Eric's hand grazed the cool metal stock of the crossbow, but he didn't lift it into sight. The glaring searchlight from the ship made him feel too exposed, like a grasshopper impaled on a pin.
"What do you want?" he shouted at the ship.
"Want?" The voice affected a tone of surprise. "Fellowship, my dear man. The love of a good woman. Perhaps two. The respect of my peers. To die in bed at age ninety-nine, humping twin sixteen-year-old virgins."
Howling laughter from the crew.
"I want whatever I can take," he barked angrily. A match flared behind the searchlight, briefly outlining a broad lump of a man. The red tip of a cigarette glowed. The gesture was not lost on Eric. Cigarettes were a habit only of the powerful. Two cigarettes could buy you a horse. Three a whole town.
Eric glanced over at Tracy. She was quietly working her Colt Cobra.38 out of the nylon backpack. There were only three bullets left in the cylinder, their last three. He watched her pale hands trembling as she stared directly into the blinding light. Her expression was tense, yet defiant. She fidgeted with the gun in her lap, finally easing the safety off.
"We don't have anything of value," Eric called. "A few cans of food, a couple canteens of water."
"Food and water, huh?"
"Yeah. And the canoe."
"That's all?"
"That's all."
The captain snickered. "Surely you underestimate the worth of your cargo, my friend. From here you look absolutely laden with treasure."
Eric's hand tightened around the crossbow's black stock, dragging it across the curved ribs of the canoe. His finger snuggled against the cold trigger and he noticed for the first time that his hands were sweating. Good, he liked to be a little frightened. It kept him from doing anything stupid. He pulled the bow closer. Already cocked and armed with a sharp wooden bolt, the waxed string strained to flex its one hundred seventy-five pounds of pressure against the arrow.
"Quite the charmer," Tracy said. Her voice was flat, almost dreamy as she stared into the light.
"David Niven he ain't."
"The Welcome Wagon he ain't, either." She clenched her fist tighter around the gun.
"Easy," Eric soothed.
She didn't answer.
"Trace?"
"I'm fine," she said, but Eric could see that she wasn't.
It wasn't just the danger of their situation that was frightening Tracy now. The threatening tone of the man's voice had been oily with innuendo. His references to her as a "treasure" were not meant to flatter, merely assess, as one might livestock, for sale. Or cargo.
The quakes that had ripped California from the rest of the continent, that had sent a billowing dome of chemical and biological weapons clouding the sky to cut them off from the rest of the world, had also brought a lot of social changes among the survivors. People, who before had felt only marginally bound by society's rules, now felt free to do whatever they wanted. Whatever the cost. A few had turned their ruthlessness into profit, selling, whatever was in short supply. The millions of deaths in the quakes and subsequent fires had left a lot of severe shortages: food, water, weapons-and one that the survivalist magazines hadn't predicted. Women.
And business abhors a vacuum.
So women soon became good business. Scavenging entrepreneurs created an underground slave trade in women, sometimes buying them from camps, sometimes stealing them. A settlement of men might chip in a whole case of Heinz baked beans for a healthy woman. And if she was a little attractive, they might be willing to toss in an additional case of plums in extra heavy syrup.
"Now, I want you both to sit perfectly still," the captain ordered. "A couple of my men will be over to, um, welcome you."
Eric did not respond.
"Did you hear me?"
Eric studied Tracy in the bright beam that washed over her face. Last week she'd insisted he hack off her wavy red hair with his knife until it was as short as his. Now it wreathed her head in wispy tufts like the furry red petals of some exotic flower. True, it was easier to keep clean, and under some circumstances might allow her to pass for a male, but still he'd hated doing it. Not just because it had been so stunningly beautiful before, but for a much more selfish reason. One that he'd felt too guilty to admit. Her hair reminded him of Annie, his murdered wife.
Sometimes while lying in Tracy's arms, Eric would wrap her thick long hair around his fist, between his fingers, the way he used to do with Annie's. And for a few precious moments he would be back in their quiet suburban home. Timmy and Jenny would be playing chess, Jenny with one ear cocked for telephone calls from boys. He and Annie would be cuddling on the sofa, watching a video-tape movie they'd rented. The history professor and his family. Happily average, his infamous past almost forgotten.
But that was before.
Before the quakes. Before his daughter's throat had been slit open. Before Annie's neck had been snapped. Before his son, Timmy, had been stolen.
Before Dirk Fallows had returned.
Sometimes Eric wasn't sure whether his fondness for Tracy was for who she was or because she reminded him of Annie. He suspected Tracy knew this. Perhaps that was why she'd suddenly insisted on having her hair cut off.
He wasn't sorry he'd taken up with her so soon after Annie's death. This new world was unforgiving and impatient, allowed no time for mourning. Not if you were to survive.
Looking at her attractive angular features now, he couldn't imagine anyone mistaking her for a man. If anything the ragged haircut made her look even sexier, perhaps in the way it emphasized her beauty while hinting at the toughness underneath. A smooth stream sliding over sharp stones.
"We're not going to have any trouble from you, are we?" the captain asked lazily.
"We don't want trouble," Eric shouted back.
"Nor do we. But you've got trouble, my friend. Right here in River City." He chuckled. "And unless the two of you follow my orders, your trouble is spelled with a capital T which rhymes with D which stands for dead. Should I sing you a stanza?"
Eric didn't answer. No point, the guy was too full of his own wit, chattering away with manic energy.
"Griffin!"
"Cap?" someone on board answered.
"We've had a request. Play your instrument for the lovely couple. Something romantic."
Instantly Eric heard the unmistakable sound of a bow string snapping. An arrow thwacked wood, poked through the canvas and splintered a rib of the canoe's hull. The sharp metal tip lodged only inches away from Eric's knees.
"Bravo!" the captain said, applauding. Others on board joined in the applause, whistling and jeering. "A virtuoso performance, wouldn't you agree? You might even say he handles a bow better than Isaac Stern, eh?" The captain cackled with laughter.
Eric lifted the crossbow to his lap, waited.
"Apparently you two lack a sense of humor." The captain's voice hardened, shouting across the water now as if enraged. "You will remain motionless while my men approach you."
Out of the dark shadows skirting the ship, a small dinghy emerged. One man rowed, the other sat on the rear transom with a 9-mm Uzi submachine gun aimed at Eric and Tracy.
Somewhere in the dark Eric thought he heard a rubber band snapping.
"We'd prefer not to waste any precious bullets on you, so your cooperation will be appreciated." The captain's voice was calmer now, but measured, as if he was still struggling to control his temper. "By the way, you do have the Alabaster map, don't you?"
"The what?" Eric asked.
There was a pause. Eric heard the buzzing of whispered conversation. A woman's shrill voice mingled with the man's.
"No matter," the captain said cheerfully. He flicked the cigarette overboard in a bright arc of red light. "Perhaps you will feel more like talking on board. If not, well, we shall make do."
The dark figure behind the spotlight walked across the ship's deck, his thick body outlined in the rim of white from the searchlight. Then he was gone. Another figure, shorter, thinner, took his place behind the light.
The rowboat glided closer. The only sound was the oars pounding water with a quick cadence.
Tracy lifted the Colt.38 from her lap.
"Wait," Eric whispered.
"For what?"
"Wait."
She hesitated, then rested the gun back on her lap. She rolled her lower lip between her teeth, bit lightly.
The rowboat sliced through the black water until it too was basking in the bright beam from the ship's searchlight. The oarsman's back was to the canoe, but he kept looking over his shoulder at Tracy.
"Eric, look," she pointed.
Eric stared at the approaching men. Both looked like refugees from the midnight screening he'd attended last June of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Annie had dressed in an outrageous costume, sneaking past the babysitter and children. Stripping out of her trenchcoat in the car, she'd swiveled the rearview mirror over so she could shovel on her makeup while he drove. They'd laughed all the way to the theater.
But these men were serious. Their faces were caked white with some kind of makeup. Thick black mascara rimmed their eyes, scarlet lipstick was smeared on their lips. The oarsman's greasy hair was knotted into a heavy braid that hung down the middle of his muscular back like black rope. The skinny gunman on the transom wore an expensive black tuxedo with no shirt underneath, just his pale bumpy chest. Around his bony neck he wore a white flea collar.
"Jesus," Tracy said.
"Get ready."
"For what?"
"All the gear tied down?"
"Yeah."
"I mean everything. Backpacks, weapons."
She looked at him, realizing. "Oh no, Eric."
He lashed the paddles to the thwarts, secured the extra bolts for his bow in one of the backpacks.
"There's got to be another way."
"You think of one?"
The rowboat splashed closer. The gunman with the flea collar stood up in the boat and waved his Uzi. "Shut the fuck up, assholes."
The oarsman glanced over his huge shoulder and leered at Tracy. Three of his front teeth were missing. The others looked like rotten prunes.
Tracy sighed at Eric and shrugged resignation.
"Keep your head down," Eric winked.
"I said to shut up!" the gunman screamed. The rowboat was only ten feet away now, directly between the canoe and the ship. "You want to suck on the end of this, jerkoff?" He waved the Uzi at Eric.
Tracy snapped up her Colt in a double-fisted grip and fired. The.38 slug blasted a hole through the gunman's wrist, splashing a pattern of blood on the tuxedo jacket and bare skin of his chest. Undaunted, the bullet continued on through the wrist and into the center of the bloody pattern, burrowing another hole through his bony chest. The impact flipped him over the side of the small boat. His heavy boots dragged his dying body to the sunken sidewalks of Huntington Beach below.
The oarsman grabbed at his partner's Uzi, which had clattered to the floor of the rowboat. He had it in an instant and was swinging toward the canoe.
Eric hefted his Barnett Commando crossbow to waist level and pulled the trigger. The bolt jumped out of the bow, plunging through the oarsman's red Linda Ronstadt T-shirt. The Uzi dropped from his hand into the boat, but he didn't seem to care. He sat back down with a heavy thud, staring blandly at the feathered plume lodged in his chest. Blood even redder than his lipstick oozed out of the corner of his mouth.
"Kill them!" a woman's voice commanded. It was high-pitched, unmistakably Oriental. For a second, Eric thought he recognized it.
A submachine gun flared on the ship and a dozen bullets chewed through the rowboat and across the legs of the oarsman before one finally rammed through the canoe. The oarsman didn't scream, just looked confused, his heavy-lidded stare still fixed on the protruding arrow.
"Move!" Eric hollered at Tracy, and both threw themselves backward over the side of the canoe. Eric held on to the gunwale, purposely tipping the canoe over with him.
Under the black saltwater he couldn't see anything but the rim of light above that outlined the overturned canoe. He reached his arms out, flailing to find Tracy. His fingers grazed her head and he fought to get a grip on her short hair, yanking her up next to him. He knew she was a fine swimmer, but he also knew the terror even good swimmers feel when thrown into a dark ocean at night. He'd seen experienced soldiers become unhinged as they thought about all the primitive life teeming around them searching for food.
They bobbed up directly under the overturned canoe. Two rods of light slanted through the dark where the searchlight lit the bullet holes.
"Just tread here for a while," he said. "There's plenty of air and they'll probably think we swam away."
Tracy sputtered water, nodded weakly.
"No bullets!" the woman's clipped oriental voice screeched from the ship. "Save bullets."
"What the hell's going on?" the captain's voice challenged; apparently he was returning from below deck.
Their voices became quiet for a minute.
"How long should we stay?" Tracy whispered.
"We'll let the current carry us away. They must have a pretty big ship, not all that easy to maneuver in the dark, even with their searchlights. Besides it would take them a while to haul all the sails up."
"They could use the motor."
"Providing they have any fuel and are willing to waste it on us." He shook his head as he secured his crossbow to the thwarts. "Nope, my guess is they'll just write us off and sit it out for the rest of the night."
Three arrows slammed through the side of the canoe. One of them plowed a couple inches of skin from Eric's neck. He felt the sting of saltwater splashing his bleeding wound.
"Down!" he barked, pushing Tracy's head underwater as he dove under after her. They came up on the outside of the canoe, their heads still hidden from the ship. Another volley of arrows whistled through the air, some piercing the canoe, others splashing in the water around them like crazy fish.
"We swim?" Tracy asked, her teeth chattering from the cold water.
"Yeah. We swim."
"Which way?"
He pointed.
"Eric, that's toward their ship!"
"Right. They've got their light searching all over the water. They're bound to find us when we come up for air. Unless were where they aren't looking."
"Like in their laps?"
Half a dozen arrows slammed into the canoe, another half a dozen sliced through the water.
"Damn," Tracy said, "I just felt one graze my sneaker."
"How long can you hold your breath?" Eric asked.
"As long as I have to, I guess."
"Good. We won't be able to see each other underwater, so grab hold of the waistband of my pants once we're underwater."
"My boyfriend in high school already tried that line."
Eric smiled, wishing for a moment he could see her more clearly. Just in case they didn't make it. He pulled her toward him, found her shivering lips with his own. Kissed. Salty tongues flicked against each other. It was over in a second, but it gave both strength. "Take some deep breaths, force the air down. Your lungs only operate at a third their capacity during normal breathing." She sucked the air deep into her lungs. "Okay, let's go," he said, diving under the water. He waited until Tracy had groped along his back and snagged his waistband before diving deeper, out of lethal range of any stray arrows.
The numbing cold of the water seemed to wring his muscles with each stroke. Occasionally his hand brushed something floating, and he wondered if it was seaweed or a shark or that boy's body he'd dragged up. But he pushed on, scooping water aside as he swam blindly toward the ship, hoping he was still going in the right direction. Hoping that this plan was better than the last one.
After a while he felt that insistent twitching in his chest, the burning spasms of the last of his oxygen being consumed. The muscles in his throat began to flutter, demanding air. Tracy was yanking on his waistband, urging him to go up to the surface. He couldn't be sure of exactly where they were right now, but he was sure that they weren't close enough yet. He kept swimming.
Tracy's tugging became more desperate, panicky. But he swam on, fighting the screaming in his own body. They had to keep going. Finally Tracy let go, pushing off his back and shooting up toward the surface. Eric reached up, grabbed her churning ankle, and yanked her back down, wrapping his arm tightly around her chest. She fought weakly as he pulled her through the water. Just a few more yards, he thought, kicking furiously.
He heard the sudden rush of bubbles escape from her mouth, felt her chest convulse as it gulped water. She was drowning.
He had no choice now. He broke for surface.