Read Online Salby (Book 2): Salby Evolution by Ian D. Moore - Free Book Online Page B

sailing somewhere and I went back to the bridge. The ship was circling in open water. The captain must have adjusted the course before he—” Barbie couldn’t finish the sentence. She coughed before she continued, “I restarted the engines and activated the auto navigator, set the speed to full ahead. The fuel is almost gone, I figured we should get as close to land as we could before we’re dead in the water.”
    My mouth got steadily wider at her revelations, at the outright confession of mass murder by her hands alone.
    I didn’t kill all those people. You did. Where do I start? I mean, how the hell do I come back on that?
    “You don’t … you don’t feel like killing anyone else anytime soon—do you?” I queried, tentatively.
    “Oh—no. Not now. My head hurts still, a dull buzz. How about you? How do you feel?” she asked, between licks of the knife and fork.
    “I’m … fine, I guess. My leg feels okay, nothing is broken by the looks of me. You killed all those men on your own?
    “I guess so. Sir, at the time, I saw them as a threat. It was them or us, I had to protect us. I mean, you.”
    My perception of reality suddenly began to wane at the implication of what Barbara just said. This slip of a girl, a shade under half of my years, went on some kind of mad rampage armed to the nines to protect us? To protect me? I struggled to process the information, to accept the brutal, pointless loss of life—surely no man was worth that? As I stood from the table, unable to discuss the events that got us here further, Barbie looked at me with her head cocked slightly to one side.
    “Come on. We’ll talk more about this later. Right now, we’re sailing and we need to know where,” I said boldly.
    “Murmansk,” Barbie blurted out instantly.
    “But how do you know that? You can pilot a ship too?”
    “It seems so, yes. On the bridge, I found the captain, he’s still there keeping an eye on things for us. As I looked at the control panels, I knew what the gauges, knobs, charts and levers did. Don’t know how I knew, I just did,” she stated flatly and shrugged.
    “You’ve never done that before, never been on a ship like this, yet you know how to sail it. How could that be? Okay, that’s another mystery to my list of mysteries to solve. How long before we get there?” I asked.
    “Hmm, we should make landfall anytime soon. What with getting you up, cooking and the like, I’ve lost track of time, but we weren’t far away from the port, last I checked. I can take you to the bridge for an update if you like,” Barbie said, casually.
    As she led the way from the restaurant area, up several more flights of stairs towards natural light, I looked her up and down a number of times. Despite her gory outward resemblance to someone exhumed from a fictional sepulchre, there didn’t appear to be any wounds to suggest she’d been bitten by one of them —the memories of whom still burned at the forefront of my mind. No limps or strained motions either. She appeared perfectly fit and well, albeit in need of a makeover.
    It doesn’t matter how many times I try, it simply won’t add up, the pieces just don’t fit the puzzle. Piloting an oceanic freighter—not forgetting mass murder. And what’s with the ‘sir’ thing? My mind kicked up a notch.
    The cabin-wide, panoramic view out over the entirety of the vessel really was something to behold as we rounded the spiral staircase to the bridge. Spectacular banks of flashing lights accompanied an array of alarms, beeps, buzzers, and even a ringing phone. Barbara began to panic.
    “Sir, we’re closer than I thought. We’re going to hit the harbour wall,” Barbie observed.
    “Okay, just stop, or turn left or right, or something.”
    “We’re not parking a car, sir. She’s twenty thousand tonnes of metal and grain doing twenty-one knots. Even full back it’ll not stop us in time,” Barbie quipped at my ignorance.
    “Okay, leave it, let her go. Come on,