CONVICTED
Chapter Eight
I felt the blood drain from my
face and I staggered back a bit. Jack supported me.
"Please, go get your
lifebelts on and get to a boat as quickly as possible," the man said, and
with that, he was gone.
"Jack…Jack, it’s happening
again!" I nearly cried.
"Come on. We need to get to
the boats," he said, trying to remain calm.
Just before we were about the
climb the staircase up to the deck, the people came rushing back in a huge mob.
They fought tooth and nail to get up the steps, so Jack and I went back and
tried a different hallway.
He paused for a second when we
reached an area with three separate corridors. He ran a hand through his sandy
hair.
"Oh, great," he
muttered.
Suddenly, a steward appeared on
the other side of one of the hallways. He had a gun drawn, and his face was
grim.
"Hey, why don’t you put that
gun away?" Jack asked calmly, trying to get me to go behind him, but I
refused.
"Mr. Hockley anticipated
that you might escape, so I was supposed to give you this from him," the
steward replied.
The water was already ankle high
on the floor and the man was advancing on us. Thinking quickly, I slipped
forward and collided with the man before he had a chance to react. His head
fell against one of the doors and he was out like a light.
Jack appeared seconds later.
"Great idea," he said
sarcastically.
"Well, it worked, didn’t it?
Besides, I didn’t see you offering up any brilliant ideas!" I snapped.
He helped me up and we chose a
random hallway, twists and turns which only led us to another flight of stairs
going down. Water was already rising up the stairs and coming closer.
"Wrong hallway," Jack
said, and we ran back to the main area.
We tried another one that led us
to a gate, which was locked.
"Damn it!" I cursed.
Jack kicked the gate, trying to
unlock it, and slipped on the floor. I couldn’t help but laugh.
"You got anymore
ideas?" he grumbled, taking my hand.
"Just one," I
responded, and slammed my shoulder into the gate.
Pain shot up my arm and I cursed
some more.
"Not a good idea."
We tried the last hallway, which
was blocked by a wall. Jack and I kicked the wall until the wood snapped apart
and we were in the main stairwell. We took off to the upper decks, but
regretfully, most of the boats were gone.
"Oh, bloody fantastic,"
I said.
"Women and children
only!" a man was calling.
No one was really listening to
him, and men were jumping into the boats or jumping off the ship and into the
freezing depths of the North Atlantic.
"If we live through this, I
am never getting on a ship again," I said.
"Women and children
only!" the man said more fiercely, and fired off three bullets.
Jack stared at me, wondering if
it was really worth it. I read the expression on his face right away.
"Don’t. Don’t even try it.
Don’t even suggest it."
He didn’t.
"Jack, what are we going to
do? This is just like what happened on the Titanic," I muttered in a
panicky voice.
"Listen to me; we are going
to get out of this alive. Both of us," Jack replied, trying to calm me
down or himself, I wasn’t sure.
There was another boat calling
for women and children, and suddenly Jack pushed me so I flopped into the boat.
"Jack! No!" I objected,
getting ready to climb out.
A woman in the boat held me back
and Jack kissed my hands.
"You have to," he
replied.
The boat was slowly lowering and
I did what I had done on the Titanic. I jumped from the boat onto the ship.
Jack met me in the stairwell,
tears in his eyes.
"How many times are you
going to do that?" he asked.
"Until you realize that I’m
not going anywhere without you," I replied.
He smiled and went to one of the
vases on a table, pulled out a daisy, and stuck it between my ear and hair.
"Come on," he said, and
tugged on my arm.
I followed him back up the steps
and we reached the hallway. Then, suddenly, the lights went out. It was
suddenly very quiet in the hallway, and all I could hear was the running water
pouring in.
"Let me go first. Wait here
for my signal," Jack said, and went down the hallway.
I waited for a moment, only a
moment, and then started down the hallway.
Suddenly, I heard angry shouts,
grumbling, and then a loud clang, followed by a splash. I splashed through the
water as quickly as possible, and when I turned, Jack was slumped against the
wall, blood on his hands.
I stared at the bloody water down
below and turned away. The sight of the blood and the dead body floating in the
water made me puke. When I was finished with that delight, I turned to Jack.
"The son of a bitch tried to
club me with a vase after I turned into the hallway. Then he tried to strangle
me, so I busted his nose, and…"
Before Jack could finish, I
retched again, and he got the idea I didn’t want to hear the rest.
"Can we please go now,
before I lose anymore body fluids I’m not supposed to know exist?" I
asked, clutching my stomach.
Jack nodded and helped me through
the hallways. We were in the dining hall when it started to happen. The ship
started tipping, but on the right side. It wasn’t going up like the Titanic;
instead, it was sinking on its side.
"Wait here!" Jack
ordered, making his way towards the porthole.
He picked up a chair off the
floor and shoved it through the porthole. The glass shattered and the ship
tilted some more.
"Suck in your stomach and
try to squeeze through this porthole!" he ordered.
"Are you implying that I’m
fat?" I demanded, trying to add a little humor into our death sentence.
"No, I’m implying that this
porthole is too small for even you to squeeze through. Now, come on."
Jack climbed through the porthole
first, and as I made my way over, the ship went even further on its side and a
counter fell over, right on top of my leg.