The Boat

by Christine Dougherty

  Maggie’s hands were free.

  He stood, grabbing her elbow and pulling her up with him. They both staggered against the rail and then righted themselves. Steve hugged Maggie to him, briefly. “Okay, it’s okay we’re going to–”

  “What did you think?”

  Steve felt Maggie stiffen against him as John’s voice came from the dark doorway leading to the bridge. John slid out into the moonlight, grinning his dead shark grin. “Of course, it was very exciting up here, too. The way you fought against the ropes! And when you bashed your face! That part was great; really, really great.”

  “You’re a…a monster. An animal,” Maggie said, her voice tired, worn out from screaming. “Hasn’t there been enough? Haven’t enough people died?”

  An honest confusion suffused John’s features. “Is that what you think? That I’m trying to kill people? Why the heck would I do that?”

  “What do you call that?” Maggie’s voice was rising and she gestured to the deck below. “You killed Carl. You caused him to die. Don’t you get that?” Steve gripped her around the waist, afraid she was on the verge of launching herself at John.

  John shook his head. “He’ll be back up in no time. Look there; he’s already starting.”

  Shaking, Maggie turned her head. The sinkers had left Carl’s body. They did that as soon as someone began the change in earnest. Sinkers didn’t eat sinkers.

  Carl’s fingers were twitching. Then his legs spasmed and his arms. He looked like a big dog caught in a bad dream. His head rolled side to side, causing a chunk of his neck to slide off where the sinker had been chewing on it. Behind it was coagulated black. Carl’s blood–what was left of it–had become as thick and sticky as jam.

  His eyes opened and Maggie couldn’t see them very well from this height, but she knew they were milky, cataract covered. She’d seen it enough times to know. She sobbed and turned her face into Steve’s chest.

  John stepped closer. “See there? Told you so. Feel better?”

  Steve kept a wary eye on John, on the gun in John’s hand. He decided to take a different tack. “She feels better, yeah.” He felt Maggie stiffen in his arms and he squeezed her once, quickly.

  “Good. Then we can move along,” John said, his tone brisk. “I only had the one chain, unfortunately, but I feel like I didn’t really need it, to be honest, because–”

  “Because you still didn’t get to see, right? Not as much as you wanted to?” Steve’s voice is calm, conversational. He squeezes Maggie again.

  “Yes, that’s just exactly right. I was distracted. Distracted by you two up here and also, well, I have to keep a watch out, don’t I? I don’t want one of them to get me. I don’t want to be one of the walking dead. Not now that I’ve found more alive people.”

  Steve is nodding, his lips pursed consideringly as though he is trying to figure out a tough but ultimately solvable problem. “Yes, I see what you’re saying. You need a safe place to watch from, but you also need to be able to see the whole…the whole struggle.”

  John’s gaze is wary and flat. He’s gone from shark to Gila monster. “Yes, that’s exactly right. The struggle is…it’s the good part. It’s very exciting. To me, it is.”

  Steve nods again and squeezes Maggie one more time, a warning to be ready. “There’s something more though, isn’t there? More exciting to watch? Something else you want to see?” He felt Maggie buck slightly against him, but not as much as she might have if he hadn’t been preparing her.

  John Smith licked his lips and his eyes lit with cautious fire. He looked at the split on Maggie’s face, the blood, the bruise already appearing. “Yes, there is something else. Something better.” His voice was low and his eyes were heavy again, almost drugged looking.

  Steve’s voice dropped, too, becoming raspy. “You want me to hit her.” He didn’t ask this time, he knew; oh, yes, he knew. “Hit her and then fuck her. You want that…you want to see that.”

  John nodded again and Steve noted with satisfaction that the gun in John’s hand had drooped to the side. He kept the excitement and nervousness out of his own voice. “I’ll fuck her up and then I’ll fuck her out. Good?”

  John came another step closer and then faltered. He saw Steve’s eyes go to his gun. He brought it up sharply, aiming directly at Maggie. “Yeah. That’s what you’re going to do. Fuck her up and then fuck her out and then she’s taking a trip down one deck. To meet some of the other residents.”

  Steve looked into Maggie’s eyes. He still held her around the waist but now his hands went to her arms and he pushed her back a pace. He whispered, “I’m sorry,” and brought his hand back. He slapped her across the face, rocking her head back. He heard John gasp behind them, almost a pant.

  He brought his arm back again and slapped her backhand this time, sending her head the opposite direction, splitting her lip. She cried out and there was an answering squeal from John.

  Steve gripped her, danced her backward to the side railing. He pushed her against it, bending her slightly. He kissed her roughly and grabbed her breast through her t-shirt, bending her further back. “Scream,” he whispered in her ear.

  She screamed and the scream was petrified and furious; it tore at his heart. He twisted her breast and put his mouth over hers and she screamed again and it was muffled by his mouth and behind him, John was panting in earnest now.

  Steve fumbled at the snap on her jeans and pushed them down past her ass.

  In one swift movement, Steve knelt, his face level with Maggie’s crotch and he heard John’s hissing “yes!” behind him. He pulled her pants the rest of the way down, dragged them off. She screamed and now the scream was edged with tears. Her shaking hands beat lightly around his head like terrified birds. Her underwear were white cotton dotted with tiny, faded roses. They were torn at the seam on her waist, just under her belly button. He kissed the ragged tear, lightly and with tenderness, feeling both the cotton and her warm skin under his lips. He grabbed her ankles, closed his eyes, prayed.

  Then he stood, bringing her ankles up, and tumbled her over the rail and out into darkness. He pushed her outward at the same time with the hope that she wouldn’t hit another deck on her way to the water.

  Falling the forty feet to the water below, Maggie had time to hear John’s outraged howl and then, right before she hit the water, a gunshot.

  Then she was under.

  She struggled, churning in the water, disoriented and panicked and expecting a sinker to grab her arms or legs at any moment. Then her body, full of good oxygen, unhindered by heavy denim, righted itself and she kicked hard, propelling herself up. She broke through and the night air was warm, the stars a million, the moon gentle. She turned in a frantic circle. Everything was quiet.

  “Steve!” She looked up, expecting to see him diving after her, but there was no one at the railing. Not even John Smith. “Steve!” Her scream bounced off the uncaring hull of Flyboy and rang back to her ears as though the big boat was mocking her grief. She turned in another circle, hoping that he would pop up somewhere nearby. He didn’t. She screamed until she felt as though her throat was alight with fire and she sank as all the air left her lungs. Seawater filled her nose and mouth and she struggled up again, blowing the water from her lungs, choking, and still she screamed.

  She screamed for a nightmarish long time and then Dave appeared on the jet ski, still trailing the rowboat behind him. “Maggie!” he said and drew up even with her. He grabbed her hand and hauled her up behind him. “You’re okay? Not bit?”

  She shook her head no. She was so tired. She’d never been so tired. She leaned against Dave’s back. His voice came to her through his ribcage as much as through the air. “Steve and Carl?” he asked her and she shook her head no, unable to speak but trusting that he would feel the movement, would understand that they were gone. “I didn’t find anyone in the water,” he said. “Only you.”

  She nodded in acknowledgment. He cranked the throttle and turned the jet ski away
from Flyboy. She saw over his shoulder to ThreeBees sitting peacefully in the water. Just like before, she was home free. She’d never even tried to find Joe, to help him if she could. She knew he would have come for her. But now she could fix it; she could fix it as best she could.

  “You have to take me back.” Her voice rasped painfully and she swallowed, tasting salt. It was either seawater or her blood or both. She didn’t care. She tried to increase her volume. “Dave. Take me back!”

  “You got it, Maggie, we’re on our way,” he said, shouting over the engine whine.

  She shook her head again. “No.” She sat up and thumped his back. “Not there, not ThreeBees!”

  He throttled down and turned to her. He took in her battered face, her one eye beginning to blacken, her split lip. The long cut on her cheekbone.

  “Back to where, then?” he asked, confused.

  “Back to Flyboy. I’m going aboard.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  He’d fought her on it, of course he had, but not as much as she would have thought. She’d never felt so determined; had never known that it was this–this determination–that caused others to stand back and let you do what you wanted to do.

  She stood on the back ledge of Flyboy where they’d all been less than two hours prior and waved Dave away to continue his search for survivors in the water. Now it was just her. But she wasn’t here to clear the boat, she was only here to find Steve, if she could.

  She looked at the horizon. The sky was just beginning to lighten and the deep, inverted bowl was flattening to a uniform gray. She regretted that the last sunrise she expected she might ever see was not going to be a pretty one. Then she shrugged and turned away from that, too.

  The small deck was clear, and she ascended the starboard side stairs to the next deck and paused, scanning. This deck was clear, too, just two bodies lying near the far rail–she knew if she looked she’d probably find gunshot wounds to the heads. The sliding glass doors that led into the main salon were closed but a large spider-webbed crack ran through one from the bottom to the top. One hard push and the whole thing would crack apart. Listening carefully, she heard distant moaning. The belly of the boat must be filled with sinkers by now. If they blundered onto the stairs, then they might come up–but sinkers were too stupid to actively seek them out.

  The first time they’d come aboard, they were completely unprepared; she saw that now. They’d been like fish in a barrel, especially the guys who’d gone to the lower decks. There were no survivors on the boat by the time they’d gotten here, John Smith had made sure of that. Even a small army might not have stood a chance against a boat of sixty or so sinkers, not without foreknowledge.

  But now she knew what to look for, what to expect. She would go directly to the bridge and find Steve. If he was…if he was gone, dead…then she’d come right back down and take one of the jet skis still tethered to the back of Flyboy and get back to ThreeBees. At the thought of driving away from the sinker-filled Flyboy, a shift of unease tried to work its way into her consciousness but she stifled it. Whatever problem her brain had seen, she’d examine it later, not right now.

  She ascended the next set of stairs, thankful she could get to the bridge without going inside the boat. It would be way too claustrophobic in there, too dark. Too many nooks and crannies where a sinker might be…what? Resting? Did they rest? She shook her head to clear it. This was the deck below the bridge deck and she was hoping to see Steve on this one with–at worst–a gunshot to the leg, making his way down to safety, resting…waiting for her?

  “Steve,” she said, spurred on by a sudden flood of anticipation, and peeked over the edge.

  Carl swiped at her head, missing by mere millimeters. She could feel his fingertips brush across the top of her head as she gasped and nearly fell backwards down the stairs. She braced herself and looked up in time to see Carl disappear from view. The chain still holding him to the rail clanked as he stepped out of sight.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She hadn’t considered that Carl might still be there, but of course he was. After all, where would he have gone?

  She thought and then went back to the lower deck, scanning the salon doors for movement from inside. She saw none and crossed to the deck box, avoiding the half-sinker that Carl had knifed the first time they’d come through. She lifted the lid and rifled through pillows, a throw, a plastic margarita pitcher, a line of cotton rope… “Come on, come on, there must be something,” she said, her words an impatient sigh. Then she heard a metallic clank. She pushed aside a canvas with a flamboyantly ugly sunrise painted on it and then, at the very bottom of the box, she found a horseshoe set. The original owners of Flyboy must have used it when they went ashore for beach picnics or maybe even lawn parties. Next to it was a badminton net and an old shuttlecock with tattered tail feathers.

  Maggie pulled out the two iron posts that in better days would have been hammered into the sand at the beach to catch the flying horseshoes. The ends of each were rusty and sharply pointed. She hefted them. Heavy. She had nowhere to put the extra post so she held one in each hand and, avoiding the half corpse again, went back to the stairs.

  She watched and listened. Nothing. Then she heard a faint clink: the chain. She ascended halfway up the stairs. “Carl?” she said, her voice low. There was an immediate, frantic clanking and Carl appeared near the top of the stairs, the chain pulled tight behind him. He reached for her, straining, but he could go no further. His arms swung in agitation and then Maggie heard a sound like wind through fall-dead leaves. Carl, trying to talk.

  His throat had been eaten away and part of his chest. The links were buried in the blackened meat of his neck and Maggie wondered briefly how much longer he would be held before the chain just cut right through his spine.

  He had the advantage of the higher ground and she wondered how she was going to get the spike in his eye before he was able to grab her. He had a much longer reach than she did. She wished she had a gun. She wished she’d taken Steve up on the lessons he’d offered her in firing one.

  Well, too late now, she told herself. Figure something out.

  Then she had a thought.

  She went back down the stairs again and Carl disappeared. Both times, she’d said something as she came up. Maybe if she kept quiet, he would forget she was here. They forgot things in the blink of an eye.

  She crept back up, breath held, iron posts clutched in either hand, staying silent. She peered over the edge, tensed and ready for anything. Carl was on the other side of the deck, the chain pulled taut behind him. A large seagull stood on the railing just out of his reach. As Maggie watched, Carl lunged forward and the bird lifted itself up on large wings as its head darted forward. It flapped a few feet backward, still on the rail, but now something dangled from its mouth–Carl’s eye. The seagull snapped its head up, opening its beak and the eyeball flipped into its mouth and down its throat. Still Carl fought and struggled toward the bird.

  It tilted its head at Carl, watching his waving arms, seeming to gauge them, and it hopped a foot closer. Probably going in for the other eye, Maggie thought. Her stomach twisted with grief, outrage, anger and even a dark variety of humor.

  She’d had enough. She slid the few feet to the stairs that would take her to the bridge. She’d worry about getting back down when (if) the time came. She lightly ascended to the bridge, slipping distractedly on blood that had puddled on one riser.

  The door was pushed in giving onto the dark bridge. There was no one there. On the far side, the door to the observation deck was closed. She went to that door and peeked out, seeing nothing. She opened the door.

  “Steve?” she said, voice barely above a whisper. From where she stood, she could see Carl below, still struggling to grab the seagull. His chain clinked and clanked fretfully as the bird flapped and danced just out of his reach.

  “Steve?” She pushed the rest of the way out onto the deck, but it was empty. There was a pool of blood near the far rail where
she’d gone over. It was just beginning to dry at the edges; then she remembered slipping on the stairs coming up. She made her way back through the bridge, this time actively looking for a blood trail and she found it. Someone had come through here, bleeding pretty heavily. It continued down the stairs.

  As she was descending past Carl, she paused, wishing she had a way to relieve him of his torment. The seagull was eating him piece by piece. She shuddered as it nipped in for a go at one of Carl’s lips, pulling it out like a fat, elastic worm.

  Sorry, Carl, I’m so sorry, she thought and continued down.

  The blood trail led into the lounge on the next deck. She hurried through, trying to see everything at once, conscious of being silent. The rising sun was beginning to light the inside of Flyboy but it only served to make the space scarier. In the half-light, distracted by the glittering mirrors and chandeliers, everything seemed animated, moving eerily.

  The trail took her through the lounge, past a dining room that had been stripped of its finery, and then into a kitchen.

  Steve sat on a stool, slumped over the large butcher-block that dominated the middle of the kitchen. He wasn’t moving. Half his face–the half she could see–was covered in blood from a large knot on his forehead. That must be where all the blood had come from. Had he been shot in the head?

  She sucked in a breath and then checked herself and went to him, lowering the horseshoe posts to the counter as she went by. She reached out a shaking hand and placed it on the exposed nape of his neck. He was warm. Thank god.

  She shook his shoulder and put her mouth to his ear. “Steve,” she said but he didn’t move. She slid her hand around to the side of his neck and felt for his pulse…nothing. Her stomach sank. She palpated his neck, moving her fingers slightly and was so surprised by the strong pulse under her fingers that she nearly jumped back.

  A flood of relief weakened her knees and she gripped his shoulder harder than she’d intended.