‘Lolie!’ I scream. I have no need of a tongue.
There is the scream of metal cable unravelling under hydraulic pressure as the winch lowers the boat towards the ocean. Romano flies beneath a canvas cover, throws up a hatch near the Dragonfly. He pulls out a second rifle. Lolie swings and shoots a burst of bullets at him. Romano’s Kalashnikov catapults through the air, detonates three times by accident. Romano hurls himself after it, rolling like a soldier across a killing field. The lifeboat is shunting down without Lolie.
‘Wait!’ I try to shout, but Josiah is already gunning the engines, preparing them for full speed. Lolie leaps towards the sea, lands lightly in the bow of the boat. Above us, Angus launches off the railing of the rig. As he jumps, Romano grabs hold of one flying wing. The skinny rapist twists off course and falls down, down, down past us.
Angus lands with the smallest of disturbances in the monster sea. He rolls slowly to the surface and floats lopsided, his mouth wide, gasping. A dark shadow browses past him, vanishes. Then the moon catches an enormous fin. The beast races towards Angus, rams his thin body, propels him forwards half a metre deep. I think I see his bulging eyes, his mouth crying out. Then the rapist is gone.
The lifeboat’s backside dips violently. We wrap our arms and legs around the benches as the boat stops. It rocks back, swings, filled with soft, naked targets in the traitorous moonlight. Gibril, the desert runner, hurls himself at a pulley on the bow. He heaves at it, every sinew stretched to snapping point. Above us, Romano aims his shattered Kalashnikov at him. DTT DTT DTT. Out of the corner of my eye I see Lolie rise up from the bow. DFF DFF DFF. The fabric on Romano’s shoulders rips. Something shiny flies up and tinkles on the metal deck. Lolie has shot off his epaulettes.
Romano drops to his haunches, crawls out of sight of Lolie’s crack fire. He shoots from his hiding place. DTT DTT.
‘Barry!’ the social worker screams.
‘Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.’ Barry is on the floor of the boat fighting for each breath as he watches the blood pool around his buttocks. More blasts from the rig. The bald man next to Barry folds on impact. He stares at his toes like a puppet on a shelf. Three holes between his nipples bubble with blood. His eyes flare like stars, then turn to green glass. Next to him, red fills Barry’s folds, runs down his hips. Romano has shot him in the stomach.
He smiles a weird smile, some kind of horrible reflex. ‘Oh. Shit.’
High above us, I catch sight of Mr Rawlins’ silver hair and Meirong’s pale face at the railing of the rig. Romano rises up behind them, hurls them down on the deck. The wind tosses his scream towards us. ‘They’re shooting!’
Lolie shatters a railing to confirm his words. Romano aims his disembodied weapon over the edge of the deck. His bullets shatter the steering wheel right next to Gibril.
‘Keep them alive!’ I hear Mr Carreira’s unmistakeable bellow. I might be imagining it, but I think I see a glimpse of his grey teeth. The desert runner wraps his whole wiry body around the pulley, pits every quivering strand of muscle against it. Suddenly the jammed wire screams out. The strangler has restarted the orbit of our earth.
As the lifeboat tilts down at the bow, Barry’s blood streams towards Vicki and me. I lift my feet, clap my hands over my eyes like a refugee child. When I look again, Barry is staring up at Romano taking aim at our engines.
‘Shoot him, Lolie!’ someone screams.
Lolie shatters the air next to Romano’s head. She could put a copper pellet through the cubic millimetre of his brain that tells him to breathe, but somehow I know, Lolie is desperate not to kill again.
The lifeboat lands with a sickening violence, hurling bone against bone, cracking our faces against the fibreglass.
‘Pull the pins!’ Mohammed screams. His candle-wax hands drag at the steel tackle hooking us to the winch. A metal pin comes free. ‘Help me!’
Samuel leaps up and fumbles with a catch, but Gibril moves like the wind, pops three pins in quick succession with his strong hands. The old boat is in the water, gunning through the waves, the rig a devouring shadow above us.
Behind me, I hear Vihaan saying in perfect English, ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Sea Sprite, Sea Sprite . . .’ A screen illuminates his face as he reads off the solo sailor’s monitor. ‘This is Sea Sprite, RF, five four seven. Over.’
White foam flies up behind us, creates a parting as we roar through the sea. This close, the ocean is our friend, dark and deathless, filled with ramming sharks to terrify our enemies. The moon path dissolves behind us, lets the vastness of the night cover us. The sea wind follows politely, escorting us. The broken wheel on the helm twists as if a ghost is steering the boat but it is Josiah, working the tiller under cover of the tarpaulin.
I type on my phone, slide the volume to Shout, ‘Josiah. Due south!’
He crawls to peer at an instrument. He eases the tiller, corrects our course. Vihaan persists in clear, confident English, ‘Mayday, mayday.’
Samuel sits close to him, holds the black box steady on Vihaan’s knees.
