MUTINY by Lee West

Author:Lee West [West, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

— 16 —

Joe repeatedly pressed the elevator call button with desperation. He knew time was ticking quickly past while the ship was on a fast course straight out to the open ocean. The lifeboat plan would only work if they were close enough to reach shore with the boats. They couldn’t count on the Coast Guard to rescue them if they ran out of fuel.

For the first time since waiting for the elevator, Joe noticed the entire bank of elevators was dark. Although the call button illuminated, giving him hope that a car would pick him up, none were coming. Each panel above the elevator door was dark, as though turned off. None of the elevators displayed their location. Joe assumed the captain must have turned those off too. The lights had been flickering all evening and at times stayed off for several minutes before turning back on. Shutting off the elevators only made sense. People could walk just as easily, and the ship’s electrical system would be less challenged.

Turning toward the vast elaborate staircase with its gilded handrails, Joe started his seven-deck descent to Mike’s room. He ran down the stairs, taking the last two steps of each flight with a jump. Adrenaline fueled his exhausted seasick body forward.

When he reached deck five, Joe stood in the atrium for several seconds, trying to catch his breath. The pace he’d run down the stairs took a lot out of him, leaving him completely winded. Although young, Joe was no athlete, and the heavy food and alcohol he’d consumed for the past week didn’t help his overall fitness level. Turning toward the cabins, he read the sign that indicated which cabins were located on the various sides of the ship’s vast passageways.

He knew Mike had said his room was number 547. However, the rooms on the board didn’t match his room number. All of the rooms on the board were four digits long. Then it occurred to him that he’d never seen any of the crew’s cabins. They must have a separate number system than the passengers. Clearly the crew cabins were obscured from the passengers so as to create the illusion that the entire ship contained happy vacationers and not people grinding out their workday.

“It has to be here, but where?” he whispered softly to himself.

Walking up and down the corridor provided absolutely no clues to where the crew rooms were located. Desperation gripped him as the thought that the plan would never work dawned on him. He worried about never finding Mike and being taken well out to sea.

“Excuse me, sir, are you lost?” asked a security officer in a crisp white uniform.

“No, not really. Just couldn’t sleep and thought instead of waking up my wife, I’d roam the ship.”

“Roaming the ship has a way of settling even the most active of nocturnal minds.” The officer smiled as he started to move away.

“Are all the decks laid out the same?” asked Joe, pointing to the ship’s rudimentary schematic.

The officer walked back over to him, clearly happy to engage in conversation during his lonely watch.

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