The Deep

“A warning. Cloche is loading these animals with some fiery shit, to hop ’em up, turn ’em into kamikazes. It’s all bush, but you feed a bird like that hallucinogenics and then talk bush to him, and he’s a rightful maniac. Believes he’s serving some crazy-ass god, and when he wakes up in the morning he’ll be in Valhalla or some such. But they believe the only way you’ll get there is whole; can’t have anything missing, so being lunch is bad bush. Cloche’s people find what’s left of that fellow hanging off the bow rope, maybe they’ll think twice before pulling a stunt like this again.”

They could see the other boat, outlined against the moonlight. The corpse’s head bobbed to the surface, jerked up by the rope, then sank again.

Gail turned away and said, “My God!”

“Don’t waste sympathy on him,” Treece said.

“He can’t feel a thing.”

There was a thump against the leeward side of Corsair, followed by a grunt and another thump.

“What’s that?” Sanders said, worried that, somehow, more of Cloche’s divers were attacking. He looked over the side and saw white foam boiling up beside the boat.

Treece shined the light on the water, then quickly turned it off and said, “Next thing, they’ll eat the boat.” He went forward.

Sanders felt an acid pool rise in his throat, and he gagged at the taste. The few seconds of light had branded a nightmare image on his brain. What had thumped against the boat was a body, not that of the man tied to the other boat, but of the man Treece had killed earlier by preventing him from exhaling. And what had slammed the body against the boat was the broad, flat head of a shark. The head was the size of a manhole cover. Two nostrils flared on the snout, and the jaws snapped as the tail thrust forward, forcing more and more rubber and flesh into the mouth. The eyes looked sleepily evil, two-thirds covered by a white shield of membrane. While Sanders had watched, the head shook fiercely from side to side, and a two-foot crescent of flesh had begun to tear away.

Now, in darkness, Sanders could still see the white foam and hear the slapping of the tail and the crunch of teeth against bone and sinew.

“What is it? “Gail asked.

Sanders shook his head, trying not to vomit.

Gail looked out over the dark water at the receding shape of the other boat. “It’s so quiet,” she said.

“Aye,” Treece said, standing at the wheel. “Death is that.” He started the engine.

The trip back to St. David’s didn’t take long, for the night was calm and the moonlight bright.

They were still several hundred yards at sea when the offshore breeze brought them the strident sounds of taxi horns.

XI

When he had secured the boat to the dock, Treece shut off the engine. Above the low murmur of wind they could hear the distant bleat of several taxi horns, apparently stationed at intervals around the island. The horns were blown in staccato bursts, with no rhythm or organization. Treece frowned. “What the hell is he up to now?”

“He?” Sanders said. “That’s Cloche? Those taxis?”

“Aye. There are no cabs on St. David’s. He’s making bush again.”

A shiver touched Sanders” spine. “I’ve about had it. I hope he’s not going to try anything more tonight.”

“If he was, you wouldn’t think he’d announce it.

Besides, what’s he think he’ll get from another visit? He doesn’t know anything about the cave, and he’s not fool enough to believe he can make us tell him.”

“Then why…?”

“I don’t know. He’s saying something, that’s for sure. If I had to guess, he’s spooking the Islanders, telling ’em to stay indoors-all bush.

But you’re right: If he’s doing that, it’d seem he’s planning to pay us a visit.”

Treece snapped his fingers at the dog and pointed to the path. “Well, whatever. I’ll go get a couple of Kevin’s cannons and fix him a royal welcome. Too bad we lost that shotgun. It was a fine people-eater.”

There was no rebuke in Treece’s voice, so all Sanders said was “Yeah.”

Treece started up the path after the dog, with the Sanderses following. “Any weapon’s only as good as the man using it,” Treece said, “and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything. Ever kill a man with a knife?”

“Me?” Sanders said. “No.”

“There’s right ways and wrong ways. Most knives have three elements to ’em: the point, the sharp side, and the dull side. Depending on what you want to do to the fellow…”

Bringing up the rear, Gail tried to block out the conversation ahead of her. It was all becoming unreal, inhuman… terrifying. It seemed that a new Treece was speaking now-not a wounded man or a compassionate man or a sensitive man: a killer. But perhaps this wasn’t new, perhaps it was the boy talking, the boy who played by his own rules, and when the rules called for killing, he killed. What scared her most was that the man Treece was talking to, explaining the rules to, was her husband. She heard Sanders say, “Yeah, but he could still-was

“Not if you go deep enough,” Treece said. “You snip that spinal cord just like a thread, he goes all to jelly.”

“Stop!” Gail’s voice was so loud that it scared her.