The engine, a black outboard Bob Jr. figured must be military grade just like the boat itself, churned through the sea with a hushed whir. He could still hear the alarm back in the greenhouse. And something else, coming from way back beyond the buildings, something higher pitched, like some swarm of pissed-off Weed Eaters and lawnmowers.
He cranked the throttle over as far as it would twist. The Zodiac dutifully soldiered up one swell after another. Bob Jr. coughed. His mouth was curiously dry, as if he’d taken five or six bong hits and was so stoned he wasn’t sure if he was sitting or standing. He scraped the top of his tongue against his top teeth and didn’t like the feel of the slime that now coated his teeth. He coughed again.
An open knife didn’t belong in an inflatable boat, so he snicked it shut and handed it back to Slade. Slade was sitting up now, digging around in his nostril with his thumb. He closed one nostril and tried to blow out whatever was in his nose. A tiny spatter of blackened mucus landed on his knee.
Bob Jr. coughed again and bent over between his knees, really hacking. He tried to swallow. Globs of wet clay seemed to be clogging his throat. “Hey. All that shit back there that Deemer told us, you don’t think he meant us or anything, right? I mean, we didn’t breathe in anything. We didn’t, right?”
Slade didn’t answer. He closed his fist around the knife and pointed.
Bob Jr. twisted and saw distant helicopters, looking like a dozen dark dragonflies rising over the island, incinerating everything below. Streaks of light leapt from the buzzing insects. When they struck the island, fire bloomed so bright it darkened the sky itself. He heard the immense crackling thunder a half-second faster than he felt the impact, a hot blast of wind that lifted his hair and dried his eyes.
He thought he heard a dense, muted click behind him.
If he hadn’t turned back to shield his face from the explosions, Slade would have been able to slit his throat. As it was, Bob Jr. had turned just enough to catch the old man’s movement and shot his hand out. The blade sliced through the outside of his palm, but then Bob Jr.’s hand had slipped past the knife and grabbed Slade’s bony wrist. He wrenched his fist over and Slade cried out, releasing the pocketknife.
It bounced on the wooden floor of the boat.
Bob Jr. let go of the throttle and snatched at the knife. The engine’s pitch dropped to a low murmur and the boat spun as he knocked the tiller sideways. Anger sparked and roared in his clogged head, and for a moment, rage obliterated everything. Still clutching Slade’s wrist, he wrenched the older man even farther off balance and drove the knife into his chest. The three-inch blade punctured the thin sternum with a sound like the snapping of a plastic fork.
Slade tried to catch his breath. It hitched and snagged.
Bob Jr. yanked the knife out, plunged it in again.
Again.
And again.
When Bob Jr. finally stopped, the wooden floor was slick with blood. Slade’s chest was a shredded patchwork of blood, ripped fabric, and meat. The old man’s head was thrown back, dead eyes staring at the sky.
Bob Jr. rose to his knees, gathering his bearings. The island was off to the right now, and the relentless waves were pushing them closer. He hit the throttle again, knowing that he had to keep moving, put some distance between him and the island.
He coughed again. This time it felt like something ripped in the back of his throat, and he swallowed before he could stop himself. A thick lump the size of a peach pit, wet and smooth, slid down his esophagus. He couldn’t breathe through his nose.
Soon as he hit land, he was gonna have to find some antibiotics or something.
That brought him back to Slade’s body. He couldn’t exactly take the old man back with him. Bob Jr. left the engine for a moment and scrambled forward. He flopped Slade over, got hold of the back of his belt and collar, and slung him onto the side of the boat, then rolled him over.
The corpse hung facedown in the swells, suspended in the sun-dappled greenish-blue water. For a second, Bob Jr. was afraid the old man might twitch and jerk his head out of the water, gasping for breath at the last moment. But he stayed down, legs drifting under him, arms splayed out. A thin haze of blood spread out slowly, clouding the water.
Good. It would draw sharks and anything else in the deeps that wanted a free meal. No one would ever know. As far as anyone else was concerned, Slade had died on the island.
Bob Jr. almost lost his balance as the boat rolled over the crest of a large wave. He shook his head. He didn’t feel right. He looked back and saw that he was being driven back to the island again. Crawling back over to the engine, he cranked the throttle over again and headed in what he hoped was a southeasterly direction.
His stomach heaved and he almost threw up. Strangely, it didn’t feel like he was seasick. Once the boat had moved away from the island, the ocean had been fairly calm, and besides, he had only been out there ten or fifteen minutes. This was something different, something connected to the goddamn head cold.
Thinking about the heaviness in his head made it worse, somehow. He slumped over, feeling all of his strength evaporate, bleached out by the Caribbean sun. It was all he could do to hold on to the tiller and keep the throttle twisted. He tried to reassure himself. It made sense. After all the adrenaline and shock from the morning, he was bound to feel exhausted once all the excitement was over.
He managed to turn his head to watch the island grow smaller and estimated it was at least a half mile behind him. The light from the flames was still plainly visible. He dropped his gaze to stare at his right hand, the one gripping the throttle.
A fat gray spider had nestled in the soft webbing between the knuckles of his fore and middle fingers. It didn’t move. Bob Jr. wasn’t sure if it was dead or simply content to rest there, motionless. He went to flick it away with his left thumb. The abdomen sac wobbled, but it remained rooted to the spot. A dozen or so irregular legs uncurled from the center.
Bob Jr. blinked and wondered what was wrong with him.
He hoped he was hallucinating.
Spiders didn’t have that many legs. And these legs looked… wrong, as if they weren’t spider legs at all. Some of them looked grotesquely disproportionate, as if they belonged on grasshoppers or crickets. Some were so tiny he didn’t even realize they were legs at all until he squinted and got closer.
He wanted to whip his hand away, smash it against the side of the boat, drag it in the water and drown the damn bug, anything, but he didn’t want to let go of the throttle. If just one of those choppers saw him, he was as good as dead. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure if he could even move as fast as his panic wanted as it pleaded with his muscles.
What if it was poisonous? All kinds of nasty, poisonous insects lived in the tropics all around the world, creeping and crawling through the jungles. No. He’d come too far to let some goddamn spider poison him. He gritted his teeth and squeezed the bulbous body between his left thumb and forefinger, intending to pull it gently away from his skin and fling it into the water.
But as he applied just enough pressure to pick it up, the sac burst, dribbling a thick blackened soup over the back of his hand. The legs shivered furiously in mindless spasms. He pulled the body away from his skin, surprised that he couldn’t see any head.
Then he saw the thin gray thread that trailed out of the center of the body and connected with the webbing between his fingers. He tugged gently and felt the gray tendril move under his skin.
The sensation made him cough again, gagging this time. He clutched at his throat with his left hand and gave a wracking cough. Black mucus spattered across the blood on the bottom of the boat. The fingers on his right hand fluttered of their own accord and released the throttle. The boat slowed and drifted in the swells.