Chapter 25

Wyatt

I’m back on the ship. I’m always back on the fucking ship. Behind my eyes, in my mind, it’s there, just waiting. I never left. This is my Hell, and I don’t have to wait until I’m dead to see it.

It lives with me, in my blood and in my breath. My own personal Hell, always reaching out to grab me and drag me back in.

Maybe death would free me from it. I still don’t understand how I’ve survived, or why. Most days, I wish I hadn’t.

I can hear the far off, dull booms. Getting closer all the time. Shouts break out all around me. There’s black smoke everywhere. My eyes are stinging, and I can’t see a fucking thing.

I know I acted quickly. Almost before anyone else did. I know I got a gun and some supplies. The explosions began to rock the boat soon after, making the air like razors to breathe. My throat rips raw every time I draw breath. My eyes are running, making tracks down my face in the soot.

Not much time has gone by, but I know the situation is desperate. We’ve been boarded, and they are moving. They don’t just want to blow us up. Not till they get what they came for. Fuck knows what that might be. I’m a grunt, I don’t get detailed descriptions of everything that we carry.

They are coming.

We’ve been overrun. I know that much. We have to get to the lifeboats. There is nothing but enemy, all around. I see the guys charging at me from in front and raise my gun, pressing my finger on the trigger.

It clicks dully. It’s empty. I’m out. I’m fucked.

Seconds slip by that feel like hours to me. Hours where I feel at my pockets, listening for the tell-tale clink of ammo. Hours where I check the clip to make sure she’s not jammed. Hours where I look around me and see how close the enemy is.

I rush forward, low to the ground, bringing up my gun and slamming it into the first guy’s jaw. I dodge sideways, flinging the gun out with my left hand and hitting another guy in the chest. I come up, swinging around, flinging the gun out with my right hand, hitting another guy in the face.

More are coming. Thick waves of them. Endless, hostile. Coming to kill us. Smoke pours from the ship and into the sky as I turn around, braced and ready.

Behind me, I hear screams. There’s a dull boom, closer than the others.

The ship’s been hit. We’re fucked. We have to get out of here.

Surrounding vessels are invisible, but I know they are there. There were a few more in the fleet but through the smoke I can’t see shit. I don’t know which ships are the enemy and which is us.

I don’t know where they boarded. I can’t tell how close they are to me.

Why can’t I see any fellow soldiers? Where the fuck is everyone? Am I fighting on my own? Did they leave and forget me?

I turn around, bolting through the smoke as a shadowy figure rears up, and my arm moves without conscious thought—it comes up hard, bringing my gun into contact with a human skull.

My enemy goes down, hitting the deck with a thud. For a moment, the unreality of the situation reaches fever pitch. There’s a ringing in my ears.

The guy plastered to the deck is in a ship uniform. It’s not an enemy. It’s Benson.

From our first day, we were mates. I see him smiling easily in the sun as we clean the deck. Tossing potatoes at my head on kitchen detail. Short sheeting all the beds on laundry day.

When he laced the Captain’s food with laxatives, we got put on latrines. Every single dirty job there is to do, we were in it together. I clung on to his adventurous spirit, his mischievous nature.

The isolation and loneliness of being at sea gets to everyone. Especially if you’re new to it, and recently torn out of a comfortable, familiar world into a hard, sharp one. Still, it was all just a joke to us, ships don’t get hit and sink, not in this day and age. Or so we said.

I doubted my decision to sign up in the first few weeks. Without Benson, I would have bailed. He had a long line of soldiers to live up to, and was keen to show all his uncles, his dad and granddad, just how great he was—to follow in the family footsteps, and make a name for himself in a long line of service men.

He should be by my side, kicking ass. Not bleeding on the deck. He has the heritage, the training, the drive. How can he be a crumpled mess while I’m still standing? It doesn’t make sense.

“Benson? Benson?” I lean down, grabbing his shoulder. He doesn’t move, blood pooling around his face. The dull booming and trampling of feet are miles away now. All I can hear is the ringing in my ears. All I can see is Benson’s broken face.

For the first time, panic grips me. Before now, I was scared, but in control. I could taste the panic but my human brain protected me, holding my conscious thoughts just outside the bloody violence.

Now I’ve fucked up. Now I’ve made a mistake. I was so honed for attack I hit someone I know. Someone who came to help me.

I can feel myself trembling as the ringing in my ears gets louder. There’s a pressure in my head. I put a hand up to it, shaking it a bit. This doesn’t help, it only makes the smoke and splashes of red spin wildly against the ship and sky.

The world has become a crazy, bloody place where nothing makes sense. I realize, I can’t move Benson without a stretcher. I forget where I am, and what’s happening for longer than a few seconds. Parts of my mind are trying to rationally come back to me.

One look at Benson and I’m panicking again. I don’t know what to do.

A massive boom nearby shakes me to the core. I look around me, clinging to my gun.

Enemy. Enemy coming.

They are closer than before. Maybe they got what they were after and now they are just going to sink us.

I grab Benson, trying to pull him up. His hands flutter against me and he groans.

“Get up! Get up, Private! That’s an order!” I roar at him as he blinks. One foot comes up, trying to stabilize himself. I get an arm around him and start dragging him.

He falls, eyes closing. The enemy are right on our ass. I grab for him again, losing the gun. I don’t give a fuck about anything except grabbing and dragging him to safety.

Out of the looming smoke, hands grab me. I fight them until a stern voice cracks through my panic.

“Lawrence! Stop it!” Something in me recognizes the officer. He and others are dragging me down the deck.

“No, no, Benson—” I reach for him as they drag me. Through the smoke I can see the enemy pouring over him like ants; their massive boots pulverizing him while he lays helpless against the hard steel of the deck.

“We got ‘em all?” The officer barks.

“As many as we’re gonna get. Move!” Another voice cracks across my thoughts.

“Keep dragging him, Lawrence? Help us, man. We have to move!”

“No. No. Benson!”

“They got him, man, he’s gone! Come on!”

I try to wrestle free, desperate to pick Benson up, get him out from under those trampling feet. I can’t fight all the hands that have me, dragging me away. I see Benson crushed under waves and waves of black boots, without a damn thing I can do about it.

I’m aware, but that’s all I am. The world is dark. I can’t see. I don’t know if my eyes are closed or if the smoke has gotten so thick it’s blacked out the light.

I feel the heaving of the sea. The bobbing of the lifeboat. I hear them pulling us away from the ship as it gets hit one more time and blows. Smoke pillars up into the air, and the explosion bathes us in red orange glow.

I realize I can see. Red fire, black smoke, blue sea. They bob up and down as my eyes lazily flick open and closed.

I’m shaking. I can’t feel anything. My stomach is cold, sick and tight. I can’t move. The shock sets in and I’m grateful for it. It sweeps away my thoughts and my feelings and leaves me blank.

Except for one thought.

The ship is gone. Everything’s gone.

How am I still alive?