Heavy footfalls shook the ceiling above them.
Doors opened and closed in the halls.
“Shy?” Carmen said.
He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could get any words out there was an explosion of deafening sound. They both covered their ears and stared at each other, Carmen’s face filling with worry.
The ship alarm.
Shy threw open the cabin door and looked down the hall. Other doors were opening, people gathering in groups, looking at one another, confused. Shy spotted the man in the black suit, Bill, hurrying away from Carmen’s cabin. Like he’d been listening to their conversation through the door. But why? That seemed as bad as breaking into his cabin.
Shy refocused his attention on the alarm and the panic rising in the hall. Maybe the ship had reached the eye of the storm. Or maybe it hit something or there was a fire in the engine room or pirates had stormed the captain’s quarters.
He saw Carmen rush over to her tiny porthole and look outside. “I can’t see anything!” she shouted, turning back to him. “Can you see anything?”
Shy hurried to her side, but all he saw was a thick blur of rain and choppy waves crashing into each other.
No fire.
No smoke.
No other ships.
The alarm continued as they hurried back to the door, ducked out into the hall. More crew members now gathered there, everyone looking around and shouting over the earsplitting sound. Shy’s throat tightening, his eyes darting every which way.
Then the alarm cut off.
Just as abruptly as it had started.
The ship emcee’s voice came over the loudspeaker:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is an emergency. All passengers and crew members should secure a life jacket from the closet of your cabin and proceed directly to the appropriate muster station. I repeat, all passengers and crew members must secure a life jacket and proceed directly to their muster station.”
Shy and Carmen turned to each other.
He saw in her terrified eyes that this was something serious, and he knew immediately his life would be forever changed.
18
Order in the Normandie Theater
The alarm was blaring again as they raced up the stairs toward the Normandie Theater. Shy’s heart pounding inside his chest and throat, his thoughts all half formed. They were in trouble. He knew that. And he had to get to his and Kevin’s assigned muster station, the balcony area of the theater.
Just yesterday, he’d met with his group of passengers and led them through all the emergency procedures and marched them out to the lifeboats—but never once had he considered that there might be an actual emergency.
He glanced at Carmen, her anxious stare fixed directly ahead as they hurried through the hall. Life-vested passengers all around them now, wide-eyed and clinging to one another, shouting over the alarm.
Carmen broke off from Shy, hurried toward the stage level of the theater, her own muster station.
Shy continued across the corridor, toward the far staircase. He had to get to the third floor. Check on his group. Then he could think. And Kevin would be there, too. But he was slowed by a mob near the elevators. They turned on him with their questions, yelling over one another, the blaring alarm drowning out almost every word.
During training week they’d spent three full days on emergency procedures. Drilled every possible scenario, again and again. But now that it was happening for real, Shy felt totally unprepared.
“I’m sorry,” he told them.
“I don’t know anything,” he told them. “We have to wait for another announcement.”
It wasn’t good enough.
The mob kept shouting at Shy and pressing in on him until he couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved past everyone and broke for the far stairs, climbed two at a time.
Kevin was on the next floor up, barking directions at passengers: “All guests must go to their muster stations! Let’s move it, people! This is an emergency!”
Shy ran up a final flight of stairs, stepped into the hall just outside the theater and repeated Kevin’s exact words to all passengers who were lost. It helped Shy as much as it helped them. Gave him something to focus on. A job. No time to think about the storm or what the ship alarm meant or the supposed eighteen feet of steel keeping them afloat.
Each passenger carried a ship card, which was like a credit card they used for everything on board. Shy flipped over the cards of lost passengers, directed them to the right muster station based on the color code on back. Some of the things he’d learned in training were actually returning to him.
All around were panicked faces, the ship pitching aggressively again, and sometimes a man or woman getting sick right there, in the middle of the hall, and the other passengers stepping around him, over him, through him, and it was all so chaotic and overwhelming, but Shy no longer had time to think about his own fear because he had a job.
Take a card.
Flip it over.
Shout the muster station name and point a direction. “Go!”
He spotted the foul-mouthed Muppet boy sitting against the far wall, rocking back and forth, alone. The kid wasn’t cursing now, he was crying and calling for his mom. Shy grabbed him by the shirt, lifted him up. “What’s your mom’s name?”
“Barbara!” the boy shouted.
“Barbara what?”
“Barbara Pierce!”
Shy dragged the kid into the theater and called this name, over and over, “Barbara Pierce! Mrs. Barbara Pierce!” above the crowd noise and the alarm and the kid’s continual sobbing, until a woman downstairs, in Carmen’s section, started waving her arms frantically and screaming the boy’s name: “Lawrence!”
Shy led the boy to the stairs, made the handoff, watched the mom wrap her son in a tight bear hug, her face wet with tears and relieved, and right then Shy decided something: This was what he had to do. Help people. Because when he helped people, he didn’t try to guess what was happening and he didn’t worry. He just acted.
He turned back to his muster station and shouted for everyone to line up, recalling many of the faces from yesterday’s departure, when he’d led them through the safety rules and marched them to the lifeboats off the Lido Deck—back when the lifeboats seemed like nothing more than decoration and all the faces he saw were full of excitement. The faces he looked at now were frantic and bloodless and lost.
“What’s happening?” they shouted at Shy.
“Where’s the captain?”
“We need to speak to the captain!”
“Why aren’t they telling us anything?”
“Please!” Shy shouted back, feeling more in charge now. “Right now we gotta line up! Like yesterday! Come on, guys, let’s go!”
The alarm cut out again.
Every passenger stopped in their tracks.
The entire theater went perfectly silent for a few long seconds, everyone looking around at each other, looking at Shy, but soon the quiet was broken, and the hum of conversation picked back up, the ship still bucking underneath them.
Shy moved to the balcony to see what was happening. The theater curtain opened and the movie screen lit up, but all it showed was static.
He spotted Carmen, standing off to the side of the stage with Vlad, one of the security guards.
Just the two of them.
Vlad talking and Carmen listening.
Her face suddenly fell and she grabbed at Vlad’s uniform shirt and let out a piercing scream that filled the entire theater.
Everyone turned to her.
Shy leaned over the railing and shouted Carmen’s name.
She didn’t look up, but covered her face and dropped to her knees, sobbing.