Piranha Read Free

woman was because of the remnants of coat and tie that were still intact beneath his folded arms. His lower half was burned to a cinder. Scott figured the man must have been lying on his stomach when the fire scorched him.
    â€œHelp me, Mr. Scott,” the man sputtered through cracked lips.
    Scott looked at the man in confusion. “Do I know you, sir?”
    â€œDon’t you know
me
, Mr. Scott?” he croaked, every word an excruciating effort. “I am Lutzen.”
    Scott gaped at Gunther Lutzen. He would never have recognized the German.
    Lutzen trembled as he raised his arms toward Scott, who thought the man was reaching out for aid. Instead, he lifted his precious notebook and held it toward Scott. Now he realized that Lutzen must have thrown himself on the notebook to protect it from the flames.
    â€œI’m dying. Give this to my sister.”
    Scott did not want to see another man die, so he desperately searched for any signs of help coming to them. A cargo vessel he recognized as the
Roddam
was turning to port to head out to open sea, and he could see that the entire stern was on fire.
    â€œPlease, Mr. Scott,” Lutzen said, drawing Scott’s gaze back to him. “Ingrid Lutzen, New York City.”
    Seeing that there was nothing more to do for the man, Scott nodded and carefully took the notebook and tucked it into his waistband. “Of course, Mr. Lutzen. I’ll see to it.”
    Lutzen couldn’t smile, but he nodded in understanding. “Tell her I was there,” he said with a pitiful wheeze. “I made the breakthrough. It will change everything. They shined like emeralds, as large as tree trunks.”
    He coughed violently, his body shaking from the strain. Scott tried to stand to go find him water, but Lutzen grabbed his sleeve and pulled him close so that Scott’s ear hovered over his mouth. He whispered three words, then his hand fell away from Scott’s coat. Lutzen became mercifully still, finally free from his pain.
    Scott remained kneeling for a moment, confused by what he’d heard. Then more groans caught his attention, and he was on his feet. With the captain dead or mortally wounded, he was now in charge.
    Scott gathered as many survivors as he could find, a total of only thirty out of the sixty-eight on board, and half of those would likely not make it through the night. Scott and three other crew members were the only ones not badly injured. They set about constructing a raft out of the remains of a lifeboat, but their efforts were rendered moot when the French cruiser
Suchet
arrived in the afternoon and took them aboard, leaving the
Roraima
behind to sink. The officer who gave him coffee told him that they feared not a single soul in Saint-Pierre had lived through the holocaust.
    With nothing more to do now that he and his few charges were safe, Scott took Lutzen’s journal from his waistband and flipped through it. As he’d suspected, he couldn’t understand a word of it. Not only was every page written in German but the majority of the writing consisted of equations and scientific mumbo jumbo. Scott hoped Lutzen’s sister would know what to make of it and vowed to keep his promise to return it to her.
    Scott thought about what he’d tell her when he met her upon his arrival in New York, whether to save her from the horror of what her brother had suffered. He thought she deserved the whole truth, including Lutzen’s last message to her.
    He wanted to make sure he remembered it verbatim in the days it would take for the trip north, so he scrounged a pencil from one of the
Suchet
’s sailors and leafed to the first blank page. Scott scribbled the cryptic phrases he’d heard, Lutzen’s raw voice in his head.
    Tell her I was there.
I made the breakthrough. It will change everything. They shined like emeralds, as large as tree trunks.
    Scott paused, still unsure whether he’d heard Lutzen’s final three