Dead in the Water (45 page)

“Not even belly timber,” he said after a time.

“Come on, dear,” Ruth said, jerking on Matt’s wrist. “Let’s get this done and go to the party.”

They were in the freezer room. The large, white oblong freezers stood in rows like hospital beds. Overhead, a few light fixtures hummed dully and cast a sheen of blue-gray light on the old lady’s face. She looked terrible, all sunken in and … dead.

He wasn’t prepared when she bent down, gathered him around the waist, and sat him like a toy on top of one of the freezers. It was on; the vibrations needled his butt. He folded his arms across his chest.

“I want my father. Now.”

“Drink this first. This is the medicine Dr. Hare prepared for you.”

She held out a brown bottle with a prescription label on
the front. Matt had swallowed many things from many such bottles, wondering what they were, knowing only that his dad and the other doctors had their fingers crossed that one of their potions would save his life.

“Drink it, sweetheart,” she said gently.

“I ought to check with my dad first.”

“Dr. Hare thought that might be what you’d say. In fact, he was hoping your father would administer it himself. But …” She scrunched her face in a silly smile and jutted her head forward like a snake. “We have to hurry, Matt. They’ll be waiting for us.”

Matt eyed the bottle. Why was he arguing? After all, she was his friend. She’d comforted him in the lifeboat, and played with him on the
Morris
. He had no reason to doubt her.

“Don’t you want to go to the shipwreck party, dear?”

Maybe he had no reason to doubt her, but he should still check with his father.

“I—” he said, and then the room wobbled. It went blurry, and—

—the bottle was green; it was the captain’s special bottle, and the room wobbled again, and—

—he was sitting alone in some kind of shed, and there was a ship’s wheel in front of him. Wind and rain whipped his face. He shielded his eyes and focused in on the bow of an immense ship, heading right for him.

“Help!” He grabbed the wheel and turned it left, right, left, remembered his lesson on the bridge with the captain, remembered she responded slowly, and pushed it all the way to the right and held it there.

A klaxon blew, long-long, short-short-short. Fog rolled in, obscuring his vision, but the water in front of him chopped and sloshed and rolled. It was coming closer. It was almost on him—

“Jump!” someone called. Matt looked to his right and saw a hooded figure on a small, curved boat. He’d seen that person before, hadn’t he? He’d—

He cried out as something smacked the front of his boat. A face! A woman’s face, the statue lady—

“Ruth!” he screamed. “Mrs. Hamilton, where are you?”

Jump overboard
.

Jump, jump

for my love
.

There was no other choice. Matt let go of the wheel and ran to the side of the boat. It was a tugboat, he realized distractedly as he balanced in the doorway. The hooded figure gestured for him to hurry, hurry, and Matt jumped

into the freezer.

And the heavy lid fell shut from the force of his momentum.

“Ah. Excellent.” Dr. Hare smiled. “The choice has been taken from you, Dr. Fielder.”

“Wh-what?” John stammered. “Where’s Matty?”

“I believe we’ll meet your son at the party. Come this way.” He dragged John after him.

Donna knocked on John’s door, heard a plaintive mewing on the other side. The cat. Maybe she was having her babies.

“John! Open up!” She slammed both fists on the door. Again. Pushed with her shoulder. Too thick. She was very aware of the mittens in the small pockets of her dress, bulging like hand grenades. Where had they come from? And who had left them before her door? The shithead who stole her gun?

But who cared about that, Donna? Who cared about one swiped firearm when you heard something in the hatch—yes, yes you did! You heard something and you felt something that gave you the screaming meemies, and someone had brought her yellow reindeer mittens, just like the floater’s, the little Tahoe boy’s. Name, name had been Dwayne or something.

The mom had knitted them herself, that’s what one of the paramedics said. So fucking tragic, all that love, those little red mittens …

 … in Donna’s pocket.

And someone had moved her across the floor. Ice water, something being pulled out of her mind, out of her …

“John, goddamn it!”

She didn’t get this, not any of this. Her mind raced through horrible pictures of what lay beyond the door. Boy and man, shot through the head with her gun. Boy and man, bludgeoned.

Christ, Christ, calm down. A shipboard crime, a vivid imagination, and maybe they’d gone for help with the kittens. Get some towels, milk. Yeah, ’cuz the phones were out and the steward couldn’t fetch and carry for them. That made sense. Her guys weren’t in danger, ’cuz that made sense.

She shuddered hard. She didn’t care if it made sense. Pulled herself away from the door and ran down the companionway, bellowing, “Phil! Elise! John! Captain Reade!”

Shouted, looked, turned corners, went on.

“Matt!”

Marched into the reception area, the foyer with the horse mosaics and the ship mural and—

there was no one there. No one.

No one
.

She stopped so abruptly she stumbled. Flew around in a circle.

No one.

Her stomach grabbed. Cautiously, she walked over to the registration counter and dinged the bell. No one came.

“Hello!” she shouted.

No one answered.

Swearing, she left the foyer and headed for the elevator. Punched the button, but when it came, she found she couldn’t go inside it. She thought of the fuses in the captain’s ready room, just from a blender for God’s sake; what if something bigger blew, had already blown?

“Damn it.” She unconsciously moved her hands to smooth her dress, felt the fingers of the mittens and yanked them out and tossed them on the floor.

She ran a hand through her hair. Saw the stairway sign, and took it.
Where she lands, nobody knows
, she thought, but suddenly and sharply, she felt herself running as fast as she could,

for the museum.

Panting, Curry staggered into the companionway. Beneath the pounding of his heart, he heard a
ping, ping, ping
, almost plaintive, almost a great distance away. But he wasn’t fooled; as he wrestled with his claustrophobia, he watched a green glow sicken the walls. The wreckage of the submarine was there, beneath the camouflage of the hurricane lamps and the sturdy, upright walls. He remembered how Reade had maneuvered that one: made the sub crew believe they were diving, and they rammed whatever the
Pandora
had been at the time. Whatever Reade had made them think it was.

Then he salvaged—how?—part of it and added it to the floating graveyard that now paraded as the
Pandora
. That’s all the
Pandora
was, a mishmash of the vessels that Captain Reade had destroyed. Bits and pieces of them clung to each other, somehow adhering, the material foundation of a surreal vision. Was even
that
a delusion? Was there something
else beneath the pieces of wreckage? How did Reade make it all change? How did he keep it from sinking?

The captain had laughed at those early questions, never deigning to enlighten him.

Curry heard the
ping
again. But all he saw was the
Pandora
companionway near the museum, and—

—he walked closer to a shape on the floor. Shut his eyes for a moment, forced them open.

“Oh, holy God, I’m so sorry,” Curry whispered. He recognized the features, distorted as they swam in a heap of gristle and bone. The face was battened down from a storm of blows; the arms and legs gashed and cut.

It was the man he had tried to warn, the Spanish one.

He looked away. And incredibly, horribly the heap of flesh shifted. He heard the squish, the sigh. His stomach turned and he made himself look back at it. Put both hands over his mouth. Acid flooded his mouth at the sight, though he had seen piles of fresh … meat … many times. Rendered men, many, many times.

Curry bent down. The eyes in the pile stared at him. He didn’t see the mouth.

“Oh, man, are you alive?” Curry asked, revolted. “Is the captain using you? Are you real?”

Pieces gleamed like snake scales as they moved. “Dead,” came a voice.

“What?” Curry leaned over it. Steam rose from the entrails and the heavy odor of blood assaulted him. He fought to keep from retching. “What, man?”

Silence. Curry considered looking for a pulse. Couldn’t decide where, and what good it would do. Then something went out of the eyes.

With a deep, steadying breath, he stood. He stepped around the pieces, the blood. Was this some trick of the captain’s? Or was the man finally, blissfully, forever dead?

And what was that, dead? Curry was almost afraid to know.

Almost. The alternatives that he knew about were too horrible to endure.

*  *  *

In the freezer, Matt’s lids closed and he stirred weakly. How could it be warm when it was so cold? How could it feel good?

“Daddy,” he whispered. “Daddy.”

He lay on stiff, lumpy things that poked his back and neck. Buffalo steaks, he thought vaguely.

Rest, Mattman. Rest. You are my choicest prize, and I shall save the best for last
.

He scowled. Who was that? Who kept talking? Who kept sounding crazy?

Rest
.

“Fu-fuck you,” Matt said.

Something laughed.

The tears on Matt’s cheeks froze.

Unchallenged, Donna rounded a corner and started down the companionway that led to the museum. She had found no one on the ship. No John, no Matt, no steward, no crewman. No other passengers. She was

alone, alone, all, all alone
.

And if she didn’t figure out why real quick, she was going to lose her fucking mind.

The mittens had taken on additional significance: a pair of gauntlets, a challenge, a dare. Some kind of lure.

Damn it to hell, what was going on?

She kept walking, senses alert, back stiff with nerves, and then she saw it.

The captain’s special green bottle, in the middle of the hall.

She touched it with her foot as if it might detonate. It tipped over and described an arc like a needle in a compass. Eeenie, meenie, out goes
you
.

It pointed directly at her. She took a step back and reached automatically for her gun. For where her gun should be.

The yellow light from the hurricane lamps gleamed on the green glass and the chunks of red and green stone. Donna moved toward it and crouched down.

Son of a bitch, it was uncorked. She poked at the cold,
hard glass with her finger. Nothing special. Ah, but there was something inside.

With an unconscious breath, she slid two fingers into the neck and caught the object between her middle and forefingers. It was a very thick, clothlike piece of paper, same stationery as the invitation to the Captain’s Table. Folded several times, and then rolled into a scroll. Cautiously, she unrolled and unfolded it.

There was a skull and crossbones—no, an anchor, her mistake—engraved in black at the top. Below it, in shiny, embossed script, were the words:

Nearer, my God, to thee
.

Donna glanced up at the sound of the faint music. “Yes?” she called. Waited. There was nothing more. She read on:

“Holy shit,” she said, examining the paper, turning it over in her hands, What the hell kind of game was this? Had the
captain
knocked her out, taken her gun?

And what was this about the
Titanic
? Her “favorite ship,” as Reade had put it. She read the invitation again. No mention of Phil or Elise, and what about Ramón? The people who were missing weren’t mentioned.

She held the bottle to the light, examining it. Had they been left all over the ship, like Easter eggs, with invitations
crammed inside? Why was she the guest of honor? ’Cuz he’d hit on her, or hit her, more like?

Nearer to Thee—

She almost dropped the bottle. Then she realized how enclosed she felt. Claustrophobic. And she heard a strange
ping, ping, ping
. She considered it, found herself thinking of submarine movies.

She looked to the left, and she had the strangest sense that something was there, near the wall, but she couldn’t see it. A shadow of a shadow. A smell of a smell,

of a smell that was Death.

And the echo of wind, blowing fierce and far away.
Shhhooooo
, a gale, a hurricane, but muffled.