“You need a lookout, too,” Jake said. “I mean, unless you’re planning on crashing this ship.”

“Bring him over here, I can’t hear the son of a bitch from there.” Flynn waved a hand at his remaining henchmen.

The German and the Chinese looking man came over to Jake’s chair. Taking a side each, they lifted it up with him still attached, crossed the bridge and dropped it down in front of the captain’s seat. It landed with a thud, jarring every bone in Jake’s body.

“What did you say to me son?” Flynn was still looking out of the window.

“I said that if you intend to move this ship, and don’t want to crash it, then you’re going to need a lookout as well as a pilot and navigator.”

“Is that so? Well I guess we’ll have to hope the driver can do both jobs then huh? Ought not to be too hard. I wasn’t watching the whole time we was out cruising, but I didn’t notice a whole bunch of obstacles to hit out there on the ocean.”

“What is the breeding?” Jake had to try and push for more. “What are you going to do with Lucya?”

“I told you not to worry about her. She’s going to be well looked after. She’s one of the lucky ones, pretty little girl like that.”

The other men on the bridge chuckled. Jake felt a mixture of fear and rage welling inside him.

“And what about me, what will happen to me?”

“Like I said, justice will be done. You’ll die, of course, but not at my hand. At least, not directly. Funny thing is, it wouldn’t have made no difference if you hadn’t been set up in my little plan there. Your days would still be numbered just the same. Just like nearly every other man on this ship.”

“You mean every other person,” Jake said defiantly. “Everyone is going to die, you included. This ship doesn’t have the fuel to sustain you. I guess Melvin never told you, we’re leaking fuel. You take this ship back the way we came and you’re going to find yourself stranded in the middle of the Arctic ocean with no heat, no electricity, no way to prepare or store food. If you sail away from here, you’re killing everyone on board.”

“No, not quite everyone.” A smile spread across Flynn’s face. “Oh most of them are going to die, of course they are. Nearly all the men. Most of the women too, at least, all those over the age of thirty. Great job on that census by the way, it made my job of finding the younger women a whole lot easier. And yes, Melvin told me about the fuel. Another great job. Death will come even more quickly than I had hoped. With no fuel, people will die of the cold, of hunger, of dehydration. Oh I’ll make a great show about how we’re all doing what we can to help them. It’ll provide them with some comfort in their final days and their final hours. They don’t need to know about those of us living the high life on deck twelve. Those of us for whom the food will never run out, the heat will never go off, and the water will never run dry.”

“You’re completely insane!” Jake felt his stomach turn.

Flynn turned to look at him, grinning. “No son, not insane. Denounce me and you denounce the Lord, for I am doing his work here.”

“You’re condemning thousands of people to death with your actions. That’s not the work of any god, that’s an act of pure evil.”

“You’re wrong. We have been the evil ones. Mankind. We have brought about the gradual destruction of his creation. He gave us a world, a beautiful world. An abundant world, filled with wonder. And how did we thank the Lord for his gift of life? With our factories and our bombs and our pollution and our consumption and our disregard for our fellow men, and fellow creatures. We plundered it. We ruined it. And for that, we deserve to die.”

“You believe God sent a asteroid as punishment for what we’ve done to the planet? You’re as crazy as Captain Ibsen. He wanted to kill us all too.”

“You’re not listening to me son. I told you, I’m not here to kill everyone. Most? Sure. But not all. See, the Lord spoke to me. He explained to me about the asteroid. Yes, it was punishment, in a way. But it was also sent to cleanse the world. To purge it of the scourge of humanity. Almost. But we were saved. He gave us a second chance. We get to start again. In time, the dust will go. The land will repair itself, become green again, safe again. It will be a new Eden, a new beginning.”

“With you in charge?” Jake closed his eyes, shook his head.

“That’s old world thinking. Nobody need be in charge. We’ll make a better world. A world based on respect and love.”

“Can you even hear yourself?” Jake fought to keep the anger within him. “A better world? Respect? Love? And how are you going to make this better world of yours? By killing thousands of innocent people!”

“Sacrifice is necessary. Billions have already died, what’s a few thousand more?”

“So why not you? Why don’t you sacrifice yourself? Because you know what? You’re right! In some sick, twisted way, you’re right. The sacrifice of most of the people on this ship would allow the rest to survive. For a time, anyway. So why don’t you do everyone a favour and sacrifice yourself, and your cronies here, right now, and leave the rest of us a tiny bit more resource?”

“Why not me? Because I am Adam!” Flynn’s expression had changed to one of pride, mixed with a little confusion, as if he couldn’t understand why Jake didn’t see what he saw.

“You’re what?”

“I am Adam. And these men,” he gestured to the other two men on the bridge, “and ten others like them, are my disciples.”

“Disciples? Like Jesus? You think you’re Jesus? You think you’re the second coming? You’re even crazier than I thought.”

“The Lord spoke to me, after the asteroid. He told me my real name. That name is Adam. He told me that the world will be reborn. We will find our garden of Eden. And with twelve others like me, we will start over. The men, and the women over the age of thirty, will be sacrificed. The younger women will join us in Eden, for the breeding. Together we will make a new world.”

Fifty-One

LUCYA WAS ROCKING from side to side. She may well have been tied to a chair of some description, but she had soon worked out that the chair itself was not fixed to anything. She swung her weight from one side to the other. With each swing she felt two of the legs raise up from the floor, a little higher each time. As she swung in the opposite direction the legs thumped back down and those on the opposite side rose. The thud made by the chair legs hitting the ground was muffled. She was on a carpet, which meant she wasn't in a bathroom or cupboard.

The momentum was gradually building. Another swing and she knew the chair would tip. She put all her effort into it, straining her head and trying to shift the mass of her body to the left. The chair’s right side lifted, tilted over. It teetered in perfect equilibrium for a second, two seconds. Lucya stretched her neck as far as she possibly could, trying to get every last ounce of weight to the left. Then the chair started to fall. It felt like it was going over in slow motion. A thought ran her head; what if there's something just to the left, something hard?

She hit the floor with another muffled thud. Her head bounced off the carpet. It may have been soft, but there was still a hard floor underneath and the impact sent bright flashes of light dancing before her eyes. The way that her hands had been tied behind the back of the chair meant that part of the back was now pinning her arm to the floor. With all her weight was on it, she could feel it already starting to go dead as the circulation was cut off.

She tried moving her legs. They remained stubbornly stuck together, but there was a tiny bit of give in the legs of the chair that they had been attached to. The swinging had weakened the structure of it. She tensed her thigh muscles and then her calves. She pulled them towards her bottom, then tried flexing them out away from her. The tiny movement grew a fraction larger. She continued to jerk her heels and thighs backwards and forwards, squeezing and flexing, crunching and stretching. Her muscles were burning, but she kept on pushing, glad of all those evenings spent in the gym. Then, finally, a cracking sound. The legs had started to become detached from the seat of the chair. Now there was lots of give. One more squeeze between thigh and calf, and there was another crunch and the sound of splintering wood. Three of the legs had come free, and one had snapped in two.