Shock Wave (Dirk Pitt 13)

Someone had eaten here. Pitt stared at the dishes that still had scraps of food on them. There was a nearly empty bowl of what looked like clam chowder, broken rolls smeared with butter and a half-consumed glass of ice tea. It was as though someone had just finished lunch and left for a stroll around the deck. Had they opened the dining salon early for someone? he wondered. He rejected any thought that suggested a passenger had eaten here after the death plague struck.

Pitt tried to write off the intriguing discovery with a dozen different logical solutions. But subconsciously, a fear began to grow. Unthinkingly, he began to look over his shoulder every so often.

He left the dining salon and moved past the gift shop and worked forward into the ship's lounge. A Steinway grand piano was situated beside a small wooden dance floor. Chairs and tables were spaced around the lounge in a horseshoe arrangement. Besides the cocktail waitress who had fallen while carrying a tray of drinks, there was a party of eight men and women, mostly in their early seventies, who had been seated around a large table but now lay in grotesque positions on the carpet. As he studied the husbands and wives, some locked in a final embrace, Pitt experienced sadness and anguish at the same time. Overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness, he cursed the unknown cause of such a terrible tragedy.

Then he noticed another corpse. It was a woman, sitting on the carpet in one corner of the lounge. Her chin was on her knees, head cradled in her arms. Dressed in a fashionable short-sleeved leather jacket and wool slacks, she was not in a contorted position, nor did she appear to have vomited like all the others.

Pitt's nerves reacted by sending a cold shiver up his spine. His heart sprinted from a slow steady beat to a rapid pace. Gathering control over his initial shock, he moved slowly across the room until he stood looking down on her.

He reached out and touched her cheek with a light exploring fingertip, experiencing an incredible wave of relief as he felt warmth. He gently shook her by the shoulders and saw her eyelids quiver open.

At first she looked at him dazed and uncomprehending, and then her eyes flew wide, she threw her arms around him and gasped. "You're alive!"

"You don't know how happy I am to see you are too." Pitt said softly, his lips parted in a smile.

Abruptly, she pulled back from him. "No, no, you can't be real. You're all dead."

"You needn't be afraid of me," he said in a soothing tone.

She stared at him through wide brown eyes rimmed red from weeping, a sad enigmatic gaze. Her facial complexion was flawless, but there was an unmistakable pallor and just a hint of gauntness. Her hair was the color of red copper. She had the high cheekbones and full, sculptured lips of a fashion model. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then he dropped his stare slightly. From what he could tell about her in her curled position, she had a fashion model's figure Her bared arms looked muscular for a woman. Only when she lowered her eyes and peered at his body did he suddenly feel embarrassed to be standing in front of a lady in his long johns.

"Why aren't you properly dressed?" she finally murmured.

It was an inconsequential question bred from a state of fear and trauma, not curiosity. Pitt didn't bother to explain. "Better yet, you tell me who you are and how you survived when the others died."

She looked as if she were about to fall over on her side, so he quickly bent down, circled his arm around her waist and lifted her into a leather chair next to a table. He walked over to the bar. He went behind the bar expecting to find the body of the bartender and was not disappointed. He took a bottle of Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Tennessee sour mash whiskey from a mirrored shelf and poured a shot glass.

"Drink this," he said, holding the glass to her lips.

"I don't drink," she protested vaguely.

"Consider it medicinal. Just take a few sips."

She managed to consume the contents of the glass without coughing, but her face twisted into a sour expression as the whiskey, smooth as summer's kiss to a connoisseur, inflamed her tonsils. After she'd gasped a few breaths of air, she looked into his sensitive green eyes and sensed his compassion.

"My name is Deirdre Dorsett," she whispered nervously.

"Go on," he prompted. "That's a start. Are you one of the passengers?"

She shook her head. "An entertainer. I sing and play the piano in the lounge."

"That was you playing `Sweet Lorraine.'"'

"Call it a reaction from shock. Shock at seeing everyone dead, shock at thinking it would be my turn next. I can't believe I'm still alive."

"Where were you when the tragedy occurred?"

She peered at the four couples lying nearby in morbid fascination. "The lady in the red dress and the silverhaired man were celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with friends who accompanied them on the cruise. The night before their private party, the kitchen staff had carved a heart and cupid out of ice to sit in the middle of a bowl of champagne punch. While Fred, he's . . ." She corrected herself, "He was the bartender, opened the champagne, and Marta, the waitress, brought in a crystal bowl from the kitchen, I volunteered to bring the ice carving from the storage freezer."

"You were in the freezer?"

She nodded silently.

"Do you recall if you latched the door behind your?"

"It swings closed automatically."

"You could lift and carry the ice carving by yourself?"