Riptide

The lobsterman shook his head. 'We're not going to stop them in this weather, Reverend. Anyway, this little Nor'easter may do the job for us.' Smith turned a weather eye upward and scanned the sky, then turned to the distant land, a mere ghost of blue vanishing into the driving rain. 'I can't afford to lose my boat.'

Clay fell silent. I can't afford to lose my boat. That was it in a nutshell. They didn't see that some things were more important than boats or money. And perhaps they never would see. He felt a strange tight sensation around his eyes and realized, vaguely, that he was crying. No matter; two more tears in an ocean. 'I wouldn't want to be responsible for anybody losing his boat,' he managed to say, turning away. 'You go on back, Lem. I'm going to stay.'

The lobsterman hesitated. 'I'd sure feel better if you came in now. You can fight them another day, but you can't fight the ocean.'

Clay waved his hand. 'Maybe I'll land on the island, talk to Neidelman myself...' He stopped, hiding his face as he pretended to busy himself about the boat.

Smith gazed at him for a moment with creased, worried eyes. Clay wasn't much of a seaman. But telling a man what to do with his boat was an unforgivable offense. Besides, Smith could see something in the Reverend's face, a sudden uncaring recklessness, that told him anything he said would be useless.

He slapped the gunwale of Clay's boat. 'I guess we'd better shove off, then. I'll be monitoring the ten point five channel, case you need help.'

Clay hugged the lee of the Cerberus, engine idling, and stared as the remaining boats headed into the heaving sea, the sound of their diesels rising and falling on the wind. He pulled his slicker tighter and tried to hold himself steady against the deck. Twenty yards away, the curving white hull of the Cerberus rose up, rock solid in the water, the swell sliding noiselessly past.

Clay mechanically checked his boat. The bilge pumps were running smoothly, jetting fine streams of water over the side; the engine was purring nicely, and he still had plenty of diesel fuel. Now that it had come to this—now that he was alone, the Almighty his sole companion—he felt an odd sense of comfort. Perhaps it was a sin of presumption to expect so much from the people of Stormhaven. He couldn't rely on them, but he could rely on himself.

He would wait a little before heading toward Ragged Island. He had boat and time enough. All the time in the world.

He watched the remains of the fleet head back toward Stormhaven harbor, his arms braced hard upon the helm. Soon, they were nothing but distant, ghostly shapes against a sodden background of gray.

He did not see the Thalassa launch that pulled away from the island, pitching and yawing, the outboard cavitating with each plunge as it struggled toward the boarding hatch on the far side of the Cerberus.

Chapter 44

Donny Truitt lay on the sofa, breathing more calmly now that the one-milligram IM dose of lorazepam had started to take effect. He stared at the ceiling, blinking patiently, while Hatch examined him. Bonterre and the professor had retreated to the kitchen, where they were talking in hushed tones.

'Donny, listen to me,' Hatch said. 'When did the symptoms begin to show?'

'About a week ago,' Truitt replied miserably. 'I didn't think anything of it. I started waking up nauseated. Lost my breakfast a couple of times. Then this rash thing appeared on my chest.'

'What did it look like?'

'Red splotches at first. Then it got kind of bumpy. My neck started to hurt, too. On the sides, like. And I started noticing hair in my comb. First just a little, but now it's like I could pull it all out. But there's never been a touch of baldness in my family; we've always been buried with a full head of hair. Honest to God, Mally, I don't know how my wife'd take it if I went bald.'

'Don't worry. It's not male pattern baldness. Once we figure out what's wrong and take care of it, it'll grow back.'

'I sure as hell hope so,' said Truitt. 'I got off the midnight shift last night and went straight to bed, but I only felt worse in the morning. Never been to a doctor before. But I thought, hell, you're a friend, right? It wasn't like going to a clinic or something,'

'Anything else I should know about?' Hatch asked.

Donny grew suddenly embarrassed. 'Well, my—it kind of hurts around my hind end. There's sores back there, or something.'

'Roll to one side,' Hatch said. 'I'll take a look.'

A few minutes later, Hatch sat by himself in the dining room. He had called an ambulance from the hospital, but it would take at least another fifteen minutes to arrive. And then there would be the problem of getting Donny into it. A rural Mainer, Truitt had a horror of going to the doctor, and an even greater horror of the hospital.

Some of his symptoms were similar to what other crew members had complained of: apathy, nausea. But, as with the others, there were symptoms Donny presented that were maddeningly unique. Hatch reached for his battered copy of the Merck manual. A few minutes of study gave him a depressingly easy working diagnosis: Donny was suffering from chronic granulomatous disease. The widespread granular lesions of the skin, the suppurative lymph nodes, the all-too-obviously painful perianal abscesses made diagnosis almost unavoidable. But CGD is usually inherited, Hatch thought to himself. An inability of the white blood cells to kill bacteria. Why would it be showing up only now?

Putting the book down, he walked back into the living room. 'Donny,' he said, 'let me take another look at your scalp. I want to see if the hair is coming out in clean patches.'

'Any cleaner, and I'd be Yul Brynner.' Truitt touched his head with his hand, gingerly, and as he did so Hatch noticed an ugly cut he hadn't seen before.

'Lower your hand a moment.' He rolled up Truitt's sleeve and examined the man's wrist. 'What's this?'

'Nothing. Just a scratch I got in the Pit.'

'It needs to be cleaned.' Hatch reached for his bag, rummaged inside, irrigated the cut with saline solution and