The number of sick passengers, bedridden from the cocktail of illnesses they all exhibit, has now surpassed those who are still left standing. The bunks are now occupied around the clock by the hungry, cold, irradiated, and exhausted. Lewis is left running the ship with the barest skeleton crew, and even they aren’t able to work efficiently in their condition. Meanwhile, Bill, Charlie, and Max are the only researchers still up and about, spending as much of their strength as they can spare on nursing duty, bringing water to those who drink without puking it up right away, and making sure that those too sick to leave their bed stay clean.

  Max sits alone in the mess hall. His breathing is heavy, he’s been working on helping the sick all morning, but it only takes a short amount of work before he’s winded. They have to take frequent breaks, their bodies unable to take such exertion for long. He wonders how long they can keep it up. It’s only a matter of time before he and everybody else falls as well. The more that have fallen ill, the harder the rest have had to work to keep everyone alive, and the faster those few wear themselves out. His stomach lurches as he chews on a dried out, old granola bar but he can’t afford to let himself throw up, nobody can. The kitchen is empty, there’s no food left to cook. The bar in his hand represents what’s left, meager snacks, pre-wrapped tidbits of food that don’t come anywhere close to replacing a meal. He eats half of the granola bar, then sticks the rest into his back pocket for later. He can feel his insides twist as the scrap of food digests. He takes a deep breath; he won’t let his body reject it. Those who let the radiation make them sick end up in bed, and he refuses to get to that point so soon. Max’s face contorts, concentrating on one thing, the importance of his own survival.

  Once the fight with his own body has ended, Max stands up, but he’s uncertain where he’s even going. Not to the bunks, not yet, he’s not ready to go back there to the den of disease and filth. He watches somebody else walk into the room. He rubs his eyes, trying to see clearly in the dim lighting, and they vanish. Their shadow lingers on the floor for a moment before losing its shape and melting into the shadows cast by the furniture. He’s alone.

  Max sighs and looks up to the ceiling, through it.

  “Why?” he asks.

  He doesn’t even know why he asks. He’s long since stopped wondering. It’s not worth the effort to ponder. Like asking God, there is no returning voice to respond to his query. Though he didn’t rule out the possibility that she could reply if she wanted to. Ernie had established some level of communication with her, so who’s to say she can’t hear him right now? Maybe she was always listening, waiting to be addressed. He wouldn’t even be that shocked if she started to speak. Seeming to continuously pull new tricks from her hat, upping the ante on her antagonizing behavior, Julia could do just about anything and it wouldn’t really surprise him. Thinking about it though, Max would rather not get an answer to his question, and he quickly regrets even asking.

  There’s a knock from behind and he turns to find the source. To his ear, it sounded like the door leading to the kitchen pantry, where Jessica is locked up. He doesn’t want to open it. Jessica was handled all wrong in his mind, just one of the captain’s many failings. Locking her in a closet, especially one in the mess hall, where everyone gathers, did little to prevent others from catching her madness. Though no others had professed a need for mass suicide, he knew that most had started to go crazy. He could see it in their eyes, the way they acted, they were letting the fear get to them and it was making them sicker than they would be normally. Even poor old Bill was one hair’s breadth away from breaking, looking fragile enough both mentally and physically to fall apart at any moment. And Charlie was just putting on airs. He could see the terror inside her, no matter how much she tried to mask it. No, Max is sure that he’s the only one left who can see things clearly. Julia may be tormenting them, but under better leadership, she wouldn’t have been nearly as effective. Lewis was the real problem. He was soft, too nice, and too unwilling to make tough choices. Max wasn’t Navy, but he knew that a situation like this should have called for more drastic measures. Instead, Lewis sat, hoping that ignoring the problem would help people cope, but it hadn’t. Lewis’s inaction had dug them all so deep into the well of insanity that Max believed most would never reemerge. And now they were going to starve. He could have done better. He would have. If he had been in charge, none of this ever would have happened.

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  Again the knocking comes and Max realizes it’s not coming from the door, but the wall next to it. The wall held nothing but the expanse of the sea behind it. Three knocks, light knocks that wouldn’t echo far through the ship. They were intended for a select audience, and Max knew immediately who was playing.

  Max steps forward, carefully. He reaches out for the closet door and swings it open. The light from the stove pours inside, and he sees Jessica huddled in the corner.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Max steps inside. “What’s going on here?”

  Jessica looks up, shaking her head. Her eyes are empty, they look through Max, not at him. “She’s outside, waiting.”

  “Waiting? For what? What are you saying to her?”

  Jessica tilts her head. “Me? I’m not.”

  “Bullshit. Your brother did the same goddamned thing. You probably put him up to it in the first place, didn’t you? The fuck are you trying to pull? Are you trying to get her to kill us? Realized there aren’t any fucking torpedoes onboard so this is your backup plan?”

  “You don’t understand at all.” Jessica shakes her head, looking at Max with pity. “I’ve learned a lot locked up in the dark here. Had a lot of time to think, and see. Julia is not an entity of habit. She communicated with my brother because it served her to know us better. But she got what she needed, or wanted, now things are different. Do you see?”

  “No, I don’t fucking see! What are you talking about?”

  Jessica shrugs. “Just theorizing. Why else would her behavior change so much? Because she learned something.”

  “Does it matter? I don’t give a shit what that thing learns. I wanna live, and you’re trying to do the opposite.”

  “I won’t deny that I think we should die.”

  “Fucking psycho. Captain should’ve done you in instead of locking you up in here. Listen here, I’m not dying! I won’t let you draw that monster in to do the job you couldn’t. I’m trying to save lives here.”

  Jessica chuckles, her laugh weak and raspy. “Again, I’m doing nothing. Even if I was trying, Julia wouldn’t just do as I ask, she’s so far beyond that. And she doesn’t want us dead, if she did we’d be dead already. She wants us alive.”

  “Then why was she tapping on the wall to you?”

  Jessica stares at the wall. Not a peep comes from the other side.

  “You think she was calling out to me, but you heard it too.”

  Max swallows. “Me? Fuck that.”

  “Those were your knocks, were they not, Max? Three knocks on the wall.” She taps the floor three times. “You started that business did you not?”

  “Shut up!” He shakes his head and takes a step back out of the closet

  “She got your attention, didn’t she? It worked, didn’t it? Maybe there’s something she wants you to know, or see.”

  Max clenches his fists. “Why? What?”

  “Who knows? But whatever it is, know it’s for her benefit more than our own.”

  “There’s not even anything here!” Max shouts, more to Julia than Jessica.

  But he stumbles over his final words, pausing. His breathing slows, his brow furrows and Max takes a step back into the closet.