Devour (11 page)

“How’d I get here?”

“We plucked you off a piece of your boat about three hours ago. What the hell happened?”

“We need to go back to shore,” Wells said. “I need to tell . . . I need to call Sarah’s parents, and Desmond’s wife, and . . .”

“Here,” Brian said, handing him the glass. He watched as the old man stared into the amber liquid, then drank. A bit more color had come back into his cheeks, and his eyes had cleared considerably.
He wasn’t just hypothermic
, Brian thought.
Not this whole time. He was trying not to think about what happened.

“Your boat,” Brian prodded.

Wells shook his head. “We were working outside Boon. Sarah just dropped the sonde and she was logging the data into her laptop. Marcus had collected all his samples for the day and he was trying to run stats on it, a regression analysis I think, and he couldn’t get the data—”

“The boat,” Brian said. “What happened to your boat? Was it a wave?”

“No,” Wells said, and convulsed in a great shiver. “No, it wasn’t a wave. Something ate it.”

“Oh,” Gilly said, eyeing the bottle on the table. “Yeah. That happens.”

Brian shot Gilly a look. “What do you mean, Mr. Wells?”

“It’s Dr. Wells, actually.” He squinted at Brian. “Something came out of the water and destroyed us. We had been gathering data for several hours, nothing strange except the weather, and then there was this tremendous lurch and I fell down. I got to my knees and I could see . . . something . . . tearing at the back of the boat. It had these huge curved teeth, like snake fangs or . . . I don’t know. The outboards went dead and a moment later it ripped both of them—both outboards—completely off the back of the boat.”

“And what’s a sound?” Brian said. “You said she dropped a sound?”

“A sonde,” Wells said. “It’s a device for measuring water chemistry. We were traveling down the Kaala as part of Sarah’s master’s thesis.”

“How old was your boat?” Gilly said.

“It was the university’s boat,” Wells said. “A twenty-four-foot Boston Whaler, a recent model.” He looked up sharply. “The engines didn’t fall off, if that’s what you’re implying, Mr . . . ?”

“Mr. Gilly, actually. He’s Mr. Brian.” He had poured himself another drink and now he tossed it back. “So what, exactly, ate your boat?”

“You think this is a joke?” Wells said. “My students are dead. I saw Sarah in the water, in a cloud of her own blood, and then that . . . thing . . . came out of the ocean and killed her. She screamed and then she was just gone. It swallowed her.” Wells’s voice faltered. “It swallowed her, and then it looked at me. It
saw
me.”

Wells seemed about to say something, then clutched his bony shoulders and began to sob. After a minute, Brian put a hand on his shoulder. Wells’s pulse was thumping rapidly on the side of his neck.

“Cap?”

Brian nodded, and Gilly began rummaging through his seabag, evaluating a half dozen orange medicine bottles before finally settling on a sample packet. He handed the foil package to Brian: two pills of Xanax, 500 milligrams each. Brian pressed them into Wells’s hand.

“You’ve had a hell of a day, Dr. Wells,” Brian said.

Wells stared at the pills, then popped them into his mouth. “Wash her down,” Gilly said, holding out a glass of water. Wells gulped the water down noisily. Gilly held up his own glass, which had magically refilled with more Seagrams, and clinked it against Wells’s empty glass. “You’re safe now.”

Wells leaned back and closed his eyes. After a moment he began to snore. Brian motioned Gilly toward the stairs. “Should he have booze with those pills?”

“Oh yeah,” Gilly said. “It won’t kill him.”

“Just put him to sleep?” Brian took Gilly’s glass, drained it, and set it on the counter upside down. He had not eaten since noon, and he could feel the heat of the whiskey, combining with the meager warmth of the cuddy. If he sat much longer he was going to fall asleep himself.

“Might,” Gilly said. “But he won’t have bad dreams, least not any he’ll remember.”

“No more,” Brian said, taking the bottle. “For any of us. I mean it.”

He pushed the cuddy door open and climbed back up to the deck. The port engine rumbled unsteadily, but the gauges showed good temp and oil pressure. The GPS still had them floating right past the edge of Cape Cod, which at their current speed they wouldn’t reach until first light. He would have to make the hard decision in the morning, either risk losing the port engine for a final run for the shoreline, or make the Mayday call.

Or what
, he thought, staring at the engine hatch.
Float down the coast until you end up in the Caribbean?

No. We go like this until dawn, and with any luck the wind swings around to the east, like it sometimes does after a strong northern blow, and you ride onshore breezes into Plymouth Harbor and anchor in twenty feet of water. Easy-peasey. One more story for the Riff-Raff.

See how good you’re doing? You could have said one more story for the grandkids and then felt bad. Because you don’t have kids, or a kid. But you didn’t say that. You’re doing good.

Okay, stick with the boat. Maybe you miss Plymouth and swing around Cape Cod. I can see that, see the fancy pricks standing on their lawns, staring at us through the fog. Then the wind swings around to the east and instead of a gentle harbor you’ve got the hard shoreline crashing in front of you. Not so good, but by then Gilly will have light to work with and we can throw the anchor. Gilly digs in, get his hands greasy. Maybe siphon off the pure fuel from the top of the tank, put it in a couple cans, then drain the water off the bottom?

Even he knew it wouldn’t work. The water and fuel were too mixed up; it wouldn’t separate until it had a chance to rest, and that wouldn’t happen out here, not in these seas. Well, Gilly would think of something. All they needed was daylight, a little bit of luck.

Luck
, the cold voice inside him said.
Yes, you’ve had so much of it. Now if it’ll just hold.

He walked over to the caved-in corner of the boat. The thick fog and the darkness closed around him and now, instead of feeling insignificant, he felt the universe constrained to the deck of his boat. He stood in its epicenter. Not its master but its lone prisoner.

And underneath him, the cold waters of the Kaala bore them to their new destination.

T
he numbers weren’t adding up.

Moore squinted at the two gauges on the
Nokomis
’s instrument panel. One was for a float valve on the lowest berth, which showed the level of seawater in the hold. The
Nokomis
was designed to carry several thousand gallons of bilge water in the ballast tanks, connected by a series of pipes that allowed him to move the water from side to side, from bow-side to aft. The gauge read six inches of water when they had left Boston Harbor, evenly distributed among the four tanks. Once they reached the open seas and he could tell they were in for a bumpy ride, Moore had added two more inches, making her sit down in the water, allowing the keel to bite into the ocean. That brought her up to eight inches, roughly two thousand gallons of water.

The other gauge was the on-off status of the four bilge pumps, located above the ballast tanks. Each of the pumps was rated at five hundred gallons per minute, and three of them had been running for the past twenty minutes. The fourth and largest one, the big emergency pump, was located slightly higher than the other three. It would not kick in unless the water breached the first containment structure, when the bilge water was at fourteen inches.

They were at sixteen inches, over four thousands of gallons of water, and the fourth bilge still wasn’t running.

Actually, Moore thought, the numbers were adding up right. If you wanted to show the equation for a ship that was going to sink, slowly and steadily, these were the numbers. Yes, these were the numbers you would want.

He turned as Fred Wright entered the bridge. Wright was a dark-haired man with a protruding brow and intense, dark eyes, dressed in navy blue overalls with the knees and wrists stained with grease. He held an amp meter in one hand, a coil of electrical wire in the other.

“The fuck happened to Collins?”

Damn,
Moore thought.
That’s right, they knew each other. Friends or something like that.

“He went overboard,” Moore said. “I’m sorry, Fred, I really am. We couldn’t turn around, not without power.” He willed himself to take in Wright’s furious gaze. “I threw him an Illuminok ring,” he said. Illuminoks were the new life rings, complete with automatic distress signal capabilities and strobe lights that activated when it hit the water.

“So? Did he grab on?”

“I don’t know,” Moore said. “It was dark, and we were still getting pushed around by the seas. He . . . he may have.”

“Better hope he did,” Wright said. “Better goddamn hope, Captain, that I don’t have to call my sister and tell her that her favorite cousin is feeding the fuckin crabs off Stellwegan Banks.” He moved forward, his face a foot from Moore’s. Moore’s nostrils filled with the smell of industrial lubricant soaked into Wright’s clothes and skin, overlaid with his mechanic’s oniony breath.

Cousin,
Moore thought.
Wonderful.

“You understand what I’m saying?”

Moore straightened. “Watch your tone, Fred.”

“Have you radioed it in?”

Moore had moved back as Wright advanced, until his back was brushing the steering console. Now he pushed past Wright and returned to the instrument panel, tapping at the large GPS screen. “We haven’t moved under power since he fell over. See? We’re only a few hundred yards away. If he was still afloat, he would have seen us. We have spotters looking for him, and as soon as it’s light—”

“He’ll be frozen cock stiff by then,” Wright said. “You gave up on him. Didn’t even call it in, did you?”

“For what purpose? You think the Coast Guard could have got out here in time to do anything?”

Wright furrowed his brow, his lips twisting.

“Listen,” Moore said, his voice gentle now. “We don’t have power, we’re taking on water, and you need to take care of the ship. We’ll keep shining the seas, and if we see him, we’ll get him on board.” He motioned at the amp meter in Wright’s hand. “Now. What’s the status of the upper bilge?”

Wright opened his mouth, caught himself, then sighed. “It’s still down,” he said. “Bad electrical connection.”

“So why aren’t you working on it?”

Moore and Wright swiveled in unison. Frankie was standing in the doorway to the bridge, freshly shaved, his tone conversational.

Wright turned to Moore. “The hell’s this?”

“Seems to me,” Frankie said, taking a step forward, “you’ve already got the hard part figured out.” He ambled to the instrument panel, glancing at the screen showing their location, and traced a finger along the 76th parallel. The GPS screens showed the ship about two miles southeast of the last GPS coordinates, still labeled UNKNOWN. There were three other officers on the deck besides Moore and Wright, and all of them watched as Frankie ran the three fingers of his right hand down the navigation screen, tapped it, then ran a hand lightly along the steering wheel.

“Oh yeah?” Wright said. He was clenching the amp meter so hard the plastic cover was buckling. “What’s the hard part?”

“Diagnostics. You said you got—quote—a bad connection.” Frankie turned to Wright. “Now all you got to do is get down there and fix it. Make it a good connection.”

Moore stepped between them before Wright could take another step. “Gentlemen,” he said, placing a hand on Wright’s chest. “Control yourselves.” He turned to the rest of the crew. “We all have jobs to do, and none of them involve talking. Wade?”

“Yes, Captain,” their duty officer said. Wade Vanders was young, a couple years out of college, trying to grow in a patchy beard.

“You logged the event?”

“Yes, sir.” Vanders cleared his throat. “But we have another issue.”

“Yes?”

“We just received a call from the onboard day care. It seems one of the children is missing.”

Moore felt something drop in his chest. It was an actual physical sensation, as though a gallon of cold liquid had been poured into his stomach all at once. “When?”

“She wasn’t sure. The girl’s nine, name of Taylor Millicent. The day care sent her out to get some medicine from the onboard pharmacy last night and she didn’t return.”

“She’s been missing all night and we hear about it now?”

“Sir,” Vanders said. “The day-care lady fell asleep, and the kid was supposed to stay at the facility overnight, so her parents didn’t know she was missing. This just came through. The parents are extremely upset, sir. We have all available men looking for the child.”

Moore could feel his pulse throbbing in his temples. For the past year, the
Nokomis
had been able to hold together, to scrape in a modest profit, and yet deep down he’d known, goddamn
known
, the threads would unravel one day. He had hoped to be retired by that time. “How many passengers and crew do we have, total?”

“One-seventy-five,” Vanders said. “One-seventy-six, counting Collins, sir.”

Wright started to say something and Moore cut him off. “Wade, you’re familiar with the Emergency Action Plan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your next step?”

Vanders looked at the screen, then back at Moore. “Sir? Have we declared an emergency situation?”

Moore paused. The kid was right; he needed to declare an emergency before the EAP kicked in. The three criteria for enacting the plan were clear: If the crew or passengers were in imminent danger; if the ship was disabled and subject to sinking; or if they were under attack. Two missing people didn’t trigger it, but two missing people and a foundering ship . . . shit, it might. He had only had to enact a maritime EAP one other time in his life, a time he remembered vividly. Full investigations, with interviews with every member of the staff and the crew....

“No,” he said. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Sir?”

Moore glared at Vanders. “Don’t be dense. What
would
be your next step? If we had to go to an emergency situation, how would you direct the boatswains?”

“Oh,” Vanders said, his face darkening and then brightening as the answer came to him. “We would ask passengers to congregate near the lifeboats for drills. Since it’s dark, and if we had time, I would probably wait until dawn. If the weather allowed it, and we were shallow enough, we would deploy anchor so that we would provide a reference point for search-and-rescues. After that—”

“That’s fine,” Moore said. “Deploy anchor. Graves, lead the search for the girl. She’s around here somewhere.” Hell, she had to be; the
Nokomis
’s deck was flanked by high guardrails in all of the passenger areas, another insurance requirement. “At oh-seven-hundred, Wade will notify the passengers that we will be performing a drill. Practice it, make sure everyone knows what to do. One person in each group needs to know how to operate an outboard motor. Call them a captain, it should help.”

“Wait a second,” Frankie said, touching Moore’s sleeve.

Moore shook him off. “After you deploy the anchor,” he said to Graves, “get some men to help Wright with the bilge. Plug the damn breach if you can. If we have to put these people out on the open sea with those waves . . .” He paused, letting his mate think about it. Thinking about it himself. The lifeboats on the
Nokomis
were closed-hull, but not solid metal enclosures like they were on more modern ships. The hulls were aluminum, the enclosures canvas. A big wave could crush the enclosure frames, and the next one could fill it with water.

Graves frowned. “Cap, we’re over a hundred fathoms. Six hundred feet. We only have a thousand foot of chain.”

“It’s not ideal,” Moore said. “It’ll slow us down, though. I want to stay near the place we lost power.”

“That’s plenty of chain,” Frankie said. “I’m doing the math right, you got four hundred feet extra.”

“The anchor chain should be five times the depth,” Moore said patiently. “Less than that, you tend to bounce along the bottom.” He looked at Wright. “Can you get the big bilge running?”

“It’s not the pump,” Wright said. “It’s the wire. I gotta run ten, twelve feet of six-gauge from one of the big batteries, and I don’t have enough onboard to snake it all the way around the bulkhead. It needs to go through a twelve-inch gap to reach the terminal, with about three right angles in the gap. I can’t worm my way through, and besides that, it’s half underwater.”

“How about your crew? Any of them fit?”

“Danny might, but he’s claustrophobic as hell. The other two are bigger than me.”

“We’ll find somebody,” Moore said. “What about the props?”

Wright shook his head. “Hard to tell. I think they sheared right off.”

Moore pinched his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “We’ll think of something.” He opened his eyes and turned to the rest of his crew. “Start looking for the girl. Talk to the day-care lady, talk to her parents. Keep them calm. Everything’s going to be all right.”

* * *

After Wright left, Moore motioned Frankie to his quarters. Once inside, he unbuttoned his collar and sat down on the small couch, motioning Frankie toward the single chair by the door. “Sit,” Moore said when Frankie didn’t move. “We better talk now, because I won’t have time later.”

Frankie lowered himself into the chair. “You can’t be this stupid.”

“No?” Moore said. “That’s what I was going to say about you.”

“How so?”

Moore rubbed his temples, pressing hard against the headache he felt forming there. “So far, nobody knows about the game, your cargo, any of that stuff. But let’s talk worst case and the ship sinks. We’re both screwed, even if we make it back to shore. Agreed?”

“I suppose.”

“Of course we are. But we’re not there yet, so let’s talk about the other possibility.”

“We don’t sink.”

“Very good. We don’t sink,” Moore said, tapping his fingers on the armrest. “Fred Wright is a temperamental man, but he’s a damn good mechanic. He has to be, to keep a tub like this running, especially with what he has for a budget and crew. He’ll get that bilge going. But now there’s a little girl missing, and that’s a whole new wrinkle, a whole new set of emotions. I don’t know what we collided with—”

“You keep saying
we
,” Frankie said. “Like all your pretty little sailors were standing there, each with a hand on the wheel?” He raised an eyebrow. “I won’t ask what your other hand was doing.”

“The ship was on autopilot,” Moore said calmly. “In six hundred feet of water, with nothing on the sonar or radar to suggest a collision might occur.”

Frankie leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Then why’d we slow the boat down just before we hit, Captain?”

Moore paused, held Frankie’s eyes for a moment, then looked away. “There was something in the water,” he said, staring at the picture on the wall, Winslow Homer’s
Fog Warning.
Look at that goddamn fisherman, he thought all calm and resolute. Looking up at those dark clouds on his horizon with austerity. “It was behind us, Frank. We didn’t hit it—it hit us. Collins saw it, too, just before he went overboard.”

Frankie frowned. “Say again.”

“It hit us,” Moore said, then waved it off. “Doesn’t matter. It hasn’t hit us again, and Wright will get the bilge running. That’s the good news. But we’re powerless, and we lost a man, and we probably won’t get him back. Not good, no, but accidents happen at sea. Add in the missing girl . . . if I give the impression of
under
reacting . . .” He paused, waiting.

“Okay,” Frankie said. “There’d be questions, no matter what happens. We get back to shore, the Coast Guard investigators are talking to your crew—”

“Asking them, ‘Did Moore have you follow procedure? ’”

Frankie nodded. “They start digging in, looking for dirt, wondering why your panties
weren’t
in a bunch. So,” Frankie said, “you’re not actually planning on abandoning ship.”