There was a familiar surge.  Travis thought he could see the mass pushing a little bit more of itself into the vessel, just as he was able to move forward about three feet. He willed himself to keep watching and moving as he struggled to breathe. There was little choice, there was no room to bend or spread his arms in the crowd.

He turned his head, and saw the next set of davits letting out cable and the boat dropping, one side swinging low then the other violently dropping, past the hundreds who still pounded with their fists on the closed shell. Then Travis saw the davit operator jump the three flights down. So that’s how they got on the lifeboats, he thought.

Another surge, Travis moved one step closer. The ship was rocking now with the waves and the crowd was so tight that they held each other up as they slid across the deck. Travis was dizzy now, and his vision seemed strange. He looked up and saw the spotlight, solid and blurry at the same time in its passage through a million moving drops of rain.

28

The power went out in the Theater.  Lee sent a few of his men to check the ship, to find out if there was power elsewhere, but Rick returned before they did.

“They’re going for the lifeboats,” Rick said. “I could hear them all in the Atrium. They were raiding food and everyone’s panicking and trying to follow them before it’s too late. It’s chaos, and it’s black everywhere.”

Lee ran out of the Royal Theater with the rifle and a flashlight.

They couldn’t do this, he thought, bounding up the stairs. But there was no law to stop them. Hesse had said as much. Hesse and the Colonel’s control was a joke, but he had the gun. So he’d be the enforcer. Golding’s Law.

The lifeboats and life rafts were at the Atrium level. From the Italian restaurant, Lee had to climb four flights of stairs, run down the dark Penthouse Deck corridor, and down four more flights. The adrenaline surge was in him, and he hardly slowed. At the Atrium level, he forced open a door and went into the rain, walking solidly in the wind. He was familiar with weapons, and he worried that the gun would jam in the rain. This had automatic and semi-automatic options, which was good. He didn’t quite know what he’d do. If they were leaving, they damn sure couldn’t have the food. On the other hand, the more that left without extra food, the more food would be left for those remaining. How could that work?

Still, he had the gun, which was good. There were so many of them, and it was so hard to see in the dark, through the rain. He’d have to make liberal use of bullets to frighten them away from the boats, but how would he get the food? Their screaming came to him over the echoing rain from down the walkway.

He reached the first lifeboat with his heart beating in his throat. His only animal thought was that they were taking his food. He began firing above their heads in single shots, trying to get their attention. The crowd around the first boat turned.

“Give me the food!” the Mighty Lee Golding shouted holding his gun above his head so they could all see.

Only the first few at the edge of the crowd could hear him, the rest just stared, waiting.

This was the mob. The same that screamed and lost themselves in their screams at the arena. They were one monster with a thousand heads. He fired above their heads again and waded into the crowd, as some fought to get away and others fought to get into the boat. The sea of bodies parted around as he marched quickly towards the boat, firing a few more shots in the air. He got to the door, throwing a smaller man off the steps. The lifeboat was already beyond capacity.

“Give me all the food,” he screamed in the closed hull. He fired through the roof.

Nobody moved. Something made the lifeboat buck, and Lee fell hard against the wall. A man jumped at him. Lee caught his jaw with his big elbow, then smashed the stunned man’s face with the butt of the rifle. Screw it, he thought. There was a console- he shot it. He stepped back out of the lifeboat and shot up the davit control boxes and soft spots. There were the loud pings of ricochets, and Lee knew he couldn’t let fear of that stop him.

When he got to the next boat, more of them just scattered, which made it easier. But he couldn’t see any other way – he couldn’t stop them from taking the food unless he stopped them from going. He should have organized first, he shouldn’t have gone alone. He shot out mechanisms and controls for the next boat, and repeated that, so that hundreds had scattered before him. There were too many boats. Some of them had to be in the water by now. He switched the rifle to fully automatic. It made everything faster. The sounds of the ricochets came over the gunfire, but Lee didn’t see anyone get hit. The rain picked up suddenly and he was drenched as if in a waterfall. He looked up at the heavens and saw the spotlight, the only light on the ship. He felt a kind of ascendance, as if he were rising above this crowd he fought.

The living mass around Travis’s group propelled them in jerks. The sound of gunfire pierced the storm, and the living mass held its breath and stopped convulsing. The sound was unmistakable, through the rain and wind. It came again, single shots. Then a burst, coming closer, and they heard screams, and reverberations of the fire against the ship.

“Daddy?” Darren said. “Are they back?”

Lee Golding, Travis thought.

“No,” he said.

Was he trying to get on a lifeboat? Or was he trying to stop them, as he and Hesse had tried to stop them in the galley? With that he realized he was now with the same group he had been fighting less than half an hour earlier; he recognized several faces that had appeared in the flashing of lights around the galley. The madness of it. He was struggling, competing and cooperating with the ones he’d thought monsters minutes ago, while another man with a gun threatened them all.

There was a loud sound like a machine breaking down as the mass again surged forward, and they all waited for the next sign of the gun. Why hadn’t he brought his gun? Travis thought.  He’d been to Vera’s room and never thought of it. He would kill Lee Golding if he came near his family. But he had no gun. There was thunder that blocked everything out, and then the noises of gunfire and metal percussions were all around them, like the gunfire was part of the swirling tempest itself.

The gunfire was not heard in the piano lounge far above. The lounge had returned to its calm equilibrium. Those who were staying were staying. Only the sounds of the storm now.

Professor Claude Bettman stood and walked to the piano. It was dark, no one noticed. He began to play a nocturne of Chopin. It was not loud; the rattling of the glass all around them was loud. Only those in a few of the spots closest to the piano could hear.

A woman yelled for Claude to be quiet. A man, holding a child, shouted back to play.

It was not a technically difficult piece, but one that, with the right touch, rang out with subtle flavors. Professor Claude played fluidly, just louder, just softer. It was a sad piece, but, here and there, hope, in bright chords. Then gone, as if it had not been there at all.

It was a good piano, a Bosendorfer concert grand. He’d wanted to play it for days. Why not? He lost himself then in the music. It seemed to him the most beautifully he’d played in his life. God, he’d always wanted to play a Bosendorfer, why had he let this one sit here untouched?

Chopin on a Bosendorfer in the storm, as though each note were itself a drop of liquid gold.

When he finished, he could hear the applause from all the spots that could hear. He had a wet hand on his back and turned to see Travis, and just about in the darkness, Gerry, Corrina, and the child. Travis was breathing loud and slow.