Sargasso

by Russell C. Connor

  Eric nodded as if this was just confirming information he already knew. “Then we better hurry this along so we can all go home together.”

  “You don’t have any intention of letting us go.”

  He grinned. “Give the statue to Carlos.”

  Amber held the glass figurine up over her head. “Let him go, or I’ll toss it into the ocean right now. Swear to Christ I will.”

  “No.” Eric sounded almost bored. “You won’t.”

  “Oh really? And what makes you think that?”

  “Because it’s not in the cards.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “The…cards?”

  “Yeah, you know, the cards. The Big Plan. Fate.” He leaned forward, putting weight on the leg resting on Lito’s back until he grunted. “You see, Amber, I have a destiny. One you couldn’t alter if you wanted to. Cherrywine tried, so I fucking killed her. The universe looks out for people like me. I’ve become more and more convinced of that in the last 24 hours.”

  She stared at him, utterly aghast, and let the arm holding the statue fall back to her side. He looked crazed, jittery, nose still crooked and swollen, his eyes swimming out of focus. Amber had a feeling this was the real Eric Renquist, the maniac that had been hiding just below the surface of the smarmy veneer his whole life.

  He pointed the gun at Lito’s head. “But destiny aside, if you don’t hand that statue over to Carlos, I’m gonna fucking shoot all of you, starting with your spic boyfriend here.”

  Feeling numb, Amber passed the statue to Carlos, who walked over to Eric with it held in front of him in his one good hand. “Yo, what is this thing?”

  “Your future. After we deliver it for my father, you and I will be working for him. You’ll be a capo in the Philadelphia mob by the time you’re 20. Sounds a lot better than smuggling drugs, right?” He held out his hand.

  Carlos frowned and stopped just short of surrendering the statue. “So…it’s valuable?”

  “Very.”

  “Then…why don’t we just keep it ourselves?”

  “Because your new partner always listens to Daddy,” Amber said. “Don’t you, Eric?”

  “Shut the fuck up, slut. Carlos…give it to me.”

  Carlos hesitated again, looking from the statue to Eric’s outstretched hand.

  Eric swung the gun up and shot him.

  Amber was amazed at how smooth and mechanically the deed was done. Even Carlos seemed surprised as blood spread down the front of his jersey. Eric watched eagerly, taking in every detail as the Hispanic kid went to his knees, then he bent to tear the statue from his grasp, taking his foot off Lito’s back as he did. Carlos fell over on his side, wheezing and making feeble clawing motions at the deck. Lito reached over and took his hand. The gesture made Amber’s heart ache.

  “You’re sick,” she told Eric.

  “Yeah? You a psychology major now too?”

  “No. But it doesn’t change the fact.”

  “God, you were always one mouthy bitch. I never did understand what Justin saw in you.”

  “Cause he’s a decent human being, and you’re even more of an animal than those things downstairs.” Amber shook her head disgustedly. “That’s what this whole trip was about, wasn’t it? You delivering this statue for your father. I knew you were crazy after what you did to Cherrywine, but now I see you’ve got more daddy issues than she did.”

  “If you love her so much, then by all means, let me reunite you two.” Eric raised the gun.

  Two things happened at once.

  Lito let go of Carlos’s hand, grabbed Eric’s foot, and yanked him off balance.

  And a door on the far side of the deck burst open, releasing a flood of irradiated cruise ship passengers.

  15

  Eric crashed to the deck between Carlos and Lito, his hands too full to catch himself. He chose his precious statue over the Walther; the gun clattered away as he cradled the figurine. Lito heard something in the fucker’s side give a satisfying snap. Eric cried out in pain, but the noise was drowned by sudden screeches form the other direction.

  The mutants of the Atlantic Queen had been lost in its lower decks for a few centuries, trapped by their own deteriorated minds, slumbering as the cruise ship disintegrated around them. Now, they’d finally found their way out.

  Or been led out.

  Justin was at the front of the pack, not as physically repulsive as the rest, but snarling and howling in mindless fury just the same. There must’ve been just enough of a spark of intelligence left for him to make it all the way up here, and he’d played Pied Piper for the others. The creatures only had to make their way around the corner of the pool before they would reach the group.

  Eric performed a strange hobble-crawl toward the gun on his hands and knees. Lito grabbed his leg to slow him down and received a heel to his already injured head. The world blurred before snapping back into focus. He saw Ray limp forward to help him, but Amber beat him to it, snatching up the pistol and then kicking Eric in his injured side. He screamed again and crumpled to the deck.

  She wrenched the statue away from him.

  “PLEASE!” he pleaded. “Give it to me, oh god, please, I have to take it back, it’s my destiny!”

  “You want this?” Amber demanded, like a master getting ready to play fetch with his dog. “Then go get it!”

  She threw it into the huge pool. Lito watched it plunk into the murky water at the bottom.

  “You bitch!” Eric scrambled after it, dumping over the lip and tumbling down the sloped inner wall of the pool. He splashed and flailed below.

  “C’mon!” Ray shouted. He offered a hand to Lito, who first paused and checked Carlos before getting to his feet.

  The boy was dead, his eyes open and staring at the sky. Lito closed them, giving a silent apology to both the boy and his mother.

  The three of them ran as the mob of tourists came around the pool and loped after them.

  16

  Amber dove back into the lifeboat with Ray. Lito shoved them out to dangle over the water, then swung a leg over the railing and dropped in himself. The bottom of the boat cracked under the stress. Lito had to stretch up to reach the catch on the crank system that would start them lowering toward the water, then pulled back as the creatures surged toward the bulwark above them.

  In the sunlight, their glow was dampened, but every detail of their grotesque bodies was revealed, putrid, singed flesh and twisted limbs. They leaned over the Atlantic Queen’s guardrail, clawing at the air in a parody of how they had started this voyage, waving goodbye to loved ones they would never see again as the cruise liner sailed away from the dock. A few of them fell over—missing the lifeboat by inches and dropping to smash against the ocean surface far below—but the rest were held against the railing by the press of bodies packed in behind them.

  She spotted Justin, his teeth bared like an animal as he howled in frustration.

  The thought of him remaining on this cursed ship forever, eventually turning into one of these pathetic freaks, was too much for her to bear.

  Wiping at sudden tears, she pointed the gun up at him.

  Lito put a hand over hers. “I’ll do it.”

  She gave him the pistol and looked away as the shots rang out.

  The lifeboat dropped fast without anyone to control the descent. As they reached the ocean, the sickly glow from the alien ship began to flicker. Arcs of piercing blue electricity surrounded the entire vessel. The air was suddenly so heavy with static, Amber thought she might be able to swim through it.

  They reboarded the drug dealers’ speedboat. Amber gave the keys to Lito and rushed to cut the mooring.

  “You better drive this thing for all it’s worth,” Ray said, sinking down onto the padded bench with Amber. “I figure we got less than five minutes before we’re all goin bye-bye.”

  Lito brought the engine to life and throttled up. They shot across the band of empty water, back toward the ring of derelict ships. Soon, they were lost i
n the maze of drifting steel.

  An ungodly roar sounded behind them.

  Amber looked back as a familiar shape rose from the water in the wake of their boat: a sleek, domed head with jaws big enough to swallow a person whole.

  The sea monster. Except now, she knew it was no monster, but some dinosaur-like creature that had never existed in the same time as human beings. A long lost relative—or descendent—of Loch Ness. Or maybe it came from some other dimension where its species still ruled the oceans, and mankind quaked in fear of it.

  Now, it was caught within the Deep’s spider web, doomed to forever follow the spacecraft wherever it went, drawn back time and time again by the flashing beacon.

  Behind the speedboat, it kept pace with them, opening its crocodile jaws and snapping at their engine. She could see the tip of its tail as it thrashed in the water. Those huge, powerful flippers she’d seen last night during the storm churned the water to either side, propelling its massive body after them. It might’ve been majestic if its reptilian skin wasn’t pitted with radiation burns and stretches of blackened scales.

  The beast raised its head and issued another roar at the morning sky, a braying call that sounded like a cross between whale song and an elephant’s trumpet.

  “Go faster!” Amber yelled.

  Lito hunched over the wheel, but he was forced to slow down for turns as he navigated through the derelicts. The beast chasing them had no such trouble, submerging briefly to zip under anything that got in its way. In a few seconds, it breached right alongside them, its girth pushing a wall of water in front of it that tipped the speedboat to one side.

  Those jaws swung toward them, bashing the side of the boat. Its teeth left gouges in the craft’s side. Amber screamed and held on to her bench as they started to tip.

  The sky flashed dazzling blue, a color somehow deeper and more exotic—and nauseating—than daylight could ever be. The sea monster slowed, all interest in them lost. It turned around and drifted back toward the bursts of light. The speedboat shot away from it.

  Just ahead, the derelicts petered out. Lito steered around the hull of a yacht, then they shot into open water. He opened the boat’s throttle to full and then twisted in the pilot’s chair to look back.

  The sea monster was lost in the field of derelicts now, which stretched out to either side of them as far as they could see. A high pitched whine filled the air, louder even than the boat’s droning engine. That sharp tang of burnt ozone hit her nostrils again. Static electricity coursed over them, strong enough to make every hair on her body stand at attention. The flickers of light from somewhere at the center of the ships were getting faster, brighter, so intense they were more white than blue, a hazy color like the interior walls of that ancient craft. Amber caught one last glimpse of the prow of the Atlantic Queen stretching high above the other abandoned ships just before the light became too bright to look at. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears, but neither did anything to block out this sensory overload.

  And then it stopped. Amber blinked a few times until her vision returned.

  The ocean behind them was empty. The derelicts, the cruise liner…all of it gone. In their place was a gigantic hole in the ocean surface, an impossible and perfectly round dimple in the water, like the Sargasso was just one big ice cream carton and someone had removed a scoop. Which was, she realized, exactly what had happened; the Deep had taken a five-mile long chunk of ocean water along to wherever it went next. The hole stayed like that for one precipitous moment, and then, with a pop that Amber felt in her eardrums, the surrounding water and air rushed in to fill the void.

  “Hang on!” Lito shouted.

  Their speed slowed. A sudden current dragged at them. With the boat in motion, there had been a wind blowing over Amber, but now it sucked at her with tornadic force, ripping at her hair and skin as air pressure worked to equalize. A roar like a thousand raging waterfalls assaulted them.

  The ocean waters crashed in from all sides in the middle of the depression, creating a foaming waterspout that shot into the air and came down like rain, drenching them. But the sea settled after another minute, and all was calm.

  Lito brought the boat to a stop. Turned to face them while wiping saltwater from his eyes.

  “That was fun and all, but next year…Disneyland, okay?”

  Amber gave a tired chuckle. Ray kicked out at him feebly. Then all three of them grew quiet and went back to studying the sweep of the morning ocean. It seemed so vast and empty again, without the derelicts to break up the horizon.

  “Well, I guess that’s that then,” Lito said. “She was a good ship.”

  “Still is,” Ray told him. He pointed. They followed the direction of his finger.

  Far out on the water, several miles off their starboard stern, one lonely ship floated.

  17

  The Steel Runner was as they’d left it. They checked it top to bottom, and found no creatures waiting for them. The engines were still down, but Lito figured the Dominican’s luxury speedboat had more than enough torque to tow the ship to land.

  He tried to get Ray to lie down, but the man insisted on helping him take the bodies of Mondo and the nameless little girl from the holds and cast them overboard. Amber left them alone for this operation, volunteering to go downstairs and work on mopping up the blood belowdeck.

  The sun stood high as they tossed the sheet-wrapped forms over the side. Ray said a short prayer. Though they were only sending off two people, Lito knew the impromptu funeral was also for Jericho, Rabid, and Jorge. And Carlos too; Lito felt the kid deserved at least that much.

  “How is it even still here?” Ray asked in Spanish when it was all over, and the last of the bodies had sunk beneath the seaweed. “The Runner, I mean. Why didn’t it go with the rest of them?”

  Lito leaned against the bulwark and gave the railing a loving pat. “Blind, stupid luck, that’s what I think. Last night, when we dropped anchor after almost hittin the pontoon boat, we parked right on the damn edge of this quarantine zone.” Ray and Amber had filled Lito in on their discoveries, some of which he’d already pieced together from his last conversation with Tuan. “We’re just lucky it didn’t crack up when the ocean collapsed on itself.”

  Ray was quiet for a moment before saying, “You wanna talk about blind, stupid luck? I’ve been thinkin about that broadcast the girl and I heard.”

  “The one from the thousand-year-old alien?” Lito tried not to sound skeptical, but it was hard.

  “Yeah, that one.” Ray lit a cigarette and dragged deep. “That spaceship…we’re all just playin one big game of hot potato. Sooner or later, it’s gonna explode, and take out a quarter of whatever planet it’s on. We better just hope it’s not ours.”

  “If you’d told me this time yesterday that you and I would be having a serious conversation about alternate dimensions, I’d’ve busted a gut.”

  “Then let’s talk about how we’re gonna find another crew with a death warrant on our heads.”

  Lito sighed. “Ray…if I never see the Caribbean again, it’ll be too soon.”

  18

  After Ray was freshly bandaged and in his bunk, Lito secured the speedboat to the prow of the Steel Runner with some heavy steel cord. When he climbed back aboard his ship, Amber was sitting in the wheelhouse, staring out at the water. Her cheeks were wet. He sat down with her, but said nothing for several minutes. The silence wasn’t awkward, but he had no idea how to break it.

  She saved him the trouble.

  “Doing some pirate meditation?” she asked, wiping away the tears caught in her eyelashes.

  He smiled. “I’m taking up yoga next.”

  “Be sure to wear an eye patch with your leotard.”

  They fell quiet again, and this time he took the lead.

  “I’m sorry. About Justin, about…all of it.”

  She nodded. “I appreciate what you did for him back there. I just…couldn’t leave him like that. And, in fourteen yea
rs, if there really is a ship called the Atlantic Queen, I intend to make sure it doesn’t wind up trapped in the Bermuda Triangle forever. Maybe it’ll save him. Maybe it’ll save all of them.”

  Even though he’d had that thought himself, he briefly considered trying to argue her out of that idea—after all, if that ship never went into the Sargasso, then how had they just escaped from it?—but she seemed resolute. “I better get us moving. If we leave now, we’ll be to the Florida coast before nightfall.”

  He stood, started to walk out, but she grabbed his hand and pulled him to her. Their lips brushed, for just one electric moment, and then she leaned against him.

  “You know, gringa, you could come with us,” he told her. For the first time, Lito admitted to himself how much he wanted to see where things went with this woman.

  “Girls can’t be pirates, remember?” she said against his shoulder.

  “I think Ray and I are givin the whole pirate thing up.”

  “We’ll see. The only good thing about all this is that I have no idea what comes next.” He felt her lips move in a way that had to be a smile, but when she spoke again, it was to say, “I know the radiation would’ve turned him, but…I can’t help wondering where Eric ended up.”

  Lito thought briefly of the rich pendejo and his beloved statue. If anybody deserved an eternity in the Triangle, it was him.

  “As long as it’s somewhere far, far away from here, consider me a happy man.”

  19

  When all was quiet, Eric exited the alien spaceship through the portal on its side.

  He’d found the statue in the bottom of the pool, and managed to climb out without attracting the attention of the mutants, who now lined the portside railing as they howled for blood. He launched another lifeboat, then rowed for the UFO. By that point, the craft had been spitting out blue sparks like a chainsaw put to metal. Getting there hadn’t been easy with his broken rib, but he’d made it—as he knew he would—just as the glowing cylinder on top of the ship began to emit a whining noise.