He didn’t meet any other crewmembers. He found his way to a hatch leading back inside the ship’s hull that he was pretty sure was close to the small room that the crew had stuffed the seven of them in. Readying the rifle with his offhand he opened the hatch and ducked back inside the ship.
He vaguely recognized where he was. He had calculated accurately and he was close, only two levels higher than the room they were all staying in. He cautiously peered around a corner and slid down the nearest ladder well. It was awkward with the rifle in his hands but speed was important and he managed.
He landed in a crouch and looked around his surroundings. He wasn’t a soldier but he had been trained by Efraim Goldstein, a veteran and fighter of multiple battles and wars. He hadn’t ever guessed at how many people Efraim had sent to an early grave. Now, the training that the man had passed on to him might just save his life. These weren’t arrogant vampires, trusting on their strength and regeneration to save them; these were cautious, treacherous, fearful people, who may be all too aware of their mortality. Charles would be happy to give them a lesson in just how fragile life is, if it came down to it.
He opened a hatch and ducked down as a hail of gunfire spattered at him from down the hallway, from the three thugs who had been covering the door.
Charles leaned back and closed the hatch, locking it swiftly from his side. He turned around and ran back the way he had come, this time sliding down ladder wells, taking him down deeper into the bowels of the ship, instead of going higher.
He stopped in a dark room off the side of one of the main through ways, three decks down from where he had just been shot at. He hoped that the crew would assume he was afraid of the claustrophobic feel of the ship and try to get back topside. It was a risk and a gamble, but one that he felt as sure as one could feel about a fifty/fifty split bet.
He needed time to think. He stalked the small room. There was very little here. It felt like a broom closet with nothing more than some cleaning supplies and a broom.
He rushed over to the shelf and pulled out some of the cleaning supplies, bleach, some stuff that kinda smelled like Simple Green, some brillo pads, and some scouring powder, all the labels were in Chinese and he didn’t recognize the logos on any of them. He wished there had been more. Wasn’t there always a convenient amount of cleaner and chemicals for the hero to make a bomb or something out of in all the movies? Nicolas must have told him a hundred times about how this guy or that guy had blown up somebody with a specific combination of chemicals in some film or other.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Well, he wasn’t a chemist, and he didn’t know how to make bombs. However, he knew bleach would burn, sting, and cause temporary blindness if eye contact was made, at least that’s what all the warning labels had said.
He grabbed the bottle of bleach and took another look around the small room. He had pretty much cleaned the place of anything that would be useful to him. He smiled at his own joke. Clean the place? Really? You’ve been hanging around William too much. He nodded, still smiling at the ridiculousness of the whole situation, and the fact that he could joke about it. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that he was in one of those action movies Nicolas kept talking about.
Charles leaned out the hatch and checked the passageway, it was clear and he moved off to his left. The first thing he had to do was secure the engine room. If he could control the power of the ship then he could isolate where the ship’s crew would be. As long as he was ready and had an exit, he could make a stand in the Engine control room and move off from there, hopefully having taken out at least a few of them.
He hadn’t been down this deep in the ship before, so he was going mostly by feel. He came across a map and breathed a sigh of relief. The map was crude and it was for a fire escape and what hatches to close in sequence. That gave him a place to start from. Of course he couldn’t be exactly sure, he didn’t read Chinese, but the diagram gave him a rough idea.
He was three decks below the engine control room. He would have to go all the way aft of the ship on this level, that would reduce the risk of angry crew members coming up on either side of him and boxing him in. There was only a single ladder well in the aft of the ship on this starboard side. It wasn’t anything like a safe passage, but it was the safest he could see. Holding the AK in his right hand, with the bottle of bleach in the other, he began trotting toward the aft end of the ship.
It was hot down this deep in the bowels of the ship. Much hotter than he remembered it being only three decks up, where the closet that they had been living out of for the last two weeks was located. He couldn’t help but look up, letting his imagination look through the deck plates toward that closet. If Katherine and Nicolas had been drugged, he could only assume that William and Aceso had been similarly drugged, or possibly gassed, or just bum rushed by over whelming forces that would have over powered William. The thought of that turned his stomach. He should have been there; he should have done something. He shook his head. He was doing something; he was free and he intended to stay that way so he could free his pack.
He reached the end of the passage way and climbed the ladder well to the next deck up. He slowly peeked over the lip of the well opening and saw that it was clear. He quickly jumped up the last few steps and slid soundlessly around into a small alcove which gave him cover from the passageway.
He listened for any sounds, of which there was none. He calmed his body and inhaled deeply. His Tracker training had attuned his sense of smell to detect smells in minute detail. His nose and brain simultaneous processing and shifting the smells of the ship, oil and fuel, dust and days old sweat. He opened his eyes. The way was clear.
