“Eew, I hate lying on the sand,” she said. “Did you bring a beach towel?”
“Well, no. All we got is each other.”
“Okay then,” she said while staring at the uneven deck of the dinghy. “I don’t think I can stretch out here either. This whole boat is too small for us to lay down in.”
A look of disappointment crossed his face, but his visage was obscured by the night. “So what do we do now? Head back?”
“I don’t know. Just keep driving. Is the rest of the island just all trees from here on out?”
“No, there’s a private estate at the other end.”
“Oh yeah? Let’s take a look.”
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. That’s Mr. Morgenstern’s private area. They’ll kill me if we get close.”
“Then we don’t get close. We stay far out in the water here so they can’t see us.”
“They might hear the engines.”
“Just keep going slow,” she said. “I can barely hear it myself.”
Oliver bit his lip. He was already in so much trouble, he was sure they would be waiting for him when they got back onto the resort pier. “I can’t believe I’ve let you convince me to do this.”
She placed a confident hand over his. “Just a quick look. I’ve never seen how the super rich lived before.”
He sighed as he turned slightly to starboard in order to put more distance between them and the island’s shore. “Just a quick peek, yeah? Then I turn this boat around.”
Kim started to get giddy. She felt like a little kid breaking all the rules her parents had set down. “Okay, it’s a deal.”
Oliver kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the boat’s throttle as he maneuvered the dinghy past the neighboring jungle until he could make out the faint outlines of the sprawling private estate to his left. “That’s weird, there’s no lights turned on at all.”
Kim stood up. “Yeah, why is that?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. Perhaps they all packed up and left.”
She pointed towards the small pier jutting out from the corner of the big house. “There’s two boats tied by the dock.”
“That’s Emeric Morgenstern’s powerboat,” Oliver said, staring at the custom-built, gold-lined Eliminator moored at the dock. “I saw him take a spin on it from the shore once when I got into Lemuria for the first time.”
“So he’s in there? Why does the whole place look abandoned?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” he said as he began turning the steering wheel. “Let’s head back.”
She placed a restraining hand over his forearm. “Wait up. Let’s hang out here for awhile. Can we get in closer?”
“Absolutely not,” he said adamantly. “All resort staff are under orders to never approach the private area without permission.”
“But there’s nobody here.”
“Even then,” he said. “They might have passive detection devices or even cameras installed all over the place.”
Kim moved over to the bow of the dinghy and sat down along the cushioned sides of the gunwale. “Fine, let’s just hang out here while looking at an empty estate then.”
He lowered the throttle to idle and turned the engine off. “Okay, just for a few minutes.”
Kim beckoned him with her hand. “Come over here.”
He got closer and sat down beside her. Placing his arms around Kim’s neck, he started kissing her again. “You’re not feeling seasick, are you?”
She giggled. “What kind of a stupid question is that? Of course not.”
“It’s just that the last girl I took boating with me started vomiting the moment we left the dock.”
“I’m made of sterner stuff, Mr. Marriot.”
He kissed her again. “I guess you are. Now we ought to…” Oliver craned his neck forward and squinted at the wine dark sea beyond.
Kim turned her head to see what he was looking at. “What is it?”
He pointed towards something bobbing on the moonlit water’s surface. “Do you see that?”
She looked out to where he was pointing. With the boat lights turned off, the only illumination was from the moonlight reflecting on the calm surface of the sea around them. “I don’t see anything.”
But Oliver was certain. He got back up and made his way over to the controls. He quickly restarted the engine and began revving the throttle. “There was a cyclone that hit us about a week ago. It temporarily knocked out the power supply over the entire island. Maybe some people got hurt.”
“So now what?”
“Let’s get closer,” Oliver said. If he got into trouble so be it. The object on the water looked like a person’s head, and if someone needed to be helped then he would risk his job for it. Turning on the boat’s deck lights, he also checked the radio to see if it was working—it was. I won’t report anything in until I get a closer look.
Kim got on her knees and stared out past the bow. “Yeah, I think there’s somebody in the water.”
“Okay, hang on.”
Oliver kept the throttle on low as the dinghy closed the distance to the object. “There should be a torch in a cabinet underneath the cushions.”
“A what?”
“I’m sorry, you yanks call them flashlights.”
“Right,” Kim said as she leaned back and fumbled open a small compartment underneath the bow. Rummaging through various bits of small equipment, she successfully grasped the cylindrical length of a yellow waterproof flashlight.
He lowered the boat’s throttle as they drifted close enough to take a closer look. “What do you see?”
Kim switched the flashlight on. She could see what looked to be the back of a man’s head and shoulders drifting less than two meters from the dinghy’s forward bow. “Someone’s in the water. It looks like he’s wearing some sort of gear.” She tried calling out to him. “Hey mister, you okay?”
The stranger failed to react.
Oliver kept the throttle on idle as they got ever closer to him before turning the engine off completely. He hurried to the bow of the dinghy while grabbing one of the paddles he had used earlier, along with the first aid kit from the boat’s main storage cabinet. “Hold on, Kim.”
Leaning over the dinghy’s pointed bow, Kim tried to reach out to the man in the water. As she made a one handed grab at his shoulder but missed, the man seemed to turn and face her, and she finally saw the frozen look of horror on his lifeless face. The rest of his body below the ribcage was missing, and there was a school of small fishes nibbling on the corpse’s ropelike entrails. Kim screamed and tried to lean backwards, but she lost her balance and tipped over the side of the gunwale, falling into the water with a loud splash.
“Kim!” Oliver said as he tried to lean out and extended the paddle, hoping she could grab hold of it, but Kim continued to yell while thrashing on the water’s surface.
She had swallowed a mouthful of seawater the moment she fell in, and it partially choked her screams. As Kim looked up at Oliver, flailing at the paddle he was holding out towards her, she also saw a monstrous shadow of pale, pulsating flesh pull itself out from the water and clamber up the aft deck of the dinghy, just behind the outboard motor.
As Oliver turned and saw what was now on the boat, they both screamed in unison.
28
TAYLOR ERSKINE STOOD a few meters away from the helicopter as its rotors began to power down. Once the fuselage doors opened and Kazimir Morgenstern stepped out onto the helipad, Lemuria’s chief of security quickly closed the gap and extended his hand. “Welcome to Lemuria, sir.”