Vishon seemed just as hesitant as he killed the engine and stuffed the speedboat keys in an inside pocket of his windbreaker. He and the other thug studied the yacht as rain washed down their faces. Finally, the Jamaican raised a hand and pointed toward the cabin. “Porto gotta be in dere! Go on and find ‘im!”
The other man—big, with broad shoulders and cantaloupe biceps—shook his head like a child refusing to look under the bed. “No way Boss, I ain’t goin in there!”
“It just be some plants! Now get in dere and bring me ‘is ‘ead!”
The thug cast another fearful glance at the other boat as waves slammed against them. “I don’t wanna go alone!”
“You fuckin punanny!” Vishon slapped him across the top of his bald head, then turned and yanked Eric to his feet by the collar of his shirt. He leaned close enough for Eric to get a good look at his gold-capped incisors and shouted, “Go on rich boy, you get to go first! And if you try to run from I…” The barrel of his uzi dug into Eric’s ribcage. “You gonna get whatever Porto does, ransom or no!”
He shoved him forward. Eric waited for a lull between waves and then hoisted himself up and over the guardrail of the yacht, falling sideways and giving his hip a painful bruise when the deck pitched to the right. He stayed down until the other two climbed aboard and dragged him up, then pushed him ahead of them through the shattered back wall of the cabin, like villagers offering a sacrifice to a hungry god.
13
The interior of the yacht cabin was more like a South American jungle than manmade living quarters: dark, muggy and full of vegetation. The strange, gooey vines grew across every surface, dangled from the ceiling, wrapped around the furniture and fixtures.
Lito couldn’t decide which was creepier: this place or the abandoned houseboat with its layer of dust.
But at least he didn’t have to wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness; in here, the leafy plants gave off a cool, blue glow, casting just enough light for him to see without distorting his vision. It was like being inside some cave from National Geographic, a place with fluorescent lichen on the stone walls, except there was something almost sickly about this light. This whole radioactive theory was looking more and more plausible.
Lito had no idea where he was going, except away from the gunmen. If nothing else, maybe he could find a place to hole up for a last stand. He made his way quickly through the interior, wishing he had Jericho’s machete but settling for his hunting knife to slash at the iridescent vines that got in his way.
From the rear deck, the cabin opened up into a spacious living room with lumps of plant-covered furniture scattered around. A few chairs were overturned, and one recliner was turned around to face the corner, but Lito was able to make his away across a long, open space up the middle without tripping. He was cold, wet, and shivering, and the sound of the storm followed him from one end of the boat to the other. The yacht continued to rock from side-to-side; long, slow yaws that first pitched him at one wall and then the other. Each tilt caused an avalanche of loose bric-a-brac and shifting furniture he was forced to dodge. He leaned with the yaws to keep his balance, but one unexpected tilt when he reached the front of the room tossed him up against a glass bulkhead obscured by plants as thick as his forearm, a see-through wall sectioning off the communal space from the galley. A large crack skewed across the glass from his impact, but it held. He pushed away from the bulkhead and went through the gap that served as a doorway just a few steps further down.
The galley on the other side had a gas-fed range and full-size electric refrigerator. On the far side was a doorway leading to the lower quarters, but it was choked with more plants. They grew around the doorframe in all directions, layer upon layer of glowing, tangled vines, like slimy electrical cables. Whatever had spawned these freakish growths must’ve come from down there. In his head, Lito imagined a few ferns or an ivy, some small houseplant kept by the lady of the boat, grown rampant in her absence, aided by the bursts of radiation. He hacked at them frantically, wanting to move further into the boat to hide from his pursuers.
One of them twitched beneath his palm, a small but deliberate movement.
Lito stumbled away, giving a yip of surprise. The vines in front of him jittered against one another angrily, producing a sound like a rattler’s tail. The juices from the ones he’d sliced dripped onto the floor, forming a neon puddle. Its mutilated end curled up, as though looking at him.
He spun around and bolted back out of the room, but ran into a large black man with a submachine pistol coming from the other direction.
They startled each other, rebounding away. The other man tried to get his gun up. Lito slashed out with the knife and cut him across the forearm. The gun dropped to the floor as he clutched the wound.
Lito reared back to strike again, meaning to stab him in the chest and end this as fast as possible but lost his balance as he and the boat tilted in opposite directions. He stumbled back, arms pinwheeling. His attacker took the advantage by grabbing his wrist and sucker-punching him in the face.
The blow caused a starburst of pain across his vision. His legs noodled. This guy was a bruiser, not quite Rabid’s size, but he had a good thirty or forty pounds on Lito, all of it muscle. He wrenched the wrist he held up behind Lito’s back, forcing him to let the knife fall, then smashed him face-first into the glass bulkhead. This time when they collided, the wall shattered. Lito plunged straight through in a hail of tinkling shards.
He fell in a heap on the other side, bleeding from a dozen small wounds. Whatever fight he had left was gone. He tried to stand, but the guy was on him in a heartbeat, driving the steel toe of one boot into his side. Lito squawked and fell over, clutching his throbbing torso. The rocking of the boat combined with the swirling darkness behind his eyelids served to reinforce his nausea.
“Well, well, Porto. Dis been a long time comin. You t’ink you was gonna run fohevah?” The words had a much more syrupy Caribbean accent than Jericho’s.
Lito opened his eyes. The bruiser stood over him, one hand on his bleeding wrist, but the voice had come from deeper in the room. By the queasy glow of the vines, Lito could see another silhouette, one with a mohawk of limp dreadlocks. And, in a weird enough twist that Lito thought he might be hallucinating, in front of this guy was—
“Richie Rich? Zat you?” Lito gave a chuckle that made his ribs ache. “Jesus, you must keep goons on retainer to get these guys here so fast.”
Eric held up his hands. “Not that I don’t love seeing you get your ass kicked, but I got nothing to do with these dickheads.”
“Shut up, botha you.” The owner of the first voice stepped forward, holding on to the thick vines growing along the wall to keep his balance, and Lito recognized Vishon the Vicious. The man squatted in front of Lito. “Da Dominicyan sends his regards, bomba claat.”
“Christ. That’s what this is about?” Lito coughed. Pain lanced up his side. “All the shit that coulda killed me in the last five hours, and I end up at the mercy of Santiago’s shithead brigade?”
Vishon smiled and reached out to smack his cheek several times. “Lesson numbah one, pirate: keep dat tongue in yo’ mouth or I snatch it out.” He straightened and ordered his cohort, “Pat ‘im down. Might as well take what we cyan get foh dis job.”
The bruiser pushed Lito flat to the floor with one foot, then ran a hand down each side of his body. Lito’s ragged leather wallet was back on the Steel Runner, and the radio was in his back pocket, so there was nothing for them to take. Yet the man’s hand stopped at the cargo pocket of his faded shorts anyway, reached inside and drew out an oblong object that, at first glance, Lito couldn’t remember being in there.
“What the hell?” They all turned to Eric, whose eyes bulged so much from his skull as he took in the statue, they gave his broken nose a run for its money. “How did…? You fucking lowlife, you took that off the houseboat?”
“Nope. Amber did.”
“Oh, that cunt whore! That’s m
ine!”
“Actually, I think it’s mine. She gave it to me. Finders keepers, and whatnot.”
The bruiser passed the ugly little statue over to Vishon, who looked it up and down. “De way you two arguin, I guess dis t’ing worth a few coins.”
“Listen man, I need that.” Eric held out his hands, wobbling for balance as the deck swayed. “These assholes stole it from me, so you gotta give it back.”
“I don’t got to do not’ing, white boy.”
“Just give it to me!” Eric sounded shrill and desperate. “I can pay you whatever you want!”
“Watch out,” Lito told Vishon from the floor. “This kid loves to pay with credit he don’t have.”
“Shut the fuck up, scumbag!”
“’Ey!” The Jamaican said sharply. “We cyan ‘andle bizness latah.” He slipped the figure into an inner pocket of his jacket. Eric’s eyes followed it with the eagerness of a hungry dog watching a T-bone.
“Boss, can we just finish this?” The bruiser looked around uncomfortably. “This place is givin me the fuckin creeps. And that light earlier...”
“You talkin ‘bout the blue flash?” Lito asked. “Yeah, you know what that was, cabron? Your first taste of radiation poisonin.”
He gaped. “Whattaya mean, ‘radiation poisonin?’”
“One of these ships out here’s leakin plutonium or somethin. We’ll prob’ly all be dead in a few hours.”
The bruiser’s eyes flicked around in wide circles, as though he might actually be able to see the deadly radiation creeping up on him. “You’re fuckin with me.”
“Nope. ‘Fraid not. That’s why all the derelicts are out here. And what do you think’s up with these plants? It’s just like in the old black-and-white horror movies. Everything glows and gets gigantic.”
“Oh Jesus, Boss!” The thug stepped away from the vines, moving to a clear spot in the middle of the room. “We gotta get to a hospital!”
“‘Im’s lyin, you chickenshit. ‘Ere.” Vishon tossed him a keyring. “Go start da boat and take da white boy wit you. If we all gonna be dead in a few hours, we better catch up wit da rest of his crew. Make sure ‘is boy finish dem off.”
Lito frowned. “My boy?”
Vishon’s grin was wickedly sharp this time. “Degas? You little cabin boy? ‘Im made a deal with da Dominicyan. ‘Im take care of you pathetic assholes, bring in dat shitty boat of yours, and all be forgiven.”
“No.”
“How you t’ink we knew where to find you? ‘Im bring back yo’ head, ‘im even gets a new job runnin product.” Vishon laughed, jiggling his mop of dreadlocks, then winked. “Maybe we help out wit dat one.”
“Carlos. Shit.” Lito closed his eyes and thought about the boy’s ‘business’ in town earlier today. Jesus, he’d known the kid was miserable, but a betrayal like this seemed beyond even him.
“Don’ be too mad at ‘im.” The Jamaican leveled off his Uzi at Lito’s chest. “If da deed ain’t done by da time we get back to ‘im, dat li’l batty boy’ll be keepin you comp’ny in ‘ell.”
“Can you just get this over with? I forgot how much I hate listenin to you mouthy fuckin dreads.”
Vishon pulled the trigger.
14
A tingle of excitement built in Eric as he realized Vishon was about to kill Lito. His head whirled with fragmented images: his father, kicking the shit out of rival ‘businessmen’ in the warehouse by the river…the big tattooed guy getting dragged beneath the water…firing the uzi and killing one of the thugs…
He found himself wishing it were him taking out the pirate scumbag. Preferably with his bare hands.
The Jamaican’s finger tightened on the uzi’s trigger.
But, as he opened fire, a dark shadow whickered through the air, latched onto his forearm, and jerked the gun off target. A trail of bullets ripped across the yacht’s ceiling.
“De fuck?” Vishon stood with his arm suspended in the air, a fat length of florescent blue vine wrapped around his wrist and stretched taut to the ceiling. He tried to yank free, raised his other hand to pry at the plant, but another glowing loop uncoiled from the wall and whipped around his midsection. It dragged him backward as they watched, pinning him against the bulkhead.
“‘Elp me!” he screeched.
The whole room came to life.
Vines whipped the air, peeling away from the walls and rearing up from the floor like snakes, their glow pulsating as they twitched and spasmed. The other thug swatted at them like a man going after mosquitoes. A horde ensnared his legs and jerked his feet out from under him. He hit the ground squarely on his chin, leaving a spatter of blood and a single tooth that rolled away on the canted floor.
Eric felt several of the tendrils slither across his own chest. He flung them off and squirmed away before they could get a grip. He tried to run, but misjudged the current slant of the deck. He fell, landing in front of a recliner that was turned to face the corner.
As he looked up, the chair creaked around to face him.
Eric saw what was in it…and screamed.
15
When the vines came to life, Lito thought of the angry quaking from the other room, a dry rattle like corn stalks rasping against each other. By the time he’d come to terms with the fact that he hadn’t been shot, the entire cabin of the yacht was overrun with waving, neon tendrils, like glow sticks at a rave, every surface squirming and wriggling. Most of them seemed preoccupied with the others at the moment. He jumped to his feet amid the chaos, staying hunched and low, and tried to figure out what the hell to do.
The keys, he thought. You better get those keys if you want off this deathtrap. Some part of him, at least, was still cool and collected enough to form a plan. All that meditation must be paying off.
Lito turned to the bruiser on the ground, unconscious or dead. The keys to the speedboat were still clutched in one palm. He knelt, plucked them out, and dropped them in his shirt pocket just as the plants tugged the man’s body away, reeling it in toward the galley and, he suspected, that doorway leading below deck, where the growth had been thickest. The thought of those vines parting to allow their victim passage into the infested bowels of the yacht sent a violent shiver up Lito’s spine.
The boat shifted on the turbulent waters again, causing the flood of objects to tumble and slide toward the opposite wall. He saw his knife among the flotsam this time and snatched it up.
Vishon was still shouting from where the vines held him to the wall, like a fly in a giant spider’s web. Now Eric’s voice joined him, and Lito turned to see what the rich kid’s problem was while he slashed at the few plants coming at him.
The recliner held in the corner by a net of vines had been freed as they came to life, and now it spun to reveal its sole occupant. One of the charred mutants struggled up out of it, a gaunt, balding woman much worse off than any they’d seen, with half her face sloughing off and a tiny third arm growing from a lump on one of her shoulder blades.
And a grossly swollen belly. She was pregnant to ridiculous proportions, a distended globe hanging off the front of her emaciated frame.
Eric crouched in front her, staring upward, face slack with terror. He tried to back away, crawling on hands and knees, but the vines finally succeeded in hooking him. Several strong stalks lifted him completely off the floor and slammed him against the bulkhead next to the broken glass windows at the rear of the cabin.
The pregnant creature lost interest in Eric when she caught sight of Vishon. She took halting, jerky steps toward him with all three arms upraised, like some hellish marionette. He screamed and wailed as she reached him, pleading for help, but only until she grabbed hold of his face and clawed most of it off. What was left when she finished was just muscle and bone, with one eyeball dangling from its socket. Vishon the Vicious twitched and gurgled for a few seconds before going limp in the embrace of the vines.
She made a ninety degree turn and came at Lito next, as he stood horrified in the middle o
f the room. Most of her clothes had rotted off, leaving the huge lump of her stomach exposed. The skin there, unlike the rest of her sagging flesh, was blackened and bruised-looking, stretched so tight it looked like plastic. As he watched her approach, the shape of tiny hands were visible, pressing against its surface from within.
Lito couldn’t move. He truly believed these things hadn’t been anything close to human in a long time, but something in his moral code just wouldn’t let him fight a pregnant woman.
He broke his paralysis just before she lunged, raising one foot and kicking her squarely in that bulging mass of hard flesh. The skin shredded as she flailed backward, releasing a flood of foul-smelling guts and a hideous, squirming monstrosity about the size of a full-grown beagle. The deformed infant hit the floor, shot him a reproachful look, and hissed.
Lito turned to flee. This was a nightmare, worse than anything he could imagine. His cool was gone, and if he didn’t find calmer waters to drop a mental anchor in, then no amount of deep breathing or searching his inner chakra would be able to put him back together.
As he ran for the shattered glass at the back of the cabin, fending off the last few loose vines as they came at him, Eric yelled, “Hey, help me! Don’t you fucking leave me, asshole!”
Lito was in such a blind panic, he almost ran right by the kid, but stopped short of stepping back out into the rain. He hacked at the vines holding Eric in a blind panic, somehow managing not to cut the younger man, and glanced over his shoulder as he worked. The woman lay on the floor, unmoving, but the freakish baby crawled toward them on stubby limbs. In seconds, Eric was free.
“Let’s go!” Lito tried to pull him outside, but he jerked away.
“Not yet!”
Eric crossed the room quickly, leaping over the infant—it held up one stubby, gnarled fist to grab at him—and the remains of its mother. He went for Vishon where the vines still held him in their luminescent embrace, reached into his jacket, and pulled out the statue.
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