Gabe wasn’t quite so sure. He lay on his stomach on the wooden hull and looked over the edge, getting a better look. Tori lay down beside him, close enough that he could hear her quickened breathing. Adrenaline still drove them all. Without it, Gabe figured they’d be dead already.
The deck angled down into the water, but now that he looked at it, he realized it wasn’t exactly ninety degrees. Perhaps eighty. Close enough. Without something to hold on to, they’d just slide down into the water, and the space that separated the schooner from the sunken freighter had already filled with shadows. The sunlight came skimming across the surface of the water now, and didn’t reach into that gap.
One of the masts had broken off perhaps a third of the way up its length. The other lay on the tilted deck of the rusty sunken freighter, creating a bridge to that ship from the schooner. They would have to slide down the deck to reach the base of the mast. Once again, however, whoever had come before them had paved the way. The cable from the trawler’s winch had been tied off on the mast itself. If they were careful, they ought to be able to guide their descent.
“Who did all of this?” Tori asked, staring down at where the cable had been wound around the mast and hooked back onto itself.
“Dead motherfuckers,” Pang said, voice flat.
Gabe, Tori, and Kevonne all looked at him.
Pang shrugged. “What? We were all thinking it.”
Kevonne stripped off his shirt, wrapped it around his right hand, and sat down on the edge. Traversing the gap had been one thing, and hard on the hands, but the cable wasn’t a fire pole. If they weren’t careful, they’d tear the skin on their fingers and palms.
He didn’t wait for them to wish him luck, just slid over the edge and slowly rappelled down the deck, coming to rest on the thickness of the mast. Kevonne had made it look easy, which prompted Pang to pull his own shirt over his head and follow suit. Halfway down his hands slipped and he nearly fell. Catching himself cost him. He gripped the cable tight enough to stop his descent and cried out as the metal dug into his flesh. His left hand was wrapped with cloth, but the right had been bare. Now it would be slick with blood.
Gabe said nothing to hurry him.
Down in the space between the schooner and the freighter — in the gathering shadows — the water sloshed, slapping the sides of the ships. Tori’s focus was entirely on Pang, and she did not react at all. But Gabe looked down, peering into the dark, and saw the eyes staring back at him. The splash had come from off to the right, and when he looked in that direction it only took him a moment to make out a second set of eyes and the pale, glistening white hump of a head. The creatures watched them like crocodiles, so still, waiting for them to make a mistake.
Pang reached the mast. By then, Kevonne had crept on hands and knees across ten feet of the thick mast. For the last three or four feet, where the mast began to thin, he had to straddle the wood and drag himself forward, keeping balanced, twenty-five feet above the water.
“Shit,” Tori said.
With a look of determination, she started to peel off her tank top. Gabe grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Hold on,” he said. As she watched, he unbuttoned his own, a cotton short-sleeve with a faded scallop pattern. Maya had bought it for him two years before, during better times.
Better times, Gabe thought. Hell, they were all better times. Perspective could be a bitch. Pushing away thoughts of Maya, he held the shirt by its bottom hem and tore it down the middle, then handed half to Tori.
“A weird time to get all chivalrous on me,” she said.
Gabe surprised himself by smiling. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you naked. I just don’t want you distracting the rest of us.”
Tori nodded. “Good. You had me worried.”
She went down much faster than either of the guys, but by the time she landed on the mast, Kevonne and Pang were both safe on the rusty freighter. Tori started making her way across the mast-bridge without hesitation, driven by the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. If she had noticed the things down in the water, watching her, she made no mention of them.
When a third one appeared and reached out of the water to press its hands against the rusted freighter, then began to slither up the metal hull, Gabe wanted to scream. The suckers on its hands somehow allowed it to stick like a salamander to the side of the freighter, and it slithered upward until the top half of its pearlescent body was out of the water. Then it paused, clinging to the hull, as if testing out the shadows.
Dark enough, Gabe thought, glancing quickly at the horizon.
Sunlight still washed the deck of the freighter. Tori, Kevonne, and Pang were safe there, for now. But down there between the ships, the day had already fled. The creature seemed frozen for several seconds, then it slid farther up the hull, its serpentine lower body curled against the metal, suckers holding it in place.
“Gabe!” Tori called. “What are you waiting for? What’s wrong?”
Kevonne joined in. “Captain?”
But it wasn’t their urging that got him moving. Another pair of long-fingered hands rose from the gentle, lapping waves, and a second creature began to climb up the freighter’s hull. How far would they venture from the shadows? How much light was enough to hold them back?
His hands were oddly steady but his throat went dry and he felt twitchy. He dropped down to sit on the edge of the sideways schooner, no longer able to hear the questions and urgent shouts from the others because his heart pounded so loudly in his ears. Twisting around, he gripped the cable with his torn shirt and pressed his feet against the deck. Then he pushed off, just a bit, and let his hands slide on the cable, the shirt tearing further, wearing thin. He tightened his grip and the cloth tugged away, metal scouring his palms and fingers. His jaws clamped shut in pain and his hands became slippery. With two fingers, he pulled the remnant of his shirt down into his hands, wrapped it as best he could, then moved more slowly.
He couldn’t do it. The rag his shirt had become tore away, metal bit into his palms, and after a few more feet he froze. Gritting his teeth he looked down, saw the mast not that far below, and turned around, letting his legs hang down below him. With the wood just five feet away, he let go.
Falling, he felt despair fill him. If not for the square metal fitting around the base of the mast, he would likely have slipped right off and fallen into the water. But his shoes hit that flat surface, jarring his bones, and he let his momentum carry him forward. Steadied by his landing, he went down on his hands and knees on the mast. His hands stung and they were slippery with his blood, but Gabe did not slow. He hustled across the mast, the exhortations of the others finally reaching him.
His skin prickled with fear, but he did not look down, unwilling to learn how close they might be, or how many.
When he reached the place where the mast thinned enough that he should have straddled it, he could not bear to hang his legs over the sides. Instead, he stood. Refusing to look at Tori or his sailors, Gabe ran the last half dozen feet and leaped to the sun-washed deck of the rusting freighter.
He clapped his hands to his forehead and doubled over, heart slamming against his chest, breath too fast. Forcing himself to calm down, building walls around the fear inside of him, he straightened up, first pressing his hands together as if in prayer and then dropping them to his sides. Telling himself he was the captain no longer made any difference. Gabe Rio wanted to live, captain or not. Yes, he and Miguel needed to be eye to eye, and he needed answers, and despite it all he still wanted to see Maya again.
“What the hell, Captain?” Kevonne said.