William Mark Simmons Undead 4 Dead Easy

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up off the bottom and rising beneath the hull isn't going to read like a
suspended object. It's going to read like a sandbar or a shallow stretch of
river bed. The fish finder wasn't set to sound an alarm for depth soundings."
"Can we correct that?"
"I think so."
"Well, make it so, Mister Zotz."
"Aye, sir!" he said, tinkering with the settings and eliciting an
intermittent series of beeps, chirps, and clicks. "A trickier fix is the
question of how we steer an 84 foot houseboat with a relatively shallow draft
all the way to the Mississippi River and then down to New Orleans where a
major storm is brewing?"
"Good question."
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"Bad answer," he grumbled.
We'd gone to the GPS screen, first. The satellite charting system was great
for local details and long-range overviews but a little clunky for checking
details in-between us and our final destination until we got there. The paper
charts were better for long-range details like where I might anticipate
passage problems or potential interceptions from our furry following.
I sighed. "Look, I've got wolves on the left bank and wolves on the right
bank and I've already spent way too much time not going anywhere. I mean to
move toward my people and keep moving by whatever means I can find. I'll sail
this ship until she sinks or founders. Then I'll take another. Or go ashore
and deal with whichever bunch of busybodies offers the path of least bloody
resistance. At least that's the plan until I can come up with a better one. It
may sound impractical or even just plain nuts but I can'tnot go forward any
longer! It's my problem, not yours. You're welcome to take the dinghy. Seek
your redemption on a surer, saner path. I don't mind. In fact, I rather
insist."
Zotz stared at me with his newly disturbing, semihuman face, the greens of
the GPS and fish-finder screens and the red from the chart lamp giving him an
old, 1950's, 3-D, Technicolor Monster Movie vibe. "This voyage stinks of death
and madness! I think great suffering and retribution lie ahead."
I nodded. "Yeah . . ." I murmured.
"Good enough for me! Where do I sign?"
I sighed and turned off the chart light. As I stowed the charts I reflected
that Mama Samm would not approve of my taking Zotz along on what was sure to
be the equivalent of a pub crawl for an unrepentant alcoholic. I just hoped
she'd eventually turn up to give me hell for it.
"Oops," he said.
"Oops?" My head snapped up and I gave my demon pilot a hard look. "You don't
drivemy house down a river filled with mysterious lights, vicious fish folk,
and giant, tag-team amoebas amoebae slime monsters and just say 'oops' like
maybe there's a teensy problem."
"Naw." He had fired up another stogie and had liberated a can of beer from
his secret stash (for medicinal purposes), promising me that he could navigate
unimpaired. He tipped a yachtsman's cap back from his nearly human brow as he
continued. "Just remembered, that's all. Been a little busy and distracted
ever since you got back."
"And?"
"Mama Samm said you wanted some research on four sets of coordinates.
I did? "Oh yeah. Sure."Mind like a steel trap closed tight. "What did you
find out?"
"For the most part, not a hell of a lot," he groused. "Unless it's that the
two of you have a wicked sense of humor." He shot me a look but when I failed
to confirm his suspicions, he continued. "I mean, I expected that these
coordinates would well coordinate with some kind of actual landmark. Like
land: an island, a reef, a shoal something other than empty ocean. But only
one set of longitude and latitude numbers conforms to the position of an
actual land mass or two, if you count make-believe."
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"Lincoln Island," I said.
He almost lost his cigar. "Then you know?"
I nodded, staring out into the darkness. "Mama Samm gave you the first set of
coordinates out of a French edition of Jules Verne'sThe Mysterious Island .
Interesting book. Verne, a Frenchman, wrote a novel about five Yankee
prisoners during the American Civil War how they escaped the Siege of Richmond
by hijacking a hot-air balloon and flying off into the unknown. The unknown
being a volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, some 2500
kilometers east of New Zealand. The castaways named it Lincoln Island in honor
of President Abraham Lincoln."
Zotz nodded and turned the wheel to make a course correction. "Yeah, I pulled
the book off the shelf and thumbed through it. Lots of action and that Cyrus
Smith guy was always inventing stuff out of raw materials. But I guess the big
whoop-de-do is the return of Captain Nemo and his submarine."
"TheNautilus ," I appended.
"Yeah, well, the problem is there ain't no such island on the charts, the
satellite photos nothin'."
"Actually," I said, "that's not the only problem.The Mysterious Island was
written in 1874 and chronicled events that were supposed to have transpired
from 1865 to 1867. It's a sequel to20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which was
published four years earlier and covered Captain Nemo's adventures from 1867
to 1869. That means Captain Nemo dies and the Nautilus is scuttled in the sea
caves of Lincoln Islandbefore he takes Professor Aronnax on his memorable
voyage in the first book! Yet, Cyrus Smith, our ingenious engineer-hero in the
second book, recognizes Nemo and the Nautilus from the descriptions in the
Aronnax Journals. Which, if you want to further nitpick, won't be published
under the title20,000 Leagues Under the Sea until 1870 a couple of years in
the future at that point."
My demon pilot goggled at me. "How do you know crap like this?"
"I told you, I used to teach American and World Lit. Too bad knowing crap
like that doesn't seem to count for anything when it comes to so-called
geriatric gods and pseudopodinous probiscae."
"Yeah, well. Bottom line. No island at those coordinates, mysterious or
otherwise. On the other hand thereis a mysterious island of sorts at the
second set."
"Really?"
"Yeah. It's like haunted or something . . ."
Chapter Fourteen
Blame Edmond Fanning. The American sea captain may have used up any good luck
concerning Palmyra Island when he discovered it on a voyage to Asia back in
1798. The good captain was sleeping in his cabin one night when he found
himself awakened by a strong premonition of doom. Not once, not twice, but
three times he found his sleep disturbed by an overwhelming sense of dread.
More than disturbed: he awoke having left his bunk and walked about the ship
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while still asleep something he had never done on any other occasion in his
life! Out on the deck of theBetsy , all was calm and quiet, though it was too
dark to see any distance in any direction. Still, the charts showed empty
ocean: they were near the center of the Pacific, about a thousand nautical
miles south-southwest of Hawaii about halfway between Hawaii and American
Samoa. Nothing was evidently wrong but he gave orders to the helmsman on duty
to heave to until daybreak in hopes that he might sleep more peacefully.
At sunrise Captain Fanning and his crew stood at the railing and looked out
over the killer reef lying before them, now revealed by the early light of
day. Had they continued on their original course during the night, the ship
would have been ripped to pieces and all hands lost in the darkness. Fanning
and his crew were doubly lucky: not only did they narrowly avoid disaster on
the northern portion of the reef encompassing Palmyra Island, but they
continued on their way without stopping to make landfall. And though he did
note the position of the unknown and unnamed island in his ship's log, he
failed to file a timely report. Credit for the unnamed island's discovery went [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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