I went up another level. Good; you know what to do, move away from the fire. So do it.
And I tried.
I could remember the idea of moving. I could almost remember the feeling of movement. But the mechanics of it were beyond me. How did that work? How did you move? Move? Move—Movemovemovemovemove—
I said the word too many times and again it lost meaning. It was just a sound, mooooow.
The fear ran over me again with sharp little rat’s feet. What was going on? What in God’s name was happening?
Why couldn’t I move?
I was almost sure it shouldn’t be like this. This wasn’t natural, wasn’t right. I was supposed to move. I was supposed to feel good and know who I was. This just wasn’t right.
It wasn’t right. It hadn’t been like this before.
Before what?
I thought. That was beyond me. I didn’t know before what, but that idea of before seemed to have a lot of other ideas hanging off it. The pain, the not moving, that was now. Something else was before.
There was something I was supposed to do, something I had to do, and now I would not do it and something terrible would happen. Something worse than me being dead. I could not remember what any of it was, but I remembered that it was all up to me and I had failed. I was dead.
I felt something cool roll across my face. A tear. That meant something. I bit down hard in my mind so I wouldn’t repeat the word too many times and lose the meaning.
Tear.
I was crying.
But—
If I was dead, I couldn’t cry. Could I? I thought hard for a minute, as hard as I could, and managed to sweat out an answer: no. When you’re dead you can’t cry.
I was crying. So:
I wasn’t dead.
I wasn’t dead.
I did not know what I was that I should feel like I was dead but I could not be dead because of the tear. I was alive.
It was another eternity before I went past that thought. Just the idea of being alive set off a soundless, motionless party in my mind and I celebrated for a very long time. And then more grey cells woke up and I thought, hang on. When you’re alive you’re supposed to be able to move and see and speak and know where you are. I can’t. Why not?
Something was wrong. Something had happened. I tried hard to think what and I couldn’t. It was hard to think through all the pain, the burning across my skin and the pounding in my head. And those damned drums. How could I think at all with those damned drums rattling away like that?
Drums?
Were there supposed to be drums?
I listened for a while. Drums were not normal. But I had heard them before. Not long ago, too. I had heard drums and then something had happened. Something bad. Had the drums made me like this?
I thought hard for a while. It came back to me slowly: No, the drums had not made me like this. Drums could not do that. But something that went with the drums had.
For a time that was enough. I was satisfied. Something that went with the drums was not good. Now I knew.
I came back to that question eventually. What had happened to me? If not the drums, what? What was the bad thing connected to the drums?
I worked on that. Nothing came to me. I drifted for a while, listening to the drums.
There was a new sound. A door opening. The drums got louder for a moment. I heard scuffling, heavy breathing, a sharp SMACK sound, a thump.
The feet moved closer to me and I felt a new pain blossom in my side, about the size and shape of a foot. A voice hissed something in a language I did not know. The foot kicked me again. The voice laughed.
“You’ve bloody killed him!” said a different voice. “You fucking bastards!” I knew the voice. I was sure I’d heard it before, but—
“Not dead. Zom-BEE!,” the first voice said, sounding very happy. “Your friend is a zom-BEE!” And it laughed.
I almost didn’t even hear the feet moving away, the door opening and closing, the lock clicking home. Because I had begun to remember and it all came pouring back over me, cascading across my mind in a terrible flood.
I remembered. I knew what had happened to me and what the drums meant. I knew where I was.
I was on the Black Freighter.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Christ. Oh hell, mate, what’ve they done?”
I felt a hand touch me, shake me, slap my face. Although the voice was in my ear the hand felt far away. It was as though he was talking to me and touching somebody else.
“Bloody fucking Christ,” Nicky said. I heard a soft fumbling sound and then he was forcing something small and cold between my lips. I felt a few drops of something bitter roll slowly across my tongue and into my throat. Then I felt Nicky lift my hand into the air and feel for a pulse.
“We’ll be all right,” he said, as if he was trying to convince himself. “Long as they haven’t given you the second powder. That first dose just puts you out, mate. The second, that’s what makes you a right proper zombie. We’ll be all right.”
I wanted to talk back, make some small joke about my condition. I couldn’t. I tried to move just a little bit to let him know I was alive. I couldn’t. I tried as hard as I know how to speak, to say I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t. I think I managed to twitch one corner of my mouth.
“Gotcha,” Nicky muttered, but whether he had seen my mouth twitch or just found my pulse, I don’t know.
And then, as strange as anything that had happened to me so far, Nicky dropped my arm, picked up my foot, and started to take off my shoe.
So they got to him, too, I thought. They’ve pushed him over the edge. Poor Nicky. He was never strong enough for this, never meant to stand up under this kind of treatment. Of course he’s cracked, poor guy.
He had my shoe off now and I felt his thumbs digging in around my toes, and just above my arch and below my big toe, at the large pad on the bottom of the foot.
And if I needed any more proof that Nicky had slipped quietly out of his tree, he started to hum at me. At first it was just sounds, “EEeeh,” and “Aaah.” He would hold to one note and sing it for a full breath as he poked at my feet.
And then the sound changed and he was humming, “All You Need Is Love.”
It didn’t make sense. I was in mortal danger and paralyzed and my friend was poking at my feet while singing The Beatles’ greatest hits. The weirdness of the whole thing suddenly made me want to laugh out loud. A huge bubble of hysterical laughter built up inside me, tried to explode.
“Uh,” I said, very softly.
“Right,” said Nicky cheerfully, “We’ll have you dancing in no time,” and he swung into “Penny Lane.”
I had said something. My mouth had opened—only a little, sure, but sound had come out.
And Nicky had been expecting it.
It didn’t even begin to make sense. Which one of us was really crazy?
Did he know what had happened to me—and how to fix it? It seemed impossible. But Nicky was rubbing my feet briskly, poking at the same two or three spots on both feet, and humming at full blast—now it was “Good Day Sunshine.” And as he did—as a result of what he did?—I felt a slow flush spread outward from my heart and climb from the base of my spine up to the top of my skull.
I pulled in a deep breath. It felt better than anything else I could remember.
“Ee-hah,” Nicky said softly.
More deep breaths. The flush spread outward to my toes, my fingers. I wiggled my index finger and felt like the world was starting all over again. And finally, after “When I’m 64,” with the first notes of “Mother Nature’s Child,” my right eye opened.
“G’day, mate,” said Nicky. He didn’t stop rubbing my feet.
The other eye struggled open. It was like trying to lift a Dodge van, but I finally got it open. For a minute there were two Nickys rubbing four feet. Terrifying. I felt his thumbs dig in at a different spot, on my two middle toes. Gradually the Nickys on the right and th
e left swam together and there was one Nicky with two feet in his hands.
“Nuh,” I said, trying to say “Nicky.” But “Nuh” was all I could manage.
“I know, mate, I know,” Nicky said cheerfully. “It’ll come, never fear.”
Two fingers moved now. The thumb joined them. I wiggled them at my face. Hello, Billy. Welcome back. We missed you.
I remembered the terrible burning and the bone dreams and with great effort and a lot of fear, started scanning what I could see of my body. It seemed okay. I couldn’t see all of me; my neck wouldn’t move. But what I could see looked all right.
I was alive. Everything seemed to have gotten faster and brighter while I was away, but I was back. I felt a terrible thirst and my head was pounding with a pain that made all other head aches I’d ever had seem funny, but under the circumstances I didn’t mind. Maybe I was going to be okay.
My whole hand moved now, and I rolled my head to the side. It felt wonderful, even when the head movement made my headache flare up higher. I looked at the grey steel wall. The rust specks were beautiful, the grey paint seemed lush and colorful.
I turned my head the other way. I was laid out on the floor in a small storeroom. There was a row of hanging mops and brooms, some buckets, and a shelf of cleaning supplies, all packed in with nautical efficiency. One dim light bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling, and a small porthole was rusted and bolted shut on the far end of the wall.
There was also a little more space than you might expect to find in a place where a ship’s cleaning supplies were kept. There were several spools of chain and rope hanging from spindles. and something looked familiar about the wall over there but I couldn’t say what. I frowned, trying to remember. I looked at the wall again. I had seen it before, but when? Something was different, missing, in that part over by the ringbolts fastened to the wall—
I remembered. The pictures I had taken from the sailor in the wheelhouse, of women begging. The women had been fastened to those ringbolts. Slowly, painfully, I came back to life. It was a long and awful trip. One small piece of me at a time would wake up and sluggishly, awkwardly, start to talk to the other parts. Nicky kept rubbing my feet, kept singing, and eventually rolled me over and rubbed my back, too.
I didn’t object. I didn’t have the strength yet. But as soon as I could form a thought and make my mouth work I asked him to please stop singing for the love of God.
He looked hurt, but he stopped, only mid-way through “In My Life.”
In the background, now that Nicky was quiet, the drums were overwhelming. I could hear other noises over them, sounding like a really wild fraternity party at the end of spring term.
Finally I sat up. For a few minutes I just sat there. I felt stupid and stiff, as if I had been stitched together from mismatched parts and there must be little bolts in the sides of my neck.
Nicky watched me, beaming, and hopping on one foot like a kid who has to go to the bathroom. When I finally tried to stand he was there to catch me if I needed it.
I almost did. The roaring and pounding in my ears nearly drowned out the sound of the drums. After a few lifetimes of standing and enjoying the pain I sat back down again.
I took a couple of deep breaths and managed not to throw up. Then, when the world steadied again, I looked up at Nicky.
“How?” I said. It was very tough to put thoughts together. “How you… here?”
“You put us through the wringer, you did,” Nicky said, dropping to the floor next to me. “We didn’t hear from you. Didn’t have a clue if you were out of fuel and drifting, or maybe eaten by sharks. Not a fucking clue, mate.”
“How long?”
“I waited three days, Billy. Three awful fucking days. Going right off my nut. Finally Deacon called a mate of his in Port Au Prince. Fella calls back and says Petit Fleur is in port. Has a racing boat in tow. So now we know he’s got you, too.
“I caught the first plane. Spent a day nosing around, buying a few things.”
“What?”
He chuckled. “Things, Billy. Things I couldn’t get through customs, or couldn’t get in the States. Some special medicines, like what I fed you. Some other stuff.” He leaned close and whispered, “Guns, Billy. World’s greatest gun market out there. I’ve got three of ’em stashed on this ship. Good ones. If we can get out of this room we’ll be all right yet.”
I grunted. The thought I wanted to tell him was too long and hard to put into words, but there was a heavy accent on how stupid it had been to buy guns in a place like Port Au Prince. It wasn’t much brighter to think that having one in his hand was going to make everything all right.
But that was Nicky. New Age gunslinger. Guru with a gun. In his mind a pistol was a magic charm to ward off evil. He’d spent hundreds of hours firing at targets, practicing his quick draw, changing magazines as fast as he could.
I’d tried to tell him it wasn’t the same as hearing that unique flat ripping sound of a bullet just missing your head, and trying to fire back without wetting your pants. He’d never quite believed it could be all that different.
And now, unless I could remember how to work my feet, he was going to get us into a shooting match with a bunch of guys who killed for fun and profit.
I shook my legs. They were still numb, but a little better. With time I might make it.
“They caught you,” I said to Nicky. Good, Billy; almost a full sentence.
“They did that,” Nicky admitted. “I slipped on board right after they cleared all the cargo off. Looked around a bit, stashed a couple of bundles. Three small backpacks, Billy. Food, water, weapon. So if they find one, I got a back-up.” He looked so proud of himself; so damned clever, sneaking around stashing guns and granola, out-foxing the enemy.
He went on. “I watched ’em start to load on people. Another full day. I was up on top, in the big life raft up there. Couldn’t move around, look for you. People everywhere.” He shrugged. “I waited. Figured they had to blink sometime, eh? Then I could sneak round about, have a peek, see if I could find you.
“Well, it got night, and just as things slowed down a bit, the boat starts up and heads off to sea. And I figure all right, Nick-lad, time to earn your keep. I slip out of the life raft and down the stairs.”
He paused and I turned to look at him. I could hear my neck creak from the effort and a pain shot straight up my spine and out my eyeballs, but I looked.
Nicky was looking at his toes. He kicked his feet, left, right, left. “Shit-peppers. They grabbed me before I got three steps down. Dragged me in to see Cappy. The fella with the snake tattoo. He knew me right off. Thought it was pretty funny, us sneaking aboard one at a time. ‘Now I ’ave you all,’ he says in that horrible silky froggish accent he’s got.
“And then he raises up that eyebrow of his and wants to know, is anybody else of our merry little gang going to come a-calling? And I figger if I say yes, lots more, he’ll think I’m bluffing. So I say no, that’s the lot. And he looks at me a good long time, smiles, and says, ‘Bon.’
“Then he has his boys bounce me around a little and asks me again. And I say all right, there’s one more boatload, they’re waiting in the Gulf Stream. And I can’t tell if he believes me or not, but they bounce me around a little more and then they throw me down here.”
“And here we are, mate. Here we are.”
He sounded almost happy about that. I managed to grunt, “Anna—”
He was a quiet for a moment. “Billy—I don’t know, mate. I—tried to look for her, but… I don’t know, mate.”
I closed my eyes and let the sound of the drums rolls over me, mixing with the pounding of my headache. I couldn’t make my brain work fast enough to be sure but it seemed like Cappy had had Anna almost a week. I had to find her, had to get my stupid brain and wooden body together and find her. It was impossible that she was all right, but I had to know.
Which meant I had to get on deck into the middle of what sounded like a cannibal’s di
nner party, get past a gang of pet killers, and face the Man With The Snake. Simple enough.
But first I had to remember how to walk.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It took some more time to get my legs back. The party overhead didn’t slow down. If anything it got louder and wilder. By the time I had walked back and forth for a few minutes and felt ready to go, it had gone way beyond wild frat party. Now it sounded like after hours at the Republican convention.
I still felt slow, stupid and stiff, but it wasn’t going to get any better anytime soon. “All right,” I told Nicky.
“Right,” he said. “What’s the plan?”
I looked at him. He was all eager and confident, looking like he didn’t have a doubt in the world that we would waltz up on deck, clean up the rascals and sail away into the sunset.
“It sounds like everybody is on deck, so I’m going to search below-decks,” I said. “Try to find Anna.”
Nicky nodded. “Then we’ll split up,” he said. “I’ll go for that pack I stashed, so we’ve got some artillery to back us up.”
I wanted to tell him he had seen too much American TV. A gun doesn’t always save the day. He didn’t have a clue, and I could barely function, and we were about to take on a crew of killers on their home turf. And he was convinced that a gun would even things out. If I only had enough gripping strength I would have grabbed him and shaken him.
But what the hell. If he realized how bad things were, he might experience aura meltdown. So if looking for his gun kept him from jumping into the ocean screaming, maybe it was a good thing. It was all right if one of us had hope.
In any case, I wanted him out of the way. I was going to kill Cappy, no matter what it took, and I didn’t want him there for something he might not be able to handle. Let him look for his gun. It was better than looking at murder.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll find Anna.”
“Where do we meet?” he asked.