Some were hoarding. Two of the culprits were a young couple, tourists staying in their own cabin. John Hesse walked right in on them. He found a fresh garbage bag and loaded the food into it while they watched.

“Half of this would be rotted in a day, you idiots,” Hesse said.

The young man shoved him. Hesse swatted his arms away and grabbed the hoarder by the throat. His face became bloated and purple.

“If you mess with me, I’ll drag you in front of that crowd and we’ll see what they think. Don’t get out of line again.”

Hesse still held the garbage bag with one hand, but he easily slammed the other man into the wall before dropping him to the floor. He stepped in front of the woman, shoved his face at her and growled, then left. The food could be repurposed in the galley.

John Hesse had always been the leader. It was never something he questioned, it was all he knew. His friends thought he lived a charmed life. He was always on top. That kind of proof in his instincts made him easy to trust, easy to follow. But Hesse knew better, he knew the difference between himself and others and why they thought that of him. He never complained.

He saw the world as people who complained and people who would rise to the challenge. When he’d once seen how complaining made him look weak, he’d given it up altogether. Hesse was a bit of a solipsist. His strength of character, indeed his ethics, came from the thought of what kind of person he’d want to be if this were all a game he were playing.

Much of the ship had taken on a putrid smell. In the first day of the power outage, nearly every toilet on board had overflown due to their electrical mechanisms. Human waste had soaked through floors and into carpets all over the ship, and Hesse had organized the excruciating task of cleaning and bleaching the affected areas, with no steam cleaners and before the running water was restored.

Travis took to walking on his own. There were enough hours in the day for it. On the fifth morning on the Festival, Travis made a discovery. The spa. It had its own complex on the Resort Deck, the first mostly enclosed deck, below the open Sky Deck.

In the spa were fitness rooms supplied with stations of various apparatus and machines, and racks of free weights and dumbbells. There were aerobic rooms of stationary bikes, treadmills, stairmasters and rowing machines. There was a hair salon, an acupuncture clinic, a honeycomb of massage rooms. There were men’s and women’s lockers.

At the centre was a beautiful, long indoor swimming pool in a modernized Roman style. It was orbited by four smaller hot tubs. The tubs, and to a lesser extent the pool, had just begun to show signs of algae growing, from lack of cleaning and circulation. At the head of the pool was a large white marble Poseidon, trident raised, looking more majestic than threatening.

Under the statue, a plaque:

 

I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great God, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, God of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae. A two-fold office the Gods allotted you, O Shaker of the Earth, to be a tamer of horses and a savior of ships!

Hail, Poseidon, Holder of the Earth, dark-haired lord! O blessed one, be kindly in heart and help those who voyage in ships!

“So you’re the old earth shaker what did all this,” Travis said to the God.

Travis stripped naked and dropped his clothes over Poseidon’s arm.

“Well, keep an eye out.”

He plunged into the deep end. It was a shallow deep end – a pictogram specifically banned diving on the side of the pool – so he dove shallow and long. No rules, he thought. The water was cool and beautiful. Afterwards, he found a towel in a closet he tore open. He wrapped it around his waist and lay down in a tan and red-trimmed linen lounge chair looking out long windows at the sea. Travis had a stocky frame, big arms, big chest. His belly too was big, a little bigger each year. He was losing weight now, he considered. On a cruise ship.

24

Travis was beginning to recognize many of the faces. Some days, he noticed a few missing, and sure enough, a corresponding lifeboat gone. He knew that meant fewer crew left on the Festival, as the lifeboats were difficult to deploy without familiarity. It also meant that someone who wasn’t going with them was helping them, because someone had to be left behind working the davits to lower the boats.

He wondered why anyone would do that. Were they ‘sacrificing’ themselves by staying behind? Or did they just think it was safer on the Festival but were happy to help? What was the context, or relationship there?

Travis saw the great grey-haired man a few times on the deck, always alone, watching the sea.

He tried to keep Darren away from the crowd, but couldn’t entirely. They’d go down for meals. The whole ship came together then, and they could see just how many they were sharing the ship with. Then many would disappear back to their cabins or whatever corner of the ship they had made their own.

Vera didn’t like to leave her room; they would bring her meals to her, generally. Once in a while, she’d forget things, usually her medication which Travis supervised. She never forgot that Norman was gone, though she several times mentioned Pavel.

Near the end of the first week, Travis sat with Darren on the Sky Deck. They listened to a man playing banjo on a chair nearby.

“Do you think he was a musician for the ship, or do you think he was rescued like us, and brought his banjo instead of a suitcase?” Travis said.

“Ummm, I think he’s like us,” Darren said. “He brought his banjo because he’s all alone and he wanted to play music if he got lonely.”

A basketball shoot-around started at the court in front of them. Travis watched them pass the ball around, shoot and put in lay-ups.

The Mighty Lee Golding was one of the players. He didn’t have the gun. He had the ball.

“Can you take one more?” Travis asked.

“Sure,” the big man said. “I’m Lee Golding.”

Travis introduced himself.

“I recognized you. I saw you at Madison Square Garden against the Samoans, maybe twenty years ago. It was great. You tossed Trog through the announcers table.”

“You’re with us,” the Mighty Lee Golding said, and they began a game of three-on-three.

The third man on their side was a pylon, but Travis and Lee could play. Lee mixed fearsome intensity with a suddenly relaxed, amiable laughing humor. He could not be stopped inside. He couldn’t dunk, but he could almost drop the ball in off the backboard. Travis was shorter than all three of their opponents, but he had a fadeaway jumper that was hot, and he milked it. He used the pylon on their side for pick and rolls, and almost laughed at his teammate each time he was knocked to the deck.

Travis was happy. All the bad went away for a moment, and his only connection outside the game was awareness of his son watching him, and looking pleased.

“Go, Daddy, go!” Darren yelled.

Afterwards, he high-fived Lee, and the big man grabbed his hand, and pulled him into his sweaty bulk. Travis was helpless in Lee’s arms as he shook him. The bigger man laughed and with a butt-slap sent Travis to high-five the pylon and their opponents. His son had the biggest high-fives for him.

“Yay Daddy!”

Travis had deferred thought on the sweat problem while he played, but afterwards he could not ignore it. Nor was there anything he could do. He’d have to let the sweat dry and keep on wearing the stinking clothes. And he’d probably keep doing it as long as there was a game on.

The day after the basketball game made it a week on board. Sunday to Sunday. No one had come. There was an awful presence in the Atrium. No one on board had expected to be here more than a few days, even after the attack. For them to still be uncontacted after a week was inexplicable. It brought a very real change to the psyches of all: there was no longer the expectation to be saved soon. They had to live on this ship indefinitely. It was felt acutely as a third disaster. Flood, Attack, and Abandonment. Each of the three a different flavor, they came so fast on each other that it seemed the laws of nature had turned upside down.