Chapter Thirteen: Urgency and Despair
Zack, Cody and Max ran down the corridor, but the way Zack and Max had come was now blocked by debris. An enormous safe had come crashing through from above causing a large area of the floor above them to collapse. The safe, standing on its end, now provided a step up towards the hole.
"Up there!" Zack pointed as seawater reached their ankles.
Zack jumped and grabbed onto the edge of the safe, hauling himself up to stand on it. He motioned for Cody to join him and Cody repeated the move Zack had just done to get up on the end of the safe.
Zack tried to reach up into the deck above so he could pull himself up but it was out of reach.
"I guess you can't boost me" Zack said turning to look at his brother who was holding his wrist.
"No…but I have another idea" Cody said dropping to all fours.
"Hey guys, the waters rising here!" Max said with an alarmed voice.
Zack stepped onto Cody's back and reached up. He got both hands on the ceiling of the deck above and began to pull himself up. The jagged edges of the tear cut into his arms and belly but he ignored it and eventually pulled himself up into deck 4.
Cody immediately turned and, using his good arm, reached down to Max who started pulling herself up. The rising water had made the distance less and, with Cody helping to lift her under one of her arms, she managed to get onto the side of the safe. They looked up at Zack and waited.
Zack lay on the deck ceiling and leaned down into the hole as he had done when he had pulled Cody from the suite.
"You first this time" Cody said to Max, again dropping to all fours.
Max climbed on his back and reached up to grasp Zack's outstretched arms. As soon as she grabbed on to him, Zack realized he wasn't strong enough to pull her up. He also began to slide a bit towards the opening.
"Max, jump back down, I'm sliding in!" Zack yelled and she released his arms.
Cody got up and they looked up at Zack again.
"I'm going to have to find something to tie to the wall" Zack said.
"Ok, make it quick though, the water's rising fast!" Cody said.
Zack ran from the opening desperately looking for a rope-like object of some kind. He realized quickly that this was the mall deck. Debris from all the stores lay scattered around him in the dim light. He ran along until he finally spotted a rope coiled up behind a fireman's axe and a fire extinguisher. He high kicked the glass and grabbed the rope. Upon reaching the hole in the ceiling he looped one end of the rope around a broken window frame of one of the storefronts and lowered the other end down to Max.
Max grabbed the rope and began to climb. When she could just reach into the deck herself Zack grabbed one of her arms and helped her lift herself up to stand next to him. They dropped the rope back down to Cody.
Using his good arm and both legs, Cody grasped the rope and tried to climb. The combination of his hurt wrist and ankle made this a nearly impossible task.
"Just hang onto it Cody!" Zack yelled down.
"Max, grab on, we'll lift him out" Zack said.
Before either of them could grab the rope the window frame cracked and the rope came loose. Cody landed back on the safe with a thud. The water had risen so much that the safe began to teeter like it was going to go over.
"Grab the rope quick!" Zack yelled to Max and they both latched on and began pulling hand over hand.
As the safe finally toppled, Cody clung for dear life to the rope. After what seemed like an eternity, he was high enough in the hole where Zack and Max could grab under his arms and pull him onto the deck.
"That was another close one…I know someone who needs to stop eating the goods while he bakes!" Zack said patting Cody in the stomach.
"Hey, I might nibble a little, but you're the one who devours most of the finished product!" Cody retorted.
As if to put an end to their emerging argument, Poseidon once more erupted in a slew of explosions. All three fell to the floor.
"What the heck do you think is causing that!" Zack asked, standing again when it stopped.
"I don't know but we'd better keep moving…grab the rope, no doubt we'll probably need it again" Cody said looking down into the hole at the rising water.
All three began running down the corridor. As they went they took in the utter devastation that had been wrought on the stores. They came to a stop when they neared what had been the food court.
"Now there's something you don't see everyday…" Max said.
"An upside down food court" Cody said.
All three chuckled lightly at the sight.
A tremendous moan shattered their revere as a geyser of water came blasting up through the hole they had left behind. It was joined by even more water coming in from above and below.
"Let's move!" Zack yelled seeing the water surge towards them.
They broke into a run again.
Cody scanned the floor above them, looking for a way up. They ran towards the stern until another mountain of debris blocked their way.
"Now what?" Max asked.
"Over here! The elevators!" Cody exclaimed, spotting the elevator doors off to the side.
"Cody, you do realize they don't work right?" Max said.
"Yeah, but hopefully the cars are below us so we can climb up through the shafts" Cody said.
"Genius!" Zack replied.
They pried open the first set of doors with a piece of debris Zack had located but found that the car was stuck right at their deck. It seemed as if the car had been in transit between decks when it lost power as it wasn't quite square in the opening.
Once more the seawater reached their feet. Some of the emergency lights sparked and sputtered, some died out.
"Quick, let's try the next one!" Zack said.
They began to pry the next set of doors open but these were harder. Finally, with all of them pushing and pulling on the bar, the doors finally slid open, the elevator car inside slid down a bit...and something dropped out of it.
Max screamed and all three of them jumped back in horror. A body lay sprawled out before them, blackened from an apparent fire. Inside the car were more bodies, burned like the first one. The smell was indescribable.
Cody turned away and promptly threw up. Zack held Max's face to his chest as he stared, to shocked to look away himself. He patted his brother on the back.
"Uh…come on Codes…we've got one more to try" Zack said in a hoarse, barely audible voice.
They did their best to ignore the bodies and jammed their pry bar into the last set of elevator doors. More sparks flew and then more lights went out. They were losing light and the water was deepening fast. These doors opened smoothly. All three braced for more bodies but this time there was nothing but open shaft in front of them. The water around them began to pour into the shaft. It was deep enough to where it was trying to push them into the opening.
"Hold onto me so I can get a look inside!" Zack said.
Max tied the rope onto the railing behind them and then held onto it for added support. Cody stood in front of her, the rope under his bad arm, holding onto Zack's belt with the other. Zack held onto the rope with one hand and the door frame with the other and peered in.
"Well, I've got good news and bad news…the good news is we can climb up to another deck…the bad news is, we only get to go up one…the car looks like its stopped on deck 6" he said.
"Well, that's better than staying here!" Cody said.
"One problem though…once we get on this access ladder here and climb up, we won't be able to get back in front of the doors on deck 5 in order to pry them open" Zack said.
"Look for a manual override, a hand crank looking device, every deck should have one" Cody said.
Zack looked and sure enough spotted something that looked like what Cody was talking about.
"Yes I see it…man am I glad you spent all that time following that engineer guy around" Zack said.
Cody smiled briefly then frowned, wondering what had become of his friend.
Just then Zack noticed the elevator car above him shift a little.
"Oh you've got to be kidding me" Zack said to himself.
"What?" Cody asked.
"It moved! We've got to go now!" Zack said.
Cody and Max hauled him back from the opening and all three stood against the back wall. Max untied and re-coiled the rope slinging it over her head and through her arm.
"The access ladder is to the left inside the shaft. It's going to be tricky for each of us to try and get on it with the water pushing at us" Zack said.
"If we run at a diagonal towards the opening and jump at the last minute our momentum should carry us to the ladder…only thing is we might fall quite a ways before we're able to grab a rung" Cody said.
More lights died out, it was now nearly dark in the hallway.
"It's now or never, Max…you want to go first this time?" Zack asked.
Max nodded and lined up to make her run.
She darted from the wall, running as best she could in the now shin deep water. At the last second she lept into the shaft. She fell a bit, but as Cody had predicted her momentum carried her to the ladder. She climbed up enough to stand above where she anticipated Zack would land.
"I made it, come on!" she yelled out to them.
"Who's next?" Cody asked.
"Me, I wanted Max above me and you last so in case I have to help you she could grab me and I could grab you…with your bad hand and all" Zack replied.
Cody made eye contact with him.
"You think were gonna get out of here Zack?" Cody asked.
"Were doing okay so far…and I don't intend on quitting…were gonna make it" Zack said.
Cody nodded and Zack broke the stare and lined up for his jump.
He ran and jumped the same way Max had done, landing a little below her, right where she had landed. They moved up the ladder, making space for Cody.
"Okay Cody, come on!" Zack yelled.
Cody lined up and took a deep breath. He started his run, his ankle protesting greatly, and made to jump. Before he could though, the ship erupted into yet another set of explosions. Cody was thrown off balance on his last step. He jumped anyway, flying out into the empty space of the elevator shaft. He yelled out, realizing he wasn't going to reach the ladder where Zack was. He reached out towards it as he fell and eventually his good hand grabbed hard to a rung on the ladder. His fall had caused him to pick up much more speed than the others and the force of grabbing the rung with one hand to stop his full body weight from falling yanked his arm out its socket.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHH!" Cody screamed in pain.
His body twisted around as he frantically fought to get his feet on the ladder.
It all happened in seconds, the landing, the twisting…the force of Cody's fall was so great that, while he had managed to grab hold of the rung, he wasn't going to be able to hang onto it. Just before Cody lost his grip, Zack grabbed his other arm. In the few seconds that had passed, Zack had seen what was going to happen and had let go of the ladder, free fell, and grabbed back onto the ladder just in time to reach the spot where Cody had landed. Zack bore Cody's full weight until Cody twisted back around and got his feet on the ladder, then he put Cody's arm over the closest rung.
Cody looked up.
"How many times are you going to save my life today?" he asked.
"As many times as I have to" Zack replied.
Cody glanced down and noticed the shaft was rapidly filling with water, both from below and from the doors they had opened on deck 4. They began climbing, Cody ignoring the now insignificant pain in his right hand and using it to grab one rung after another. The pain in his left shoulder, however, was searing. That arm hung limp at his side.
The elevator car above them had lowered itself even more after the explosions and now sat level with the top edge of the doors to deck 5. Max was the first to reach the level the doors were on. She spotted the manual hand crank for the doors and tried to turn it. It wouldn't budge.
"I can't get it to crank Zack, see if you can climb up here next to me" Max said.
Zack shimmied up one side of the ladder to stand next to Max.
"Just brace yourselves in case we get more of those explosions" Cody warned from below.
Both Zack and Max tried pulling the lever and still it wouldn't budge.
"Any ideas" Zack asked Cody.
Cody thought for a few moments.
"See if there is a locking pin, or a latch or something you have to remove first" he suggested.
Zack searched the device for any such thing and found none.
"I don't see anything like that!" Zack said.
Cody looked over and down at the deck 4 landing. Water now rushed like a waterfall from the opening and the shaft was filling up quickly now.
"Well, I don't know then but you better figure it out pretty quick…have you tried turning the other way?" he asked up to them.
"No, lefty loosey right, it has to be that way" Zack said.
Cody rolled his eyes and groaned.
"Not when the ship is upside down!" he said.
"Right" Zack said and then both he and Max tried turning the crank the other way.
"It's still resisting but…there! It's going now!" Zack said.
As soon as the doors were open some debris fell out of the deck and into the shaft. They then had to figure out how to get over to the opening. Max wordlessly handed Zack the rope then reached over and grabbed the ledge of the opening. Then she moved her hands sideways along the ledge. When she had moved over far enough she hauled herself up and onto the deck.
"Oh sure, easy for you Mrs. Gymnast…I might be able to do that but what about Cody?" Zack said.
"Toss me the rope" Max said.
Zack threw her the rope and she tied one end of it to a nearby metal door frame. She tossed the other end back to Zack who tied it to the ladder.
The elevator car chose that time to shift and squeak, dropping a few inches lower.
"Oh I have a bad feeling about this…Cody, you're going first" Zack said.
"Why?" Cody asked.
"Because if that thing goes soon you'll at least be over there where you'll be safe" Zack replied.
"Now wait just a minute…" Cody began.
"Cody, don't argue with me! Just go, now!" Zack said.
Cody's mouth shut and he slowly maneuvered himself next to Zack and grabbed the rope.
"You'll be right behind me?" Cody asked as he put his good arm and both legs on the rope and began to shimmy towards Max.
Zack looked down, alarmed at how full the shaft was by this time.
"Like white on rice" Zack said eying the water.
The elevator car protested a few more times but held firm.
Once Cody was close enough to Max she grabbed him and hauled him in.
"Okay guys, I'm gonna untie my end, swing out, and then climb straight up so we can keep the rope" Zack yelled to them.
"Okay" Max and Cody replied.
Zack untied his end swung out. Just then the elevator car let out a shriek and a groan and began to drop down.
"ZACK!" Cody screamed when he saw the car start to fall.