Ship Breaker Read online

  Nailer shrugged. “Now or later, what’s the difference?”

  “Because it just gets worse and worse.” Her face hardened. “And then you die from it. This looks like you’ve got a superbacteria. We need to do something fast, or you’re not going to make it.”

  Without warning, Lucky Girl shoved her thumb into his back, into the heart of the wound. Nailer screamed and scrambled away. He clutched at his shoulder, gasping. The pain was so bad he thought he’d black out.

  When he had himself under control he yelled, “What’d you do that for?”

  “Crew up, Nailer.” Lucky Girl made a face. “You can’t collect a reward for saving me if you’re dead. Let’s get your ass down to my ship and get you fixed up.”

  “Crew up.” Pima laughed and hit Lucky Girl on the shoulder. “Swank’s starting to talk like us.” She grinned again, then gave Nailer a serious look. “She’s got a point. Your mom would have been damn glad to have money for some ’cillin. You want to go out like she did?”

  Sweating and sobbing. Skin like fire. Her neck swollen with infection. Eyes red and pus-filled.

  Nailer shivered. “Okay, you want to play doctor, go for it.” He snagged an orange as he started down the hillside. “I’m not going out like she did, though. Won’t happen.”

  Despite his words, it was hard to get down to the water, and it was worrying. His arm and shoulder and back were all on fire. Lucky Girl and Pima guided him down, going slowly, both of them helping, reaching out to support him like he was an old lady made of sticks.

  As he made his way farther down the hill, Lucky Girl’s words lingered, unwelcome. A reward wouldn’t do him any good if he was dead. He forced down his rising fear, but still it tickled at the back of his mind.

  He’d seen other people’s wounds turn nasty, sick with rot and gangrene; seen their stumps crawling with maggots where they’d gone bad after having an amputation. Despite his bravado, a trickle of fear ran strong in him. His mom had prayed to Kali-Mary Mercy and she’d died in a haze of flies and fever pain. A superstitious part of Nailer wondered if the Scavenge God was balancing the scales of his Lucky Strike with a sickness that would kill him before he got to reap the rewards. Sadna was right. He should have made more offerings to the Scavenge God and the Fates after he got out of the oil room. Instead, he’d just spit on that luck.

  They reached the ocean. The ship had rolled during the night, turning itself nearly upright; it made it harder for them to climb aboard. Pima finally hauled Nailer up, groaning, her muscles flexing as she dragged him up like a dead pig, then left him lying on the carbon-fiber decking while she and Lucky Girl went below.

  When they finally came back, they were both shaking their heads.

  “It’s all broken open,” Lucky Girl said. “The ocean must have gotten it.” She surveyed the wreckage of the ship. “I don’t see anything in the water.” She shook her head again. “It’s all lost now.”

  Nailer shrugged, making a show of nonchalance. “When your people get here, they can give me medicine.” But even as he said it, he wondered how much time he had. He was shaking now, and even though he sat in hot sun, he felt chilled.

  “With your satellites it won’t be long, right?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Lucky Girl sounded uncertain.

  Pima nodded at the girl’s jewelry. “With your gold we could buy medicine from Lucky Strike, no problem.”

  Lucky Girl looked up from her study of Nailer. “This Lucky Strike has medicine?”

  “Sure,” Pima said. “He’s crewed up with the boss men. Gets them to bring things on the train.”

  “No.” Nailer shook his head. “We can’t let anyone know about the wreck. They’ll pull the scavenge.” He shivered. “We need to keep low until Lucky Girl’s people show up. Then we can do whatever we want. We let people know now, and they’ll come after our scavenge with everything they got.”

  “It’s not your scavenge,” Lucky Girl said fiercely. “It’s the Wind Witch, and it’s my ship.”

  Pima shook her head. “Just a wreck now. And you’re only alive because Nailer’s nicer than most of our people. Had himself some kind of religious experience out there. Got the fever eye, now, for sure.”

  Nailer shook his head. “I don’t have fever eye.”

  Pima shot him a glance. “You don’t think you’re paying the price for all your luck?”

  “What’s fever eye?” Lucky Girl asked.

  Pima stared at her. “You don’t know fever eye?”

  She shook her head. “Never heard of it.”

  “When dying people look into the future? Last look before the Fates take them?”

  “I don’t have fever eye.” Nailer felt tired. He sat heavily on the canted deck, perched in the sun. “Maybe if I wash it, it will make it better.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Pima spat. “Nothing’s going to make that better except medicine.”

  Nailer put his head on his arms. “How long? Till your people come?”

  Lucky Girl shrugged. “The GPS tracker will bring them. Soon, I think.”

  “You’re that important?”

  She seemed embarrassed. “Pretty much.”

  “Who’re your people?” he asked. “You’re cagey about it.”

  She hesitated.

  “We’re crew,” Pima reminded her.

  “My name’s Chaudhury. Nita Chaudhury.”

  They shrugged. “Never heard the name.”

  “I have my mother’s name, until I inherit.” She hesitated. “My father’s name is Patel.” She waited expectantly.

  There was a pause; then Pima said, “Patel? Like Patel Global Transit?” Pima and Nailer exchanged glances as shock rolled over them. “You’re a boss girl?” Nailer asked. Pima’s face turned furious. She lunged at Nita and shook her. “You’re one of the damn blood buyers?”

  “No!”

  “Patel Global buys all kinds of scavenge down here,” Pima said. “We see their logo all the time. Them and General Electric and FluidDesign and Kuok LG. Everyone’s always talking about keeping quota so the blood buyers won’t find another supply. Go across to Bangladesh or Ireland. Lawson & Carlson won’t even supply filter masks because they say they’ve got to keep costs low.”

  “I don’t know.” Nita looked embarrassed. “It’s a corporate priority… to source from recycled materials vendors.” She hesitated. “Ship breaking would be one possible trade source for raw components.” She looked away. “I’ve never really followed that side of the company.”

  “You goddamn swank.” Pima’s face had turned harsh. “You’re lucky we didn’t know who you were when you were still lying under your bedroom furniture.”

  “Leave her alone, Pima.” He was feeling worse, feeling tired and nauseous. “We got bigger problems.” He pointed to the horizon. “Check it out.”

  Pima and Nita turned. All three of them stared across the sand flats to where the last of the tide was trickling away. From the direction of the ship-breaking yards, a crew of people was headed toward them—eight or ten, all in a knot.

  “That your crew coming for you?” Pima asked. “Maybe your blood buyer people?”

  Nita ignored the jibe and craned her neck to stare across the waters. “I can’t tell.” She scrambled into the ship and came back with a spyglass. She trained it on the distant walking forms. “I’m seeing a lot of scars and tattoos. Your people?”

  Pima took the glass and peered through.

  “Well?” Nita pressed. “Is it one of your scavenge crews?”

  Pima shook her head. “Worse than that.” She handed the spyglass to Nailer.

  “What do you mean worse?” Nita asked.

  Nailer cradled the spyglass in his good hand and peered at the distant beach. The view slid over reflecting sand and salt water pools until he found the figures hurrying across. He focused on the faces, found the leader. “Blood and rust,” he cursed softly.

  “What’s wrong?” Nita asked again. “Who is it?”

  Pi
ma sighed. “His dad.”

  12

  RICHARD LOPEZ WAS FAST, coming across the sand flats where the water had run out. He had a surprisingly big crew with him as well, all his hungry ones, the ones who did rough work, kept the yards in line when it suited them, did nothing the rest of the time. They glinted with scavenge jewels, with steel necklaces and copper twists on their biceps. Crew tattoos snaked over their skin. Men and women who had done heavy crew work and then slipped out of the yards and into the twilight life of the beach with its nailsheds and gambling dens and opium holes.

  Nailer watched them, forcing down the creeping fear he felt at the sight of his father’s grinning features in the spyglass. He recognized a couple of the others. A hard-faced stringy woman who everyone called Blue Eyes and who scared Nailer maybe even more than his father scared him. He startled at the sight of another, a full foot taller than any of the others and massively muscled. Tool, the half-man, who Nailer had seen last at Lucky Strike’s side. He recognized another, Steel Liu, a skull cracker from the Red Python gang. All of them bad news, no matter how you cut it.

  The dragons on his father’s shoulders rippled. His father was leading the whole band, striding ahead, grinning, showing his tangled yellow teeth. Through the scope, he was so big it felt as though the man had already arrived.

  Nailer shivered and it wasn’t just the creeping infection in his back that chilled him. “We need to hide.”

  “You think they already know we’re here?” Pima asked.

  “We better hope not.” Nailer tried to get to his feet, but it was too tiring to stand. He motioned for Pima’s help.

  “What’s wrong with his dad?” Nita asked.

  Nailer made a face as Pima hauled him upright. It was too difficult to describe all the things that Richard Lopez was. Talking about his dad was like talking about city killers. You thought you understood them, and then they were on you and they were so much worse than you remembered. “He’s bad,” he muttered.

  Pima got herself under his arm, supporting him, and started helping him down the slope of the deck. “I saw him kill a man in the ring,” Pima said. “Beat him down and killed him, even after everyone said he’d already won. Beat him bloody, left him with his head cracked open.”

  Nailer’s face felt like it was carved from wood. He looked again across shimmering water to his father’s progress across the sands. He and his crew were coming fast. This time of day they were probably already sliding high.

  “If they get hold of Lucky Girl, she’s dead,” Pima said. “Your dad won’t want her getting in the way of scavenge.”

  Nailer looked over at Nita. “This would be a good time for your people to show up.”

  Nita shook her head. “Too soon, I think.” She didn’t even look to the horizon. “What else can we do?”

  Nailer and Pima exchanged glances. “Let’s get out of here,” Pima said. “Let them search the ship. There’s plenty of good scavenge. Maybe it’ll keep them busy and we can sneak back to the beach later. Tonight or something.”

  Nailer stared at the antlike forms. “He’ll still be looking for me, even when we go back.”

  “We don’t know that. He’s so damn high, he probably doesn’t even remember he has a son.”

  Nailer remembered the time when his father, high and angry, had taken a man twice his size, blurringly fast, a broken bottle and blood on the ground. He blew air out through his lips. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

  “You’re sure we can hide?” Nita asked.

  “You better hope so,” Nailer said through gritted teeth as they helped him slide clumsily over the side. “If they catch us…” He shook his head.

  “But aren’t you family?”

  “Doesn’t mean anything if the man’s sliding,” Pima answered. “Even Nailer’s afraid of his dad when he’s high.”

  “Sliding? That’s a drug?”

  Nailer and Pima exchanged glances. “Crystal slide. You don’t know it?”

  She looked puzzled.

  “Red ripper?” Pima tried.

  “Bloodrock,” Nailer said. “Steely breeze? Hornytoads? Bliss bleeders?”

  She sucked in her breath. “Bleeder?”

  They both shrugged. “Could be.”

  She looked at them both, horrified. “That’s what surge rats use. Combat squads. Half-men. It’s for animals.” She caught herself. “I mean…”

  “Animals, huh?” Nailer exchanged a tired smile with Pima. “That’s about right. Just a bunch of animals here, making money for you big bosses.”

  Nita had the grace to look embarrassed. Nailer stumbled out of the surf and stared up at the island’s foliage above. Dizziness washed over him. He held out a hand to the rich girl. “Help me. I don’t think I can climb.”

  The haul back up into the island undergrowth was a nightmare of pain and struggle. Finally they huddled again at their makeshift camp. Nailer curled on the ground, panting and dizzy. Two hundred feet below, the white hull of the clipper was visible through the greenery. Shouts of pleasure echoed up to them. Cheers from the men and women as they swarmed onto the scavenge. They were laughing and whooping. Nailer tried to prop himself up, to see what was happening below, but he was feeling worse and worse. Chills swept over him in steady surges even though the sun was pouring down on him.

  “I need blankets,” he whispered. The girls wrapped him, but still he couldn’t stand the sweeping chills and the ice that filled him. He shivered uncontrollably. Sweat dripped in his eyes. His teeth chattered, waves of fever surging through.

  Below, his father and his cronies clambered over the wreck with the feral grace of tiger monkeys.

  “We are so screwed,” Pima muttered.

  Nailer could barely speak through his chattering teeth. He wanted to tell Pima to check the far side of the island, to make sure they weren’t going to be surprised, to tell swanky Nita Chaudhury that she needed to keep her damn head lower, that the adults below weren’t smart but they were plenty sly, and they’d look around sometime. At some point, they’d get tired of hooting about all the wealth, and start making sure they had the scavenge protected for themselves.

  He wished they’d fled before the tide had come. It was stupid not to assume that someone would be coming. The ship was too big not to attract notice. Little scavengers only had so much time to profit before the lions rolled in and took the vast share of the meat. And now they were hiding and watching and stuck, while the lions stalked through the ship’s carcass and laughed and cracked open liquor they’d found in the galley. They tossed plates of silver onto the deck and shattered fine china against the rocks with shouts of pleasure, china that even he and Pima had guessed might be more valuable than the silver it sat beside. Then again, if you couldn’t smelt it, it wasn’t worth a copper yard on a ship-breaking beach, so maybe they were right to destroy it all, maybe they should light the damn ship on fire, turn the sky black…

  Nailer shivered. He was going crazy. He needed to lie still. He was so tired. Needed to lie down and rest.

  “We need to get you back to the yards,” Pima whispered.

  Nailer shook his head. “No. They’ll get Lucky Girl.”

  “I don’t care. Let her hide or be found. You need medicine now.”

  He could barely force the words through his chattering teeth, but he stared at her as hard as he could, trying to make Pima understand. “She’s crew, yeah? Bloodmarked just like me and you.”

  Pima looked away. Nailer knew what she was thinking. There was crew, proved over years of scavenging together and sharing the take, sharing the risks of thefts, putting aloe on belt marks after a bad night with Richard Lopez, fighting to get onto light crew and then sweating hard to keep the quota coming through…

  And then there was day-old crew.

  “Pima.” He clutched at her. “If you think I’ve got the fever eye then you better believe we need to keep our Lucky Girl safe, even if she’s a blood buyer. We need her.”

  Pima didn’t answe
r.

  Nita crouched beside him, studying him with concern. “He needs a doctor.”

  “Don’t tell me what he needs,” Pima snapped. “I know damn well what he needs.” She peered through the ferns at the men below. “No way we can get him across the flats without them catching sight of us, and then they’ll want to know what we found.” She shook her head. “We’re trapped.”

  “I could go down,” Nita offered. “It would distract them.”

  Nailer shook his head violently. Pima stilled, studying her. She looked to the men again, grimacing. “If you actually knew what you were offering, I’d let you do it.” She shook her head. “No way.” She glanced at Nailer. “You’re crew, anyway.” She almost said it like she meant it.

  “Well, well,” a familiar voice interrupted. “What we got here?”

  The sunburned face of Nailer’s father peered through kudzu vines, grinning. “I thought we saw something moving—” His eyes widened with surprise. “Nailer?” His eyes flicked back and forth, skitter quick, high and fast, looking all of them over. “What are you kids up to? Scavenging ahead of us?”

  His gaze fell on Lucky Girl. “And who’s this pretty little thing?” His eyes scanned her, wide and fascinated; then he grinned again. “Soft girl like you could only come off a big boss boat.” He smiled at Nailer. “Didn’t know you were crewing with swanks, boy.” His wide blue eyes swept over her body, lingered. “Pretty.”

  “She’s our crew,” Nailer said through his shivering.

  “Yeah?” A knife flickered into Richard’s hand. “Come on down, then. All of you together. Let’s get a good look at what the light crew’s got for us.” He turned and shouted, “Up here!”

  A moment later, Blue Eyes and the half-man Tool and a couple others surrounded them and goaded them out of their camp. They scrambled clumsily back down through the weeds and ferns, with Nailer’s dad’s friends all making comments. They whistled at Pima and Nita, slapped and pinched them. Laughed harder when Pima tried to fight.