And just like that, everyone was concentrating less on the peculiar circumstances surrounding their boat and its captain and more on exactly how much they disliked Cory again. “What is even your problem?” Katherine asked him. The other tourists, whether they meant to or not, started to converge around him. “You obviously don’t want to be here even a little bit, so why not just turn around and go home to let the rest of us actually enjoy this?”
“You actually think any of you are going to enjoy this?” Cory asked. He kicked the wood of the boat’s railing to emphasize his point. The wood shuddered more than safety regulations would have deemed acceptable anywhere else in the world.
Simon tried to hide how much the display disturbed him. He really was getting a little concerned about the safety of the boat, but he didn’t want to let Cory know that he thought the tall man was even a little right. Something told Simon that any such sign or display would turn Cory into an even more insufferable know-it-all.
“Um, excuse me?” Lucas asked one of the deckhands. “Could one of you tell us what we’re supposed to do with our stuff? Are we all supposed to go to some kind of bunks or something?”
The deckhand said something in what Simon assumed was Portuguese. He also made a few gestures that Simon believed were supposed to be directions, but before anyone could ask the man to elaborate, he was off again to do whatever it was he was supposed to do on the boat.
Katherine gave everyone else a look that was both confused and annoyed. “So I guess maybe we should go find our own bunks? Or rooms? Or whatever the hell it is we’re supposed to have. Does anyone here even know for sure?”
A quick, non-verbal survey resulted in everyone shaking their heads.
“So, is there anyone that was aware this was what we were getting when they signed up for the trip?” Simon asked.
“No,” Miriam said. “Were you?”
“This trip was a graduation gift,” Simon said. “I was too excited to even be going to pay too much attention to the details. I just figured I shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth.”
“Uh, yeah,” Miriam said. “And I’ve kinda gotta admit something: Katherine and I signed up for this trip while we were drunk. We weren’t exactly paying attention to the details, either.”
“Lucas bought this trip for me as a present,” Lara said. In response, her boyfriend wrapped his arms around her from behind. “Neither of us has a lot of money, so we just took whatever we could get.”
They all turned to look at Cory to see if he would join in the conversation, but he was too busy sullenly sulking around the front of the boat to pay any attention to what they were saying.
Right, Simon thought. So none of them had been completely aware of what they were getting into with this trip. But he still wasn’t going to let the less-than-stellar details get him down. So the trip might be a bit on the rough side. Again, this was the Amazon, one of the wildest places still left on Earth. It would have been disingenuous to expect a cruise ship or anything like that. At the very least, they were on a boat that looked like it had done its rounds up and down the massive river. The captain had to know what he was doing.
As if on cue, the captain came back out onto the deck. Before even acknowledging any of them, he went to the edge of the deck, positioned himself so that his crotch was just over the railing, and started to pull down the zipper of his pants.
“Um, excuse me?” Miriam said to him.
The captain startled, and Simon realized that he hadn’t been ignoring them after all. He simply hadn’t been bothered to notice their existence.
“What are you doing here?” the captain asked, whirling to see them with his fly still halfway down on his pants. His thick accent might not have been Russian after all, but Simon couldn’t place exactly where it was from. “Get off my boat, or I’ll call security.”
Simon and several of the others looked around just to make sure there was no security of any kind.
“Um, we’re supposed to be here?” Lucas said to him. “We’re your customers. We all paid to do your five-day trip on the Amazon.”
The captain stared at them all through heavily lidded eyes before he blinked. “Oh. Oh! Yes, um. Welcome. Aboard? Yes, aboard. That thing.”
And then he turned and started back to the cabin as though he was planning on further ignoring them.
“Wait!” Miriam called after him. “Aren’t you supposed to give us some kind of orientation or something? Tell us what to expect on the trip? Or even at least let us know where we should be putting our stuff?”
The captain looked surprised that anyone had deigned to speak to him like that. He turned to one of his deckhands and spoke to him in hurried, confused Portuguese, leaving the young tourists to speak amongst themselves again for several minutes.
“Miriam, have you noticed anything off about our intrepid captain?” Katherine asked her friend.
“What, do you mean besides the fact that he looks like he intentionally smears mud in his beard to get it to stick out in all those directions?”
Now that the two of them were talking about it, Simon also realized that something seemed off about their captain, and it wasn’t just his bizarre behavior. The way he moved, Simon would have thought they were already out on the river instead of docked. He swayed just a little this way and that, like he was compensating for the rocking of waves that only he could feel.
As soon as it occurred to him exactly what was wrong with the captain, Simon had to wonder why he hadn’t realized it sooner. But then again, maybe he could be forgiven for automatically assuming that the captain they were paying to take them through one of the wildest parts left on Earth would be responsible enough not to be drunk at the beginning of their voyage.
Cory joined the group again, and for once, the words that came out of his mouth actually added something to their conversation without making everyone want to smack him. “I recognized that smell on his breath. That’s the same whiskey my uncle used to drink all the time.”
“He doesn’t drink it anymore?” Lara asked.
“No. He drove drunk and smashed his car into a construction crane. Killed himself instantly.”
“Uh. Oh,” was all Lara could say in response.
“Well shit,” Lucas said. He began to gather up his luggage and looked like he was about to take it off the boat before it could leave the dock.
“What are you doing?” Lara asked him.
“Babe, what do you think I’m doing? I’m not going down the Amazon River with a drunk captain.”
“But we put so much of our savings into this trip!” Lara said. “We can’t just walk away from it now after we’ve come this far.”
“Yeah, and also, do you know something that the rest of us don’t regarding transportation?” Miriam asked. “Because merely getting bussed down to this point was difficult enough. The bus or vans or whatever only run down this far because they were paid to. It’s not like they’re going to just pop up at random again just in case there happens to be someone waiting for them at a dock in the middle of nowhere.”
“There’s going to be a ride waiting for us at the place where we get off the boat,” Katherine said. “Other than that, you might as well walk off into the middle of the rainforest. It would get you back to a town or city faster than waiting.”
“Come on. There’s got to be something,” Lucas said. “Whatever company set this tour up, they had to provide some way to go back if there was a problem.”
“Honey, I’m the one that set up this trip for us,” Lara said. “I had to, if I wanted to do it on our budget.”
“And you didn’t check to see if the captain might be an incompetent, raging alcoholic?”
“How the hell was I supposed to do that? He’s a guy that runs his own tour boat on the Amazon. It’s not like he’s going to have a page for Yelp reviews.”
“You see, everyone?” Cory asked. “I told you this was going to be a shitshow.”
“Look, I don’t think
there’s anything we can do about any of this,” Simon said. He was a bit surprised that he had the nerve to speak up, but no one else seemed to be getting anywhere. “We’re here, and we can’t leave by any means other than the boat taking us to where it’s eventually supposed to stop. And yeah, the captain certainly seems iffy, but it’s not like this is his first time.” Or at least Simon didn’t think it was. He had to trust that Aunt Annie hadn’t set him up with some random guy no one had ever heard of. “He’s obviously done this a time or two, and despite the state of everything, he’s still sailing and his boat is still floating.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Cory said. “This guy has so much booze in him that I’m afraid to light a match around him.”
“Well, I guess we don’t really have a choice at this point,” Katherine said. “We’re here and we can’t go back the way we came. So the best we can do is try to make the best of this. And maybe Simon’s right. Maybe there’s more to our captain than meets the eye. He might not be the total screw-up that he looks like.”
As one, they all looked in the direction of the captain. He’d finished talking with his deckhand, and against all odds, he did suddenly seem to be lucid. The captain approached them again, and although he still wobbled, at least this time he looked like he was trying not to sway on his feet.
“I apologize,” the captain said. “I got off on the wrong toe. Toe? Foot. I mean foot. Please, take your belongings to the bunks just below deck. Once you have settled in, come back up and we’ll begin the tour. Welcome to the Amazon.”
It was hardly the greatest welcome speech in history, but at least it was better than what the captain had offered them earlier. The deckhand that the captain had been speaking to waved for them all to follow him, presumably down to their bunks, and Simon allowed himself a sliver of hope. This could still be his dream vacation. It might be rough, but then he hadn’t expected life going through the Amazon to be easy. As long as he kept his expectations at a reasonable level, this could still be a trip he would never forget.
Shark: Infested Waters Is available feom Amazon here!
Shadow Of The Abyss Page 24