“I don’t think we’ll need to,” he finally said. “Look. It’s getting really close now.”

The boat had continued drifting at a slow and steady pace, moving toward the cliff and the beaches to the south at roughly the same speed. Isaac and Miyoko had walked along with it, things moving so incrementally that it felt sudden when they realized the thing was only about twenty meters away, as if it had skipped a beat in time. And now they could really see all the details that had been fuzzy before. The bodies.

“There’s . . . eight of them,” Miyoko whispered, almost as if she worried she might wake those lying on the deck. But there wasn’t much chance of that. Each one had a bullet hole in their head, the wounds crusted with dried blood. “What the . . . Who killed them?”

“Whoever blew that horn, I guess.”

The lifeless people were dressed in warm clothing, most of it still sopping wet—the boat must’ve gone through a storm right before it reached the island. There was a mixture of gender, hair lengths, races, sizes. But they all appeared equally dead. Although the deck itself—made of warped, cracked wood—had no bloodstains he could see, that could be explained away by the storm. The murder spree couldn’t have been too recent because the bodies looked . . . spent. Not fresh.

With every one of these passing thoughts, the boat drifted closer. In a matter of minutes, they could probably leap across the gap and onto the boat if they wanted to.

As if she’d read his mind, Miyoko said, “We promised the others we’d just watch and observe. Shouldn’t we go and hide? If someone comes out of the cabin toting a gun, we’re dead unless we jump into the water.”

“We should definitely go and hide,” Isaac agreed, but neither of them made a move. Instead, they just kept walking along, one slow step after another. Never in his life had he felt such a thrilling fear, like electric eels were swimming through his guts. Something. Something was about to happen.

The ship finally ground to a halt twenty minutes later.

Once its starboard side had edged so close to the cliff that it risked slamming into the rocks, an amazing thing happened. An engine underneath the boat rumbled to life, gurgling and bubbling water toward the peninsula as if a giant squid were about to rise from the depths of the sea. It only lasted a minute or so, but it kept the vessel from crashing. Then the engine shut off, and The Maze Cutter continued drifting southward.

Isaac and Miyoko had stopped on instinct, now looking at the squared-off back edge of the boat, where they had the best view of the dead bodies.

“Guess that answers our question,” Miyoko said.