Chapter 4
Into The Storm
The lights—barrel-mounted flashlights, I assume—recede a few feet, outlining a man's silhouette. Beyond, dim gray daylight and blattering rain and spears of lightning in the distance.
"Come, come. Outside." The lights back away further, and now I can make out details of the speaker.
Medium height, pale skin, thick dark stubble.
Middle-aged, maybe late thirties at youngest, with a heavy forehead and vicious black glittering holes for eyes.
He has a pistol-grip, sawed-off, single-barreled shotgun dangling from one hand; I'd guess he has birdshot in there.
It'll kill you at close range like this—if you get the full load.
At anything other than close range, it'll cause serious but not necessarily lethal damage.
Sawed-off shotguns like that look cool for movies, but they're generally useless in most firefights.
The muzzle velocity is ruined by the shortened barrel, the spread is usually so wide as to be like throwing a handful of sand, and the kick, especially if you've modified the stock into a pistol grip like that, makes it nearly impossible to control.
But in this limited, specific scenario? It's a damnably effective visual deterrent against attempting escape.
I can feel Killian considering it. "Don't," I breathe.
Killian doesn't verbally respond, but I sense the subtle shift of his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels.
He precedes me through the opening and outside—it's hard to tell what time of day it is, but I'd guess early morning.
There are two guards arranged behind and to either side of the man with the shotgun in a loose V formation, each one armed with M4 carbines leveled at us.
These men are younger than their leader, and I can smell their unwashed bodies from here..
Somehow, being outside in the fresh air makes our stink that much worse.
I glance at Killian—he's pale and pallid, with hollow cheeks and dark circles under his piercing green eyes.
The fury and hatred written on his features is impossible to miss, as is the coiled violence of his muscled frame.
Even after two weeks of being poorly fed and kept in the pitch black, Killian's body is dense and hard and powerful.
The leader slaps the shotgun barrel into his open palm and gestures at Killian with the gaping black hole of the barrel. "Try. Please." He steps forward, glances at me with his tiny, deep-set dark eyes that brim with leering malevolence. "She has value. You? Not so much. So please, try."
Killian says nothing, does nothing, just stares at the man with his hands laced on top of his head. But the quiet, reserved, go-with-the-flow Killy I thought I knew so well is utterly gone. The Killy who kissed me in the dark with such sweet tenderness is utterly gone.
This, the young man beside me? He’s pissed. He’s trembling beside me, but not with fear. I shuffle sideways and bump my hip into his. "Killy." It's a low murmur, a warning. "No."
"Listen to her, my friend."
I hear Killian growl wordlessly in the back of his throat. Now that he's out of the darkness, his whole demeanor has changed.
It's a deluge out here. The rain is pouring down in buckets, sideways sheets, curtains of windblown rain swirling and gusting.
We've been standing just beyond the door of the container for all of thirty seconds and we're both soaked to the bone.
The guards and their leader are wearing plastic ponchos over their clothes, but the hoods are thrown back, and their faces and heads are so wet they don't bother to wipe the rain from their eyes.
I can't fathom what the plan might be. While this storm, unlike the earlier one, is fairly tame, it’s still a hell of a thunderstorm, with violent, white-capped waves.
A giant ship like this freighter would usually avoid a storm, not sail directly into one.
A quick glance around informs me that we are near the stern of a massive, ocean-going container ship, and our former prison is on the bottom of a dizzying stack of containers blotting the rest of the deck from view.
The containers gleam dull and wet in the dim light, rust-red, industrial blue, faded green, sickly yellow, and burnt orange.
A narrow walkway on either side of the stacks leads forward to the bow, a waist-height railing the only guard between us and the storm-tossed sea.
There's no land in sight, albeit with the cloud cover and the rain, visibility is pretty much nil. We could be just off a coast somewhere and wouldn't know it.
"Go. Forward." The lead guard gestures with his weapon. "Slowly. Don't be stupid or I kill you while girlfriend watches."
One of the assault rifle-wielding goons, looking miserably wet and ready to murder, precedes us, walking backward, carbine trained on Killian. The other follows behind me, and the leader brings up the rear, the shotgun resting upside down on his right shoulder.
Ahead of me, Killian's bare torso glistens with runnelling rain, the muscles shifting under his skin, and I can see him scanning our surroundings as we walk.
There’s not much to see—containers stack a good sixty feet high on our left, the railing on our right, and beyond that the ocean.
I'm still confused as to the plan, here.
Container ships like this don't typically have tenders—the small boats used to ferry passengers and crew from large vessels like cruise ships or military vessels at anchor depth to port.
And even if this ship had a tender, launching in weather like this is suicide.
Same goes for a helicopter. So…why drag us out of the container in the middle of a storm?
We make our way forward, the progress slow—we stumble as the ship tips and tilts, pause to grip the railing as we rock and roll.
Rain sluices down my face and plasters my clothing against my skin, and the skirling, rain-sodden wind is sharp and cold, pebbling my nipples and sending gooseflesh rippling across my skin.
Suddenly, the impregnable dark of the container doesn't seem so bad.
We reach a section of deck where the narrow walkway widens into a platform that contains a small crane and an orange lifeboat.
Or maybe it's a rescue boat—I don't know for sure.
It's open, with hard, inflatable rubber sides and a tiny rectangular white hut-thing.
Probably a rescue boat, then. We stop near it, and the leader pulls a two-way radio from a pocket under his poncho, yells into it, puts it to his ear to listen, yells a response, and then stows it back in the pocket.
For a second, he tips his face up to the sky, shakes his head, and then scrapes a hand down his face.
"On. Get on." He gestures at the boat, which, while not exactly tiny, doesn't seem like a safe place to be in a storm like this.
Killian stares out at the frothing sea. "Fuck you. You're nuts. No fucking way, asshole."
"I like this no more than you, asshole." He jams the barrel of the shotgun into Killian's gut, hard, doubling him over; Killian retches, staggers to the railing, gagging for breath, and the other man presses the barrel to Killian's temple. "Get…on."
Killian straightens. Grins savagely. "This feels like Bryn's handiwork."
"Get on boat." He gestures at the water. "Or swim. Either way, we leave ship now."
Killian just laughs. "Desperate times, huh?"
I lean into him, lips to his ear. "Just get on, Killy! This isn't the time."
Killian sighs heavily, shoulders lifting, pausing, and then falling. "Fine!" he shouts. "But this is suicidal!”
Killian helps me into the craft and then climbs in after me, and the three guards follow him, one after the other, weapons trained on us both at all times.
Clearly, they received a memo that we're dangerous. It feels good, honestly. Knowing these goons are scared of you makes you feel kinda badass.
Above us at the controls of the winch/crane thing is a member of the ship's crew, dressed head-to-toe in reflective bright orange foul-weather gear.
Once all of us are on board, the lead goon gives a thumbs up, and the winch groans to life, lifting the craft with us in it off the deck.
A nauseating lurch sends us swinging precariously out over the water; a wave rocks the ship just then, and one of the goons, not properly seated in his zeal to keep his weapon trained on us, goes tumbling toward the nose of the rubber boat.
His buddy-goon lurches after him and grabs his ankle before he goes overboard.
Killian, seated on the floor with his back to the side, just laughs; it’s not a nice laugh.
Once the goon is seated—and looking pale and shaken, clutching his rifle to his chest like a teddy bear—the boat swings the rest of the way out over the water.
We lurch and jounce, jolt and sway and swing at the limit of the painter—the taut rope keeping the boat in place despite the lurch of the boat and the howling crush of the wind.
There's a click and grinding rattle, and then we're being lowered, inch by inch, foot by foot, down the side of the ship.
With every foot we descend, the freighter seems to grow larger and larger beside us.
The descent halts, and for a second or two we just sway and swing in the gale. And then, without warning, the connection tethering us to the ship is released and we plummet abruptly, smacking violently onto the pitching, rolling surface of the sea.
Rain spatters in my eyes and I blink it away. I hear a low groan beside my left ear, blink hard, glance left—the ship is a towering wall of metal mere feet away. The railing seems a distant wisp of mist overhead, the top row of containers further yet—higher than a ten-story building.