The Ocean Dark

43

For twenty or thirty seconds after he’d spoken to his brother on the radio, Gabe didn’t want to be the captain anymore. His heart seemed to have shrunken in his chest, and memories flooded his mind. Maya liked to lie in bed on rainy mornings, tucked beneath his arm, her head on his chest, just listening to his heartbeat. Gabe could watch an old movie or a baseball game and she’d be entirely content just to cling to him like that. In happier times, she had always told him it made her feel safe. Protected.

When they wanted to escape, they would drive south to the Keys, find a place on the water, drink margaritas, and listen to Bob Marley. Hell, sometimes he and Maya would even listen to Jimmy Buffett, the hero to middle-aged white stoners everywhere. Buffett knew something about relaxing. Like margaritas, that music made him feel like he was on vacation.

At home, Maya relished the days when neither of them had to work. She always had some project for him to do — putting up a floral border in the spare bedroom or repainting the bathroom or reorganizing the furniture in the living room just so she’d have the perfect place to hang the new painting she’d bought. Gabe had bitched about it, but he had loved it, too, turning up the radio and singing along as they created and re-created their home together.

The home he spent most of his time leaving, out of fear that one day he would become too comfortable and become trapped there.

For that half-minute, Gabe lost himself in thoughts and memories and regrets.

“Captain!” Kevonne shouted. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Sweat beaded on his forehead and he gesticulated wildly, pointing at the reef of sunken ships and at the Antoinette in the distance, then at their lifeboat and at Bone and Pang and Tori. He kept shouting, but Gabe found himself unable to focus. Shock, he thought. It’s shock.

It occurred to him that they were in paradise. Perfect blue sky. Sun moving lower, throwing the long shadows of palm trees across the sand. All the ingredients were there. If he had a margarita, Maya, and Bob Marley, it would have been like heaven.

A small sound — half-chuckle and half-grunt — came from his throat and he shook his head in disbelief.

“Gabriel-fucking-Rio!” Tori shouted.

She gave him a shove with both hands and he staggered back, then narrowed his eyes, glaring at her. Tori stood in front of him, somehow managing to look more angry than afraid. With her hair back in a ponytail and her bronzed skin and tight tank top, she only added to the illusion of some tropical vacation. But Gabe had woken from that dream.

Bone had dropped to the sand twenty feet from the water and hugged his knees to his chest, muttering “what the fuck” over and over again. Pang strode along the shore, alternately staring out at the place where the other lifeboat had just gone down and peering into the shallow surf for some sign of anything that might threaten them.

Kevonne still shouted at Gabe. “Captain. Come on, man! What do we do?”

Gabe locked eyes with Tori. “Sorry. I was just thinking. I’m okay now.”

Tori barked a dry laugh. “Are you? Me, I’m not so much okay as scared out of my mind. We’ve got to get off this island and back to the Antoinette, and I’m pretty sure it’s got to be now, Gabe. Before nightfall.”

That woke Bone from his shock-coma. The boy looked dreadfully old as he turned toward them. “Are you nuts? I’m not going out there, Tori. Something’s under the water. You see all those bones? It’s what killed them. That’s why all those boats are sunk out there. People came ashore, to do a little fishing or take a swim or whatever. Tiny little island in the Caribbean, right? But once they’re here, they can’t leave. That was the mistake they made, don’t you get it? Trying to leave! We’re safe here. Here is good.”

Kevonne rounded on him. “And what are we gonna eat, dumbass? Or drink? I didn’t see any water fountains, did you?”

Gabe put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s enough.” He glanced at Tori. “What do you mean, ‘before nightfall’? Where do you get that?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. We know they can come on land or there’d be survivors here on the island. So why aren’t they on us right now? Something’s keeping them in the water at the moment, and it’s gotta be the sun. They let us get to the island. Now they want to keep us here until sundown.”

Gabe turned to Bone and Pang. “She’s right. Sorry, Bone, but it does make sense. Whatever just happened — whatever’s in the water — it won’t stay in the water.”

“How can you be sure?” Bone asked frantically, determined to be right.

“Look around you. You see anyone else? You think you’re the only one who’s ever assumed that being on land is safe? Tori thinks it doesn’t like the sun, and if it spends most of its time underwater, maybe that’s true. But it means that, at best, we’ve got until dark to get back to the Antoinette.”

“Captain,” Tori said, stepping up close beside him, diminishing the space between them almost to the point of intimacy. “The other boats — they were scuttled. They had to be. The people on board wouldn’t have put holes in the hulls. Which means that whatever’s out there is doing it.”

Pang started pacing along the water’s edge. “Oh, that’s just beautiful.”

“No, no,” Kevonne said, waving him silent. “The Antoinette’s a beast, man. It isn’t some rich boy’s toy or a damn fishing boat. She’ll be okay. We just have to get out there.”

Gabe nodded. “Right. So put your heads together, and let’s figure out how.”

They all fell silent. Tori’s eyes lowered, the weight of gravity pressing down on her. Gabe looked out at the graveyard of ships and saw it anew. The stretched netting, the ropes, the way some of them seemed to have crashed into others — it wasn’t the result of pirates building some kind of village out of the wrecks, any more than that the ships themselves had been sunk by hurricanes. The tethers between ships had been previous attempts to escape. He tried to tell himself that some of those escapes must have been successful, but the logic didn’t hold up. If anyone had gotten out of here alive, would the graveyard of ships still be there?

There were thirty years or more of derelict vessels, whose captains had come across the island and been drawn into its trap. And if they managed to radio for help, then whoever came looking either didn’t find the island or were also drawn in. Maybe he was wrong and others had survived, and for whatever reason had never spoken of their ordeal. After all, the Mariposa had managed to get away from the island. Granted, only one man had been aboard, and he had been wounded so badly he died. The fishing boat’s captain must have assumed they were trapped, that they would be better able to defend themselves with their cargo of guns if they brought them ashore. Like Bone, he must have assumed the creature or creatures in the water couldn’t reach them there. Perhaps he had even thought they could kill them all, and then they would be able to get away.

He’d been a fool. Which raised a dreadful question in Gabe’s mind — how, exactly, had the Mariposa managed to escape? It made no sense, unless whatever lurked out there, under the water, had allowed the dying sailor to take the Mariposa back out onto the open sea. The idea suggested two awful conclusions: first, that the Mariposa had been cast out into the Caribbean as a lure, to draw more victims to the island, and second, that whatever had killed its crew was intelligent enough to use the fishing boat to lure others into its grasp.

Not thoughts you want to share, he told himself, looking at the fear in the eyes of those still on the island with him.

“Kevonne, Bone, unload the gun cases from the lifeboat. We’re gonna match ammo with weapons, load every gun we’ve got ammunition for. That way, we don’t have to take the time to reload. When a gun is empty, you discard it, right over the side, and grab another one.”

“Viscaya—” Tori started to say.

“Fuck Viscaya,” Gabe said.

“So we’re just going to make a break for it? That’s it?” Bone asked. He looked like he might be about to cry.

“You got a better idea?” Kevonne asked.

“I’m not going,” Bone said.

Pang laughed — an edgy, disturbing sound. “Yeah, good plan. Stay here and die.”

Bone buried his face in his hands, pushed his fingers through his shaggy blond hair, and started to rock back and forth.

“Come on,” Tori said softly. “You get one chance to live, Bone, and this is it. We’ve got a few hours before it gets dark. After that …”

The surfer started to nod, drew a long, shuddering breath, and pushed himself up off the sand. He went to help Kevonne start unloading the guns, both of them wary about stepping into the water.

“Captain, what about Chief Boggs?” Pang asked, shielding his eyes from the sun.

Gabe hadn’t thought that far ahead. “We’ll try to reach him on our way out.”

Pang seemed satisfied with that, and went to help with the guns. They were falling back on habit now, taking orders from their captain. In some ways, it would be easier that way for all of them, but it weighed on Gabe. Their lives were in his hands. If he screwed up, they were all dead.

Don’t flatter yourself, he thought. You’re probably all dead anyway.

Tori moved closer as the guys moved off, and Gabe gave her a sidelong glance. The guys might fall apart, but Tori seemed to be holding it together better than any of them.

“Where do you think they came from?” she asked. “Whatever they are, out there?”

He thought of ocean storms and shattered walls and glass-smooth black stone engraved with strange writing.

“You’re thinking the grotto,” Gabe said.

Tori returned the intensity of his gaze. “Aren’t you?”

He looked to the west, saw the sun had sunken farther than he had thought. Gabe strode away from her, kicking up sand as he hurried to help unpack the guns. He knew that whatever awaited them just offshore, it would only wait until sunset.

Again he thought of Maya. Would it have been so bad to have given her the life she wanted, with a baby and a husband who spent more time at home than at sea? Would it have been so difficult for him to be content with that fate? The questions lingered, but the answers didn’t matter unless he managed to keep himself alive long enough to get back to Miami.