Sargasso

by Russell C. Connor

“But—”

  “What other choice we got, Ray? We need to get to those ships.” Lito flipped the switch to turn on the searchlight, then swept the beam across the seaweed-strewn surface of the ocean in as wide an arc as it would reach. To the south, those crooked forks of lightning drew ever closer. “We don’t got a lotta time either. That storm’ll be on us in an hour or two, and that rich pendejo has a head start. He’s probably out there lookin for a radio that works on one of these derelicts as we speak.”

  “I don’t know ‘bout that. He didn’t seem too eager to be rescued.”

  “You noticed that too, huh?” Lito turned back off the searchlight, then leaned one elbow on the guardrail. “He couldn’ta got too far. We’ll look for him along the way. But let’s take the VHF and keep monitoring, just in case.”

  Ray lowered his voice and switched to Spanish. There was no real need; Jericho had taken the white kids belowdeck to find some clothes, and Carlos and Jorge were gathering the last of their weapons and ammo. For the time being, they were alone on the deck of their ship. “What about everything else, Lito? The voice on the scanner…the sharks and the girl…that weird blue light…”

  “I saw it before,” Lito said.

  “What’re you talkin about?”

  “That blue light. I saw it right before we sent Rabid over to board their yacht. It was just flickers on the horizon then. We’re a lot closer now.”

  Ray’s mouth twitched in anger. “When the fuck were you gonna tell me about it?”

  “Right now, obviously.”

  “We shouldn’ta made a move on those white kids if there was even a chance anyone else was out here.”

  “Well, we did. At the time, it didn’t seem too important.”

  “No, of course not. Because Lito Porto was ready to play pirate, so nothin else mattered. Now we’re stuck out here just waitin to be picked up by any patrol boat that wanders by. You know, if that white boy dies from whatever that little bitch gave him, that shit is on us.”

  “He’s not gonna die.”

  Ray tugged on the back of his ponytail hard enough to give himself a facelift. “I just want you to say you’re takin this situation at least a little seriously.”

  “I’m takin the situation very seriously, Ray.”

  “Then make me feel better. Tell me what happens if we don’t find a fuel line out there. Or if someone boards the Runner while we’re gone on your little fishing trip and finds Mondo and that girl rottin in the holds?”

  “If that happens, Ray,” Lito said, leaning back against the guardrail, “we’re no more fucked than we are right now.”

  11

  Eric stayed crouched in the bottom of the rowboat for another ten minutes after the deck of the pirate ship cleared. He’d headed out into pitch darkness after his escape, far beyond the range of the searchlight. The damn seaweed had fought him every step of the way, like it was trying to keep him from leaving. From way out here, he could see the pirates, but they had no hope of picking him out against the black expanse of the sea.

  The much smaller fishing boat began to move away, past the Holy Mackerel and on toward the other derelicts. He couldn’t hear an engine, so he figured they were rowing the damn thing. In a way, he was weirdly jealous; they were setting out to explore the collection of derelicts that, he had no doubt, the Bermuda Triangle had spewed forth from some hellish pit at its center.

  A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  But now wasn’t the time. His head felt too muddled, as if there were more people than just him taking up space in it, and there was only room to concentrate on so much.

  His destiny; that was the only thing that mattered. Now that the pirates were out of sight, and the night had descended into a deep silence broken only by the grumble of thunder, Eric could consider his next move.

  I’ll tell you your next move. That voice again, emphasizing words just the way his father would. Never had it spoken to him this much before, and never so loudly. It was as though it had been locked up behind a door in his head, and something finally sprang the lock. You need to get that fucking statue back, and then make sure that blonde bimbo won’t be around to tell people you tried to squeeze her neck like a tube of toothpaste.

  “What are you talking about?” Eric asked aloud, acutely aware he was talking to himself. Beads of sweat jumped out across his forehead. “I didn’t do that.”

  You did though. Somewhere in that junkyard you call a brain, you know you did. She saw behind the mask, Eric, saw you for what you really are, and now that bitch Amber knows too. Maybe even Justin. So you need to clean up all your messes before you even start thinking about escape.

  “But they’re…they’re with the pirates…they’re as good as dead anyway…”

  YOU GODDAMN JACKASS! The words in his head were so loud, Eric pitched backward like he’d been physically slapped, sprawling across the benches and rocking the rowboat. You saw Amber and that wetback captain of theirs making googoo eyes at each other! Those two little whores are gonna blow every spic on that boat and get dropped off at the closest five-star resort! Then, even if you get your dumb ass outta here, they’re gonna have the cops waiting for you when you get back! So grow up and stop MAKING EXCUSES!

  “O-okay,” Eric whimpered, lying in a fetal ball on the bottom of the boat. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  The voice didn’t answer. Instead, he heard the steady thrum of an engine growing louder in the distance.

  Eric uncurled, sat up, and peeped over the rim of the rowboat. He looked to the southeast, toward the gathering squall. Somewhere in that direction lay the tiny island they’d left just a few hours before, but much closer than that was a small craft skimming the waves, heading right toward him. He waited till it got close enough to be sure it wasn’t a patrol boat before standing up and waving his arms.

  “Hey! Hey, come over here!”

  The boat—a slick little speedster with a flaming paint job—made a final course correction toward him and cut its engines. As it coasted toward the rowboat, a halogen flashlight beam hit Eric in the face, blinding him. He raised a hand and barked, “Jesus, do you mind?”

  A heavily-accented voice asked, “Whatchoo doin way out heyah, bredda?”

  “My friends and I were taken prisoner by this group of pirates, but I got away! Listen, you gotta help me, I need a ride to this houseboat over here and then to the closest port! I can pay you whatever you want!”

  “Oh really now?”

  The light clicked off, and Eric could finally see the occupants of the speedboat by moonlight. Three black men sat with submachine guns pointed at him, while a fourth—a guy with a mohawk of dreadlocks down the middle of his scalp—stood on the bow, scratching the shaved part of his head with the barrel of a pistol.

  “We cyan talk aaaall

  ‘bout payment latah, white boy, but first…” He leaned forward, displaying a mouthful of gold that seemed to float in the middle of his dark face. “How ‘bout you climb aboard and tell us which way dem pirates went?”

  1

  “Those fucking gringo pinche puto pendejos,” Jorge muttered, for what must’ve been the thousandth time since they boarded the fishing boat. Carlos rolled his eyes. The gawky little Cuban added an additional insult each time. “This is all their fault. And I don’t care what the Cap’n says, I’m gonna get a little revenge for Rabid the first chance I get.”

  The fishing boat was just a big, rectangular aluminum raft on top of two barrel pontoons, two feet of clearance beneath and a narrow fiberglass shack running up the middle. Carlos stood at one rear corner of the vessel and Jorge at the other, both of them rowing with extra oars from the Steel Runner lashed to boathooks to form long handles, like they were goddamn Huck Finn floating down the Mississippi. Carlos hated that book in school, but he could remember him and his homies—Diego Palacios among them—laughing their heads off whenever that Twain dude wrote ‘Nigger Jim.’ The going was slow, and their standing positions were so precari
ous that if they didn’t brace their legs just right during the backpaddle, the resistance of the water against the oars could easily cause them to fall into the ocean.

  And, after seeing that deformed shark, Carlos had decided the ocean was the last place he wanted to go.

  “Homey, I agree with you and shit, those muhfuckahs is bad news, but do you think you could…you know…just shut the fuck up?” Carlos stopped paddling long enough to glance over his shoulder. “We got worse problems than those white kids anyway, like the Cap’n leadin us out here to the middle of nowhere.”

  “Ain’t got no other choice, mon.” Jericho spoke so quietly between them—with his head jammed under the hood of one the old jet skis parked on folding skids at the boat’s stern—that Carlos had trouble hearing him. The deck around the mechanic was covered with the bags of tools, weapons, and gas cans they’d brought from the Runner, and, on the fishing bench that ran the width of the rickety vessel, the VHF scanner started up again, speaking low in its garbled tongue. That creepy-ass voice had been drifting from the speakers every couple of minutes since they’d left, and it never got any easier to listen to.

  “He had plenty of choices. Anything besides draggin us out here.”

  “We voted, idiot. Your hand was up just like everybody else’s.”

  “I just didn’t wanna call the pigs for front door pickup. I didn’t vote to row your asses around all night.” He pointed at the scanner. “And turn that shit off! If you can’t understand what the muhfuckah’s sayin, then listenin to it for an hour ain’t gonna help!”

  Jericho pulled his head out from under the hood and turned the scanner down, but not off. His face was nothing but shadows, while his eyes were as big and round and bright as the nearly full moon overhead. “De signal’s gettin clearer, which means we gettin closer to de source.”

  “Yeah, and what if the person sendin it is like that little girl you killed?”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Jericho snapped.

  “Yo, I’m pretty sure when you put a gun to the bitch’s head and blew her brains out, it didn’t send her to Disneyland.” Carlos waited to see if that would get a response—his face still stung where Rabid had smacked the shit out of him, and he’d love to pass the beating on to this beach trash mechanic—but Jericho just stiffened momentarily and then went back to work on the jet ski’s engine. After a couple of seconds, Carlos thought he heard the man sniffle. What a pussy.

  He wanted to feel triumph, but a sudden overwhelming sense of urgency turned his blood to acid. There was no time to sit here jawing with these assholes. He’d been telling himself that he couldn’t make a move until the Steel Runner was mobile again, but now that felt like another excuse, a way to delay what needed to be done. He couldn’t afford to keep waiting for the perfect opportunity, not when every second took them farther away.

  Carlos pushed his paddle through the water again to keep their coasting momentum going, and asked Jericho, “So you really can’t just rig somethin up back on the ship? You know, just to get us goin?”

  “If I had de right parts, I could prob’ly do somet’in. But you know, Ray’s t’eory was dat somebody like de little girl took dat fuel line. But de more I t’ink about it, de less sense it makes. If dere was someone else on de Steel Runner, den where’d dey go?”

  “Well, whatevah,” Carlos said quickly. The words sounded much too guilty to his own ears. “I’m just gettin tired of rowin this thing, is all I’m sayin.”

  “Yeah, well, you best get used to it, cause if we can’t fix de Runner, you gonna be rowin a loooot more.”

  Carlos turned away, meaning to put his back into the rowing, and felt something move against the end of his oar, startling him so bad he almost let go of the pole. He yanked a flashlight from his pocket and shone it down at the water beside the boat.

  At first he expected more shark fins (or even the monster the white kids kept talking about), but there was nothing, just the carpet of seaweed surging gently on the ocean currents.

  And yet…

  He knelt on the edge of the boat, leaning closer to hold the flashlight just a foot or so above the surface of the water.

  The seaweed was moving all right, but the undulations didn’t have anything to do with the water. As he watched, slimy tendrils rose from the water and slid along the rusted side of the pontoon, as though caressing the metal. In the harsh beam of the flashlight, they were the blue-green color of the plant on the houseboat, the one whose narrow stems had reached for him like a baby toward its mother. It was like some blue dye had been injected into them.

  The color was so vivid, the seaweed almost seemed to glow.

  Carlos felt sure that if he fell in the water, those tendrils would wrap around him tight. Cover his mouth to keep him from screaming. Drag him below the surface.

  He shuddered and thought about pointing his discovery out to the others, but decided against it.

  Maybe there was a way to use this.

  2

  Justin couldn’t stop thinking about that blue light.

  He kept seeing it flash in his mind’s eye, that strange, somehow delicate shade of teal, the same color that had popped behind his eyelids when the little girl flayed open his chest with her filthy, ragged fingernails. Something about that light, pulsing across the night sky like explosions in heaven, had made him want to jump in the water and start swimming till he found wherever it was coming from, till he could bathe in that color and let it wash away all his troubles and cares. Even now, as he sat with Amber and Cherrywine at the front of the old pontoon boat, listening to the lap of water and the soft murmur of the radio from the opposite end, he found himself gazing into the sky to the west every few minutes, waiting for that light to begin its entrancing dance again.

  But instead, the sky only darkened as more clouds roiled across the moon, reminding him of a bubbling cauldron. The stars were blotted out one by one; the night deepened until it became something alive and dangerous. In the distance, the other derelicts drew closer, shrouded, skeletal shapes floating in the gloom.

  As part of their newly acquired ‘guest’ status, they’d been allowed to roam freely about the boat with minimal supervision. Which was horseshit of the first degree; if they were ‘guests’ here, then that made Guantanamo Bay the newest four-star resort. Justin suspected the real reason was because the pirates knew there simply wasn’t anywhere for them to go.

  He huddled with his arms around his chest, trying not to shiver or cough, while Amber sat cross-legged and stared into her lap. When he wasn’t waiting for the blue light, Justin watched her instead, wondering what she was thinking. Behind them, Cherrywine fiddled with the laces of the tennis shoes the pirate captain had given her, along with a pair of baggy jeans that didn’t fit but at least covered her bare legs.

  “He left us.” Cherrywine sniffled and tried to tame her long hair as the wind whipped at it. It took Justin a second to realize she meant Eric. “I can’t believe he just…left us.”

  “Why would you not believe that?” Amber demanded. In the distance, a sharp crack of thunder split the night. The storm wasn’t here yet, but it was coming on fast. “The guy’s a selfish, borderline-sociopathic asshole. Think about what he did to you!”

  “I know, he’s horrible, it’s just…he didn’t even try to help us.”

  “Yeah, because guys that are willing to crush your trachea are usually more than happy to risk their lives for you.” A pained look crossed the other girl’s face, at which Amber softened and said, “I’m sorry, Cherrywine. I didn’t mean to joke about it. As soon as we get back, we’re…we’re going to the cops so you can press charges.”

  “What are you t-talking about?” Justin shivered and sat up straighter. “I mean…‘press charges?’ What for?”

  “Justin…look at her throat.”

  “If he did that, it had to be an accident.” Justin realized how stupid he sounded, like a wife making excuses for the abusive husband.

  “It was not!” C
herrywine argued.

  “Look, I’ve known him since elementary school, and, I admit, he can be a little rough around the edges. But he’s not gonna leave us like this. He’ll find a way to get help.”

  Amber shook her head in disgust. “Why are you so blind when it comes to him? Wake up and get it through your head: he’s not going to help anyone but himself.”

  She was right. Justin knew that, like he knew that Cherrywine probably wasn’t the first of Eric’s sexual conquests to receive some unwanted bruises. But, right now, he was just too pissed off at Amber to concede any point.

  He looked away, muttering, “You’re probably right. I guess I’m obviously not the greatest judge of character.”

  “What does that mean?”

  When he didn’t answer, Cherrywine said uncomfortably, “Uh, Amber? He…kinda…knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “What you said on the beach. I told Eric and Eric told him. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Amber was quiet for a long moment. “Justin?”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “Listen, I found the ring in your bag last night and…”

  He spun around on the deck to face her. “So it’s true. You were, what? Just waiting for me to ask so you could say no?”

  “I…you just…you caught me a little off guard, I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with something as serious as a marriage proposal on this trip! I’m a little preoccupied with graduating right now!”

  From the back of the boat, they heard one of the pirates—it sounded like Jorge—say, “Uh oh, someone didn’t get the deep dick last night.” There was muffled laughter.

  Justin lowered his voice and asked, “Is this about that internship? I told you I would go with you!”

  Amber groaned and covered her face. “We are being held captive by pirates while they go exploring a bunch of ghost ships. For god’s sake, do we have to do this right now?”

  He jammed a hand into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out the velvet-covered box that started this whole thing. Justin pulled the lid open and flashed the diamond at her. “Just tell me, do you want to marry me or not?”