Ocean Burning (15 page)

That attitude must have been catching. Soon I could tell that Ben felt that same feeling that always comes to me at moments like those—the simmer, the slow burn. I thought of my father and the only real lesson I think he ever taught me. As a kid, I’d been afraid of the dark. My father hated that about me, used to beat me senseless when I cried at night. It had always made sense to me, the fear. I couldn’t see in the dark, ergo, it was possible for something to be out there. Watching and waiting. Logical, in my child mind. To my father, a man who liked to hunt at night, to walk for miles and miles in the blackness, it was infuriating.

One day I asked him, wasn’t he afraid there might be something in the dark?

“Boy,” he’d said in his Georgia drawl, “I
am
the thing in the dark.”

Even now I remembered that moment with perfect clarity. The reversal of perspective had stunned me, and I never forgot it. Rowing towards a certain outcome, one way or another, still frightened me. Rigger was a big bad man. Carmen was too smart for us; she’d had our number every step of the way. Hell, right now I wished I had a drink to stiffen me up. But all that was just enough to keen my senses. Raw, paralyzing terror—I hadn’t felt that since my father.

Sweeping across the black, I repeated his words under my breath, a mantra.

“I am the thing in the dark…I am the thing in the dark.”

Twenty feet out, I risked another glance back over my shoulder. No one on deck. I pulled hard on the oars once, twice, three more times, and judged that would be enough to carry us in. Waving Ben towards the bow, I gave him a thumbs up. He looked green around the gills, but returned the thumbs up gesture.

“I am the thing in the dark,” I repeated, then rolled over the side and let he ocean take me.

Chapter 16

BEN HAWKING THOUGHT I was crazy when I sketched this part of the plan out to him earlier, the part where I would swim through shark-infested waters. “You just don’t understand sharks,” I’d said. Certainly, they were still there, circling and waiting. The key was not to flop around on the surface, acting like prey, and there was very good chance they would ignore me.

So I let the clammy saltwater close over my head, kicked my feet, headed straight down. Something yanked sharply on my leg, and I let out a sigh of relief. The rope was still attached, tied securely around my ankle. I waited some more, comfortable down there under the surface. Right now it was the safest place to be. The stuff above the waterline was what worried me.

Another few seconds passed, then the rope tugged reassuring at my ankle. That was the raft continuing to drift in the same direction it had been going, towards the
Purple
, and that tug was what I had been waiting for. Rolling off a moving boat into the ocean can be disorienting, and that tug acted as my compass. I pointed myself in that direction, gave another single kick, and drifted. I waited again, let my body slide through the water, until I judged I must be under the keel. Cautiously, I let myself rise a bit, and banged fiberglass.

Bingo,
I thought.

Pulling myself along, I made it up the far side of my boat and let just my eyes and mouth poke out of the water. I opened them both, using my mouth to take quick, shallow breaths, but mostly focused on using my eyes to take in my surroundings.

No one to see. The deck still seemed clear. Visibility was very good under the glow of the little electric lanterns strung up above the deck.

Carefully, I untied the rope around my ankle, found a good, solid o-ring built into the side, and tied the rope on using a bunt line hitch. It was a good sailing knot, one where pulling would only tighten it.

At exactly that moment, all the lights on the boat went out.

The darkness jarred me, made me wonder what exactly was in store for me on board, but in the end I thought it would be better for me. The boat belonged to me, after all. I knew her best. The darkness belonged to me too.

“I am the thing in the night,” I whispered.

The deck scratched at my forearms as I dragged myself aboard. I stayed low, army crawled across the bow, reached the superstructure. The wet fiberglass was cool to the touch, and I shivered. The wind picked up behind me, buffeting the boat from side to side.

Peering around the corner of the superstructure revealed the stern, seemingly abandoned. We’d checked the conning tower on the way in, and it was abandoned too, which meant that everyone must be below. My feet suddenly seemed huge and heavy, every footstep its own earthquake. I placed one foot in front of another very carefully, and edged my way to the back.

Halfway there, I reached up towards the one of the small storage compartments that were nestled all over the boat. They were hard to see, and harder to find, but as captain I knew each and every one. This one sat just out of reach, even on my tiptoes. Silently, I used the lateral pieces of the rail as rungs on a ladder. I walked m hands up the side, took a step up, and repeated until I balanced on the very top of the railing. Reaching into the opening, my hands grasped the canvas bag stowed inside.

I glanced down. Dark clouds pulled back like a curtain, and for a brief second the rail sparkled in the moonlight.

It’s wet,
I realized, just a second too late.

I slipped.

The grip of my shoes gave way. I snatched desperately at empty air with one hand as I fell, the other hand dragging the canvas sack down with me. My shoulder hit the deck with a resounding thud. Then my shoulder slipped as well, and I was headed for the water.

Visions of sharks, razor-tipped mouths gaping, danced in my head. Swimming underwater, controlled and ripple-less, was one thing. Hitting the surface, splashing and floundering about, was quite another. They’d take me for food in an instant. I knew I couldn’t let that happen.

Frantically, I reversed the roll, pushed away from the water, and hit the bulkhead as well. All together that was two solid thumps.

Frozen on the deck, I waited for the shouts and the stomping feet. Nothing came of it. Total silence, as though the place were a ghost ship, empty and adrift.

Too good to be true.
That was the phrase that floated up out of the depths of my mind. My gut tingled at me. Something was wrong. Time to sharpen up my senses, because I was most definitely not alone.

I stayed down on my belly, moved again, dragging the bag with me. The deck on the
Purple
had been due for a sanding, and I had put it off. Now I paid for it: for every inch of forward progress, splinters wormed their way through my thin cotton shirt and planted themselves in my chest and stomach.

Breath hissed out between my lips, my teeth clamped shut to prevent crying out. I reached out, planted my hands and pulled. Pulled. Pulled again, feeling a million tiny daggers go in each and every time.

The corner of the bulkhead loomed in front of me. I made myself flush against the wall, peered around the corner. The opening to the stairs lay here at the stern, just forward of the bubble housing the engine.

The stairwell seemed empty. Quick as could be I slithered over to the rail and popped open the plastic access panel on the back of the engine. Greasy metal parts shone back at me, then disappeared as clouds overtook the moon once more.

I waited, cursing under my breath, and my epithets seemed to do some good. The clouds covered a fair portion of the sky, but only moments later the moon found a hole and blazed down at me, illuminating the interior of the engine as well as any flashlight.

That was the second bit of good luck in the plan so far. I prayed it would hold together a bit longer.

Piece of luck number three: the plastic tube, the fuel line, was miraculously repaired. As we had suspected, they had carried a fake faulty tube along with them, then switched them out. Once we had gone, they must have switched them back.

I glanced furtively over my shoulder and looked into the yawning opening of the stairs. No one coming.

The distributor cap came out of my pocket and screwed easily into place. The engine should operate normally now. The next thing on my list was the diciest. Ben had objected to it when I’d laid it out, but not once we’d considered each and every scenario that might play out here tonight. The thought of being murdered will make a person do crazy things, I suppose.

I pulled the supplies out of the canvas bag, and set to work. The procedure I had planned was simple enough, and indeed, it only took a me another minute. With everything in place I started to close the engine hatch, then remembered the most important thing of all: the fuel caps.

I unscrewed them, pocketed them, and snapped the hatch closed. Hopefully all of that would be unnecessary. If Ben had pulled off his half of the plan, they’d never see me coming.

From the bag, I drew long, thin piece of metal. It was a fillet knife, used for cleaning fish, flexible and wickedly serrated. It felt good clamped between my teeth. I edged up the top of the staircase, pressed against the bulkhead there, and looked down.

Nothing. All the lights out, darkness, and nothing. My ears strained to make out something over the hiss of the waves. Only silence spouted from opening in front of me.

Trouble,
I thought.
Silence means trouble.

Luckily, I didn’t plan on taking the stairs.

I edged around the other corner of the superstructure, to the port side, and felt along the fiberglass with my fingertips. They struck an edge, an uneven plane in the side of the boat. I dug in with my fingernails and pulled.

A panel, perhaps two feet by the same, pulled right out of the side. It was an electrical service shaft, a small path for the necessary wires to run between the above and below decks. The fit would be tight, but I had been inside of it before, and knew it was possible.

I pulled myself up by the top and slotted my legs into the hole, then pointed my toes and fed my torso into the shaft. Halfway down was a toehold for just this purpose, designed to allow someone to repair frayed or corroded wires. I searched for it with my right foot. My fingers started to slip.

Sweat began to bead on my brow. My fingers slipped another quarter-inch, and I knew I was going to fall.

Then my toe found the small ridge crafted into the wall of the shaft, and I lowered my body down into it, turned, and pulled at the panel I’d leaned just outside. Struggling, willing my heart rate down, I clicked it into place from the inside, and tried to look down.

There wasn’t room to crane my head. It didn’t matter: here inside the tiny shaft was a taste of true darkness. I couldn’t see the wall six inches in front of my face. My foot reached down again, but this time I only had to find the bottom of the shaft, the floor. As expected, it sat directly below me.

One foot down, then two. I lowered myself into a crouch, my knees pressed against the corners. My fingers found the edge of an identical panel here at the bottom of the shaft, and I lifted it out of its place, then lowered it gently to the floor.

I stepped out into the below decks, into my own cabin, the captain’s quarters. There were two portholes plugged through the bulkhead to my left. The angle wasn’t right for the moon, but some light did reflect off the waves and into the cabin itself. My pupils were dilated, either from the low light in the shaft or from adrenaline, or perhaps some combination of both. The cabin appeared before me in minute detail.

Empty.

I gave it another quick scan, then moved quickly and quietly to the door. Just outside lay the galley, the chart table, the couch and chairs. Unless all three of them were secreted in one of the guest staterooms, I was pretty sure at least one of them would be right in front of me when I opened the door.

Blood pulsed hotly in my veins. My hand trembled, but I reached it out anyway, grasped the knob, turned it. This was my moment. I reached up and pulled the nasty looking fillet knife from between my lips. I squeezed the rough grip, trying to reassure myself.

Something rustled outside the door.

Now or never.

I ripped the door open, hard and fast, took two quick steps and reached out for the light switch. Flicked it on, brandishing my knife wildly. Scanned the scene before me, ready to move.

Rigger and Carlos sat at the chart table, Ben Hawking between them. Ben’s face was white, his lips drawn into a tight line. His hair, for the first time, was out of place, mussed to the point of messiness. A thin trickle of blood drained from above one eye.

Rigger and Carlos both looked surprised to a satisfactory degree, shocked to see me come out of my cabin instead of down the stairs.

“Don’t move, “ I said, and pointed the tip of the fillet knife at them.

Ben’s eyes widened. He was looking right over my shoulder. I started to turn, but didn’t get far.

“Yes, don’t move,” a voice behind me muttered. A feminine voice with a hard edge.

A single word back-flipped through my head:
disaster
.

Then something heavy and cold crashed into the base of my skull, and the light I had turned on went out again.

Chapter 17

MY SYNAPSES FIRED randomly, launching me into senseless dreams.

Sand gritted between my toes. I was back on the beach, the one with a nuclear sun radiating on the horizon. A woman in red walked towards me. Where her face should have been there was nothing, just a blank space. For some reason, this didn’t alarm me.

She extended an arm. In her hand she held a single red rose. She was holding it out to me. I thought it was the most beautiful specimen I had ever seen, reached out, took it from her.

My hand began to hurt. I must have taken a thorn. The rose’s red petals began to dance and shimmer and I realized the flower was burning me. I tried to put it down, but my hand stayed firmly shut. I focused on my hand, tried to move it, but it was as though the connection between it and my brain had been severed. I shook my whole arm, trying to loose the thing, but it stayed stuck. Kept burning.