The Night Boat

by Robert R. McCammon

  The freighter, moving with incredible speed, roared between the trawler and the Night Boat; Moore could still see the submarine through a mist of fiery timbers. The U-boat veered away, water thundering against its superstructure; it swept past the trawler, and the grim freighter disappeared within the folds of the sea.

  Cheyne strained at the wheel, his teeth clenched. There was a loud crack that both Moore and Kip first mistook for breaking wood. Cheyne cried out in pain; bone protruded from his left elbow. The rudder came free, the wheel spinning. The Carib fell to his knees. “TAKE THE WHEEL!” he shouted.

  And Moore, his senses reeling, found himself reaching for it, gripping it, his wrists almost breaking. He let the wheel play out and then fought back, feeling the ocean’s tremendous strength wrenching at the rudder.

  “KEEP YOUR HANDS ON IT!” Cheyne roared, pulling himself up, his arm dragging uselessly. “DON’T LET IT SLIP!”

  Moore held on, his arms about to rip from their sockets. Spray whipped into his eyes through the broken glass.

  “HOLD HER STEADY!” the Carib shouted.

  The wheelhouse door was suddenly torn from its hinges; in the next white-hot sear of lightning Jana saw the huge form take shape, saw it hurtling toward the Pride’s starboard, saw the waves churning at its prow. “It’s coming back!” she cried out, holding herself in the doorway. “There! It’s coming back!”

  Kip twisted his head around, struggling toward her. He saw it approaching, could imagine the things aboard grinning as they sighted their easy prey.

  It raced onward, parting the sea, the rumble of its diesels and oil-stink filling the wheelhouse. Jana saw the dripping holes of the torpedo tubes as the submarine was lifted high; in that instant she fought for her sanity.

  In the far distance came a sound of metal against metal, a clattering racket borne in by the wind, swiftly carried away. The buoys marking Jacob’s Teeth!

  When the submarine was almost upon them Moore felt the rudder respond; he spun the wheel to port. The Night Boat roared alongside, only feet away.

  Kip and Jana were shoved aside by the boat’s turning. Cheyne, his broken arm hanging, stood between them, his eyes blazing. Then he staggered along the bucking deck, moving for the bow. He stumbled, fell, regained his footing. The noise of the buoys was more strident now, closer. The Night Boat shuddered, struck the Pride, and then was thrown back by a wave. It came in again, iron grinding along the trawler’s hull. Timbers shattered.

  And finally Cheyne had reached the bow; he grasped a thick line and pulled at it. There was a crude twin-grappled anchor attached to the other end used for mooring on reefs. The thick, coarse line was coiled on the deck and made fast to a winch. He heard the buoys rattling dead ahead. If he could lift the anchor, throw it, get it hooked into the submarine’s deck railing there was a chance of dragging it across the reefs and splitting that hull open. With one arm he hefted the anchor, the muscles cramping; he couldn’t find strength enough to throw it. The Night Boat again crashed against the starboard gunwale. There was no time. In another moment it would be veering off from the Teeth.

  Cheyne pulled the anchor with him and leaped over the gunwale.

  He slammed against the superstructure, pain taking his breath away. He began to slide down the iron, his feet scrabbling at vents. With his good hand he sought to spike the anchor in, like a harpoon, but there was no place to hook it. The sea pounded him. He drove out with the anchor, feeling it catch into something: A collapsed, hanging section of railing.

  The rope snapped tight before his face and he clung to it, dragging in the water. Beside him, the monster vibrated. Hold! he commanded the bolts around the winch on deck. Hold! “I’VE GOT YOU!” he shouted, his mouth filling with water.

  And then the Night Boat swerved toward the Pride. Cheyne was caught between, but still he held the anchor firm into the railing, gasping for breath.

  The two vessels crashed together; the entire starboard gunwale split open. When the submarine pulled away, tightening the rope again, Moore looked for Cheyne but saw he was gone.

  The rattling of the warning buoys rang through the wheelhouse and Moore saw one of the red cans pass to port. They were in the danger zone. He threw the throttles forward, the Pride’s diesels screaming. Ahead were the twisted outgrowths of coral; he turned directly for them. The only hope was the trawler’s powerful engines against the submarine’s ancient ones. The Pride, shuddering with the weight, pulled the Night Boat onward.

  There was a splitting noise, a snapping of coral; Moore heard iron being scraped and gouged as the Night Boat was dragged alongside. Kip saw figures on the conning tower, the terrible things watching with greedy, flaming eyes. A flash of lightning revealed a grim, jawless face.

  Moore continued on into the field of reefs, feeling the Pride being bitten and knifed by the coral. Water streamed into the wheelhouse, almost pulling him away from the wheel, but he fought it off, steering straight for the treacherous growths. Kip and Jana, holding on at the doorway, saw the submarine slam onto a sharp coral slab; iron shrieked, began to fold back.

  And then, the diesels still racketing, the Pride was held firm by the Teeth’s bite; mere feet away the Night Boat came to a stop, its guts pierced by a reef spear, oil leaking from its tank. The two boats hung side by side, each doomed. Waves swirled around them, seeking to break them free.

  Moore turned from the wheel, his eyes searching the shadows. The oil lamp had gone over; it lay on its side and where the glass had cracked a single, weak finger of flame burned. “Take Jana and get off,” he told Kip. “Use that broken door as a raft. Hurry!”

  Kip stared, shook his head. “No, David. NO!”

  Moore ducked down through the hatch into the cabin. He reappeared a moment later with the reel of fuse, unwinding it as he backed up the steps. “Get off, I said!” he shouted.

  “There’s time for all of us,” Kip told him. “Please…!” He turned his head; a movement had attracted his attention. The zombies were climbing down from the conning tower, moving across the deck toward the Pride.

  “Take Jana!” Moore shouted. “Go on!”

  Kip grasped his arm. “You’re going with us!”

  “If you don’t try to fight the sea you can make it. I did…a long time ago. Two can make it on that door. Three can’t.” He came to the end of the fuse, threw the reel aside; the things were scurrying down the conning tower ladder. One of them tried to pull the anchor free.

  Moore bent down and touched the fuse to the dying flame. It hissed, sparked; a red cinder burned past him, along the plank flooring and toward the bow-section cabin.

  “DAVID!” Jana pulled at his arm. “Please!”

  “I can’t leave you,” Kip said.

  “They need you on Coquina,” Moore told him, his voice hurried. “The things are coming to board the trawler. If they find the fuse and put it out, they may be able to work their boat free of the shoals. They’ll find someplace—maybe another Coquina—to repair it. Go on! Get out of here!”

  Kip paused. There was something cold and resolute in Moore’s eyes; he had seen a vision beyond Kip’s sight. There was nothing else to be said. Kip grasped his good shoulder tightly, then took Jana’s hand and dragged her out over her shouted protests. He hauled the battered slab of the door over to the port side. The water was black and wild underneath, dotted with coral. “Listen to me!” Kip shook her hard. “I SAID LISTEN TO ME! Hang on to my back. There’ll be a shock when we hit, but don’t let go!”

  And then, gripping the door before him like a shield, he leaped over with Jana clinging to him. It was like hitting a solid wall when they struck; water crashed over them, tossed them high and then back down. Kip pushed off from coral, shredding one hand. He kicked with all his strength, trying to catch his breath, hearing Jana cry out in pain as her leg brushed one of the Teeth’s needles. The bulk of the door kept them afloat and away from most of the coral. Kip clung to it with all the power he could manage.

  Moore whi
rled around in the Pride’s wheelhouse as two of the zombies appeared in the doorway. They crept forward, claws outstretched. He backed away from them, counting off the seconds. One of them rushed him and he swung at it; the other grasped his arm, throwing him off balance. He staggered and fell through the companionway into the lower cabin. Fingers jabbed at his eyes; he kicked them back, struggling to his feet. Behind him glowed the eye of the fuse. Others came down after him, yellow fangs slavering, talons seeking his throat. He kept backing away, making them follow him toward the bow compartment. How long? his brain shrieked. His flesh was crawling. HOW LONG?

  With another few steps he twisted around to look. The primary fuse sparked higher, separated into four fuses that snaked toward the crates. There was a hiss of fetid breath in his ear; a spidery thing with gaping eye sockets leaped for him, forcing him to the plankings, a claw reaching to rip at his throat. He threw it off, kicked at it, crawled away. He found an odd piece of wood and stood up, brandishing it like a club. The cabin was filled with the stench of smoke and rot; whorls of smoke from the burning fuses undulated around them. One of the things reached out—a face eaten by gray fungus, red eyes staring—and Moore slammed the wood into its chin. It fell back, colliding into the others.

  “COME ON!” he dared them, beckoning with his club. “COME ON AFTER ME!”

  They stopped suddenly, watching him, the eyes moving past to probe the bow shadows. They saw; in the next instant they surged forward, flailing at him, trying to reach the dynamite and tear out the racing fuses. Moore swung wildly, felt the wood break beneath his grip, felt himself flung back by a tremendous, inhuman strength. Only seconds now, the seconds breaking into fragments. Seconds. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.

  Moore stood his ground, blood streaming from a hairline slash; he fought madly with his bare hands against the hideous things that advanced upon him, throwing them to each side, slamming fists against brittle bone.

  And through the knot of living corpses came the one that Moore recognized: the tall, livid-eyed form of Wilhelm Korrin. Moore saw the jawless face illuminated in the faint red glow of the fuses. Korrin stepped forward slowly, a man in the grip of horrible pain; his arm came up, the finger pointing toward Moore. The hand became a claw, grasping, reaching. The others were motionless, watching their commander.

  And then the hand stopped, inches from Moore’s throat. Korrin stood looking at the burning fuse. His head fell back slightly, the eyes closing, the lids blocking off that hellish gaze, as if in expectation of death’s final and merciful deliverance.

  An instant before the heat seared him Moore had a split-second sensation: the touch of someone’s hand, cool, kind, reaching for his through a wall of mist. He held it tightly. And his last thought was that he was staring toward the sea, that he had seen a beautiful boat in the distance and he must swim to it, must swim to it because he had recognized the name on the transom and they were waiting for him.

  The blast parted the sea. Kip and Jana, struggling through the churning waves, twisted around to look. There was a yellow glare so fierce it hurt their eyes; jagged shards of wood flew through the sky, leaving fiery trails. The bow section of the Pride had disappeared; beside the trawler the fist of a giant pounded the Night Boat, slamming a tremendous rent in the iron just at the waterline. The forward deck collapsed—crumpling, metal shrieking—the conning tower was almost ripped from the superstructure. Iron plates spun into the air, up into blackness. Bits of railing were thrown to all sides. In another roar of flame the Pride’s wheelhouse vanished; the second blast deafened them. Drums of fuel were tossed high, and as they dropped back into the sea they exploded just over the surface, covering the submarine with sheets of flame. As Kip watched, he saw the Night Boat thrown free of the reef. Its twisted, smoking bulk veered toward him and Jana, faster and faster, driven by the rolling currents.

  And then came the collapse of the entire deck, the conning tower falling away, the periscopes snapping off. Kip felt the pull of the water at him; he fought it, his legs kicking wildly. A whirlpool had opened and the Night Boat began to whirl around the rim of a huge, black pit; as the submarine was sucked down, the bow peeled back, the noise of a dying beast screaming in agony. The ocean’s thunder drowned out the death cries.

  The boat was folding in on itself, its iron caving in, being hammered into a misshapen mass. It was happening, Kip realized, just as Boniface had tried to make it happen when he twisted that bit of wax cast in the submarine’s image and tossed it to the flames.

  The Night Boat’s stern pitched high, dripping red flame; the bow vanished into the whirlpool. There was a loud hissing as the sea swept over hot iron. On the rising stern the screws glistened in the firelight.

  Water crashed over them, forcing them down; Kip clenched the door and pulled them back to the surface.

  And when his head broke free he saw the thing was gone.

  Though the plain of the sea was studded with fire, the whirlpool’s action was lessening. A rush of bubbles exploded on the surface; then the whirlpool stopped, covering over the boat, its own deep grave.

  Kip and Jana clung to the platform of wood, exhausted, breathing raggedly. Kip shook his head to clear it, shrugging off water. Jana was limp, one hand still clamped to his shoulder. He could feel the strong beating of her heart.

  On the horizon, silhouetted in a gash of orange sky, was a flat mass of land. Kip blinked, unsure of what he was seeing. It lay about two miles distant, but he could already feel the currents dragging them in. “Big Danny Cay,” he said hoarsely. Beside him Jana stirred, lifted her head.

  They began to kick for it, slowly because the water was still rough. Kip looked over his shoulder, trying to pinpoint the spot where the submarine had gone down, but now the fires were dying and there was no way to tell. The creature was gone, and there was no cause to look back again. Now he could only think of all he would have to do, because he was the law on Coquina and there were people he was responsible for, people who looked to him for the kind of strength he knew he would find deep within himself.

  And swinging his vision back across the sea he thought he saw something, there against the warmth of the horizon, something like a small boat heading into the sun with her sails filled and all the great expanse of the sky beyond it.

  His eyes filled with tears and, looking away, he knew it would soon be out of sight.

  Afterword

  Robert McCammon Tells How He Wrote The Night Boat

  The Night Boat was the second novel I wrote, but the third one published. If you’d like to know why that was, write me a letter and I’ll be glad to tell you a tale of dark and twisted passages.

  The Night Boat actually had its beginnings in a drawing of a dinosaur that scared the jelly out of me as a kid. It showed an aquatic beast with a mouthful of gleaming teeth emerging from dark water to snap at a pterodactyl’s leg, the full moon shining down and gleaming off the white-capped waves. Long after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep, I lay in bed and heard the sound of waves on prehistoric shores, and the thrashing of a huge and hideous body emerging from the depths. The hero in The Night Boat, David Moore, remembers the same drawing.

  I also am fascinated by machines. Particularly ships and submarines. I can imagine nothing more grim than to be two hundred feet underwater in a leaking, moldering submarine. They didn’t call them Iron Coffins for nothing, and it took iron-willed men to survive in them. Most of the German submarine crews didn’t.

  The Night Boat is a mixture of dream and nightmare. A dream in that the location, the colors, the language are idyllic; nightmarish because the Night Boat invades the dream and destroys it. I took scuba-diving lessons in researching The Night Boat, but I wasn’t able to afford a trip to the Caribbean. It amazes me still that a review I got for the book went to lengths to say how accurate the reviewer thought I’d gotten the cadences of island language. I listened to many hours of calypso music and spoken Caribbean dialect records.

  Events and impressions in a
n author’s everyday life are always mirrored in the work he or she is doing at the time. While I was writing The Night Boat, I lived in a cramped little roachhole of an apartment on Birmingham’s Southside. Honestly, I could hear the roaches running wild in the ceiling over my bed as I tried to sleep. And my upstairs neighbors played their stereo at an ungodly volume all hours of the night, so round about two or three in the morning you could hear the other neighbors banging on their walls to get the music shut down. That weird, rhythmic hammering in the early hours remained with me and found its way into The Night Boat. When the crew hammers at the rotting hulk of the submarine, it’s actually irate neighbors at two o’clock in the morning trying to get Led Zeppelin silenced. The roaches in the ceiling I saved for another book.

  Now, eight or nine years after The Night Boat was first published, I think often of Coquina Island. It is a beautiful place, surrounded by emerald water, with fresh trade winds and golden sand, green palms swaying in the breeze, the scent of cinnamon and coconut in the air. It was created by a young man whose apartment looked out over a junk car lot, the smell of burned onions wafting from somebody’s kitchen, and burglar bars on the windows. Ah, the luxury of the imagination…

  The Night Boat is about the merging of dream and nightmare, confinement and escape, and what I think of as the whirlpool of Fate. David Moore thought he’d escaped that whirlpool, but it was waiting for him, there below the surface of emerald waters, where the monsters doze but never sleep.

  Robert McCammon

  June 1988