Dead Water Zone by Kenneth Oppel

hell. Leaving us like that. Aw, who knows what I’d say.” She flung out her hands in a gesture of contempt. “I’d ask her some things, I guess. Why’d she keep on drinking the water? She knew it was making her crazy, but she kept on anyway!”
    She sat down beside Paul, her body rigid, looking fiercely at the wall.
    “Maybe I wouldn’t have anything to say at all,” she went on more quietly. “What it really came down to is simple—she was more interested in drinking the dead water than sticking around. She wasn’t even much of a mother. I’m still looking though. Stupid, isn’t it?”
    Paul took her cool hand in his. He’d never simply touched someone out of sympathy before, and it surprised him. He could feel her cat’s pulse beneath her pale skin. In the warm light from the lantern she was like something from a fairy tale, thin and airy, with dark, streaming hair. Had he really thought she was ugly?
    She turned to him with a quizzical look, and he almost lost his nerve. He could pull back his hand. But he didn’t want to, and he felt as if some disconnected part of him was making the decisions.
    He awkwardly curved a hand behind her slender neck and kissed her on the mouth. He feltclumsy; he was probably doing it wrong. But she tasted warm and salty as she kissed him back. He encircled her with his arms and felt her pickpocket’s hands pressing into his back. All at once it seemed so obvious that this should be happening, and he was laughing quietly, and she was, too. He drew back to look into her face, brushing his fingertips over her cheekbones and eyebrows.
    He pressed his face into her hair, breathing its warm perfume, wanting to be swallowed up by it. Nothing mattered except this.
    But she suddenly stiffened.
    “What is it?” he asked, embarrassed and confused.
    With a swift movement, she reached up and extinguished the lantern.
    “There’s someone walking along the pier,” she said from the sudden darkness.

9
    P AUL KNOCKED ASIDE the ragged curtains and peered out into the night. At first he saw only the long, dark line of the pier, shrouded in mist. But after a few moments, his eyes adjusted, and he spotted a vertical brushstroke of darkness blending with the water and the distant buildings.
    “There’s three of them,” breathed Monica, looking over his shoulder.
    As Paul continued to stare, he saw a second dark form and a third, walking in line down the pier.
    “It’s Sked and his fun friends,” Monica said, letting the curtains fall back into place. “They don’t usually hang out around here.”
    “They can’t be looking for us,” Paul muttered.
    “It’s time to leave.”
    Paul hurried on deck after her. The cool of the night air made him shiver.
    “Cast us off,” Monica whispered from the wheel.
    He reached over the side and fumbled with the knot. The engine kicked over with a noisy wheeze, then died. Fingers tugging numbly at the painter, he looked anxiously down the pier. They’d been spotted. Sked and his friends were running now, their boots thudding against the planking. For a second time the engine roared to life, racing for a few seconds before sputtering out. Monica swore.
    Paul clawed at the knot, his hands trembling. He worked a strand loose. Come on! The boat’s motor growled uncertainly and then strengthened.
    “We’re gone!” Monica shouted. The cabin cruiser lurched away from the pier, throwing Paul across the deck.
    “It’s still tied!” he cried out.
    The boat heaved back, the painter taut as a tightrope. Sked was almost at the pier’s edge, and he jumped. With a whip’s crack, the painter ripped the metal cleat out of the pier, and the boat surged ahead. Not quickly enough. Paul watched in horror as Sked sailed through the air andlanded on deck in a clumsy crouch. Paul tried to scramble out of the way, but Sked brought a steel-toed boot down on his hand. Swearing, he butted his whole body against Sked’s legs, knocking him against the boat’s