Manny lets me drive a few more minutes, then motions for Trey to take a turn.

“Steering the barge won’t be this easy,” Trey says. “It’s just too long.”

“It’s a very different experience,” Manny says. “That thing is like an aircraft carrier. But I’ll still feel better going through with this plan if you both have a basic understanding of how to drive a boat.”

“Fair enough,” Trey says.

We circle the barge twice, Trey and I taking turns at steering, slowing, even reversing. Finally, Manny signals for Trey to pull up alongside the pusher tow. “There,” he says, pointing. “That low spot on the port side. We can hop up onto the deck there.”

The towboat is shaped like a layer cake, with three stacked rectangular decks, each progressively smaller than the one below. Wyatt throws out some pontoons to keep the sides of the boats from scraping as Trey delicately pulls alongside the much larger craft. Wyatt grabs the rail on the other boat and ties us up with a nylon rope, using a flurry of fancy-looking knots. He’s the first to leap up. As he lands, a curtain of black sweeps across the sky, and I duck instinctively. It’s a flock of crows rising en masse from the deck and streaming away.

“Guess that means there are bodies up there,” Trey says. “Be prepared.”

“We have to do this, no matter what’s up there,” I remind him.

“Yeah.”

Seeing death everywhere hasn’t exactly been a picnic for any of us, but Trey has seemed the most squeamish. Strange trait to have if you want to be a doctor. Then again, maybe he was planning on going into private practice. It’s not like pediatricians see dead bodies every day. I have a sudden, fierce urge to protect him. Maybe there’s a job he can do that won’t require him to look at bodies. Or maybe we can find a tarp to cover them with. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and there won’t be any bodies at all.

We don’t get lucky.

A slimy skeleton sprawls across the lowest deck, tattered clothes hanging from bones that are covered in wet gray bird droppings. Bits of flesh still cling to the socket areas. The boots are round and bloated with rotted flesh where the birds couldn’t reach, the boot laces straining, so that the skeleton looks like it’s wearing clown shoes. A half-smoked cigar lies on the deck beside the grinning skull.

“Just don’t look,” Manny says at our backs. “Head up that ladder to the next deck.”

We obey eagerly, jogging down the port side of the boat past portholes that likely mark crew cabins, maybe a galley. More bodies are probably inside, but I’d rather not know.