Blood Ocean

by Weston Ochse

  “I said, hey,” he said, holding the scissors in front of him.

  The laughter came again.

  He edged forward.

  Movement at the far end of the room. A foot scuffed, then came into view. A moment later it was joined by another as if someone were laying on the floor.

  “Hey, yourself,” came Spike’s voice. “Come back here.” Giggling. “Join us. Meet Lopez-Larou.” More giggling.

  He took two more steps and Spike came into view, sitting in the middle of the floor. Her wig lay across her knees like a small dead animal.

  “You okay?”

  “She’s fine,” came a voice he thought he recognized.

  He took another painful step and the whole scene came into view. Spike sat back-to-back with the Tiburón girl, their legs spread out across the floor. The other girl held a bottle in her hand. She passed it back to Spike, who took it and drank, then held it towards Kavika.

  “Looks like you need this.”

  “What happened to you?” Lopez-Larou asked. But then she giggled, so Kavika wasn’t sure if she even wanted to hear him. Still, he answered.

  “They kicked me out of the sky.” The words came out easy, but the idea of it dammed up his insides. He felt his face turn red, and the edges of his eyes began to sting. He closed his eyelids to keep them from exploding. As sure as he was standing in the morgue ship, devoid of everything Pali, he knew that if he didn’t do something he would cry, showering the universe with all his unfulfilled dreams and desires—the hatred he felt against his father for dying, the desperation he held and refined for his sister, and the bile taste of the hope he’d carried in the empty spaces between what he’d wanted to do and what he’d never be able to because of his fear of failing.

  Spike laughed. “Is that all? I thought someone had died or something.”

  Lopez-Larou laughed with her. “Come join us.”

  Kavika was so tired. He sagged to his knees, then keeled over. His head landed in Spike’s lap.

  “There, there, silly boy. We’ll get this figured out.”

  “I don’t want to figure anything out.”

  “Then let us do the thinking for you.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Just lay here and pretend you love me.”

  “But I do love you.”

  “See?” Spike said to Lopez-Larou. “He knows just what to say.”

  “All you need now is for him to ask you to marry him.”

  “A girl knows when to stop. I’m happy just to be loved.”

  Then the cool comfortable darkness Kavika had been seeking found him, wrapped him in plastic, and dropped him in a universe where flowers grew from the sky, fish jumped from cloud to cloud, and Pali Boys were two inches tall.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DADDY? WHY IS there no land?

  The land is where the plague lives.

  Why doesn’t it live in the ocean with the fishes?

  Because it’s man who made the plague and Mother Kapo who made the fishes. She won’t let anything happen to her fishes.

  Is that why we’re in the ocean? Are we pretending to be fishes?

  Yes.

  And Daddy?

  Yes.

  What’s at the bottom of the line?

  The ocean floor.

  Isn’t that the same thing as land?

  No. It’s made up of the bones of a billion billion fishes.

  So then we live above a graveyard?

  Yes.

  Does that make us ghosts?

  No. We’re headstones for a dead planet.

  KAVIKA HAD AWOKEN lying on a slab, a plastic cover pulled over him. It had taken him a long time to figure out exactly what had happened. His wounds had been bandaged sometime during the night. He could barely remember anything from yesterday. The one thing that stood out was that he was no longer a Pali Boy. This he knew just as he knew his name was Kavika Kamilani.

  Spike had come in later, looking none the worse for wear. She wore working clothes, with only a set of high heels and her wig as her signature. She’d cleaned him up and told him to get ready.

  Evidently he’d been pretty badly concussed. They’d called Donnie in to help. Kavika had been in and out, talking about the Sky Winkers and Abe Lincoln and Akamu and his father, all in a mishmash of truth, supposition and dream-fueled lies. The one thing they had been able to parse was that Abe Lincoln was someone they needed to talk to, so Donnie had arranged it, setting the rendezvous for later in the morning.

  Then Spike had dropped Lopez-Larou’s bombshell. Sometime during their fight, between a left hook to the head and a spiked-heel kick to the gut, the Tiburón girl had revealed what she’d been seeking. The idea of a Pali Boy running drugs didn’t sit well with Kavika, but what was worse was the fact that the drugs were missing. It could have only been the Boxers who’d taken it, which meant that the blood rape hadn’t been a botched Corper attempt to get a blood sample, but a murder.

  And now he waited.

  They’d chosen an unaffiliated ship in the eastern section of the floating city: an old cargo container hauler, built to crate huge metal containers between the mega ships and the ports. It was about a hundred and fifty feet long, and a third of that wide. But the deck was devoid of cargo containers, and was instead covered with lines, for drying clothes, smoking birds, and airing out bed clothes. At noon, everyone was belowdecks, cleaning their morning’s sky-catch of birds and doing whatever else they needed to survive. The deck was virtually empty, except for a few old men lounging in the shadows, watching with interest to see what Kavika had brought to their corner of the world.

  Donnie ran sky watch, dangling from a lanyard on an old flag pole.

  Lopez-Larou had returned to her people before he’d awoken.

  Spike stood next to him, dressed in a simple white dress, fussing over her nails with an emery board.

  Finally Donnie whistled.

  Kavika glanced skyward and saw where the older man was pointing. Three men headed their way. Each was at least six feet tall, and all wore khaki pants with boat shoes and plaid shirts. They were all blonde. Their faces were free of hair, except for the one in the middle, who wore the signature whiskers of the long-dead president.

  “Abe Lincoln?” Kavika asked, straightening as they arrived.

  The man held out a beefy white hand and grinned, revealing impossibly white teeth. “One and the same.” As they shook hands, he twisted Kavika’s wrist so he could better see the Hawaiian’s forearm, noting to his fellow Real People the missing sharkskin accoutrements. “I was told you were a Pali Boy.”

  “I am... or was. Will be again.” He jerked his thumb above his head towards Donnie. “He’ll vouch for me if necessary.”

  Abe released his hand and smiled sadly. “No need. It’s not often that a Pali boy gets kicked down. We even heard about it in our spaces.”

  Kavika was taken aback. He’d planned what he was going to say, but this had totally thrown him off. He’d never anticipated the celebrity of his own misfortune.

  Saving him from looking too stupid, Spike stuck out her hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Spike. And you are?”

  The other two introduced themselves as James Madison and George Bush. George gallantly bent his head and kissed Spike’s hand, which of course pleased her no end.

  It gave Kavika enough time to regain his composure.

  “I’m Kavika Kamilani. Thanks for meeting us like this.”

  “I knew your father,” Abe said, then seeing Kavika’s narrowing eyes, added, “But we never formally met. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Daddy, where did all the white people go?

  There’s some still around. You gotta watch them, though.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Some things don’t get any easier with time.”

  “Like your son. I heard and am very sorry.”

  Abe clasped his hands in front of him, but not before clenching his fists. He fixed a smile on his face. “I
hear you’re after some Boxers.”

  “Not just any; the ones who killed a friend of mine.”

  “I spoke with the Corpers after my son’s death. They apologized. They even let me talk to a few of their pet Boxers. ‘Unfortunate accident’ is what they said.”

  “Too many unfortunate accidents speak to a different story,” Kavika said.

  “Why don’t they just ask people for their blood? Why the need to blood rape?” Spike asked.

  “They tried that,” said Bush. “Didn’t get enough. Their only choice was to take it by force. They used to take a lot more, but people resisted. Can you imagine what a war is like aboard this ship?”

  “Devastating,” said Madison.

  “Devastating.” Abe placed a hand on Bush’s shoulder. “So they resorted to what they call ‘Field Sampling.’”

  “Blood rapes, you mean,” Spike said.

  “Yes. Blood rapes.” Abe looked appraisingly at Spike. “You’re a man, aren’t you?”

  Kavika held his breath as he watched Spike out of the corner of his eye.

  Finally, she responded. “An unfortunate accident of birth, I’m afraid. One I’ve been trying to remedy for some time now.”

  Abe smiled. “We all seem to be trying to undo what was done by someone else.” He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “The plague put us all at a disadvantage.”

  “You more than most. My father told me that the world used to be dominated by Haolies. One thing I’ve been meaning to ask is, why Real People? Why that name?”

  Abe shrugged. “It’s a matter of translation. When Europeans moved into North America, they encountered many indigenous peoples. Most of their tribal names referred to themselves as the ‘real people,’ or the ‘only people,’ or something similar. They had a very introverted view of the universe, and until their interaction with outsiders, never considered that they weren’t the center of their own universe.”

  “And you?”

  “I suppose we had a very introverted view of our own dominance in the world culture. Some used to say ‘White means Right.’ Wars were fought over this.”

  “My mother told me that the white man was a plague,” Spike said. “Wherever they came, people died.”

  That stopped everyone for a moment. Kavika didn’t know what to say. Spike’s curiosity had taken them to a place he didn’t want to be, and his invocation of the word ‘plague’ in the same sentence as ‘white man’ could be tantamount to a slap in the face.

  Abe cleared his throat. “Now that we’ve convened this meeting of the Real People Mutual Appreciation Society, let’s get down to business.” Kavika caught the twinkle in his eyes. “So what did this Boxer look like?”

  Kavika described him as best he could, including all the details about Akamu’s blood rape that he knew, but excluding the presence of drugs.

  “I know this one. Calls himself Fang. He was involved in my son’s death.”

  “This is bad business,” Madison said softly. “Why are we even involved in it?”

  “As bad as it is, we need to stick together if we’re going to have any chance against them,” Abe said.

  “Why is it that you’ve never made a move against them?” Kavika asked.

  “We’re under constant surveillance. For some reason, our presence is threatening to them. No telling what’s going through the Jap minds. You, on the other hand, are able to go places we can’t.” He pointed to the wires, cables and nets that made up the roof of the floating city.

  “We’re willing to do it if we know where to go,” said Kavika. “That ship is larger than all the rest put together. We wouldn’t get ten feet inside if we enter through the wrong window.”

  “That’s your first mistake. You can’t enter through the windows. They have them electrified.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Kill you stone dead.”

  “Then how?”

  “I’ll tell you. Better yet, I’ll show you.” And with that, Abe held out a hand, in which Bush placed a rolled up map. Kneeling on the deck, he proceeded to show Kavika the best way into the lion’s den, answering every question as best as he could and pointing out the dangers along the way.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WAITING UNTIL NIGHTFALL was one of the hardest things Kavika had ever done. It was too much time. Fear fingered its way through the plan to pinpoint every flaw and chance for failure. The more Kavika had to wait and listen to his own second thoughts, the more be began to believe them. Their initial plan had been pretty simple: Donnie Wu would create a diversion near one of the fountains. While the Boxers responded, and the Corpers’ attention was drawn away, Spike and Kavika would enter surreptitiously through an access hatch where the screws had been loosened. Used for maintenance when the ship was still a pleasure palace for the rich and famous, the hatch was now used by scientists to gain direct access to the water for testing.

  Dressed in black sharkskin, he and Spike hugged the deck of a nearby ship. The unaffiliated occupants had been ushered below and were too afraid to even ask for something in trade for their discomfort. Both Kavika and Spike wore skull caps made from reclaimed rubber tubing. They had the same material on their feet, thicker pieces of rubber for traction. The only parts open to the air were their faces and hands. Each carried a knife at the waist in a sharkskin sheath. Both of them also had back holsters holding two rattan Escrima sticks.

  They were as ready as they’d ever be.

  Of course, they almost hadn’t gotten Donnie to help. He’d needed convincing.

  “Tell me again why you want to go aboard the Freedom Ship?”

  “Akamu’s attackers are there. I need to find them.”

  “And then what? You think they’ll automatically cooperate? They’ll see this badass ex-Pali Boy and lay down their weapons and beg you not to hurt them?”

  “I don’t think that at all. But it won’t be as hard as all that. The Real People gave us directions.”

  “And that’s supposed to be a good thing?”

  “They know exactly where these Boxers live.”

  “And the pair of you think it’s going to be easier to go into the lion’s den than to wait outside of it?”

  “We don’t think anything of the sort,” protested Spike. “We know this is near-suicide. But what choice do we have? You saw what the Pali Boys did to Kavika. What’s to stop them from doing it again?”

  “They won’t touch him as long as he stays out of the sky.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t prove that. The only way we’ll get this over with is to find the Boxer that killed Akamu.”

  “And when they catch you?”

  Spike smiled. “There’s catching us, and then there’s catching us.”

  “So you do have a plan.”

  “Pali Boys own the sky. Water Dogs own the sea. And until someone stops them, Boxers own the decks.”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  “We can’t make them go to the sky, but we can get them in the sea. And if they’re in the water then they become the property of the Water Dogs. They can be killed or ransomed. Whatever’s easier and more profitable. And then there’s nothing they can do.”

  “I have a feeling that there’s always going to be something they can do, but I get it. I was just worried that you two were going off half-cocked, thinking you could infiltrate the Freedom Ship like a pair of plague ninjas to find the one Boxer you need among Pele knows how many are in there.”

  How many are in there?

  Which was a question that Kavika was soon going to find the answer to. Ever since he was a child staring at the Freedom Ship, he and the others had daydreamed about how the Japs lived aboard. It looked so fresh and clean. All smooth lines and a fade-proof white hull. It was like a heaven they could never attain.

  Ivanov had told him about the old Greek gods and how they lived on Mount Olympus. The Freedom Ship in all of its glory was like that. Those who lived aboard were gods, and the people of the city dreamed of the extravag
ances to be found aboard it. Showers. Movie theaters. Running water. Electricity to spare. Spreads of food fit for kings. Plush carpets and fabric. Cool metals. Soft beds. All these and more had become a mantra for generations of children growing up. On occasion a beautiful woman of the city would disappear; children would sometimes go missing. All these were blamed on the residents of the Freedom Ship. Most hoped that they’d been taken as a reward for something. But others, like Spike, scoffed at the idea that they’d been selected, or had ‘risen’ to the Freedom Ship, as people were known to say, delivering the pronouncement in soft, awe-filled whispers.

  “More like gang-raped by a bunch of horny-ass Japs,” Spike once told an elderly woman. “They’re no different than we are. They’re just the rich folk and we’re the poor folk.” She’d spat. “Doesn’t make them gods.”

  Gods or not, Kavika was eager to see inside.

  He heard the shrill whistle from the other side of the Freedom Ship. Donnie Wu was doing his thing.

  He and Spike slipped over the edge of the rail and into the water, where a pair of Water Dogs were waiting. The Water Dogs grabbed them and, with their oversized flippers, quickly propelled them across the lagoon to the ship. They found the lip of the access panel, pulled it slightly to the left, then used a knife to free the three hasps on the inside. There used to be a rubber seal around the door, but that had long ago rotted away. It took maybe thirty seconds, and the door was slowly opening.

  Kavika and Spike stared wide-eyed into the darkness. No one was waiting for them; a good start. Spike entered first and Kavika pulled himself up after her. They stood for a moment, attempting to acclimatize themselves to the pitch-black interior of the access tunnel. As they did, the last of the water fell away from the sharkskin. Finally it was Kavika who whispered, “I see a light. Let’s go.”

  Kavika squeezed past Spike towards an almost impossibly dim strip of light. As he moved, one slow step after another, he heard Spike close the hatch behind them.

  Kavika reached the interior hatch and placed his ear to it, but heard nothing except the thumping of his heart. Now all he had to do was open the door and hope for the best. For all he knew, it might lead them into a latrine or the main dining hall. The thought made him wish that Spike hadn’t closed the hatch behind them.