Kimo grabbed the edge of the skylight and held on, but Halverson fell. He landed on his back, hitting his head. The impact seemed to stun him. He grunted and rolled over, putting his hands down on the deck to push off with.
The gray substance swarmed over him, covering his hands, his arms and his back. He managed to get up and brace himself against the bulkhead, but some of the residue reached his face. Halverson pawed at his face as if bees were swarming around him. His eyes were shut tight, but the strange particles were forcing themselves under his eyelids and streaming into his nostrils and ears.
He stepped away from the bulkhead and fell to his knees. He began digging at his ears and screaming. Lines of the swarming substance curled over his lips and began flowing down into his throat, turning his screams into the gurgles of a choking man. Halverson fell forward. The spreading mass of particles began to cover him as if he was being consumed by a horde of ants in the jungle.
“Kimo!” Thalia shouted.
Her voice snapped Kimo out of his trance. He pulled himself up and scrambled through the opening onto the roof. He shut the skylight and sealed it hard. From the spotlights high in the mast he could see that the gray swarm had spread across the entire deck, both fore and aft. It was also creeping upward along the sides of the cabin.
Here and there it seemed to be swarming over things as it had done to the fallen dinner items and Halverson.
“It’s coming up over here,” Thalia shouted.
“Don’t touch it!”
On his side the invading swarm had made less progress. Kimo reached over and grabbed for anything that would help. His hand found the deck hose and he turned it on, grabbing the nozzle and spraying high-pressure water at the gray mass.
The jet of liquid swept the particles backward, washing them off the cabin’s wall like mud.
“On this side!”
He stepped to her side and blasted away at the muck.
“Get behind me!” he shouted, directing the hose.
The pressurized stream of water helped, but it was a losing battle. The swarm was surrounding them and closing in on all sides. Try as he might, Kimo could not keep up.
“We should jump,” Thalia shouted.
Kimo looked to the ocean. The swarm extended out from the boat and onto the sea from which it had come.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Desperate for something that would help, he scanned the deck. Two five-gallon cans of gasoline sat near the aft end of the boat. He aimed the hose at full pressure, sweeping it from side to side and blasting a path through the swarm.
He dropped the hose, ran forward, and leapt. He landed on the wet deck, skidded across it and slammed into the transom at the rear of the boat.
A stinging feeling on his hands and legs—like rubbing alcohol had been poured over open skin—told him some of the residue had found him. He ignored the pain, grabbed the first jerry can and began pouring fuel across the deck.
The gray residue recoiled at the flow, curling out of the way and retreating but probing for a new path forward.
Up on the cabin’s roof, Thalia was using the hose, blasting the water around her in an ever smaller circle. Suddenly, she cried out and dropped the hose as if she’d been stung. She turned and began to climb the mast, but Kimo could see the swarm had begun covering her legs.
She screamed and fell. “Kimo!” she shouted. “Help me. Help m—”
He splashed the deck with the rest of the gasoline and grabbed for the second can. It was light and almost empty. Fear knifed through Kimo’s heart like a spear.
Only gurgling noises and the sound of struggling came from where Thalia had fallen. Her hand was all he could see, writhing where it stuck out from beneath the mass of pa
rticles. In front of him, that same mass had resumed its search for a path to his feet.
He looked once again to the surface of the sea. The horde covered it like a sheen of liquid metal all the way out to the limits of the light. Kimo faced the awful truth. There was no escape.
Not wanting to die like Thalia and Halverson had, Kimo made a painful decision.
He dumped the rest of the fuel onto the deck, forcing the swarm back once more, grabbed for a lighter he carried and dropped down to one knee. He held the lighter against the gasoline-soaked deck, steeled himself to act and snapped his finger along the flint.
Sparks snapped and the vapors lit. A flashover whipped forward from the aft end of the catamaran. Flames raced through the approaching swarm all the way to the cabin and then roared back toward Kimo, swirling around him and setting him ablaze.