Her first day of captivity blended the mundane with pangs of desolation. Tommi had access to most of the trawler’s open spaces, but always followed by an armed guard, a new one from the ship’s company, with a menacing sneer offset by a smoker’s cough from the Turkish cigarettes he smoked incessantly. She dubbed him Boris and never gave him a second glance of consideration or emotion. At night, Boris locked her in her own cabin, postage stamp small with a metal bunk and a mattress befouled with sweat odors and stains she did not wish to guess at. The toilet facilities were down the hall, but with the door locked they gave her a honey bucket; she was in charge of disposing of the contents in the morning.
The ship, Danish flagged but christened the Altair Beria, had no Danes aboard, though Tommi saw a few fake passports lying in what she perceived was a purser cabin. The main mast nest sprouted communication radar and radio antennae that would not pass any close inspection by a U.S. vessel. The Altair Beria had been on her way to Bikini Atoll to monitor the next atomic bomb explosion [fortunately, they would later learn that Operation Crossroads radioactivity was so severe, future testing was postponed until 1954]. When Baran radioed the ship from the Island Clipper to say he had film to place into the hands of Russian Intelligence as soon as possible, the ship made the mid-ocean rendezvous. In quest of the super-soldier serum they would make a quick stopover at the port in Hilo Town, near the base of Mauna Kea, before sailing on to the western Soviet
Union port of Vladivostok.
Where along this route Tommi’s life would be most at risk she could only guess, and secretly, she was afraid. Her life never had brought any heroes to come to her rescue, and though her thoughts dwelt from time to time on Hunter, she did not see him in the role of the cavalry charging to the rescue of the damsel-in-distress.
On board, she, Pele and Baran were the only other English speakers, though the Captain had a good handle on pidgin English and British sailor slang phrases. And in the Captain’s questioning of Tommi on the second night, as she ate a cold dinner of meat soup in her cabin, she came to discover that the Russians who had accompanied the Clipper in its rendezvous with the Baker blast were quite ill, and the ship’s doctor had no clue what might be the cause, or if it were contagious. She could provide no answers, wondering to herself if this might be the same ‘atomic sickness’ that those in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by only one bomb each, were now experiencing.
At 1 am, she was awakened by the first rifle shot, followed by several others. Along the corridor outside her cabin, she heard footsteps, a scream, then shuffling footsteps, and her door was unlocked and opened. She backed to the corner of her room where no escape existed; before at the door stood, weaving with menace, a living horror.
One of the Russian sailors looked at her with anguished hatred. In one hand, he held an half empty bottle of Vodka which he spilled into his mouth and poured over his ravaged face, crying out like a wounded, dying animal. He had no nose; his mouth visible through a hole in this cheek, most of his hair had fallen out; large scabs covered his head and hands. He was holding a metal wrench, wildly swinging and waving it at her.
“Sooka! Bliad!” Without a dictionary, she translated the shout as a curse, maybe “Die, Bitch Whore!” Tommi started flinging anything she could find at him and jumped on top of her bed, which immediately, collapsed tumbling her to the floor right towards him and his raised swing.
Kū rushed in behind the crazed, tormented ghoul.
“Thank God!” Tommi cried, trying to scramble out of the way.
Kū grabbed the dying man’s head and ripped it off his shoulders.
Tommi screamed at the geyser of blood spurting, and darted past both the corpse and the victor admiring his trophy. Into the hallway she ran and down the corridor. She had to leap over the collapsed body of a Russian crew member who, by his startled dead look, had earlier met up with a skull-caving weapon, probably the steel wrench.
Around another corner she screeched to a halt, as another crew member, another ghoul with a fi re ax, charged at her, until his head exploded. Behind that falling body stood the ship captain with an odd looking gas-operated carbine, its muzzle leaking expended smoke. Tommi couldn’t care less that this was a prototype rifle (codenamed AK-1) designed by an inventor named Kalashnikov, out for field tests; relief swept over her when she saw affixed to the weapon a large magazine clip for man or ghoul stopping power. When the Captain motioned her to follow she clung close behind.
The survivors, and it seemed there were a lot of them, congregated in the bridge. She saw men she hadn’t seen before, young ones; not the rough sea-worn crew sorts, but intelligent looking, definitely the handlers of the communication array equipment, they were radio spies and scared to death, unaccustomed to the insane, destructive world she had just come from.
Baran entered holding his Luger pistol, Pele behind him, and an armed guard behind her.
“I think we got them all.” He spoke in English to calm
Tommi, who was clutching herself and shaking, not sure if she was more afraid of radiated monsters or of Kū the Ripper who could easily end life with his bare hands.
Baran spoke to the captain in Russian, the latter responding in anger.
Back to Tommi he said, “He lost six crew members, not counting the five sick ones from Bikini who we have finally tracked down and dispatched. Seems they broke out of the infirmary and into the ship’s liquor cabinet, hoping the alcohol would save them, or at least deaden their pain. They feel no pain now.”
“Why aren’t you sick like them?”
“I heard over the radio what Hopewell wanted us to do and took shelter; they did not. I made it to the bunker in time, they did not. Also, I followed Hunter’s orders to you and the boy, and washed myself on the plane several times. Those crew members are not used to washing.” He gave off a smirk, smug at his cleverness. She only saw the evil he manifested in outwitting the less swift.
The ship’s doctor spoke to the Captain and Baran, and again,
Baran translated.
“The good doctor wants to collect the dead bodies of the sick and do autopsies on them to understand what drove them mad, what disfigured them so horribly.”
“If you really cared for your shipmates, you might tell them to wear gloves, and face masks if you have them. And use any equipment these scientists have on board to measure this thing called radiation.”
“You’re right, Miss Chen. Not only for safety -- our entire trip, even up to the top of the mountain, will be for science. By the way, where is our native warrior?”
Said Pele, “If I know Kū of old, he is probably eating the hearts of those he slayed.”
“Eeww.” Tommi felt her stomach churn. “Tell your captain buddy that I am bunking in with my girlfriend here, and I will even sleep on the floor, if you find a mattress without blood on it, and a clean blanket.”
“I am not your girlfriend,” said Pele, though she did squeeze her face into a scrunch and stick out her tongue. Tommi rolled her eyes in exasperation.