by Jake Bible
Had.
Nivia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand a couple of times before setting about to clean up the puke. A smell like that would fill the entire yacht quickly if she didn’t take care of it. It took almost a whole roll of toilet paper to clean up, and several flushes down the toilet, but she got the mess taken care of and felt strong enough to get to her feet.
The storm had been a brutal one. She shivered at the thought of what it must have been like for any ships out in open water. The yacht had been tossed about like a pool toy and it was anchored in a sheltered cove.
Nivia opened the head door then hurried through the master cabin. The floor in the passageway outside was covered in half an inch of water. She couldn’t tell if it was seawater or rainwater. Didn’t matter, she’d have to bail it out at some point, and soon or the wood would begin to warp. It was treated and supposed to handle near anything, but with her luck, it’d be full of mold by the time she got home.
Home.
What the hell was she thinking? Getting home was way down on the list of immediate worries. She had an entire yacht to inspect before she could even think of heading home. She also had to know what had happened to her brother and the rest.
She knew what had happened to Kyle and Tessie, and suspected the worst for the others, but until she knew for sure, she wasn’t going anywhere.
First thing first was to see what was happening up on deck. There’d been a couple large crashes and her stomach was clenched into a tight knot in anticipation of what she’d find.
She continued through the main cabin, got the hatch unlatched, went up the steps two at a time, and emerged onto the deck. It was not good.
Nivia sat down for a few minutes. She didn’t make a sound, she didn’t look at the damage, just sat down and hugged her knees to her chest as she rocked back and forth. It was silly, an infantile movement, but it comforted her and allowed her mind to just wander as tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
Ten minutes, then fifteen minutes went by, and Nivia finally pulled herself together. She stretched out her legs, planted her feet on the deck, ignored the couple inches of water that was still draining away out the holes in the sides of the gunwale, and turned to look at her future.
The main mast, the only mast, was gone. Not snapped in half and lying across the ship, but gone. Nowhere to be seen. It had been completely ripped out of the deck. Nivia stared at the sheared-off bolts and couldn’t believe that it hadn’t gone through the deck or torn apart the gunwale. It was like it had been plucked away by a giant hand.
The rational part of her mind figured it had been sheared off and the wind was so strong it had flipped it over directly into the water. It was possible. She hurried over to the side of the yacht and peered down into the crystal clear water. Nothing there.
She pushed away, looked over her shoulder, then turned her entire body that direction and moved to the other side. She peered down into that part of the cove and was both relieved and horrified at the same time.
The mast was intact and sitting way down at the bottom of the cove. It was quite a few meters down, but she could make it out. That was the good part. An intact mast right where she could see it. The bad part it was an intact mast at the bottom of the cove. There was no way in hell she could get it back up onto the yacht, let alone figure out how to bolt it in place.
She was a nurse, not a nautical engineer. She didn’t have the skills needed to work out the geometry it would take to hoist the mast out of the water, stand it up, bolt it in, and then check to see if it was working correctly. It might as well have washed out to sea.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said out loud and started at the sound of her own voice. She took a deep breath, let it out, and finished her thought. “The yacht still has plenty of fuel. I can pilot it out into one of the more popular lanes and hope I can get someone on the radio.”
Saying the plan out loud had helped her confidence, but reality nagged at the back of her mind. It was all good in theory except she was assuming a lot.
Nivia let the millions of simultaneous thoughts bounce around in her head while she occupied her time with busy work. She checked the anchors to make sure they were secure, they were. She squeegeed as much water off the deck as she could. That didn’t take too long. She inspected everything on deck to see if there was damage she hadn’t first noticed. Nothing serious, mostly superficial.
All of that took up enough time that she could no longer put off the inevitable.
Nivia went below deck and started to bail out the water in the main cabin. She pumped out most of it, squeegeed some more, then used a rag and bucket for the rest. When she was finished, she stood in the main cabin, her hands on her hips and looked one way then the other.
The first direction was towards where the auxiliary controls were. The main wheel and ship’s controls were up in the open-air cockpit, but there was a secondary set by the stairs. She stared at the starter button then shook her head and turned around. In the middle of the passageway was a trap door set into the floor. If she lifted that up, she’d be able to climb down to the engine.
It did not want to cooperate. She pulled at the small ring set into the wood and it did nothing. It wouldn’t give a centimeter. She put all of her weight behind the pull, but nothing happened.
Nivia was close to giving up, to just collapsing back on her ass and crying her eyes out. Before the impulse overtook her, she let all of her frustration, anger, and grief channel through one hard slap of her hand onto the ring. It bruised the hell out of her palm, but it also showed her how stupid she was.
The ring didn’t pull up, it twisted into a set groove which activated the gas pistons that popped the trapdoor open. It waited for her, six inches of a welcome gap showing her the promise of its treasure below. Nivia shoved the trapdoor all the way up and peered down into the darkness of the machinery space.
She fumbled her hand down along just under the edge of the trapdoor and found a flashlight strapped tight a few inches underneath. She freed it, flicked it on, and leaned as far inside as she could without falling.
Water. A ton of water everywhere. The 75hp diesel engine was submerged halfway. Nivia knew that the second she tried to turn the engine over, it would suck a ton of that water into itself and be nothing but useless metal. She sighed as she realized she had a lot more pumping to do.
She paused. It was a self-bilging engine compartment. She knew that. It was one of the perks of a three-quarters of a million dollar yacht. The engine shouldn’t have been submerged halfway; it shouldn’t have been submerged at all.
Unless there was no power for the bilge pump to work.
If there was no power for the bilge pump, then there was no power to start the engine. First thing she’d have to do was get the battery out, clean it up, and hope she could trickle charge it somehow.
Sweet Jesus, what a mess.
Actually, first thing was to pump all the water out of the engine compartment. Last thing she wanted to do was be thigh deep in water while removing a battery. If it wasn’t dead, and there was only a short, she’d be in a world of hurt real fast.
She fetched the hand pump and got to work. She had to fish one end of the hose out of a porthole while she stood down in the cold water, her hands pumping up and down, a whooshing bubbling pressing against her calves below the water.
It took nearly two hours to get all of the water out. Even with all of that work, there was still a couple of inches left. Her arms were too tired to do anything about the last few inches. Her arms were almost too tired to get her up out of the engine compartment.
She struggled into the main cabin and rummaged in the galley. A bottle of champagne and a box of water crackers was her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was a bad idea, but it was all she could manage.
Champagne finished, she fetched a second bottle, told herself she more than deserved it, and stumbled back up on deck as the sun began to set. Far, far off, she could see the remnants of the storm.
It was a grey smudge on the horizon. Nivia tipped the neck of the champagne bottle at it then brought it back to her lips and drank deep.
She belched loudly when done and wished she had more water crackers. There were several boxes down in the galley, but there was no way she was standing up to get them. The yacht felt like it was spinning around her and regret hit her about as hard as the alcohol did.
She shouldn’t have gotten drunk. What had she been thinking? She still had way too much work to do before it got dark.
She sat bolt upright, nearly threw up and passed out at the same time, and twisted around to look at the island beach. She’d been avoiding looking in that direction all day, but as the last rays of sunlight began to fade, she knew she couldn’t avoid it any longer.
Nivia was drunk, no question, but she was also highly alert. She cocked her head, listening as her eyes strained to see into the growing darkness. When the last of the sunset was gone, and there was nothing but a faint band of pink out over the ocean, Nivia heard it.
The loud drone and buzzing of beetle wings.
She scrambled to get herself down below deck. All her worry about the storm and the engine and the mast had pushed the real reason she was in the predicament she was in right out of her head. She’d allowed it, thankful for some healthy denial, but she no longer had that luxury.
The hatch slammed shut with a heavy clunk and the latch locked right in place. The buzzing didn’t diminish, and Nivia couldn’t figure out why. It should have been muted with the hatch shut.
Then she looked over and saw the pump hose sticking out of the porthole. She hadn’t pulled it back in. Nivia raced to the side of the boat, yanked on the hose, screamed as it whipped back into her face, then reached out and grabbed the porthole window. Three beetles affixed themselves to her hand and she screamed again.
But she didn’t let go of the window latch. She pulled it shut, locked it, and then slammed her hand down on the teak table next to her, crushing two of the beetles into yellow and black pulp.
The third one doubled down and its mandible dug deeper into her flesh. Nivia ignored the pain, grabbed the beetle with her other hand, and pulled with all of her strength. The mandibles tore free, taking a good amount of flesh with them, but it was no longer attached to her hand. She tossed it onto the floor, lifted a foot, and stomped. Yellow guts splattered everywhere, but she didn’t care.
Nivia bent over and laughed at the crushed insect.
She laughed until the sounds of the beetle swarm became too much and she had to flee back to the head. It was going to be another long night locked in the bathroom, but at least there was no storm to deal with. She counted that as a blessing then settled in for the long wait until morning.
Chapter Four: Everything’s Better In The Daylight
It had been a terrifying hour.
Trapped in pure darkness, the ship going almost straight up then almost straight down, being strapped to an exam table for his own safety.
Then the sound of Darby’s voice in his ear. Right there. Next to him when she should have been in a drug-induced dreamland. Right there.
It was all Max could do not to shit himself.
The Crisis of Darby, as Max had come to call it, had begun not too long after they’d gotten away from that insane island with the mutant T-rexes and weird croanderthal things. That should have been where the Hell ended. Ballantine had promised he had plenty of other islands, one in particular, that would suit their needs perfectly. The little setback with the croanderthals wasn’t going to be a problem.
Then Darby started acting weird just after they saw the nuclear destruction of the particular island Ballantine had guided them to. She’d been complaining of headaches, pushing Max away whenever he asked if she was alright, mumbling in her sleep in languages Max didn’t understand, staring off into space for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, no movement, barely blinking.
And Max didn’t say a word to anyone about it.
The crew and Team Grendel were occupied with trying to find them a refuge. But each time they thought they found one, it turned out to be nuked to all Hell. Shane had joked that someone hated Ballantine so much that they would waste nukes on blowing up his islands just to fuck with him. That was serious hate.
So Max didn’t say a word.
There was nothing to say. Darby denied there was any problem besides the headaches. She said she was tired and that Max needed to back off. He’d never considered himself a genius, but when a woman like Darby told you to back off, you backed the fuck off even if you did love her more than weed.
There was that also. No more weed. Even Lucy’s stash, which had originally been pilfered from the Reynolds brothers’ stash, was gone. No more smoking up to relieve the tension. No more lighting a joint in the crow’s nest, shooting at empty plastic jugs floating out in the waves, the tropical sun beating down with its relentless heat and intensity. His mellow was lost and being harshed bad.
But he kept on, never gave up, always trying to reach out to Darby when he thought it was safe to do, and get her to open up. She refused.
Kinsey had pulled Max aside and said how she’d caught Darby crying in the shower a few times, but she couldn’t get her to open up. Except for one time when Darby had said she felt like she had someone else’s memories inside her. Someone else’s mind floating in her skull. Kinsey hadn’t known what to do with that. But Max did.
He told Gunnar.
“That’s not good,” Gunnar had said as they sat in the infirmary. “We know almost nothing about Darby, so who knows what kind of psychological conditioning she’s had. Not to mention trauma. The woman has been a professional killer for years. Her PTSD threshold has to have been hit by now. We know she’s not a total psychopath since she’s fallen for you. Her intelligence is in question, but not her capacity for empathy and feeling.”
“You’re fucking hilarious,” Max had said. “Really funny.”
“Listen, since we’re kind of in limbo until Ballantine knows where we can safely find land, I’ll ask everyone in for routine checkups,” Gunnar had said. “I’m bored as hell anyway and you’re all overdue. I’ll ask her some questions, feel out her mental state, and if I see a problem, then we go to Vincent.”
“What’s Uncle Vinny gonna do?” Max asked.
“He’s in charge of Team Grendel,” Gunnar said. “Darby is part of Team Grendel. Vincent knows fighters, he knows soldiers, he knows killers. He ran the Navy SEAL BUD/S training for years. He’s watched hundreds of people crack under pressure. He’ll be able to know if she’s dangerous unstable or just exhausted unstable.”
“You think it could just be exhaustion?” Max asked, hopeful.
“I think everyone runs down at some point,” Gunnar said. “Darby is probably long overdue for a snap.”
“Darby snapping would not be good,” Max said. “Better get started on those checkups today.”
“I’ll post a schedule, put her on the list as the last one for the day,” Gunnar said. “I’m Chief Medical Officer. She can’t refuse.”
“It’s Darby,” Max said. “She can refuse if she wants to and there isn’t a whole helluva lot we can do about it.”
“True,” Gunnar said. “Maybe talk to the elves. See what containment or stun equipment they have.”
“Seriously?” Max asked. “You just went from medical checkup to stun and capture, Gun. That’s a bit of a leap.”
“I’m thinking it through,” Gunnar said, looking like he was doing just that. “I may find answers or I may make things worse. Yeah. Go see the elves. Let’s be prepared in case I open up the floodgates.”
Gunnar opened up the floodgates.
The simple physical tests had gone fine. Heart rate was elevated, but it usually was with all the members of Team Grendel. Lungs sounded great. Abdomen was clear. Eyes solid, hearing good, reflexes tip top.
Then he asked a couple of questions. Routine, almost textbook, psyche evaluation questions. Those were the warm-u
ps. They were meant to do nothing but ease Darby into the process. Darby changed instantly. There was no easing. There was no process after those three questions.
Darby struck.
Gunnar’s nose was shattered before he even knew he’d been hit. His eyes had started to swell up and he fell back on his ass all in the space of a breath. Darby had grabbed a scalpel from somewhere, Gunnar didn’t know where since he hadn’t had one out, and was down straddling him, the blade pressed to his neck, a look of pure rage on her face.
“Who am I?” she snarled, the blade sending a small trickle of blood tickling down Gunnar’s neck. “Who am I?”
That had been her mantra ever since and remained her mantra even in the pitch blackness of the infirmary.
It had been a terrifying hour.
“Hey, lovey dovey sugar boobs,” Max had cooed once he’d stopped screaming. “You got out of your restraints.”
“Who am I?” Darby snarled into Max’s ear.
“You are Darby,” Max said. “You are a pacifist and hate violence. You also like to do this thing with your tongue where—Ow! Dammit, Darby! Knock this shit off!”
“Who am I?” she growled.
Then she was gone.
Max felt her presence leave.
“On the move, guys,” Max said, warning Shane and Gunnar.
“Darby? It’s Gunnar,” Gunnar called out into the black. “Darby? You aren’t well and need to lie down. I’ll be honest. I’ve pumped you with so many drugs that I’m worried about your heart. I need you to sit down and just relax or you could go into cardiac arrest.”
“Who am I?” Darby asked, just inches from Gunnar’s face.
He squeaked and lashed out with both hands to ward her off, but he hit nothing except open air.
“Darby, baby, love of my life, the light that fills the day, the stars that fill the night, please don’t kill Gunnar,” Max pleaded. “He’s good people. He’s also a doctor. You don’t kill doctors. Medical staff are off limits. That’s just the rule of soldiers, right? We don’t kill the medic. Darby? Right?”
