Just as she was thinking this, she heard a thump practically over her head. Up came the Glock, and she was just about to shoot, when Gavin whispered again, “It’s not that bad, Rod. Right? Rod?”
“Shut up!” Rodrigo hissed from near the front of the boat. He wasn’t over head as she thought—he must have thrown something to distract her! Or to get me shooting. Well, two can play that game. In her pocket was the jackknife, the one she had vowed to use against any man who tried to rape her. She dug it from her sopping wet blue jeans and tossed it in front of her. It hit something with a muffled clunk. It was just enough of a sound for Rodrigo to orient on. He fired twice, putting more holes in the hull.
Now she had a bead on him and fired three times through the fiberglass ceiling. She was hardly what anyone would call an expert shot, but still, he was all of fifteen feet away and was a good-sized target. It would’ve been difficult for her to miss, although she managed to with one of her shots. The other two sank home and he toppled backward over the railing.
“Rod?” Gavin whispered.
“He’s dead,” Emily told him. She had advanced up the stairs so that her head was just above the level of the deck.
Gavin had managed to drag himself to the edge of the boat and was sitting with his back to the railing, both hands clutching his stomach. His fingers glistened with dark red blood. “You gonna kill me?”
She didn’t want to. The two bodies floating next to the boat were bad enough and she was going to have to give the captain a shove in as well. He still hadn’t moved, and she didn’t think he would.
“I should kill you,” she told him. “You Corsairs are bad and can’t be trusted. Even when you’re hurt. You might even be waiting to get me once I come up.”
Gavin shrugged and pried one hand away from his stomach; it dripped red as he gestured around. “I don’t have a gun, and if I did…” He shrugged again, grimacing this time. “I don’t want to hurt you. Okay? This was all a mistake. Okay?” He had started to slouch and tried to force himself back up. Another grimace, and now he looked as though he was crying. “I could help you. I could help you with the boat and you could help me. My stomach…it’s, it’s bleeding. Just tell me it’s okay. Please?”
He certainly did look pathetic, and she did indeed need help with the boat. Her last attempt at working a sailboat had ended with her damaging one boat, sinking another, and getting caught by the Corsairs. She didn’t see how this was going to be any better. “Maybe,” she answered, nervously, afraid to trust a Corsair, even one who looked like he was on the edge of dying. “I can do my best for you, but I can’t make any promises. And first, before I do anything to help, you have to show me how to get close to that cliff.” She pointed nearly due west. It was the last place she had seen Gunner. Chances were that he was just another body floating in the water, but she had to see for herself.
Chapter 2
Puget Sound, Washington
It turned out that Emily Grey didn’t have time to be afraid of the Corsair. The puffing wind had progressed to a confused and sporadic gusting, which was slowly driving the Dead Fish southward toward a jumble of rocks that looked innocent enough, barely humping up out of the water. Barely or not, there was no true innocence there, and even Emily knew better than to let the boat get anywhere near them. Sailboats were delicate machines, and hers—she had quietly claimed it by virtue of conquest—already had six or seven bullet holes in it. She wasn’t about to let it run aground as well.
With Gavin mumbling out instructions, she danced around the deck, running the mainsail up, heeling the boom around, tying knots and working the wheel. She also grabbed the guns that had been flung about and stowed them near the wheel, where she could get to them quickly. Lastly, she dumped the captain’s body overboard without ever checking to see if he was actually dead.
He sure seemed dead. He was already stiff and he smelled like a dank, moldy armpit. She tried to shove him under the lower part of the railing with her foot, but he got stuck. His belly was three inches too round, forcing her to stomp him under. She did it with her eyes closed and her face turned away. It took five squeamish thuds before he went over with a splash. Although she felt her stomach flip, she didn’t feel an ounce of guilt. In her mind, he had been the prototypical Corsair and thus, deserved a far worse death than the one he’d received.
Once she had the deck clear and the sails properly set, she noted with some satisfaction that they were no longer aimed at the rocks. Neither were they going back to where Gunner had fallen in. They were headed northwest on a course that would take them out into the main part of the Sound. “We need to turn,” she declared, heading back to the wheel, and pointing at the remains of the staircase floating in the water two-hundred yards away. “That’s where we need to go.”
“Hold on. Don’t turn yet,” Gavin told her. She gazed fixedly on him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “It’s not like driving a car,” he explained. This was something that didn’t mean all that much to her since she had never driven a car. He took a deep, tired breath and tried again, “When we turn, the wind will push us hard to leeward. That means it’ll send us past where you wanna go, and we’ll end up having to go in a circle. Wait until we’re maybe a hundred yards past your spot and then make the turn.”
She didn’t like the idea of wasting any more time than she had. Gunner had been in the water seven or eight minutes already; plenty of time to drown. Or maybe he was dead already? The wounds he had suffered would have killed a normal man. Then again, Gunner wasn’t close to being normal. He was tough as old shoe leather, and had fought even when he’d been hurt. He had fought to save her, when he hadn’t needed to. She was glad that he had, of course, and was properly grateful…and was flooded with guilt. There was no denying that she had treated him shabbily, thinking that he was some sort of malformed pervert—and maybe he was, she didn’t know. Still, even if he were, he had never mistreated her, and if he’d been a bit rough around the edges with her, the fact that he had done everything he could to save her more than made up for it.
Gavin interrupted her thoughts, “Will you look at me, just to check? Please?” His head was slumped and his heavy jaw lay on his chest. The one sentence appeared to have drained his energy. “It’ll be a few minutes before you need to turn.”
Reluctantly, she agreed to look at him. Although Emily had clapped a few bandages on Gunner, she figured he hadn’t died under her care simply because he was tough as nails, not because of her “skills.” Gavin was something of a gorilla of a man with a round paunch and long heavy arms; he might have been big, but he wasn’t tough. He seemed soft beneath a sneering exterior, as if he was getting by on his reputation. That softness had Emily afraid she might accidentally kill him.
Or what if I look in at his guts and faint? Or puke? Or cry? Worse, what if he cries? All were possibilities, which were offset by her need to keep him alive. The inlet was narrow, and she was pretty sure she would crash the boat without help.
“I just need a little light,” she told him, buying a few seconds to steady her nerves. She had set the red lantern to the side as she had been cleaning up; now she pointed it at Gavin’s midsection, where it beamed a dull red glow onto a glistening mess.
Pressing her lips firmly together, she squatted down and peered in at his wound, saying, “Hmmm,” just as Jillybean would have. Emily had no idea whatsoever what she was looking at beyond a small hole that pulsed red fluids. She knew that his stomach was right there behind the hole and his spleen was tucked away nearby, but that was about it in the vicinity, except for maybe a few loops of intestine. “Does it hurt bad?”
Something deep inside of him had begun to throb. He told her this, adding in something of a whine, “Other than that, I can’t feel anything. Not even my legs. That’s bad, right?”
It sounded both terrible and perplexing. How could he not feel anything? She gave his belly a little poke, which made the hole belch out a gush of green fluid. He didn’t seem to notice. S
he, on the other hand, made a noise: “Hrrgh,” and began to heave. She looked away, breathing lightly, trying to keep from hurling up a rush of gastric juices out onto the deck.
“What is it?” Gavin demanded in a frightened voice. “Is it bad? Oh, Christ, it’s bad isn’t it?”
“No. I just…hrrgh…I just…it’s a…hrrgh…a small hole. Maybe it’s not…” A deep breath…“Not so bad.” She forced herself to look again, glad that her Aunt Jillybean wasn’t around to see how pale she was. As part of Emily’s “real” schooling, Jillybean had arranged for Emily to dissect two dead zombie bodies so she could learn the reality of human anatomy. They had been a hell of a lot different than the unblemished, sterile cartoon-like drawings found in Emily’s textbooks. It was shocking and gross, and yet Emily hadn’t been sick, even when Jillybean had her root around in the gunky parts.
But those had been zombies. This was a person. Bad or not, his pain and fear were very real. It infected her and made her unsure of herself. Still, he needed her to at least pretend to be competent. Swallowing heavily as her stomach continued to roll, she took a long look in at his wound. The small hole had not changed. “It probably nicked a nerve. Maybe I should look at your back.”
She was just reaching for the lantern when the boat shuddered and their momentum was checked. Emily’s first thought was that they had hit a sandbar.
Gavin corrected her. “It’s a zombie. Prolly a big one.”
“What do we do?” she asked, even as a huge slimy hand stretched up and took hold of the edge of the boat near the bow. The Dead Fish yawed to port, nearly sending Emily right off the boat and making Gavin gasp in pain.
“Use the boathook,” he suggested. “Just try not to let him go right straight under. If he gets caught up on the keel…man, you don’t want that.”
Emily’s nerves were already thrumming, and with the cryptic nature of the response, the thrumming advanced into her hands. “Why? Why don’t I want that? Will it chew its way into the boat?”
“It could, but that’s not the problem. The problem is you can’t steer the boat with one of them slung up underneath. And the only way to get it off…”
He left that hanging and she filled in the end, “Is to go under there?” Her clothes were still dripping wet from having just been beneath the keel, and she didn’t think she’d have the guts to go down there with one of them lurking in the dark. Taking up the boathook, she advanced to the front until she could see the beast.
Gavin had been right, it was a big one, at least eight feet tall and closing in on eight-hundred pounds. It was rotted, black and green, with mold and algae competing for space across its immense fleshy back and up its neck. When it pulled its head out of the water and growled at her, she saw that its teeth and gums were green as well, and that there was a long string of seaweed running from its chin down into its gullet.
Uncertain how to get it off the boat without allowing it to go straight under, she smacked its knuckles with the hook. This was very much like smacking the roots of a tree and expecting it to give up its hold on the earth. It didn’t even seem to notice. Next, she jabbed the hook into its upturned face. That got its attention. It raised its other hand, which was missing its thumb and pointer finger. Without them, it could only bat uselessly at the hook.
Letting out a howl of frustration, it let go of the boat to make a grab for the hook and immediately began to slide under. She gave it a quick shove with the hook. It had been a feeble shove against a great deal of weight and didn’t seem to move the monster more than an inch from the center line. She held her breath and listened as the beast tumbled and thumped against the hull, and it did indeed strike the keel, slewing the boat slightly into the wind, slowing them as if someone had applied a brake.
Then it came free and washed out behind them, rolling in their wake like a log.
Emily turned them back on course, only to see that it looked as though she could begin turning toward shore again. “Hey, Mister,” she whispered. “Do I have to mess with the sails?”
“Naw. Just turn.” He sounded cranky. “What about my stomach? You said you’d check me out.”
“And I will in a few minutes, I promise.”
“You have to hurry. There’s too much blood. There’s not supposed to be this much blood coming out of a guy. Hey! Don’t get too close to that cliff. Turn to port.” Having spent three days with Mike Gunter, she knew that port was to the left. It was too soon to turn, but she did want to slow down. She asked Gavin how to do that and he showed her how to “Heave to.”
Either he wasn’t the best teacher or she did something wrong. The boat went up into the wind and then began to spin slowly as it drifted parallel to the cliff. As long as they didn’t crash, she didn’t really care. She was too invested in finding Gunner to worry about the “perfect” approach or to listen as Gavin groaned and whined, doing everything he could to get her to abandon whatever fruitless cause she was on and help him. He guessed correctly that she was searching for the person who had been shooting at the Dead Fish, and with all his black heart, Gavin wished that he was dead.
Gunner was not dead, although he was close. After the stairs had fallen in with a great crash, the dark water had almost taken him. Had it not been for a bit of floating debris that his right hand had found just as his head was going under, he would have been resting on the muddy bottom of the Sound long before. His death seemed only to have been postponed, however.
The water was like ice, and within minutes, he felt his body temperature plummeting. He didn’t know why he was fighting to live. He knew that in his present state he could do nothing for his daughter and assumed that she had been taken by the Corsairs. This should have made him furious and sad in equal measures, but the cold had turned his iron muscles to mush and set his mind awash in a drowsing despair.
Even when the black boat, looking immense from his low point of view, came sliding up, he couldn’t seem to find the spirit of revenge that should have been burning in him. Instead, he made the firm decision to let himself drown rather than be taken captive.
Emily snagged him with the hook and hissed, “Gunner! Gunner! Are you alive?” Gunner was sure he was dreaming when he saw a blurry, dripping version of his daughter leaning over the rail. “Gunner?”
“Yeah?”
“Catch hold of this.” She held the boathook next to his hand and tapped it gently on the length of old wood so he wouldn’t have to do anything but grab it. He couldn’t seem to focus on it, and when he made a listless, anemic attempt to grasp it, he slid off the board and started right for the bottom, disappearing into the black water in a split second.
With a cry, Emily swished the boathook beneath the surface, caught something and hauled back. She had snagged him by the neck and as she pulled him to the side of the boat, she was simultaneously killing him and saving his life. She had no other choice, which was little conciliation to her as he passed out before she was able to drag him to the side of the boat.
“Oh no! Wake up, Gunner. Gunner! Wake…”
A harsh cry from above stopped her words and sent her heart into her throat. “What boat is that?” She knew the voice; it was Mark Leney, the Corsair who had hounded her and Gunner for days on end. He was a fiend of a man, and it was fitting that he appeared as a demonic shadow, standing high above them on the top of the cliff. He was not alone, either; there were other shadows with him.
Emily swung around just as Gavin was about to answer. “Don’t,” she whispered, digging in her pocket for the old Glock.
He looked caught between conflicting desires, and he hesitated, not knowing which way to go. The seconds drew out and as they did, Gunner’s face went blue. Leney asked the question a second time. “I gotta say something,” Gavin whispered. Louder, in something of a strident, strangled cry, he called out, “Dead Fish.”
“This is Captain Leney. You guys see a girl or a hunchback down there?”
There was no mistaking the violent side to side motion of he
r head or the gun that she finally managed to rip from her pocket. “Uh, no.” He didn’t sound all that believable. She waved the gun at him and then pointed seaward. He had no idea what that was supposed to mean. “W-we were just coming to check though.”
“Just coming to check?” Leney’s hackles were up. Something wasn’t right. “How would you know to check?”
Gavin shrugged, looking towards Emily; she gestured with the gun in a way she hoped he would understand as: Make something up. He began to hem and haw. Emily didn’t know what to say to help him, but she knew she had to do something besides sit there under the guns of the Corsairs. She shoved the Glock back into her pocket and reached for a coil of rope. Quickly, she pulled Gunner right up to the edge of the boat, tossed the pole away, and…
“The radio,” Gavin said, finally able to spit something out. “And, and, and we heard shooting, and there was that big splash. So, uh, that’s why we came.”
She could only hope they would believe him despite the whiny, rattling way he spoke. He sounded like someone had a gun pointed at him. Regardless, she kept working, holding Gunner with one hand, while trying her best to wrap the rope up under his arms. It wasn’t just awkward, it was impossible. For one, he was so extremely heavy that she almost fell in on top of him. It took everything she had just to keep his head above the surface. Perhaps worse than his weight was that his hump was too big, his huge, muscular barrel chest was too wide, and her arms were too short. She was sorely tempted to wrap the rope around his neck, temporarily, of course; just long enough to get the boat turned away from the looming cliff. Beneath her, she could already feel a crunching, vibrating grind as the keel scraped across mud and slime-covered rocks.
“Alright,” Leney said, his suspicions only slightly diminished. “I’m going to need to take command of your ship. Take her south a quarter of a mile. There’s some remains of a dock. See if you can get her in close.”
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 2
