A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [19]
“Willy’s getting the raft ready. It’ll hold eight, so that’s all of us and some food and water. We can at least row it. We’re a ways out from land, I ain’t gonna lie, but we can at least make for land. Hopefully another craft’ll spot us, and if we see something we got the flare gun to signal ‘em.”
They stared at him in silence. “That’s the best plan I got. Any objections?”
Sam hugged herself, Edward draped around her middle. Charles looked down at the deck, blinking. Flanagan sighed.
“Okay, then, that’s what we’ll do. Willy, you got that dinghy yet?”
“Got it, Skip,” Jurgen called from the sundeck. He’d watched the exchange without interrupting. Or helping, Kelly noted.
“Well, go ‘head and blow it up, get it tied off over the side. Make sure it don’t leak. Rest of you get provisions together.” Flanagan offered his hand to Beaushanks. Charles stared at it, then took it. Flanagan pulled him to his feet. “Go ‘head an’ help the others, Mr. Beaushanks.”
“Charles,” Beaushanks corrected. “Call me Charles. Sorry … about before, I mean. I…”
“Forget it, Charles. Just pitch in.” Flanagan clapped him on the back. Charles waddled like a schoolboy back into the cabin behind the others.
“That was pretty good,” Kelly admitted from the bridge. “Pretty doggone good.”
Flanagan smiled up at her. “I hate to get rough with folks, but …” He shrugged.
She smiled back, then something drifted on the air to her. She stood up, tuned her ears to the mist over the murmur of the food gathering. “Listen!” she said. “What’s that sound?”
Flanagan scrambled up the ladder and stood beside her. He listened.
There was a secondary sloshing, slapping sound, under the sound of the sea against the charter’s bulkhead, and a creaking, a moaning of timbers.
“Holy crap,” Flanagan said, “it sounds like …”
Kelly watched him. “Like what?”
“Like another boat. Old one.”
They went out onto the sundeck, Flanagan moving as far onto the bow as he could, both of them straining into the gloom and fog, following the groaning wooden sounds and the slicing of something through the water.
“Sounds like it’s close,” Flanagan said, his voice a whisper.
The sound drew nearer. They held their breath, though she didn’t know why.
“Close … close by.”
“Don’t you want the flare gun?”
Flanagan’s eyes widened with realization. “Oh! Yeah!” He stumbled away and Kelly watched him vanish into the fog before his footsteps faded. She turned back to the haze, watching, listening, straining into the leaden blanket.
She heard the puff-hiss of the inflatable raft filling with air. She strained harder to hear the growing, stealthy sounds from the water.
A sudden black shadow emerged from the mist in front of Kelly, and she gasped, pushing herself backward as fast as she could, but the massive looming form came through the wafts of fog with abrupt silence and she didn’t have time to cry out. A shuddering thump nudged the charter craft and sent vibrating shock from bow to stern, knocking it off center and slapping it aside like a gnat. Kelly screamed then, heard the chaos of voices in a terrified cacophony from the deck below as she toppled from the force of impact. Her midriff slammed into the railing around the deck and her hands closed around it, bending her over the cold chrome tubing. She couldn’t see the black water below, but managed to keep her equilibrium in check so she didn’t flip overboard. She pushed back as the boat pivoted, the bow moving away from the fading shape to the port side as it slipped by them like a wraith in the fog.
Flanagan was beside her then, helping her to her feet. “All right? You all right?”
She nodded, dumb with shock and fear, trembling hard. “Y-yeah, I’m okay. God, it came out of nowhere!”
“No horn, no lights, no nothin’,” Flanagan said, staring at the vessel as it faded further into the gray. “And nobody’s come out to see what the hell happened, neither.” Kelly followed him across the sundeck and down the ladder. He turned to Jurgen. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
Jurgen looked at him. “Can