Lifeboat

By S Collins

Jen wakes up to find herself on a boat with six other people, with no idea of how she got there. She quickly learns that she and the others on board are dead, and that wherever they are is not the world of the living. She also learns what the others had before her; that somewhere along the river their boat is travelling on, there may be a way for them to get back, to cheat death and regain the lives they had lost.
Unfortunately their trip down the river is anything but easy.
Along the way they defend themselves against strange, mutated creatures intent on forcing them to pass on, stumble through their own missing - and unexpectedly found - memories, and grapple with the looming question of what befalls them should they fail, all while following the one rule they know they must adhere to to stay ‘alive’: stay away from the water.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S Collins
• Release date: Dec 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311920522

S Collins

S. Collins is a young writer who uses a pseudonym for no other reason than he thinks it will make him more interesting as an artist. He is am amateur actor and playwright, operating out of Perth, Australia and hopes one day he will have a real job and do something productive with his life.Sadly, such a day is not on the horizon just yet - but at least his plays get picked up by production companies.

Book preview

Lifeboat

By S. Collins

Copyright 2014 S. Collins

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. I doubt the police force will personally confront you otherwise but you can never be too careful when the fuzz are concerned. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Chapter 1: Under Attack

Chapter 2:Memories by Moonlight

Chapter 3: Suction

Chapter 4: The Afterlife

Chapter 5: Promise

Chapter 6: Decisions

Chapter 7: The Junkyard

Chapter 8: Escape Route

Chapter 9: The Revenge

Chapter 10: Memory Lane

Chapter 11: One Cut

Chapter 12: Considerations

Chapter 13: Path of Spires

Chapter 14: The Lifeboat

Chapter 15: Dead End

Chapter 16: Anew

Chapter 1

Under Attack

The dull sound of semi-distant voices became sharper and louder. Jen’s eyes fluttered open, shattering the darkness with the light of the world. She realized was lying down, looking up at an orange, cloudy sky. Probably late afternoon, she thought briefly, before wondering why she was lying face-up on quite an uncomfortable floor.

Jen blinked a few times and tried to sit up. Her joints felt stiff, as if she hadn’t moved from that position in hours. Judging from the ache in the back of her head, it was quite possible she hadn’t, although she could have easily have smacked it into the ground when she fell over and have it feel the same.

Wait, she thought. Fallen over? She paused mid-movement, hesitating to bring her hand to the sore spot where her head had rested against the floor. She hadn’t fallen over... had she? She couldn’t recall. No, it wasn’t a fall, more like... like...

Jen looked down and rubbed the back of her head a little more, struggling to remember, but nothing was coming to her. Whatever had happened before she blacked out just wasn’t coming back to her.

Jen’s focus shifted and she realized she was sitting on a wood-planked floor. She looked back up and tried to survey her surroundings, still massaging her sore spot. She seemed to be sitting on the deck of a boat of some kind, and a pretty rickety one at that. It looked like it hadn’t seen a body of water in years, or at least shouldn’t have according to nautical law. The railings at the edge of the deck, wooden poles with ropes tied between them, didn’t look like it could even support a child. The rope was frayed in places and the wood looked rotten. The deck itself was similarly deteriorated, enough so that Jen felt unsafe just sitting there. Beside her, the door to a cabin of some sort was slightly ajar, swaying in time with the boat’s movements.

Movements, Jen noticed. The boat was gently rocking from side to side. She looked out further and saw she was in fact moving, the heavy vegetation some distance away on either side scrolling past. If she didn’t know better she would have guessed she was in the middle of a jungle. There was the faint sound of splashing water, so the boat was definitely moving along some sort of river. She was too low to see past the podium at what appeared to be the front of the boat, judging by the direction of the moving trees and what looked to be a steering wheel.

The voices grew louder. Jen realized she hadn’t been paying attention to them, despite them not having stopped since she first became aware of them. There were definitely several of them, all yelling at something, or someone. Each other? Probably, they sound like they’re responding to each other. Jen’s mind was still clouded with post-awakening sluggishness, only just able to comprehend the voices.

Hurried footsteps sounded from around the corner of the cabin. Jen froze, not sure what to do. Were the owners of the voices friendly? Were they hostile? Whatever they were, she didn’t have enough time to react before somebody came rushing around, stopping themselves by grabbing part of the railing, a terrible decision in Jen’s opinion but somehow effective nonetheless. A man in a dishevelled business suit stood before her, panting slightly.

‘Hey,’ he called behind him, ‘she’s up!’

Jen couldn’t help but be extremely worried. Here she was, on a boat, with no memory of getting there, and now a man in a suit was standing in from of her, calling for others. Such a situation was dangerous enough in the open, in a closed space, even worse. Jen tried to stand, fighting the stiffness of her body, while more footsteps grew louder and more people responded to the man’s call, more voices Jen couldn’t understand in her current state.

‘Are you okay?’ the suited man asked, taking a step forward and offering his hand. Jen eyed him cautiously, finally bringing herself to her feet on her own. The man awkwardly took his hand back.

‘Wh-who're you?’ Jen managed to ask, her throat dry and sore, more clues to just how long she’d been out of action. Before the man could say anything, more people appeared behind him, also panting and looking just as displaced.

Jen took another step back as she was stared at by no less than six strangers, including two suited men, a young man and woman dressed much less professionally in a T-shirt and jeans, a lady in smart work clothes and a tall man in a long coat.

‘Hey!’ the casually-dressed woman greeted, surprised but glad. ‘Are you alright? Still in one piece?’

‘Asked already,’ the first man told her, ‘she’s not talking.’

‘Well, give me a minute,’ Jen added, returning her hand to the back of her head. ‘I just woke up! What’s going on?’

‘Oh,’ the other suited man mumbled guiltily, but ignored her question. ‘Is your head okay? We had to drop you in a hurry.’

He gestured to the man in the T-shirt, who shrugged. ‘Can’t be wasting time on luxuries like health.'

‘Hold on,’ Jen said, moving her hand away from her head, her sense of danger growing. ‘You dropped me? As in, you picked me up and brought me onto a boat?’

‘Sure did,’ the coated man answered, as if it had been the obvious choice of action. ‘We saw you were unconscious so we took you with us.’

‘Unconscious? How? Where was I before?’

The group was silent. Nobody looked in Jen’s direction. The suited man loosened his collar and the two women bit their lips and looked to the floor. The man in the coat looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek. Everyone was sneaking glances at each other, as if silently begging anybody else to say something instead of them.

Jen looked at them in bewilderment. Her first impression was that she was missing something important, something too awkward to make known. But even if the news was awkward to tell, she thought, surely somebody would have said something by now. Jen started to wonder if it was in fact awkward, or something beyond it. They didn’t look like they needed to say something embarrassing, or obvious... they didn’t look uncomfortable. They looked scared.

‘Well,’ the T-shirted man started, but he was interrupted. Loudly.

The whole boat shook, nearly sending Jen back to the floor. The others also shook on their feet, the smartly-dressed lady even falling over with a shriek. Something large had just crashed into them. The woman who had spoken to Jen ran to help her up while the men ran to the front of the boat.

The T-shirted man swore loudly and vanished around the corner again. ‘Percy,’ he yelled, ‘you said they were gone!’

‘They looked gone!’ the man in the long coat, Percy, yelled back, following him. The others hurried towards the front of the boat, too, leaving Jen alone with the two women, now both on their feet.

‘What’s happening!?’ Jen cried, holding onto the corner of the cabin, not trusting the railing in the slightest.

‘We were followed by something,’ the lady who had fallen over responded, massaging her elbow where she had landed. ‘We tried to get rid of them, but they must still be close!’

With that, she disappeared after the others. The woman who had helped her stand paused to face Jen.

‘I-I’m Nina,’ she added, not sure how to proceed. ‘Come on, we should probably stay with the others.’

Nina ran off. Nina clearly wasn’t one for conversation, at least not during times of apparent danger.

Jen frowned and refrained from following these strangers. Clearly something was incredibly wrong with her situation. These people had just scooped her up from somewhere (exactly where that had been was a whole other issue) and dumped her on a boat that looked like it was breaking apart, and from the sound of it, was about to be made to do so by force. In such a situation, remaining with a group would be the best plan, but they’d just have to forgive her for taking a few moments to gather her bearings and consider jumping overboard and swimming to shore.

When the boat shook for a second time, Jen snapped out of her thoughts and tried not to fall over again. She took off around the side of the cabin to follow the others, her hand hovering tentatively over the railing should she need to grab something – a situation she did not want to be in.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked again, seeing the six people scattered around the back deck. ‘Is something hitting us?’

‘Yeah,’ T-shirt called from the side, ‘we got a damn shark over here!’

‘Shark!?’ Jen repeated, shocked. She looked up around the area, confirming they were still on a jungle river.

‘More li’l ones on this side,’ Percy called from across the deck.

‘Did you say shark? Isn’t this a river?’

‘Oh, this’ll be fun,’ the second suited man muttered sarcastically. Jen heard him, but wasn’t in any mood to address him. Apparently they were under attack by a very lost ocean predator.

She stepped towards the side of the deck, near Percy, and looked over the edge. Below, the river ran as black as night, as if it were ink rather than water. This wasn’t what had drawn her attention first, however. Swimming alongside the wooden hull were several creatures reminiscent of fish, but also reminiscent of alligators.

They looked to be a combination of both, having fish-like bodies and tails, but also clawed limbs and long, toothy jaws. If it weren’t for their swimming movement - a combination of tail movements and what looked like a very sloppy freestyle stroke - they may not have been visible at all, as their scaly bodies were as black as the inky waters of the river.

Jen recoiled in fear. 'The hell are they!?' she cried. She’d never seen animals like this, or even read about them. Though each one was only about a foot in length, the sheer number of them was frightening.

‘We don’t know,’ Percy answered. ‘They’ve been following us since we left the queue.’

‘What queue?’

Percy didn’t answer that one. He ran back across the deck to where T-shirt was rifling through the contents of a large wooden crate sitting beside the cabin door. Jen looked back over the edge and saw the fish-things trying to grab the side of the boat, having trouble due to their continued attempt to keep up with it. She jumped back from the side, realizing they were trying to climb aboard.

‘Come on,’ T-shirt muttered, still going through the crate. He threw aside a variety of small tools and coils of rope, narrowly missing the suited man who’d first spoken to Jen. ‘Who doesn’t keep any poles or anything on a river boat?’

‘People who don’t want boat thieves to survive?’ Suit replied. T-shirt ignored him and searched deeper, although the next piece of rope Suit had to dodge looked like it was thrown much more intentionally.

‘Here we go!’ T-shirt cried, lifting a long wooden pole from the crate. He pulled it out and swung it towards the edge of the deck, nearly clipping Nina and the other Suit with the metal spires at the end.

‘Whoa!’ Nina yelled, ‘watch it!’

‘Is that a rake?’ Second Suit asked, surprised.

T-shirt looked at the pole in confusion. ‘Oh,’ he realized. ‘Uh... yeah?’

‘What’s a rake doing on a-’

Another shockwave interrupted Second Suit by rocking the boat harder than the last time. Thankfully for them, T-shirt managed to stand his ground without impaling anyone with the rake.

‘Okay,’ T-shirt announced, making for the railing. ‘Percy, Tyson and Liam,’ he called, pointing to the two suited men and Percy, ‘check the cabin for anything else to get rid of the smaller ones.

‘Linda,’ he continued while the men scrambled for the cabin door, ‘you said you went boating or something before?’

‘A little,’ the woman who had fallen over earlier replied.

‘Then get up the front make sure we don’t crash into anything,’ T-shirt commanded. Jen silently pondered her lack of faith in the girl who couldn’t stand up on a moving vehicle to steer them. ‘If we keep getting bumped while nobody’s steerin’ there’s gonna be hell to pay!’

Linda froze, looking worried for a moment before snapping out of it and heading for the front of the boat. Jen and Nina, shared a glance, neither having been given an order. They quickly returned their gaze to T-shirt, though, when they saw him swing the rake over his shoulder.

T-shirt muttered something to himself as he strode over to the railing, then swung the rake again in an arc over his head and downwards over them. A horrible screeching sound from below signaled an accurate hit.

There’s no way a shark could be making that noise, Jen thought. It sounded like a mix of a lion’s roar and the screech of a bird of prey. She ran to the railings and held onto the nearest wooden stake, abandoning her previous apprehensions, looking down at the creature that was attacking the boat.

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Unlike the smaller creatures on the other side, the shark was actually quite shark-like. It had several wounds on the top of its head and was making a horribly unnatural sound, baring far too much teeth in both quantity and size for any regular shark. Another very un-shark-like quality was its scaly, pitch-black skin. This ‘shark’ was definitely related to the smaller creatures in some way.

Jen, Nina and T-shirt watched as the shark shook its head in recovery and looked back up at them with two very angry yellow eyes.

‘Well he doesn’t look happy,’ T-shirt mumbled, before swinging the rake down again. This time, the shark avoided the attack, swerving to the left. The rake connected with the surface, harmlessly splashing water in the shark’s face.

Without hesitation, the shark twisted around, its teeth wrapping around the wood and tearing it apart, ripping it from T-shirt’s hands. T-shirt swore and stumbled, stopping himself from falling overboard on the rails, apparently stronger than they appeared. Jen and Nina jumped backwards, Jen even shrieking, a reaction far more dramatic than T-shirt’s.

‘We lost the rake!’ T-shirt yelled back to the others, still inside.

The second suited man’s face appeared, sticking out of the cabin window. ‘It’s not lookin’ too good in here, either,’ he shouted.

‘Liam,’ a Percy’s voice sounded from inside, ‘they don’t need any damn updates! Keep looking!’

Liam’s now disgruntled face disappeared back inside.

T-shirt swore again. Nina turned to look around at the deck, a look of desperation on her face. Jen, still incredibly confused about her entire situation, decided to do the same. They looked around for something, anything to use against the shark, or at least the smaller creatures that sounded like they had managed to grab onto the side of the boat, judging from the scratching sounds coming from several directions.

Liam and the first suited man, Tyson, bolted out of the cabin door, a large kitchen knife in each of their hands.

‘We found the kitchen!’ Liam yelled, heading towards the side of the boat. As a small, scaly claw reached over the edge, he brought one blade down, narrowly missing it but shocking it into letting go and falling back into the water.

The boat lurched. The shark had rammed them again with a vengeance. Jen slipped and hit the deck, hitting her elbow on the wooden floor with a yelp.

‘Ah!’ Nina cried, running to her. ‘Are you okay?’

Jen was about to answer when she caught sight of a wooden pole poking out from under an elevated crate. She lifted herself up, ignoring Nina’s question, and reached out to grab the possible weapon.

Jen tugged a long shovel from under the crate, using it to push herself to her feet.

‘A shovel?’ Nina asked. Jen hastily shrugged and ran towards T-shirt.

‘Hey!’ she yelled, getting T-shirt’s attention. He turned around just in time to see her toss the shovel towards him. He reached out and caught it in midair and swung it back around over the railing. The shark, just about to ram them again, got a face full of metal shovel and screeched again. T-shirt, refusing to make the same mistake twice, brought it around again for another hit, again smacking the shark in its toothy, angry face, and finally jabbed the edge as close as he could get to its hateful eyes.

The edge struck just under the shark’s left eye,