"What the hell?"
"You all right?" Everly asked again. "Did he cut you?"
"Oh, Christ!" Weston said. "What the hell happened?"
"I cut his throat," Everly said almost matter-of-factly. "Are you all right?"
The sonofabitch is annoyed that I didn't answer him quickly enough.
"I'm wet, my hands are wet," Weston said.
And then he realized what made his hands wet and sticky, and was quickly nauseous. Not much came out, but his chest hurt from the effort, and there was a foul taste of bile in his mouth.
"What the hell happened?" he asked, now indignant himself.
"Here it is," Everly said. "I found it."
"Found what?"
"The knife, a filet knife, it looks like," Everly said. Weston felt something pushing at him. "You take it."
"I don't want it!"
"There's three more of them outside," Weston said. "In thirty seconds, they're going to suspect this guy fucked up."
"He tried to kill me?" Weston asked, his brain not quite willing to accept that fact.
"Just be glad he went after you first," Everly said. "If I'd have had to fight the sonofabitch, no telling what would have happened."
"Jesus Christ!"
"Load your pistol," Everly ordered.
"There's shit-there's blood-all over my hands."
"Wipe them, for Christ's sake, on your pants. Get your pistol loaded. Qui-etly!"
Weston slapped his hands against his trousers to wipe off the blood, then somehow managed to get the.45 pistol from its holster. The first time he tried to pull the slide back to chamber a cartridge, his fingers slipped when it was halfway back, and the spring forced the slide forward again without chamber-ing a cartridge.
"Quietly, for Christ's sake!" Everly said. And then, as a flashlight played in the compartment, blinding Weston with its sudden light, he added, "Shit!" A moment later there were half a dozen deafening explosions, each accompa-nied by an orange flash.
Now everything seemed to move in slow motion.
Weston frantically wiped his fingers on his trousers and felt for the serra-tions on the rear of the pistol slide. He jerked it back violently. His fingers slipped off, but when the slide moved forward again, he heard-and felt-a cartridge being chambered.
He now recognized the noise. It was the Thompson firing, and it was in-credibly loud, painfully deafening. His ears rang, and he felt dizzy. Though he was nearly blinded by the light from the flashlight, he vaguely saw Everly div-ing for it. Then he covered it with his body, and the light went out.
An orange ball in Weston's eyes faded slowly. After what seemed like a full minute but was probably far less time, he could make out a slightly lighter area in the blackness. This was the hatch to the compartment, he realized- now open. A moment later, he saw the reason the hatch was open: There was a body in it.
He could now make out Everly, not clearly, but clearly enough to see that he was grasping the hair on the head of the body in the hatch. He pulled the head back and cut the man's throat.
"They don't have any weapons," Everly said. "Guns. If they did, they would have used them by now. But how the fuck do we get out of here?"
"They'll be waiting for us," Weston said, and immediately felt like a fool.
Everly moved close to the hatch, then rolled onto his back.
"As soon as I'm through the hatch, you follow," Everly ordered. "Come up here!"
Weston moved toward the hatch. When he put his hand to the deck, it slid in what had to be blood. The bile returned to his mouth, but he was able to restrain the impulse to vomit.
He had just reached Everly when Everly fired the Thompson at the side and overhead bulkheads, ten or twelve rounds in two- and three-round bursts. The noise and muzzle flashes were again blinding, deafening, and painful.
When partial sight returned, Weston could see Everly shoving himself through the hatch, still on his back. Additional flashes came from the Thomp-son. But, with the muzzle outside the compartment, no more painful explosions assaulted his ear.
Weston dove through the hatch the moment Everly had cleared it, then rolled onto his back.
"Shoot the sonofabitch!" Everly ordered.
Weston looked frantically from side to side, and finally saw one of the Filipinos, scurrying aft on all fours.
"Shoot the sonofabitch!" Everly screamed.
Weston held the Colt in both hands, lined up the sights as best he could, and fired. The Filipino seemed to hesitate. Weston shot him again. And again.
"Make sure he's dead," Everly called, somewhat more calmly.
Weston rose to his feet and walked unsteadily aft. The Filipino-he was "their Filipino," the one who'd arranged for the boat, taken the money-was on his stomach, his legs pushing as if trying to get away. Weston did not want to shoot him again. But then, as if with a mind of its own, the hand holding the.45 raised the pistol until it was pointing at the base of the man's skull, and his finger pulled the trigger.
The man's head seemed to explode.
He looked back at Everly in time to see him-far more clearly this time- repeat what he'd done in the compartment. Pulling the man's head backward by his hair to expose his throat, he used a thin-bladed knife to cut deeply into it. Blood gushed out.
Everly dropped the man's head onto the deck. As Weston watched, horri-fied, Everly ran his hands over the man's body, searching it. He put his hands in the man's pockets and came out with a pocket watch, a key, and some money, all of which he jammed into his own pocket. Finally, he stood up.
"You want to give me a hand here, Mr. Weston?"
"What?"
"Get this sonofabitch over the side. Him and the others."
"You're going to throw him overboard?"
"You want to keep them, Mr. Weston?" Everly asked.
Weston went forward and helped Everly throw the body over the rail. It entered without much of a splash. And when he gave in to the impulse to look over the side, it was nowhere in sight.
Everly was by then already aft, searching the body of "their" Filipino. From it, he took a canvas wallet and a gold locket of some sort the man had been wearing around his neck. He went into the wallet and took from it the five hundred dollars Weston had given the man on the beach. He put the money in his pocket; and then, horrifying Weston, he pulled the man's trousers off.
Everly met his eyes. "We're going to need clothes," he said, adding, "Help me get the bastard over the side."
Weston moved to help him. The body fell backward into the water, and Weston had a quick sight of the man's face, the features obscenely distorted by the.45 bullet. It would remain with him for a long time.
By the time they'd dragged the last two bodies from the compartment, searched them, stripped them, and pushed them over the side, Weston was ex-hausted, sweating, and breathing heavily. He sat down on the deck, his back against the mast, feeling sick and fighting the urge to throw up.
A few minutes later, Everly came back and sat down beside him.
"No food and no charts," Everly said. "Those bastards had no intention of doing anything but going back where we came from, with our money, and without us."
"Shit," Weston said.