The Flower Net Read Online Free PDF Page B

left elbow. His right arm swung at his side in rhythm with the ship’s movements.
    David lay on the top bunk in a cabin that must have been shared by four crewmen. He’d stripped off what was left of his clothes and had draped them over the end of the bunk to dry. Below him, two men gently snored. The helicopter pilot occupied the upper bunk across from him, but he’d turned to the wall. David stared at the ceiling, where a handful of postcards had been taped. Whoever had bunked here had been at sea a long time. One postcard showed a sweet-faced Chinese maiden posing before a colorful bouquet of carnations. Others showed Hong Kong Harbor, a neonlit Tokyo street, the Golden Gate Bridge. David wondered wearily where that sailor was tonight. Had he washed into the sea when the crew had abandoned ship? Or was he in Chinatown, singing at a karaoke bar?
    David closed his eyes and listened to the reassuring pulse of the engines. He could honestly say he’d never had a day like this before in his life.
    In that stage between sleep and wakefulness, something started to edge in on David’s consciousness. What was it they had been trying to hide from him down in the hold? He opened his eyes. He whispered, “Jim, you awake?” The pilot didn’t move. David hopped down, slipped on his damp clothes, then quietly pulled open the heavy door and went out into the deserted hallway. He turned left and headed down a flight of stairs.
    He paused to look at the immigrants. No one noticed him. He continued down another flight and down again. By now the stairs were little more than steep metal ladders. The air was humid and rotten, the hallway dimly lit. David closed his eyes and tried to think back, visualizing where he had been earlier in the day. There was a place where the men kept blocking his way. That was where he wanted to go. He passed the holds where they all had worked so hard. He turned a corner and found himself in a huge, deserted room with a ten-foot-high iron tank sitting against the wall. He had been there before, only to be led off in another direction time and time again.
    He walked over to the tank and knocked on the side. It sounded hollow, but what did that mean? If the day had proven anything to David, it was that he didn’t know anything about the sea or ships. The door was painted a drab green. Rust stains seeped from hinges and bolts. He tried the round crank. It moved easily in his hands. He turned once, twice, pulling hand over hand….
    A force pushed him back, and he fell to the floor. Water splashed over him for a moment, then spread out into a shallow puddle. An odor of decay filled the air. Next to David lay a mound of putrefying flesh. The body—human—was grossly swollen. The eyes and tongue protruded. The lips had pulled back, revealing black teeth. The skin—what was left of it—was covered in greenish black algae. The distinctive band of a Rolex glinted in the decomposing meat of the wrist.
    David pushed away, sliding across the slippery surface of the floor. As he looked down, he saw on his chest something that looked like a glove. He tried to bat it away, but it stuck to his shirt. Then he realized what it was. The skin and fingernails of the dead man—woman?—had come loose and slipped off. Panicking now, David forced himself to look at the body again. The flesh from both the hands and feet
had
come off—like gloves, like socks.
    That was enough to send David reeling to his feet. He staggered out of the hold and scrambled up the narrow staircases, paying no attention now to how much noise he made. Finally, he pushed through a last door and was on the deck. The rain was coming down hard and the ship still pitched relentlessly. David grabbed hold of the railing and threw up repeatedly.
    But even as he was sick, even as one part of his mind recoiled at what he had seen, even as he wished that he could scrub from his body the horrible slime of that chamber, another part of his mind was already