by Jason Frost
The cutthroat
( Warlord - 2 )
Jason Frost
Jason Frost
The cutthroat
Book One: ON THE SEA
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many resources who wandered far and wide… and on the sea he suffered in his heart many woes.
- Homer
1.
"Duck!"
"Huh?"
"Get your head down!"
She looked around in the dark. Saw nothing. "Why? I don't see-"
Tracy Ammes felt the sharp jolt of Eric's strong hands shoving her roughly off the wooden seat and onto the wet floor of the canoe. She sprawled head first into their nylon backpacks, colliding with such impact that the narrow canoe began to rock furiously, tipping over far enough to scoop great gulps of water over the rails. The black saltwater bounced around inside, soaking the backside of Tracy's tattered jeans.
"Son of a bitch," she sputtered, inching her hands along either side of the canoe's gunwales as she pulled herself upright. "What the hell are you doing? You got me all wet."
"Keep your head down," Eric Ravensmith repeated urgently, then turned and leaned over the stern of the canoe. He poked his paddle at something out in the water. She couldn't see what.
"You're getting weird, Eric."
No response. His paddle thumped something solid.
"You hear me? Weird. Like Tony Perkins or something."
She watched him continue to grapple with whatever he'd found. Something about his intensity frightened her. Eric wasn't the kind of man who spooked easily. In fact, she'd noticed that the more threatening the situation, the calmer he often got, almost icy, like he'd flipped some internal switch that shut down his emotions. That's when he was the most dangerous.
She leaned over the side, trying to see what he was fooling with. No use. Too damn dark.
Tracy swatted at the cold water soaking through her pants. To hell with his over-protectiveness for once. She wasn't little Dorothy from Kansas, he wasn't the goddamned Wizard, and this sure wasn't Oz.
"There's no place like home," she muttered angrily.
"What?"
"Nothing." With a huff she settled her wet butt back on the wooden thwart and massaged her sore knees. They had started to seriously cramp twenty minutes ago and during the last ten minutes they'd gone numb. Not used to the constant kneeling that went along with paddling, she'd taken a break a couple of minutes ago, hauling herself onto the narrow seat and stretching her numb legs. "Stupid canoe," she had complained to Eric. "No wonder the Indians lost. After paddling all day in one of these things they probably couldn't even walk straight."
Then Eric's harsh warning. A brusque shove. Wet butt.
Tracy took a deep breath, calming herself. She'd just been sitting there, nibbling on their last scrawny carrot, which she'd been saving for two days. Testing her discipline. Eric's shove had knocked the carrot out of her hand, but she'd be damned if she wasn't going to sit straight up, head high, and finish every bite of it to spite him. Tracy looked around the canoe for the carrot, squinting through the dark, her hands groping along the five inches of greasy water now swishing in the canoe's bottom. Her thumb bumped something. Quickly, she snatched it up, wiped it on her hooded sweat shirt, and took a loud bite. Salty, but good.
"No noise," Eric whispered sharply.
"Christ, Eric. We're in the middle of the ocean."
"Shhh."
She quietly mashed the half-chewed carrot with her tongue, wondering if she should swallow or spit it out. For a moment she considered hacking it up and spitting it onto his back like a chaw of tobacco. She decided against it. Any other time Eric might have laughed at the idea. But not now.
She heard a splash and Eric's mumbled curse. Though he sat only a few feet away, she could barely make him out in the dense darkness. Since electrical lights were extremely rare anymore, the nights had taken on an ominous blackness she'd not known since she was thirteen, sneaking into the drive-in theater in the trunk of her cousin's Nova to see Connie Francis in Where the Boys Are. Now it was as if all the survivors in California were living inside a closed trunk. Shadows seemed coiled in the darkness, somehow blacker and more threatening. The night looked impenetrable. The only lights came from the scattered campfires that speckled the land like distant flickering fireflies.
She looked over the side of the canoe at the soupy black water. They were far away from land now… if you didn't count the fact that what used to be one of Huntington Beach's busiest streets was lying eighty feet directly beneath them. Billions of gallons of salt water were tasting land for the first time. Liking it. The surf shops, T-shirt stores, burger stands, and cheap bars, all hunkered under them like a sleazy Atlantis. No lights there.
Overhead the stars and moon offered some faint illumination, but most of it was blocked by the thick Long Beach Halo which curved over the island of California like an inverted salad bowl. Months ago it had transformed the sparkling heavens into a random series of dim smudges. Eric had once said that it reminded him of a sloppy child's fingerpainting.
"Just what the hell am I ducking from?" Tracy finally demanded, sitting even straighter. She felt unreasonable, but couldn't stop herself. Fear brought out her anger. "I don't see anything out there."
Eric answered without looking up. "By the time you did, it would be too late."
"Screw you, Captain Bligh. We haven't seen another human being in two days, not since we launched this Natty Bumpo contraption of yours. What makes you think we're in danger now?"
Eric was half hanging over the stern of the canoe, his broad muscular shoulders hooded like a cobra as they flexed against some weight in the water. Even here, even now, she felt a warm rush of desire for him. For once she fought it.
"I love talking to your back, Eric."
"Good, it's been lonely for conversation."
"What are you fussing with back there?"
He didn't answer.
"Need help?" Sarcastic.
"Yeah. I need you to keep your head down."
She crunched her carrot loudly in response.
Eric, still struggling with something heavy in the water, paused, glanced over his shoulder at Tracy. "I mean it, Trace. Head down. Something's not right here."
What little light there was in the night air seemed immediately drawn to Eric's glacial face, flaring along the thin twisting scar that climbed out of his shirt collar, up his long neck, along the curve of his boxy jaw, then exploding in a round patch on his cheek. The pattern resembled the sparking of a fuse.
Tracy had known him for months, since before the disasters and afterward at the survivor's camp where they'd made him Warlord. Before he lost everything he'd loved. She was used to seeing the scar. Mostly she found it sexy, exotic. It gave off an aura of danger that spiced his rawboned good looks. Some days in some lights you couldn't even see it. Yet other times its intensity still startled her, the way it seemed to almost pulse with life like a winding strip of plastic explosive pasted along his face. The threat of violence lurking beneath the smooth surface skin.
Did he know the image he projected-tough, hard-nosed, ruthless-and how at odds that was with the other sides of him she'd come to know? Like last week when he'd recounted the last battle of the War of the Roses-Bosworth- where Henry Tudor finally defeated and killed Richard III in 1485. Describing all this while scraping out the slimy intestines of a rabbit he'd caught bare-handed and was about to cook with plants he'd dug up that looked suspiciously like weeds to her, but were, he claimed, herbs used by the Hopi Indians. This was also the same man who yelled at her to keep up with him, then slowed down so that she could.
Tracy saw all that in his scar. Even more important, it reminded her how he got it and she felt
a shiver run up her spine on tiny clawed feet. It also reminded her of where they were going now-and why. Again the fear yanked at her stomach. But she didn't want Eric to see it.
"I hope all that strain back there is at least for something to eat."
"I don't think we'll eat it just yet," Eric said. "In a few months we may not have a choice."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He didn't answer. His eyes were lost in the dark like moon craters so she couldn't read his expression.
"Well, if it's not food, what is it?"
"An answer to your question."
"What question?"
He turned back to the object he was wrestling out of the water. The canoe began to rock again from the added weight. "It's snagged on some seaweed."
Tracy braced her hands on either rail of the canoe, shifting her weight back and forth along the seat to maintain their balance. "What question, damn it?"
Eric grunted, heaving his arms up. His catch bobbed partially out of the water.
"Oh God!" Tracy gasped, dropping the stub of her carrot again. "Jesus no!"
2.
The seventy-three-foot staysail schooner rocked silently in the gentle current only a quarter of a mile ahead of Eric and Tracy's canoe. The heavy darkness completely curtained it from sight and being downwind drowned any sounds. On board, the ship's armed crew stood solemnly on deck, scratching their bodies and fidgeting with their weapons. Waiting and listening.
"What the hell are they doing?" the captain whispered, annoyed. A faint scent of English Leather soap and Polo cologne misted the air around him.
"We could be on them like a bad rash in just five minutes," Griffin urged the captain in his slow Carolina drawl. "Just say the word, Cap."
The captain didn't answer.
"Be over in no time," Griffin pressed. "They'll think their worst nightmare just came true, Cap. They'll be pissing out their guts like the others."
"No," the captain said. "Not yet. Wait until they're closer."
Griffin nodded, forgetting that it was too dark for the captain to see him. He'd learned when not to push it with the Cap. His hands clenched and unclenched around the wooden grip of his bow, which he called The Enforcer after his favorite Clint Eastwood movie. His thumb brushed the tiny nick where he'd blocked a knife thrust a couple weeks ago when they'd hit that tent town up the coast. You have to watch the old folks the most, he thought sagely, especially old ladies. They've always got a knife or a fork or something sharp hidden away on their wrinkled bodies, tucked in their size fifty-four bras or something. That last bitch had stabbed poor dumb Brian Fields to death before Griffin had finally crushed her skull with an Underwood typewriter she'd been sitting at when they'd surprised her. Writing fucking poetry, of all things. Well, he'd warned Brian about geezers. Afterward Griffin had stripped both Brian and the old woman clean. And, after scraping off a hunk of the woman's bloody scalp with Brian's knife, he'd taken the typewriter too. He'd traded the whole lot for a jar of Smucker's strawberry jam and a few cartridges.
"I hear his paddle messing in the water, Cap, but they ain't getting any closer. Maybe it's just kids foolin' around."
"Maybe," the captain said. "And maybe it's Alabaster."
Griffin shrugged, his calloused finger pressing the arrow tight against the bowstring. He was ready, whether it was kids or dogs or Alabaster or Farrah fucking Fawcett. Made no difference to him. Or The Enforcer.
He scratched the blue tattoo etched in the back of his hand. He'd had it done six years ago in Miami after he quit the Coast Guard and joined the merchant marine. The old fart who'd done it had the worst breath he'd ever smelled, like something real sick had crawled in his mouth to die. Still, he'd known his way around a tattoo machine and, despite the thick bifocals, had a steady hand. Griffin loved that tattoo more than he'd ever loved anything or anyone in his life. He figured it said more about him than any amount of talk could. It was a pair of tumbling dice with two words underneath: No Regrets.
It itched again. A medical impossibility, the captain, who seemed to know a lot about everything, had often explained. But the sucker itched just the same. Always did before a battle. Like it was anxious to get started.
The ship swayed but made no noise. No creaking or moaning. It was a damn fine ship, better than he'd ever have gotten to sail aboard if it hadn't been for the quakes. She'd sail up the asshole of a hurricane and out again without rustling a hair on the ocean's ass. Whatever craft was floating toward them now, whoever was aboard, they didn't have a chance against this baby.
Not to mention this crew. Griffin had sailed with strange crews before, but this one won the Grand Prize at the Looney Tunes Festival. Fucking maniacs. When they weren't grabbing at each others privates-no matter what the sex-they were stealing from each other or fighting over skin magazines. That was one thing he could say about himself, he hadn't turned fruity or bi-fucking-sexual.
Griffin reached back and smoothed his long ponytail. It was the only hair on his head, sprouting from the crown of his skull amidst a desert of bare skin like a rooster's tail. If only his old ballbusting Coast Guard captain, T.J. Phelps, could see him now. Or his folks back in Greensboro, for Chrissakes. They'd shit barbed wire. He stroked the ponytail as if it were a pet, then ran his rough hands over his bald head. He'd modeled the style after that guy on Kung Fu he used to watch while in the Guard. Wanted one ever since. That was another great thing about the quakes, you could be anything you wanted now. Funny thing was, on this ship, he was one of the more normal-looking bastards.
They listened silently for a few minutes. Behind them was the slight trickling sound of someone pissing overboard. Griffin sighed, maneuvered across the dark deck until he was near the culprit. "Stick it back in your pants right now, Devon, before I cut it off." The immediate sound of a zipper hastily tugged shut.
Griffin rejoined the captain. They could hear the distant voice skipping like a flat stone across the placid ocean. It was a woman's voice. Good, Griffin grinned. Very good. She sounded frightened about something out there. He chuckled, tapped his finger against The Enforcer. She'd be better off worrying about what's waiting out here.
"They've found something, Cap," he said.
"I know that," the captain hissed, snapping the thick rubber band he always wore around his wrist.
A bad sign, Griffin realized. Usually meant he was getting angry, starting to lose it again. Christ, he hoped not. Not yet. Not until this was over. The captain was the only thing that kept this crew from killing each other. And he was already scary enough without one of his fucking spells. At least in the dark he didn't have to look at Cap's face. There was no getting used to that sight.
Something splashed in the water.
"They're moving," Griffin said, slipping quietly toward the stern of the ship. It wouldn't be wise to be right next to Cap when the action started. Besides, that was her job. He looked around deck, couldn't see her, but knew she was standing nearby. She always was. She was the only woman he'd ever met who really scared him. Cap and her were two of a kind.
As Griffin eased across the ship's deck, he heard the thick rubber band snap twice. A very bad sign…
…for whoever was out there.
3.
"Please, Eric, get rid of it," Tracy pleaded.
Eric's hands were clutching the lapels of a sopping denim jacket. Inside the jacket slumped the bloated body of a young man in his early twenties. Water lapped his chest as he bobbed next to the canoe. Exact age was hard to determine because the skin was so puffy with water. Rubbery, like moist bread dough. Parts of the face had been nibbled away by fish, particularly the lips and the right side of the mouth all the way back to the cheekbone. The clenched teeth that showed through the flapping flesh hinted at the grinning skeleton lurking beneath.
But Eric's purpose in hauling him out of the water to show her was clear now. So was his warning. A wooden arrow had drilled through the face just to the left of the nose and was sticking out
the back of the skull.
"Seen enough?"
She nodded, unable to work her frozen mouth.
Eric wrapped his fingers around the wooden arrow and firmly tugged. The shaft moved slowly at first, reluctant.
"What the hell are you doing?" Tracy asked, horrified.
"We may need the arrow." He added a little more muscle, twisting the arrow as he pulled. Finally it dislodged from the skull. The soggy skin tore easily, clinging to the wood like wet tissue paper. Eric swirled the shaft in the water a few times, rinsing it clean, then handed it to Tracy. "Put it in your quiver with the others."
She held the arrow, said nothing.
Eric pushed the dead man away from the canoe and wiped his hands on the thighs of his Levis. They watched the boy's lifeless arms flop into the water, the swollen body rotate face down with black water bubbling like a fountain through the hole in the back of his head.
"That's why you keep your head down," Eric said, kneeling back down and grabbing his paddle. "Understand?"
Tracy tucked the arrow into her quiver next to the long bow, fighting the surge of nausea clawing in her stomach. Her mouth tasted bitter, metallic, as if she'd been sucking a rusty nail. Fresh blood. Sometime within the last minute she'd bit her lower lip. She prodded the wound with her tongue, then ignored it. She fished the fallen carrot stub from the canoe and finished the last two bites.
Since Atlas and Thor-that's what the outside world called the great earthquakes that had instantly made obsolete every map and globe in the world-Tracy had seen her share of horrors, ghastly sights much worse than that boy's chewed-up face. It wasn't merely his bloated corpse which was making her feel so chilled and sick, it was the constant unexpectedness of it all. Living in a perpetual state of tension, of being on guard. Like an unending Tunnel of Terror ride in a carnival. Peek around any corner, open any door, turn over any rock and you might suddenly be looking down the barrel of a madman's shotgun or staring at a mutilated body. Or worse. In this new world, the flesh had lost all dignity.