Blackwater Kraken (The Dystopian Sea Book 3)

by Sean Michael Argo

  The smoke cleared from the water. Debris and blood and carcasses of both man and beast spotted the blackwater around them. To their relief, there was no sign of the kraken on the water.

  “Send a boat out to look for Bard,” Abigail begged Drucilla through heavy sobs.

  Drucilla shook her head, “He’s gone. It’s too dangerous with the blackwater.”

  Abigail locked eyes with her Captain and between gritted teeth she repeated, “Send a boat now. At least try to look for him! At least bring his body back! We couldn’t do it for the rest of them, Mr. Pit, Riddle, but if there is a chance—" her words were cut off by more sobs choking her throat.

  Drucilla signaled for Vladimir, “Send a boat to search for Bard and anyone else surviving in the waters. If you find cultists, execute them. Search well for Bard, but no more than two hours, understood?”

  Vladimir nodded. “Aye, Captain.”

  Drucilla nodded and continued to hold Abigail, trying to console her. Kalak left with Vladimir. Drucilla shouted out after them before they disappeared.

  “Come back. Stay safe!”

  She wondered if her words were lost in the wind and watched as they descended in the small raft down to the surface. The Captain withdrew her eyeglass to watch after their safety with bated breath.

  30.

  She swept the horizon. It looked as if the two other ships both housed survivors from their crew. One was in bad shape, on fire with only a handful of survivors. Kalak and Vladimir stopped and unloaded the few people who remained. The other ship helped circle around the bits of the oil rig protruding from the surface.

  An hour and a half passed before Kalak, and Vladimir’s boat returned to the Penny Dreadful. Drucilla watched their small vessel slide over the blackwater and saw them pull a few things up from the ocean. The distance was too much to make out whether they were simply collecting useful debris, or if they found any survivors from the battle.

  Abigail broke away from the Captain and rushed to meet the hunting boat. The survivors from the fallen ship were the first to board. Each time somebody popped their head above the banister, Abigail’s anxiety and disappointment increased upon seeing a stranger. Kalak and Vladimir were the last to pull themselves up. Kalak stepped onto the decks and yelled at Abigail.

  “Get back!”

  He leaned down and helped lift a limp body from Vladimir, over the railing. It was Bard, still unconscious, his suit nearly eaten away by the blackwater and concussive force of the explosion. Abigail tried to rush towards them.

  “I said get back, Abby!” Kalak growled, “Give him space.”

  “Is he breathing? Is he alive?”

  Vladimir boarded and immediately ran below decks to get supplies.

  “Get a hose,” Kalak barked.

  Abigail did not hesitate and helped wash the oily blackwater from Bard’s body and spraying it off the ship’s surface. Kalak cut through the suit, throwing the damaged material overboard and into the ocean. They had already removed the tanks.

  “Is he breathing?” Abigail asked again, this time in a muted whisper, afraid of what the answer may be.

  “Yes,” Kalak looked up at her, “But it doesn’t look good.”

  He adjusted his position, and Abigail saw it. Bard’s arm was hanging on by mere strands of muscle and sinew. She puked over the railing. Drucilla brought a torch and her cutlass. She heated it to a glowing hot red and cut the arm clean off.

  Vladimir came with sanitized bandages, alcohol, and a med kit to treat the other wounds. Abigail knelt down beside Bard and pulled his head carefully into her lap. She brushed his wet hair out of his eyes as Vladimir poured alcohol over the wound before cauterizing the arm closed.

  The crew pressed in close as they watched. Artisema was the one who stitched the multiple thick gashes cutting through Bard’s flesh. They checked the previous leg wound, a dark purple festering collected around the previously tainted meat of the blackwater. Vladimir took a swig of the transparent spirit before setting to work surgically removing the infected tissue and re-cauterizing the wound.

  “What can I do?” Abigail cried.

  “Pray.”

  A long time passed, many days with little signs of whether or not Bard would live. He stayed in a state of coma broken only by intense fevers. When Bard awoke, he did not know where he was. Bright lights blinded him. At first, he panicked as the last memories rushed through his brain. He saw the flashes of the explosives, the rocks tumbling, the pylons crushing in, the sound of his final air tank sputtering out of control, and then nothing. Bard’s body reacted to the sudden remembrance with fearful muscle spasms.

  “Bard, Bard,” Abigail’s soft voice calmed and grounded him, “You’re safe.”

  Her eyes welled up with moisture. Bard tried to reach out to touch her. She must have seen the confusion on his face. Her lips pressed into a hard line. She spoke to him gently.

  “You lost your arm in the explosion.”

  "We'll have to call him Aki-Pati for sure now," grunted Kalak, his face a wide smile as he turned to leave, giving Bard and Abigail their space.

  He looked and sure enough, where his dominant hand used to be was nothing. Bard looked back at her, and with his remaining hand, he cradled her face.

  “I thought I would never see you again,” Bard said.

  She smiled as tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. “I have been worried sick.”

  “Did everything work? Did we close her in?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes, the blackwater is dissipating,” She smiled. “It’s over.”

  They both laughed a moment. It was over. No more Kaiku. No more kraken.

  “How long have I been out for?” Bard asked.

  “A week and a half. We didn’t think you would make it. Your body has been fighting fever up until yesterday. Vladimir had to remove a large chunk of your thigh from where the blackwater got you.” She pulled his hand away from her face and looked at it as she grasped it between hers. “You won’t throw a harpoon or play the banjo anymore.”

  “Well, that’s better than what I thought was going to happen, besides, if Vladimir could help Riddle then he can help me, I'll be hunting in no time.”

  “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

  Bard smiled.

  He tried to get up. Abigail attempted to stop him at first. The look on his face changed her mind. He needed to see everything was okay for himself. She helped support Bard’s weight. He cringed as he stood. Pain throbbed through his ribs and almost every part of his body. He could feel his missing hand tingle like needles pricking the skin. Bard’s injured leg was virtually useless, even with the crude brace that was affixed to it. They were in Vladimir’s workshop.

  Abigail helped Bard up the ladder well. The bright sun and blue sky blinded him as he stepped onto the upper decks. The commotion of the day silenced as the crew saw Bard approach. Everybody gathered in, yet kept the path clear for him to pass. Abigail let Bard lead and helped him walk to the bow of the ship.

  The ocean was flat and more beautiful than he had ever seen it. Birds cut through the air, and he could see Atoll Sparta in the distance, already recovering. The masts of the Penny Dreadful stood strong behind him, creating an image which inspired awe in every crew member aboard and every fishermen, peddler, and sea merchant lining the waterway into the atoll.

  “What are you going to do now?” Abigail asked, smiling at Bard, "Go home?"

  He looked down at her and sucked air between his teeth, and she could see the light in his eyes as he looked at her.

  "I hear that down near the equator there are leviathans bigger than anything we've ever seen before." And then Bard turned towards the horizon and pointed with his good hand.

  "Home can wait another whaling season."

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Shark!

  Chapter One

  Simon didn’t have an exact word to describe the smell permeating the air. The closest he could come up with instead
was a color: green. The air smelled green. The trees, the miles of endless forest, the river, the lifeforms running and scampering and screeching in the trees and underbrush. Even when it wasn’t actually green, it felt green, lush and growing and full of life.

  This was the world he’d always dreamed of visiting. This was the Amazon.

  He wasn’t the only one who stood on the dock and stared out at the lush world around them. Not including the captain and his two crewmembers, the tourist boat that he didn’t even know the name of yet would be home for the next several days to five other people. Simon hadn’t had a chance to meet any of them yet, as he’d been too busy rushing out to get his first true views of the untamed jungle river. He had to assume that everyone else had the same level of interest as him. After all, this trip hadn’t been cheap for him, and anything this expensive would only attract the die-hard true believers, right?

  As soon as one of them, a tall man with slicked-back black hair, opened his mouth, Simon knew differently. “This is seriously what we’re paying for?” the man asked.

  A young woman roughly Simon’s age turned to look at the man. Despite her petite stature being dwarfed by his, she shot him a feisty look that said she would be more than willing to take him on if need be, and if Simon were a bettor, he might even put his money on her.

  “What did you think you were paying for?” she asked. “Casinos on the river? Roller coasters? The whole point of a trip to the Amazon is seeing the wildest that the world has to offer.”

  “The wildest that the world has to offer is in my bed, sweetcheeks,” the guy said. Oh brother. Simon would have done something to put the asshole in his place, but he didn’t have to. The little woman was more than capable of doing it for him.

  “I don’t think your tiny little worm can actually be considered wild,” she said. She walked away from him then, but not before “accidentally” stepping on his foot. Judging from the hardcore wince he gave, she must have more force in that tiny foot than anyone gave her credit for.

  The tall man turned to Simon, giving him a look that obviously meant he expected to get some sympathy for his rude treatment. “I hate bitches like that, don’t you?”

  Simon tended to consider himself to be the quiet, unassuming sort. He wasn’t at home with confrontation. But in this moment, it felt very important to him that he unambiguously let this guy know that he wasn’t on his side. Almost before he even realized what he was doing, he gave the tall man the finger and then walked away.

  With the unpleasant guy out of the way for the moment, Simon could go back to appreciating where he was and how he had gotten here. The Amazon had always been his number one dream vacation, but it had never been something he believed he’d get around to. He especially thought it would be out of the question given the massive amount of student loan debt he had to pay back now that he was done with college. But his aunt had given him the trip as a graduation present, and even though she could only afford to send him during the offseason, he was extremely grateful.

  Judging from the relative age of most of the other people waiting with him at the docks for their boat, Simon suspected he wasn’t the only one here to celebrate graduation. In addition to the obnoxious guy and the feisty young woman who had defied him, there were three others, a guy and a girl couple, as well as another young woman who appeared to have come with the feisty one. He hadn’t had a chance to truly meet any of them yet. Simon supposed he should try to introduce himself, as the six of them were all going to be on the boat together for just under a week, cruising down the Amazon River and taking in the unspoiled wilderness, yet he just couldn’t force himself to make the first move. He had always been rather shy, and nothing about this situation made that any easier.

  Short-and-Feisty, however, didn’t seem to have the same problem. “Hi!” she said to him, shooting out a hand for him to shake. “I’m Miriam.”

  “Simon,” he said, taking her hand. For someone so tiny, her grip was ridiculously strong. She cocked a thumb in the direction of the other young woman who had come with her. “That’s Katherine.”

  Katherine gave him an exaggerated wave, but said nothing else. The couple, seeing that the introductions were finally happening, came over and joined them.

  “I’m Lucas, and this is my girlfriend Lara,” the guy said. “Pleasure to meet you all.” He then paused and looked in the direction of the taller man, who was still glowering at the river some distance away. “Or almost all of you. Miriam, was Cory giving you any trouble?”

  “Not any trouble I couldn’t handle,” Miriam said.

  “His name is Cory?” Simon asked.

  “That’s what he said on the bus ride over here,” Lucas said. “Other than that, I didn’t really bother to listen to much of what he said. Most of it was just bitching and complaining, as far as I could hear.”

  Simon had taken a bus from the city to here as well. It had been a small, overcrowded affair where nonetheless very few people had gotten off in this vicinity. From the stop, he’d had to hitch a ride in the back of a truck to get here. None of the others currently waiting here had been with him for any of that, so he had to wonder if there had been a way to get here that hadn’t smelled like chicken and pigs.

  His Aunt Annie may have paid for him to come here, but she sure hadn’t been able to pay much.

  Simon had to assume that most of the others were here, at this off time in the season and taking less than reliable means to get here, for the same reason. Apparently, though, they’d gotten here by different means than him.

  “Did you have a bus that brought you all the way here?” Simon asked.

  “No, we had to take a smaller shuttle,” Miriam said. “Thankfully. Katherine here was convinced we would have to ride the rest of the way in the back of a livestock hauler, but I told her that couldn’t possibly be the correct way.”

  Simon kept his mouth shut and tried not to blush.

  Miriam, however, seemed to realize that she’d said something to make him uncomfortable. She remedied the situation by changing the subject. “Where are you from, Simon?”

  “Nebraska,” he said. Normally, that was something he felt self-conscious about, coming from a state that many considered to be middle-of-nowhere. But he thought he had detected just the hint of a mid-west accent in one of the other tourists, so maybe he wouldn’t feel so out of his element here.

  “I’m from Iowa,” Lara said, confirming his theory, “although I’ve been living in San Diego for the last couple of years.”

  “And I’m San Diego born and raised,” Lucas said as he affectionately kissed the top of Lara’s head.

  Miriam and Katherine looked like they were about to chime in with their own places of origin, but before they could, they were interrupted by a whistle from Cory back over at the dock.

  “Hey, assuming the rest of you are going to be stuck on this shitty trip with me, you might want to look alive,” he called. “It looks like our ride and home for the next few days is here. And it’s exactly as terrible as I expected it to be.”

  Oh lordy, Simon wasn’t looking forward to dealing with that attitude for the rest of the trip. But when he turned and looked at the boat they would be taking, he honestly had to agree with Cory. This was definitely the conveyance of tourists who couldn’t afford to see the Amazon during peak times of the year with respectable tour agencies controlling it.

  Damn, Aunt Annie, Simon thought. I love you so much for this trip, but next time, please check the brochure a bit closer.

  There was a name stenciled on the side of the boat, but it was so chipped and faded that Simon couldn’t even tell if the name was in Spanish, English, or Portuguese. If everything about the environment around them said “green,” then everything about this boat said “brown,” even the parts that were supposed to have color. And it wasn’t a rich brown, either. It was the washed-out brown of mud and excrement and rotted leaves left to bake in the sun. The thing had obviously been around for a very long time, and
Simon honestly wasn’t sure how the rickety thing managed to stay afloat. About the only positive thing that could be said in its favor was that at least it was large enough for the small group of tourists to live there for several days like they were supposed to. The question then became whether or not they would even want to.

  As much as everyone else looked like they wanted to defy Cory’s snide statement, none of them said anything in the boat’s defense. Most of them looked downright shocked at the sad state of their home for this trip, and Simon had to assume that, like him, they hadn’t been the ones to arrange the specifics of their trip.

  “Please tell me this is some kind of joke,” Lucas said.

  The boat slowed as it got to the dock, and the two deckhands stepped out to tie it off. Simon didn’t know a lot about sailing, but he didn’t think the knots they were using were of the best quality or workmanship. Behind these two, a third man came out of the cabin, looked around confused for a minute, then saw the tourists waiting for the boat and waved at them. While the two deckhands appeared to be locals, the man in the captain’s hat had a light complexion and features that vaguely marked him as being of some kind of Eastern European stock.

  “Welcome!” he bellowed at him. His thick Russian accent confirmed which part of the world he hailed from. “You must be my guests for the week! Welcome, welcome! Come aboard and join me!”

  Simon looked discerningly at the boat and captain, then at the other tourists, then again at the lush world surrounding them. So then, this was to be his dream Amazon vacation. Already he could see how it would leave a little something to be desired, but at the same time, he hadn’t expected five days in the rainforest and along the Amazon River to be a pleasure cruise. He’d wanted to see the real river, not some overly touristy version of it, and that apparently was what he was going to get. He would take the bad, as long as it brought all the amazing world of his dreams along with it.