She decided the best place to be was on the wreckage of the Star Time, and kicked back up toward it. There was nowhere else on earth, above or below, where she was safe.
Fifty
The stairs brought Sara down to another landing. This one flooded with ankle-high water. The door was larger and Sara suspected it had to be this way in order to move furnishings and materials inside.
Which meant there was another way out somewhere beyond it.
It opened like an ancient meat locker. She flung it wide and tossed a glow stick into the darkness. A green trail skipped across the stone floor—just enough distance to bring some light to the narrow passageway below.
Sara lit another glow stick then, wound her arm back and pitched it even further. Then she broke another and kept it in her fist as she headed in. Overheard, footsteps echoed on the stairwell.
Sara rushed for the thin corridor. It was tighter than the hallways that ran beneath the decks of some of the commercial vessels she’d worked on. It didn’t make any sense down here unless these walls somehow moved. Given the sliding window mechanisms she’d seen above, there was probably a good chance that was the case.
Roche wouldn’t hand his treasure over so easily.
Sara’s shoulders scraped stonewalls. Inhuman grunts huffed somewhere behind her. She wouldn’t allow herself to look, instead taking careful steps toward the first glow light. The entrance door rumbled and slammed shut as she reached the first marker. Around her, the walls began to thrum.
She sprinted for the next glow light, throwing the stick in her fist further into the beyond, ensuring she knew where to run. In the same fluid swoop, she bent and picked the next stick off the ground without breaking stride, following the green light as she went.
The closing walls pressed on her shoulders, an undeterred squeeze that threatened to grind her skin right off the bone.
Once more, Sara hurled the glow stick into the beyond. The open space ahead appeared in the haze of a lime green filter. The room there was wide open if she could reach it.
On either side of her shoulders, two slabs of stone rushed to touch. She was nearly through, diving the rest of the way but failing to get clear. The walls caught her ankle. She tried to tug it clear, but the grip was unrelenting. The pressure began to feel like the prelude to a pop.
Sara reached for her scraped shoulders. The fresh injuries there were raw and tender, painful to touch. Her hand came back coated in fresh blood and she used that to lubricate her ankle.
It tore the skin off either side of the bulbous bone. She rolled back in an awkward summersault and whined, her body throbbing in a half dozen different places.
She wanted nothing more than to feel sorry for herself, but there’d be time enough for that if she survived. Right now, she rolled onto her stomach and crawled across the room, refreshed by the occasional cool air that gusted through this space like Isabella’s ghost.
Sara hobbled though endless caverns and storage spaces, much of it flooded. There were old cages littered with skeletons, collapsed stone shelving, and rusted swords that rested on a busted weapon’s rack.
As last she reached a spot where twirling stone steps disappeared straight down into open water. Squatting to look out across the low cave ceiling, she knew this would lead all the way to the ocean.
The stairs that spiraled up led to another set of rooms. These were directly above the chambers from where she’d come.
The floor there wore specific patterned tiles.
She hovered the light over them. This space seemed undisturbed because nobody had ever made it this far. But could that be true when Vernier had spent days down here?
There had to be a purpose to these designs. Some kind of method.
Roche had lived a pirate’s life, so the puzzle’s language was nautical. She stepped onto a square plate that seemed like an engraved ship’s stern. The other choices were farm implements, a soldier in uniform, and a powdered wig.
Those wouldn’t work.
The plate depressed as soon as her boots landed. From behind the walls on either side, bolt mechanisms clicked into place. She lifted her glow light to the nearest hole and found the sharpened point of a wooden spear ready to spring loose had she chosen poorly.
She hot-stepped next to the hull wheel, a diagonal jump that she barely made, and much harder given the injuries to her mangled foot. Her knees wobbled but she steadied herself against the wall. The path ahead remained easy to guess.
A masthead engraving was located directly above the wheel. Sara ignored symbols of government and order—Roche’s dismissal of the world he’d fled. Next was an anchor. Her final choice was between a horse, a Renaissance-era dress, a gavel, and a cannon. She imagined the ones Roche had lugged off his ship and placed in the parapet and jumped right on top of it.
“Everyone’s got a little pirate in them, huh, Roche?” Sara said, never more empowered. “I see you.”
She was safely on the other side now. Her heart danced as the vertical door grumbled, then lifted.
Sara crossed the threshold and a plate beneath her feet depressed, rushing the door back into place.
“Didn’t want to go back anyway,” Sara mumbled, almost inaudibly.
One slab of natural light was filtered through two-dozen baseball-sized holes in the ceiling. As close as Sara could figure it, she was over the residential part of this place and the intrusive light here beamed in from the sky as the moon lifted over the mountain face.
If she paused just right, she could taste tiny instances of fresh air blowing through the holes—enough to keep the air from going squalid.
Sara walked the perimeter of the room in awe. In the center, she found what must’ve been the helm of Roche’s old vessel—the ship that had earned him his riches. Of course he couldn’t part with it.
She went to the wheel like a speaker approached a lectern, clearing her throat as she put her hands around the jutting handles.
“And what do you do?” she said from the side of her mouth, afraid that the mere presence of her voice was enough to ignite whatever trap lay in wait.
She turned the wheel slowly and the lights overhead shifted. The holes looked like spider eyes and they moved with the wheel. It took the light off of her and slid the beam forward, illuminating a pile of what she first assumed was broken glass. But the shards were too thick and clustered for that.
Diamonds. The light landed on them and threw kaleidoscopic fire onto the wall. A carved skeleton face with refracting eyes glared back from there.
“Okay,” Sara said and tightened her hands around the helm, disturbed by the sight, giving the wheel another turn to see if the light would keep moving.
It did.
The holes moved on a circular arc and found another pile of diamonds across the way. The skull glowed once more, this time highlighting a single diamond’s tooth inside its open and delighted mouth.
“What am I missing?” Sara asked.
She cranked the wheel and the lights moved even further away from their starting point. The holes clicked into place, illuminating the first pile of diamonds and making the skull’s eyes burn hot once more.
Another crank and this time only half the holes in the ceiling turned. The second pile glowed along with the first and soon the skeleton’s smile matched its beaming eyes.
It looked eager, delighted to see someone come this far.
Sara left the hull and circled the room, wondering how much the diamonds on the floor might be worth. Could she cut her losses?
The skeleton’s grin widened as she approached. It wasn’t a trick of the light. Its mouth had opened wider. The brick behind the fallen jaw came loose with a simple touch, revealing a cradle that held a blue jewel beside an empty cradle. The light touched it and a sliver of the wall across the way shook, then stopped.
“My words are ghosts,” Sara said, thinking about Isabella’s words, Roche’s riddle. “They move across the moonlight, promises as purple fog.”
She dropped the jewel onto the cradle alongside the blue one and let the moonlight have both. The merging light that came off the stones was a deep, throbbing purple.
“Eat it, Mrs. Zimmer,” Sara shouted as a stuttering, disbelieving laugh fell past her mouth.
A small door swung open across the way and Sara pushed off the wall in order to sprint for it. The jamb rained stone shavings as she dove beneath. It slid shut almost immediately and Sara didn’t want to think what it’d feel like to be stuck on the other side after all that. She kept moving up another slight incline.
She was directly beneath the living space now. She tossed the glow light into the dark and hobbled into Roche’s vault.
At the sight before her, Sara began to cry.
The room was empty, save for two skeletons sitting across from one another, anything but at peace.
One single doubloon was wedged between two stone tiles. Sara stuffed it inside her pocket. In the center of the room, a single sheet of paper lay on the floor between the bodies. Only now did she understand that she was looking at Roche and Isabella.
The wall behind the larger skeleton was stained with faded blood. Bone was visible through shredded ribbons over his chest, that part of the rib cage blown inward.
The smaller skeleton was slumped against the other wall, a bayonet jammed into her ribs, wedged in between two bones. A flintlock pistol sat just outside its bony hands. And the ground around her was equally dark.
Sara looked at the page, recognizing Vernier’s writing.
The bitch has birthed twins. They are my problem now, because she has lost her mind. One night, just to spite me, she confessed at last to watching Vernier take the treasures from Roche’s vault and escape.
She wished so badly to hurt me, reminding me that I had given up everything to hunt for treasure and all I got was her.
Her. I caught the whore by the prison cells, on her knees for Roche, servicing him.
I should care. But there is too much else that matters. There is something wrong with the children. They grow violent, with each other and with wildlife. They do not kill to sustain themselves, but because they enjoy it.
I left the whore and her pirate inside their empty vault, curious to see if their love would remain intact after they were locked up. I have no intention of ever checking on them... may they die ever so slowly.
I fear the children will come for me soon, and there will be little I can do to defend myself from their madness.
I should never have come here.
Despite everything, Sara continued to sympathize with Isabella. You loved a man, she thought. A man who made bad choices.
Sara tapped the square stone plate that reached up from the floor, strangely confident in its function. The ceiling rumbled, raining down loose stones and pebbles. A small staircase grew from the wall. The pirate stood atop the steps, a wobbling blade in hand.
“Where are they?” Sara asked.
His voice was wheezy. A large red slice through his clothes. He gestured beside him. She came up to find one of those things on the floor, head separated from its shoulders.
“There’s another,” she said. “At least one.”
“It waits for us,” the pirate said. “Out there.”
“Want to help?” Sara asked. “Let’s kill it. Then kill the fish.”
The pirate looked at her in disbelief. “You sound just like the American.”
“I am one,” she said and felt sadness for Holloway. “Now how do we get off this fucking island?”
“There is no way.”
“Because of that fish? Nah, I’m going to cook that fucking thing for dinner.”
“There is no way.”
“If I told you we can kill it,” Sara said, “would you help me try?”
Fifty-One
“The Baroness,” Sara said. It felt like such an inspired plan she even snapped her fingers at the thought. “Guillaume was in contact with a woman called The Baroness. His boss. She’s the one who brought them here looking for Roche.”
They moved through the jungle, both parties unable and unwilling to fully trust the other. The pirate led and Sara kept her distance. Eventually, it was the other way around. Nobody wanted to keep their back to the other for too long.
Every so often they forgot they were bitter enemies and walked side-by-side, attempting to find an escape plan.
They stood on the riverbank that cut straight through the heart of the atoll.
There was a slight incline there, a hill just off the river. A makeshift fire pit dug through the center, with a wooden spigot held in place by thick branch supports.
A corpse dangled from it. It was the color of char, cooked beyond its features. Hogtied with the same leather strips that fashioned the hunter’s blades to their hilts. The body had one foot, the other leg amputated beneath the knee. Pieces had been sliced from its belly and arms, and a few finger bones were picked clean and discarded around the log stumps used for seats.
Sara dropped to her knees and vomited. The pirate stood solemnly and dipped his head in a motion of respect for one fleeting second. Then he went on the move, leaving Sara to follow.
The river wound through jungle terrain like a snake and they stopped again at its mouth when they came across the blood-spattered remains of a torn and deflated Zodiac boat.
“Let us keep moving,” the pirate said. The yacht wasn’t far. It lay in the shallows like an exhausted animal.
Waves broke over its deck, ocean fizz washing away debris.
Her heart drummed as she thought of Carly.
“Only one of us should go in there,” the pirate said.
“We don’t know what condition things are in.”
“If we both die—”
“If we don’t get that laptop, no one will ever find us,” she said. “So we’re as good as dead and you know that.”
The pirate took a deep breath. He started for the wreckage and she followed. His footsteps left deep imprints in the sand, as if he was pressed down by greater weight.
They waded into the water and swam straight for the overturned helm. The windows there were either punched out or busted. Jagged glass edges promised to chew them up if they moved wrong. Undaunted, the pirate passed through, then reached back, offering to guide Sara. This as her light sputtered and blinked dark. One final sign to discourage them.
She ignored it and tossed it away.
Sara had spent several days aboard this boat, but the terrain was halfway inverted now, making navigation surprisingly disorienting. Floors were walls and the walls were floors.
Something as simple as the stairwell leading down into the kitchenette was mostly inaccessible. They took careful steps over broken glass floors that had once been windows, climbing up onto the small stairwell wall and then hopping down onto kitchen cabinets. It was like being back inside Roche’s tomb, only that had been easier to traverse.
Sara thought something passed through one of the broken windowpanes, realizing the shadows here were exaggerated and expressionistic, wreaking havoc on her senses. Harsh angles that projected wide, crooked angles disorienting to look at.
Passage into the next hallway required a climb. The pirate boosted her in his hands so she could grip the ledge and hoist herself up. She turned back and begrudgingly offered the same courtesy.
The equipment room was located on the deck below. They fumbled across more stairwell walls and descended into ankle-high water.
The room they needed to reach was locked and submerged directly beneath them. If the Star Time had capsized the other way, they would’ve had to climb up into the room. A preferable option, because that awful fish couldn’t fly.
“It’s locked,” the pirate said. Repeated stomps wouldn’t budge it.
Sara hurried to the end of the hall and brought her boot heel through the safety glass now positi
oned on the floor. The glass broke away and she lifted the fire axe free.
The pirate tensed as he caught her stalking back toward him. She had a split second to think, good, but her eyes were plastered to the floor.
On where they needed to go.
She stood in a V with her legs on either side of the jamb, lifting the axe over her head. The blade slammed through the water and splintered the wood. Water bled out. Sara continued chopping until there was almost nothing left of the door but driftwood floating around their ankles.
The pirate didn’t wait for an invitation. He dove through and went to work at locating the package.
Sara let him work. Bloodthirsty thoughts challenged her. She wondered if she shouldn’t bury the axe in his skull as soon as he reappeared. He’d killed his way through everyone on this perverse treasure hunt. It was foolish to assume their allegiance was anything but limited. They were of mutual use to each other, but that lasted until the Baroness was called. Then she’d look him in his dimming eyes and tell him, “This is for my husband, you motherfucker.”
The pirate reappeared in the submerged jamb, rising up over the water and gasping for air. No time to communicate. He slipped back under as her thoughts returned to murder. When? Now? But could she make the first move?
Next time the pirate returned, it was with an oxygen tank. He climbed free and slipped it around his back, pushing a breather into his mouth and sliding a mask over his face. He went back under and was gone for a long time.
So long that Sara began to think he’d left her for dead. That he’d found the laptop and took another way out. But she was careful to recall the parameters of the room beneath her and thought that was impossible.
When he returned again, it was with another diving mask and a tank.
“The laptop is nowhere to be found.”
“Well he didn’t take it with him,” she said.
“Which room did he choose as his quarters?”
Sourness settled in her stomach. The diving gear meant they weren’t finished exploring this ship. They needed to go deeper.
Ocean Grave Page 26