Finn had just watched as the master of ceremonies gestured with his cane to a rolled-up canvas affixed high up at the back of the makeshift stage.
Some in the crowd who guessed what was coming were already starting to laugh. Even though the gigantic poster’s exact content was a closely guarded secret, they knew what it would display: something truly, insanely ridiculous. A photoshopped image of the captain in drag, maybe, riding on top of Master Chief Jackson, rendered as a tank in a tutu. Or who knew what. Whatever the crew who put this on thought they could get away with.
With a soft thoop! the poster unfurled.
The laughter stopped. A thousand sailors froze in place as if God Almighty himself had just hit PAUSE.
Then someone near the stage let loose with a bile-curdling scream.
Others joined in, a wave of screams ripping through the crowd like a fire in a dying forest.
“Shit! Oh, shit! Ohhh, SHIT!” one guy moaned. “Ohhh FUCK!”
Another voice: “What—Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, Willy! WILLY! Oh, Jesus! Fuck me, man, FUCK me!”
“Holy mother of God,” murmured someone near Finn. The person next to him vomited, right there on the deck.
It was not an image of the captain, or of Jackson, or of any other subject of lighthearted ridicule.
It was a diptych of two high-definition photos, side by side, each depicting a nearly identical scene: a squarish opening in a wall of charred steel, blazing fire inside, like a pizza oven. What looked like two logs jutting in through the narrow door.
Not logs.
Legs.
An iron shovel pushing in the prone figure of Seaman Willy Chavez in one shot, Seaman Ángel Cristobal in the other, the skin on their faces starting to bubble and smoke, wild eyes staring at the camera as they were fed feetfirst into the ship’s jet fuel–powered, two-thousand-degree incinerator.
Finn heard a voice bellowing, “Cut it down! Cut it down!”—the chief of security, fighting his way up onto the stage, shoving people aside as he went—but nobody was listening.
“QUIET!” That was the air boss, whose voice carried like a thunderclap even without his PA system. The screaming and crying stopped as if someone had yanked the power cord. “CUT IT DOWN! NOW!!”
Three guys scrambled up onto the stage and managed to wrench the canvas free from its moorings.
The two incinerating boys crumpled and folded to the deck.
The talent show was over.