by Robert Bevan
She didn't care if she caught anything or not. She was mainly interested in trying to estimate the ship's speed by seeing how quickly the line cut through the water. The sea was calm and there was barely a breeze. It didn't feel like they were moving at all. At Randy's request, her former crewmen had pointed her ship in the right direction and rigged the sails for her. They told her that if nobody touched anything, the ice sheet around Nazere should be wide enough for them to run into it.
That was good enough for her. She didn't hold any grudges for them not wanting to go on what they saw as a suicide mission. And why wouldn't they? They'd all grown up on these wild sailor tales. For Katherine's part, she was putting her faith in the propaganda theory that Randy had pulled out of his ass at a moment's notice. She took comfort in that he seemed to be genuinely unafraid of what may lie ahead for them all. If he was hiding his fear, he was doing a much better job of that than he was with hiding his sorrow at parting ways with Alexei, Captain Longfellow's first mate.
“Kinda chilly out here, ain't it?” said Randy.
Speak of the devil.
Katherine's Grim Reaper cloak and Captain Martinoli's brandy were keeping her warm enough, but she noticed that she could see her breath. “It'll warm up once the sun comes up.”
Randy took a seat on the other side of the rear deck. “Catch anything?”
Katherine shook her head. “I'm not even sure if there's still bait on the hook.”
“Somethin' on your mind?”
“I'm just thinking about Tim, about why I'm doing all this.”
“Why?” said Randy. “It's because you love your brother, of course. He's lucky to have a sister like you.”
Katherine shrugged. “I guess that's part of it, but I think a bigger part is that it's something to do.”
“You mean like Minesweeper?”
“Yeah, actually. Kind of like that.” Katherine gulped back a swig of brandy from the bottle, then offered it to Randy, who declined. “You know how, back in your normal life, you'd get up every day and go to a job, then you go wind down at a bar, or go home and watch TV, maybe sometime along the line you get married and have some kids, and eventually you die?”
“I suppose so.” Randy sounded doubtful.
“Well maybe it's a little different for registered sex offenders. Maybe you beat off to Sesame Street, then microwave a burrito for breakfast or whatever.”
Randy looked slightly annoyed. “I don't know how many times I got to –”
“My point is, we had a routine. No matter how miserable we were about having to do it, we knew when we got up what we were going to do each day. Right?”
“Sure.”
“I don't have that here. I feel like, if I didn't have this stupid quest to keep me occupied, I'd be going nuts. It's like the job, the kids, the bars, all of that shit is gone, and I'm just waiting for the eventually you die part.”
“Ain't a whole lot for me back home,” said Randy.
“That's my point. I've got nothing going for me back home either. I'm the co-owner of a shitty fast food chicken restaurant with my brother. But at least I know what I'm supposed to do every day. Even if it's a lousy direction, it's a direction. Here, it's like I'm just adrift at sea.” Katherine took a moment to take in her surroundings. “I'm literally adrift at sea. I'm living in a goddamn metaphor.”
“You'll find your way. Once we get Tim back, I reckon you'll still have plenty to do takin' care of him. He seems to have taken a harder downward turn as of late, and he'll need your support to climb out of the hole he's dug for himself.”
“Who the fuck am I to help anyone climb out of a hole? I'm down there in that hole with him.”
“You don't give yourself enough credit,” said Randy. “You're a talented and clever young lady. Look how much you've accomplished in only the past couple of days. You need to get to an island, and the next thing you know, you're the captain of your own ship.”
“Which I don't even know how to sail.”
“You'll pick that up in time. What I'm saying is, you got a knack for gettin' shit done, girl.” Randy's words and smile felt sincere. They warmed her even more deeply than the cloak or brandy had managed to.
“That's really sweet of you, Randy,” said Katherine. She hadn't really noticed until now, but he really was a handsome guy, which was odd because he also looked pretty much the same as he had back in the real world. It was as though the game used some kind of Instagram giving-a-shit-about-yourself filter to show his greatest potential. She smiled back at him. “It's too bad you're gay.”
“Huh?”
“Oh wow, that came out so wrong. I didn't mean it's bad that you're gay. It's good that you're gay. I love that you're gay.” Stop saying 'you're gay'. “I just meant, here we are on a boat. Sky full of stars. You're single, I'm single. You're good looking, I'm –”
CRUNCH
“Wha?” She was jolted off the back of the ship.
SPLASH
“Fuck!” she cried in a burst of bubbles. The water was freezing.
She willed herself to avoid going into shock. She didn't know how fast the boat was moving, and Randy couldn't swim. She had to get to the ladder before he ignored that fact and jumped in to rescue her.
Having reorientated herself to the best of her ability, she started swimming hard in the direction she guessed the boat was. Two strokes in, she slammed her head straight into it.
She used the last of her breath in another burst of bubbly swearing, then climbed up the ladder at the rear of the ship.
Butterbean looked down at her and barked helplessly.
“Are you okay?” said Randy, getting to his feet as Katherine climbed back onto the deck. At least Butterbean was smart enough to know it would have only made the problem worse to jump in after her. It appeared the only thing that had stopped Randy from doing so was that he'd fallen backwards.
“No, I'm not f-f-f-fucking okay. I'm f-f-f-freezing.” Her sopping wet clothes in the chill of the breeze felt colder than being in the water had. “I need to get out of these clothes.” She looked around for alternatives to straight up being naked. Her gaze fell on the Bag of Holding. “I need to go inside the bag and see if there's anything in there for me to wear. Give me a minute, then reach inside the bag and say Katherine. Can you do that?”
Randy nodded confidently. “Sure I can.”
“If you fuck this up, I'm going to suffocate and die.”
“I got it,” said Randy. “I put my hand in the bag and say Katherine. I seen y'all use the bag before.”
It was a simple enough task, but Randy was nothing if not a simple man.
Another breeze nudged her decision along.
“Okay, here goes.” She pulled the bag down over her head and found herself floating in the all too familiar void. How many times had she vowed to herself that she'd never get in this bag again? Ah well, at least it wasn't as cold in here as it was out– “What the fuck?”
She'd expected to see giant rat corpses floating around. With her mind focused on being cold as fuck, that's the only thing she could remember being in the bag. But there was something wrong with the corpses. They all appeared mummified, their skin clinging tightly to the bones.
Were they decomposing? Was her meat-preserving-properties-of-a-Bag-of-Holding theory debunked?
Katherine hadn't seen a whole lot of decomposing bodies in her lifetime, but these didn't line up exactly with her mental image of what that was supposed to look like. There were no gaping holes full of squirming maggots, no discoloration, no foul odor, at least no more fouler than before. As one rat corpse floated by near enough for her to examine it, it's skin didn't appear to be damaged at all. It was shriveled up like a –
“Holy shit!” Having had an epiphany, Katherine hurriedly began taking off all of her wet clothes. With each garment shed, she felt better and better, until she could finally laugh at how Randy was going to react when he –
A hand grabbed her left tit and squeezed har
d.
“What the fuck?” she said, stark naked with the chill of the deck biting her ass and Randy's hand on her tit.
“Shit!” cried Randy, putting his hands up like a dozen state troopers had just drawn guns on him. “I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to – Hang on, why ain't you got no clothes on?”
Katherine rubbed the soreness out of her tit. “Would you mind turning around?”
“Of course.” Randy did a quick about face.
“What the fuck is going on?” said Denise, coming out from the cabin. “It's cold as fuck and I was just jolted out of my sleep by some kind of – Well hello there, Sugartits. You best be careful. You're like to poke someone's eyes out with them nip-nips.”
“Denise!” said Randy. “Have a little decency and turn around.”
Denise raised a brow at Randy. “And what the fuck happened to you, Homo Erectus? You go one day without a cock in the ass, and now you're battin' for the home team?”
In under a minute, Katherine had heard as much of Denise as she wanted to for the day. “Turn the fuck around and shut your hairy-ass face or I'll grab you by your fat red neck and throw you overboard.”
Denise frowned. “It ain't right to judge folks based on stereotypes.” She turned around. “So what's goin' on here anyway? Y'all skinnydippin' or something?”
“Just keep facing that way.” Katherine reached into the Bag of Holding. “All the water.”
A gush of cold seawater fell out of the bag and onto her feet. She willed away the chill running up her legs and back, and hoped her new theory was right.
“My clothes,” she said, her hand still in the bag. She could feel right away that they were bone-ass dry. “It worked! I'm so fucking awesome!”
Randy turned to her. “What did you – Oh, you're still naked.” He turned away quickly.
Katherine hurriedly pulled her clothes back on, relishing the warmth of her own retained body heat, especially when she finally wrapped herself in that thick black cloak.
“Okay, I'm decent now.”
“So what the fuck was that all about?” asked Denise.
“As it turns out, a Bag of Holding can also be used as a clothes dryer.” She thought about the rats. “Or a horrible way to kill a person.”
“I know exactly what you're talking about,” said Randy. “My cousin Ronnie got stuck in the dryer once when we was kids. His mamma turned it on and let it run a full minute to teach him a lesson about how dangerous it is.”
Katherine gawked for a moment at Randy's latest demonstration of how fucked up his upbringing was, then reined in her thoughts again. “That's not what I'm talking about at all.”
Randy frowned. “Yeah, now that I think about it, those particular dangers wouldn't necessarily apply to being inside a bag.”
“So what's the big revelation?” asked Denise.
Katherine grinned. “Right. So when I was floating around inside the Bag of Holding, I noticed that all the dead rats were shriveled up like furry prunes.”
Denise grimaced. “That sounds like an old man's nutsack.”
Randy had a more concerned expression on his face. “What happened to them?”
“I asked myself the exact same question,” said Katherine. “And then it hit me.”
“A dead rat?” asked Randy.
“No, the answer to my question. When everyone was fighting on the Maiden's Voyage, I blasted Captain Martinoli with water from the Bag of Holding.” After pausing for whatever dumb hillbilly comments they might want to interrupt her with, she continued. “I explicitly said all the water. Along with the seawater I'd collected, the bag ejected all the moisture in the rats' bodies.”
Randy offered an unconvincing grin. “Well that's... gross.”
“How much water you reckon that bag can hold?” asked Denise, holding onto the railing with both hands and looking toward the front of the ship.
Katherine appreciated hearing something from her that wasn't completely vile. “I don't know, a lot. Why?”
“Because unless it can swallow up the whole goddamn ocean, your clothes is about to be wet again.”
Katherine leaned over the railing and looked past Denise. “Shit!” They'd run into a sheet of ice, and it had torn a hole in the hull.
“On the bright side,” said Randy, “this is what we been lookin' for, ain't it?”
“Some bright side. Once we get the Eye of Rasha, how the fuck are we supposed to get back to the mainland?” She sighed in frustration. “I swear, I'm the worst captain in the history of –”
A cry like a yeti caught in a bear trap broke her train of thought.
Denise peered into the icy darkness. “The fuck was that? Sounds like it's right on top of us.”
The beast cried out again, sending a chill up Katherine's spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
“No!” said Randy. “Right below us! It's Basil!” He and Katherine ran to the winch that lowered the cargo hatch and turned it together as fast as they could.
The damage to the boat was worse than Katherine had first suspected. Water was gushing in, and poor Basil was up to his fat leathery neck in it. He cried out again. If Katherine had to guess, she'd say this cry sounded more like relief than the first two had.
Randy stepped carefully down the ramp into the water and guided the massive beast back up onto the deck.
Katherine noticed that the water was deeper at the rear of the ship than it was at the front, which seemed odd considering that's where the hole was. Even as she watched, the water began to crystallize around the top of the breach. And while it was still flowing in at a much faster rate than they could ever hope to bail it out, it seemed to have slowed down a bit.
“Hey!” called Denise from up near the front of the ship. “Y'all come check this shit out!”
Katherine glanced up at Randy, who also seemed doubtful as to whether or not he wanted to check out whatever it was Denise wanted to show them. She forced herself to remember that Denise was pregnant, and that no matter how satisfying it might feel at first, she would probably ultimately come to regret throwing the bitch overboard.
Seeing how low the rear of the ship had sunk in the water at this point, there wouldn't be any point in wasting the effort to throw anyone overboard anyway. She had to hold onto the railing to help herself climb her way up the incline to the front of the ship. When she got there, she saw that throwing Denise overboard would be pointless for a reason other than the one which had just occurred to her. Denise was already overboard.
“Look at me!” said Denise, standing on solid ice. “I'm walkin' on water, just like Jesus!”
She'd obviously climbed down the anchor chain, which was hanging from the front of the boat. The anchor itself didn't appear to have chipped the ice it lay on.
“This doesn't make any sense,” said Katherine. “It's chilly out here, but it doesn't feel nearly cold enough to freeze water.”
“'Specially seawater,” said Randy, still down at the rear of the ship with Basil. “On account of it bein' so salty.”
Katherine gave him a thumbs up for saying something smart, then wondered if that might have come off as patronizing. But Randy beamed at the gesture.
“Ain't no sense to be made of it,” said Denise. “We're at a semi-tropical latitude. Water don't freeze naturally 'round here, salty or otherwise. This is obviously magical ice.”
Katherine resisted the urge to tell her to go fuck herself. “Go on.”
“Jesus, woman. Don't you get it? The cold air ain't makin' the water freeze. It's all the goddamn ice that's makin' the air cold.”
“Oh.” While what Denise was saying sounded reasonable, Katherine still had to suppress the urge to tell her to go fuck herself.
“Hang on a sec,” said Randy. He peeked down into the cargo hold. When he pulled his head back out, his face looked hopeful. “It looks like the hole's froze over and plugged itself up with ice. The ship might not sink after all.”
Katherine supposed that was sort of
a silver lining. But a ship stuck in ice wasn't going to do her any more good than a ship stuck at the bottom of the ocean, as far as getting back to the mainland went. She'd have to cross that bridge when she came to it. Right now she had to focus on getting to the island proper and getting that stupid gem from that stupid ice bitch. Getting Basil down onto the ice was going to be a challenge.
“Hey Randy,” she said as persuasively as she could. “How do you feel about leaving Basil here while the three of us go to the island?”
Randy frowned. “I don't know for sure that the ice is gonna keep this ship afloat. And I'd hate to leave him out here alone. He might get scared.”
“Oh, come on,” said Katherine, trying to sound confident. “The ship's not going anywhere. We can leave him a couple of dehydrated rats to chew on. He'll never know we were gone.” Dim as he was, she could tell he wasn't buying it. She could smell her own bullshit as she spoke the words. “Look, I just don't see how we're going to get him down there on the ice. He can't climb down the anchor chain, and he's too big to put in the Bag of Holding.”
Randy smiled. “We just got to get creative is all. We solved harder problems than this before.”
“Y'all keep flapping your gums for another hour,” said Denise from down on the ice. “I reckon the problem will just solve itself.”
Katherine turned on her with a severe glare. “Listen, Fuckhead. I've had about enough of your shit. We're trying to come up with a solution to a problem, so if you've got nothing to contribute, I'd appreciate you shutting the fuck up.”
Denise put her hands on her hips. “And I just gave you a solution, Miss Potty Mouth. Give it an hour or so, and the problem will solve itself.” She sounded suspiciously unlike a sarcastic bitch.
“What are you talking about?”
“Take a look.” Denise gestured to where the front of the boat met the ice. “It's still expanding, slowly but surely. At the rate it's going, I reckon the whole ship will be engulfed in ice in about an hour's time. When the ice reaches the rear of the ship, that fat-ass freak of nature can just step over the railing.”
