Then, quite suddenly, Bannon saw a pale blob of flesh, just a few feet ahead of him, seeming to drift and ebb with the motion of the dying boat. He threw himself forward, blundering desperately and snatched at it. It was a hand – a baby’s hand – the skin soft and translucent, perfect and pale and lifeless.
Bannon felt the heavy punch of shock and sorrow. He felt down into the dark water, touching the child’s face, and then his fingers explored further until he realized the baby’s legs had been trapped by a solid weight he could not see. The black water sloshed across the dark hull again and Bannon reluctantly let the dead child’s hand go, let it be swallowed by the watery depths forever.
He turned and waded back towards the square patch of daylight at the cabin’s entrance. The ice-cold sea was as high as his chest and he moved with desperation, clamping down on his panic until his feet felt the narrow cabin steps and he emerged on the deck.
The woman was gone.
Bannon’s eyes swept the boat, and then darted to the aluminum dingy. Sully was there, holding his place just a few yards away, working the motor and tiller with fierce concentration to keep the boat from being hurled onto the rocks.
“The girl?” Bannon shouted.
Sully shook his head.
The sense of helpless despair was crushing. Sully screwed his eyes tightly shut. The fatigue of failure consumed him, robbed him of the last of his strength. He shook his head dully – and then finally saw the woman.
She was lying amongst the huge heavy boulders of the break wall. A wave rushed down and smashed hard against her. Bannon saw her fingers move weakly, as she tried to claw for a handhold. Then the wave sucked back and surged in on her again. For a brief moment the wall of water hung suspended over the break wall. Then it burst upon the woman with a sound like thunder, so that the very air seemed to shake. The woman was smothered by the swelling green surge, crushed to pulp. When the wave withdrew her body was no longer moving, but instead lay broken and crumpled, her bloody legs and arms at impossible angles and her neck twisted so that her dead vacant eyes were turned towards where Bannon stared on in pale horror.
The next wave swept the body away, leaving the rocks gleaming and glistening.
Bannon looked away. The sailboat was breaking up. He felt the deck beneath his feet crack open, and the violent shudder roused him from the spell of his despair. He reached the rail just as another swell burst over the boat and smothered him.
Sully dashed the tender in, close to the wreckage. Bannon shouted something that was lost in the booming crash of the next wave against the rocks, and when the grey wall of water and blinding spray cleared, Bannon stood poised to jump the gap of frenzied sea that separated the two vessels.
Bannon waited until the wave was seething back from the break wall and then he dived into the foaming white spume.
He plunged into the murderous stretch of water and came up, gasping for air, just ten feet away from the tender. The little boat was being thrown around like a cork in a washing machine, and Sully was no longer able to keep the dingy steady. He gunned the outboard and the engine flung the boat forward into the surging gap, while over his shoulder the next great crashing wave reared high.
Bannon saw the boat, saw Sully’s pale white face. He flailed his arms and struck out gamely, but there was a heavy weariness in his body, a leaden sensation that clawed and dragged him back towards the rocks. He felt like he was swimming in glue, and within moments he knew he would not – could not – possibly swim the few desperate feet to safety.
Sully sensed it too. He was aware of the next swell breaking over them. It came rushing down on the tender and Sully had just a split-second to react. He spun the boat hard, swinging her tail round in a tight circle that brought the boat closer to the rocks, and gave her a sudden burst of speed. He leaned out over the side of the boat and dragged one massive muscled arm in the water, still giving the boat power to make headway, and he knew he had just one chance.
“Grab my arm!” he yelled.
The boat’s nose bobbed and bucked. The wave began to break apart, her crest boiling, the momentum and crushing weight of the smooth green face beginning to curl and collapse.
Sully turned the bow of the tender to face the heaving sea, and swept past Bannon with only seconds to spare. Bannon threw up his hand. Sully’s fingers caught him around the wrist and his grip was like iron. He heaved with all his strength and the muscles and joints in his arm caught sudden fire. He heard a crack, felt something deep within him tear, as he plucked Bannon from the water just as the wave lost the last of its scimitar shape and began to explode upon the rocks of the break wall.
The tender’s bow burst through the white-water crest, throwing her high, and for an instant she was weightless. Then the aluminum hull crashed down hard onto the back of the boiling maelstrom as the wave’s energy burst against the broken hull of the sailboat and tore it to pieces.
Chapter 5.
Bannon stood in the wheelhouse of the ‘Mandrake’, shivering violently from the shock and the icy water. He hunched over and retched, then clutched at the console to support himself as a spasm of coughing racked his body.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his trembling hand.
“Thank you, Sully,” he said, his voice hoarse, his throat raw as if it had been sandpapered. “I owe you.”
Sully said nothing. He sniffed and looked away.
Claude came from the skipper’s cabin with a towel and spare clothes. He dumped them on the saloon table.
“What about the tender, skip?” Claude asked.
Sully shook his head. “Fuck it,” he growled. “Cut it loose, Claude. We haven’t got time to bring it aboard.”
The crewman raised his eyes in surprise, but Bannon never saw. He spun round to Peter.
“Something made a woman risk her life, and the life of her two young children trying to flee Grey Stone in a boat she couldn’t sail. Now they’re dead,” Bannon’s voice crackled like electricity. He clutched fiercely at Peter’s arm and his eyes were suddenly blazing. “Get us into that harbor, Peter. Right now.”
Chapter 6.
The ‘Mandrake’ was seventy-five foot long and twenty-five feet wide: she came in through the harbor entrance at four knots, her blunt broad bow pushing a white wave of wash across the surface of the water. Boiling black smoke billowed, thick as fog, and Peter hunched over the flying bridge controls, peering blindly into the haze, as the big boat crept past the last green channel marker and coasted cautiously into the wide basin of Grey Stone harbor.
Bannon changed quickly, standing in the middle of the wheelhouse deck. Through the forward windows he could see little beyond the haze of smoke. He ran out onto the boat’s wide deck and saw Sully and Claude leaning over the starboard rail.
The water was black, covered in a thick coat of ash, swirling with oil and debris. Sheltered from the ocean breeze by the massive headland, the air here was still and heavy with the stench of rotting corruption. It seemed to swirl in the smoke and permeate their clothes and skin like a coat of reeking grime.
Bannon stared aghast into the mist. He could see the faint shape of capsized motorboats, stranded and abandoned, their hulls crusted in green slime and barnacles, bobbing lazily in the fishing boat’s wake. And he could hear the frenzied cries of the birds as they wheeled overhead in vulture-like flocks.
“What the hell has happened…?” Claude muttered in disbelief.
Bannon shook his head. He heard something scrape against the side of the boat’s bow, and then a moment later he saw a corpse in the water. The body was ballooned by trapped air that had caught within its clothing. It bobbed in the ripples of the boat’s bow wave, floating face down.
“Sully. Gaff it.”
As well as the .22 rifle, the fishing boat carried two enormous gaffs, each with a razor sharp hook at the end of a ten foot long pole. The gaffs were used to hook the big fish before the crew hauled them aboard. If the fish was still thrashing and flailing
on the deck, it was beaten over the head with an aluminum baseball bat. Sully brought both back to the side of the boat. He held the long gaff in both hands and passed the baseball bat to Claude.
Sully swung the gaff and its stiletto hook snagged into one of the arms. He tugged, and the body rolled over onto its back. It was a man. The face was old, a man of maybe sixty or seventy. His head was almost severed from the neck, and the chest had been torn open. But there was no blood. The ghastly wounds were washed and puckered white – the whole body bled out.
In fascinated horror, Bannon watched on as Sully dragged the body close to the side of the boat. He stared down into the wide lifeless eyes, and beside him he heard Claude cough and then retch. The young man vomited explosively, and the muck of it spattered over the deck and across his boots. Claude spun away, gasping for fresh breath. Sully held the body close against the boat and looked up into Bannon’s sickened, horrified eyes.
“You know him?”
Bannon frowned then nodded. “It’s Sam Kinkade.”
“Kinkade?”
Bannon nodded again. “He did some deck work for one of the game fishing boats during the high season.” For a long moment his voice trailed off, and then he asked in a whisper, “What the hell could have happened to him?”
The corpse was horribly mutilated. The dying expression fixed on the white face was one of sheer horror. “He looks like he’s been torn to pieces.”
Sully held the body so that it nudged gently against the hull for a few more seconds, then he unhooked the gaff and the corpse drifted away into the fishing boat’s burbling wake. Instantly, a dozen gulls appeared, turning and hanging in the air. They landed on the body, hopping and flapping raucously as they squabbled over the eyes and soft flesh of the nose and lips. Others tugged and nipped at fingers so that the body seemed to twitch and move. Bannon turned away, appalled and numb with a creeping rise of revulsion. He went to the ladder and clambered up onto the flying bridge.
“I’ve got it,” Bannon said grim-faced, striding to the control console. Peter stepped aside. He bent and picked up the .22 rifle. It was a bolt-action weapon with a ten round magazine. The law prohibited semi-automatic weapons aboard. Peter pulled back the bolt and chambered a round.
Bannon cut the big boat’s speed until she was barely drifting on the calm oily water of the harbor. The huge piers of the main jetty loomed out of the smoke, and Bannon saw the wide rust-streaked stern of a fishing trawler, tied to the wharf.
“Bow and stern ropes,” Bannon called down to the crew. “And don’t fuck it up.”
The ‘Mandrake’ coasted closer to the pier. Bannon put the engines in reverse and gave the big diesels a pulse of power. The last of the boat’s speed bled away and she scraped gently against the huge black rubber tires hanging from the pier posts. Claude and Sully tied the boat to the jetty and Bannon cut the big engines. A final belch of black exhaust mingled in a sky hazed with smoke – and then the whole world seemed enveloped and choked by heavy silence.
It was eerie: unnatural. There was only the lap of gentle waves at the boat’s hull and the shrill raucous cries of the gulls as they scavenged and squabbled. Bannon swept his eyes along the waterfront.
A complex of tourist buildings, each one newly constructed, but carefully built to create the charming atmosphere of an old fishing village, fringed Grey Stone harbor. The cafes, restaurants and tourist shops were all low wooden structures with quaint windows displaying antique nautical items.
Bannon narrowed his eyes warily through drifting tendrils of grey smoky haze. He concentrated his attention on the doors of each building.
“Claude, Sully, arm yourselves with those gaffs. Peter, take the .22 up to the bow and cover those buildings.”
Bannon swarmed down onto the main deck and snatched at the aluminum baseball bat. He hefted it over his shoulder like a club and clambered from the boat onto the jetty.
For long seconds Bannon stood perfectly still, every fiber, every sinew in his body drawn tense. He could hear the roar of blood in his own ears and feel the thump of his heartbeat exploding within the cage of his chest. He took a dozen cautious steps along the jetty, and then paused – some instinct screaming at his senses in shrill alarm.
The jetty was streaked in spatters of fresh blood. It lay on the concrete in dark puddles, like an abstract artist’s nightmare. The stench of death and decay was thick and cloying in the back of his throat. He tore his eyes away from the menace of the shop front doors and caught a glance of Peter, kneeling at the high canted bow of the ‘Mandrake’ with the rifle sighted.
Behind Bannon, Claude and Sully scrambled onto the jetty. Bannon dropped onto one knee and the two crewmen came to where he paused.
“What the fuck…?” Claude’s voice had a panicky edge to it.
Bannon shook his head, but said nothing. He pointed wordlessly at the door of a café that opened up onto a paved promenade area directly ahead of where the three men hesitated.
The café had been destroyed. The door hung from its hinges, and the long window that had given patrons a view across the harbor had been shattered. Black smoke billowed from the interior, rising up into the sky and smudging their view of the building.
“Something inside moved,” Bannon whispered hoarsely at last.
He came up off his knee and the three men moved in cautious crouches along the jetty, narrowing the distance until they stood at the edge of the promenade. There was a narrow nature strip of bushy shrubs between the men and the building. Bannon felt a tremble of unaccountable fear. He turned, stared back over his shoulder. Peter had left his position and was running along the jetty towards them. Bannon spat a curse under his breath and clenched his jaw.
Beyond the waterfront, the town of Grey Stone was burning. Houses along the main street were blackened, charred shells. Bannon could see shapeless clumps on the blacktop and on the front lawns of homes that he knew instinctively were dead bodies. Buildings had collapsed. Others had burned to the ground. The road, and the waterfront parking lot were choked with crumpled, smoldering vehicles.
“Are we at war?” Claude gasped.
Bannon shook his head. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”
Sully leaned in close, his voice tight and urgent. “What the fuck do we do?”
Bannon shook his head again. Nothing made sense. He felt himself reeling. “I’ve got to get to my wife,” he said, with a terrifying coldness settling on his chest, the coldness of heavy dread.
Beyond the waterfront shops, beyond the manicured lawns and the parking lot, and beyond the two lane road that led into town, was the apartment complex where Bannon lived. His mouth formed itself into a thin bloodless line and he felt a surging sense of resolve drive down the trembling fear and swirling confusion. “I’ve got to get to Maddie,” he said again.
He fisted his grip on the baseball bat and stepped from behind the dense wall of shrubs. He felt his feet find the hard paved surface of the promenade. His legs were trembling. He stood for a moment, exposed and vulnerable, and the panic came back upon him as a heavy lead weight in the pit of his gut. He could taste the acid tang of fear in his throat.
And then someone shouted.
Bannon swung around, his head spinning, his eyes wide and wild. Behind him Claude had burst through the bushes and was running towards the smoldering ruins of a restaurant. He had the boat’s gaff hoisted high above his shoulder and there was a crazed berserker shout in his throat.
Bannon cried out, the sound impossibly loud and shrill in his own ears, as Claude went pounding across the promenade twenty feet to his right.
“Fuck!” Bannon swore. He took uncertain steps towards Claude and then froze.
From within the café directly ahead, a woman suddenly appeared. She came shambling through the doorway, lurching into the bright sunlight with her whole body seized into a contortion of unnatural movement. Her legs were stiff, her back arched as though she was racked with
terrible pain. She swayed on her feet, her eyes sightless, and then her chin sank slowly onto her chest and she howled at Bannon in a grotesque shriek.
Bannon stared, aghast. Sudden fear sparked tiny fires of panic down the length of his spine. The woman raised her face and the dark eyes slammed into focus. There was fresh blood and gore on her chin and painted across her chest in grisly streaks and spatters. She stared feverishly at Bannon with red-veined eyes, her mouth opened in a deep snarling.
Bannon stood transfixed, horrified. His mind went white – became blank for long dangerous seconds as the grotesque figure rocked from side to side as though infected with madness.
“Jesus,” Bannon’s terror was raw in his throat.
What remained of the woman’s hair trailed to her shoulders in unkempt clumps. The long satin nightdress she wore was stained with blood, and hung from her skeletal frame in scorched, blackened tatters. Clots of charred flesh had peeled away from her body, leaving open wounds of putrefied rotting slime.
The woman leered at Bannon, her rictus grin seething with a vicious spasm of hatred and rage. She hissed – and the sound in her throat was a harsh guttural grate like gravel.
She lashed out for him, the hand a claw of blackened gristle. The woman’s rotted lips peeled back and corrupted into a vicious snarl.
Bannon took a faltering step back. He felt the rasping hot breath of Sully close behind him.
“How the fuck could she be alive?” Sully croaked.
Dead Rage Page 3
