The Blue (The Complete Novel) (26 page)

    The first thing I feel is the edge of a knife against my neck and hot breath. It happens so fast that I don’t have any power to react. To push away the rotten smell. Your screams are louder than the dog’s I’ll bet, he says, But they won’t hear them now. And it becomes clear to me that I was right—he did kill the rest of them. All so that he can have me to himself.

The pressure of the blade makes me draw in a fast breath and then hold it, anticipating the pain of the cut. But he doesn’t keep pushing it in, and instead his other hand works, groping over my body, and then quickly down to my pants. He works to take them down while keeping the blade pressed firmly on my neck, and I keep my eyes on him, the half-glare of the flashlight lighting up his monster face. He’s too big, I tell myself. There’s nothing you can do. Voley barks loudly from the other room, and then, together, we roll hard into the wall. But he doesn’t lose his grip on me. And then the ship rights itself and he goes back to work. I feel the awful breath and smell its horrible stench, even as he moves his face away from mine and down into my chest. And when for a moment he loosens up the knife, I try to push away so that I can sneak past him and race out into the dark and hide, but he catches me too quickly. He presses in so that we’re both pushing harder against the wall, and then he tells me to behave or he will make it all last longer. I numb myself to his wandering hands and the chill of the cold air on my naked legs. And then, just as he’s about to lower his head, away from me and somewhere else, the ship rocks violently again, and we both hit the wall. But he’s as strong as a rock, and he catches us both before we bang into the hull. And then he stops, listening. Trying to hear something. I can tell by the light that hits his eyes he’s waiting for a particular sound. He tilts his head up, and through the barks and the rain and the wind he’s trying to hear something different. And part of me thinks that maybe the crew isn’t dead. That he’s snuck down again on his own, the same as last time, and they’re just preoccupied with the storm. When he’s satisfied there is no sound to be alarmed about, he looks back at me. And in his glare I see deadness, and then he squeezes my leg with his hand. I scream in pain and he presses the knife back into my throat and up so that the point digs into the bottom of my jaw. The sharpness stings, and my panic level rises as I feel the skin cutting. Everything tells me I have to make my move, the last ditch effort, or there won’t be another chance. This is it. And it comes to me—
wait, wait for the next time the ship rocks.
I have to do it then, when he’s trying to stabilize us after the roll. If I help the storm, I might be able to bring us both down. I wait and wait, and ignore with all the power I can the pain as he starts to bite me. Each time hot and sharp, harder and harder.

    My mind flashes away from the bites to something else Russell told me, the night he told me about the sadists—that there were some worse than others. Some with a combined sickness—he called it a sickness—the face eater’s desire to eat people, and the sadist’s desire to cause pain, and the animal compulsion to rape—all of it bound up in one evil type of being. And more and more, with each progressively more painful bite, I’m convinced that this is just the same guy he told me about back in Sioux Falls—that kind of pervert who will eat me alive if I give him the chance, and he’s working up to it now, bite by bite, harder and harder. And it’s getting him off. I can feel it. And it’s all I can do to wait out each small jerk and roll of the ship for one that’s big enough to knock us both over with my help. And then, stronger than any rock yet, it finally comes.

The ship rolls so hard that I almost don’t have to help it. I think maybe we’re going down because the floor drops so fast from under my feet. And the next thing I know, as the shock of what’s happening wears off and I realize I can make it happen, I pull with everything I have down toward the corner of the cell. His body slams off of me and the wall takes most of it. But I hear the rattle—the sound of his knife loose and bouncing against the floor. And next to him, when I jump up, my only chance, is the flashlight. Pointing at just the right angle I follow its light to where it exposes the silver blade. My hand dives to grab it but the man doesn’t even try to race me for it. And all at once, as I have the handle and then the knife in my hand, the sound of the hatch opens from the deck. The crew is alive and someone’s coming down. But I don’t let the guy warn his friend that I’m loose now, because just as he starts to sit up, grabbing at his head where it slammed the hull, I stab with everything I have. One and then two and then three, quick and powerful and right into his neck, pulling back fast enough so he won’t be able to catch my hand. Each of the first two times I get him he tries to sit up, to take hold of my arm, squeeze out the knife. But he can’t—he’s in shock and I’m too quick and he’s dying too fast. The noise of the scuffle attracts the call of his crewmate:

    “Hey, what the hell are you doing down here!” comes the voice from the steps. There’s new light coming from the center of the darkness now, the round glow of a shaky lamp. And I know he’s coming to see what I’ve done. But I don’t let him see me—I bolt out as the pervert gurgles, my feet stomping a little too loudly into the dark space, the first corner I feel. But the shipmate doesn’t even seem to pay attention to me—he just keeps calling his friend’s name, walking toward the downed flashlight in the cell. I watch him go, carrying the lamp and exclaiming in shock when he sees the body. I run forward and reach his back. Both of my hands bring the knife down together, just as hard as I learned it has to be to cut a dead man’s flesh out, and the knife locks in. I raise my right leg up through the pain and kick into his butt to push until the knife launches free and I go back with it. Voley barks in a rage, growling and fighting the bars with his nails. The hatch above slaps wide open because it was never closed all the way, and the rain and the wind deafens everything else but the barks. But the second guy isn’t dead. He starts crawling around on the ground, toward the flashlight. And then, when I see his hands going somewhere, for something I don’t see, I charge at him again. This time I go for the neck again, like Voley’s taught me to do, like the knife is one of his fangs, and I bite down again and again until all movement stops and no noises come from his throat anymore. Then, on the blood-soaked floor, I freeze, trying to hear anything through the frenzy of barks and the roar of the wind and the rain. But there’s only that—no new voices shouting, no sound of footsteps running along the deck to see what’s happened. The ship throws me up against one of metal bars and I grab on, holding tightly and looking down at the dead bodies. Two of them down and two to go.

I grab the flashlight and immediately look for the keys. On the first one I find a set in his pocket. There are about six keys on a ring. I grab it and step back through the maze of arms and legs and make my way through the cabin, pointing the flashlight as I go. And there’s Voley, his nose poking out between two of the silver bars just like I’d pictured, whining desperately now that he’s seen me, his paws working at the bottom, trying to dig a way out. Hold on boy, I tell him, and I get to work trying each of the keys on the lock. And that’s when it hits me, as I go through each key—the smell. It’s worse than ever, and when I turn my head around and point the flashlight where I think it’s all coming from, I find my answer. Four steel drums with lines of dark ooze coming from their sides. Some kind of body stew I’m convinced, but I don’t investigate. Instead I keep trying until I find the right key. But it’s not there. Nothing opens the cell and I tell Voley it’s okay, I’ll get him out. And then, I make my way back to check the other guy’s pockets.

    The light guides me through the darkness, away from the stench, and then, before I hit my cell again, I do a quick rotation, scanning the entire darkness and the shaft of light from the hatch. I  brace myself against a pillar as the ship jerks again and then rights itself. But what I see takes me away from the pocket search—there on the wall are two of the guns, the same ones they had in their hands when they took me in from the boat. Machine guns. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never used one, I go straight for it anyway. I lift it up off the wall and it’s so light that I think it might be a toy and not a real gun. But then I see the rounds, lying out in a tin on the shelf. Heavy and real. And the gun has a clip in it. I hold it for a moment, figuring out where the safety and trigger rest against my fingers, and then put it back down. I have to get the key first.

My hands run through the second guy’s pockets but there’s nothing there. The spilled lamp lies on its side, illuminating the cabin ceiling. And just where I look, up at the deck floor above, I hear a sound. Something that isn’t the weather. A loud stomping. I know it must be another man coming so I run back out of the cell, gripping the knife and trying to decide if I should attempt to use the machine gun yet. Somehow I don’t think I should do it. That it might not work and then I’ll have given myself away. I have to stay hidden for this to work. So I find the stairs and get behind them and wait, watching for someone to come down. And then, when the footsteps get really loud, and I’m sure someone’s about to come down now, I turn off the flashlight. Each foot descends from the madness above, a black silhouette against the thin light of the storm sky above. He shouts as he makes his way down. “Selmin!” he shouts. And again he calls the name. Each time his foot hits a new lower step, he calls again, the same name, but then he stops when he sees the spilled lamp and the bodies around it. He freezes, like he knows I must be in the room. He doesn’t have a light though, and I’m behind the stairs, so I don’t even breathe. I just wait to see what he’ll do, the knife out and ready. And then, just that fast, he turns and runs back up to the deck, leaving the bodies and me down in the dark dungeon alone. I hear the name John shouted twice.
Their leader.
And I know they’ll both be back, and that I have to use the gun now. Have to hope I can fire it. That it even works. But maybe the storm will buy me time, I think, as I turn the flashlight back on and point it over to Voley. He’s quieted down now, but his nose still pokes through the bars, and he looks across the room at me sadly, his eyes glowing in the light. I want to tell him again it’ll be okay, but I can’t. I have to be completely quiet now. It’s the only thing I can do. But each time the ship rocks I know there’s no way I can get this thing through the storm by myself. Even if I somehow kill them all, the storm will finish the job for them. They took this thing in the wrong direction and now we’re getting sucked a thousand miles from Leadville into the heart of the Great Plains.

My hands wrap around the cold steel of the machine gun again and I tuck the butt into my right shoulder. My legs cooperate without much pain and I slowly walk up the steps to the raging hell above. I am tempted to fire off a test shot because the sound of the weather might cover it up, but I don’t—I can’t: I’m stopped dead by the sight of the horizon. Lightning flashes light up the long spiraling arms of five waterspouts, two of them coming from the same funnel connected to a gigantic black mass in the sky. The normal gray has turned to charcoal along a long broad line that curves down almost to the sea. Some kind of a supercell storm. And that’s when I see the waves. Tremendous lines of foam ride like mutating fractures along the bursting sea, up and down, rising and following and shattering against the sound of thunder, almost as high as the waves we fought in the
Sea Queene Marie.
The sight paralyzes me as I watch the gyrating masses work, glowing against the lightning and then almost disappearing without it. And as I finally get high enough to peer over the deck rail and see the sliding water cascading across the deck surface, I see the lit wheelhouse. And there in it I see both of the men, fighting to keep the ship afloat. Some kind of commotion is happening, like the one man is trying to get the other to leave. But he won’t, and I dip my head back down under the deck when I think I see them glancing toward me and the center of the boat. And the next thing I know, the ship is launching up a long swell, so high I think this is the last one. But we climb and the roar of the water crashes and then we start to fall again. Below me Voley won’t stop barking again, and above me is the dark gray waterfall of rain, unloading all the water it must have been saving since the ice pack. Like all of it had been stored up until the time was right, and now it’s going to drown me at last.

From halfway up the steps I look out at each bolt of lightning as it stabs through the sky, one after the next, some of them sounding their roar at the same time as I see the flash. My eyes glue to the waterspouts as they change shapes and forms, towering so high that they split off and reform in the middle of the sky. Where they hit the water I can only see a dark haze, some kind of torture chamber of the sea. And then, I have to check if they’re both there still. I lean my head up, just enough to catch sight of the cabin again, but there’s only one man there now. Working the wheel. The other one is gone.

            I look quickly in each other direction, trying to catch sight of him running along the deck, but I don’t see a thing. And then, coming around the corner of the extended part of the wheelhouse, I see him. Gun in hand, coming my way. I slip down again into the darkness. I descend the stairs quickly and turn off the flashlight, finding my spot in the corner. And it comes through my head—do you use the knife or the gun? You’ll only have one chance. You know the knife works, you have no idea about the gun. But you can be sure
his
works. And then, instinctually, like I didn’t even ask my body to do it, I point the gun into one of the walls and press the trigger. The quick and loud clap charges through the room. Voley responds crazily, fighting against the bars of the cage to get out. And all I can do is hope that there was thunder above and the man racing toward me didn’t hear it.          My projection stops when I see the light—a beam of white that strikes down into the darkness and makes a circle on the floor. Another flashlight. And then, just like before, from behind the steps, I see the feet descend. I wait until he’s all the way to the ground, pointing his flashlight into the wrong dark corner, to fire. This time I press the trigger harder and hold it, and before I know it, the gun is jerking up and out of my hands. But I hit him at least once because he drops onto his knees and then starts to moan, turning around and trying to grab the gun from where it’s fallen near him. I step over and look down at his face. He looks young—too young to be beaten this badly by the rain. Like something innocent might have been left in him. And it crosses my mind that maybe these people aren’t all bad—maybe it was just the one man. But I shut out the sympathy and pull the trigger again, this time close range and at his chest. The gun fires off two more times and the man stops moving. I go through his pockets looking for another set of keys but I can’t find anything. Nothing. Through the claps of thunder and between the throttling motion of the ship, I cut off the man’s rain suit. Then, wrapping myself up in it, I tell Voley I’ll be back, and I head above the deck.