The Apocalypse Ocean

by Buckell, Tobias S.

  A large, hairy hand grabbed her from behind and clamped over her mouth, then spun her around. Large brown eyes stared at hers. The Ox-man wasn’t dead. The sound woke him.

  Shush, he indicated with his finger.

  Then the Ox-man quietly pushed her against the depression in the sand his body had created. He carefully lay down over her, smothering and crushing her.

  She could barely breathe, her ribs crushed by his weight. She panicked, wanting to scream and push. But that impulse vanished when she heard the footsteps.

  Feet kicked the Ox-man, who didn’t stir.

  Kay didn’t know the Lord’s language well, but she thought she heard “… dead?”

  Another Lord responded. Kay couldn’t focus to try and understand. A second later the crack of a gunshot shattered everything and translated his response for her.

  “… move …” the Lord asked.

  For a terrifying moment Kay felt the body of the Ox-man shift as the two Lords pushed and shoved at it, trying to drag it back to the pit. She waited for the body to roll off her, and for them to discover her.

  But then they stopped. They couldn’t move the body.

  “… later …”

  She listened to the footsteps slap away.

  Trapped under the massive bulk and completely unable to move, Kay fought to keep breathing as the Ox-man’s blood trickled down her neck and soaked her tunic.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kay couldn’t move. She tried to push the body of the Ox-man off her, but the three hundred pounds of muscle and hair didn’t budge.

  When the Lords came back to move the body they would find her. Then she would be just as dead as if she hadn’t been hidden.

  She cried for a while. But that hurt her ribs.

  She started to dig. The dirt by the boulder was mixed with sand, and looser. That’s why the Ox-man had settled into it and left a depression.

  Dig.

  With her left arm Kay began to scoop the sandy dirt down toward her elbow, and then wiggle it down to her side.

  It was excruciatingly slow work, and she kept expecting to hear footsteps. But none came. There were still gunshots popping in the distance. More executions.

  For an hour and a half Kay dug until fresh air suddenly filled her nostrils and the Ox-man’s body shifted slowly off into the depression she’d dug and just slightly off her.

  It was enough. Now she began to dig with her right hand, and in twenty minutes broke half her body free.

  She scrabbled and pulled, grabbing nearby rock and popping a fingernail as she flailed, but she finally pulled free.

  For a long moment she sat near the Ox-man, panting.

  “Now what?” she whispered to the empty air.

  The sun had set and there were no moons out. Kay peeked around the boulder, and saw no more living people. Just Lords, awkwardly dragging bodies to the lip of the pit.

  She couldn’t run for it.

  But she could climb out of the low canyon, Kay realized, looking up at the rock. If she was lucky. As long as she didn’t knock any rocks loose.

  She picked up the empty canteen, slung it over her shoulder, and began to carefully climb.

  Her arms and fingers were tired from the digging and threatened to give out. She forced them to grip handholds. Several times she paused, resting on her legs as best she could, catching her breath and crying quietly.

  At the lip of the canyon she pulled herself slowly over the edge, terrified of knocking something loose, then rolled onto the flat ground.

  The stars were falling again. Streaking far overhead and burning up, dancing and flickering.

  If those were the Lord’s enemies, Kay hoped they fell all the way down onto the Lordhouse.

  Something scratched the ground nearby. Kay slowly crawled along, keeping low. The tall neck of a Lord stretched over a scraggly set of bushes. It was Kestreyya, Kay realized, patrolling the lip of the canyon with a rifle in her handwings.

  Kay froze for a long second. She’d been hoping to hide around the Lordhouse. She’d need food and water, and would have to sneak it out from the huts.

  But she couldn’t get away from the lip without Kestreyya seeing her.

  From a young age she’d been taught dispassion. The necessity of doing hard things that needed done. The Fist. Controlling the people of the Lordhouse with firmness. Her mothers and fathers had always beaten into her the need to be made of iron and think fast, read a situation.

  They were bred and trained to be rulers.

  Everything had just changed. But she still had that training.

  Kay wiped tears from the sides of her eyes and took a deep breath. What did she have?

  The canteen.

  She looked down at it. It was strong, but not enough to hurt a Lord. But it did have a strap.

  It wouldn’t break free of the canteen, but Kay slipped both wrists through and twisted them so that the canteen and strap were intertwined.

  Then she quickly padded up toward the Lord.

  Those quill feathers, she thought. Avoid the quills.

  Kestreyya turned around at the last second, her wide eyes larger and more startled than even usual. For a second, Kay realized she was looking right at a Lady and her knees buckled.

  “No!” Kestreyya hissed in the Lord’s language as she started to pull the rifle up.

  That fueled Kay into moving faster. She slammed into the Lady hard, ignoring the pain of the quills shoving into her shoulder. The rifle clattered free and Kay slipped her arms around the Lady’s neck.

  It was such a long, slender neck.

  Kay yanked the canteen and strap tight. She pulled them hard and yanked Kestreyya down to the ground. The Lords were so light, Kestreyya weighed no more than Kay.

  On the ground Kestreyya flapped her handwings, battering Kay’s crouched back and legs with the quill-feathers. Every slap burned and drew blood, but Kay didn’t budge.

  You didn’t budge when an Ox-man threw himself forward at you.

  Didn’t flinch when a Runner screamed and spat.

  You controlled the situation.

  You did what had to be done.

  No matter the screaming. The pain. The torment.

  This was a Lady. But it was no different once the mind was focused, Kay realized. She’d helped her mothers put down an unruly Runner once. Couldn’t let that spread, she’d been told.

  This was the same thing.

  Eventually Kestreyya stopped squirming. The faint fluttering ceased, and the Lady lay still on the desert ground.

  Kay tightened the strap some more and dragged the body over to a nearby rock sticking out of the ground.

  She grabbed the Lady’s head in her hands, and lifted it up, then cracked it over the sharp edge of the rock again and again until brain and blood saturated the ground.

  Just to make sure.

  When that was done to her satisfaction, she untangled the empty canteen from Kestreyya’s neck and slung it over her own bloody shoulder.

  Kestreyya had nothing on her worth taking. The rifle wouldn’t work in Kay’s hands, she knew. It was just like a Fist, it would only work to the person a Lord assigned it.

  Which reminded her. She slipped her Fist off and threw it to the ground at Kestreyya’s spurred feet.

  Then with no water, or food, or any idea where she was going or where she was, Kay walked out into the desert.

  #

  The first day she walked until she collapsed from the heat. She barely slept through her first night, as she shivered so much the clacking of her teeth kept waking her up.

  She changed her tactics, sleeping in a shaded overhang during the day and setting out at night.

  Thirst gnawed at her constantly. Hunger she could control and push away from her mind, but her parched lips and gagging cough reminded her that the canteen by her side was empty.

  She knew nothing about the land away from the Lordhouse. She knew nothing about her world.

  This was how she imagined her a
ncestors lived.

  But that probably wasn’t true, was it? Nothing was true, she thought. It had all been ripped away, and she was all that remained. Alone. In the desert.

  Her walking slowed. Vision blurred. She suspected she might, at times, be hallucinating. It was like that time she’d spent five days weak and feverish in the longhut.

  She imagined she was talking to one of her mothers, who spent time walking beside her, saying nothing. But that couldn’t have been real, because all her mothers were dead in the pit.

  During the midday heat of the third day, Kay woke. A high-pitched whine and several explosions filled the air.

  She rolled out of the shade of a rock and looked up to shield her eyes. Two metallic flying craft danced around each other in the clear sky. Light dazzled her as they attacked each other, and when her vision cleared she saw one of the craft slowly spiral to the ground.

  A dark plume of blackened smoke marked where it hit.

  Kay now had a goal to walk toward.

  #

  The day’s heat burned her skin and exhausted her. She spent most of her time looking down at her feet and counting. Whenever she hit one hundred she looked up at the dark pillar of smoke and reset her count.

  She struggled over two hills. A field of boulders. Walked down and through remains of what looked like a stream, but was baked dry now. She’d paused to scrabble at the bottom, hoping to find water, but turned up only dirt.

  When she topped the last rise and looked down at the crashed vehicle, she could have wept with relief at finally achieving her goal, but she had no energy like that left in her.

  It looked like a giant, crumpled arrowhead. A long streak of hull had split open, and it gushed bubbling yellow foam. She stumbled down toward it, hoping that it had spilled something useful out into the ground. Or that someone would come to rescue the pilot, and then rescue her as well.

  Kay approached the downed vehicle warily.

  “Hello?” she shouted.

  Something groaned from deep inside.

  The Lords had been scared of these things, Kay thought. What dark, alien creature could do that? She imagined something fearsome. With razor-sharp tentacles.

  But, she reminded herself. There was an equal chance there was a Lord inside this craft. Maybe the enemy had shot one of them down.

  Either way, whatever was inside that craft was dangerous.

  Kay walked around until she found a palm-sized, pointed rock. Then she circled back and stepped through the congealing yellow foam to the gap in the hull. She paused and tried to see in. “Hello?”

  Something stirred inside.

  Kay considered running, but she knew she would die out there in the sun. Better to die here, doing something, than to run and die slowly out in the wastes she’d already dragged herself through.

  She held the rock up, ready to strike.

  Shadows shifted, foam burbled and shifted around, and a creature staggered out into the blazing sun. It had a human form. There were two legs, and definitely two arms raised in the air pawing at its metallic, oversized head. Long tentacles swung back and forth, slapping its back.

  “Stay back!” Kay screamed and held up the rock.

  The creature ignored her, landed on its hands and knees, and yanked at its head until it pulled it off. It was just a helmet, with cables hanging off the back, Kay realized. And it wasn’t an alien horror. It was woman with hair as black as night and a scar under her right eye.

  She vomited yellow foam and took a deep breath, then sat up and pinched the bridge of her nose and blew.

  “Fuck. Me.” She said, taking another deep breath.

  Kay stared. “You speak the people’s language. You are people.”

  The woman scrambled back. “Shit.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a tiny pistol.

  Kay dropped the rock. “Please don’t shoot.” She’d read this women, in that second of seeing fear in her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt, I want to help.”

  She could control this situation, Kay thought. She could do this. This was no shadowy alien enemy. This was a woman. Like her.

  The gun wavered. “Where are the rest of you?” The woman asked. She sounded resigned.

  “There are no others,” Kay said. “It’s just me.”

  “You?”

  “I ran away.”

  “To the desert?” The pilot asked incredulously.

  “It was here, or death,” Kay explained.

  “Huh.” The pilot looked around at the heat-rippled dunes, then back at Kay. Her knees wobbled. She pitched forward and passed out.

  Kay stared down at this fearsome enemy of the Lords themselves, and rolled her over onto her back.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “There’s no rescue team,” the pilot told Kay. “Nezzy’s going apeshit up there, doing their best to keep us bottled up in the stratosphere.”

  She pulled out a bag of supplies from inside the destroyed craft. She moved with an easy confidence. Sure, she’d been shot out of the sky, but now her body language seemed to indicate that this was just an annoying setback.

  “I don’t understand. Who is Nezzy?” Kay asked.

  “Nesaru,” the pilot said. “The alien bird fucks.”

  Kay was shocked at the irreverence. “The Lords?”

  The pilot paused rummaging around in her bag. “Lords? Is that what you call them?”

  Kay grimaced. With a curled lip she said, “That is what they demand we call them. They rule this world. They rule us.” The words frightened her, but she realized their truth.

  “But not you,” the pilot noted. “You’re out here.”

  “I ran,” Kay said. “They killed everyone else. So I ran.”

  The pilot’s head snapped up at that. “Killed everyone?”

  “They dug a pit,” Kay said.

  “Hiding the evidence,” the pilot muttered, moving slowly. “They claim they’re not breeding and using humans for cheap labor to replace their collapsing economies. Means they’re realizing they’re about to lose, and they’re trying to hide the evidence. Fucking Nezzies.”

  “They’re losing?” Kay looked up at the sky.

  “Yep,” the pilot said with an enthusiastic grimace as she hefted her bag onto her back. “We have secure ground positions three hundred miles north of here protected by an orbital defense platform. We’re wrapping up the orbital campaign, now it’s the down and dirty groundside operations. We could have just nuked the place from orbit if it was only Nesaru, but everyone out there is doing their best to try and liberate as many fellow humans as we can.”

  “You’re here to free us?” Kay asked.

  The pilot held out a clear water bottle. Kay blinked. The water softly sloshed back and forth, captivating her.

  Her hand shook as she opened it.

  “Take sips,” the pilot ordered. “You look dangerously dehydrated. Do it all at once, you’ll just throw it back up.”

  Kay took three careful sips and handed it back.

  The pilot looked impressed at her discipline. As Kay intended.

  “What is your name, little girl?” the pilot asked.

  “My name?” Kay rubbed her lips with her fingers, peeling tissue free.

  “What do I call you? My name is Avris Jake. You can just call me Avris,” the pilot said.

  Kay thought for a moment. “When people need me, they know I’m the third child of room K, of the Caretakers hut. That is all they need.”

  The pilot, Avris, looked at her. “I’ll just call you Kay, then, shall I?”

  Kay looked around. “You can call me anything you wish, Avris, there is no one else here.”

  “Well, Kay, since I assume you’re on the run, do you want to join me on my trek back to safety?”

  #

  There was a lot to learn.

  There were forty-eight other worlds, and many interesting waypoints in between. There were many races, aliens, and humans. And humans had once lived on a distant world by themselves, but
had been ripped from it.

  Kay learned about the wormholes that connected all these worlds, magical portals that starships slipped through to instantly cross vast distances.

  “There was one in orbit above Okur, this world, high up in the sky,” Avris told her as they walked at night, the continuing battle of lights raging overhead. “That’s where we came in from.”

  “Was?”

  “We pulled it out of the sky and landed it,” Avris said. “After we established the high ground. Now we’re vomiting a land war up onto the continent and trying to snag the skies away from the Nezzies. We’re chaining all the worlds together, so that you can just sail from one to another. One giant, massive ocean of the worlds.”

  “And the Lords, they don’t rule it all?”

  “They don’t rule shit,” Avris said. “All the aliens, the not-humans, used to rule us. The Satraps ruled the aliens, and all the forty-eight worlds used to be under the Satrapy. But we rose up. And we’re breaking their hold. Your world, Okur? One of the last alien-ruled strongholds. Nezzies thought if they could pack enough armor in front of the wormhole and never come back out, they could hunker down here and do whatever they wanted.”

  The worlds out beyond Okur were different. People ran their own affairs. Were powerful.

  Kay had a lot of time to mull that over.

  #

  A large flying machine found them after four days, following a signal from Avris. The massive engines on finger-like wings kicked up sand and blinded Kay, but Avris tugged her along inside.

  They watched from the windows as they flew over the nighttime landscape.

  “Keeping low and fast,” one of the helmeted crew said. “Still have Nezzy Interceptors trying to harass us out on the fringe.”

  Dunes whipped by, but after an hour the landscape began to change.

  Kay watched, glued to the window, as trees and green life slowly appeared. It seemed a dream in the bright moonlight. It was like they were flying into the world’s biggest garden at night, she thought, as more and more plants filled the sand.