Apocalypse Unborn. James Axler
swimming in it?”
“What about us? Aren’t we too close?”
“Moot point, I’m afraid. What few extra rads we might pick up in passing aren’t going to make us ill. The eruptions are the real problem. They’ve been sending radioactive material aloft, into the upper atmosphere for more than a century. All that stuff has to come down somewhere. In fact, it comes down everywhere.”
“Then we’ve been breathing it and eating it all of our lives. But none of us are sick, though.”
“Short of a massive dose of gamma rays, radiation doesn’t kill its victims quickly. It can take decades for the damage from lesser levels of exposure to show up as cancer. Even folks with terrible superficial burns sometimes recover—whitecoats found that out after Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl. It’s a matter of genetic luck and total rad exposure. Most people in Deathlands don’t live long enough for the sickness to ever show up. They get chilled by other things first.”
“Look at that!” Krysty exclaimed, pointing at a sudden commotion on the surface, about 150 yards from the ship and five miles off the hellish, uninhabitable coast. It was definitely not volcanic. A huge living creature thrashed and rolled out there. It was at least thirty feet long, and splashing fountains of water tinged with gallons of blood.
“It’s a whale,” the black woman said. “And it’s under attack.”
Only when the animal stopped thrashing could Krysty see it clearly. The barnacle-covered skin along its flanks was torn to shreds, torn through the thick white layer of blubber, gory pits gnawed into the dark purple meat. Though the whale floated quietly, gathering the last of its strength, the surface around it churned and humped.
There were things in the bright red water.
Much smaller creatures. Streaking pale, people-size shapes.
They were tearing at it from underneath. Hundreds of them.
The whale smashed the water with its tail flukes, fighting in vain to drive off the horde.
From the helm, Captain Eng bellowed through his megaphone for more sail. The deck crew leaped to the task. As the additional canvas dropped and filled, the ship surged ahead, pulling away from the carnage.
“What is it?” Krysty demanded of a passing crewman. “What is it?”
The islander did not turn, and he did not answer.
W HEN SUPPERTIME CAME , Krysty and Mildred joined the others assigned to the second feeding shift. The galley’s tabletops were covered with slick film of fried fish oil, and littered with discarded squid beaks and shrimp shells. Krysty had to take off her coat to keep from getting the mess on the long fur. After a day to recover, she found her appetite had returned with a vengeance. Ignoring the gut bomb sensation that came from swallowing cupfuls of grease, she chewed the golden crispy bits. She paused to spit out the larger bones and scales, then reached in the trough for another handful.
Krysty was using her back molars to tackle a particularly tough and rubbery hunk of squid, when from the deck above came shouting, then the ship’s bell began ringing. First crew, then passengers abandoned their dinners and rushed for the stairs. Krysty and Mildred joined the throng.
Above deck, the wind was dying down; the sea was a polished mirror.
Off the bow, framed by a sunset of orange and salmon-pink reflecting off the smooth water, of bloodred underlighting the tiers of volcanic clouds to the east, lay a ship slightly smaller than their own, painted black and brown. Instead of three masts, it had two, each rigged for four sets of sails.
It was adrift, riding low as if overloaded or in the process of sinking. Its canvas was torn and hanging in strips, its cables broken, trailing in the water. Nothing moved on deck. A few oil lamps glowed weakly; all the others were extinguished. It looked like they had been burning since the night before.
Captain Eng cut a wide, cautious circle around the vessel, then began to spiral closer. Every time he turned downwind, an awful stench engulfed them. The stench of death. Facing the foul, carrion breeze, the crew began to mutter and moan.
When they got a little closer, Krysty could see the wreck was a wooden ship. A coastal cargo trader, like theirs. Overlapping planks formed the hull; there were holes in it above the water line. Dozens of them. They didn’t look like damage from cannon shot. Their edges were ripped out, not blown in. The holes were big enough for a person to crawl through.
Behind them, the captain of the Taniwha tea turned his face to the sky and screamed like a wounded animal.
Chapter Six
Eng barked orders through his steel megaphone.
Ryan didn’t understand the islander language, but the meaning became obvious as the crew scurried to pull in the sails. The white ship glided to a stop, upwind of the derelict vessel and its pall of death.
Eng barked again, and Ryan was forced back from the rail as islanders rushed to open a blaster and prepare the cannon for firing. They unblocked the wheels, removed muzzle plug and fuse hole cap and rolled the weapon forward on its tracks.
Likewise, every cannon on the starboard rail was readied to broadside the brigantine that foundered just forty yards away.
Because the two-master was so much lower in the water, Ryan could look down on its main deck, which was a wreck. Cables, ropes and chains lay in tangled heaps; tool chests and worktables were overturned. Some of top-deck cargo had come loose from its safety netting: huge bags of grain had broken and spilled.
The chem storm could have done all that, easily, Ryan thought. It was less likely, though still possible, that the storm had tossed every living soul overboard.
But no way could it have torn those holes in the hull.
Up close, Ryan could see marks where the black paint had been pulled off, masses of overlapping, tiny circles that exposed the bare wood beneath. The marks led directly from the water line to the ragged hull breaches. Paths of popped paint. They weren’t made by bullet impacts or grappling hooks or ballpeen hammers. Something had climbed up from the sea, up the side of the ship in great numbers, and once there, had gnawed and ripped through the inches-thick hull planks.
All the bullet holes were on the main deck; the gunwhales, the superstructure and the masts were absolutely riddled. The scuppers gleamed with a litter of spent brass. Certainly thousands, maybe tens of thousands of rounds had been fired. Apparently to no avail. In broad swatches, congealed blood glazed the deck like purple varnish.
Along the Taniwha tea ’s rail, between the cannons, other crewmen took positions with their Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades, ready to put up covering fire for the longboat that had already been lowered into the water on the port side.
Sunset, like a second Armageddon, lit the ruined ship and the rapidly moving longboat. As six rowers pulled hard, a seventh islander stood braced in the bow, his AK shouldered and aimed.
No targets appeared.
Nothing stirred on the opposite deck.
Shipping their oars, the rowers tethered the longboat to the side of the brigantine. Captain Eng ordered his cannoneers and riflemen to hold their fire as the boarding party deftly scrambled up the broken lines and cables onto the main deck. Once there, they fanned out with assault rifles, sweeping the area, kicking over anything that could hide an attacker, quickly confirming there were no signs of life—or death.
The boarders then split up, entering the fore and aft companionways in a simultaneous rush. After a few minutes belowdecks, the crewmen spilled back into view and immediately lurched to the rail, coughing and gasping for air.
Eng raised the megaphone and shouted an unintelligible question across the gap.
One of the boarders raised his head and drew a forefinger across the front of his throat.
All dead.
A