His eyes spun in their sockets, seeking input, but all this darkness was like going blind. He swam upward until he banged his head against the MishMasher’s upside-down deck, then felt along it until he reached the edge of the yacht.
Something huge blasted by him in the water, hard enough to create a wave of turbulence. Hard, scaly flesh brushed against his arm. He recoiled, heart pounding, then let go of the boat and kicked hard for the surface.
The trip through that pitch black void took an eternity. Every second, he expected to feel teeth chomping down on his leg. When he swam headlong into the forest of seaweed, he screamed out the last of his oxygen and then tore through the curtain of vegetation until he reached fresh air.
He submerged again almost immediately, too dizzy and exhausted to stay afloat. Justin flailed, his hands clutching at the air, and was relieved when they encountered a floating ring that took his weight. Only once he was supported across it and gasping for air did he open his eyes.
The ring was a life preserver. A rope was tied to it, and he followed it up to a ship floating right next to him. Someone above must be pulling the cord, because he was tugged forward like a hooked fish. The comparison was furthered when metal loops slid under his arms and his limp body was lifted from the water and dragged over the railing.
He was dropped on a solid surface. A blurry crowd of faces hovered over him, eyes peering from holes in knit ski masks.
“Amber,” he wheezed. “Where’s…Amber?”
“You ain’t ever gonna see that bitch again if anything happened to our friend,” a squeaky voice told him.
Justin tried to get up, and a booted foot forced him back flat. A pistol was jammed in his face.
“If he’s here, then that means Rabid’s over there with them,” a new voice said. “So let’s keep this bastardo handy in case we need to…negotiate.”
6
At Eric’s last dental appointment, his dentist told him his teeth were being worn down at an alarming rate, most likely from ‘nocturnal grinding.’ He custom-molded a clear plastic bit that Eric wore every night when he slept, but had done little to solve the problem.
If the dentist could see Eric’s jaw working methodically as he swam toward the grungy houseboat, he might understand why.
His father. What the fuck was he going to tell his father? Not just about the boat; oh no, he had a feeling losing the MishMasher was some seriously small potatoes compared to making the delivery tomorrow. He swam with one hand for a moment and used the other to make sure the weird glass figurine was still in his pocket. There it was—damaged, missing a horn thanks to that meddling, nose-breaking bitch he’d brought along on this trip, and how was that for gratitude?—but at least it was still safe for the moment.
These guys with the guns had to be ‘business rivals’ of his father. They might want Eric for ransom or revenge, but more likely, they wanted this statue. He had to get it out of his hands in case he was captured, then convince them it went down with the ship.
Because somehow, someway, he would get out of this. Destiny demanded it. Dying at the hands of some goombahs like this was unthinkable. No way had the Man Upstairs written that into The Big Plan for Eric Renquist.
He approached the houseboat. The thing was a big, floating rectangular box, like a Winnebago on water, probably twice the size and length of the MishMasher; basically just one long cabin with an open sunporch jutting from the back above the engine propellers. A ladder fixed to the side allowed access to this open surface. He headed for it. As he got closer, he saw the thin layer of aluminum that served as an outer shell was stained and covered in a layer of moss, barnacles and other growths. Someone hadn’t been keeping up their maintenance schedule.
“Hey! Anybody in there?” He was still getting used to the sound of his voice with his newly clogged nasal passages. “Goddamn it, wake up! We need help!” There was no response, and no lights on in the cabin windows.
Eric grabbed the ladder bolted to the back, tried to pull himself up, but the rusted rungs broke off in his hands. He let loose a growl of frustration. Trying not to give himself tetanus on the jagged edges, he gripped as high up on the ladder as he could, where the metal still looked the cleanest, and used it as a boost to grab the lip of the porch, which rode a good three feet above the water. His arms were shaky, but he gathered the strength to pull himself up and lay exhausted and panting on his back, then began removing clumps of seaweed clinging to his t-shirt and shorts. The thin boat carpeting beneath him had rotted away in places, and was covered in accumulated mildew.
“Eric!”
He heard the garbled cry and leaned over the edge to look down at Cherrywine, treading water beside the houseboat. She held the remains of the ladder with one hand and reached out to him with the other. “Help me, I can’t swim anymore!”
Eric hesitated. There was a voice speaking in his head, a voice he was barely even conscious of but that sounded a lot like his father, and it was telling him that he should let this girl drown, that it was a vitally important first step toward solving his current predicament, and all it would take is reaching down to hold her head below the surface for a few seconds—
“Eric, what’re you doing?” Amber—just a few yards out and dragging the huge pirate right behind—cut into his thoughts with her shrill tone. Eric wasn’t used to women talking to him like that. “Help her, for chrissake!”
He held out a hand. Cherrywine grabbed it, and he lifted her onto the porch in her sopping wet t-shirt and panties, which were now almost see-through. Even in the heat of the moment, he felt an erection pushing at the khaki material of his shorts. Nice to know at least one part of him was all-systems-go. She spent a few seconds coughing up seawater and then scooted away, out of reach, and watched him warily.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
One hand clutched at her own throat. “Fuck you, you bastard,” she said tearfully. “You know what you did.”
What he did? She was the one that had snooped through his property, broken the statue, and then, when he’d confronted her, punched him right in the face and given him a kink in the nose that would take the country’s best plastic surgeon to fix. That was what happened. Right?
Uh huh, the voice agreed. And it’ll stay that way, as long as she’s not around to say otherwise.
He waved a hand at her. “Whatever. I’m not playing games with you, you ungrateful bitch.”
Amber reached the back of the boat. She made sure the pirate had a firm grip on the ladder, then grabbed Eric’s offered hand, swung a leg up, and rolled onto the porch.
He gestured down at the other man flailing in the water. “I can’t believe you saved this asshole.”
The pirate looked up, lost his hold on the ladder, and found it again just as he slipped under. He came up spluttering. Something about his face and all those tattoos rang bells in Eric’s head. “I’m sorry mate, really I am! If you just get me outta here, I swear I won’t give you no hassles!”
“Yeah? What about your friends?”
“I’ll tell ‘em to leave ya alone too!”
Eric laid down on his stomach on the edge of the porch, rested his chin on his hands, and smirked down at him. “And what if we decide to hold you hostage, huh? Will they care enough about a piece of shit like you to do what we say?”
“I don’t know, do whatever you want, mate, just please, help me! My leg is bloody killin me!”
“Get him up, Eric!” Amber said behind him.
“How am I supposed to do that? Guy weighs a fucking ton!”
“We’ll both do it.” She joined him at the boat’s edge. They reached down and each took one of the pirate’s hands.
“Count of three. One…two…”
The water a few feet out from the boat parted. A monstrous shape breached the blanket of seaweed, something rough and angular. Eric saw jaws the length of a Volkswagen Beetle lined with crooked, triangular teeth just before the shape submerged again behind the pirate,
leaving behind a cloud of pungent stench like sulfur.
The big man screamed in pain as his body was yanked taut, his upper half slanted at a diagonal and dangling above the water from where Eric and Amber gripped him. The unexpected force was so great, they almost tumbled in with him. Eric braced his knees on the deck and played tug-of-war as Amber did the same beside him. The water below frothed and churned. The pirate wailed as he was shaken back and forth, like a dog with a chew toy. Finally, he was jerked from their grasp. Eric leaned forward in time to see his large, tattooed hands disappear beneath the black ocean, then shoved away from the edge and fell back heavily on his ass.
“Did you…did you fucking see that?” he asked quietly.
“I saw it,” Amber confirmed, still hunched over the side and staring downward.
“It fucking ate him.” Something about this suddenly struck Eric as equal parts gruesomely fascinating and hysterically funny. “Grabbed him from below and…ate him.”
“I said I saw it.”
In her corner, Cherrywine covered her ears and sobbed quietly. “No, no, no, I don’t wanna be here, I wanna go home!”
Eric ignored her. “Shit. I mean…shit! What the hell was it?”
“Calm down,” Amber said without turning around. “It could’ve been a shark. The guy was bleeding badly and…” She trailed, sounding unconvinced by her own argument.
“Are you kidding me? Did you see the size of it? And it’s skin? That was no fucking shark, it was more like an alligator the size of a bus!”
She didn’t answer, just kept staring out over the water. He started to ask her if that thing was coming back, but then suddenly realized that wasn’t what she was looking for.
“Justin?” he asked.
“No.”
“Maybe…you know…that thing didn’t get him.” Eric tried to examine how the idea of his best friend being dead made him feel, and came up blank.
“So what, he drowned instead? Thanks, you’re a real comfort.”
There was silence for a moment, except for Cherrywine’s sobbing and the lap of waves against the houseboat’s hull.
Then that bright searchlight fell across them, and the amplified voice they’d heard earlier came crackling across the water from the direction of the pirate boat.
7
“EVERYBODY ALL RIGHT OVER THERE?” Lito winced at the sound of his voice through the bullhorn. The atmosphere out here—with all these empty, silent boats—was the kind you didn’t want to disrupt, like shouting in a museum.
Or a graveyard.
He could see the distant figures on the back of the houseboat standing up to look in his direction, shielding their eyes from the light. A female voice drifted back to answer him. “Go away and leave us alone!”
“‘FRAID I CAN’T DO THAT. WHERE’S OUR MAN?”
He sensed a moment of hesitation before she stammered, “We…we don’t…he’s not here!”
“BULLSHIT. I KNOW HE IS. LET ME TALK TO HIM.”
“No, really, he—!”
She was cut off by a male voice; Lito recognized the dickhead from back at the port. “Fuck you, you fucking scumbags! You sank my boat! You’re gonna pay for that!”
Carlos wandered up beside Lito and snickered. “Yo, tell ‘im to send us a bill, homey.”
Instead, Lito said, “IF ANY OF YOU ARE STILL ARMED, THROW YOUR WEAPONS IN THE WATER.”
“We’re not doing jack shit, except get the people on this boat to radio for help!”
“IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR FRIEND, I WOULD ADVISE AGAINST THAT.”
This shocked even the asshole into a few seconds of speechlessness.
“You got Justin?”
“IF THAT’S HIS NAME.”
“No way! Prove it!”
Lito waved two fingers over his shoulder. Jorge and Jericho lifted the shirtless kid they’d fished out of the water to his feet. Lito held the bullhorn in front of his bruised face. “Talk.”
“AMBER, DON’T LISTEN TO TH—!”
Lito jerked the horn away. “SATISFIED?”
“What do you want from us?” The girl again. “Why are you doing this?”
“YOU HOLD MY GUY, I HOLD YOURS. AND IF YOU CALL THE AUTHORITIES, THEN OUR ONLY CHOICE WILL BE TO RUN, AND TAKE THIS SCRAWNY PENDEJO WITH US. THINK ABOUT THAT BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING RASH.”
“Please don’t hurt him!”
“THEN DON’T MAKE ME. WE’RE COMIN OVER THERE. I WANT YOU ALL TO STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. IF THERE REALLY IS ANYONE ELSE ON THAT BOAT, YOU BETTER GIVE THEM THE SAME MESSAGE.”
Lito lowered the bullhorn and turned away, almost tripping over the other object they’d brought up with the white kid: a waterlogged, bloated textbook titled Linguistic Relationships Through Time that had gotten tangled in the life ring. He picked it up and then cocked a finger at Ray, standing by the wheelhouse door. “Get us in close.”
Jorge yanked the white kid’s arm up tight between his shoulder blades. ‘Justin’ uttered a short cry. “If they hurt Rabid, I swear you gonna pay, cabrón!”
Lito tossed the textbook to Mondo, who almost got bowled over as he caught it. “Take the kid downstairs and tie him up.”
The cook answered him, speaking in the most solemn, respectful tone Lito had ever heard him use. “Cap’n, this out here…these other boats…I’m tellin ya, it just ain’t right. I really think we oughta—”
“Not now. Do what I said.” The last of Lito’s patience ebbed. That heavy, burnt smell hanging over everything was giving him a headache, but a fresh breeze was finally clearing it out.
As the old man started to lead the kid away, Ray popped his head out of the wheelhouse. “Engines ain’t startin.”
“Jer, man, what the fuck, I thought you fixed ‘em!”
“I did!” Jericho squeezed the back of his neck beneath the ski mask. “Who knows what de hell dis be?”
“Ah, mierda, not now!” Lito stood for a second with hands on his hips and closed his eyes. He had trouble thinking when he got this frustrated. The last self-help book he’d read had advised, in moments like these, to envision each exhale releasing a bit of tension until his head cleared, but something told him the author never intended for the technique to be used in the middle of a hijacking that had gone this far astray. “Okay, change of plan. Jericho, stay here, figure out what’s wrong with the engines and do it fast. Keep in touch over the walkies. And let Mondo know to keep an eye on the kid and monitor the VHF for any chatter out here. The four of us are takin the other rowboat to get Rabid and the rest of those kids.”
“Hey,” Carlos said softly. “How ‘bout I stay here to help with the engines?”
Jericho snorted. “What de hell you gonna help wit, boy? You t’ink pissin and moanin gonna fix dem?”
As impressed as he was that the kid had volunteered, Lito shook his head. “I need all hands, especially if we have to lug Rabid around. Jorge, bring your rifle. Everyone else, make sure you’re packin somethin light, just in case. That guy over there thinks he’s a real hardcase, so watch him like a hawk.”
“And what if someone else is over there?” Ray asked. “We gonna start up our own prison colony or what?”
Lito glanced across the stretch of open water between them and the houseboat.
“We’ll deal with that when we have to.”
8
On the pirate’s ship, Amber could see another rowboat being lowered over the side and into the water.
Eric grabbed her arm. “We gotta see if anybody’s home on this barge!”
“They told us to stay here.”
“Fuck that, we need to get away! Something tells me these guys ain’t gonna listen when we tell them their buddy was just eaten by Godzilla!”
“But…they have Justin” She didn’t know if him being in the hands of these scumbags was better or worse than the idea of him being dead. The way she’d treated him all day…it seemed so petty now. Just because she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him, didn’t mean she want
ed this.
Eric moved toward the door on the houseboat’s porch leading into the cabin. “It ain’t gonna help him if we get caught too!” He reached down and grabbed Cherrywine’s wrist, the way he had earlier before dragging her off to the bedroom. “Get up, goddamn it, let’s go!”
“NOO!” the girl shrieked, flailing her body and battering at him until he let go. “Leave me alone!”
“Jesus, you crazy bitch!”
“Don’t touch her!” Amber flew across the short length of deck and jumped between them. “Stay away from her, you maniac, I know what you did!”
“What’re you two talking about? I didn’t do anything! Look at my nose! She did that!”
“Yeah, and was that before or after you almost choked her to death?”
“…huh?”
“You think I’m blind, Eric? I see the bruises on her throat! You expect me to believe she did that to herself?”
“What? I didn’t…” He paused with mouth hanging open, his eyes darting back and forth above his crooked, swollen nose, then leaned around her to look at Cherrywine. And, even though Amber believed deception and lying came factory standard in a guy like him, his confusion seemed genuine enough to make her falter.
“Screw you both then,” he finally growled. “We don’t have time for this.” He spun around and ran into the dark cabin of the houseboat.
Amber knelt in front of Cherrywine. She moved limp, blond locks out of the other girl’s face. “You okay?”
Cherrywine nodded. “There’s something really wrong with him.”
“I know. Back on his boat, did he…rape you?”
“He tried. So I broke his nose.”
As she said it, Amber felt another surge of affection for her. “Good.”
“But that’s not what caused him to…” Cherrywine massaged her bruised throat and grimaced. Her voice was scratchy and hoarse. “He had this thing. Like a little statue. He thought I did something to it and just went nuts. Now he acts like he doesn’t even remember.”
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