Eric raised up to watch, interested to see what this would look like.
The blue flashes started up again, reflecting off the clouds this time, so bright his vision shorted out as if a flashbulb had gone off in his face. His stomach lurched. He threw an arm over his eyes and heard the other men in the boat shouting. When the light stopped a few seconds later, and his vision cleared again, Eric saw the speedboat had gone wide of their target. Vishon and his two remaining goons rubbed at their eyes, one of them gagging. To their portside, Lito leaned forward over the handlebars of the jet ski and throttled into the night.
The submachine pistol was still on the floor. Eric snatched it up and got to his feet. One of his captors caught sight of him and tried to swing his own weapon around. Eric beat him to the trigger. The small gun in his hand purred, the recoil tossing shots in an arc, but they ripped through the other man hard enough to pitch him backwards over the edge and into the water.
Savage glee filled Eric. The world pulsed red in tempo with his beating heart.
Vishon and his last cohort turned to him, fury on their faces. Eric tried to bring his weapon back down to take aim again, but the crafty Jamaican spun the wheel fast enough to slew them around nearly 180 degrees in the rough waters. Eric stumbled back, the sidewall of the boat striking behind his knees. He dropped the gun in an attempt to catch hold of something, but would’ve fallen out anyway if the other man hadn’t lunged forward and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.
A fist drove into his stomach hard enough to deflate his lungs. Eric fell to his hands and knees and was kicked in the side, forcing him over on his back next to the body of the other black man. He lay there, blinking away rain, a booted foot on his chest to hold him down, and stared up at the Jamaican.
“I’m gonna spit on your corpse,” Eric wheezed, when air finally reentered his lungs. “A great big fuckin loogie.”
“We see ‘bout dat, white boy!” Vishon shook his head, like a dog, his mohawk of dreadlocks wagging. He turned back to the controls and revved up the engine again. “Aftah we catch Porto!”
10
Ray had an exit wound on his back just above the swell of his hip, which Amber took as a good sign; at least the bullet wasn’t still in him. When she’d done all she could to stop the bleeding, she had Jericho help her lift the man up and carry him inside the cabin and out of the storm. Probably wasn’t wise to move him, but the pontoon raft had begun to bounce and roll as the storm worsened—one side or the other flipping up so high at times, it left their stomachs behind when it plummeted again, like the best rollercoasters—and she was afraid he might be dumped off the edge. He was unconscious as they laid him gently in the unoccupied bunk across from Justin, who watched them with glittery, fever-bright eyes. Their new Vietnamese companion still stood guard in the doorway, feet braced against either jamb to keep steady, while Cherrywine clung to the cabinets in the kitchen and uttered a tiny shriek every time a wave tossed them.
Amber set about securing Ray and Justin to their bunks with the leftover rope, ignoring Justin’s pale skin and sunken eyes as she tied straps across his chest to keep him in place. One problem at a time, that was the best she could manage.
Carlos bolted through the door, pushing Tuan aside. “I can’t row in this shit anymore!”
Amber finished with Justin, then turned to Jericho. “Where’s the walkie-talkie?”
The mechanic frowned at her. “What for?”
“Because Lito took one, remember? If he still has it…”
He hurried to the bag of equipment they’d brought and dug out the second radio. “Lito, mon, you dere?”
She watched as he tried a few more times, committing to memory which buttons he pressed. There was no response.
Her heart fell. It must’ve shown on her face too, because Jericho said, “It doesn’t mean anyt’ing. If he’s still on de run, he can’t hear it.”
She wondered how likely that was. How long had he been gone? Fifteen minutes? If the speedboat hadn’t caught him by now, this storm would. Amber bit her lip as Jericho turned away, her eyes prickling with the damp heat of impending tears, and became suddenly aware that Justin was still staring at her, searching her face intently.
“Tuan,” she said quietly. “Can I see one of your detectors?” She had to pantomime to get him to understand.
The young soldier pulled out one of the PDA units and turned it on, indicated with a few gestures how to use it, then handed it over. She made her way across the rocking floor to Justin’s side and held the metal wand in front of his face.
“What is that thing?” he asked, coughing.
“It’s…like a thermometer.” She pressed the button on the side to begin taking a reading. “Just lay back for a second, okay?”
At first, nothing happened, and she realized she had no idea what to expect from the device in the first place. But then, on the tiny screen, there was movement. Lines and graphs and a string of numbers that she didn’t understand. The unit gave off a slow series of clicks.
“Why’s it doin that?” Carlos asked. “Yo, what’s that mean?”
“Nothing,” she answered quickly. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Tell dem de truth,” Jericho said. “Dey got a right to know.”
“Know what?” Justin tried to sit up, but the ropes she’d tied across his chest held him back.
“It means you got some kinda radiation poisoning. Dat’s what’s causing all dis.”
Justin’s eyes bulged. “Oh my god, I’m gonna look like that little girl?”
“No,” Amber reassured him forcefully, then turned to glare at Jericho. “Tuan never said the radiation turned his crewman into onto one of those things, only that it made him sick!”
“Don’t fool yourself, girl.” Jericho had a guilty look on his face, as if he hated having to say this to her. “Dat detector says he’s got it. So for our own safety…we gotta tie him up, so he can’t give it to de rest of us.”
“Yo, fuck that man, let’s just kick him off the boat!” Carlos shouted.
“You’re not gonna touch him!”
Amber felt a hand curl around her wrist and looked back; Justin had slipped an arm free from the ropes and clutched at her gently. “They’re right,” he said. “If there’s even a chance I have whatever those other people do, you need to get as far away from me as possible. Either that, or…” He watched her eyes and swallowed, but it seemed to take effort.
“What, kill you? Jesus Christ, has everyone gone…”
The argument was interrupted as the detector in her hand began to click faster, the lines on the screen scrunching into thick, steep hills.
“Uh, why’s it doing that?” she asked.
Something slammed against the underside of their raft. The carpeted aluminum floor directly under Amber’s feet bulged upward a few inches, permanently dented. As she jumped off the little mound, Cherrywine screamed.
Everyone else backed away, eyes rooted to the cabin floor.
The entire room bucked up on its side without warning.
Amber tumbled across the steeply canted floor of the cabin, friction burns from the cheap carpeting blazing across her bare legs and arms. The electric lantern crashed against something and broke, plunging them into darkness. She caught only jumbled, quick glimpses of the others falling also just before she slammed into the base of the wall next to Ray’s bunk, her elbow striking someone in the face and several other bodies landing on top of her hard enough to crush the air from her lungs. Loose objects plunked down all around them. Shouts and groans floated up; Cherrywine’s keening shrieks rose above them all. Amber braced herself in case the pontoon boat flipped over completely, but the opposite side of the room fell after only a few seconds.
Something in the bottom of the boat gave a sickly creak as their raft righted itself, then everyone began yelling at once.
“Turn a light on!” Cherrywine’s voice pleaded.
“I told you it was gettin bad out there
!” Carlos called out.
“Dat wadn’t no wave, somet’in tipped us!”
The radiation detector was still going haywire. A flashlight came on at last, and Amber found herself face-to-face with the grinning skull of Mr. Watts. She shoved it away as everyone untangled. Once she could stand and made sure nothing was broken, she checked on Ray and Justin and found them both still in their bunks thanks to her homemade seat belts.
Jericho freed the machete from the sheathe on his back. He ran for the cabin door, with Amber right behind him.
Outside, the night was a maelstrom. The wind tore at them. Skirls of freezing rain had her drenched and shivering in seconds. Waves slammed the boat from side-to-side, still growing in size. Lightning—of the plain white variety—turned the whole world into a slow-motion strobe light. The few derelicts still visible around them reminded her of rodeo cowboys trying to ride an angry bull as the seas tossed them. She held the detector’s wand in the air and pointed it in different directions until she found that the left side of the boat gave the most reaction.
Something long, flat and scaly slid over the pontoon, working its way onto the boat beside them. It was a few yards long, several feet wide, but mere inches thick, and it took her only half a second to realize it was a gigantic, aquatic flipper. She suddenly imagined an enormous dolphin swimming beside the boat, using this diseased appendage to feel along the deck.
Except this dolphin wanted to eat them, like it had the tattooed pirate.
This was their sea monster, returning for another meal. It had shaken the vending machine, and now it wanted to see what snacks had fallen out.
“There!” she shouted, her voice barely audible to her own ears. Jericho spotted the monstrous appendage and brought the machete whistling down at it. The weapon left a long, dark gash in the scaly hide.
The flipper pulled away so hard, the boat rocked heavily. They grabbed on to the captain’s chair at the front to keep their balance. From beyond the raft came a deep, bass moan that Amber felt in her bones more than she heard, a sound as mournful as whale song.
“What de hell is dat?”
A dark shape breached the rough water in front of them, a bald, leathery dome as big as the roof of a Volkswagen. Two baleful greenish-yellow eyes like dinner plates glared at them, above a set of jaws at least seven feet long, three wide, and full of crooked, dagger teeth.
Eric was right; it really was a crocodile the size of a bus. It had to be the largest living creature she’d ever seen.
Watching it as it watched them, she felt the first frayed ends of her sanity start to pull loose. She could rationalize everything else that had happened to them, keep panic away by viewing all of it as one big problem a professor had placed in front of her, a puzzle that had to be solved, but this behemoth’s presence couldn’t be explained by radiation poisoning…
Jericho held the machete up, as if in challenge, an almost laughable gesture. Its jaws swung open, and the next flash of lightning revealed a scarred, blackened gullet.
From the west, the sky burst into shades of brilliant powder blue. Amber closed her eyes, but the unearthly light seemed to blaze right through the lids, worm its way into her brain until she thought she would vomit. When it stopped, she saw the gigantic creature pull back, looking toward where the light had been, and dive beneath the frothing waves once more.
Tuan exited the cabin and stood behind them.
“Dat was number four, right?” Jericho asked him, holding up fingers to get the number across.
Tuan nodded. “Next…big.”
“How long we got?”
He tapped his watch, then held up first two fingers, then three, then shrugged.
“He doesn’t know,” Amber interpreted. “Two or three hours, maybe.”
“Den let’s get off dis damn raft before dat t’ing comes back.”
11
The light was so bright this time, Lito thought for sure it must be the ‘big flash’ Tuan had warned them about, the one that had turned day to night, or whatever he’d been talking about. A queasy cramp ripped through his stomach. Lito’s vision cleared just in time for him to avoid scraping the jet ski against the freighter. He twisted around on the seat to look behind him. The speedboat had drifted past, missing him entirely. His attackers must’ve been just as walloped by the blue burst. Damn thing had saved him from being creamed.
And if it really is radioactive, maybe you can all go shopping for dentures together after your teeth fall out.
Lito realized his hand was empty; he’d lost the pistol at some point. If there was no fight, he’d have to rely on flight. He throttled up the jet ski and blasted away. Now was his best chance to lose them, while they were still recovering. Once he was sure he’d gotten clear, he could double back and try to find the others.
Ahead was a rough corridor formed by the freighter on his right and an ongoing line of smaller ships to his left, all of them packed so tight there was barely room to squeeze between. They crashed into each other as they rose and fell, some of them hard enough to scrape hulls and groan against one another. To his left, a nice-sized fishing boat was crushed as a heavy steel cutter rolled over on top of it.
Lito followed the corridor and jumped a wave that swept under him, feeling like Evel Knieval, and landed hard enough to jar his tailbone and nearly flip him over the handlebars. These were no conditions to be riding a craft like this in. Jagged whitecaps stabbed upward from the ocean surface, crashing together like cymbals. If one of them came at him from the wrong direction, he’d be swept right off this thing.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to worry about it for long.
The canal took a sharp right turn, and he entered an expanse of open water filled with boats bobbing as randomly as driftwood on a stream. The tiny, thrumming jet ski engine between his legs began to sputter. His speed dropped. Within seconds, he was sitting dead in the water.
Lito twisted the key again. The gas gauge needle was still at the halfway mark, so he had to assume the peppy little junker had finally given up the ghost, or that he’d used the only unspoiled gas Jericho had put in the tank.
Water washed over him, rocking the whole craft onto its side. He dug his heels in and rode the seat until it righted. He had to get off this thing. Between the gunmen and the growing squall, he was entirely too vulnerable just sitting here.
The waves pushed him steadily toward the stern of a two-story craft ahead, a huge, older-model yacht even bigger than Eric’s vessel. Something about its paint job looked odd. When the sky overhead lit up with another burst of crooked lightning followed by an angry drum solo of thunder, he realized why: the entire vessel was covered with dark, rope-like vines that had completely overrun the deck, some of them as thick as his wrist.
Dread uncoiled in the pit of his stomach.
No choice. When the next wave tossed him up, Lito jumped from the seat of the jet ski and dogpaddled toward the boat. Something bobbed to the surface of the water beside him. He almost screamed—Amber and her goddamn sea monster stories had gotten to him a little more than he realized—before recognizing the walkie-talkie, in its waterproof plastic bags. He grabbed it before it could get away.
The water was too rough to stay afloat in, and the seaweed clinging to him only made it worse. They felt like tiny fingers skittering against his skin as the ocean tossed him. He rode each crest as it lifted, and was finally slammed against the hull of the yacht by a sudden surge. Panic seized him as he clawed at the slick side of the boat for purchase. The undertow tried to suck him beneath, but he managed to grab one of the thick vines growing down from the boat.
Lito shimmied up them one agonizing inch at a time, expecting the greenery to tear lose at any second, but they held his weight. They were slimy to the touch even with the rain on them. The whole yacht rocked back and forth as he climbed. Nausea bubbled through his stomach; it was years since he’d been seasick. He concentrated only on hauling himself up until he tumbled over the bulwark and spraw
led on the overgrown rear deck, shivering and exhausted.
During a brief lull between wind gusts, he heard the throaty growl of an engine. He crawled back to the edge to peer over.
The speedboat chugged toward him. A powerful halogen flashlight first picked out his overturned jet ski, then lit up the back of the yacht. Lito ducked again before they could spot him.
The front half of the yacht was all one big cabin. Ahead, the rear wall had been made of glass at some point, but most of the panes were busted out now. Dark vines curled around the doorframes and spilled out onto the deck in all directions.
Lito got to his feet, striving to keep his balance as the floor beneath him tilted at nearly 45 degree angles, first one way and then another. He made his way into the black cabin just as the speedboat arrived behind him.
12
By the time Vishon docked at the yacht’s stern, the waves were bouncing them so high Eric’s butt lost contact with the speedboat seat. They’d thrown the body of the dead man overboard, where it was quickly claimed by the angry sea. The wind was a constant shriek now, blowing through the net of decrepit ships with enough velocity to knock them off their feet if they weren’t careful. The last remaining lackey managed to catch the guardrail with some nylon boat rope and drew them in close.
The yacht’s name was stenciled across its wide stern and, even though it was partially obscured by a mass of creeping vines, Eric could still make out the words.
The Family Way.
Why did he know that name? One of his books? And then it came to him, as brilliantly as one of the lightning bolts tearing up the sky above them: the squinty bartender and his sob story. Something about a missing son and pregnant daughter-in-law. The entrance to the cabin waited just on the other side of the short rear deck, gloomy and overgrown.
His balls shriveled at the thought of going in there.
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