I bent down and looked through the items before I found what I was looking for, then quickly put it in my pocket out of sight. Rosa and the other workers were just approaching the yacht, and they waved enthusiastically to us.

  “Ahoy!” Rosa called.

  “She really likes the idea of us as pirates,” Shannon commented with a smile.

  “We are a dashing lot,” I acknowledged as the canal workers climbed on board.

  “Everything went well?” Rosa asked, and smiled when I nodded. “I radioed ahead to the other control houses, and they’ll be on the lookout for you coming through.”

  Part of me was a little apprehensive at that. It was really kind of Rosa to do that for us, but at the same time, that made it impossible for us to keep a low profile if people were actively looking out for us. A little while ago, I might not have been so concerned about traveling incognito, but now with the videos on our YouTube channel doing as well as they were, I didn’t really want us to be attracting any more attention than we could help.

  But it would have been rude to say that to Rosa, especially when I’d asked for her help, so I smiled and thanked her warmly.

  The rest of the workers were eyeing the pile of items on the deck.

  “We’re happy to trade some of this stuff for your help with getting us through the locks,” I explained.

  One of the workers murmured something, and Rosa hesitated.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Well.” She paused. “This is very kind of you. But what we really need is food. But we don’t want to take any of yours if you can’t spare it.”

  I smiled and looked at Letty, who instantly jumped to her feet.

  “We can spare some,” she said eagerly. “I can make up a box of cans and dried stuff that you can take away.”

  “Thank you.” Rosa gave her the widest smile, and the older woman’s eyes looked a little misty as she watched Letty hurry down the hatch into the yacht’s kitchen. “You’re too kind, this is too much.”

  “Hey, we’d have been totally screwed if you hadn’t helped us here,” I told her. “We’re happy we can help you back.”

  “No problem,” Simon grunted.

  “You’re definitely the Good Pirates.” She smiled. “You know, it’s the highlight of our day when you upload one of your videos. I guess you must hear this everywhere you go, but it’s been so good having a real news source that we can rely on. We know you guys aren’t going to bullshit us like some of the other news channels.”

  A warm glow spread through me at the emotion in her voice. I knew that people watched the videos, of course, but seeing numbers on a screen was very different to hearing someone in person talk about how much they appreciated the channel.

  “We’re trying our best to be honest and authentic,” I said. “I just want to make sure that everyone is as informed about the current situation as they can be.”

  “Sure.” She nodded. “Knowledge is power, that’s the phrase, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, exactly.” I smiled.

  Letty came back up on deck with a huge box of food. I was worried for a moment that Letty’s kind heart might have prompted her to give away more of our supplies than we could afford, but when she handed the box over to Rosa, I saw that it was mostly full of canned and dried goods, and I knew that we had plenty of those stored away below. There was also a parcel wrapped up in a cloth, and I guessed that Letty had tucked in a bundle of her home-baked goods to help the package stretch further.

  “Thank you,” Rosa told her with her eyes wide. “This is so kind of you all, thank you.”

  “Hey, you hush your mouth,” Letty told her in a playful tone. “This is just right and proper for how you’ve helped us.”

  “Oh, that reminds me.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the phone charger I’d picked up earlier. I handed it to Simon. “For your phone. If it’s a match, you can phone your cousin and find your son.”

  Simon’s mouth dropped open. He took the phone charger carefully in his hands as though I’d just handed him a precious jewel. He seemed totally lost for words, but then he just stuck out his hand.

  I shook it firmly, and he gave me a nod that said everything he couldn’t.

  “Thank you,” he managed in a gruff voice. “This is the exact charger I need.”

  “Are you sure we can’t give you anything else?” Ally asked. “What about weapons? Oh, no, of course not, sorry, I forgot.”

  “Forgot?” Rosa queried.

  “We figured out pretty quickly that guns are worse than useless out here,” I said. “It’ll just take one shot to bring out every dragon for miles around.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Rosa raised her eyebrows. “It’s good you managed to realize that so quickly. Not everyone who’s come through here has figured that out.”

  “All the dragons we’ve fought have been very sensitive to sound.” I shrugged. “It’s a pain in the ass, though. We’ve been relying on our guns up until now, so we’re going to have to find something else to use.”

  Simon went to the edge of the boat where the rest of the workers had left their things. He came back with his spear in his hand, and he held it out to me.

  “Here,” he said.

  I stared at him, and then at the spear in his hand. Up close and without it being waved in my face, I could fully see what a deadly weapon it was. The tip was carved to a wicked sharp point, and the shaft was wrapped in a strip of tough but soft leather to create a good grip.

  “No,” I protested, but even so, a part of me longed to take it and feel what a dangerous, primal weapon it would be.

  “Take it,” Simon insisted.

  And so I did. The spear was light but perfectly balanced, and the thick shaft was smooth and strong. In my mind’s eye I could see it leaving my hand and taking down dragons with the kind of precise power that humans had been utilizing for thousands of years.

  “Damn,” I said in wonder.

  “Feels good?” Simon asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said as a smile spread across my face. “I think we’ve found the answer to our problem right here.”

  Chapter 4

  It turned out there were plenty of spears to go around. The workers were fired up by Simon’s example and clearly very grateful for the food package that Letty had made, and they would have eagerly offered up all of their weapons if we’d accepted them.

  Rosa explained that they had made the weapons themselves, so any we took could easily be replaced.

  “We don’t want to leave you defenseless in the meantime, though,” I insisted. “We’ll take what we need, one for each of us, but no more.”

  “Very well,” Rosa acknowledged.

  “I feel like Wonder Woman,” Dia said as she gave a few experimental thrusts with her spear.

  “Wonder Woman doesn’t have a spear,” Letty objected.

  “Alright, nerd.” Dia rolled her eyes. “I feel like Aquaman.”

  “Aquaman doesn’t have a spear, either!” Letty folded her arms in exasperation.

  “Sure he does,” Dia deadpanned. “The stick thingy he holds.”

  “That’s a trident,” Letty sighed.

  “Okay, stick police.” Dia feinted a stab at Letty, and the Southern woman leaped back with a little squeal.

  I shook my head at their antics.

  Ally was hoisting the sail, and we all crowded to the edge of the yacht and waved goodbye to the group of workers on the shore.

  They waved back, and we pulled away from the lock and sailed into the still waters of Gatun Lake.

  “They were nice,” Shannon commented.

  “Yeah,” Letty said. “Simon took a while to warm up to us, but I think you really connected with him at the end there, Drew.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I think once he realized we really weren’t there to cause trouble, he thought we were okay.”

  “I do wonder what the other boats they’ve encountered have been like,” Ally mused.

  “Yeah, we need to be on our guard,” I said. “It could be that there are raiders or gangs nearby.”

  “I hope not,” Ally sighed. “Can’t we get just five minutes of peace, please?”

  “Simon said crossing Gatun Lake should be relatively smooth,” I said. “So long as we stay away from the shoreline, we shouldn’t run into any surprises.”

  “Finally!” Ally threw up her hands. “Some good news.”

  “For a pirate captain, you’re really not embracing the high-octane lifestyle,” Shannon teased.

  “I’m complicated,” Ally said with dignity. “I can be a pirate captain and still want to sit on deck and sunbathe, okay?”

  The scenery as we entered Gatun Lake was just as breathtaking as it had been on the other side of the locks. The water was a deep and sparkling blue, and on either side of the lake, the trees and bushes fluttered their leaves in the breeze. The sky above was bright blue and whipped up with clean white clouds, and the air seemed clearer and lighter than it had at the locks. It was still hot, but out on the water, the wind picked up and ruffled my shirt against my body and cooled the sweat on my skin.

  With the Gatun Locks behind us, the land opened up in a V-shape before we sailed into the middle of the lake. The shoreline was still pretty close, and as we passed a clump of tall, dark green palm trees, Ally suddenly let out a soft gasp.

  “Oh, my god,” she whispered. “Look.”

  I followed the direction of her pointing finger.

  At the bottom of the trees, where their roots sprawled into the dark wet earth of the Canal bank, there was a row of weird-looking tree trunks. I thought they must have fallen down in some storm or something. But then one of them moved, and I saw what Ally had also spotted.

  Those weren’t tree trunks.

  Those were crocodiles.

  “Oh, shit,” I breathed.

  “Oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my god,” Ally chanted.

  “It’s okay,” I told her and put my arm around her shoulders to steady her. She reached up to grab my hand, and I felt the tension in her fingers as they gripped mine.

  “I’ve really gone off crocodiles,” she said in a small voice.

  “Were you a big fan of them before?” I asked her teasingly in an effort to lift her spirits.

  “I guess I was neutral on them.” The redhead shuddered. “I’d never had to think about them very much.”

  “These guys don’t look like they’re bothered by the yacht,” I said. “Look at them, they’re just lying there.”

  “Topping up their tan.” Ally managed a weak smile.

  “Yeah, exactly that.” I let out a soft laugh and gave Ally’s shoulders another squeeze. “They’re not going to attack in the middle of their pamper time.”

  Shannon gave me a soft smile as Ally leaned her head against my shoulder. I returned the smile as Shannon came to stand by Ally’s side and took her hand in hers to give it a comforting squeeze.

  “It’s okay, Ally,” the Indian woman told her in a gentle voice.

  “I know, I know.” Ally heaved a big sigh. “I feel like a huge baby for getting so worked up about them.”

  “No,” Shannon protested. “Those things are huge.”

  “It would be weird if you weren’t freaked out by them,” Letty said.

  “Yeah,” Dia chimed in. “You know, crocodiles kill about a thousand humans every year.”

  There was a moment of silence as I struggled not to laugh, and Shannon bugged her eyes at Dia in outrage.

  “What?” the Latina asked. “I’m just saying, Ally’s right to be scared.”

  “Yeah…” Shannon said. “Maybe that’s not what Ally needs to hear right now.”

  “I thought I was validating her concerns.” Dia frowned and folded her arms. “You know, making her feel seen, and all that shit.”

  She did seem genuinely offended.

  Ally smiled reassuringly at her.

  “No, I get it,” she said. “You were just trying to be comforting. Thank you, Dia.”

  “See.” Dia glowered at Shannon and turned away with her bottom lip pulled huffily between her teeth.

  I remembered Dia saying that she had sometimes struggled to form friendships because she ended up saying the wrong thing, and my heart melted at the sight of the young woman’s confused face.

  “Hey,” I said to her gently. “We all know what you were trying to say.”

  Dia shrugged. I raised my eyebrows at Shannon meaningfully, and Shannon put her arm around Dia’s shoulders and gave her a hug.

  “You know I’m only teasing you,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Dia heaved a big sigh and rested her head on Shannon’s shoulder. “I’m just tired, I think. It’s been a long day.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Shannon warned.

  “Don’t say that,” she sighed.

  Shannon smoothed Dia’s dark curls back from her face with a tender gesture. We stood on the deck and watched the scenery pass by as we left the locks behind and headed out into the open waters of the lake.

  There was a cluster of little islands that I recognized from my time spent studying the map. They were all called things like Isla Ocelote, Isla Puma, and Isla Tigre. I hoped that wasn’t an indicator of the kind of predators who lived there.

  I could also make out Isla Pantera, which was the island closest to the Gatun Locks. It looked like a little floating forest in the middle of the lake, with clumps of tall palm trees and dark leafy bushes that I didn’t know the names of. As the yacht sailed closer, I tightened my grip on my new spear in case we ran into any trouble.

  “Drew,” Letty said as she nodded toward the island. “Do you think there could be dragons there?”

  “Possibly.” I scanned the landscape for any telltale signs, but as far as I could tell, there weren’t any ripped-up trees or gaps in the bushes that would indicate that there was a dragon living there. “I can’t see anything so far, but that doesn’t mean anything for certain.”

  “Maybe none of the meteorites actually landed on these islands,” Ally mused. “They’re pretty small, so what are the odds they would make a perfect landing?”

  “And even if they did make a direct landing, the dragons might not have lasted there very long,” Dia added. “There can’t be that many animals on such a small island. If a dragon landed there, they’d probably eat everything within a fortnight. And then what do they do? They can’t swim to the next shore.”

  “I think you’re right,” I replied. “When you think about how many dragons we’ve heard so far, they’re going to be running out of food sooner or later, even on the mainland.”

  “That’s going to be exciting.” Shannon grimaced. “Dragons fighting each other for food.”

  “Who knows?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe that will end up being a kind of population control.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Ally said. “Dragons taking each other out. That’s a show I’d watch.”

  “Oh, my god, can you imagine that?” Letty’s eyes lit up as her imagination ran wild. “A reality TV show where dragons fight each other to the death. Or humans fighting dragons! And you could win huge amounts of money by taking them out.”

  “I feel like we already did that,” I said with a wry smile. “Didn’t you see the movie Gladiator?”

  “Oh, shoot, yeah.” Letty gave a rueful laugh. “I suppose that is very much like the Roman circuses, isn’t it?”

  “I actually saw that film,” Ally said. “Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. I got chills.”

  “Really?” I smiled down at her. “I would never have expected you to watch a film like that.”

  “Hey, keep up, Drew.” Ally winked at me. “I’ve got layers, you know.”

  I laughed. I was glad to see her looking a bit more cheerful.

  My phone had been buzzing on and off in my pocket as service came and went, and I assumed it was YouTube notifications. I had been getting a lot of them lately, and I didn’t want to be checking my phone every two seconds to keep up with them all. Still, I supposed that I should at least take a look in case they were anything important.

  I took my phone out of my pocket and was shocked at the number of alerts on my lock screen.

  “One thousand, three hundred, and seventy-five mentions.” I whistled softly.

  “How many followers do you have now?” Ally asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I haven’t checked in a while.”

  “You’re such a lousy influencer,” she teased.

  “I’m not any kind of influencer, thank you very much.” I opened the YouTube app, and my eyebrows shot up as my account page slowly loaded. “Whoa.”

  “What is it?” Ally leaned over my arm to see my phone screen before suddenly letting out a sharp gasp. “Oh, my god. Guys! Come and see this!”

  The others hurried over to see what the fuss was about.

  I showed them my phone.

  “Holy shit,” Shannon breathed.

  “You’ve got almost eight million followers,” Dia gasped. “Fucking hell.”

  “That’s crazy.” Letty shook her head in amazement.

  “I guess when there’s nothing else to watch, people have a lot of time on their hands.” I checked my inbox and was instantly bombarded with thousands of direct messages, tags, and comments. “If the gamers and beauty gurus were still uploading, I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Come on, Drew, you know it’s not just that.” Ally patted my arm. “You know what you’re doing is important. People are responding to that.”

  “It does seem to be striking a chord with people,” I acknowledged. “Rosa did say they’ve all been watching the videos, too.”

  “There you go.” Ally smiled.

  There were so many notifications that it seemed almost pointless to start going through them. It would have taken me days to read every one, never mind responding to them all.

  But as I looked down my list of mentions, I noticed that the hashtag “#TheGoodPiratesVlog” kept coming up from tons of different accounts. I clicked on one of the latest hashtags, and it took me to a video titled “Flesherton Day 12 #TheGoodPiratesVlog #WelcomeToTheGrog.”

  The video opened with a twenty-something guy walking along a deserted street in what looked like a small town. He was wearing a red-and-white striped knit hat and a dusty red puffer vest over a white tee, and the overall effect was like a budget Where’s Waldo.

 

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