The Boat (8 page)

Maggie hated that being female, being young,
made
them vulnerable.

“Can you take him to
Big Daddy
?”

“Yeah, we’ll do that. It would be for the best. Let me get over there and get a bigger jet…yours are all one seaters, right?”

“We’ll come with you,” Denny said, standing. “Me and Brian. We’ll help you keep an eye on him.”

Steve laughed, not unkindly. “That’s okay, Denny, we need you here, on ThreeBees. If you and Brian left, who would protect her?”

Another dig of annoyance jabbed Maggie, made worse because she knew it was true. She also knew she’d be much more fearful if she didn’t have Denny and Brian on the boat. She liked that they were in the salon. Anyone coming aboard would have to go through them, and they were young, strong and fit.

Singer, Jade’s brother, was young, too, but he didn’t come across as strong and fit. He was almost as thin as his sister with the same lithe, graceful body type. The two of them could pass for twins.

Maggie’s smile was tight, rueful. “Come on, Den, you don’t really want to leave us do you? For
Big Daddy
? I hear it smells like dirty socks over there. Besides, who would I train? If you guys left?”

Maggie had been giving the two of them what she called EMT training. Both Denny and Brian enjoyed it and not just because it passed the time. Because it made them valuable. Denny was smart and he was starting to see that ‘valuable’ would be an outstanding commodity in their new world. Just look at that guy Adam. He was a total tool, but he ran the show because he’d been able to figure out some of the things on that big boat,
Flyboy
. Now he douched it up and everyone just said yes sir to him all the time.

Not that Denny wanted to be a tool or a douche. He just didn’t want to be one of the shuffling multitudes like most of the people on
Flyboy
. When he found his parents someday, they’d be really proud of him. Especially his dad. Denny never admitted to himself that he might
not
find his parents. But his bad dreams were ones where he found them floating (inexplicably together) next to the boat. In the dream he bent over to try and pull them into the boat but then they reached up, their mouths opening and their eyes deadly empty, and they pulled him over into the water. He’d wake shivering from that one.

Steve jet skied off and Denny and Brian carried the guy into the salon to wait for Steve to come back with the two man jet. At their entrance, Jade faded back down the stairs to her stateroom, taking Babygirl with her.

Maggie stayed on deck, tidying and wiping blood from the teak deck boards. The guy had bled a lot.
Head wound
, she thought,
they bleed like crazy
. It had been a clean cut–surgical, almost–and straight across his forehead. He was lucky half his face hadn’t folded over on itself.

“Maggie, this is Steve, you there? Over.”

Maggie sat on the bench that curved around the inside of the hull and picked up the walkie-talkie. “I’m here, Steve, what’s up? Over.”

“Listen, Maggie, we’re having some problems over here, will you guys be okay for a bit? With your passenger? Over.”

“We’re fine; take care of business. Over.”

“Over and out.”

She sighed and looked across to
Big Daddy
.
Big Daddy, what a name
, she thought. But fitting, I guess, for its purpose. Tugging and nudging, putting boats where they were supposed to be. Keeping them from harm. Providing.

She smiled.

A gunshot echoed across the water. Maggie recoiled in shock, almost as if she had been hit.

Someone had fired a gun on
Big Daddy
.

~ ~ ~

“
Big Daddy
…Steve, what happened? We heard a gunshot. Over.” Maggie’s voice from the walkie-talkie on his belt, trying for calm, but Steve heard the panic that wanted to break through. He felt Maggie’s panic himself, but was trying to quell it.

He stood with his hands up, looking at Sujon, Mohammed’s aunt. Tears coursed down her cheeks and her teeth were bared in rage. She held a gun in thin, trembling arms. Her entire body shook. The gun was pointed at Steve. Light smoke curled from the barrel.

Carl rolled on the deck between them, cursing and holding his leg.

“Where is Mohammed?” she said. Her voice was shaking, choked.

“Sujon, you have to put that gun down. You don’t want to hurt anyone else.” Steve said but he didn’t move, not yet.

“Where is he? Where is his body?”

“He was…he was…left behind; Sujon, they had to leave him behind.” Steve hears the despair in his own voice, the guilt. They should not have had to leave Mohammed behind because Steve should have done more to stop his going.

“Who?” she asked and her gun traced the line of men who stood behind Steve on the deck. “Who left him? Who left a little boy to be torn apart by the dead?”

A man’s head fell as a sob escaped him. Sujon’s gun swiveled to him as levelly as if she were a twenty year sniper veteran. “It was you? You
left
him? You left a
child
?”

Steve heard the loathing in her voice. He stepped neatly between her and the man she’d targeted.

“It’s not his fault, Sujon, don’t aim that gun at him. You know it isn’t his fault.”

“It’s
your
fault,” she said, her voice a shaking ruin in danger of imminent collapse. “
Your
fault.” Tears coursed steadily from her red-rimmed eyes. Steve had a distant twinge of surprise that she could even see. Everything must be a blurred swirl to her.

Her hands shook and her finger gripped and relaxed reflexively on the trigger. If he didn’t do something quick, get through to her, she was going to shoot again. This time, it might not be a grazing leg wound.

“Sujon, it isn’t my fault, it isn’t anyone’s fault. It just happened. It’s terrible. No one wanted it to happen but it did; it did happen. We’re all upset about it, Sujon, but no one is responsible. No one is at fault.”

Sujon blinked rapidly. Steve noted how slack her clothes lay against her skin, how dry and malnourished she looked.
We all look like that now
, he thought.
We are all like the sinkers except just not dead. Not yet.

Abruptly, Sujon’s tears stopped. “Yes. It is
someone’s
fault. Someone was responsible for Mohammed.” Her eyes were alight with some terrible inner fire. She stepped back three quick paces until her back was to the rail. “
I
was responsible for Mohammed,” she said and turned the gun to her own face. She pulled the trigger.

The top half of her head disintegrated, blowing blood and gobbets of brain and bone into the air. Steve and everyone nearest her were peppered in gore.

Steve had stepped forward when he’d realized her intent. But his hand closed on nothing as her body toppled over the rail and caught in the lines criss-crossing the side of
Big Daddy
. She dangled, half headless and twitching, one bare foot kicking.

Steve stared at Sujon’s sandals on the deck. They were light green with sparkling faux gems on the straps. Very pretty. She’d been blown right out of them. He cocked his head at a strange patter, like rain, and realized it was her blood, raining into the ocean below.

He felt his gorge rise and he stepped forward, drawing a knife from his pocket and flinging it open. He cut Sujon’s bonds in two furious swipes, nearly cutting off his own thumb in the process. Her body tumbled into the ocean below.

He turned away and stared at his men. Each set of eyes that met his were round with shock. All faces had drained of color. A few men had bent over themselves, crying or trying not to vomit, Steve couldn’t tell which.

In his despair, his eyes went to the deck of ThreeBees, which was facing the side where Sujon had shot herself. Maggie stood at the rail, utterly still. Steve raised a shaking hand to her and she raised hers back.

What a fucking mess
, he thought.
Is this our world, now? Is this our only option?

He wiped a tickling drip from his cheek and stared at the smear of gelatinous gray matter shivering delicately on his fingers.

Yes, most likely.

~ ~ ~

“That was Sujon, wasn’t it? Was that Sujon? Mohammed’s aunt? She just shot herself. Didn’t she? Didn’t she shoot herself?” Denny’s eyes were feverish. Maggie put a hand on his arm, trying to calm him. She nodded.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure she did.”

“Well, but why? Why would she? Why did she…I mean, it doesn’t make sense. For her to…to kill herself.” He dropped his head, thinking, considering.

“I think it was just too much for her,” Maggie said, patting Denny’s back. Brian turned away, embarrassed but also near tears. It’s strange, Maggie reflected to herself, these people who had seen so much horror in that first wave of panic are
still
not immune. None of us are immune. We’ve had two months of relative calm and we’re ready to pat it on its ass, call it good, and assume it’s here to stay.

How complacent.

How stupid.

“She just couldn’t take it, Denny. She was…” Maggie trailed off, realizing she couldn’t put herself in Sujon’s shoes. She didn’t know what it was like. She’d had no children of her own, no nieces or nephews, no one she was solely responsible for. Babygirl flitted into her mind but Maggie pushed her aside.
Maggie
was not responsible for Babygirl, they were
all
responsible for Babygirl.

Not just me
, Maggie thought, and the thought was touched by a tinge of resentment. Then she pushed that aside, too.

“I think we should probably plan on having our visitor stay the night,” she said and turned away from the railing, away from her view of
Big Daddy
. “I think they’re going to be distracted over there for a while.”

Denny stayed at the rail, his head down. Maggie thought about going back to talk to him, comfort him some more. But this was life now, she decided, and he’d have to just face up to it. He was old enough. He was an adult.

There had been a furious burst of chatter over the walkie-talkies as the people on
Flyboy
wanted to know what happened. Maggie had ascertained that the shot fired had mostly just grazed Carl’s leg so she wouldn’t be needed. There were questions of retrieving Sujon’s body, but most people took a ‘what for?’ attitude on that. They’d only end up burying her at sea anyway, right? Let her rest, poor thing. At least she wouldn’t reanimate, not with half her head gone.

Severe damage to the brain, it turned out, was the key to dropping the walking dead.

Adam had addressed and readdressed Steve several times over the walkie-talkie, the tone and pitch of his voice escalating through the octaves until he’d seemed to realize that Steve wasn’t answering the phone, so to speak. There had been no more from Adam, but Maggie found the silence ominous.

Adam had, in Denny’s words, ‘a kink in his dick’ for Steve.

Thinking of the term now, Maggie smiled, but it was brief. She surveyed the deck in the fading light. Cleaned up. She looked back to
Big Daddy
, almost expecting (hoping?) to see Steve at the railing, but he isn’t there. No one is.

Everything seemed to quiet as the darkness fell.

Chapter Six

Maggie eased herself into the double bed next to Babygirl. Baby’s lips had gone slack around her thumb and she was covered in a light sweat. Maggie brushed a hand over the girl’s forehead and marveled that her skin could be so cool despite the uncomfortable heat in the stuffy cabin.

Maggie thought she was probably going to have a hard time falling asleep. When she closed her eyes, she saw Sujon tumbling from the railing, revealing Steve where he stood, knife in hand. Funny how no sound accompanied this image, only the light breathing of the girl next to her and the ubiquitous whap, whap of waves against the hull. ThreeBees rocked. Maggie felt consciousness waning.

Sujon fell again.

A small gasp escaped Maggie’s lips and her eyes fluttered halfway open before shutting more firmly. She slid into sleep, watching Sujon fall, watching Steve revealed, his face a mask of revulsion and shock. And grief.

Sujon fell again. Maggie felt the sensation in her own stomach, felt herself falling through blank space and she jerked without waking.

Above her, the boards creaked as someone walked through the galley.

Maggie slept.

~ ~ ~

“Denny is gone. Maggie? Denny is gone.” Hands shook her.

Joe?
was her first, semi-coherent thought.
Stop shaking me, hon, I’m up.

But it wasn’t Joe, Joe was dead. Her eyes opened. Bonnie sat on the edge of the bed and everything had tilted toward her weight. Maggie felt herself pulled implacably to her as if Bonnie exerted her own weird gravity.

Bonnie shook her again. “Maggie? Denny is gone.”

“Gone?” Maggie sat up, trying to clear her muzzy head. “Denny?”

“Yes, Maggie, like I told you. Denny is gone. Are you awake now?” Bonnie leaned over to peer into Maggie’s sleep puffy face and Maggie felt the force of her pull increase. She pushed herself further back to keep from toppling onto Bonnie.

“Yeah, I’m awake. I am.” She scrubbed her hands over her face and looked automatically to her side for Babygirl. She wasn’t there. A tendril of unease whispered around her heart. “Where’s Babygirl?”

“She’s up on deck with Randy; she’s fine. Look at you, mama bear!” Bonnie chuckled but then remembered her original business. “Denny is gone.”

“Well, geez, Bonnie, he’s probably just over on
Big Daddy
. You know how he’s always crabbing about being stuck over here with us. Back up, okay? You’re blocking the whole damn room.” The space in the cabins was extremely limited. Maggie wouldn’t be able to get out of the bed until Bonnie retreated almost all the way to the door.

Bonnie surveyed Maggie one more time, her face grave, almost watchful. It didn’t sit well on her happy, blowsy features. She stood and backed to the doorway.