The Night Boat

The Night Boat Page 23

SMOKE WHIRLED ACROSS the Coquina roofs in the grip of a rising storm wind. A lamp had been thrown over in a tinderbox shack near the wharfs, and red tendrils of flame greedily consumed the roof. The dancing sparks spread, rapidly devouring other dwellings, leaping from roof to roof, caving in fiery timbers on the bodies that lay beneath.

The fires took hold, strengthened by the wind, and began to gnaw away at the semicircle of shanties clustered around the harbor. The reddish light in the sky grew in intensity, the sea mirroring the flames. A silence had fallen across the village, broken only by the noise of wood giving way beneath the fires and the thrashing of the ocean against Kiss Bottom. Still, there remained the echoes of chaos, the screams that had filled the streets, the moaning and crying that had spilled through windows and doorways.

Kip roared through the smoke in his jeep, his eyes red and wild, his shirt hanging in tatters around his chest, ashes all over him, ragged scratches on his throat and cheeks. His eyebrows had been singed, the flesh around them puffed from the heat. He gripped the wheel, swerving to avoid the bodies littering High Street as he headed down for the harbor. A corpse lay in a doorway frame - a woman, her face mangled beyond recognition - and another - a man in a pool of blood - alongside. A body sprawled directly in his path, a mass of torn flesh he had known as James Davis; he wrenched the wheel to one side and whipped past. More bodies, more pools of blood. A child, arms and legs spread-eagled, eyes lifted to the sky; the man called Youngblood, the head almost torn from the body. Windows above the Landfall Tavern had been shattered, and he saw the heavyset woman who had worked there sprawled out with sightless eyes. There was a rotting corpse crumpled in a heap - one of the things from the U-boat - grinning even in death; a young girl - yes, the high yellow on her way to Trinidad - now beaten and torn, her beauty ravaged. He shuddered, looked away, was forced to look back to keep from running over a corpse.

He had reached the village just before they attacked in full force; he had fired his rifle at them, struck some of them down with his jeep, shouted until he was hoarse to alert the sleeping islanders. But he had known he was too late. He heard the screaming begin, saw them crashing through glass and doors. There were too many... too many... too many... the streets crawling with death. He'd fought them away even as they rushed him, trying to pull him from his jeep, and then he had raced to protect his own family.

And there he had found his house a shambles, windows broken, the doors caved in. Tears stinging his eyes, he had rushed inside. His wife and daughter were gone. There was a smear of blood across a wall, a bullet hole in a door, another in a window frame; the sight made him freeze in shock. He had fought his way out of there, sobbing, not knowing if they were alive or slaughtered.

Kip saw figures struggling through the pall of smoke as he neared the harbor. He tensed, slammed on his brakes, and reached for the rifle on the seat beside him. The forms emerging from the darkness were islanders, terrified people running wildly past him toward the jungle beyond. He saw their glazed, mad eyes and knew there was nothing he could do.

Except one thing.

He jammed his foot to the floor, blared the horn to avoid a man who staggered through a doorway into the street. The jeep roared along the harbor through the blazing heat. A bucket brigade had been started, the men moving in slow motion, their clothes smoking. Wet wood whined and shrilled; to Kip it sounded like what he imagined a shell from a U-boat's deck gun, screaming from the sea, might sound like.

"WHERE ARE YOU!" he shouted, his throat raw. "WHERE ARE YOU!" Smoke whirled before him, stinging his eyes, filling his mouth. But he knew where they were.

It was war. War, just as it had been in 1942. Time had stood still for the U-boat's crew, and now it was frozen for the villagers as well. But this was not war. It was a massacre, a hideous and inhuman massacre of the innocents. But, that was the way it was done, wasn't it? War always took the innocents first, and then the things that had done the killing slipped back into the shadows to wait and plan for another day. By all that was holy, he swore he would kill as many as he could with his bare hands if need be. He left the burning village behind, sweat and tears mingling on his face, his pulse pounding with the knowledge of what was to come.

And then he was at the boatyard, crashing through the remnants of the gates, swerving past the junk piles, one hand guiding the wheel and the other gripping his rifle. The naval shelter lay before him, a streak of lightning illuminating it for an instant. The doorway was open. He stopped the jeep, leaped over its side, and ran toward the shelter with the rifle clasped in his arms.

But before he reached it there came a hollow rumbling noise that seemed to make the earth tremble beneath his feet.

He stood where he was, listening, new sweat beading up on his face. The noise came again, harsher, shaking the shelter's walls. The distant sound of thunder, yes, thunder.

"Noooooooo," Kip hissed through clenched teeth, his mind reeling. "NO!" He took a step forward.

The noise died away, came back, growing, growing, growing, making the ground tremble. With a shriek of metal the huge sliding bulkhead crumpled.

Kip forced himself to move, one sluggish step at a time. "I won't let you get away...!" he shouted against the brittle wind, the words flying out to all directions. "GODDAMN YOU, I WON'T LET YOU GET..."

The bulkhead bent outward, a blister of metal. It collapsed into the water with a metallic ripping noise.

And from the shelter, inch by inch, the U-boat's stern emerged.

The battered propellors churned oily water; the boat's aft deck slid out, then the conning tower. Kip could see formless shapes on the dark bridge. He raised the rifle and fired, hearing the bullet ricochet off iron. The U-boat emerged like a reptile slithering from its den, and the entire length of it shuddered from the straining power of the engines. It moved free of the shelter and began to turn, gradually, the iron protesting, toward the reef passage with foam streaking along its bow.

The U-boat ground itself over a skiff, rammed broadside into a small trawler at anchor and cast it away. The sea was already filling the trawler's shattered port deck. Lightning jabbed the sky, and Kip saw the iron monster cross the harbor, veering away from the sandbars; the boat gained the passage and began to move, sluggishly against the surge of white-capped breakers. Kip ran past the water's edge and on into the sea, bringing the rifle up, firing without aiming, again and again. The gun jammed; the U-boat was out of the harbor now, the ocean thundering against its hull, and when the next sheet of lightning came it was gone, swept away into the night, on a final and terrifying voyage.

The waves thrashed around his knees, almost throwing him off balance. Wind sucked at him, howling within the empty shelter. The Night Boat, Boniface had said. The Night Boat, the most terrible of all creatures of the deep. "Nooooo," he whispered. "I won't let you get away..."

Lightning flashed overhead, and the thunder's boom sounded like the laugh of a war god, savage and victorious.

Rain began to fall, first in single heavy drops, then in sheets that rippled across the sea. Kip stood in the downpour, his eyes fixed on the limitless blackness. Very slowly he made his way out of the water and when he reached shore he crumpled to his knees in the sand, driven down by the weight of the storm.

Moore and Jana clung to each other, following the men through the curtains of rain. They were Caribs, Moore realized, although he didn't recognize any of them. They were moving across a high-grassed clearing into a part of Coquina he didn't know. He could see the glimmer of lights in the distance. The crowded shacks took shape out of the rain, and he saw the outline of the muddy street stretching down to the north harbor. Caribville. One of the Indians stepped from the path into thicket and sat on his haunches, facing back the way they'd come, with a rifle across his knees. Another took his position a few yards away.

The streets were empty. The heavy raindrops on tin roofs sounded like gunshots. The man with the shotgun spoke quietly to the others and the group split in different directions; he motioned with his head for Moore and Jana to follow, and he led them to a shack where an oil lamp burned behind a window screen. He opened the door and waved them in with an impatient gesture.

Inside there was a dim glow of low-burning lamps, the faint smell of tar and tobacco and food. An emaciated old woman in a patchwork gown sat rocking in a chair in front of a cast-iron stove. Her hair was knotted behind her head; her leathery flesh was stretched tight over her prominent facial bones. Another woman, perhaps in her late thirties, stepped away from the door as they came through.

They stood in a large room; Moore could see another in the back. There were a few chairs, a sun-faded wooden table with a lamp set at its center, cane blinds across the windows, a mat of intricately woven sea-grass on the floor. Framed pictures that had obviously been scissored from travel magazines hung from nails around the room. On one wall was a gun rack, now empty; near it hung a beautifully carved and smoothed wooden tribal mask, light gleaming on its oiled surface. Its triangular teeth were bared, the eyes set in a fierce, warriorlike glare.

Moore put his arm protectively around Jana, supporting her as the man closed and bolted the door behind them. As she swept her wet hair from her face, Moore saw an angry red welt on one cheek.

The man shook his head like a dog, spraying droplets of water from his beard and shoulders, and placed his shotgun in the rack. At once the younger woman was at his side, speaking to him in the Carib language. He didn't reply, but waved her back to her place. Across the room the old woman rocked back and forth, her hands clenched in her lap, her gaze boring through Moore's skull. She muttered something and laughed abruptly.

The man took up one of the lamps in his large hand and stepped toward Moore. With the light falling directly upon them, Moore could see his horribly ravaged face. The eyes were as hard and cold as chunks of new granite.

"Who are you?" Moore asked him.

The man ignored him and spoke to the young woman, who hurried from the room. She returned a moment later with a brown blanket and offered it to Moore, but he could see no charity in her face; he took it and wrapped it gently around Jana's shoulders.

The Carib held the lamp steady, its light painting his flesh the color of waxed mahogany. He held Moore's gaze and motioned with the lamp toward a window. "Rain before wind," he said in English, his voice like the rumble of a diesel engine. "The storm will follow."

"You saved our lives," Moore said. "If you hadn't..."

"There are many who are beyond saving now," the Carib said. His speech pattern had a mixture of British and West Indian rhythms, and he sounded as if he might be fairly well educated. "Your name is David Moore; you're the one who bought the hotel, aren't you?" He stood like a massive tree rooted to the floor.

"That's right."

"What happened to your shoulder?"

"I can't remember. I think one of them hit me with something."

"Broken bone?"

Moore shook his head.

The man grunted, played the light across Jana's face. Behind him the old woman muttered on, her voice rising and falling.

"What place is this?" Jana asked.

"My village. My house." He looked from one to the other. "I am Cheyne, Chief Father of the Caribs."

And now Moore made the connection: The man reminded him of that statue in the Square. Cheyne, a distant ancestor of the chieftain who'd battled pirates?

"Those things..." Jana said softly. She picked at the dried blood on her lower lip and then raised her face to Moore's. "What about Schiller?"

"Dead," he replied, his mind sheering away from the image of Schiller pinned to the floor. He weaved back and forth, the pain now flaming under his flesh. Cheyne spoke to the woman, who left the room again. He clamped a firm hand around Moore's arm and eased him into a chair. Cheyne motioned for Jana to sit on the mat beside Moore and she did, drawing her knees up to her chin and pulling the blanket around her. Then Cheyne withdrew a gleaming, jagged-edged blade from his waistband. He picked up a flat black whetting stone from the table and began to draw the blade slowly across it; then he walked over to the window and stood peering out. Moore sat silent with his head in his hands.

"The constable made a mistake bringing that boat into the harbor." Cheyne said suddenly. "A long time past, it brought death and evil here. Now again. It's not a machine; it's a living thing, and it has the soul of Hehue, the serpent..."

Moore looked up. "You've got to take your men back there and help them!"

The Carib continued sharpening his blade, turning it under his hand. "Some men have gone back to help those who may reach the jungle," he said after a pause. "We went over there when we heard the shooting, and many of the young bucks wanted to go down and fight. But I wouldn't let them. None of my people are going into Coquina village."

"Christ!" Moore blurted out, shaking his head. "Do you hate those villagers so much you could stand by and let them be slaughtered?"

"They're not my people," Cheyne said. "But this is not the point - a good fighter wouldn't last a minute against those creatures. No. If and when they reach Caribville the men will have to protect their own women and children."

"This isn't the time for counting heads, damn it! For God's sake, help them!"

"Oua!" Cheyne said, turning from the window, his stare bitter and forceful. "What had God to do with this? Everyone dies, Moore, whether in pain or at peace."

The young woman came back in, carrying a pot of a strong-smelling, vinegary liquid. She knelt before Jana, dipped a cloth into the pot, and began to dab rather roughly at the cuts. Jana winced and jerked her head back; the woman grasped the nape of her neck and finished the job.

The noise of the rainfall had quieted somewhat; now Moore could hear the water rushing through gutters. He got to his feet, feeling the heaviness of his shoulder. "Then I'm going back. Give me a gun."

Cheyne sharpened his knife in silence. In the distance thunder crashed.

"I said I'm going back, damn you!"

Cheyne put the stone and the knife back on the table, reached over for the shotgun, broke it open, and withdrew two shells from a back pocket. He slipped the shells into the breech, closed it, and slung it over to Moore.

"Go on," he said quietly. He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. "But you won't be coming back. And you won't be able to help any of them, because before you reach the village those things will have smelled you out, and they'll find you. They'll bleed you dry; then they'll feast on your corpse and leave your bones for the lizards. Go on."

"Lalouene," the old woman said, the rocker creaking. "He's a dead man." She stared at Moore, her eyes fathomless depths.

Jana shook off the Carib woman, ignoring her angered chattering. "Don't," she said to Moore. "Please don't go back there!"

Moore said, "I've got to find Kip. I'll come for you when I can." He paused a moment, looking back at the Carib in hope the man might go with him, but Cheyne glowered at him and did not move. Moore knew there was no use asking again; he'd have to take his chances alone in the jungle.

There was a loud knock on the door. Moore tensed, whirled around. Cheyne moved forward like a panther, his hand gripped around the knife. He looked out the window and then threw back the bolt.

Two rain-soaked Carib men, both armed with rifles, stood in the doorway. Cheyne motioned them in and the man in the lead - tall and bony with black, ferretlike eyes - began to talk in an excited voice, gesturing with his large hands toward the sea. He talked on for a full minute before Cheyne spoke, and then the man answered a question Cheyne had posed.

Moore was watching Cheyne's face; he could see a coldness creeping across it from the chin upward, first tensing the jaws, then drawing the lips tight, flaring the thick nostrils, settling in the eyes like circles of frozen steel. But in the eyes also, very deep, there was a flash of something he recognized because he had seen it before, in his own mirrored gaze: a powerful, soul-aching fear. Then it passed, and Cheyne found his stern mask again. He seemed to be giving the men some kind of instructions. They listened intently.

When he'd finished the two men returned into the night. Cheyne stood watching them go, and then he rebolted the door. "OUA!" the old woman shouted wildly. "NO!" She shook her head from side to side and the younger woman left Jana to try to calm her. At the back of the house, a baby began to cry.

"What is it?" Moore asked him.

Cheyne reached out and took the shotgun from Moore's grasp. "You will not need this. They're gone."

"How?"

"They've taken their boat," Cheyne said, "and left Coquina."

At once Jana was on her feet. "That can't be!"

"Those men saw the boat move around the point and disappear into the northwest."

Moore shook his head, his shoulder burning, his mind whirling with the horrifying events of the night.

"It can't be!" Jana said forcefully. She looked over at Moore, her gaze helpless, almost childlike.

Moore slowly let himself sink back into the chair. He felt the Carib watching him. "We helped them," he said wearily. "God save us, we helped them repair their boat. We put them in the boatyard, gave them access to fuel and oil and tools. And all along, while we were sleeping, they were piecing that terrible machine back together - and we never knew. God... we never knew..."

"Now listen to me!" Jana said, rallying suddenly. "Even if they have worked on the diesels and replaced enough of the battery cells, they can't be getting but a fraction of their former power out of those old engines! I don't care what sort of equipment they had, they couldn't have repaired all of the systems! Their steering will be sluggish, they'll be slowed to a crawl and forced to keep to the surface!"

"You said the systems were duplicated," Moore reminded her. "One operated by machinery. One by hand."

"No!" She looked from Moore to Cheyne, back to Moore. "They may have gotten the skeleton moving and maybe a portion of the brain working, but the veins and nerves are still dead!"

"Can you be certain of that? What about their torpedoes, their deck gun? And that damned boat itself, with its blade of a bow, could batter a hole through a timber-hulled freighter...!"

Jana was silent, trying to piece together what he was saying. "No. What you're thinking is... madness. This isn't 1942... this isn't World War II..."

"To them it is," Moore said. "If they're moving northwest they may be going back toward Jamaica. And there are shipping lanes between here and there. Lanes that they may have prowled forty years ago. They're bound to have known the charts and how to reach the lanes from here..."

"God!" Jana whispered. "What's kept them... alive after more than forty years underwater? What sort of things have they become?"

The baby's crying was louder; the Carib woman left the room, went back through a doorway, and returned holding a black-haired infant cradled in her arms. The baby groped for a breast, and she unbuttoned her blouse to let it suck from a nipple. She kept her eyes fixed on Cheyne's back, as he stood at the window.

"You can go back to your village now," Cheyne said after a long silence. "It's safe."

"They may still need your help," Moore told him.

"No. I have no time to waste on them." He turned and spoke to the young woman, whose face was taut with apprehension. The woman struggled to rise, her arms trembling with the effort, and Cheyne crossed the room to her. He whispered gently and stroked her hair while she muttered pleadingly, clutching at his arm, holding the child close to her body. He looked into Moore's face. "I say go back to your own kind."

Moore rose and took a single step toward him. There was a fierceness in Cheyne's face that made him the living duplicate of that hand-hewn tribal mask. In the light of a nearby lamp the scars seemed only the exterior wounds of something that had mauled his soul. "What are you going to do?"

"It's no concern of yours. Now leave, both of you!"

Tears had begun to stream along the old woman's face.

Moore's voice was unyielding. "What are you going to do?"

Cheyne continued to stroke the woman's hair. When he looked again at the white man his jaw was set and firm, the eyes shotgun barrels.

"I'm going after the Hehue," Cheyne said. "And I'm going to destroy it."