(no subject)
Bill and Jack are Disney’s. The crew of the Northern Beacon (dwindling in number though they seem to be) is mine. Violence and colorful sailor type-talk in this installment.
BENEATH
pt. 5
Jack stumbled backwards, his muscles signaling a retreat even before he could bring himself to turn and take his eyes off the dark, slick shape moving like a mamba across the floor towards him, hissing through bloody teeth as she came. He heard his own breath coming harsh and high and fast, any words that might be trying to form burned up in the dry furnace of his throat.
When his back connected with a stack of cargo behind him, it knocked him ‘round hard enough that he righted himself facing the other direction, and he lost not a second propelling himself into a dead run. He tore forward, past the ladder he knew he couldn’t mount faster than the thing at his heels, not in tossing seas, with hands and feet and rungs all slick with blood. Ahead of him, in the pendulum-swinging light of the lantern he had somehow not dropped yet, the metal crossbars of the heavy brig door in the thick, dividing center bulkhead of the hold beckoned.
Behind came the wet, rapid two-beat slap of the mermaid’s hands on the planking as she closed the distance between them. The sound lent an extra surge of speed to Jack’s stride, and he hurtled forward.
He was shy of the door by perhaps twice the length of his arms when he felt the mermaid’s claws rake his calf. He staggered, but didn’t fall, and as he gained the last few feet to the door, he grasped the lantern two-handed, and spun, swinging it with the full weight of his body.
Jack cried out in fright as the light, for a few scant seconds, blazed noon-clear across the eyes and jaws of the thing that had followed him out of his nightmares. Then that snarling face met up hard with glass, metal, and fire, and the mermaid screamed.
The force of the blow sent a jolt up both Jack’s arms, spraying shards of glass in every direction, and the hold was plunged into darkness. He landed on his backside and his elbows, skittering backwards, his own screams warring with the creature’s as he dragged himself away from her. He reached back and found the edge of the door, hauling himself through it, then kicked it shut hard, with all the strength in both legs, begging silently for Bill’s word of caution on the brig’s touchy locks to be well-founded. His hand snaked down to draw a slim dagger out of his right boot where it was braced against the bars.
No sooner had he wrapped both hands around the hilt and raised the knife to hover between his throat, where his pulse hammered with sickening speed beneath his skin, and the blackness before him, then the reverberation of the mermaid’s body striking the door rattled through him, tearing loose a banshee-wail of terror that rang through the hold until the roar of the sea against the hull drowned it out.
When both Jack and the sea had gone quiet, he realized there was no blood-and-slime- soaked weight bearing down on him, no hot breath and shark’s teeth at his throat.
On the other side of the brig door, the mermaid raged, barricaded from her prize.
Jack let his legs drop away from the door, crawling towards the center of the brig, and went limp, pressing his cheek to the floor and sparing ten seconds to bless the Beacon and her battered bones.
Then a horrifying realization slid icily to the front of his mind, jerking him up sharply from where he lay, and he moved across the brig, swallowed in darkness, one shaking hand outstretched until it found the rough coolness of the grating on the opposite side. Jack wrapped his fingers around one of the bars, and he pulled himself to his feet, feeling blindly for the other door.
Out of the dark that he finally just closed his straining eyes against came noises, weird warbles and trilling, and a rolling, deep-throated hiss; the sort of sound he’d once heard an alligator make, up north. Claws scratched tenaciously at metal. The air was thick enough to swallow with a stench like stagnant water, and rising just around the edges of that scent was the sharp red taint of blood. Jack pressed his nose and mouth to the crook of his arm to block it out, his palm sweating around the hilt of the dagger. His other hand encountered the latch of the fore brig door, then, and he clutched at the bars, yanking hard.
It didn’t budge.
“Shit!” Jack sobbed, rattling the door roughly, but to no avail. Both sides of the brig were locked, and he was trapped.
His hand clamped convulsively around the bar it clutched, and Jack bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, squeezing his eyes shut until they stopped burning. Turning, he pressed his back to the cold solidity of the grating, and sliced a thin strip of fabric off the bottom of the shirt Bill had given him to wear. He put the blade between his teeth and wiped his oil-splattered hands thoroughly with the cloth, soaking up as much as he could. The blood was stickier, more stubborn. He’d have to scrub it off, later.
He hoped he’d have to scrub it off later.
Jack drew the twin to the dagger held in his teeth out of his other boot, and wound the cloth around the blade, tying it off. Kneeling, he laid the makeshift torch on the floor in front of him and reached, once again, for his flint and steel.
The first strike brought no spark, nor did the second. When the third stayed dark, a sob hiccupped out of him, driving him to clench his teeth down furiously on the blade, until his jaw ached. The fourth finally threw out a pinpoint of brightness, and the fifth kissed the oily cloth and blossomed into flame, a tiny nimbus of yellow in the vast, black belly of the Beacon.
Jack took the knife from his teeth with his right hand, and with his left, picked up the little torch.
The mermaid’s arm was thrust through the grating, reaching for him, her awful fingers twitching and wriggling, and Jack jolted in fright, his breath hitching. The light glittered in colorless eyes where they stared at him through the crossbars. The hideous face, lacerated and burned down its left side, twisted malevolently, and her dark lips curled away from her teeth.
Jack backed farther away, laying the light down to burn by itself on the floor of the cell. He scooted back until he found the corner junction where the brig grating and the wooden bulkhead met, and he wedged himself there.
That wicked, greedy gaze followed his movement, holding Jack’s eyes unblinkingly, and as badly as he didn’t want to see any more, he couldn’t look away from her.
He curled in on himself, wrapping both hands around the hilt of his weapon. “Go away,” he whispered, pressing his mouth to his knuckles, breathing the words across the chilled skin of his fingers. “Go away,” he willed her.
The mermaid withdrew her arm and rose up to the full height her coiled tail would grant her. She put the claws of her right hand into her mouth, sucking on them, and Jack’s scratched leg voiced its injury, forgotten in his flight. Forgotten until now, as her fingers slipped out of her mouth, trailing down her chin, and she licked her lips, staring down at him with her pale, terrible eyes.
“Go away,” Jack whispered into the hands that clutched his knife, unaware of the moment when he started to rock, back and forth, huddled in the corner of the brig. “Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away…”
……………………………………
Her prey huddled in its little haven of light, out of her reach. Behind her, the scent of her earlier, cooling kill hung heavy in the air, but as always seemed to happen now, the warmth and movement of live quarry were an intolerable distraction from the simple process of hunt-strike-feed.
She did not remember when the throbbing in her teeth for warm flesh had become an urge more compelling than the ache of hunger in her belly. She did not know how the hot, pungent scent of fear from her prey had become something that brought her pleasure. She could not recall when desire had wormed its way insidiously through her mind, strangling instinct and swallowing it whole.
She only knew she wanted the one cowering from her beyond the unbreachable barrier she slithered against. The young of its kind were rare catches for her, and though this one was almost grown, the blood she’d managed to snatch from it was still sweet enough to make her mouth water.
Tail coiled beneath her, she settled in to wait, feasting for now on each little flutter of movement and each little rustle of sound that came from the other side of that halo of light.
………………………………….
Bill almost tripped over Downey as he left Yearwood’s cabin. The downpour produced a stocky shape that came up quick on the quartermaster, wearing a look of anticipation Bill had last seen on Will’s face come Christmas day.
“What happened?”
“Ain’t you got anything more worthwhile to do with your time than stand out here gettin’ rained on and pissin’ yourself to hear the greenest gossip?” Bill groused.
“Nothin’ presents itself. What’d he do to you?”
“My wrist is well and soundly slapped.” He didn’t divulge the keen warning that had been tacked on to the reprimand for an assortment of reasons, paramount being that he knew he’d had it coming, but also because it was none of Downey’s mother-loving business.
“What about Rudolphs?” Downey fell a step behind Bill as they headed below.
Bill wiped his shirtsleeve across his brow, mopping rain and long wet hair out of his face. “Rudolphs won’t be with us much longer.”
“You don’t say.”
“No, I don’t,” Bill muttered, making for the galley. “Captain does.”
“Well, that’s a cheerful piece o’news on an otherwise shite day.”
“Be a sight more cheerful after a drink.” Bill reasoned, locating a dark, dusty bottle of rum. Ordinarily he found the stuff foul, but he was just wet, cold, and irate enough to forget that for a few swigs. Bill uncorked the bottle, took a pull, and passed it to Downey.
“Now you’re talkin’, Bootstrap.” Downey held the bottle aloft. “Let’s you, me, and the bilge rats drink to good Mr. Rudolphs, whose arse will soon be turned to us in farewell.” He took a drink significantly longer than Bill’s, exhaling appreciatively, then snorted rudely as he handed the rum back. “You think Yearwood will actually wait until we make port, or just toss him over when we’re close enough for him to swim for it? Which begs the equally interestin’ question of whether or not Rudy can swim.”
Bill raised the bottle a second time, but his hand stilled in the middle of the motion, the glass halted inches away from his parted lips.
“Wonder how the captain would take to the suggestion. Tomorrow, I mean, when he ain’t so pi--”
“What did you just say?” Bill demanded, cutting him off abruptly.
“Rudy. Do you think Rudy can--”
“The rats,” Bill said flatly, a furrow forming between his dark eyes.
“The - what?” Downey blinked twice, slowly, not following.
Bill corked the bottle and set it aside, staring at his companion as if to bore holes through him. “Where are the rats, Harry?”
Downey’s confusion thickened. “I dunno. Around, I’m sure.”
Bill shook his head. “No. They’re not.” He turned, opening cupboard after cupboard, opening the pantry, disturbing containers and pounding the floorboards with his booted footfalls as he went. Nothing squealed or scurried in any of the galley’s dim corners and crannies. “Tell me the last time you remember seeing a rat on the Beacon, Downey.” He stepped out into the narrow corridor and searched the shadowed seams of deck and bulkheads for loathed, familiar movement.
“How the hell should I know? I don’t take a regular census of the little bastards. They’re fucking rats, Turner; they’re just there. What the hell’s it matter?”
The Beacon pitched, and Bill stopped in the galley entryway, bracing himself with a hand on the jamb.
It mattered. It mattered because it was raining like the bloody forty days and forty nights up there, and the mid-levels of the ship should be crawling with the filthy little buggers by now. It mattered because there were things on a ship that were constant, that didn’t change, didn’t go away, and the fucking rats were one of them. And it mattered because…it mattered because…
Bill’s mind closed a hand around the evasive thought, seized it like a loose line in a high wind.
“The Charybdis,” he breathed, his eyes widening as they met Downey’s. “There were no rats on the Charybdis. They’d have been at the bodies in droves.”
The befuddlement in Downey’s face was forcibly shifted aside, and for the space of seconds, his expression was a mirror of Bill’s. Then he shook himself, giving a dismissive little sniff. “Bootstrap, that ain’t really…I mean, sure enough it’s odd, but it could just be…”
But Bill was already turning away, moving with purpose, and Downey followed, because a man either followed Bootstrap’s purpose, or got the hell out of its way.
Bill’s ground-devouring stride cut a path through the Beacon, back towards his quarters. Downey hurriedly trailed him, hands out to either side to steady himself as the ship bucked with ever-increasing fervor. In addition to the pounding of waves on wood came the rumble and crack of thunder, muted as it came to them down through the decks, but gaining volume. “What’re we doin’, Bootstrap?”
“We need light,” Bill tossed back over his shoulder, never slowing. “Light and weapons, and we need to be quick about it.” Not much meat on a rat. Not much on all of ‘em put together, either, and we left the Charybdis almost a fortnight ago.
“Light for what? What’re we lookin’ for, Turner?”
A hand plunged into a pocket, and pulled out a tooth, taken from a ravaged body, on the deck of a charnel house of a boat. A tooth that might have passed for a shark’s, save for the fact it had been pulled out of a man who was shredded, along with his shipmates, on a dry deck.
Bill spun on his heel just outside his quarters, and held the tooth under Downey’s nose until the man backed up a step to stop himself going cross-eyed, and took it out of Bill’s fingers.
“We’re looking for the thing this used to be attached to.”
Downey lifted befuddled eyes from the gruesome keepsake.
“Saw a funny shape in the water off the coast of Wales one night, about thirteen years ago,” Bill went on, quickly and quietly. “Watched it for about ten minutes before I lost sight of it. Couldn’t ever quite convince myself I’d seen what my eyes were tryin’ to talk me in to. Not ‘til the Charybdis, and that ugly-lookin’ thing you’ve got right there.”
Downey’s befuddlement began to cave in, and he opened his mouth. Bill held a finger up emphatically.
“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘no such thing’, mate, you’ll have the pleasure of being the first one into the hold.”
Downey battled with himself briefly, common sense wrestling with the memory of the Charybdis’ mangled dead. “The hold?” he echoed finally. “Don’t you think that might be wiser left ‘til morning?”
“Depends, I suppose,” Bill replied, raising his eyebrows. “How long ago d’you reckon we ran out of rats?”
Downey stared, then flicked his eyes heavenward. “Lights,” he recited flatly, “weapons. Right.” He turned to go collect his own.
“Five minutes,” Bill called after him.
“Unless I decide you’re fuckin’ insane before I get back.”
Bill turned from the sight of Downey hurrying away and stepped into his quarters, dreading what he was going to have to say to Jack -
--Who wasn’t there.
Bill took in the empty hammock with a groan. One night, lad. For one night, couldn’t you have stayed where you belonged?
If Jack had gone back up into that storm, Bill was going to wring his silly neck. That was all he needed to make this day just a little extra fucking special; the kid catching himself a case of pneumonia, or crossing paths with Rudolphs after what had taken place in Yearwood’s cabin.
He seethed about it silently while he gathered extra shot and powder, adjusted his baldric, and secured a small, hand-sized lantern to his belt. He was reaching for the lid of his trunk when Josef Sweeney blew into the room, wearing a face to match the storm outside.
“Turner, you son of a bitch. If I got to come down ‘ere again I’m goin’ to break somebody’s ‘ead, right?”
“What can I do for you, Sweeney?” Bill asked, swiftly emptying his belongings from the trunk.
“You can start by tellin’ me what you done wit my goddamn men what I need up top keepin’ us from goin’ balls up in dis storm!”
“I don’t have any of your men, Sweeney, and as much as I’d love to stand here and listen to you talk about your balls--”
“’Ennesee and Parks, Turner,” the other man snapped.
“Hennesee and Parks,” Bill shot back, his tone sharpening, “I borrowed for one bloody task almost two…”
The force behind his retort died, abruptly.
“…almost two hours ago.” He straightened, hands gripping the lip of the trunk. “Sweeney. Are you absolutely certain they’re not on deck?”
“You tink I’d be down ‘ere wastin’ my time wit your fool ass if--”
“Sweeney!”
The man went silent, anger momentarily dethroned by surprise.
“Absolutely certain they’re nowhere on deck?”
Sweeney nodded. “Aye, Bootstrap, absolutely. Dey never come up.”
“Fuck!” Bill snarled, tossing the rest of the trunk’s contents haphazardly to the floor.
“Den de kid say ‘e go find ‘em, but--”
“Listen to me, Sweeney, I know this weather’s keepin’ everyone’s dance card full, but I need you to --” His mind caught up with his ears then, and told his mouth to shut the hell up. “What…what about the kid? You mean Jack?”
“Aye. ‘E said ‘e was goin’ to go down and see what was ‘oldin’ ‘em up.”
Bill was suddenly, acutely aware of every single cold droplet of rain sliding down his skin. “Jack went to the hold,” he breathed, and didn’t know where he’d found the air for speech, because it bloody well wasn’t in his lungs.
Sweeney nodded, and Bill’s eyes closed.
When he opened them again, the loose plank in the trunk’s false bottom had been pried up, and his right hand was closed around the scarred black sheath waiting inside.
“Sweeney, I need you to put a man on each topside hatch,” Bill said, climbing to his feet.
“I got no--”
“Then take them from the resting crew!” Bill burst out. “Tell Captain Yearwood to give the order if they argue. And keep everyone out of the lowermost levels until Downey or I say otherwise.” He wrapped his hand around the hilt, as unsightly as the sheath, both attesting to a hard existence spent in the cane fields, before it had come into Bill’s possession. Not near so pretty or graceful a piece as a cutlass, but it was smaller, better in tight quarters. “I want blades for the boys on the hatches,” he went on, “not just guns. Don’t chance the wet powder.”
“Bootstrap!” Downey’s voice heralded his arrival seconds before he stepped into sight. He wore a miniature lantern to match Bill’s at his waist, and carried a regular-sized one.
“An’ just what is it we’re supposed to be watchin’ for at de hatches?” Sweeney demanded.
“Oh, believe me, mate, you’ll know it if it comes.” Bill said as he and Downey made way. He slid the machete out, hefting it briefly, testing the weight and the grip, and the reach.
He’d have to get close. But he’d kept the edge like new; if he just got close enough, it could cleave bone.
TBC
BENEATH
pt. 5
Jack stumbled backwards, his muscles signaling a retreat even before he could bring himself to turn and take his eyes off the dark, slick shape moving like a mamba across the floor towards him, hissing through bloody teeth as she came. He heard his own breath coming harsh and high and fast, any words that might be trying to form burned up in the dry furnace of his throat.
When his back connected with a stack of cargo behind him, it knocked him ‘round hard enough that he righted himself facing the other direction, and he lost not a second propelling himself into a dead run. He tore forward, past the ladder he knew he couldn’t mount faster than the thing at his heels, not in tossing seas, with hands and feet and rungs all slick with blood. Ahead of him, in the pendulum-swinging light of the lantern he had somehow not dropped yet, the metal crossbars of the heavy brig door in the thick, dividing center bulkhead of the hold beckoned.
Behind came the wet, rapid two-beat slap of the mermaid’s hands on the planking as she closed the distance between them. The sound lent an extra surge of speed to Jack’s stride, and he hurtled forward.
He was shy of the door by perhaps twice the length of his arms when he felt the mermaid’s claws rake his calf. He staggered, but didn’t fall, and as he gained the last few feet to the door, he grasped the lantern two-handed, and spun, swinging it with the full weight of his body.
Jack cried out in fright as the light, for a few scant seconds, blazed noon-clear across the eyes and jaws of the thing that had followed him out of his nightmares. Then that snarling face met up hard with glass, metal, and fire, and the mermaid screamed.
The force of the blow sent a jolt up both Jack’s arms, spraying shards of glass in every direction, and the hold was plunged into darkness. He landed on his backside and his elbows, skittering backwards, his own screams warring with the creature’s as he dragged himself away from her. He reached back and found the edge of the door, hauling himself through it, then kicked it shut hard, with all the strength in both legs, begging silently for Bill’s word of caution on the brig’s touchy locks to be well-founded. His hand snaked down to draw a slim dagger out of his right boot where it was braced against the bars.
No sooner had he wrapped both hands around the hilt and raised the knife to hover between his throat, where his pulse hammered with sickening speed beneath his skin, and the blackness before him, then the reverberation of the mermaid’s body striking the door rattled through him, tearing loose a banshee-wail of terror that rang through the hold until the roar of the sea against the hull drowned it out.
When both Jack and the sea had gone quiet, he realized there was no blood-and-slime- soaked weight bearing down on him, no hot breath and shark’s teeth at his throat.
On the other side of the brig door, the mermaid raged, barricaded from her prize.
Jack let his legs drop away from the door, crawling towards the center of the brig, and went limp, pressing his cheek to the floor and sparing ten seconds to bless the Beacon and her battered bones.
Then a horrifying realization slid icily to the front of his mind, jerking him up sharply from where he lay, and he moved across the brig, swallowed in darkness, one shaking hand outstretched until it found the rough coolness of the grating on the opposite side. Jack wrapped his fingers around one of the bars, and he pulled himself to his feet, feeling blindly for the other door.
Out of the dark that he finally just closed his straining eyes against came noises, weird warbles and trilling, and a rolling, deep-throated hiss; the sort of sound he’d once heard an alligator make, up north. Claws scratched tenaciously at metal. The air was thick enough to swallow with a stench like stagnant water, and rising just around the edges of that scent was the sharp red taint of blood. Jack pressed his nose and mouth to the crook of his arm to block it out, his palm sweating around the hilt of the dagger. His other hand encountered the latch of the fore brig door, then, and he clutched at the bars, yanking hard.
It didn’t budge.
“Shit!” Jack sobbed, rattling the door roughly, but to no avail. Both sides of the brig were locked, and he was trapped.
His hand clamped convulsively around the bar it clutched, and Jack bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, squeezing his eyes shut until they stopped burning. Turning, he pressed his back to the cold solidity of the grating, and sliced a thin strip of fabric off the bottom of the shirt Bill had given him to wear. He put the blade between his teeth and wiped his oil-splattered hands thoroughly with the cloth, soaking up as much as he could. The blood was stickier, more stubborn. He’d have to scrub it off, later.
He hoped he’d have to scrub it off later.
Jack drew the twin to the dagger held in his teeth out of his other boot, and wound the cloth around the blade, tying it off. Kneeling, he laid the makeshift torch on the floor in front of him and reached, once again, for his flint and steel.
The first strike brought no spark, nor did the second. When the third stayed dark, a sob hiccupped out of him, driving him to clench his teeth down furiously on the blade, until his jaw ached. The fourth finally threw out a pinpoint of brightness, and the fifth kissed the oily cloth and blossomed into flame, a tiny nimbus of yellow in the vast, black belly of the Beacon.
Jack took the knife from his teeth with his right hand, and with his left, picked up the little torch.
The mermaid’s arm was thrust through the grating, reaching for him, her awful fingers twitching and wriggling, and Jack jolted in fright, his breath hitching. The light glittered in colorless eyes where they stared at him through the crossbars. The hideous face, lacerated and burned down its left side, twisted malevolently, and her dark lips curled away from her teeth.
Jack backed farther away, laying the light down to burn by itself on the floor of the cell. He scooted back until he found the corner junction where the brig grating and the wooden bulkhead met, and he wedged himself there.
That wicked, greedy gaze followed his movement, holding Jack’s eyes unblinkingly, and as badly as he didn’t want to see any more, he couldn’t look away from her.
He curled in on himself, wrapping both hands around the hilt of his weapon. “Go away,” he whispered, pressing his mouth to his knuckles, breathing the words across the chilled skin of his fingers. “Go away,” he willed her.
The mermaid withdrew her arm and rose up to the full height her coiled tail would grant her. She put the claws of her right hand into her mouth, sucking on them, and Jack’s scratched leg voiced its injury, forgotten in his flight. Forgotten until now, as her fingers slipped out of her mouth, trailing down her chin, and she licked her lips, staring down at him with her pale, terrible eyes.
“Go away,” Jack whispered into the hands that clutched his knife, unaware of the moment when he started to rock, back and forth, huddled in the corner of the brig. “Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away…”
……………………………………
Her prey huddled in its little haven of light, out of her reach. Behind her, the scent of her earlier, cooling kill hung heavy in the air, but as always seemed to happen now, the warmth and movement of live quarry were an intolerable distraction from the simple process of hunt-strike-feed.
She did not remember when the throbbing in her teeth for warm flesh had become an urge more compelling than the ache of hunger in her belly. She did not know how the hot, pungent scent of fear from her prey had become something that brought her pleasure. She could not recall when desire had wormed its way insidiously through her mind, strangling instinct and swallowing it whole.
She only knew she wanted the one cowering from her beyond the unbreachable barrier she slithered against. The young of its kind were rare catches for her, and though this one was almost grown, the blood she’d managed to snatch from it was still sweet enough to make her mouth water.
Tail coiled beneath her, she settled in to wait, feasting for now on each little flutter of movement and each little rustle of sound that came from the other side of that halo of light.
………………………………….
Bill almost tripped over Downey as he left Yearwood’s cabin. The downpour produced a stocky shape that came up quick on the quartermaster, wearing a look of anticipation Bill had last seen on Will’s face come Christmas day.
“What happened?”
“Ain’t you got anything more worthwhile to do with your time than stand out here gettin’ rained on and pissin’ yourself to hear the greenest gossip?” Bill groused.
“Nothin’ presents itself. What’d he do to you?”
“My wrist is well and soundly slapped.” He didn’t divulge the keen warning that had been tacked on to the reprimand for an assortment of reasons, paramount being that he knew he’d had it coming, but also because it was none of Downey’s mother-loving business.
“What about Rudolphs?” Downey fell a step behind Bill as they headed below.
Bill wiped his shirtsleeve across his brow, mopping rain and long wet hair out of his face. “Rudolphs won’t be with us much longer.”
“You don’t say.”
“No, I don’t,” Bill muttered, making for the galley. “Captain does.”
“Well, that’s a cheerful piece o’news on an otherwise shite day.”
“Be a sight more cheerful after a drink.” Bill reasoned, locating a dark, dusty bottle of rum. Ordinarily he found the stuff foul, but he was just wet, cold, and irate enough to forget that for a few swigs. Bill uncorked the bottle, took a pull, and passed it to Downey.
“Now you’re talkin’, Bootstrap.” Downey held the bottle aloft. “Let’s you, me, and the bilge rats drink to good Mr. Rudolphs, whose arse will soon be turned to us in farewell.” He took a drink significantly longer than Bill’s, exhaling appreciatively, then snorted rudely as he handed the rum back. “You think Yearwood will actually wait until we make port, or just toss him over when we’re close enough for him to swim for it? Which begs the equally interestin’ question of whether or not Rudy can swim.”
Bill raised the bottle a second time, but his hand stilled in the middle of the motion, the glass halted inches away from his parted lips.
“Wonder how the captain would take to the suggestion. Tomorrow, I mean, when he ain’t so pi--”
“What did you just say?” Bill demanded, cutting him off abruptly.
“Rudy. Do you think Rudy can--”
“The rats,” Bill said flatly, a furrow forming between his dark eyes.
“The - what?” Downey blinked twice, slowly, not following.
Bill corked the bottle and set it aside, staring at his companion as if to bore holes through him. “Where are the rats, Harry?”
Downey’s confusion thickened. “I dunno. Around, I’m sure.”
Bill shook his head. “No. They’re not.” He turned, opening cupboard after cupboard, opening the pantry, disturbing containers and pounding the floorboards with his booted footfalls as he went. Nothing squealed or scurried in any of the galley’s dim corners and crannies. “Tell me the last time you remember seeing a rat on the Beacon, Downey.” He stepped out into the narrow corridor and searched the shadowed seams of deck and bulkheads for loathed, familiar movement.
“How the hell should I know? I don’t take a regular census of the little bastards. They’re fucking rats, Turner; they’re just there. What the hell’s it matter?”
The Beacon pitched, and Bill stopped in the galley entryway, bracing himself with a hand on the jamb.
It mattered. It mattered because it was raining like the bloody forty days and forty nights up there, and the mid-levels of the ship should be crawling with the filthy little buggers by now. It mattered because there were things on a ship that were constant, that didn’t change, didn’t go away, and the fucking rats were one of them. And it mattered because…it mattered because…
Bill’s mind closed a hand around the evasive thought, seized it like a loose line in a high wind.
“The Charybdis,” he breathed, his eyes widening as they met Downey’s. “There were no rats on the Charybdis. They’d have been at the bodies in droves.”
The befuddlement in Downey’s face was forcibly shifted aside, and for the space of seconds, his expression was a mirror of Bill’s. Then he shook himself, giving a dismissive little sniff. “Bootstrap, that ain’t really…I mean, sure enough it’s odd, but it could just be…”
But Bill was already turning away, moving with purpose, and Downey followed, because a man either followed Bootstrap’s purpose, or got the hell out of its way.
Bill’s ground-devouring stride cut a path through the Beacon, back towards his quarters. Downey hurriedly trailed him, hands out to either side to steady himself as the ship bucked with ever-increasing fervor. In addition to the pounding of waves on wood came the rumble and crack of thunder, muted as it came to them down through the decks, but gaining volume. “What’re we doin’, Bootstrap?”
“We need light,” Bill tossed back over his shoulder, never slowing. “Light and weapons, and we need to be quick about it.” Not much meat on a rat. Not much on all of ‘em put together, either, and we left the Charybdis almost a fortnight ago.
“Light for what? What’re we lookin’ for, Turner?”
A hand plunged into a pocket, and pulled out a tooth, taken from a ravaged body, on the deck of a charnel house of a boat. A tooth that might have passed for a shark’s, save for the fact it had been pulled out of a man who was shredded, along with his shipmates, on a dry deck.
Bill spun on his heel just outside his quarters, and held the tooth under Downey’s nose until the man backed up a step to stop himself going cross-eyed, and took it out of Bill’s fingers.
“We’re looking for the thing this used to be attached to.”
Downey lifted befuddled eyes from the gruesome keepsake.
“Saw a funny shape in the water off the coast of Wales one night, about thirteen years ago,” Bill went on, quickly and quietly. “Watched it for about ten minutes before I lost sight of it. Couldn’t ever quite convince myself I’d seen what my eyes were tryin’ to talk me in to. Not ‘til the Charybdis, and that ugly-lookin’ thing you’ve got right there.”
Downey’s befuddlement began to cave in, and he opened his mouth. Bill held a finger up emphatically.
“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘no such thing’, mate, you’ll have the pleasure of being the first one into the hold.”
Downey battled with himself briefly, common sense wrestling with the memory of the Charybdis’ mangled dead. “The hold?” he echoed finally. “Don’t you think that might be wiser left ‘til morning?”
“Depends, I suppose,” Bill replied, raising his eyebrows. “How long ago d’you reckon we ran out of rats?”
Downey stared, then flicked his eyes heavenward. “Lights,” he recited flatly, “weapons. Right.” He turned to go collect his own.
“Five minutes,” Bill called after him.
“Unless I decide you’re fuckin’ insane before I get back.”
Bill turned from the sight of Downey hurrying away and stepped into his quarters, dreading what he was going to have to say to Jack -
--Who wasn’t there.
Bill took in the empty hammock with a groan. One night, lad. For one night, couldn’t you have stayed where you belonged?
If Jack had gone back up into that storm, Bill was going to wring his silly neck. That was all he needed to make this day just a little extra fucking special; the kid catching himself a case of pneumonia, or crossing paths with Rudolphs after what had taken place in Yearwood’s cabin.
He seethed about it silently while he gathered extra shot and powder, adjusted his baldric, and secured a small, hand-sized lantern to his belt. He was reaching for the lid of his trunk when Josef Sweeney blew into the room, wearing a face to match the storm outside.
“Turner, you son of a bitch. If I got to come down ‘ere again I’m goin’ to break somebody’s ‘ead, right?”
“What can I do for you, Sweeney?” Bill asked, swiftly emptying his belongings from the trunk.
“You can start by tellin’ me what you done wit my goddamn men what I need up top keepin’ us from goin’ balls up in dis storm!”
“I don’t have any of your men, Sweeney, and as much as I’d love to stand here and listen to you talk about your balls--”
“’Ennesee and Parks, Turner,” the other man snapped.
“Hennesee and Parks,” Bill shot back, his tone sharpening, “I borrowed for one bloody task almost two…”
The force behind his retort died, abruptly.
“…almost two hours ago.” He straightened, hands gripping the lip of the trunk. “Sweeney. Are you absolutely certain they’re not on deck?”
“You tink I’d be down ‘ere wastin’ my time wit your fool ass if--”
“Sweeney!”
The man went silent, anger momentarily dethroned by surprise.
“Absolutely certain they’re nowhere on deck?”
Sweeney nodded. “Aye, Bootstrap, absolutely. Dey never come up.”
“Fuck!” Bill snarled, tossing the rest of the trunk’s contents haphazardly to the floor.
“Den de kid say ‘e go find ‘em, but--”
“Listen to me, Sweeney, I know this weather’s keepin’ everyone’s dance card full, but I need you to --” His mind caught up with his ears then, and told his mouth to shut the hell up. “What…what about the kid? You mean Jack?”
“Aye. ‘E said ‘e was goin’ to go down and see what was ‘oldin’ ‘em up.”
Bill was suddenly, acutely aware of every single cold droplet of rain sliding down his skin. “Jack went to the hold,” he breathed, and didn’t know where he’d found the air for speech, because it bloody well wasn’t in his lungs.
Sweeney nodded, and Bill’s eyes closed.
When he opened them again, the loose plank in the trunk’s false bottom had been pried up, and his right hand was closed around the scarred black sheath waiting inside.
“Sweeney, I need you to put a man on each topside hatch,” Bill said, climbing to his feet.
“I got no--”
“Then take them from the resting crew!” Bill burst out. “Tell Captain Yearwood to give the order if they argue. And keep everyone out of the lowermost levels until Downey or I say otherwise.” He wrapped his hand around the hilt, as unsightly as the sheath, both attesting to a hard existence spent in the cane fields, before it had come into Bill’s possession. Not near so pretty or graceful a piece as a cutlass, but it was smaller, better in tight quarters. “I want blades for the boys on the hatches,” he went on, “not just guns. Don’t chance the wet powder.”
“Bootstrap!” Downey’s voice heralded his arrival seconds before he stepped into sight. He wore a miniature lantern to match Bill’s at his waist, and carried a regular-sized one.
“An’ just what is it we’re supposed to be watchin’ for at de hatches?” Sweeney demanded.
“Oh, believe me, mate, you’ll know it if it comes.” Bill said as he and Downey made way. He slid the machete out, hefting it briefly, testing the weight and the grip, and the reach.
He’d have to get close. But he’d kept the edge like new; if he just got close enough, it could cleave bone.
TBC