survive.
But, how did they miss me? If they got everyone else, why did they just miss me? The thought kept running through his mind. There’s something I’m missing. There’s something I’m just not seeing.
That’s it. Maybe they missed someone else too. Maybe someone was able to hide, and they didn’t find them. Maybe they’re still hidden and afraid to come out.
He had to search the yacht again. He walked to the front of the deck, looking in every nook and cranny he could imagine. He needed to do a complete search, if only for his peace of mind. He hated to admit it even to himself, but he was afraid. He felt totally out of his element.
If I could just find someone from the crew that knew how to drive this thing. Crap, I’ve never even seen a yacht this big before, let alone tried to drive one.
“Please God, I know I haven’t been a real religious person, but, please… help me out here,” Jack prayed out loud. He couldn’t just sit there and let the boat take him to the middle of nowhere, where he’d never be found.
Chapter 2
As Jack explored the yacht, he took special care to insure he was looking everywhere that a passenger or crew member could have hidden. He started at the stern on the starboard side and worked his way back up to the bow. He then retraced his steps on the port side, ending up back at the stern.
After searching the entire main deck, he climbed back up to the bridge and checked out every single room and closet on that level. He discovered two cabins he had not explored before, and had great hopes when he first saw them. Unfortunately, they were, apparently, unoccupied on this trip. They didn’t even have blankets on the bunks.
He climbed up on top of the bridge and inspected the big runabout that was tied to the deck. It had straps wrapped around it and was attached to a wench of some sort. He climbed up inside the runabout and inspected it. There was only one small cabin, in front of the wheel and throttle controls. He opened the door, thinking someone might have hidden in there, only to find it was also empty. “They’d have to be awfully small, to hide in there,” Jack thought, as he inspected the small enclosure.
He went back down to the passenger deck and again, went from cabin to cabin, spending more time in each one, and inspecting it from top to bottom. He noticed some cabins were for singles, and some had family accommodations. He was quite surprised at how large the cabins were that were set up for families. “Those look like a big hotel suite,” he thought. “Interesting to see how the other half lives.” He smiled.
“Funny,” he thought, “all those years I’ve been helping people save their money, so they could travel like this. And, here I am, traveling like this, and I’m scared to death.”
After spending far more time examining the passenger deck than he intended, he climbed back down into the lower deck, where the engine room was located.
He couldn’t help but marvel at the efficiency this yacht must have. The engines were still running smoothly and with barely a vibration.
As Jack went from cabin to cabin, in the lower deck, he kept getting this strange feeling, something tugging at the back of his mind, something he knew he should be aware of. But it was nothing he could really put his finger on.
He continued his search, going from cabin to cabin, and storage locker to storage locker. He had just about given up. He had inspected every square inch of this yacht, and he had found nothing. As he reached the forward compartment of the lower deck, he stopped to take a breath.
Suddenly, he heard something that didn’t sound quite right. It wasn’t anything he could identify, just some slight noise, different than what had been in the background before. He froze, listening.
Suddenly, he heard it again. It was like a muffled sneeze. It sounded like someone was trying to choke off their own sneeze, so they would not to be heard. And it was close. He listened more intently, frozen in his tracks. There it was again. And this time, he knew which direction it had come from. Right there, right in front of him. Yet there was nothing there. Just a wall.
Jack slipped out of the compartment very quietly and went back up to the galley. He found a large glass and went back down into the front compartment. He held the glass up and put the open part against the wall, and placed his ear on the bottom of the glass. He listened carefully, trying to hear anything that might be in there. He could hear the waves slapping against the hull, as they moved through the water. He could hear the dolphins talking to each other, as they ran with the boat. He could hear the faint noise from the two large diesel engines, as they pushed the yacht further and further out into the Atlantic. But, there was something else, just the whisper of a sound, like someone breathing hard, or sobbing.
“Hello, is anyone in there?” Jack shouted, as he pounded on the wall.
The sobbing stopped. There was not a sound. There was no answer.
Jack knew someone was behind that wall, but he didn’t know how they might have gotten in there. It was two decks down from the bow, and after all of his inspection, he couldn’t imagine how anyone could have gotten into the bow of the ship.
“Listen, I know you’re in there,” he said, in his most comforting tone of voice. “I’m not going to hurt you. Let me know if you’re okay?”
Still there was no answer.
“Hey,” he said, as he pounded on the wall again. “I’m a passenger on this yacht, and I can’t find anyone else on board. If there’s somebody in there, yell out and let me know I’m not alone,” he pleaded.
Still not a sound.
“Look,” Jack said in what he thought was his most reassuring voice, “there’s just the two of us on this boat, and I don’t know where it’s going. I could really use some help here.”
Still whoever was behind the wall chose to remain silent.
He realized that whoever was behind that wall was just as scared as he was, and they weren’t coming out unless they had too.
Quietly, he went back to the stairs and headed up to the passenger deck. He went straight to the bow, looking for any way he could find to get behind that wall from this deck. He looked at where he thought the bow should be, but there was just a wall at the end of the hall.
He went into the front cabins on either side of the yacht, but there was no entrance to the space that he suspected was there. There just wasn’t any way to get into that space. There were no vents, no doorways, nothing.
Jack knew that he had to be missing something. He took the stairs, two steps at a time, to the top deck. He walked up to the front of the boat, totally perplexed. There just wasn’t any way to get into that wall and yet he knew there was someone in there.
“If I can’t find any way to get in there, how did they? They must have done it when all that commotion was going on.” He surmised, as he thought about the Captain’s log. “Otherwise, why would they be so scared?”
He leaned back on the rail and glanced down at the dolphins, still playing in the wash of the bow. He noticed the anchor attached to the bow, with the anchor chain going into the hull. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said quietly. “So that’s how they could have gotten down there.”
Jack lay down on the deck and stretched out over the starboard bow, as far as he could reach, and looked back toward the hull of the yacht. He could see the anchor chain coming out of a hole in the side of the hull and the anchor firmly attached to the yacht, just below the two foot hole.
“Sure enough,” Jack thought, “if someone was small enough, they could have slipped through that hole and gotten in there.”
As Jack looked down into the anchor locker he thought he saw something move. He wasn’t sure; maybe it was wishful thinking, but he was almost certain something, or someone, was down there.
Jack quickly went back down into the lower deck and raced to the bow. “Now, I know what I’m looking for,” he said confidently.
As he came into the small storage area, he looked up and sure enough, there it was. An entrance, high up, on the port side, bolted into the wall of the cruiser. It was the entrance to the anchor locker. Jack had realized they had to have some way of getting into there to secure the anchor lines to the wench.
He went back into the mechanic’s shop and found a wrench. He started removing the nuts from the hatch cover. As he worked on the cover, he could hear scratching noises coming from behind the wall.
“It’s okay; I’ll have you out of there in a minute. Don’t worry, I’m scared too,” he admitted.
“How in the world did you manage to get in there anyway,” he asked, as he was taking the nuts off the cover. “I’ve almost got it. Hang on, just one more nut to take off.”
Finally, the last nut was gone, and he removed the cover plate.
“It’s clear, you can come out,” he said into the opening, “I don’t know how you got in there in the first place.”
Nothing moved. No one came out. There wasn’t a sound.
Jack stuck his head into the locker and said, “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m stuck here too. I don’t blame you for being afraid, but I’ve checked the whole boat, and there isn’t anyone else here. Just the two of us,” he said in a matter of fact tone.
He started to crawl into the locker a little further, when some movement caught the corner of his eye, and he jumped back. Just as he pulled his head out of the way, a bucket came crashing down where his head had been.
“Hey, whoa, I’m trying to help you,” Jack yelled. “What are you trying to do, kill me?”
“Don’t come any closer,” a female voice said, “I’ve got a knife, and I’ll stab you if you try. I can see you a lot better than you can see me, and I’ll hurt you, if you try to come in here.”
“Look, I don’t want to hurt you. My name’s Jack Rhodes. I was in cabin 23, and I don’t know what happened. But it looks like you and I are the only two people left on this boat. Who are you?”
There was no answer.
“Do you know what happened last night?” Jack asked. “I was asleep and had a weird dream, and when I came up on deck, everybody was gone. I’ve searched the entire boat, and there isn’t anyone else on board. The boat seems to be on auto-pilot, but I don’t know where it’s going. It looks like a lot of people were hurt last night; there’s blood on the deck. Come on, if you know what’s going on, please at least tell me what we’re dealing with.”
“My name’s Suzanne,” the voice said. “Are you the guy with the red hair?”
“Yea, that’s me. Come on out here. This is spooky enough. We’ve got to find out what’s going on or we’re going to end up like all those other people,” he pleaded.
“Okay, I’ll come out,” Suzanne said, “but you have to back up and get away from the hatch way.”
“Fine, no problem, just come on out of there.”
As Jack moved back, toward the doorway, Suzanne crawled out into the hatchway, peering out, and then gave a big sigh.
“Oh, it is you,” she said, “I wasn’t sure if you were telling me the truth or not.”
“I remember seeing you. You’re in that cabin down at the end, with your family, right?”
“Well, yes and no. I’m in that cabin down at the end, but that’s not my family. I’m a nanny.”
“Okay, Suzanne, so please tell me, what are you doing in there?” Jack asked.
“I don’t really know,” she said, “I was sitting up on the bow, looking at the stars, and I heard this loud bump. It sounded strange, and I thought we’d hit a whale or something. I looked over the bow to see what it was and saw a small boat, near the back, but it didn’t have any lights on, and it scared me. I crouched down, behind that big deck box up on the bow. I saw these men coming onboard, all dressed in black, so I stayed where I was. All of a sudden, somebody tackled one of those guys, and then everybody started shooting,” she rambled on. “I knew they were going to shoot me too, if they saw me, so I crawled over the side and hung onto the rail of the boat. There were some pretty heavy waves, and for a while I thought I was going to get washed off, but then, my feet hit the anchor, and I managed to stand on top of it, and hold onto the anchor chain. When I saw one of those guys in black coming toward the bow, I crawled into that little hole the anchor chain comes out of, and I fell down into the anchor locker. I’ve been hiding in there ever since. How did you get away?” she asked, as she took a quick breath.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I had too much to drink last night, and I went to bed early and apparently fell out of bed. Somehow, I got stuck between the wall and the bed and couldn’t get untangled from the sheet. I was having a really weird dream about the boat sinking, and when I woke up, everyone was gone. If they were shooting everybody, I don’t know why they didn’t shoot me while I was asleep.”
“Oh, no,” Suzanne said, in horror, “did they shoot people while they were asleep?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that everybody is gone. I could see where people were sleeping, covers pulled back and all, but I didn’t see any blood in any of the beds. But, everybody’s gone, there’s a boat still up on the deck, and it does look like somebody was trying to get it off the yacht. I just don’t know, I don’t know,” Jack trailed off.
“When I saw them shooting people, I hid, so they wouldn’t shoot me,” Suzanne said, “I didn’t see what happened after that. You may have been the only one lucky enough to have slept through it. Did you check everywhere to see if anyone else got away?”
“Yes, I checked everywhere. In fact, I’d just about given up, until I heard you sneeze.”
“Oh, you scared me to death, I heard you banging around down here, and I thought you were one of those people who had come back and was trying to find me. I knew I was going to sneeze; I could feel it coming on. I tried everything I could to hold it back, but I couldn’t. I always sneeze three times, always, and after that first one, I just knew you heard it. You’d been making all kinds of noise, and then when I sneezed, you got real quiet,” she said. “I was so scared; I was trying so hard to hold back on those next two, because I didn’t know who you were. I was afraid you were one of those guys off the boat. Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. But I’m afraid they might come back. I can’t imagine pirates killing everyone on board, and then not taking the boat. I can’t figure why they would throw everybody overboard either, which is what they must have done. Come on, let’s get up top, and see if we can figure out how to run this thing,” Jack said, as he headed toward the door.
Suzanne followed him up the stairs into the bridge, pausing to look at the stains still visible on the deck.
As they moved through the boat, Jack filled her in on everything he had tried to do since escaping from his tangled sheets.
As they entered the cabin, Jack looked at the radar screen, trying to identify anything he might see. The line kept turning, around and around, but not a single blip showed on the muted green face. Jack had seen enough weather reports to know that even bad weather would show up on that screen, if it was out there.
It had been almost five hours since Jack awakened. He went over and checked the fuel gauges again. Still full, not an ounce of fuel had been used, according to the gauges.
“Very weird,” Jack muttered.
“What’s that?”
“The fuel gauges,” he said, pointing toward the gauges. “They haven’t budged since I first checked them, and they say we have full tanks – still. We’ve been cruising for two days, and we haven’t used any fuel? That’s just not possible.”
“Maybe they’re broken.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Jack replied, not so convincingly. “Let’s see if we can figure out how to turn off this auto-pilot, and turn this thing around.”
“Well, this might work,” Suzanne said, as she flipped a switch.
Instantly, the cruiser started to sway back and forth, the wheel started moving on its own, and the engines started changing pitch.
Jack, grabbed the wheel, and held it steady. It was obvious that Suzanne had turned the auto-pilot off, now all they had to do was try to figure out how to turn it back on again, with the settings they desired.
“Next time, let’s talk before you start hitting switches. I’d like to know how to reset the auto-pilot. I could have turned it off.”
“Well you said you wanted to turn off the auto-pilot,” Suzanne said. “So, I turned it off. That’s what you said you wanted to do. Besides, I’ve been on boats before with auto-pilots, they’re not that complicated. We were going east, almost exactly 90º if I’m reading that compass right. So, if you want to go back exactly where we came from, we’d have to set a course at about 270º, right?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Jack said.
“Well, you might want to go back exactly where we came from Mr. Rhodes, but I certainly don’t care too.” she said emphatically. “That’s where those killers were, remember? I don’t think it would be too smart to give them a second chance. Do you?”
“Oh, you’re right,” he stammered, “I hadn’t thought of that. So what do you think we should do?”
“Well, a boat this size surely has GPS,” she said. “Let’s just figure out where we are, and where we want to go, and plug in the coordinates. Give me a minute to check out these controls.”
After looking over the control panel, Suzanne started moving dials, flipping switches, and generally taking over the bridge. Jack just stood and watched. He didn’t even know what GPS was, but she seemed to know what she was doing, so he didn’t say a word.
Suzanne looked up and said, “Do you suppose there’s any coffee down in the galley? I could sure use a cup.”
“No, I checked that earlier, and the coffee pot is as cold as an ice cube.”
“Well, do you suppose you could make some?” she asked with a smile.
“Uh, well, yeah, I guess, I’ll try,” Jack said, as he headed toward the door.
It was obvious that Suzanne was well in control of the yacht at this point, so there really wasn’t much he could do, except what she asked.
“Funny, how I’m the one that found her, but she’s the one giving all the orders all of a sudden,” he thought.