The horn blast died, leaving a silence so total it felt like pressure. Frankie gripped the gunwale, her own breathing suddenly loud and harsh. The fog pressed in, a cold, wet shroud against her skin.

  A shape moved in the gray.

  Slow. Deliberate.

  A wall of rust pushed through the mist.

  The fog peeled back. Streaked paint. Grime-caked portholes. Railings eaten by corrosion.

  A ship.

  “Holy—” Ted’s voice cracked. The thing bore down on them, engines silent, moving with a supernatural purpose. Frankie flinched, her eyes trying to process the scale—ten stories? Twelve? The Sea Dawg was a toy boat beneath its shadow.

  Letters on the bow, faded and barely readable: S.S. WISTARIA.

  “Ted, get us out of here!” Dee Dee scrambled backward, tripping over a coil of rope. Ted lunged for the controls, twisted the key.

  Click. Click. Click.

  He pumped the throttle. “Come on, come on.”

  The engine sputtered, choked on a single, wet cough, and died.

  Frankie couldn’t draw a breath. She stared up at the approaching hull, a sheer wall of steel that blotted out the sky, plunging them into shadow. Her legs were numb. Nowhere to go. The water around them had turned a flat, unreadable black.

  “We are so dead,” Dee Dee whispered. “We’re—”

  The ship stopped.

  Twenty feet away. Close enough Frankie could see barnacles clinging to the waterline, smell the stench of rot and brine. The liner didn’t drift. Didn’t sway. It sat in the water like an anchored monument, colossal and impossible.

  No lights.

  No crew.

  No sound.

  Frankie’s hands shook. She pressed them flat against the fiberglass to stop the tremor. Her mouth tasted like copper.

  “What the hell is this?” Ted’s voice was hoarse. He turned the key again. Click. Slapped the dead GPS screen. Snatched the radio handset and slammed it back down. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Nothing.”

  Dee Dee pulled her phone from her pocket. The screen stayed black. She pressed the power button three times. Four.

  “Mine’s dead too.”

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  Frankie tried hers. Same. Dead battery. It’d been half-charged ten minutes ago.

  Her breath came faster. The fog wasn’t lifting. The ship wasn’t leaving. And their boat—their only way out—was a floating paperweight.

  Ted stood, hands on his head, eyes wide. “We’re gonna die out here. Nobody knows where we are. We don’t even know where we—”

  “Shut up.” Frankie’s voice came out sharper than she meant. “Shut up and let me think.”

  She turned from Ted’s panic to stare up at the liner. Rows of windows, black and vacant, stared back like empty eye sockets. No movement. No figures. But… somewhere in that immense wreck, there had to be a radio. An emergency beacon. Something still wired to a battery.

  If it had power.

  Her stomach sank.

  “We have to board it,” Frankie said.

  “What?” Dee Dee’s eyes went huge behind her glasses. “Are you crazy?”

  “Our boat’s dead. The fog’s not going anywhere. That thing—” Frankie pointed up at the liner. “—is our only chance.”

  “Our only chance?” Ted laughed, high and strained. “Frankie, look at it. The paint is peeling off in sheets. Nothing on that thing has moved in fifty years.”

  “Exactly. So we get on, find a radio, call for help, and get off.”

  “And if there’s no radio?”

  “There’s a radio.”

  Dee Dee shook her head, backing toward the stern. “No. No way. We wait. Someone will come. The Coast Guard—”

  “The Coast Guard doesn’t know we’re here,” Frankie cut her off, her voice flat. “We have no flares. We have no engine. We sit here, we freeze. I’m not doing that.”

  Ted ran a hand through his hair. “She’s right. Dee, she’s right. We can’t—we can’t just sit here and roll our thumbs.”

  Dee Dee’s jaw worked. Her hands clenched into fists. “This is the dumbest idea ever.”

  “Noted.” Frankie turned to the bow locker, pulled out the anchor line. Heavy rope, sixty feet of it. She tested the weight. Solid.

  Ted moved beside her. “So… How do we get up?”

  “Anchor.”

  They secured the anchor to one end, the other to a cleat on the Sea Dawg. Frankie measured the distance with her eyes. Twenty feet horizontal, maybe fifteen up to the lowest railing. Doable.

  Ted swung the anchor. It clanged uselessly against the hull and splashed into the black water.

  Frankie hauled it in, the rope cold and slick.

  The second throw went high, scraped metal, and fell.

  “One more,” Ted grunted, his voice tight. He put his whole body into the throw.

  The anchor flew, a dark shape against the gray. It caught.

  Frankie yanked the line. Taut.

  The railing groaned. But it held.

  Dee Dee stared at the rope like it was a noose. “Who’s going up first?”

  “I will.” Frankie wrapped her hands around the line, tested her grip. The rough fibers bit into her palms. Good. She needed the friction.

  Ted grabbed her shoulder. “Frankie—”

  “Stay close behind me. Both of you.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She pulled herself up, feet braced against the Sea Dawg’s gunwale, then swung out over the black water. The rope bit deeper. Her shoulders screamed. She didn’t look down.

  Hand over hand. Pull. Brace. Pull.

  The hull rose beside her. The smell hit her—decay, oil, and something sickly-sweet underneath. She gagged, swallowed bile, and kept climbing.

  Behind her, Ted grunted, pulling himself over the rail. Dee Dee followed, her face pale, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Frankie was the last one up.

  She hauled herself over the railing, her feet landing on the deck with a soft thud.

  A different silence.

  Not the empty silence of the fog, but a thick, heavy silence. A silence that listened. The ship didn’t creak. Didn’t sway. It felt not just empty.

  It felt dead.