Dead in the Water (51 page)

Officer Donna was passed out. Alone, Cha-cha faced the creature.

BLACKNESS

LONELINESS

THIRST

She was a gray, floating mass, like silvery clouds, like lumpy fog; pieces reached at him like shaking eager hands. Sometimes they were tentacles, and sometimes they were pincers, and sometimes they were fingers; and as they touched him, they severed the muscles and veins and the other shit in his leg, but it was cool. It was cool that she was connecting with him. She was grokking him, like they used to say in the sixties; really getting him, Vulcan mind-thing, hey, Mr. Spock.

BLACKNESS

LONELINESS

“Yeah, I grok
that
, ten-four.” Cha-cha knew about loneliness. He let himself be open to it, to the creature. Another
something
slithered toward him and he let it do something to him, too. And he saw:

Eons of searching, and fury, and rage: once beautiful, once adored. Scylla, a name somehow retained in memory.

Catastrophe: the first betrayal. A change: a monster.

Abandonment.

Power, and no object.

He was confused. “Someone turned you into a monster?”

And she was pleased that he understood. She let him know that, but she also let him know that wasn’t quite true. It was the only way she had of explaining herself to him, because Captain Reade’s … influence … was still there; she still saw things through his dying essence.

Wow.

Then she let him see some other things. He grokked: Captain Reade was not the first. Other captains had come before, way, way before him. Try the Stone Age, man.

But Reade had been evil. He was nuts. He kept her locked away, fed her just enough to keep her alive—

—something about love-baby Kevin Cha-cha couldn’t quite get—

So she looked for a new captain, sent out her fog and traveled in it with her feelers; Ruth had stepped on one on the
Morris
. The bottle was like a symbol, man, that Captain Reade had dreamed of, and she had made happen for him.

Then he heard Dr. John’s voice but echoey and far away:

“So, it’s like the captains dream for you,” Cha-cha said, awed. “And they’re like filters, man. Like,
your
trip depends on what’s in
their
heads. You take head trips.”

Again, she was pleased with his cleverness.

And then he grokked again: She wanted
his
head.

Cha-cha stiffened, afraid. But she was already moving in, taking over, and promising: all his buddies, alive again! And him, their war hero! Yeah! Forever.

Forever.

COMECOMECOMECOME

There had to be a captain. He dug it. There had to be a Dreamer.

Okay.

The thing rolled over on herself, and over. Cha-cha sat on the deck beside the gray Jell-O clouds, and put his own hands out.

Something spread around his fingers, washed to his wrists, trickled around him, and wet his knees. The stuff was cold, and fog was whirling so thickly around him he couldn’t see what it was. There were hard lumps in it, little pellets that rolled beneath his palms and caught in the indentations around his kneecaps.

It smelled like the stew meat that had fallen out of the fridge back on the
Morris
, and love-baby Kevin had forgotten to put it back, so it had stayed out for a couple days. But that was okay. That was cool.

Serpent feelers, green-nailed tentacles, albatross pincers, swirling in the gray, wrapped around his wrists and knees and the toes of his blood-soaked sneakers, caressed, fondled, embraced. The gooey stuff coated his clothes; made his hands burn like they were scalded.

It crept up to his elbows and thighs, gathered up the front of his rainbow T-shirt and coated his chest; and it swallowed up his ass and coagulated around his neck. The arms, the wanting things, entwined him, and if he could’ve, he would’ve hugged back.

He turned and saw Officer Donna lying nearby. Had to help her. Had to—

The stuff reached the juncture of his lips. Something very like a kiss landed softly on them. Tears of happiness—freaked happiness, but happiness nonetheless—rolled down Cha-cha’s cheeks.

“Yeah, baby, no more loneliness. Cool. And my Nam buddies,” he said.

A
reaching
touched the top of his head. He closed his eyes.

Then it bored into his skull.

With a silent scream he struggled to move away. So cold, yanga,
freezing
; his whole brain was a hunk of ice, psychedelically
frozen, yeah; and thinking that it would be over soon, and thinking that he wished he could know if Officer Donna was okay, and

suddenly, not thinking.

And after a while, he started thinking again,

but he
knew
, he
grokked
, that he wasn’t exactly Cha-cha anymore.

Baby, he was

Something Else.

Wake up, Officer Donna. Wake up
.

Or this will be how it is when you drown
.

Bitter wind whistled around Donna. A shroud of wet covered her from head to toe, weighty, exhausting. She tried to raise her head; someone was telling her to, begging her, over and over, but it hurt to even think about it. Her face stung and pounded and her body was a hammered side of meat; tenterhooks sliced through the muscles in her shoulders and stretched out the pain in a long, slow-motion burn.

“Wake up, wake up, oh, please, please.”

And it was all a dream, she thought. I woke up on the
Morris
, no, I woke up in Long Beach, and I lived happily ever after the end.

“Wake up, ladyfuzz.” Someone cracking her phantom limbs with a pair of shovels.

“Ouch,” she said, and popped her eyes open.

Cha-cha bent over her. His leather face, his toothless snaggle face: good old Chach, saved her life from that—

“Jesus!” she shouted, bolting upright. She grunted with the pain and gingerly examined her face with her fingers as she collected herself. Everything was swollen and bloody. That bastard had beaten the shit out of her.

Her mind whirlpooled. That bastard had vanished into thin air. And that thing, that creature … she looked toward the room. It was empty.

“Yeah,” she said, forcing herself to be calm. “Okay. Okay, Cha-cha, we’ve gotta get out of here.”

Cha-cha shook his head. He crouched like a monkey on the metal stairs. He was covered with stinking slurpy stuff that looked like rotten gravy. His eyes seemed to be spinning, round and round they go, what they see, God only knew.

“You gotta book, Officer. I gotta stay.” He pointed across the hold, over her shoulder.

As she turned to look, it dawned on her that she was sitting in the wooden boat she’d seen in the … the room. She recoiled, lifting her hands from the bottom. Swaths of blood and dirt coated her palms; and streaks of green, purple, and black sizzled and smoked. There was a chunk of ice in the boat, and a chunk of … something else. She made herself scrutinize it. God. Desiccated brain.

A chunk of green glass.

Not a hallucination. It had happened.

It had happened
. She started to lose it, mouth twitching, her hands spasming.

“It’s cool, it’s cool,” Cha-cha said, patting her. “I did it. But I’m new. I’m real new, so I’m not so good.”

“What?” she said, barely able to speak. Dead men. Sea monsters.

Dead men
.

The boat wobbled beneath her. It was sitting in water. The entire compartment had flooded, and even as she registered that fact, the waterline rose at least four inches. Fog lifted from the water and wafted around the two of them, traveling as if of its own accord up the stairway.

“We’re goin’ down, down, down,” Cha-cha chanted in a
Bruce Springsteen voice. “Going on a trip, baby, and you best not come.”

“Get in the boat, Cha-cha!” she shouted. Then she realized something he hadn’t—there was nowhere for the boat to escape from, once the water reached the top of the space. They would have to swim to the stairs, try to get up to the next level, and up again.

“Officer, look,” Cha-cha said impatiently, stabbing his finger in the air for emphasis.

She turned. About a foot and a half above the water, a jagged hole like the aftermath of an explosion had formed in the hull of the
Pandora
. The bright blue day shone beyond it, just too fucking normal for the goings-on inside.

“Starfish did it,” Cha-cha told her. “They digest things with their stomach acid. I told the suckers to take care of it. ‘Nibbling, nibbling mousie, nibbling at my housie.’ ” He grinned. “Gross, or what?”

“What?” She half rose, seeing no starfish, now not sure there really was a hole. It was this place, wasn’t it? Made you see things that weren’t there.

“Cha-cha, talk to me. What … where’s that thing?”

“You gotta get over to the hole,” he said, “and when we fill up enough, you gotta go out. But you gotta do it just right. Or …” He grabbed his neck and made choking noises. “Dig?”

She stared at him. He seemed different, more together. Still Cha-cha, and yet not as much Cha-cha.

“Why can’t you come?”

He shrugged. “Captain always goes down with his ship.”

Donna swallowed. Oh, fuck. “And are you the captain now?”

Their eyes met. He nodded slowly. A chill wrapped around her, squeezed.

“Don’t freak,” he said kindly.

But she was freaking. Her whole body started to shake again. Christ, that … 
thing
. Reade. He had simply vanished. And Creutz and the
Pandora
had vanished, and now she was going to fucking vanish into madness. The boy, Dane. The little boy.

“Explain it to me,” she managed, forcing down her hysteria. “Tell me why, how.” And when it made rational sense, when she could point to toxins or food poisoning or mass delusion, she would put the brakes on her personal Grand Prix toward pure, unadulterated insanity.

Again he shrugged. “It’s a word I don’t know.” He thought a minute. “Like in the Haight. I help you, you help me.”

“Symbiosis?” She was surprised she knew a word like that. That freaked her even worse. That was not a word she knew; why was it in her head?

Cha-cha nodded thoughtfully, looking far away. The boat drifted toward the hole. “Yeah. I let her … like, mind-meld. You know, like Mr. Spock? We’re together now.”

“Who? Who, Cha-cha?” She leaned forward, waiting for his answer. The water level was still rising. “Who?” she asked again, shrilly.

He took a breath. “She’s old, really old. There’ve been so many of them—captains—but King Neptu … Reade was different. He was really wacko.” He wiped his forehead, looked startled at the clump of gray in his hand. “He’s still in there. She’s having flashbacks. He’s like acid for her. All that acid. It’s a mega-bad trip for her, total bummer. I gotta help her lose that dude. And all the bad stuff. She’s kinda confused right now.”

He stretched out a hand. She jerked, even though he was too far away to touch her. Couldn’t stop the shaking. Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Wild laughter quivered in her throat.

Keep it together. She watched the water reach his shoes, soak them. That was too much to ask. Too much.

“She’s welcoming all my Nam buddies. We’re all gonna live here now.” He rubbed his hands together like a happy little boy.

“Cha-cha, oh, Jesus, you’re wacko, too, hon. Don’t you know it?”

His gap-toothed grin. His bloodshot eyes like cracked marbles. He gave the boat a strong push backward. “Get to the hole. I’ll find the others.” He regarded her. “Most of ’em are
dead. Mr. and Mrs. van Buren. The other lifeboat dudes. I … I killed them.”

She shook harder. Felt her mind, going, going—

He stood. He flickered in and out of focus. She saw—

—Reade—

—a hideous black hole of pain—

—no, she saw nothing but Cha-cha, nothing.

And heard—

Wrong answer! Nothing! She heard nothing.

He flashed her a salute and started up the stairs.

“Reade acid!” he shouted. “Loose it, baby!”

She watched him go as her boat drifted toward the opening. Puffy white clouds greeted her imminent arrival; the sun gleamed innocently as she passed beneath cobwebs and lines of stinking seaweed hung out like wash. Crabs scuttled over the bulkhead and clicked their pincers.

And then she realized the boat wasn’t drifting, no siree! Wrong answer! Someone was swimming under it, and guiding it along.

Something floated toward her. She recoiled. Then Nemo mewed and Donna saw it was a big plastic container, and she and her kittens huddled inside it.

Donna started to laugh. And cry.

There was a moment of sublime temptation, just one, when the boat hit the water outside. The sun was bright and golden, the sky clear. A single white bird flew overhead. Close to land! Paddle like hell and don’t look back.

But just one moment, as the fog closed over the sky and the bird disappeared, and the
Pandora
filled with screams and bullet shots.

And Donna clenched the sides of the boat and thought, Protect and serve, goddamn it all to hell.