The Sea Hates a Coward (10 page)

They were easily sixty feet down now, still sinking, and darkness was beginning to gather. It was hopeless: Aroha had to do this for himself, or they would both end up in the abyss. Turning and grabbing the lost soldier by both lapels, Wrack shook the larger man like a ragdoll and stared into his face, mouthing his name and fighting the urge to lose his precious chestful of air in howling it.

But they were still sinking. Wrack pivoted in the water, legs up, arms outstretched, trying to use himself as a float to slow Aroha’s descent. The water grew colder, sliding icily around his teeth as he bared them in maddened, silent repetition of the commander’s name.

At last, Aroha’s eyes locked with his, and Wrack felt a surge of hope. If the commander started kicking now, Wrack told himself, they might both still reach the surface. But the only movement Aroha made was a slow, sad shake of his head, before closing his eyes. Whatever he had seen when the shockwave had hit their boat, it had been too much for him to bear.

Wrack let go, and the soldier dropped beyond arm’s reach. For an agonising moment he could not turn away, felt bound to watch as the man drifted further and further into the gloom. He was about to turn back to face the surface when a terrible lowing reverberated through his bones, and a pale shape loomed far below.

Silently and slow as cloud, the head of the second ET swung out of the darkness, ghastly jaws telescoping, and plucked Aroha from the water before disappearing back into the murk.

Wrack saw the tail of the monster flicker briefly in deep indigo as it dived, and then he turned and swam.

When he reached the surface, he gasped for air even though he knew he had no need of it—the relief of being above the surface was enough. It faded quickly enough when he took stock of the situation.

The
Akhlut
had vanished without a trace, sunk or at least abandoning its catch, and the wall of steam was rapidly dissipating. The surviving support craft were motoring at full speed back in the direction of the
Tavuto
, their exhaust plumes visible intermittently as surface waves slapped at Wrack’s face. They had left just a handful of stricken craft foundering in the slick of ichor around the dead ET, evacuated of overseers but left with cargoes of the marooned dead.

One of them was the pinnace Wrack had been swept from by the second ET’s assault on the
Akhlut
. It was sinking fast, full halfway to the gunwales, its engine silent and the overseer gone from the pilot’s saddle. It was still home to a couple of dozen zombies, either slumped with their heads in their hands or lying motionless in the water. And while it was hardly a refuge, Wrack was so eager to have something between him and the depths that he flopped over its edge with something approaching profound relief.

There was no time to rest; the boat was so low in the water that every large wave threatened to swamp it entirely. Worse yet, with the monster’s avenging companion now leaving the area, scavengers were finally beginning to move in to investigate the kill. Here and there, sleek fins were sliding out of the milky water around them, and things were beginning to bump against the underside of the hull. They would find nothing palatable in the weird biology of the dead ET, but human meat in the water was a different matter. He could not let the boat sink.

Wading clumsily to the front of the boat, he saw what he had hoped was there: the overseer’s iron bucket helmet, still mercifully lying next to the pilot’s saddle. Grabbing it, he began to bail water from the hull, scooping and heaving with a vigour he would have been proud to have managed while alive. If only the overseers could see him now, Wrack thought, smirking grimly, he would surely make
Tavuto
’semployee of the month.

After fifteen minutes or so, it became apparent there was no way he could empty the boat by himself. His arms were beginning to shake, clearly working at the limits of whatever necrological chemistry let them move in the first place, and there was no appreciable difference in the water level within the boat. He was going to need assistance.

When he turned from the bow, he found to his utter astonishment that he already had it. Wordlessly, and unnoticed by him above his own frantic splashing, a small group of the other zombies, the broken-jawed woman leading them, had begun aimlessly scooping water with their hands and hurling it out of the boat.

Whether this was a conscious attempt to help, or just mindless familiarity with copying the work going on around them, he had no idea. He decided to assume the former, for the sake of thin optimism, and splashed over to the small group with the helmet in his hands.

“Use this,” said Wrack, as he thrust the makeshift bucket at Broken-Jaw, and felt something giddily like hope as she nodded calmly and took it from him. He began searching the boat for more containers for bailing. He spotted the emergency locker—wide open, a two-man hand pump half dragged from it—and let out a shout of triumph that collapsed into raw, waterlogged coughing.

The boat did not sink. It seemed to take hours to empty it, but by the end, almost every zombie on the boat had been raised from its stupor and cajoled into helping. There were twenty-eight of them in all; Wrack had counted. Some were beginning to clumsily attempt speech, while others were still struggling to manage eye contact.

Only two were beyond waking: one tiny man who could not have been past his mid-teens when he died, who emitted a constant, low moaning, and another whose immense girth in life had shrunk to layers of sore-pocked skin folds hanging from his hips. They had been placed in a corner at the back of the boat for the time being, leaning against each other while the rest of the crew worked their way to sapience.

Even the one-armed zombie had come round. They had taken their turn at the pump, grinning darkly all the while, and repeating the phrase, “we’ll find out, we’ll find out, won’t we,” like someone trying absently to remember a string of numbers. Every attempt to discover their name had only been answered by a wet, lunatic chuckle.

Wrack was just wondering what in blazes they were going to do once the boat was safe, when he heard the engine.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HROUGH THE SHREDS
of the mist, pulled apart by the late afternoon breeze, came one of the weapons skiffs, billowing filthy smoke from its stack. Mouana was standing on the front, wearing a grin that was definitely more than the resting expression of her papered-over skull. She called to a hunched zombie at the back of the craft, and the skiff pulled alongside them, its side clanging softly against theirs on the swell.

“Hungry?” she shouted, loud as her punctured chest would allow, and hefted a bulky net bag before hurling it into the bilge of the pinnace. As it hit the floor it burst open, and several large tins rolled out. The labels were unmistakable: five-pound cans of Hedstrom & Sons boiled beef, labels scuffed but otherwise gleaming.

Wrack did not think it would be possible for two dozen zombies to moan in delight, but as every head in the boat turned towards the cornucopia of tinned flesh, an eerie chorus rose from their throats.

Even as Mouana clambered into their vessel, still slowed by her shark-bitten hip, Wrack’s improvised crew had abandoned the last of the baling and were falling upon the cans. While some had the presence of mind to work the ringpulls, others were battering the tins against the vertices of the burnt-out generator, or—wince-inducingly—attempting to bite them open.

Soon, the entire boat was full of wet, chomping, snuffling sounds, as sea-pruned hands shovelled wobbling meat into famished jaws. Even some of Mouana’s crew, who Wrack assumed had already eaten, were flopping over into the wider boat for seconds. It was all he could do to wait and clasp arms with Mouana before falling guiltily on a can, which he had already slid beside him with a surreptitious foot.

“Strange party,” said Mouana, and was gracious enough not to expect an answer, as Wrack was thoroughly consumed by the effort to wolf down half his head’s weight in cow detritus. “Overseer’s rations,” she added. “This lot was for four of them. You believe that?”

Wrack didn’t answer; he was too busy forcing beef in his mouth. He didn’t even have to stop to breathe. He was fairly certain he’d swallowed a tooth, but what did he care? He still had thirty or so to play with. He only noticed Mouana was speaking to him again when she punched him in the shoulder and pointed over to the body of the dead ET.

“Mealtime there, too,” she said, as a crash of saltwater eclipsed the sound of the munching dead.

Exotic scavengers had found the leaking carcass. Something segmented, with a collar of red glass eyes around its maw, had thrown its front half onto the bobbing flank and was chewing away with rotary jaws, sending pale scraps flying up with marine spray. Wrack had no idea what it was, but he felt he wanted to get away from it. Forcing his hands to stay clamped around the tin, he gulped down a packed mouthful and nodded at the skiff.

“How did you get that working?” he asked, slightly muffled by meat sounds.

“We were engineering corps,” answered Mouana. “Worked the generators for the railguns. Good with petrol. Might get us halfway back. Or further. Let’s not push our luck, though.”

Wrack had no idea how far past
Tavuto
’s horizon they had travelled, but it seemed a horrible long way to go. He only hoped Mouana had made a note of where the sun had been on the way out, as he wasn’t sure—especially after his trip into the depths—which edge of the world the slaveship sat at. After the chaos and the disaster of the ET hunt, there could surely be no better time to sneak aboard unremarked and cause havoc. And in any case, there was nowhere else to go.

He really, really hoped she knew where
Tavuto
was.

“That way,” she offered, turning his shoulder so he was facing a completely different part of the horizon from the portion he had been sure was home. “We’ll see the smoke before long, or the lights. If it takes that long. Let’s go.”

They went. Convincing the other zombies to help them lash the boats together was less an exercise in persuasion than in leading by example. The conversations involved were halting and not entirely rational, but the two craft ended up linked bow to stern, the weapons skiff leading, with some interesting knotwork. It was good enough.

Some time later, as the sun was setting, the skiff’s engine gave out.
Tavuto
was still nowhere in sight. Mouana spent a long while under the back plating of the craft, asking Wrack in the shortest sentences possible to search in the pinnace’s own workings for spares, but it soon became apparent the boats shared completely different engine designs, and no diesel grumble was forthcoming. The saltwater slap of wave on wave continued patiently around them.

Though the onset of night in Ocean was forgivingly slow, in time the sun crept below the horizon and twilight was upon them. Twilight with nothing visible but dancing wavelets for miles in every direction. Wrack decided it was time to face facts, and mention the stack of oars he had seen in the emergency locker.

Twilight passed and night fell; they were rowing. Forty dead people, half of them still stuck in the gulf beyond speech, fewer yet able to muster the coordination to row, dragging two broken boats across endless sea.

“Did you feel the black wave?” asked Wrack, as he hauled back clumsily on the oar with arms glowing with fresh food. Mouana did not answer.

“The wave, from
Tavuto
,” he continued. “The one with the memories. We were in the middle. It took what we felt, it used it against the ET. Did you feel it too?”

Mouana kept rowing, did not look over at him, even when he repeated the question. He repeated it again.

“Keep rowing,” said Mouana, her face hard and her words barely audible over the slapping of oarblades on water.

They did. More zombies joined them at the oars. The pub bruiser, who had managed little more than the words “fack off” off since the demise of the
Akhlut
, had piled in at sunset and would not be moved, and the amputee, who had latched onto the side of a decayed, silent specimen, worked tirelessly with one arm.

A while into the night, his forearms shivering, Wrack took to the bow and looked forward for a while, hoping to be the one to spot the lights of the
Tavuto
. After a while staring into the black where water supposedly met sky, he found Mouana beside him.

“It feels odd to talk,” said Wrack, his mouth still dry from the astringent meal.

“It’s not fun,” she replied, the quiet sucking of her wound punctuating her words, “but it’s worth it.”

“It’s good,” he answered, as the hull slid across boundless water. “We’re not meant to even be conscious, are we?”

Once again, Mouana didn’t answer. Wrack wondered whether it was because he had split the infinitive, before realising his companion’s silence was probably more to do with distaste for big questions than with grammatical propriety. A librarian and a military engineer, he reminded himself, before trying a different—and perhaps more honest—tack.