Dead Water Zone (5 page)

“Sam!”

He woke with a shudder, still half convinced that his brother had been standing over him, watching as he slept. Wimp, he told himself. But an electric buzz seemed to linger in the air.

He stood and looked out over the pier. At first he thought it was Monica again, standing in shadow at the water’s edge. But when the figure shifted slightly, Paul knew it wasn’t her. He whispered his
brother’s name through his dry mouth, but the figure darted across the pier so quickly he lost sight of it. He rushed out and onto the outer steps. Shivering in the cool of the night, he scanned the pier, and when he saw nothing, he dashed up to the roof for a better view.

“Shhhh!” A cold hand closed around his forearm. Monica moved up beside him. “I saw it, too,” she whispered. “There.” She pointed down to the end of the pier, near the high iron gate. “See?”

“No,” Paul told her. “You must have damn good eyesight. Who is it?”

“Can’t tell.”

The figure leaped and cleared the gate, disappearing into the maze of alleyways on the other side. Gooseflesh broke out over Paul’s arms and legs.

“That gate must be over ten feet high!”

“Twelve and a half.”

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

She seemed to hesitate, then shook her head. “You think it’s your brother, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” he replied guardedly.

She rubbed sleep from her eyes. She’d dressed quickly, in only a single sweatshirt and trousers. She was very tiny. Paul was suddenly aware that he wore nothing but his underpants.
He half turned away from her, his arms automatically folding across his chest, as if trying to conceal as much of his body as possible. But when he realized she wasn’t taking the slightest notice of him, he felt slightly put out, then ridiculous.

“We could ask Decks tomorrow,” she said. “He used to work on a tug in the harbor. He’s been around Watertown for ages. He might have seen your brother.”

“Thanks,” he said gratefully, trying to stand up straight.

“Get some sleep, Muscles.”

“Y
OU AREN’T THE
first person to ask me about this boy.” Decks handed the photograph back to Paul. “Two men came around over a week ago with a picture and asked if I’d seen him. I told them no, which is what I would have told any stranger spooking for somebody. In this case, it’s also the truth. I haven’t seen him.”

Paul’s heart raced. He glanced at Monica, sitting across from him in the narrow galley of Decks’s houseboat.

“Cops,” she said tersely. “I knew it. Those damn helicopters. Why would the police be looking for your brother, Paul? Who sent them? Your parents?”

“They don’t know he’s down here.” Unless
they had somehow found out. Had the university gotten in touch with them? But Sam said he’d quit his research job, so the university wouldn’t have known where he was either.

“I don’t think it was the police,” said Decks, scratching at the stubble on his chin. He had broad, heavily callused hands and a gruff voice that made Paul feel small and uncertain.

“The police don’t come down here for runaways or missing persons. Watertown’s like a maze to them. These two weren’t wearing uniforms, didn’t show any identification. Whoever they are, they didn’t come because someone’s parents called. They had holsters under their jackets.”

Monica’s gaze settled hard on Paul. “Your brother’s not really a runaway, is he?”

It was pointless to try to hide it now. Armed men—looking for Sam.

“He was doing research for the university, studying samples from the dead water zone. He told me he’d found something strange, something he didn’t understand. No one knew he was coming down, and he asked me not to tell anyone either.”

He saw Monica’s eyes flicker over to Decks.

“Why didn’t you tell us that right away?” she demanded.

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“You lied to me, Paul.”

He thought he caught a look of genuine hurt in her face, but it was quickly blocked out by anger.

“What about all that other stuff you told me yesterday, huh? About you and your brother. Was all that bullshit, too?”

“No.”

“Just thought you could use us, right?”

“I promised him,” he blurted.

“I should make you swim back to shore. You had no idea your brother was being hunted?”

Hunted. The loft at the old boathouse. A pile of clothes, glasses in the dust, shattered glassware, a dropped diskette. Maybe they’d surprised him; maybe he was asleep when they came. Paul played it out in his mind: they had crept noiselessly up the stairs, Sam not even waking until they’d seized him, his shouts muffled by a hand clamped across his mouth. He hadn’t even had time to grab for his glasses.

“Maybe they’re ahead of me,” he said, sick. “Maybe they found him at the boathouse.”

“I don’t think so,” said Monica. “Why would that helicopter tail us afterward? They must have thought one of us was Sam.”

Decks nodded in agreement. “I saw a helicopter making passes late yesterday afternoon. If
they’d found your brother, they’d be long gone by now.”

“He might have known they were looking for him and left on his own,” said Paul, hopeful.

Another reassuring thought came to mind—the shadowy figure on the pier last night. There was no logical proof it had been Sam, but it somehow gave him hope.

“Must have been pretty heavy-duty research,” said Monica. “And he didn’t say anything else about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Why’d you come down here, then? Unless you knew he was in trouble?”

“It was just a feeling.”

She wouldn’t believe him, even though this part was true. Last night, on the rooftop, he had felt almost close to her, but now…“When we last talked on the phone, he sounded funny. He was really worked up. I think he was scared, too. I was worried.”

“Very helpful,” she said witheringly. She turned to Decks. “There’s a computer diskette, too. I found it in the boathouse. Armitage is trying to get a machine so we can read it.”

Paul’s hand involuntarily touched the diskette in his shirt pocket. “It might be a jumble to anyone but Sam. But there could be a clue to where he is.”

“And what he’s been doing,” Monica added. “I think you’re holding out on us, Paul.”

“I’ve told you everything.” There was more, but it was strictly personal. Sometimes he barely understood it himself.

“This is getting very messy,” said Monica. “If they trace us back to our pier—”

Paul felt an urge to reach across and brush away the purple smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes.

“Look,” he said apologetically, “I wasn’t trying to make trouble. I came down here to meet my brother. He told me to come to Jailer’s Pier. He didn’t show up.”

“That’s where I found him,” Monica told Decks. “Now he’s got it into his head that his brother might be hiding out in Rat Castle. What do you think?”

Decks snorted. “The canal runs all the way around, like a moat. Anyway, the whole place was boarded up years ago. All the piers were rotting away.”

“See?” she said, but Paul thought there was vague disappointment on her face, too.

“You should stay away from there,” Decks told Monica. “It’s not safe. It won’t be long before it collapses to the bottom of the lake.”

“Thanks, Decks,” said Monica. “You’ve been a help.”

At the hatchway, Decks placed a hand on Paul’s arm. “There’s one other thing I should tell you,” he said. “That photograph they showed me—you were in it, too.”

“When we get back to the pier, you’re staying inside. Understand?”

Paul nodded mutely, keeping pace with her through the maze of alleyways. His mind kept circling back to the photograph of him and Sam. When had it been taken? Where? What were he and Sam doing? The details seemed important somehow. Get a grip, he told himself. But how had they got hold of it? He imagined them going through the closets of his brother’s room at college, handling his clothes, pulling pictures from the bulletin board. Paul suddenly felt afraid.

“Runaway brother,” Monica was muttering. “What crap!”

“Why are they carrying guns?” he said. “What’s the point of guns?”

“You tell me. Maybe they want something your brother has.”

“What do you know about the water?”

“What are you talking about?” She looked at him, surprised.

“It’s got to have something to do with the water. He said there was something strange about it.”

“It’s polluted. Nothing lives in it. You can’t drink it.”

“He found something new. He didn’t say what.”

“What was it about the water?” she asked fiercely. “What are you so afraid of?”

“That he’ll kill himself.”

He was almost as surprised as she was.

“What?”

He shook his head. “It was a stupid thing to say.”

“Why would he do that? Because he got beat up at school?”

Paul didn’t have time to answer. Three kids slid out from an alcove on the jetty, mean looking, all wearing ripped-to-hell black jeans, shredded at the seams and held together with safety pins and staples. Torn shirts hung down past worn-out jackets; metal-toed boots sounded against the planking. He felt his jaw tense, sweat prickle under his arms. Monica touched his hand lightly.
Let me handle this.

With predictability that almost made him laugh, the three kids languidly blocked their way. It was strangely familiar—kids gathered on a school playground. Bullies everywhere. In Governor’s Hill he was used to shouted threats, intimidation, ridicule, maybe a few hard shoves.
But a part of him exulted. He was bigger than any of them, but the numbers weren’t fair. Out of the corner of his eye he admired the vaguely bored look on Monica’s face.

The kid in front had long, dirty dreadlocks. His face and neck were tattooed with cobwebs and spiders. Four metal loops were sunk through one of his nostrils, and a safety pin had been plunged through the inflamed flesh at the bridge of his nose.

“Wanderin’ around as if she owns the place.”

“Don’t you have anything better to do than piss me off, Sked?” Monica replied.

“Well, this is interesting.” Sked turned his dark gaze on Paul. “A City boy.”

“Move it,” said Monica. “This is boring.”

“Does your City friend here know you’re a health hazard, Toxic Freak?”

Paul felt a nervous tremor working its way through his body. “Get out of the way,” he said.

Sked slammed a thick hand onto his arm. Paul found himself staring at the kid’s knuckles, the flesh torn away in ragged patches.

“Seen your brother lately?”

Paul wrenched his arm free, fury gathering like a white-hot burn in the center of his chest. “What do you know about my brother?” he said, choking on his words. If these bastards had Sam…

“We’re just asking if you’ve seen him lately.”

“Where is he?” Paul shouted. His ears roared with white noise. He was watching them all at once. They were moving in tighter.

“You know where he is, City boy. So just tell us. Save yourself a beating.”

“Go to hell.”

“Look at all this money they gave you, Sked,” said Monica, waving a wad of bills. “How much did those two goons pay you to find his brother? Half now, half later, was that the arrangement?” She hurled the crumpled bills contemptuously in the air.

It took Sked a second to realize it was his money fluttering down around him. “You stinking freak!” he spat, and his hand came up, palm flat, aimed at Monica’s face.

“Hey!” Paul shouted.

But Monica had slipped to one side, her arm darting out so quickly that Paul heard the impact of her fist before he realized she’d struck. Sked’s head snapped back, an almost comical look of surprise on his face.

“Don’t do this, Sked,” Monica warned him. “Remember last time?”

Sked lunged for her as the other two came crashing in on Paul. His fists flew out, driving them back. In his sudden explosion of adrenaline,
he felt like a machine: steel tendons, spring-loaded muscles, iron limbs smashing forward like pistons.

He watched Monica weave around Sked, avoiding his outstretched hands. Paul tried to get over to her, but the boys were blocking his way. They surged forward together, grabbing hold of his shoulders, kicking at his kneecaps, and slammed him to the planking. He twisted over onto his side, legs instinctively pulled up.

“Where’s your brother?” they shouted at him. “Where is he?”

For just an instant he was Sam, pinned on the ground, Randy Smith’s spit smeared across his face. So this was what it was like. Not the pain but the humiliation.

He intercepted a boot aimed at his ribs, locking his hands around the ankle and pulling with all his weight. The kid kicked frantically, arms flailing for balance, and toppled. Paul scrambled to his feet.
Where’s your brother? Where’s your brother?
He took a punch in the face—no pain, only a moment of blackness, and he felt a wet trickle in his nose. He lashed out again, the staccato pounding of his heart in his ears. They couldn’t do this to him. But they had him in a headlock, gasping for breath.

“Where’s your brother, you rich City wimp?”

Through the tangle of limbs, Paul saw that Monica had Sked’s arm pinned against his back in a painful hold.

“You want me to let go?” she panted in Sked’s ear. “Tell your high-fashion friends to let him go, or I’ll break it for you.”

“Try it,” Sked breathed, his face ashen. Monica adjusted her grip on Sked’s arm and he suddenly winced. “Let him go!”

Paul shrugged his way out of the headlock and moved past the two spider boys warily. Still holding Sked’s arm in a pincer grip, Monica followed after him along the jetty.

“Don’t move,” Monica called back to the two boys, “or you can figure out how to sew his arm back on.”

They were clawing at Sked’s cash, crushing it into their pockets. The jetty opened out on one side, revealing discolored water licking around the pilings. Monica brought Sked up short.

“Not much fun, was it?” she said.

“Yeah, sure, maybe if I had what you all had—”

“Shut up,” Monica said sharply. “Tell us what you know.”

“Up yours.”

Monica encouraged him with a slight rotation of his arm.

“They asked me if I’d seen this kid, your brother.” He jerked his head at Paul.

“When?” asked Paul.

“A while ago, I don’t know. They show me a photo. You’re in it, too. I go, No, I ain’t seen him. But I might get around to it. How much is it worth to you? And he says, Lots. Do I look rich? I need that cash. So he gives me some. Tells me to find out where your brother is, fast, and I’d get twice as much again.”

“Why are they looking for him?”

“You tell me!” Another grunt of pain. “They didn’t say, right? They didn’t tell me nothing else. I saw you, thought you’d know.”

Paul noticed that Sked’s two friends were edging forward along the jetty. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Yeah, why don’t you,” Sked snorted, twisting his head around to look at Monica. “You’re running out of time. Freaks like you can’t last forever, right?”

Monica gave him a shove that sent him over the edge of the jetty.

“Run!” she shouted.

Paul bolted after Monica, through the maze of floating alleys, ducking beneath lines of laundry, soaring over gaps in rotted planking. He was pushing to keep up; his lungs began burning. He was grateful when she began to slack off, glancing
over her shoulder to make sure they’d lost Sked’s friends. He staggered to a standstill, hands on hips, breathing hard.

“Your nose is still bleeding.”

He grunted and pinched his nostrils. He could feel the bruises on his body. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

She shrugged. “Pretty standard stuff. It only works on Sked because he’s so stupid.”

“I don’t get it. I mean, I’m getting the crap knocked out of me, and you just twist Sked’s arm—game over!”

“Don’t get so angry!”

“I’m not angry!”

“You’re shouting.”

He shook his head. He’d thought he could hold his own. His body was the one thing he had confidence in. It worked—it used to anyway. He looked at Monica critically. Under the layers of baggy clothing, there was almost nothing to her. It didn’t seem possible that she could have so much strength or endurance.