Borealis(21)
Charlie shook his head. “No. She got to him.” He cleared his throat as McEwan mounted another step. “She got to you too, Mac.”
“Ain’t nobody gettin’ to me, Mears. Why don’t you come on down? We’ll talk it out.”
Mike Fenty’s face suddenly appeared at the pane of glass in the pilothouse door—just inches, despite the shield of glass, from Charlie’s own. Charlie’s heart leapt in his chest. Mike’s eyes had soured, the sclera textured like curdled milk, and a network of whitish blisters had cropped up along the right corner of his mouth. As Charlie looked upon him, Mike Fenty grinned. His gums receded, his teeth looked wolfish.
“Can’t have you messin’ with the captain,” McEwan said. He hefted the ice axe in his hands as he climbed yet another step. “We’re almost home, Charlie. Then we can go about our shit. Like you.” Just as the girl had done before him, McEwan cocked his head to one side like an inquisitive mutt. “Ain’t you got a kid out there you’re anxious to start lookin’ for, Mears? A little boy? Hell, man, once we get back to Saint Paul, you can do all the lookin’ you want. You can use my goddamn car. Got a brand new F-450, chains on the tires, the whole nine. All yours, amigo. Whatever you want.” McEwan paused, halfway up the stairs. “Just come on down with me, huh? What’d ya say?”
Behind the glass, Mike Fenty’s face appeared to blur like someone moving too quickly just as a photo was being snapped.
“Listen to me,” Charlie said, trying to watch both Mike and McEwan at the same time. “You guys ain’t thinkin’ right. Did you hear what I said about Bryan? He jumped over the side, Mac. He’s dead.”
“Parasites,” McEwan said matter-of-factly. “In the head.”
“I can’t let this boat reach Alaska. I think that’s what she wants.”
“Talkin’ crazy now, Mears.”
“Someone dumped her out here for a reason. We can’t let her get back.”
“Hey, Mears—” he said, taking another step, “—you remember what I said ’bout them crabs? How we ain’t really no different so’s we gotta be careful, keep an eye out, make sure we don’t do what they do?”
“Don’t come up any farther,” he warned.
“Well,” McEwan continued, ignoring him, “you ain’t kept such a close eye. Seems to me you started coming apart, gettin’ ready to explode on y’self.”
“Billy—”
Scraping: nails on a chalkboard. Wincing, Charlie looked to find Mike dragging the blade of a ten-inch boning knife down the length of the windowpane. His menacing grin widened, skeletal in its appearance.
With a grunt, McEwan lunged forward, swinging the ice axe in a wide arc. Overcompensating for the distance between them, the swing was undisciplined; the tapered point of the ice axe missed Charlie’s thigh by a good foot and a half—though it seemed much closer to him—and wedged itself into the pilothouse door. Before McEwan could yank it free, Charlie administered a swift kick, which connected squarely with McEwan’s chin. McEwan’s head rocketed back on his neck, his bulky torso bowing backward until the distribution of his weight sent him spilling down the iron steps. The foredeck sustained the full brunt of his weight, the planks buckling but not breaking, while the back of McEwan’s head rebounded off a slatted wooden crate.
Charlie vaulted down the steps and bounded over McEwan’s prone form. As he rounded the foredeck, he happened to catch sight of an immense pillar of ice, its summit carving a notch in the silvery sun, rushing up to greet the starboard. Too late to brace himself against the collision, the flooring was ripped from beneath his feet, launching him into a succession of somersaults from starboard to portside in the blink of an eye. A moment later he was knocked stupid by a blood-freezing pummel of water that reached over the starboard side and, like the smiting Hand of God, smacked down on the foredeck. The icy wave burned through him. It seemed an eternity for it to spill away and for the trawler, now bobbing like a Coke bottle at sea, to right itself.
Gasping for air, his entire body flash numbed, Charlie scrambled to his feet just as McEwan, dazed in his own right, was trying to prop himself up against the pilothouse stairs. As their eyes locked—
“Mears!” It was a roar, no more human than the guttural articulation of some mythical Himalayan beastie. “Get the f*ck back here, goddamn you!”
The trawler shook again then tipped gradually to portside. All the crates, deck furniture, lines and hooks, loose tools and tool chests slid in that direction. Hands up in a defensive posture, Charlie felt the equipment slam into him, biting his flesh and snagging his clothes. Something solid ricocheted off his forehead, causing a fireworks display to erupt beneath his eyelids. Dizzy, he managed to climb to his feet and, staggering like a drunkard, propelled himself across the foredeck toward the narrow cutout of steps descending beneath the pilothouse station.
McEwan, having successfully retrieved the ice axe from the pilothouse door, lurched across the foredeck in pursuit. Chunks of graying ice adrift on silt-blackened water pool around McEwan’s ankles. The trawler was foundering, the rising water breaching the sides quicker than it was able to dispatch it back into the sea.
Charlie slammed down the stairs and hurried down the corridor toward his cabin. The walls were frozen, the pipes dripping icy condensation from above. He burst into his room and slammed the door behind him, engaging the meager, useless slide bolt. A swift kick and the door would splinter down the middle.