Ship Breaker Read online

“We’re crew,” Nailer said, trying to keep his voice from showing fear. “You tell Pima there’s oil. You tell her there’s a secret stash. If you don’t, I’ll haunt you like Jackson Boy and come back and gut you while you’re sleeping.”

  Silence: Sloth, thinking.

  Nailer felt a sudden wash of hatred for her. The skinny starved girl perched up there had all the power in the world to help or kill, to tell Bapi at least that there was something to be gained from Nailer’s survival, and yet there she sat.

  He called up. “Sloth?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I’m thinking.”

  “We’re crew,” he reminded her. “We swore blood oath.” But he knew the calculations she was making, her clever mind working the angles, sensing the great pool of wealth, the secret stash that she might pillage later, if Fates and the Rust Saint worked in her favor. He wanted to scream at her, to grab her and drag her down. Teach her what it felt like to die sucking oil.

  But he couldn’t yell at her. Couldn’t piss her off. He needed her. Needed to convince her to help him survive.

  “We’ll keep it secret,” he offered. “We can Lucky Strike together.”

  Another pause, then she said, “You said yourself you’re swimming in it. Soon as anyone sees you, they know you found a pocket.”

  He grimaced. Too damn smart. That was the problem with girls like Sloth. Too damn smart for his own good. “We’re crew,” he said again, but he suspected it was pointless. He knew her too well. Knew all of them too well. They’d all starved. They’d all talked about what they’d do if they ever found a Lucky Strike. And here Sloth had been given one. Chances like this didn’t just come along. Sloth had to make her gamble. It was her chance.

  Please, he prayed. Please let her be good like Pima. Like Pima and her mom. Let her not be like Dad. Fates, please don’t let her be like Dad.

  Sloth interrupted his whispered prayers. “Pima says I’m supposed to hook you up good. If I find you.”

  “You found me.”

  “Yeah. That’s for sure.” A rustling. “Here’s food and water.”

  A shadow fell through the green glow of her forehead phosphor. It hit with a splash. Nailer could just see pale objects floating on the surface, starting to sink. He stretched for them, trying to keep his hand on the wall. Managed to snag a water bottle before it disappeared. Everything else was already gone. The blackness of the room closed in on him again as Sloth disappeared.

  “Thanks for nothing!” he shouted after her, but she was already gone.

  He had no idea if Sloth would actually report to Pima or if she’d just hurry back, dragging copper, determined to replace him and think of some way to claim the oil prize all to herself. For certain, she wouldn’t tell Bapi. Bapi would just call it light crew scavenge and keep it for himself.

  That meant they had hours more copper work to prepare for the storm… and that meant he had hours to wait, even if Pima knew where he was and that he needed help.

  With one slippery hand and his teeth, Nailer managed to open the plastic bottle and drink while he clung to the wall. He swished the first mouthful and spat it out, trying to clear the oil and gunk from his mouth, and then drank, hard and fast, gulping. Grateful. Unaware until the water was pouring into him how thirsty he’d been. He swallowed the rest greedily, then set the bottle floating in the blackness. If he died this would be the last thing of him on the surface.

  A few scrabbling sounds drifted down from above, scraping and tearing.

  “Sloth?”

  The sound stopped, then started again.

  “Come on, Sloth. Help me out.”

  He didn’t know why he bothered. She had made her decision. As far as she was concerned, he was already a corpse. He listened as she busied herself with stripping out the rest of the copper. His fingers weakened. The oil crept up around his chin. Fates, he was tired. He wondered if Jackson Boy had also been betrayed by his crew. If that was why the licebiter hadn’t been found until a year later. Maybe someone had let him die on purpose.

  You’re not going to die.

  But he was lying to himself. He was going to drown. Without a ladder. Or a door—

  Nailer’s heart suddenly beat faster.

  If this was some room accidentally filled with oil, then there had to be doors. But they’d all be down below the surface. He’d have to dive down and risk not making it back up. Dangerous.

  You’ll drown anyway. Sloth’s not going to save you.

  That was the real truth. He could hang on for a little longer, getting weaker and weaker, but eventually his fingers would fail and he’d slip off.

  You’re dead already.

  It was a curiously liberating thought. He really had nothing to lose.

  Nailer slid slowly along the wall, questing down into the murk with his toes, feeling for some bump or ledge that would tell him a door lay below. The first time, he found nothing, but the second, he let himself sink lower, oil lapping up around his jaw. His toes brushed something. He tilted his nose to the sky, letting the oil lap higher, up around his cheeks, closing around his mouth and nose.

  A ledge. A rim of metal.

  Nailer ran his toe along its width. It could be the top of a doorway, he guessed. It wasn’t much more than three feet wide. The ledge itself was a boon. He could almost rest, letting his toes cling to it, taking some of the pressure off his trembling fingers. The ledge felt like a palace.

  You can rest now, he thought. You can wait for Pima. Sloth will tell her you’re down here. You can wait it out.

  He killed the hope. Maybe Pima would come save him. Probably, though, Sloth wouldn’t say anything about him at all. He was on his own. Nailer balanced on the ledge, on the edge of decision.

  Live or die, he thought. Live or die.

  He dove.

  4

  IN A WAY, the black muck of the oil was no worse than the blackness above. Nailer let his hands do the work of seeing. He quested down along the rim of the door, sinking deeper, reading its outline.

  His hands touched a wheel lock.

  Nailer’s heart surged with relief. The wheel was the kind used to hold back seawater if a hull breached, a solid airtight door. He tugged at the wheel, trying to remember which way to turn it. It didn’t budge. He fought down panic. Yanked on the wheel again. Nothing. It wouldn’t move. And he was running out of air.

  Nailer kicked for the surface, using the wheel to launch himself upward, praying that he’d make it. He surfaced, flailing. His fingers scrabbled for the thin pipe, miraculously caught hold before he sank again. He wiped frantically at his face, clearing his nose and keeping his eyes shut. He blew air through his lips, pushing oil away from his mouth. Sucked in a fume-laden breath.

  With his eyes still closed, he felt again for the doorframe with his toes. He thought he’d lost it for a second, but then he scraped rust and a moment later he was perched again. He smiled tightly. A door with a wheel. A chance. If he could make the damn thing turn.

  More scrabbling echoed from above. Sloth at work still.

  He called up to her. “Hey, Sloth! I got me a way out. I’m coming for you, crewgirl.”

  The movement stopped.

  “You hear me?” His voice echoed all around. “I’m getting out! And I’m coming for you.”

  “Yeah?” Sloth responded. “You want me to go get Pima?” Mockery laced her voice. Nailer again wished he could reach up and yank her down into the oil. Instead, Nailer made his voice reasonable.

  “If you go get Pima now, I’ll forget you were going to let me drown.”

  A long pause.

  Finally Sloth said, “It’s too late, right?” She went on. “I know you, Nailer. You’ll tell Pima no matter what, and then I’m off crew and someone else buys in.” Another pause, then she said, “It’s all Fates now. If you got a way out, I’ll see you on the outside. You get your revenge then.”

  Nailer scowled. It had been worth a try. He thought about the door waiting below him. It might be locked
from the far side. Maybe that was why the wheel didn’t turn. Maybe…

  If it’s locked, you die. Same as everything. No use worrying about it.

  He took a deep breath and went down again.

  This time, with more air, and knowing what he was trying to do, he found the wheel quickly and then took his time working it. He braced his feet on the hatch frame, felt around for the latch handle. First he needed to unseal with the wheel, then he needed to yank the handle. He tried to turn the wheel again. Nothing. He leaned against it, bracing himself sideways and using his legs, fighting to keep a grip.

  Nothing.

  He hooked his elbow through the wheel. He was running out of air, but he didn’t want to give up. He pulled. Pulled again, harder, the wheel digging into the crook of his arm. His lungs were bursting.

  The wheel turned.

  Nailer redoubled his efforts. Gold and blue and red pulses filled his vision. The wheel turned again, loosening. He was frantic for air, but he stayed down, fighting the urge to kick for the surface, turning the wheel faster and faster until his lungs were heaving. He launched himself upward again, hope running wild as he surfaced.

  Eager now, he hyperventilated a final time, huffing high in the blackness.

  Dove.

  Spinning, spinning, spinning the wheel, his lungs bursting, all or nothing, reckless with the need to get out. Nailer yanked the latch handle. For a second he worried that the door swung inward and that he would never be able to drag the thing open against the pressure of oil holding it closed—

  The door blew open.

  Nailer was sucked through in a black torrent. He slammed into a wall. Curled into a ball as he tumbled. Oil roared around him. His forehead smashed against metal and he almost took a breath, but forced himself to curl tighter, letting himself be turned and swirled and bounced and slammed through ship corridors like a jellyfish thrown by breakers onto a reef.

  He blasted into open air.

  Nailer’s stomach dropped out of him. Free fall. Involuntarily, his eyes opened. Stinging oil and scalding sun. A mirror bright ocean, almost white with its intensity. Blue waves rushed up to meet him. He had only a second to twist—

  He smashed into water. Sea salt swallowed him. The surge and swell of an oily sea. The roll of breakers. Nailer surged upward, kicking for the surface. Broke out into sunlight and waves, gasping. He sucked air, flooding his lungs with shining clean oxygen, starved for all the life he’d been sure he’d lost.

  Above him, a tear in the tanker’s hull still spewed oil, marking where the ship had vomited him into open air. Black streams of crude traced down the ship’s hide, running in slick rivulets. Fifty feet of fall into shallow water, and he was alive. Nailer started to laugh.

  “I’m alive!” he shouted. And then he was screaming, feeling a flood of victory and released terror, drunk on sunshine and waves and the people staring at him from shore.

  He swam for the beach, still laughing and drunk on survival. Waves caught him and pushed him into the shore. He realized that he’d been doubly lucky. If the tide hadn’t come in, he would have slammed against sand instead of plunging into water.

  Nailer crawled out of the breakers and stood. His legs were weak from so long swimming but he was standing on dry land, and he was alive. He laughed madly at Bapi and Li and Rain and the hundreds of other laborers and crew gangs, all of them staring at him dumbstruck.

  “I’m alive!” he shouted at them. “I’m alive!”

  They all said nothing, simply stared.

  Nailer was about to shout again but something in their faces made him look down.

  Sea foam lapped around his ankles, rust and bits of wire. Shells and insulation. And intermixed with the ocean froth, his blood. Running down his legs in streams, bright and red and steady, staining the waters with the pounding of his heart.

  5

  “YOU’RE LUCKY,” Pima’s mother said. “You should be dead.”

  Nailer was almost too tired to respond, but he mustered a grin for the occasion. “But I’m not. I’m alive.”

  Pima’s mother picked up a blade of rusted metal and held it in front of his face. “If this was even another inch into you, you would have washed into shore as body scavenge.” Sadna regarded him seriously. “You’re lucky. The Fates were holding you close today. Should have been another Jackson Boy.” She offered him the rusty shiv. “Keep that for a talisman. It wanted you. It was going for your lung.”

  Nailer reached for the metal that had almost cut him down and winced as his stitches pulled.

  “You see?” she said. “You’re blessed today. Fates love you.”

  Nailer shook his head. “I don’t believe in Fates.” But he said it quietly, low enough that she wouldn’t hear. If Fates existed, they’d put him with his dad, and that meant they were bad news. Better to think life was random than to think the world was out to get you. Fates were all right if you were Pima and got lucky with a good mom and a dad who was nice enough to have died before he could start beating you. But the rest of the time? Watch out.

  Pima’s mother looked up, her dark brown eyes studying him. “Then you get right with whatever gods you worship. I don’t care if it’s that elephant-headed Ganesha or Jesus Christ, or the Rust Saint or your dead mother, but someone was looking after you. Don’t spit on that gift.”

  Nailer nodded obediently. Pima’s mother was the best thing he had going. He didn’t want to tick her off. Her shack of plastic tarps and old boards and scavenged palms was the safest place he knew. Here, he could always count on shared crawdads or rice, and even on days when there was nothing to eat, well, there was still the certainty that within these walls—under blue dangling Fates Eyes and a mottled statue of the Rust Saint—no one would try to cut him, or fight him, or steal from him. Here, fear and tension fell away in the presence of Sadna’s strength.

  Nailer moved gingerly, testing the stitching and cleaning work she’d done. “It feels good, Sadna. Thanks for patching me.”

  “I hope it does you some good.” She didn’t look up. She was washing the stainless-steel knives in a bucket of water, and the water had turned red with her work. “You’re young, you’re not addicted to anything. And say what you like about your father, you’ve got that Lopez tenacity. You have a chance.”

  “You think I’ll get an infection?”

  Pima’s mother shrugged, her corded muscles rippling under her tank. Her black skin gleamed in the candlelight of her shack. She’d left her own crew and shift to make sure that he’d been cleaned up. Dropped a quota, thanks to Pima, who had had the sense to run for her when she heard that her missing crewboy was down in the shallows instead of up in the ship.

  “I’m not sure, Nailer,” she said. “You took a lot of cuts. Skin’s supposed to protect you, but water’s dirty here, and you were in oil.” She shook her head. “I’m not a doctor.”

  He made a joke of it. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need a needle and thread. Patch me up like a sail, I’m good as new.”

  She didn’t smile. “Keep those clean. If you get fever or the skin starts to pus, you find me. We’ll put maggots on it and see if that will help.”

  Nailer made a face, but he nodded at her fierce glare and gingerly sat up. He put his feet down on the floor, watching as Sadna bustled around the single room, carrying his blood water out into the dark, then coming back. He straightened and carefully made his way to the door. He pushed the plastic scavenge door aside so that he could see down the beach.

  Even at night, the wrecks glowed with work, people laboring by torchlight as they continued the steady job of disassembly. The ships showed as huge black shadows against the bright star points and the surge of the Milky Way above. The torch lights flickered, bobbing and moving. Sledge noise rang across the water. Comforting sounds of work and activity, the air tanged with the coal reek of smelters and the salt fresh breeze coming off the water. It was beautiful.

  Before almost dying, he hadn’t known it. But now that he was ou
t, Bright Sands Beach was the best thing he’d ever seen. He couldn’t stop looking at it all, couldn’t stop smiling at the people walking along the sand, at the cookfires where people roasted tilapia they’d hooked in the shallows, at the jangle of music and the shout of drinking from the nailsheds. It was all beautiful.

  Almost as beautiful as the sight of Sloth getting kicked down the beach, her eyes wet with tears for herself, while he was getting stitched up. Bapi had put his knife through her light crew tattoos himself, disowning her completely. She’d never work as a ship breaker again. And probably nowhere else, either. Not after breaking blood oaths. She’d proven that no one could trust her.

  Nailer had been surprised that Sloth hadn’t protested. He wasn’t about to forgive, but he respected that she hadn’t begged or tried to apologize when Bapi got out his knife. Everyone knew the score. What was done was done. She’d gambled and lost. Life was like that. There were Lucky Strikes and there were Sloths; there were Jackson Boys and there were lucky bastards like him. Different sides of the same coin. You tossed your luck in the air and it rattled down on the gambling boards and you either lived or died.

  “It’s the Fates,” Pima’s mother muttered. “They’ve taken you now. No telling what they’ll do with you.” She was staring at him with an expression that almost looked like sadness. He wanted to ask her what she meant, but Pima came in through the door with the rest of the crew.

  “Hey, hey!” Pima said. “Look at our crewboy!” She inspected his puckered wounds and stitches. “You’ll get some nice scars out of this, Nailer.”

  “Lucky scars,” said Moon Girl. “Even better than a tattoo of the Rust Saint’s face.” She handed him a bottle.

  “What’s this?” Nailer asked.

  Moon Girl shrugged. “Luck gift. God’s got you tight, now. I’m getting close to God.”

  Nailer smiled and sipped, was surprised at the quality of alcohol that burned his mouth.

  Pima laughed. “It’s Black Ling.” She leaned close. “Tick-tock stole it. Crazy licebiter just walked out of Chen’s noodle shack with it. He’s got no sense, but he’s got fast hands.” She pulled him toward the shore. “We got a fire going. Let’s go get drunk.”