“Yeah, sure,” Gavin answered and then said nothing else.
It didn’t seem like enough of a response to either Emily or Leney. “What the hell are you waiting for?” Leney snapped. “Get moving, damn it!”
“Yes, sir,” Emily called out in the deepest voice she could manage, putting herself in a terrible position. How was supposed to steer the ship while keeping Gunner from drowning.
If she tied the rope around Gunner’s neck, it would finish the job of killing him. Of this she had no doubt, but she had no choice. They were practically stuck on the rocks, and if they didn’t get moving fast, Leney would send men to find out why.
“Sorry,” she whispered, tying the rope just below Gunner’s chin, hoping that by avoiding his Adam’s apple he wouldn’t die quite so fast. She then heaved back, drawing him higher out of the water, like he was a tuna that was too large to land. Once she had tied him off, his face going swiftly purple, she leapt to the wheel and spun it left…and nothing happened. Looking up, she saw that the sails were limp; they were too close to the cliff to catch the wind.
“What do I do?” she begged Gavin.
He had been watching her with his chin sagged down to his chest. With a great effort, he looked blearily around. “Push us out into the channel. It’s the only thing you can do.”
That meant getting back into the water, which was so cold she was surprised it wasn’t iced over. In reality, it was forty-five degrees; not cold enough to form ice, but more than cold enough to kill someone by hypothermia. She didn’t hesitate.
She raced to the bow, jumped over, and found herself in up to her nose. Taking a deep breath, she went under, gathered her legs beneath her and heaved the boat away from the cliff. She was surprised how light it was and nearly pushed it beyond her reach, especially as the current took it. A line trailed in the water and she was able to pull herself to the side of the boat, which was too high to grab, forcing her to swim down the long hull.
A whine broke from her chattering lips. Everything was going wrong, and her mistakes were beginning to pile up as she made bad decision after bad decision, each one costing her precious seconds. They were seconds that Gunner didn’t have.
By the time she had worked her way to the stern and climbed back on board, he looked dead. “No,” she hissed at him as she yanked the rope off his neck. “Please, please, please wake up.” He didn’t. Grasping the boat hook again, she caught him under an arm his time and hauled him to the back of the boat where there wasn’t just a ladder, but a little diving platform that reminded her of a drawbridge. Two toggles held it up, and when she released them, it slid easily down to almost water level.
All she had to do was pull the monster of a man up by about three inches. It was impossible. She wasn’t strong enough and she lacked the keen insight that would have allowed her to use the physical properties of the boat itself to help. She would never have been able to get him up without help, which came in the form of a gentle swell.
The water, with caressing tenderness, simply lifted him up and slid him right onto the platform.
“Thank God! Thank God! Okay, now what?” She knew, but in her frazzled state it took her a few seconds to remember what Jillybean had taught her. “Airway, breathing, circulation.” They were the ABCs of first aid, and even though she stated them correctly, she blew right past actually checking to see if he had a clear airway, or if he was breathing, or if his heart was beating. She went right into CPR.
Taking a huge breath, one that could go a long way toward inflating a car tire, she blasted air into his lungs. Another tremendous breath in—she felt tiny compared to him and was sure that his lungs were correspondingly gigantic in size—was followed by such a huge exhalation that she forced air deep into the lowest part of his lungs. The two breaths were supposed to be followed by chest compressions, and had Gavin not said, “Hey…little girl,” she would have overdone those as well, jumping up and down on Gunner’s broad, muscled chest if she had to.
“We’re going to crash.” Gavin said this as if it was of such little concern to him that he might have been pointing out an oddly shaped cloud instead of wickedly sharp rocks jutting up out of the water. She had left the boat to sail itself. It appeared to have an infernal death wish and, accompanied by a quickening breeze, it was now charging across the water.
“How do I stop us? Does this thing have brakes or something?” Gavin didn’t answer. He had slumped over, unconscious. “Gavin? Oh, God!” Panic seized her, but she fought it down. “I’ll turn us. A quick turn and we’ll miss those…” She had stood to leap to the over-sized wheel when her eyes caught a glimmer of something off to her left, further out onto the Sound. It was a light, and it reminded her of a smaller version of one of the big spotlights that sat atop the wall surrounding Bainbridge Island.
The light was moving, which meant it was on a boat of some sort, and when the light swung away momentarily, she saw that it was a black boat, a big one. Emily’s legs buckled and she slunk down, crouching next to Gunner’s body. Another black boat could only mean there were more Corsairs on the Sound. And the spotlight sweeping back and forth could only mean they were searching for something in particular. They were searching for her, and when they found her, they would take her back to their lair and…terrible images filled her mind.
They were so horrific that the idea of crashing into the spires didn’t seem so bad at all.
Chapter 3
Puget Sound, Washington
The slick, black spires loomed up out of the water like the teeth of a giant. For Emily Grey, this was no mere simile. With the tide going out and the swell beginning to grow, it looked to her as if the sharp rocks were moving up and down like real teeth. The optical illusion was fed by the dark and the panic that had her by the throat with a steel grip.
So far, the almost twelve-year old had overcome the obstacles in her path with courage beyond her years. It helped that those obstacles had come at her one at a time, and that there had been an adult who stepped in periodically to help her past the harder spots in her adventure. Now, she had to be the adult and everything bad was happening at once. The Dead Fish was pointed straight at the rocks, she was responsible for two men who were within seconds of dying, there were dozens of armed Corsairs on the cliff above her, and who knew how many Corsair ships were crisscrossing the Sound, hunting her.
And there were zombies in the water.
She didn’t need to see them to know they were there. Their baleful moans had increased in volume as the Corsair searchlight got closer.
It was all too much, and she froze, her eyes jittering around seeing all the things she should have been doing instead of crouching down next to what she thought was a corpse. Gunner was as cold and as stiff as one, which made it all the more surprising when he grabbed her wrist. She jerked with such violence that she nearly tumbled off the back of the boat.
“You’re…so…beautiful,” he said in slurred whisper.
This was so unexpected that two seconds went by as she stared blankly at him. Her mind could not fit those three words into her current predicament. They made no sense and had no context. They had also been uttered by a man who was the exact opposite of beautiful. He had lost his mask and his revolting face was exposed in full. She could see the sickening burn scars that had eaten up half his face. She could see the ragged little hole in the side of his head where his ear had been. She could see where he was missing flesh around his jawline, and there were his ruined teeth and black gums.
It suddenly dawned on her that she had put her mouth on that! Twice! The shock of this got her moving. “Hold…hold on,” she told him and then scrambled over him to get at the wheel, which she spun to the left with all her might as if she were on a game show. It clunked to a stop faster than she expected and then began to tick quickly back the other way.
She grabbed it and fought it to the left, watching as the boat turned sharply. It heeled hard to the left, but it didn’t go left. The boat was still he
ading right toward the rocks, only now it was slipping side on to them. “What the…? Gavin? Gavin?” He had slumped over at some point. “Oh, God!” Her eyes flicked to the wheel, to the rocks, to the sails, to Gavin, and then back to the sails. She had never dropped them and now they were ballooning out, catching all the wind they could.
They had to be turned, but in what direction?
All her life, she assumed that sailboats simply went in the direction of the wind, sort of like a hot air balloon, and that their capability to steer was limited. Her voyage south to Hoquiam had changed her perception of that, without increasing her understanding of the factors involved. Besides, the Calypso had been a tiny boat. Its main sail was half the size of the Dead Fish’s little triangle of a second jib, and that had to mean the bigger ship was easier to maneuver…didn’t it? She had no idea.
She tied off the wheel so that it remained all the way over—she was sure that was right, at least—and ran to the boom, and was untying the preventer line when Mark Leney bawled from high overhead, “What the ever-loving hell are you doing?” He had been watching the boat in frank amazement; the amazement was quickly turning to anger. “Get that main over, damn it!”
“Which way?”
“Which way? What do you mean which way? Who is that?”
“I-I-I’m a slave.” She wanted to come up with a slave name only she didn’t know any slaves and didn’t know whether slaves had normal names or sexy names. It wouldn’t have mattered if they did, because she didn’t know any sexy names, except for maybe “Roxy” or “Taloola,” which might not be a name at all. Giving up on the idea of a sexy name she babbled, “There was a, uh, uh, there was a fight and two of the guys got shot.”
The black boat floated in a sea of darkness, which made it impossible for Leney to tell what was going on and which of the odd shadows on deck were corpses, and which were people, and which were bundles of rope. Still, the “slave” sounded very young to his ears and very familiar. “Haul that sail to starboard, Emily.”
Emily’s flesh flared with electric goosebumps. She was almost too shocked at hearing her own name to save the ship. The first of the rocks was less than fifty yards away when she pulled the sail around. It was the opposite direction that she would have chosen. She went with it anyway, guessing that Leney wouldn’t want to risk either the ship or her.
The wind caught the edge of the sail, turned the bow of the boat slightly away from the rocks, while at the same time imparting something of a forward motion. She pulled the sail back to a forty-five degree angle and grinned as the boat picked up speed. It still had a leeward lurch to it as each swell carried it south, closer to the rocks.
It was going to be close. She stood to judge the angle and breathed a sigh of relief as she saw they were going to miss the closest rocks by a good fifteen feet. One problem down, one million more to go, she thought.
“My name’s not Emily,” she called up to the cliff, imparting as much maturity and force into her voice that she could. “It’s Michelle and I am a slave. I, uh, I’ve been one for years.”
“Is that so?” Leney retorted. “I might believe that if you could tell me who the captain of the Dead Fish was?”
This was even more difficult than trying to come up with a sexy slave name. Would he believe Cutthroat Carl? Before she could utter this nonsense, the Dead Fish ran aground with enough force to send her flying. They had missed the rocks jutting up out of the water, but not the ones lurking beneath.
She slammed onto the deck and started rolling as the boat pitched far over on its side. It was already so far over that the water was coming up over the starboard rail. A new panic—that of the boat rolling all the way over and then being battered to pieces on the rocks, with her and Gunner drowning—swept her and seemed to switch off her mind’s “thought mode.”
As thoughts and actions went hand in hand, she did nothing except stare around her uselessly. Slowly, one thought bubbled up: Boats are stupid! With this less-than-Newtonian concept came anger and the realization that she hated sailboats. They didn’t have brakes, they never went in a straight line, they were flimsy and weak, and whoever had invented them was probably just as stupid.
The sound of Gunner splashing feebly broke her out of her internal rant and jarred her back to reality.
In a flash, she was scurrying like a monkey across the canted deck, racing to the stern. Gunner had slid off the little swimming platform and was four feet from the boat, and was being pulled further away with each swell. He could barely keep himself afloat. Foolishly, she jumped in and tried to hold him up. With one accidental swipe of his deformed left arm, she went right to the bottom. Luckily, it was only seven feet from the surface. Holding her breath, she grabbed one of his legs and hauled him the short way to the side of the boat.
Up she popped just as Leney roared, “Drop the sail, you idiot!”
If she had the breath to spare, she would’ve flung some particularly nasty and unladylike invectives his way. Even though she wasn’t allowed to use them, she knew quite a few bad words, and if ever there was a time to use them, this situation seemed tailor made. But she was struggling to drag Gunner to the low point of the ship. He was fading again and only had the one hand to hold on with.
Then her right foot made contact with the rising floor of the Sound, and she was able to pull him more easily. He was half-floating, half-standing now, as she came around to the low rail. “Slide under. Go!” Halfway under, he passed out again. It was enough. Emily slid under the rail, grabbed a rope, and cinched it down on his good hand, tying the other end around the mast.
Now she went to work on dropping the mainsail. Although she had raised the sail earlier, that had been with Gavin’s help, and she hadn’t memorized which rope was which, and there were a ridiculous number of them twisting all over the place. It was like a maze puzzle, and once more her anger started to flare. She followed this rope and that, trying to see which ones went to the top of the mast. Finally, she found the right one and yanked at the knot. The sail came down in a jumble which was wrong and not just because it was untidy. That was another thing about boats she didn’t like: if something wasn’t perfectly right, it meant it was completely terrible and that disaster would soon follow.
She knew she’d pay for the loose sail soon enough, but in the meantime, things were going her way for once. Without the wind pushing the boat over, it righted itself, and even floated back a few feet before stopping with a crunching sound.
“Stay right there, Emily,” Leney called down. “I have some men who’ll be there in a few seconds. They’ll get you off.”
“Yeah right,” she muttered under her breath. “I’ll just stay and wait for you to slap a collar on me.” If anything, she hated Corsairs more than she hated their boats. Once more she slid into the frigid water. Just like earlier, she put her shoulder under the boat and strained and grunted and heaved with all her might. Nothing happened. The Dead Fish was stuck fast.
“Stop that, damn it!” Leney shouted. “You’re going to carve a huge hole in the boat, and even if you do get it off the rocks, it’ll sink right out from under you.”
She hesitated as she pictured the boat sinking out in the middle of the Sound. It would be a long swim back to shore…if she wasn’t eaten by one of the zombies first or picked up by another Corsair boat.
“Don’t listen to him,” Gunner rasped. He was half-turned toward her. Lying on his side like that made his hump look as though a harbor seal had snuck up under his shirt. “Try rocking the boat up and down at the same time as pushing.” With nothing to lose, she heaved the bow up and then down, before throwing her shoulder into it. Right away the boat edged forward with a frightening scraping sound, as if she were indeed tearing a gaping hole through the center of the hull.
Leney threatened to shoot her.
She ignored him. Getting shot would be considered as getting off light with the Corsairs. Another rocking push, and just like magic, the boat slipped away from the rock
s and floated properly…almost like she had managed to tame it.
“Are you going to be good now?” she asked the Dead Fish as she climbed back aboard. The boat responded by drifting away from the rock. And just in time. Men were running through the shallows towards her. Her hand went to the Glock that was still nestled in her pocket; she didn’t pull it out, deciding to let it remain there. Luck had been on her side during her first gunfight with real Corsairs. Expecting to get lucky twice wasn’t smart.
Smart or not, her luck held as the first Corsair in a line of six stepped on a slick rock beneath the surface and broke his ankle. His scream was high and filled with every combination of swear words that Emily had ever heard and some she hadn’t. Her ears went pink as she tried to haul the mainsail back up. She had been right about the sail. The wind had dragged it over the wrong end of the boom, and some rope or another had become tangled in it. She tried raising it by winding up the winch, and her skinny arms went round and round. It rose higher and higher, and then, of course, it got stuck halfway up.
She let fly one of the new curses that she’d just learned, which felt wrong in her mouth. Cursing hadn’t helped anyway.
“And this isn’t terrible.” The sail made it look as though the Dead Fish had something of a potbelly, but it propelled them away from the spires and the cursing sailors, and that was a win in her mind. A small win. She still had to get home, and in vain, she tried to aim the boat out of the inlet so that it hugged the north part of the shore. The wheel was already as far left as it would go, however, the boom was tangled in the lines of the mainsail and wouldn’t move in any direction at all. When she tried to realign the jib, something that required her to reel in one rope while releasing a second, she discovered an entirely new level of frustration.
Apparently, moving the “stupid, useless piece of cloth!” was a skill that took practice and maybe some training. It took five tries, and all the while the Dead Fish plowed steadily on, angling back south in the exact opposite direction she wanted to go. When she got the jib up, she sat back thinking that she had it all figured out. The black jib filled with wind and as it did, the boat turned to the east and then to the northeast, which was all very well and good. What wasn’t well or good was that with every passing second, the boat took on an alarming list.
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 3
