of his head. Eric shivered. He ripped a swatch of his torn shirt and pressed it to the wound.
“Hold this in place.”
Marcus hissed.
Eric aimed his torch into the lower stairwell and saw the man crawling up the steps. His claw-tipped hands and feet dug into the netting of fleshy veins now covering the wood, while the walls to either side crawled with arteries the thickness of his arms.
At the opening of the upper steps, the gate lurched back and forth.
The hinges groaned.
Sisk continued to stab and slash. “The bars are giving way. It won’t hold long.”
O’Neil dropped his pistol and clapped both hands to his ears. Hollis stood silent, his face matching the ashen color of his beard.
“What do we do?” Lorris cried.
What, indeed? Eric thought. The question circled his mind like a mouse that had fallen in a well.
He looked to the lower stairwell, to Marcus and his ravaged neck; to the meaty tendrils creeping up the walls. He saw the wood grain vanish before his eyes, the rough surface of the timbers flatten.
One of the gate’s hinges cracked. Then another.
“They’re coming through,” Sisk yelled.
But rather than face the gate, Eric turned and touched the wall, running a hand across its surface, feeling the same soft, hot substance he’d encountered in the slave hold.
Skin, his mind howled. The wood is turning into skin!
And before the insanity of it could overwhelm him, Eric drew back his sword and plunged the blade into the boards. It sank up to the hilt, squirting a brackish slime that smelled of gangrenous wounds left to a noonday sun. The odor embraced him, seeking to steal his breath, but he forced it out with a savage cry and threw all his weight forward, slicing through the barrier.
“This way,” he shouted.
Without waiting for a reply, he plunged into the gap, not daring to dwell on the blubbery texture that wet his hair and licked his face.
He emerged onto the gun deck. The long corridor stretched out before him, running the length of the ship and looking mercifully vacant. The starboard cannons sat in the shadows to his left. Dim starlight seeped through the cracks of their porthole shutters, casting gray bands on the floor.
The other men oozed out of the hole and followed Eric’s lead, running toward the stern.
“The other stairwell.”
At the mid-ship, Eric’s feet squished across a softer section of the floor; the portion above the slave hold. Ignoring it, he glanced over his shoulder to see the men catching up.
Behind them, the rat-creatures had broken down the gate. They erupted through the cut in the wall, spilling forth like a demonic brood from an ungodly womb.
The horrific spectacle spurred Eric faster. He cornered right—
To discover another group of rats rumbling down the steps of his intended target.
He skidded to a stop.
The creatures descended in a landslide of bodies, trampling each other in their single-minded determination to reach their captors.
He spun away and retraced his steps, nearly colliding with Hollis and the others.
“Aft storage room,” he said, not needing to explain when the others spotted the pursuing masses.
They scurried to the rear of the ship and filed through the storeroom door. Once inside, Eric slammed it shut, locking it with his key.
“Bar it!”
Hollis lit another candle, illuminating only a third of the massive space. Lorris and O’Neil dragged crates and barrels flush with the threshold while Sisk shoved a cannon ram through the door handle, jamming it into a rigging harness affixed to the wall. Eric went for the tool bin. He snatched up two hammers and a handful of nails and passed them to the men. Stooky slumped down on a box while the others went to work.
The rats hit the door.
Everyone retreated, poised to defend themselves, but the barricade held firm.
Eric collected a lantern from a wall hook and joined it with Hollis’s flame.
“This is it,” Lorris said. “There’s nowhere left to go.”
Eric pretended not to hear him. Instead, he singled out a key on his ring and held it out.
“Mister Sisk, ready arms; there are pistols and ball-shot in the cabinet behind you. Load as many as you can.”
He turned and pointed at the twin cannons positioned along the room’s rear wall.
“Lorris, O’Neil; grab one of those chasers and point it at the door. There’s no time to secure ropes, so mind you leave room for recoil.”
O’Neil gasped. “You’re going to fire a cannon into the ship?”
Eric matched his stare. “I doubt that wood will hold any longer than the gate. When those things come through, I want a proper reception for them.”
“Do it,” Hollis ordered.
Eric locked eyes with the slaver. The man’s hands shook as he retrieved a liquor flask from his jacket and downed the contents.
“How’s it feel?” Eric asked. “Locked away, fearing for your life, surrounded by hate … Had you ever considered it before?”
The man gazed back, speechless. The night’s events had snuffed the angry fire in his eyes, leaving behind a gray, burnt-out expression.
Lorris and O’Neil hauled the first cannon into position.
And all at once the pounding stopped.
Everything went silent.
The men stood staring at the door, Lorris with a fifty-pound powder keg cradled in his arms.
Eric pressed his ear to the wood but heard nothing from the other side.
“Can we crawl out?” O’Neil whispered. “Exit through the chaser portholes and scale the stern?”
Eric shook his head. “The Captain’s quarters overhangs this level by six feet. We’d never make it.”
“I’ll take the water over those things,” Sisk said.
“And you’d die just the same.”
Eric broke away from the group and crossed the width of the ship to portside, using the lantern to search the crates and bins, looking for whatever they could use.
Something squished in the shadows.
His breath caught at the sound; it was the same wet and slippery noise Captain Forester’s hands had made when he reached inside the slave girl’s body.
He held up the lantern.
The light shimmered on the moistened surfaces of the room, revealing a huge cluster of eyeballs growing on the far wall. Each ghost-white orb had to be larger than his head. They blinked in autonomous reaction to the light, all seated in a fibrous nest of tendons.
Eric jumped back.
They’re watching us!
He twisted away, mouth open to warn the others their plan had been discovered, when he witnessed Stooky slump forward.
Focused as they were on the door, Eric realized no one else saw it happen—or viewed the pulsing black artery bridging the gap between Stooky’s head and the wall.
“Look out!” Eric bellowed.
Before he could elaborate, gouts of blood sprayed from Stooky’s mouth, nose, and ears. Red rivulets wept from the corners of his eyes and sweated from his pores. A bright patch stained the crotch of his tattered pants.
Huge rodent teeth exploded from his mouth. Shiny claws tore through his fingertips.
His toenails burst out of the leather of his shoes, pushing him taller as the bones of feet and ankles cracked, grew, and reassemble.
Hollis and O’Neil scurried away, leaving Sisk and Lorris.
Stooky’s eyeballs swelled, popping over the lids. His face elongated into a snout, saliva streaming from his fangs. He lunged forward with a roar.
Lorris screamed. He was cut off from the rest, trapped between the changing deckhand and the cannon.
Stooky tore free of the umbilical tethering him to the ship and jerked the powder keg out of Lorris’s grasp, raising it above his head. He smashed it down on the cannon barrel, shattering the wood into splinters, unleashing a volatile black cloud.
> With the cannon rendered useless, the pounding at the door resumed. Pinpoints of claw tips pierced the wood.
Stooky turned his black gaze on the men.
Lorris dove over the cannon while Sisk seized up two of the pistols he’d already loaded. He stepped forward, aiming both muzzles at Stooky’s face.
“Don’t—” Eric yelled.
Sisk pulled the triggers, and the sparks from their percussion caps transformed the entire room into a vision of Hell.
The cloud of gunpowder still hanging in the air ignited into a fireball, knocking Eric off his feet. He toppled backward, tripping over the second cannon barrel, landing on its lee side. The blast shattered the larger kegs piled against the door, and a second apocalyptic explosion rocked the ship.
Everything vanished in a white-hot blaze.
Eric hit the wall. The floor. His prone body got trampled by debris.
The room tilted as the ship rocked to and fro in the wake of the explosion, its roar still ringing in Eric’s ears, helping him realize he wasn’t dead. Shakily, he raised his head.
Hot embers floated in the air. They lit on his skin, branding his flesh, but he shrugged them off and pushed himself upright.
He started forward but only managed two steps before stumbling to the floor again.
Hollis and O’Neil sat up to his left, both men groaning.
Not trusting his feet, Eric crawled to the front of the room while his equilibrium recovered.
The explosion had obliterated the storeroom’s forward wall and damaged a portion of the starboard flank. Ocean water twinkled beyond a mosaic of holes. He looked around but saw no sign of Stooky, Lorris, or Sisk—none other than a single black boot containing the bloody stump of a foot.
Eric pushed to his feet and took several tentative steps, wading through the rubble. Outside the room dozens of small fires lit the scene,