Watersleep

by James Axler

  Doc, Jak, Dean and Krysty followed, all staying close to the handrail along the passageway. Already the seas were becoming choppy.

  "Why do we have to slink down here?" Dean asked. "Hiding out like a bunch of scared night stalk­ers at sunrise."

  "Don't let your father hear you talking like that," Krysty said, her keen ears picking up on Dean's monologue. "He's doing the right thing."

  "Why isn't he coming, then?"

  "Ryan knows if we're below, we're safe. He doesn't have to worry about anyone being thrown overboard or hit by lightning or falling down on the deck and breaking a leg. This way, he can fully focus on keeping us on course."

  "Yeah, I guess you're right, Krysty," Dean said as he sat down on a wall bunk. "Still sucks, though."

  "I must stress even at this early juncture that your slang is most vile, young Cawdor, but I have to agree. This does indeed suck," Doc said weakly.

  "Doc, you look even paler than usual," Mildred said. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing, Dr. Wyeth. Put away your medical bag."

  "You've been acting funny since we came on board. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were—"

  "Seasick," Jak interrupted with a snicker of delight. "Right, Doc?"

  "Affirmative." Doc stumbled over and sat down on a folding chair. Both man and chair wobbled as the boat encountered choppier waters.

  "Glass stomach's bad," Jak said. "Worse than jumping."

  "As you might recall, young Lauren, I am usually not the only one stricken during our mat-trans excur­sions," Doc said tightly, rubbing his stomach.

  "Only one turning green now!" Jak said, grinning.

  AS LONG MINUTES TURNED into hours, all of the com­rades knew the storm wasn't getting any better. Rather than turn back, Ryan and J.B. decided to sail farther inland in an attempt to avoid the demon storm clouds that had been bearing down on them merci­lessly.

  A good plan, but it didn't make for an easy voyage.

  Still, all was as quiet and uneventful inside the long stateroom when Krysty suddenly bolted upright from the bunk she was resting on.

  "What?" Jak said, instantly alert.

  Krysty didn't answer, her green eyes wide as she took in the room, looking but not comprehending what she was staring at in the real world.

  She was somewhere else than the Patch.

  "Something wrong, Krysty?" Dean asked.

  "Mebbe so," she said. "I wonder if everything's okay above."

  "Take look. Back soon," Jak replied, and vanished up the stairwell.

  "Woe is me, for I shall never take another sea voy­age for as long as I shall live," Doc moaned. "I have nothing left to give—my stomach is empty, cursed sickness! Shall I donate a vital organ to your lust for watching me suffer?"

  "Quiet, Doc! I've got to concentrate."

  There was a new menace, an unnatural threat be­yond the storm and the thrashing sea.

  This threat was man-made, but of what type she couldn't tell. Her latent mutie senses had been in tur­moil since they had left port in Florida. Drawing much of her inner strength from the land itself, Krysty never felt at ease when on water anyway, and she had attributed her feelings to that.

  "Something's wrong, something's bad wrong," she murmured to herself like a mantra.

  Mildred got up and reached over to feel the red­head's sweaty brow. "God, Krysty, you're on fire," the doctor said.

  "Got to warn Ryan. There's danger. I'm seeing red—bloodred."

  "What kind of danger? The storm?" Mildred was starting to get caught up in Krysty's mounting hys­teria, the buffeting of the boat, the loud crashing of the thunder, all had started to take a toll on the doc­tor's usual internal calm. And for Krysty to mention seeing red, that meant they were all in even greater danger than they might have earlier expected.

  But from what?

  Before Mildred could verbalize her own fears, a second loud boom of thunder exploded in the night, but unlike the others, this one came from below the boat. Everyone in the crowded cabin was thrown back, then heaved forward as the yacht yawled from the impact. Doc fell to his knees, not hearing but still feeling his worn bones crack in protest. His lion's-head swordstick flew out from his right hand, skip­ping like a tossed stone across the soaked carpeted floor.

  "Accursed ocean," he said bitterly from clenched teeth, trying to shake off the pain from his aching kneecaps. "If I survive, I shall be a bloody invalid by the end of this sea voyage."

  Dean slammed into Mildred, and the woman man­aged to hang on to the boy's shirttail, keeping him upright. Doc reached out and was able to latch on to a metal lip that was attached to the bulkhead.

  The remaining two members of the party weren't as lucky. Krysty had been thrown off her feet and onto her upper back and neck. The suddenness of the explosion smashed her down with terrific force, knocking her instantly unconscious as she slid toward the gaping hole that had just appeared in the hull.

  Jak, who had been coming back down the companionway into the lower part of the boat when the blast occurred, didn't have a second to react as he was thrown forward down the narrow passageway and directly into the newly created hole, almost simulta­neously with Krysty's descent.

  "Jak!" Mildred screamed, but there was no time to respond.

  The albino twisted his lithe body as he fell, man­aging not to break his neck when he hit the churning water. Gasping for breath, his lungs emptied from both the impact and the sudden cold, Jak struggled to maintain some kind of proper sense of which way was up. Seeing Krysty's limp body already being sucked into the undertow beneath the vessel, he pushed him­self down farther, under the chilling ocean, and grasped a fistful of long red hair.

  And both of them vanished in the water from Mil­dred's sight

  .

  ON THE DECK OF THE CRAFT, Ryan had turned the controls over to J.B. seconds before the blast. The one-eyed man was hurled into a console and he grabbed for purchase, trying to keep erect.

  "What the fuck was that?" Ryan bellowed. "You hit a rock?"

  "Out here? No way!" J.B. replied, his voice shrill and load against the backdrop of the storm. "That was an explosion of some kind!"

  "Who would try and attack us in the middle of this?" Ryan yelled, pulling himself up from the slip­pery deck to his feet.

  The Armorer's keen mind raced for an answer. "No one. We must've hit a mine."

  "Then we're going down," Ryan said flatly. "Find the life rafts. I'm going below to check on the others. Don't worry about the controls. We're triple screwed now anyway. I don't think we're going to crash into another boat out here alone in this mess."

  "On it," J.B. said, heading out behind Ryan onto the unprotected deck and into the full brunt of the storm. Already the yacht was starting to list badly, and the stern was beginning to rise on a incline as the lower hull took on water. Whipping whitecaps were everywhere across the surface of the churning ocean. The increased activity caused heavy seas to spring up and crash down over the Patch's bow, sending shud­ders down the length of the boat's hull.

  As Ryan entered the stairwell that led to the galley and berths, he was met by a weeping Mildred, who was trying to help a pained Doc up the steps. Below Doc, Dean was pushing the old man by the buttocks. A look of sheer panic was pasted on the boy's face. Ryan reached down past the struggling Mildred and snatched Doc by the collar of his frock coat, boldly pulling the older man up with one hand. Coasting on adrenaline, Ryan stared past his son and realized no one else was coming.

  "Where's Krysty?" Ryan shouted in Mildred's ear, trying to make himself heard above the din of a loud crack of thunder. "Where's Krysty and Jak?"

  "She went under—through the hole," Mildred screamed back over the creaking and groaning of the hull. "She was limp! Had to be unconscious. Jak fell in after her, but at least he was alert and awake. I think he was trying to grab her."

  Mildred had known Ryan for some time now, and she'd seen him caught up in the throes of any and all emotions. Usually his face was a mas
k. The only way to judge any emotional turmoil was to look at the color of the long scar that stretched from his eye to his chin. The more upset Ryan got, the redder the scar would pulse.

  This time, even the scar was ghostly white.

  Ryan spun back up and away from Mildred. He spotted a dirty coil of rope hanging beside the companionway and snatched it off the hook, unraveling the coil as he stepped as quickly as he could toward the edge of the boat. Once, he fell down in a sprawl as the bow of the vessel rose, then suddenly dropped away. Removing his blaster, he tossed the pistol to Dean with one hand.

  "Hold this!" he bellowed, then began to quickly tie the rope around his waist. By now, the boat had a near thirty-degree angle with the nose beginning to rise high in the night air.

  J.B. ran over, carrying a tight bundle of plastic. "Only one raft, but it's big," he yelled. "Should hold us all."

  The Armorer paused, noting the absence of Krysty and Jak. "Where's—?"

  "Overboard," Ryan said. "Get that raft up and ev­erybody in it. I'm going over, but I'll need an anchor so I can find my way back."

  J.B. pulled a cord, and the raft began to fill with compressed air. Once Ryan could see the old predark inflating mechanism wasn't going to malfunction, he handed his oldest living friend the end of the rope.

  "Tie this to the raft."

  "We've lost them, Ryan," the Armorer bellowed, making an effort to be heard over the din of the storm. "You'll never find her in this muck!"

  "I've got to try," he replied, then he was gone, over the side.

  Below the surface, the water was no calmer. The sea churned all around, and his sense of direction was compromised. A vision from his dream in the mat-trans chamber rushed into his mind's eye. In that vi­sion, the water had been much clearer, and had color.

  Ryan realized the vision had been wrong.

  The ocean was neither green nor blue. The ocean was black.

  NOT FAR AWAY from the sinking yacht, down lower on the Georgia coastline, in a tiny, dimly lit room crowded with blinking lights and softly whirring com­puter equipment, a white blip appeared on a normally blank sonar screen.

  The sight was so unusual, the crew-cut man seated in front of the screen rubbed his eyes in disbelief. A blip meant something big was going down, at least, that was what his training had told him. The anti­quated gear in the room was prone to hiccups such as this one in their attempts to register phantoms in the deep.

  Normally no one would have even been in this chamber, but there was a test in progress, a preliminary run. As such, he felt his duty required him to pass this information along to his commanding offi­cer.

  In the days before the nukecaust, this was known as "passing the buck."

  "Sir?" he asked a man who was watching over operations from across the room.

  "Yes?"

  "You might want to check this."

  The man approached. He was dressed in the same type of uniform, with tan, pressed slacks and a short-sleeved buttoned-up shirt of the same color. He was also wearing an embossed name tag that read Brosnan.

  Brosnan exhaled a burst of air from his lungs as he stepped up next to the seated man at the screen. "What is it now, Regis?" he asked tiredly.

  "Something's set off one of the mines," Regis said.

  "Second one this month, both times during tests. Wonder what triggered it this time?"

  "Don't know, sir. Maybe another one of those weird-ass mutie fish."

  "Maybe," Brosnan said, checking another screen. "Maybe not."

  "That's what I think," Regis said confidently.

  "Weather reports a hell of a storm blasting across the water out there. The mine was hit by lightning, no doubt," Brosnan said. "Or maybe you're actually right, and it was another one of those mutant fish. They seem to be becoming a problem. I think the communication buoys we put out there are drawing them in somehow."

  "Lightning. Sure. No doubt," Regis agreed. "Sounds good." A pause. "So, I guess you'll be the one answering to the Admiral if you're wrong?"

  Brosnan considered it for a moment. He was sec­ond-in-command to the Admiral, but the title was merely a formality given for his loyalty and seniority. The title also came because Brosnan knew not to make even the slightest move without consulting with his master first.

  Brosnan picked up the microphone at the far end of the room and pressed the Send key.

  "Mothman One, this is Base. Mothman One, this is Base. Do you copy?"

  "Copy that." The comm units provided excellent clarity, even with the nearby storm.

  "I need to speak to the Admiral."

  There was a slight burst of static.

  "Mr. Brosnan, I requested radio silence," an icy voice said. "You were supposed to track and observe, not talk."

  "Yes, sir, I know, but something's triggered one of the mines across the bay. Thought you might want to have a look, seeing as how you're already out that way."

  "Our own sensors already caught the explosion, and we're almost at the site now," the voice of Ad­miral Poseidon said briskly. "Is there anything else?"

  Regis winced at Brosnan as he replied "No, sir, Brosnan out."

  "Wonder what he thinks set it off?" Regis asked. Brosnan didn't answer.

  They would both hear about this when the Admiral returned to port.

  Chapter Twelve

  The yellow life raft bobbed in the ocean, a lifesaving cork of inflated plastic and canvas. In the raft, in vary­ing degrees of condition from the ordeal of the night before, were J.B., Dean, Mildred and Doc. Ryan was also seated in the raft, but on the other side, as far away from human contact as he could manage in the limited quarters.

  All of them were sodden with seawater, but their clothing was rapidly starting to dry out in the heat of the sun.

  Each person in the raft was silent, each one adrift physically, but also mentally in his or her own private thoughts and memories. Ryan could hear the calling of gulls, blown out to sea in the storm, now stuck hovering, far from land.

  "Not quite ten o'clock," J.B. said quietly after glancing at his chrono. "Going to be another hot one."

  Receiving no answer, he returned to tending his Uzi, taking the weapon apart to clean and dry it as best he could without the right supplies.

  "At least it stopped raining," Mildred noted softly, trying to pick up J.B.'s thread of conversation. The lapping of the waves was starting to slowly hypnotize her, so she was glad even for the sound of her own words. Talking to herself was better than returning to the stupor she'd been drifting into before the Armorer spoke.

  Doc had finished draining the seawater from his bulky Le Mat and had returned the large pistol to its proper resting place in the holster tied down against his leg.

  "How are the knees, Doc?" Dean asked.

  "Better. I should be able to walk and skip once more if, or should I say when, we reach dry land. Between that horrible bloodsucker back in the swamps and my unfortunate fall last night, I could certainly use the steadying support of my walking stick."

  "Here, you babbling old fool," Mildred said, hand­ing Doc a long slender object she'd pulled from be­neath her coat. "I was able to get this down the side of my jeans before the shit hit the fan…" Her voice trailed off as she caught a brief, almost unperceptible look of pain cross Ryan's face.

  The one-eyed man's countenance quickly returned to its frozen, stoic calm.

  Ryan was scared of what might happen once he did show emotion.

  Doc didn't notice Ryan's discomfort in his mo­mentary joy of recovering his beloved ebony-and-silver stick. "My walking stick! Woman, you have produced a feat of sleight of hand that even the greatest of stage illusionists could not hope to compete with! Perhaps I will allow you to win the next argument between the two of us."

  "Yeah, well, try not to poke yourself. Or the raft," J.B. said as he continued to strip the Uzi.

  "John Barrymore, I assure you, this finely hewn blade of Toledo steel will taste nothing but the rich ichor of our foes," Doc repli
ed in his most haughty voice.

  "Who'd mine this stretch, J.B.? Doesn't make sense," Ryan said, the first words to come out of his mouth in hours.

  "I know it doesn't make any sense," J.B. agreed, relieved to see his friend speaking again. "Naval mines are usually on the ocean floor or anchored to it. You keep the damned things floating around freely; they're completely unpredictable. What hit us had to be a contact mine. Old ordnance."

  "Not that old. It still worked."

  "Hell, Ryan, it might have been floating out here since predark," J.B. continued. "No telling what might have fallen overboard or been dredged up when the bombs fell. Once everything fell about, predic­tions went south. We've run into enough unexplained crap to prove that ourselves."

  "Shit, J.B. The coast of Georgia wasn't exactly a strategic site. Were they trying to keep it safe for tourism?" Ryan said disgustedly.

  "Didn't say it was strategic," the Armorer pro­tested. "Just gave my theory why the fragger might have been out where it was when it detonated."

  There was no anger in J.B.'s voice. He'd seen Ryan in these moods before, and it didn't pay to argue. He knew his friend was hurting over the casualties from the night before. Hell, they all were hurting. Jak and Krysty were family, and the sudden erasing of their presence still hadn't fully sunk in.

  Yet, out of everyone, J.B. had known Ryan the longest, and even he couldn't gauge the extent of his grief this time. This loss cut deep. Krysty had been Ryan's lifeline, his shining beacon in the darkness. Now, with that light extinguished, there was no telling what Ryan might do.

  If they lived long enough to find out.

  Ryan fell silent once more, trying to work the pre­vious night's sequence of events in his own mind into a semblance of logic. If he was going to lose the woman he loved, there had to be a reason beyond blind, stupid luck and a lost contact mine.

  "What do we do now?" Mildred wondered aloud.

  "No way to paddle. No oars." Dean was sullen. "Guess we could swim back to shore."

  "Excuse the hell out of me for not packing oars," J.B. growled. "I was busy finding us a safe way off the boat."