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.
44
Streetlights strafed the windshield as Gabe drove his aging BMW through Miami traffic. Gleaming neon and pastels flashed across the hood in a blurred reflection of the shops and bars and restaurants. Night had fallen a couple of hours ago, but the streets were still busy for a Tuesday night, and the traffic clogged the center lanes thanks to vehicles parked and double-parked on either side.
He gripped the steering wheel tightly, somehow both muddled and focused by the four bottles of hard iced tea he’d had at Jamie’s Reel Life — a divey little fish joint a few miles from his apartment building. Jamie’s had a streetside patio, where exhaust fumes mixed with the flavor of the mojitos and fried lobster tails that had made the place a local favorite. No one seemed to care.