Sargasso

by Russell C. Connor

  Then he took the time to perform a massive snort that shook his upper body, and spat a huge wad of phlegm into the dead man’s mangled face before running back toward Lito.

  Together, they sprinted out onto the rear deck of the yacht. The storm was in full swing, but that was the least of Lito’s worries. A few of the vines had stretched over onto the speedboat, and Lito cut them away before jumping down. The smaller vessel rocked and jumped with each wave that crashed over it. The damn thing could break apart in weather this bad. If it got any rougher, there was no way they could survive on it.

  But it was either take their chances on the speedboat, or try to ride out the storm on the yacht.

  He found that decision very easy to make.

  “Go, get us outta here!” Eric demanded. He plopped down into a seat and held on as the craft was slammed against the yacht’s stern.

  Lito jammed the keys in the ignition, started the engine, and throttled up. He had to cup a hand over his eyes just to be able to see as he navigated through the narrow canals formed by the other derelicts. The ocean had become a living, undulating carpet, the smaller whitecaps joining together in the heart of the storm to form long, rolling waves that continued to grow in height. Finally, when he had them back out in less clogged waters, Lito turned to the west and pushed the engines as fast as they would go.

  The sky was far too dark to see the silhouette of the cruise ship any more, but he knew it was out there somewhere ahead, waiting to gobble them all up.

  1

  The pontoon raft was at the mercy of the storm as the swells grew worse; rowing the vessel wasn’t even an option.

  Most of the group took shelter in the cabin. Cherrywine made herself useful by tending to Justin and Ray, while Carlos worked frantically to bail out the water that seemed to be flooding them from all directions. It was a pointless task, considering every time he opened a window to dump out a bucket, even more water blew in. Most of them had puked already, the violent rocking of the boat inducing a nausea from which there was no escape. The best they could do at this point was hold on and hope they didn’t capsize or get dashed against one of the derelicts.

  And that the monster didn’t return. Amber and Jericho had agreed not to tell the others what they’d seen, since there was little they could do about it.

  So she braced herself in the shack’s doorway, where she could see outside. The sheer violence of the squall both amazed and terrified her. The wind’s howl was punctuated every few seconds by fierce thunderclaps, and gigantic waves crashed over the front deck now, one second attached to the ocean surface, the next shattering across their bow like a crystal vase, spraying a torrent of briny, frothy, seaweed-ridden water. Jericho and Tuan clung to the captain’s chair and control console out there, to keep from being washed overboard.

  But the sea beyond the front of the ship—cast in muted, bare-bulb overtones with every frantic fork of lightning—was empty. Before surrendering to the storm, they’d exited the main mass of derelicts on their way to the cruise ship, rowing into the first patch of open water they’d seen since leaving the Steel Runner. They’d tried to maintain a course toward the towering shadow, their only hope for survival, but now…she had no idea where they were.

  Out on the deck, Jericho suddenly raised a hand and pointed. He shouted something she couldn’t hear over the roar of the storm.

  She looked past him, straining to see into the night. All at once, the maelstrom of darkness and rain parted in front of them, and the cruise ship loomed out of the tempest. It sat diagonal across their path, the blocky rear end pointed at them. The vessel was far larger than any other ship they’d encountered, dwarfing their small raft like a pebble in the face of a mountain. She had to crane her head back to take in its entirety, the wall of the hull stretching seven or eight stories over their heads and dimpled with rows of round portholes, and several open levels stacked on top of one another beyond that.

  Lightning gave them a brief, dirty sort of daylight. In it, she could make out huge patches of rust that had overtaken the ship’s exterior. Where once there had been gleaming white, now there was only a dark maroon. The cancer was so bad in some spots it had eaten holes straight through the metal. A steel girder was visible through a massive hole near the front, like a rib bone poking through the skin of a rotted animal carcass.

  A weathered name was still visible across the ruined hull: The Atlantic Queen.

  And below that, Ozuna Sun Cruise Lines.

  Where in God’s name had it come from?

  Jericho gestured frantically to Tuan. Amber let go of the door and lurched out into the storm. She made it out to them and found a grip on the captain’s chair just as a wave swept across the deck. Amber recalled some water amusement park she’d been to as a girl, where she’d waited in heady anticipation on a bridge overpass for one of the rides to come hurtling down a steel track and pass beneath them, throwing up a tsunami as it splashed down, a watery avalanche hard enough to shove them back a few steps. Oh, how she’d giggled and even waited for the next car to come so she could experience it again, but this wave wasn’t fun like that; the force of it sent her muscles into a state of shock, like slamming into a brick wall. Or having the brick wall slam into you.

  She spat out a mouthful of salt water and shouted, “What’s going on?”

  “We have to board dat t’ing, or we’re dead!”

  “How? Climb up the side?”

  Again, Jericho pointed, this time toward the stern of the enormous craft. When she squinted, Amber could make out a long, sloping ramp connected to the back of the cruise ship, leading up to a gaping, square entrance in the hull that looked like a cave.

  “Small craft launch!” Jericho told her. “De bay door’s open! De current is carryin us dat way, so we’ll try to steer toward it! Get everybody ready to go!”

  Jericho and Tuan stayed at the wheel, leaning on one side to try and keep the pontoon’s rudder pointed the right direction, while she ran back inside.

  Minutes later, the front of the raft slammed up onto the ramp, the pontoons squealing against the metal.

  “Go!” Jericho yelled. “Dis won’t hold forever!”

  They stormed the cruise ship like soldiers at Normandy. Carlos was first off; he leapt from the pontoon boat as soon as it touched down, then scrambled up the ramp without looking back. Tuan came right behind him, but he waited to catch Cherrywine in his arms when she jumped down, then carried her up like Tarzan. Jericho dragged Ray in a makeshift travois they’d created from one of the cabin’s bunks; the man was still unconscious, but he awoke and cried out when the back end of the sling slammed against the ramp.

  Amber came last with Justin, who insisted he could make it on his own. They were forced to leave most of the pirates’ equipment, but she hefted Jericho’s bag of tools and the VHF scanner as they ran for the edge together.

  No sooner had their feet left the deck of the raft then the waves ripped the vessel away from its tenuous mooring. Amber looked over her shoulder and watched as the raft got pulled away into the night, where she soon lost sight of it.

  2

  They wearily climbed the ramp that Jericho had called a ‘small craft launch’ and entered the room at the top. Amber understood what the place was for as soon as she got a look at the dank interior in the beams of their flashlights. It was no more than a rectangular metal room with a clerk counter in the corner, the walls lined with recreational conveyances like paddleboats, one- and two-man kayaks, jet skis—big, name-brand SeaDoos this time—and even a few small speedboats on wheeled trailers to get them down to the water, all meant for patrons to rent and launch from the ramp behind them whenever the cruise ship was docked. They were in bad shape, metal parts rusted, covered in mildew and rot, cracks webbed across their plastic parts. A sign mounted on the wall behind the rental desk gave prices, but it was so faded, she could barely make out the letters.

  The wind blew in through the open bay door, creating a chilly draft that
goose pimpled their wet skin, but at least its roar was dampened enough to give their eardrums a much-needed rest. The group collapsed in the middle of the floor, exhausted. Justin straddled one of the Sea-Doos like it was a kid’s ride outside the grocery store, while Cherrywine sprawled across Tuan’s lap. He gave an uncomfortable glance around, as though unsure what to make of her. Carlos crawled into the narrow space between two kayaks, where they heard him retching. Amber still felt a little queasy herself, but it helped being on the cruise ship. The massive craft rode so heavy in the water, it would take hurricane levels of turbulence before they would feel it as badly as they had on the pontoon.

  She lay still and tried not to think about the pounding behind her eyeballs, watching Justin as he leaned over to rest his head on the handlebars of the beaten jet ski. It made her think of Lito for a second, jetting away like some action movie hero with the speedboat on his tail, and a curious ache pressed on her guts from the inside.

  After a few minutes of silence, she reached into the knapsack of supplies and pulled out the battered walkie-talkie. “Lito, are you there?” she asked. “If you can hear us, we made it to the cruise ship. We’re on board now.”

  “Lady, Lito’s fuckin dead!” Carlos told her. He stood up, wiping his lips with the back of one wrist, and made his way drunkenly to the top of the ramp. Rain blew in the wide bay door at an almost horizontal angle. He stood in the spray, looking down the ramp.

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “Whatever. Don’t see why you give a shit.” He flung a hand out toward the sea. “Great! Just fuckin great! The raft’s gone! Now we’re stuck here!” His voice rang against the high, metal walls of the room.

  “Only choice.” Jericho turned over onto his back and rubbed at his temples, kneading the flesh in little circles. “Couldn’t have survived out dere much longer. We got to ride out de storm here, give Lito a chance to catch up.”

  Carlos snorted. “Yo, did you not just hear me, fuckhead? Lito. Is. Dead! Whoever those muhfuckahs were in the speedboat, they smoked his ass by now! We gotta—!”

  “Shut your goddamn mouth.” Ray’s voice was surprisingly strong and clear from where he sat propped against a rust-eaten paddleboat. The gunshot in his side must’ve broken open again in the charge to get off the pontoon boat; the makeshift bandages Amber had tied around his bare waist were rapidly turning crimson. She forced herself up and went to examine it while he spoke. “Lito ain’t dead. And even if he was, that puts me in charge, so I’m the one that’s gonna be issuin orders around here, not you.”

  Carlos turned away, shaking his head and muttering something about ‘what a great fuckin job he was doing,’ and stumbled over Tuan’s outstretched legs. “And yo, who the hell is this chinky shithead anyway, starin at me with his slant eyes? We the fuckin dog pound now, takin in strays and shit? Bad enough we still haven’t hogtied the sick guy over there!”

  Amber realized she hadn’t introduced the young Vietnamese man to the others; they’d been running non-stop since the second he came on board. “His name’s Tuan. He’s…a soldier.” She tucked her wet bangs behind her ear and used a flashlight to check Ray’s gunshot wound. It looked clotted, the fresh bleeding no more than a trickle. Her only medical training was a CPR class she’d taken at school her sophomore year, but she figured if the man wasn’t dead or in shock by now, then the bullet hadn’t hit anything vital. “He offered to help us if we’ll tow his ship out of here when we leave.” She gave a tentative glance up at Ray’s face. “Lito agreed.”

  “Well, he’s more of a gentleman than the rest of you.” Cherrywine sat up and threw her arms around the collar of Tuan’s stained jumpsuit. A look of confusion crossed his pale, round face before he gave a wide grin and hugged her back, his hands resting just above her hips. “Thanks for helping me back there…uh, Private? Is that right, sweetie?”

  Amber gave her a tired smile. “He doesn’t speak English, Cherry.”

  The stripper grabbed one of Tuan’s hands and held it to the chest of her borrowed t-shirt, right between her huge breasts. “Then maybe I can thank him some other way.”

  Jericho grunted. “Maybe you can also t’ank him for gettin us in dat mess in de first place.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “T’ink ‘bout it. Dose guys wit de guns showed up when we boarded deir boat.”

  Amber tied a new bandage around Ray made from strips of her own shirt sleeves and scooted back. “Tell them. Tell them what you told me, right after you were shot.”

  Ray regarded her with bloodshot eyes and then said to the others, “They weren’t shootin at our new friend over there. They were after us, like they have been for the past five months.”

  Carlos whirled around at the edge of the ramp so fast his feet almost went out from under him on the slick floor. “The Dominican? Yo, you sayin those bitches were Santiago’s men?”

  “Only thing that makes sense. And before you ask, I don’t know how they found us out here, unless they followed us all the way from Prince George.”

  “Aw, shhhhit,” Jericho hissed.

  “Can’t be,” Carlos mumbled. His eyes latched onto the floor, but they were glassy and faraway suddenly, pupils bouncing around like they planned to escape from his head. He sidled away from the door, circling as far around the outer edge of the room as possible, stopping only after he’d reached the rental desk.

  “Look,” Amber said, jumping in before someone else could take control of the conversation, “I think there are things far more important we need to discuss right now then whatever drug dealers are after you guys.”

  Ray asked, “Like what?”

  “Everything that we learned from Tuan.” She gave them a brief rundown of the conversation about Tuan’s ship. “The reason all the people and animals around here are mutating is because of radiation exposure.”

  “From what?”

  “They don’t know, they just picked it up on their instruments. They survived inside their ship for the past five days because it’s shielded, and they’ve seen a pattern. After every fourth flash of blue in the sky, some kind of…of radiation wave hits all of these ships. And that last one…that was number four.”

  “Blue…” Justin muttered, from his seat on the jet ski. They all turned to look at him, but he didn’t raise his head. “Beautiful…”

  “So we just left their boat?” Cherrywine asked. “It could’ve, like, protected us from this…radiation, or whatever…and we just left?”

  “Storm woulda killed us if we’d stayed on dat t’ing,” Jericho muttered. “I see dat now. But we only got a couple of hours at most before dis next wave of radiation hits…”

  “So let’s fuckin go!” Carlos yelled from the far side of the room. He waved his arms in panicked circles. “Yo, we gotta go, right now! Let’s just…find the parts and get back to the ship!”

  “Just a minute, there’s something else,” Amber said. “Back on Tuan’s ship, he tried broadcasting to the voice on the radio. And it answered him, in Vietnamese, told him to leave. I wanna try it on your scanner in English and see if we get a different response.”

  “Who the fuck cares? If it’s sayin for us to leave, then let’s do it!”

  “But this could be important!”

  Ray told her, “We don’t got time for science experiments. We make ourselves scarce first, in case that speedboat comes back. Then we start looking for the fuel hose and another way off this ship, so we’re ready to roll if…when Lito gets here. Jer, you said you needed a maintenance room, right? Where would that be?”

  “You got me. Dis ship is huge. We need a schematic map. Dat means de bridge.”

  “Then the bridge is where we’re headed.”

  “Okay, c’mon!” Carlos urged.

  “Hold up,” Jericho told him, sounding irritated. “How’re we supposed to get dere, Ray? We got two people who can’t walk—”

  “I can walk,” Justin said softly.

  “Even so.�
� Jericho lowered his voice, “you know how many of dose t’ings could be on dis ship?”

  “We have the detectors, remember?” Amber dug the device she’d used before out of the equipment bag. “They’ll warn us.”

  “Yeah, and what good is dat gonna do if we’re trapped on dis ship with whatever dey warn us about?”

  Ray shook his head. “I don’t give a shit about that. Lito is comin, and we’re not gonna tell him all we did was sit around with our thumbs jammed up our asses while we waited. Now let’s move.”

  They all nodded and began clambering up. Amber was so exhausted and sore she could barely move, but she forced her muscles to keep working. Jericho went about handing out weapons and the remaining ammunition, like a dreadlocked Santa Claus. He shot her a questioning look when she held out her hand, until she pulled Lito’s revolver from the back of her shorts and brandished it. He debated with himself for another second and then gave her a little cardboard box half-filled with bullets. She figured out how to open the cylinder herself, and refilled each of the six chambers.

  While they worked with Ray’s makeshift stretcher, she went and sat down behind Justin on the jet ski’s saddle seat.

  “We don’t have to do this, you know. You can stay here if you’re not up to it. I’ll even stay with you.”

  Justin sat up and turned halfway around to sit sideways on the long seat. “I’m feeling better, actually.”

  He didn’t look it. His skin was sallow and pale, chest working like a bellows.

  “You need to rest,” she told him. “Once we make it to this bridge, you’ve got to lie back down.”

  “Amber, I may not have much longer—”

  “Don’t say that, we’re gonna—”

  “Shut up and let me finish,” he snapped, in a tone he’d never used with her. “If I’m gonna die—or turn into one of those things—all I want is to know that you’re safe. So I have to ask…what the hell are you doing?”