Anarchy (40 page)

Goose's fingers were beginning to tingle. She'd always hated the ones who yelled back. They never made any sense either: they were drunk, usually, and crazed with their stupid pride, their desperation not to give in to the law even when she was hauling them into the station and filling out the charge sheet. They always had to have the last word. She breathed carefully, concentrating on keeping her temper.

“I've got to take a couple of steps back here,” she said. “Did you just say you broke my boat? Jonas's boat? You remember Jonas. Officer Paul. He drove you up that morning. He's a pretty nice guy, but he's not going to be happy with you if you messed his boat up. Is that what you just said?”

The girl turned away. “You don't get it,” she said. She braced her girl's hands inside the cockpit of the kayak and started trying to lift it straight again.

Goose leaned her full weight on it. “I found that kid. That boy.”

Jennifer dropped her hands to her sides and went still.

“What was his name. Horace something Chinese. Him and the mask out on Masterman Island, and your coat. I found him. What'd you do, leave him there on his own? He could have died. Is that what all your this-is-how-it's-supposed-to-be bullshit's about? Leaving a kid to die?”

Jennifer looked for all the world like a tenth-grader being told off at the front of the class.

“I know he was a killer whale too,” Goose said, without even stopping to wonder how she could be saying such a thing. “I know that. But when I got to him you know what I found? A kid who couldn't speak and couldn't move. That's what he was on that island. I looked him up. He's been missing from his home for three months. His mom made a bunch of appeals. You can see them on YouTube. A couple of times she tries to say his name and she can't, she chokes up so bad she can't breathe. The cop has to lift her up from the table and make her take a drink of water, and she spills it down her coat because she can't open her mouth properly, she's shaking so bad. You look at her face and you think she's a hundred years old. That's his mom. Is that what you mean by everything being where it belongs? Huh? Jennifer?”

She'd tried to keep her temper but she'd ended up almost shouting. The girl wouldn't look at her.

“Sit down,” she said. “Stay out of the way. Oh, and forget the kayak. Actually.” Goose had left the paddle leaning upright in the cockpit; now she took hold of it, held it straight like a javelin, pointed up and out with her leading arm as she'd been taught, and flung it from the boat. She had strong shoulders and good technique. It went spinning and arcing a long way, landing with an ugly splash. Jennifer had made a small motion as if to stop her, but far too little and too late. “There. Now, why don't you shut up for a bit while I check the battery. You went all that time without saying anything, you should be able to keep quiet for ten minutes.”

The girl put her hood up, tucking in her chin, and sat down. Her fingers went to the necklace, spinning the pendant around its chain. Goose took a few moments to flex the anger out of her hands, and then kicked her way through Jonas's crap to explore the stern.

She found the hatch by lifting the seat across the back of the boat. The battery was in a watertight compartment beneath. Sheathed rubber cables connected it to the outboard and the fuse box. She saw no cracks in the rubber, no loose cabling, none of the scum or froth that would have suggested a leak. Everything was as shipshape as the anchor had been. Jonas let everyone think he was a slob, but she knew better. There was even an inspection certificate, neatly slid inside a plastic folder taped to the lid of the compartment. She unclipped the cables and wiped the connections, though they weren't particularly dirty, reattached them, and tried the key and the switches again. Nothing.

“You're gonna have to go fetch that paddle,” Jennifer said.

Goose sat down in the seat next to her, rubbing her cheeks. She was beginning to feel seriously uncomfortable. The chill wasn't too bad for the time of year, but she felt the bad night catching up with her, and her stomach was pinching and growling. It had been a while since she'd gone this long without coffee too.

“Say what you said again,” she said.

“What?”

“You know. About how you can only go as fast as you're supposed to go, all that crap.”

“You still think it's crap? Can you see anything wrong with the boat?”

“Okay, so say it again. The boat was running fine an hour ago. What happened?”

Jennifer shook her head. “You're not listening.”

Which was true, when Goose thought about it. Wasn't that the problem all along? Hadn't she promised herself, that morning, as she watched the dawn begin, that she'd listen to the kid?

She sat for a while, trying to remember what Jennifer had just told her, thinking about it.

When she'd finished, she stretched slowly, rolled the lingering stiffness out of her neck, and stood up. Casually but carefully, she positioned herself behind the girl's seat.

“You going to fetch that paddle now?” the girl said, still hunched in her hood.

“Nope.”

Goose whisked her hands down over Jennifer's shoulders, grabbed the necklace chain, and pulled it off. The girl had time for no more than an ineffectual spasm of her arms and a sharp and angry scream before Goose bunched chain and pendant in one hand and threw them out into the grey chop. They disappeared with barely more splash than a drop of rain.

The first note of rage gathered in Jennifer's throat like muted thunder. As she rose to her feet it became a howl. She turned on Goose with murderous eyes and roared wordlessly at her. The howl cut off suddenly, leaving them face-to-face, breathing hard. The girl's face had turned as ferocious as the orca mask.

“You're gonna die alone,” she said, “and in pain.”

Deep inside her, Goose felt a light go out, or a small door open onto a long dark passageway. She faced it down.

“Okay,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Let's try the outboard now.” She could tell from Jennifer's look that she'd been right.
No motor's gonna speed this up;
whatever the deal was with the kid's necklace, that was the problem with the boat. She didn't understand it, of course, but it wasn't about understanding, it was about listening. She made to step around the girl, reaching for the dashboard.

Either anger made Jennifer quick, or Goose had relaxed a fraction too much. The girl spun round, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and held them up over her head.

Be calm now, Goose told herself. She'd done what she needed to. Time to defuse the situation. “Give me those, please.”

Jennifer backed a step away. Her eyes were so dark, they were as good as black, like Jonas's.

“Okay,” Goose said. “Think about it. I've got to have the keys, right? One way or another. So, why don't we do it the easy way.”

Jennifer cocked her arm. Goose lunged at her. Jennifer thrust her free hand out, fingers spread, a gesture so heavy with fury it stopped Goose in her tracks.

“You lay a finger on me and you'll rot,” the girl said.

Just a punk kid playing tough,
Goose tried to think, as she'd thought a hundred times before, rounding up troublemakers on the night shift, but she couldn't make herself go any farther. While she hesitated, Jennifer twisted her torso and threw the keys out into the sea.

In quick succession, Goose thought

—
crap

—then:
she throws like a girl

—then:
crap
again (as the little metal shrapnel dropped down to the water)

—then:
now we're really screwed

—and then:
oh, Jonas. Trust Jonas.

She grinned.

The Vancouver Canucks emblem on Jonas's key chain was made out of foam. Of course. Every fishing boat had a float on its key chain. You'd have to be a lot dumber than Jonas Paul not to have one. It bobbed around barely ten meters away. A small smooth-topped reef was just breaking out from small waves beyond it, emerging as the tide fell.

“All right,” Goose said. “So I guess that makes us almost even.”

Jennifer slumped down onto the seat in the bow, covering her face with her hands.

“At least you get to see me swim for it.” Goose didn't much like the idea, but by this stage she hardly cared. Get her hands on the keys, get back to the boat, get back to Hardy. Whatever was going on there, at least she'd be able to dry out, warm up, and eat. She stripped off jacket, boots, pants, and sweatshirt, trying to ignore the cold. Having some dry clothes afterward would be the main thing. She could mop herself off with the sweatshirt when she got back and then wrap herself in the rest. She couldn't bring herself to strip off undershirt, panties, or bra. Maybe they'd keep her a fraction warmer for a few seconds, who knew, but the thought of going into that grey sea naked was intolerable.

She denied herself hesitation. She told her legs to jump and they jumped. Salt and cold hit her together, the base elements of a brutally alien world. She closed her eyes and put her head down. Six frantic strokes later she took her first breath, a shocked gasp. She shoved hair out of her eyes and looked for the bobbing float.

A wild screech broke behind her. She flinched, imagining an eagle plunging, but it was Jennifer. The girl had sprung to her feet and was shouting, twisting in panic. Goose couldn't see what had frightened her, if anything. Her eyes stung with the salt. Small waves slapped over her mouth. Straightening herself to look, she kicked against limpet-crusted rock. Her feet were too cold to feel pain. She saw the keys a few strokes farther off, took a deep breath, and kicked out again. The shoal rose abruptly under her. She felt for handholds among fissured stones, distracted by the girl's screaming. The current had pushed the keys over the reef. It was too shallow to swim here so she hauled herself up onto a shin-deep platform of stone. Coming out into the wind made the freezing wet almost unbearable. She turned to shout at Jennifer, patience snapping: “Will you shut the f—”

Another body had risen from the water.

On the far side of the boat, on a small promontory of shingle reaching out from the last of the islands, a drenched black figure was unfurling itself from the sea, water oozing from moldering clothes and gorgon hair. The wind gusted sharply, and Goose felt her palpitating heart seized by a grip of ice. Jennifer stretched her arms out toward the monstrosity, yelling. It drew itself upright on the shore. It had arms too, and hands, withered white hands, salt-scoured and leached of warmth. Goose wiped at her eyes to see what those hands held as they lifted skyward. Something small, looped on a silvery thread. The chain caught a gleam of tarnished daylight.

Jennifer went suddenly silent. The gust redoubled at Goose's back, but the chill in her spine had come from inside.

The twice-drowned thing shuffled slowly around and raised its head.

There was just a moment, the interval of a breath, when Goose had time to think to herself,
The bandage is gone
, before she saw what it had for eyes.

She lost her footing. Caught by the reef, a wave crashed over her, into her nose and mouth. She choked but couldn't turn away. The spots of lurid fire held her blurred gaze like twin beacons. Everything else was grey and salt and cold: only the drowned revenant's eyes burned with ghastly unlife. It braced its hands over its head in triumph, the silver necklace chain strung between them, and snapped it. The ring quivered for an instant in empty air, a speck against the clouds behind. A skeletal hand caught it and slipped it on.

An anguished wind howled. The keys, Goose thought to herself, for want of anything better to think; don't let them blow away. Otherwise, otherwise . . . She was shivering with cold compounded by dumb dread. She saw the float and dived again. Whipped to anger, the sea smacked against her flailing arms. She swam in a frenzy, feeling herself going numb in soul as well as body, horror as overwhelming as cold. A white-capped crest picked up the keys and flipped them near her hand; she kicked and clutched and grabbed them, and couldn't remember why she wanted them, what she was doing in the water, shivering and tiny, an atom in the deadly vastness of the ocean. Her arms and legs were turning sluggish, heavy, dead wood. She was struggling to stay afloat. A single desperate urge overtook her at the expense of everything else, the atavistic compulsion to get her feet on solid ground: she drove herself back to the reef, scratching ankles and arms as she beached herself on it, clutching an outcrop of rock, hugging it, sobbing, gasping at the inhuman cold. The shoal behind her lifted the swell into breakers and threw them over her head. She spat phlegm and water.
Ah non,
she was thinking,
ah non, pas moi, pas moi.
She remembered the boat, salvation. The keys were still in her fist though she couldn't feel her fingers. She remembered the thing, the demon, the undead, its whispering voice in the dark:
everyone's story ends in death.
With a dreadful effort she pulled herself higher and made herself look over the rising sea. Everything froze; everything turned to an arctic blank. The wind had driven the boat away twice as far as it had been before. “Jennifer!” she screamed, and threw herself toward it, forgetting to take a breath. Waves lifted her and sucked her under. She surfaced, coughing, blinded by spray and salt and terror. What if
it
was swimming beneath her? She kicked out again, not knowing what she was doing. When the sea let her force her head up for a moment she saw the boat, no closer. It was only a moment. Her legs were losing strength. The dark beneath her was wrapping feelers around her ankles and beginning to pull. She tried to call out again and a mouthful of ocean slapped itself down her open throat. In a terrible instant she saw herself as if from the eagle's view, swimming weakly until she sank; the horror of it was too much to bear. She poured her desperation into her limbs and made them fight toward the only solid thing she could see, the bleak hard angle of the reef, until her feet scraped rock again.
Qu'est-ce que j'ai fait?
She looked at her fists, close to her eyes. Empty. The key chain had slipped out of her fingers. Empty. She stared at them again as if the mistake would correct itself.
Pas moi.
No keys, and the boat drifting farther and farther away. Her arms wouldn't let go of the rock, as if they'd made their own decision that all that mattered was that she was alive, now, anchored in place, not about to drown. She hugged herself tight to it and tried to look for the float. Waves were curling higher than her head; they pushed her weakening torso as if she were limp kelp, scraping her over the rock. A single explicit thought loomed up like the black-clad corpse from the sea:
la mort.
The end. She would die, freeze and drown, unless she, unless she, unless . . .