Muster Drill
a novella
Brian J. Jarrett
Copyright © 2012 Brian J. Jarrett
Elegy Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved by the author. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted by any means without the written consent of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, people, locales, or events are purely a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person (either living or dead), to any event, or to any locale is coincidental or used fictitiously. Certain liberties may have been taken with cruiseliners being equipped with freefall lifeboats, though said lifeboats do exist.
2012.MD.1.1
* * *
I awoke in a strange bed, the stiff, fitted sheets pulled from the corners of the thin mattress and bunched into my sweaty palms like deflated beach balls. I slowly opened my eyes, the bright light of the room piercing right through them and into my brain like an ice pick. My mouth felt as if it were stuffed with cotton, my teeth covered in fur. I raised my head from the under-stuffed pillow, feeling an even sharper sting behind the eyes as my head leveled.
In a rush it all came back to me; the cruise, the partying and, most of all, the drinking. Definitely, the drinking. I sat up too quickly in the bed and felt my stomach perform a few hair-raising somersaults before finally coming to an uneasy rest. Not good. For a moment or two I was sure I was going to puke, but as I closed my eyes and controlled my breathing the feeling eventually passed. It was replaced by a mild queasiness, exacerbated by the slight rocking of the large cruise ship in open waters. Compared to the nausea, I’d take mildly queasy any day.
Cursing my stupid hangover, I kicked myself for being such an idiot. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to get this drunk ever again, especially after Mexico. I’d damn near killed myself there nearly six months ago with enough tequila to put down a horse.
So much for promises.
I stood up slowly and walked to the sink in our cabin’s tiny bathroom. I ran some tepid water into a sanitized glass and forced it down, fighting the diminishing nausea. Though not cold, the water tasted surprisingly good.
After giving my head a minute or so to stop spinning, I left the bathroom and found my backpack lying under a pile of wet towels. Briefly I wondered how the towels had gotten there (and how they’d gotten soaked), but ultimately I decided it was a question for another day. I searched through the contents of my backpack until I found some aspirin. I popped three of the little pills, chasing them with more of the water from the bathroom sink.
As I stood there sweating I wondered if Ricky and Carl felt as badly as I did. They’d drank just as much or more than I had, after all. For maybe the dozenth time I wondered if this weekend “booze cruise” (as Carl had dubbed it) had been such a good idea in the first place. Carl had been the instigator behind it, as was the case with most of our party excursions. Mexico had been his idea too, along with all that goddamn tequila.
Aching and exhausted, I sat back down on the bed for a few minutes to rest. After another fifteen minutes or so the nausea disappeared for good and the aspirin finally began chipping away at my boulder-sized headache. It wasn’t long until I discovered I was hungry. I was amazed at how quickly my nausea had turned to hunger. While the hunger pangs hurt, anything was better than the nausea.
I decided to forgo the shower, at least for the time being. I really needed to eat first. I stood up again and waited for the residual dizziness to pass before reaching up toward the bunk above mine and giving my best friend Ricky a mighty shove. He didn’t respond. It took a few more attempts, but after some more not-so-gentle shaking Ricky finally pulled the covers down from over his head and glared at me.
“Dude, do you know what time it is?” he asked. His eyes were red and bloodshot, his hair misshapen into a massive bedhead cowlick. He looked at me with a mixture of anger and agony. I almost felt sorry for him, but I was too hungry to care about his hangover.
“No, I don’t know what time it is,” I replied. “I’m hungry.”
“Well, go eat then. Leave me alone.”
“I don’t want to eat alone,” I said. “Weirdos eat alone.”
Ricky rolled his eyes. “Is Carl up yet? Go ask him.” He pulled the covers back over his head.
I shrugged. “Not sure. I haven’t tried his cabin yet.”
“He’s probably already up and on the treadmill. That guy is like a machine. I’ll bet he doesn’t even have a headache.”
I nodded. Ricky was right; Carl was like a machine. It was hard not to notice it. Not only did he have a never-ending flow of cash at his disposal he also seemed to attract all the viable women in a room. Maybe the former begat the latter, who knew? All I knew was that going to a bar with him was suicide for my love life. If I was lucky I’d get to pick up his scraps, and I just didn’t want it badly enough to stoop to that.
I yanked the covers back off of Ricky’s head. “Hurry up and get dressed,” I insisted. “I’m starving.”
* * *
Having little means and little cash between us, Ricky and I had chosen to share a room on the cruise ship. Not surprisingly, Carl had opted for his own room, paying the extra cash. No one could accuse Carl of not enjoying his money, that was for sure. Sometimes Ricky and I wondered if he sold illegal weapons, or if he maybe belonged to a family of drug dealers. He could have been a trust fund baby for all we knew, drawing a regular stipend from a pile of money he hadn’t earned. Regardless of how he came by his money, he had a hankering for the finer things in life and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a wee bit envious.
As it turned out, Carl was not up and on the treadmill. Instead he was just as asleep as Ricky had been. The only difference was that Carl wasn’t alone. It figured. Since Carl had company Ricky and I waited outside the small cabin in the narrow hallway until he and his new “friend” made themselves decent. Once inside the cabin and after some awkward introductions had been made, we learned Carl’s new friend was named Molly. It didn’t help that she was also gorgeous. I felt that bitter pang of envy once again before forcefully shrugging it off. Some guys have all the luck; it’s just the way the cards are dealt.
Once the conversation got going the initial uneasiness subsided. As it turned out, Molly, like the three of us, had decided on a weekend cruise with her friends. It was obvious that at some point in the night, however, Carl had convinced her that his cabin had more to offer than her own. He must have made a compelling argument. He always did.
Still stifling my growing envy, I invited Molly to breakfast with the three of us. I didn’t want her to feel awkward and I figured it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to spend another hour admiring her from across a table. To both my relief and disappointment she politely refused, opting instead to find her girlfriends and have breakfast with them. Envy wasn’t something I wanted to pile on top of my nasty hangover, so I figured it was for the better.
* * *
Our rooms were effectively “cheap seats”, for lack of a better term. They were located near the bottom of the ship, just above the crew’s quarters. They weren’t the greatest rooms on the ship by any stretch of the imagination, but at least we weren’t below the waterline like the crew was. Something about that just freaked me out and made me feel claustrophobic, like being on a submarine or something.
Unfortunately the restaurants were all located near the upper floors, so this meant that to eat we had to ascend at least eight decks, a feat that in my present state meant using the elevator. Taking the steps to the upper floors would have no doubt caused my head to simply explode, but by this point I almost would have welcomed that.
“We need to get moving,” I said to the group. I turned toward Molly, noticing again that her beauty was truly stunning. Fucking Carl. “I hate to rush off after just meeting you,” I went on, “but if I don’t get some breakfast soon my stomach is going to eat itself.”
Molly giggled at the remark and I swear I felt butterflies in my grumbling stomach. “I understand,” she said, smiling. “No offense taken.”
With four people in Carl’s cabin things were feeling cramped, or at least I thought so. Either way, I wanted out of that room. I turned around and placed my hand on the doorknob, twisting it until I felt it click open. Just as I did, I heard a scream, the sound slightly muffled through the cabin door. I stopped and turned to the others, no doubt with a perplexed look upon my face. They must have been thinking the same thing, because to me they looked as I felt.
“What the hell was that?” Ricky asked.
I shook my head. “Dunno. Maybe somebody just got their bill,” I said, managing to get an extra joke in. This time Molly didn’t laugh. Neither did I.
Carl huffed. “Funny,” he said as he placed a hand on Molly’s slender arm, directing her toward the door. Again I felt that pang of envy. “C’mon,” he said as he opened the cabin door. Both Molly and he stepped past me, out and into the hallway. Once Carl and Molly were out of the room I looked at Ricky and rolled my eyes. He smiled in return.
Ricky and I filed out of the small cabin behind Carl and Molly. I don’t know if I’d ever before been so glad to get out of a room, not since I’d seen Independence Day in the theater. I swear the cabin was so small that the temperature had risen just from our combined body heat. Our excessive drinking last night also was causing the room to take on the distinct odor of alcohol and sweat and that aroma wasn’t helping my stomach maintain its composure.
A short trek down the hallway brought us all to the elevators. We made a left, exiting the long run of the hallway, quickly arriving at the elevators. Ricky pushed the button for the eighth floor and we stood there waiting in more awkward silence. I watched as Carl leaned in toward Molly’s ear, whispering something about meeting up later. She nodded, but her eyes stayed focused on the wall. It occurred to me that all this was probably a very public “walk of shame” for her, so I ignored the rest of the conversation. She didn’t need me making things worse by eavesdropping. Instead I focused on the burning hunger deep within my stomach, hoping to feed it very soon.
More silence passed as we waited for the elevator to reach us. Sixth floor, fifth floor, fourth floor, third floor…red lights above the elevator door lit as the overgrown box on a string came trundling down to take us up to scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes and sausage. My mouth watered at the thought.
I counted down the floors in my head as the numbers flashed above the elevator doors; three, two, one…it seemed to be taking an eternity. Out of the corner of my eye I watched as Carl attempted to give Molly a hug. She appeared less than enthused and I was happier about that than I probably should have been.
After a few more seconds the elevator car finally made it to our floor. A soft ding resonated from a bell hidden somewhere inside the walls as the elevator touched down to our level. The doors remained closed while the elevator’s pulley system slowly lowered the car, bringing it flush with the floor on which we stood.
Finally the doors began to open. As they did I caught a glimpse of a man standing in the corner of the elevator, dressed in a cruise line staff uniform. As the elevator doors opened fully and the light from the hallway seeped into the dimly lit interior, I noticed the man’s white uniform was speckled with something dark and red. At first I thought my tired eyes were playing tricks on me, but when I saw the man snarl, revealing blood-soaked teeth set within a gore-rimmed mouth I knew exactly what those stains were, even if I didn’t want to believe it.
When the man in the elevator caught sight of our group he darted from the corner, charging directly toward us. I’m not sure if the others didn’t notice the man’s appearance, or if they were just frozen with shock and fear. Regardless, I was the one who acted first, swooping in and grasping the man by the throat. Surprising even myself, I pushed the blood-stained man back into the elevator from which he’d come. It wasn’t a calculated move, only instinct. As such, I had no idea what I was going to do after I got him back in the elevator and he inevitably struggled free of my tenuous grasp.
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