Southern Gods (33 page)

Once, the boat lurched horribly and the outboard jumped in Ingram’s grip, pitching drastically upward and to the right. Sarah’s hands darted out and caught the sides of the boat.

“Log!” Ingram bellowed. “Under the surface!”

He righted the boat and pointed it back downriver. The rain increased and the wind pushed at their backs, even with their forward speed.

The buzzing of the engine lulled Sarah, dampening her senses, blotting out all other sounds. The boat rocked and yawed on the water in a hypnotic rhythm and she found herself becoming dazed, lost in a thousand yard stare at the far shore, just a black ink stroke on the horizon slanted with rain. Andrez pressed closer, and she could feel his shivering through the ponchos.

Finally, Ingram’s swaddled fist lanced out, pointing, and he yelled, “There! The
Hellion
!”

They turned to look and spied a long, low-slung rectangular barge without the massive flats of cargo. One tall stack pushed smoke into the sky and bristled with antennae. Tires ringed the gunwales, and the boat itself had doors and windows lining the deck.

Ingram yelled, “They broadcast the signal from the boat!”

The buzzing of the motor lulled, and Ingram turned the boat around, pointing it into the current to stop their forward movement.

“This is about to get messy.” He looked down at his wrapped fist.

Keeping his good hand on the throttle, he ripped the bandages from his maimed hand with his teeth and threw the splint into the river. He held up his hand and flexed it, twice. His skin was yellow and purple, bruises streaking the discolored flesh.

Ingram looked back at them.

“OK, folks. Here’s how this is gonna go. I’m gonna aim our little boat somewhere we can tie on. There’s tires ringing the barge, so we should be able to tie on almost anywhere, but it’d be nice if I could find a spot that will make boarding easier. I’ve been on lots of boats, mostly military, but it’s been a while. Sarah, I want you to tie us on as fast and securely as you can, then I’m going to grab the duffle, throw it on the deck, and come right over you two. So once we’re tied, make yourselves as small as you can. Once I’m on deck, I could be a bit busy before I can help you up. Got it?”

They nodded. Sarah began shivering uncontrollably. She couldn’t tell if it was from the wind, or water, or the fear that overcame her.

“All right, Sarah, grab the rope and get ready.”

She got on her knees in the front seat and faced forward. With white-knuckled hands, she gripped the boat’s tie and grasped the rim of the flat-bottom.

Ingram wrenched the throttle again, revving the motor, and turned the boat to the side, pushing them in a sharp arc, dashing back downstream toward the waiting black hulk of the
Hellion
. As they approached, the low throb of the barge engines shook the small flat-bottom from the water up. The
Hellion
loomed closer, grimed with oil and mud and the white streaks of seagull excrement. The flat-bottom rocked in the wake of the barge.

Ingram steered them down the length of the barge, searching for a place to moor their smaller boat. The
Hellion
throbbed with the sound of the diesel engines deep within. Finally Ingram cut the motor, falling back toward a tire resting a few feet in front of the barge’s wake.

He angled the flat-bottom inward. The
Hellion
filled Sarah’s view. Her heart leapt in her chest, throbbing in time with the diesels. Her hands shook, and the stench of diesel fumes overwhelmed her.

“Grab on, goddamnit! Grab the tire!”

She grappled with the makeshift mooring. From upriver as they approached, the tires ringing the barge seemed small, like car tires. But up close, they were enormous.

Andrez lent a hand, holding on with all his might as she leaned far out over the prow of the flat-bottom and worked the rope around a tire. The movement of the boats made the exercise harder, and as they rocked in the water, the tire slammed against the hull of the
Hellion
, catching Sarah’s hand there. She exclaimed wordlessly with the pain, giving a startled yawp.

Franny
. Sarah ground her jaw and forced the rope around the tire.

Andrez snatched up the ends and quickly tied a knot. Ingram cut the motor, and suddenly the
Hellion
dragged the flat-bottom. The little boat pitched crazily, banging against the grimy side of the larger boat.

“Out of the way. I’m coming through.”

Ingram dashed to the front of the boat, sword and pistol tucked into his belt. He threw the duffle bag onto the barge, climbed up the tire, and hauled himself over the wooden gunwale, flopping on the deck, hidden from where Sarah and Andrez rocked on the river.

Sarah saw his movement through a small porthole in the gunwale. For a long breathless silence, Sarah and Andrez stared at the lip of the barge, worried that a dead face would peek over the rail and stare down at them with lidless, white eyes.

Ingram’s face appeared over the rail. He leaned forward, reached down, and extended his good hand. Sarah grasped it, and he yanked her forcefully out of the boat, up past the tire. She grabbed the gunwale and pulled herself the rest of the way.

“Deserted, looks like. A damned ghost ship.”

She regained her feet on a narrow gangway leading to the stern of the barge.

Ingram lifted Andrez out of the boat and onto the deck.

“We need to be quick. Gotta search the whole boat, and there could be—”

“Dead.”

“Yeah. The corpses. Take the pistol,” Ingram said. “This sword is better for me. I’m a crappy shot with my left anyway.” He pulled the gun from his waistband and handed it to Andrez. “Like I told Sarah, shoot ’em in the head. Put it in their face if you have to.”

Andrez nodded.

“All right, I’ve never been on a boat like this before, so we’re gonna move as fast as we can.” Ingram shook his head and half-muttered, “I didn’t think this bastard would be so damned big.”

He slung the duffle over his shoulder.

“We move from stern to fore. Quickly. Last place we check will be the pilot’s roost, there.” He jabbed a finger at the cluster of antennae behind a stack. “There’ll be someone in there, steering, but that might not be where they have Franny. But if we hit the roost first, they might have time to sound an alarm. Let’s go.”

***

Ingram held the sword loosely in his hand and walked on light feet. He balanced his weight, placed one foot in front of the other. She tried to imitate his movement, but her heart hammered in her chest and she could only think of Franny. She wanted to scream and rush from door to door, flinging them open. Her Franny was here somewhere. This foul boat. Twenty feet to the stern, they came to a door leading into the interior of the boat. Ingram tried the handle, shoving the door open.

Inside, there was only darkness. And the stench of the dead mixed with rotten fish.

Ingram shrugged the duffle from his shoulder and handed it backward, still keeping his eyes ahead. Then he looked back at Andrez and Sarah and mimed holding a flashlight.

He stepped inside. Sarah held her breath. Blood throbbed at her temples. Her legs felt weak, rubbery. She ripped at the duffle, hands shaking, while Andrez watched her. She handed him a flashlight, and he flipped it on. She turned on her own, and they moved through the door and into the interior of the
Hellion
, shining faint lights in the dark.

“Here. Wait a sec.”

The room flooded with light. Three bulbs in mesh cages mounted on the bulkhead burned brightly, showing ranks of tables. A small galley. Foodstuffs were spilt on the floor, flour and spices making grainy sprays near the oven.

“Here. Blood.”

It was black and crusty and covered the far half of the room. The walls were smeared in it. Painted with it. Looking at the bulkhead, Sarah could almost read the bloody story the smears told, like some strange violent language distilled down to an essence of bloodstrokes and hand prints. Like an illustration in the
Quanoon
.

Ingram turned around in a circle, cursing. He looked from the stern door to the one at the fore. “This is gonna be engineering, most likely.” He pointed at the stern door. “We check that first, then we’ll know no one’s behind us. Right?”

Sarah nodded because she didn’t trust herself to speak. Andrez spoke for her. “We must hurry, Bull. Now.”

Bull went to the door, forced open the latch, and swung it open. He stepped through. They followed.

A small open aired space. Still no one appeared. Just the thrum of engines and the smell of fish and muddy water and diesel fumes. Before them stood a door marked in black stencil, ENGINE ROOM. Ingram yanked open the latch.

As Sarah followed Andrez through, she was assaulted by sound. The dynamo that turned the massive screws that drove the
Hellion
was louder than the sound of creation. The bulwarks shook with the noise, and the vibrations shook Sarah through the floor. The room smelled of oil, and wet rodents, and something else.

Ingram found a switch and flipped it. More bright bulbs burning in mesh cages.

A single figure stood at the end of the room, facing the engine, the wall of gauges and valves. He was slight, and dressed as a child.

He turned, as though sensing their presence.

A tow-headed boy. Wearing jeans and a dirty shirt. His face, though gray, wore an expression of surprise, mouth caught in an O, his eyebrows high.

For an instant, Sarah was back in the orchard, among fallow fields and the whole world smelled of burning tires and rang with the caws of crows and the Alexander boy had gripped her too tight and pushed his erection hard against her and she’d shoved him away. She hadn’t been mad, she hadn’t been terrified as she was now. But she’d wanted him to stop. He did and that look of surprise crossed his face, just like this boy’s here, when he saw Alice watching him with murderous eyes, holding the cudgel. He’d ran away, crying, and Sarah had felt so bad for him. She’d never seen him again. This boy, this boy before her, looked the same, surprised, and so similar he could be the same child. The Alexanders lived on the far side of Altheimer, by the river, she knew. And suddenly, she was sure of it, that this boy
was
an Alexander. Maybe even the son of
her
Alexander boy.
Franny
.

Ingram moved forward, raising the sword.

“Bull. Wait.” Hearing her own voice, Sarah realized she sound shrill, on the verge of hysteria.

He stopped. “What?”

“I know him, I think.”

He looked at her for a long while, too long, as the dead boy walked down the long room toward them. Bull dipped his head in acknowledgement and waved them back.

Andrez touched her lightly on the shoulder, his soft eyes searching her face. “Come, Sarah. We will wait for Bull out here.”

She looked back at the boy. He was closer now, and in the light. His gray skin looked waxy, mask-like. The open O of his mouth was as black as the opening of a well, and his eyes were pure white. As she watched, his waxy skin shifted, as if something beneath the skin was moving. The mask of the boy’s face reassembled itself into one of pure hatred.

Somehow the boy was even more pitiable now that some dark thing inhabited him, forced him to move.

They take. That’s all they do, these petty gods. They take from us and give nothing back.

The realization did not give her the fire of outrage, the strength of the desperate. She felt only an overwhelming sadness.

She let Andrez pull her through the open door, and he held his pistol tightly, knuckles white, as they waited for Ingram.

There was a loud grunt and a bellow, and then Ingram was back, holding his hand. It dripped with blood.

“Mercy didn’t work too well,” he said. He tried to laugh but it failed in his throat, and he opened his hand to show them the ruin of it.

His smaller fingers were missing and the two stumps pumped blood. Ingram shrugged, raising his big shoulders and letting them fall. “Get the tape.”

They wrapped his hand in gray hurricane tape, and Ingram stood and switched the sword to his left hand.

“We still have more boat to search.”

They moved forward, back through the galley, and forced open the next door, exposing a musty barracks. The lights didn’t work in there and Sarah, the stink of carrion filling her nose, desperately searched their duffel for a flashlight. When she found it, the beam was pitifully small in the darkness.

A bed held a graying, fly-swarmed corpse. And the light revealed another door on the port bulkhead.

The latch moved stiffly under Ingram’s hand. Using his weight, he shoved down on the handle and shouldered it open.

Brightness from the room streamed out over them, casting a wedge of light into the ranks of bunk beds. The room was lit from grimy round porthole windows and the soft yellow glow of electronic equipment. Wires crisscrossed the small chamber floor in a morass. The cables fed through a porthole, leading to the fore of the boat. A table held a microphone and turntable, still spinning. Sarah’s heart leapt in her chest.
The music
!

Ingram stood over the turntable and, with one hand, swept the electronic gear from the surface onto the floor in a barrage of sparks and smoke. The room filled with the stink of ozone and burning rubber.