Page 38 of Dance Practice, Marooned: Part 2

“Gracie, I’m going to need you to do as I’m asking, yeah?”

Right.

I turn away, what other choice do I have?

Leaning down next to the man Ace just killed, I grit my teeth and pick up the gun he dropped. Turns out you can win bare-handed in a gun fight if the other person doesn’t see you coming. I flick the safety on and shove it into my pants and then take anything else I can find. For someone who is defending against pirates, I am feeling a whole lot like I am no better...

Survival.

That’s what we’re doing.

Turning, I see Ace straightening, the man on the ground is no longer breathing. I don’t ask questions, I just pull the gun out and hand it to him. “It’s loaded.”

He takes it, almost looking relieved, then shoves it in his jeans. “You hear anything on the ship while you were waiting?”

I shake my head. “No, I actually don’t think there is anyone on there, but if there is, it would only be a few people.”

Ace nods. “Then let’s check it out before someone comes down here and figures out what we’re doin’.”

I tip my head back and stare up at the ship.

Well, this should be fun.

THE SHIP IS EVERY CLICHÉ movie’s worst nightmare. It’s not a classic wooden galleon, but a retrofitted old cargo trawler, paint blanked out ages ago by salt and caked rust. The hull is pitted and covered with weird graffiti—none of it friendly. As soon as we’re right against her, the stench just slaps me: diesel, blood, and something way less natural, like the ghost of a sewer. Ace points to the ratty ladder hung over the side.

Fabulous.

He takes the lead, hauling himself up over the side. His boots barely make a sound, which I’m not quite sure I can match. I follow, careful not to let my knife catch in the rope or bash against the metal. At the top, I haul myself onto the deck, which isn’t even a deck, just a slapped-together plywood platform, tacky and slimy under my hands.

Immediately, every horror movie I’ve ever watched floods my brain. There’s a coil of thick rope, stained dark—please let it be engine oil—and some dried something on the deck that looks black in the moonlight. There are spent bullet casings rolling around like confetti. Past the ropes is what I guess is a hatch to below, wedged open with a wrench. That’s the first moment it really hits me that people have definitely died here.

A lot of them, if I were to guess.

Ace moves quietly along the starboard rail. His eyes are everywhere, and I do my best to keep up, even though each breath I take tastes like rot and iron. There’s a large open crate, and I peer in it, expecting a body, but it’s nothing more than jerry cans and old food tins, though one can has maggots crawling out the top. Someone’s tried to burn something here—there’s singed fabric and a partial shoe. I don’t want to think about what was in it.

We pass a small, dark cabin on the upper deck. The window’s cracked and the other is broken completely. Ace signals for me to cover him while he slips inside. I keep the knife in front of me, even though my hand shakes so bad I almost drop it. There’s a bang and a crash, then the door scrapes open and Ace steps out. “Fuck, dirty bastards. It’s clear in there.”

I glance in.

This has to be the captain’s area—a stained mattress shoved into a corner, a metal desk bolted to the floor and covered in empty food tins and a crusty plate. The walls are smeared with something dark and greasy, and torn-out pages of porn are everywhere, some so waterlogged they’ve bled into pulpy messes on the floor. It’s the least sexy thing I’ve ever seen, but the pathetic human-ness of it—the sheer pig filth—somehow makes it worse. Empty pill bottles litter the desk; one rolls off and clatters across as the boat rocks.

What a pig.

A dirty pig.

Ace pulls me past the wheelhouse, which is basically a stripped-out shed with a cracked window. The controls are a joke, patched together with tape and wire, but I can see the ignition key dangling from its chain. The pirates either didn’t care or figured nobody would get this far. They probably didn’t count on us being far more fucking determined to live than they could have ever anticipated.

It gives me hope that they won’t see us coming.

I squeeze past Ace, down toward the steps leading below deck. As we move, I can see into the dirty space. Damp, stinking of brine and diesel, with a stack of plastic bins attached to the wall in what looks like a makeshift kitchen—a battered gas burner and a shelf lined with canned stew and beans. There are bottles, too, most empty, but a few left with liquor sloshing inside.

We creep in further.

The floor is so unsteady that I expect it to give under us, but it holds. It’s quieter here, the water muffling everything. I almost forget that outside, on a different part of this same beach, Zeke is bleeding and tied up and hopefully still very much alive. My lungs feel ice-cold thinking of it. Down below, it’s colder, wetter, and so dark my eyes keep making up phantoms.

Ace is a shadow in front of me. The corridor, if you can call it that, is no more than a metre wide, with doors on either side—all salvaged, spray-painted, and splintered. Most are locked. The last one isn’t. Ace opens it with the steady, silent confidence of someone who’s done this a thousand times before. Inside, there’s a cot slumped under the mesh of mosquito netting, a cracked TV zip-tied to a shelf, and just clothes everywhere.

It’s disgusting.