Secrets at Sea

Chapter 17

I burst through the bottom of the stairwell, looking around at the completely lit up indoor mall and feel a wave of calm wash over me.

If only I could do some retail therapy to help me get through this hell-ship. I sigh. 

A thought pops into my mind and I sprint towards the farthest shop from the exit. I pull on the door of the pharmacy and surprisingly it swings open. I walk in and immediately knock over a stack of sunscreen bottles.

"Shit." I whisper, frozen in place as I listen for any noise inside the store. After a minute of silence I relax and lock the door behind me. I grab a large, black backpack and begin stuffing it full of first aid kits, bandages, antiseptics, and anything else I can think might help us stay alive long enough to make it off the cruise. I work my way over to the pill part of the shop and start grabbing pain meds and insulin. If I do find my friends alive I know Brooks won't have anything on him and I can't have him dying from an irregular amount of blood sugar. I shuffle trough drawers until I find a whole insulin kit setup. I grab three. You never know who else might be going through the same thing.

I'm about to head out of the store when I look out the Plexiglas barrier, that protects the pharmacist from the customer, and see two men walking towards this side of the mall. I duck down under the counter clutching the bag to my chest. I survey the room for a back door but there is nothing labeled as such. There is the pharmacist's office at the very back of the shop that I had scavenged through earlier, but I know for a fact that there isn't a way out that way. The only thing in that room was a large vent entrance above the computer desk.

Wait...the vent. 

I quickly shuffle to the back office. I quickly peek over the counter before sneaking behind the slightly ajar office door. I still move silently, just the thought of some of the crazies in the area is making my palms sweat and my heart race. I slowly close the door behind me and lock it before standing up to look around the tiny office. The office only has a desk on the right wall, a filing cabinet, and a few cheesy posters telling people that enter to "keep your head held high" plastered above a puppy being a good boy and "hang in there" with a cute little kitten hanging from a branch. 

For such a small office they have an abnormally large vent positioned above the filing cabinet on the far wall. I move the desk chair next to the cabinet, climbing up I start pulling on the grate until it gives slightly. This is the one vent that I've seen on this ship that isn't bolted down. Thank god. I pull it off its home as quietly as possible and place it on the desk next to me. I shove my backpack as far as I can reach into the vent and climb in myself. I get about ten feet into the vent when I hear glass shatter behind me.

Shit. That has to be the glass from the front of pharmacy...

I crawl faster down the vent still pushing my bag full of meds ahead of me. I can faintly hear the freaks rummaging through the pharmacy, knocking over bottles and shelves as they move through the store. I turn the corner of the vent and I start to wish I had put the grate back up where it belongs instead of giving anyone who breaks into the office a clear neon sign as to where I'm going. I can't go back though, I just need to get as far away from those psychos as possible.

Five minutes pass and I know I'm going farther into the ship the more I crawl. I'm just trying to put as much distance between the pharmacy and me as possible. I see a grated vent light up the area ahead of me and I start to slow down a bit, trying to be as silent as humanly possible in this small metal tube. There isn't any noise as I approach the vent and when I peer through the slits I confirm that the tiny office on the other side is in fact empty. It's about the same size as the pharmacist's office but this one is more cluttered and ecliptic. Papers are piled on the desk directly under the vent, there are serving trays strewn about on the floor, and dozens of white coats hung up on the opposite wall. I push on the vent and it budges slightly. After a few more shoves I'm able to loosen it and gently put it on the desk below.

I toss my bag on the floor and it makes a small thump, not loud enough to draw any attention towards this room, and I follow my bag to the ground trying to stay quiet. This room doesn't have any cute animal posters covering the empty parts of the wall, instead there are codes and regulations for what looks like a restaurant.

I need to get as far away as possible from this side of the ship. I can't survive this alone. I think as I walk towards the door. 

Waves of fear wash over my body as I turn the doorknob and open the office door. It's dark, darker than it was in the vent that I had just crawled through. I instinctively reach along the wall next to me looking for a light switch, completely forgetting that the power is out all throughout the ship. My other hand is gripping onto the doorknob for dear life. The lights flicker on revealing a massive kitchen and I yelp, jumping backwards into the office and closing the door.

"What the heck." I whisper to myself, hearing my own voice calls me down just a tiny bit. "The ship should completely be out of power since those psychos wrecked the engines." I stand there, still holding the doorknob as if it was the only thing keeping me up in this current moment; my lifeline to reality. "Unless...there has to be generator or multiple generators keeping the kitchens alive so the food wouldn't spoil. It wouldn't be great for the cruise company if a bunch of their guests got food poisoning from a power outage. Or from killers aboard their ship, but it's the same thing right? Lawsuits either way." I chuckle at my own sarcasm. I swing the door open and walk into kitchen. The floors and counter tops are immaculate, surfaces shining from fresh cleaning just hours before. All the pots and pans are in their place hanging from a hooked chandelier above each work station. Knifes stuck to metal magnetic stripes bordering the walls of the food prep inlets. I make a beeline for the nearest collection of weapons and snatch up a chef's knife off the wall. I may be almost naked with just some thin undergarments covering me and have a bag full of meds I stole, but gosh dangit I've got my little knife and I'll use it on the next crazy that touches me.