Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

“No good.”

  “Then there were the ones who lived underground. Giants, muties, whiter than Jak and half-pike tall or taller, cannies.”

  “What’s cannie, brah?”

  “Eaters of men.”

  “Why’d you wanna chart that?”

  “Just for the heck of it. I met a few good people there. Might’ve left it better than I found it. Wonder how they’re doing.”

  “Aw, Ryan! You need to come to my island. Get you some poi dog and kalua pig.”

  Koa pulled his Hawaiian shawl closer about his shoulders. “Getting colder.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “Word is we’re running outta Brazil coastline, and we’re heading deep South Lantic, brah.”

  Ryan waited. It was clear Koa had things on his mind.

  “Captain says we don’t got enough crew to fight the cannon on both sides of the ship.”

  J.B. had told Ryan the same. The War Pig’s Gatling had swept the captain’s cabin and the two crews manning the chasers. Gunny had been among the fallen. Rumor was J.B. was going to be given the job. The War Pig was bloodied but still behind them, and the Ironman and Lady Evil would be waiting ahead. “Yeah.”

  “We don’t got enough topmen left to work two watches.”

  Ryan knew that too. They had already been undermanned; the loss of Movies and Born might well be fatal when they hit the cape. Worse still, Commander Miles was shot up in the med and the captain was spending more and more time with his cabin blacked out being indisposed. Miss Loral was getting genuinely cranky. “Looks like you and me are learning furling and reefing.”

  Koa’s shoulders twitched. He looked up into the rigging. “Don’t like heights, brah.”

  “You and I are going up.”

  Koa gave Ryan the stone face.

  Ryan gave it back.

  “So,” Koa said, suddenly grinning, “we’re friends?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Ryan!” Krysty’s panicked cry was cut off by a huge splash. Crew up in the rigging began shouting. Ryan charged the rail with Koa a heartbeat behind him. The sharpshooters in the tops began shooting. Mr. Squid exploded out of the water and hit the rail like a rocket. He rose up on his arms, ran across the deck at full speed and threw himself into his barrel. Ryan’s only thought was for Krysty, but the tactical part of his mind noted that Mr. Squid left a trail of blue blood on the deck and one of his arms had been bitten off.

  Ryan skidded to the rail.

  Doc had requested the dinghy to take oceanographic samples with Mr. Squid. Oracle had agreed. Krysty had been considered the most useless member of the crew and so was sent to assist them. They were attached by fifty meters of towrope to get them behind the ship’s wake. An Antilles crewman named Dutch had been set to watch over them with one of the ship’s AKs.

  Dutch was gone.

  Ryan grimaced. The sea around the dinghy was red with blood, and something had severed the towrope. The Glory’s end hung limp in the wake. The part still attached to the dinghy was taut. Whatever held it was well below the water pulling the dinghy around and around in slow clockwise circles. Doc held his swordstick high and slanted down for the thrust. Krysty had her knife. Fear was etched all over both their faces.

  “Lover!” Krysty cried.

  “My dear Ryan!” Doc exclaimed across the distance. “This is even worse than it appears! For your lady love and my poor life in the bargain, I pray you take every caution!”

  Ryan’s blood went cold as dozens of six-foot black fins broke the water. “Orcas.”

  “Black fish!” Koa agreed.

  Ryan took in the tactical situation. The question was, were they simple killers or weaponized like Mr. Squid? The fact that they were formation filing around the Glory said a lot for the latter. “Miss Loral, where’s the captain?”

  Miss Loral ran from the wheel and surveyed the situation. A terrible look passed over her face. “The captain is indisposed!”

  “With permission!” Ryan didn’t wait for it. He ran to the binnacle and grabbed the Dakota Longbow and its remaining rounds. “Everyone hold fire!”

  “Topsmen hold fire!” Loral ordered.

  “Miss Loral!” Gypsyfair clutched her head and shouted from the gangway to the quarterdeck.

  “What?”

  Gypsyfair’s milk-white eyes rolled in pain. “Echolocation! Whales! Dozens of them! They’re mapping us! Crewman by crewman! Deck by deck!”

  The ship suddenly yawed contretemps against wind and current. Manrape snarled as he pitted his physique against the unnaturally turning wheel. “Miss Loral, they’re screwing with the rudder!”

  “Beat to quarters!” Loral ordered.

  Krysty screamed as the towrope pulled down and the stern of the spinning dinghy began to rise in the air. “Ryan!”

  The one-eyed man went to the taffrail with the longblaster in his hands. He snapped his head back in desperate inspiration. “Squid! You speak orca?”

  Squid bubbled up out of his barrel snake balling in what Ryan had come to recognize as shear cephalopod terror. “I do!”

  “What’re they saying?”

  “Kill them, eat them, kill them, eat them—”

  Ryan leveled the Longbow at the dinghy. It swung in a slow circle, and the stern continued to rise higher as the orca that held the rope slowly dived lower and lower. Krysty and Doc held out their blades, but everything was happening underwater. It was not lost on Ryan that the outlying orcas were swimming counterclockwise to the dinghy’s death spiral. “What else, Squid!”

  “They intend to take the ship out to sea and sink it! They intend to eat me because I taste good! They intend to eat you and the crew for the pleasure of killing and eating humans! Some are saying bring the tree! The one right behind Miss Krysty is saying we wait for night!”

  “Gimme a harpoon!” Koa bellowed. “Gimme me ten men with half pikes who can swim!”

  Ryan didn’t doubt the Hawaiian for a second, but he grimaced at the words “the one right behind Krysty.”

  Miss Loral gripped the rail as the crew boiled on deck to their battle stations. “Bring the tree?”

  Ryan saw it. “They have a big piece of lumber out there. A tree or a heavy beam. They’re going to punch holes in Glory’s sides tonight and slowly sink her.”

  “Then what are they doing now?”

  Ryan watched Krysty and Doc as an orca below turned the dinghy around and around. “They’re taunting us.”

  “Blasters to all hands!” Loral ordered. “I want—”

  “You shoot, you may wound a couple of them. They’re waiting for it. They’ll dive. The one holding the rope sinks the dinghy and Krysty and Doc are treading water. Then the fun really begins. When those good times are done, they give us the tree by night. They’re intimidating us. We need to intimidate them back.”

  Loral’s eyes flicked to the blacked-out captain’s skylight. “Ryan, tell me you’ve got a plan.”

  “Squid!” Ryan shouted. “Do you speak Morse code?

  “It was the second language humans taught us!”

  “Do they?”

  “I do not know!”

  “Are they weaponized like you?”

  “It is of a high order of probability!”

  “Gypsyfair, I need you now!”

  Gypsyfair scrambled up the gangway. An orca rose behind the spiraling dinghy and sat motionless in the water. Ryan locked his gaze with another nonhumanoid mind. Its black eyes met his blue.

  Ryan glanced at the dinghy. “Doc, shove your specimen barrel over the side!”

  “But, Ryan, it contains—”

  “Do it!”

  Doc did as Ryan asked, and the specimen barrel drifted into the dinghy’s tiny, orca-induced vortex. The killer opened its mouth and exposed its teeth. Ryan could have sworn it was smiling at him. The one-eyed man leveled the Longbow and fired. The half cask was filled with seawater and specimens. Fifty meters was point-blank range for the weapon. The 300-grain bullet hit the cask with nearly 5
,000 pounds of energy. The hydrostatic shock wave was impressive to say the least. The cask exploded, and the orca pod leader was sprayed with splinters and atomized sea specimens. Ryan kept his scope on the pod leader.

  “Gypsyfair, tell them I am Ryan of the longblaster.”

  Gypsyfair clicked Morse code like gunshots.

  Ryan wondered if they understood the spoken word and shouted, “I’ll put a bullet in any blowhole I see!”

  Gypsyfair popped and clicked rapid fire.

  “My blaster was made to chill anything that breathes air!” Ryan bellowed out a very big lie. “If you come by night, I will napalm you!”

  Gypsyfair paused mid echo-translation. “What’s napalm and how do you spell it?”

  Ryan thundered forth. “If you mess with this ship by night, I will pour liquid fire over the sides on you! You’ll burn no matter how deep you dive!”

  Gypsyfair pinged out Ryan’s message of death.

  “Let my people go! Or in my vengeance I take my longblaster and this ship and hunt orcas from the Great White North to the Southern Cape! From Lantic to Cific! I will chill your kind until you’re extinct or skydark comes again!”

  Gypsyfair stared at Bolan in shock but continued emitting inhuman noises out of her throat and mouth.

  Every black dorsal fin stiffened and froze.

  Ryan shook his longblaster at the sky and hurled his voice to the heavens. “I will gut-shoot every orca I see and leave you bleeding for the sharks! I’ll tie you dying to the sides of my ship and gulls will eat your eyes while I feed you a slice at a time to my octopus! Tell every whale you meet! The wooden ships are on the waters again! Now, swim! Swim while you still can!”

  Every orca simultaneously dived out of sight except the pod leader. She lingered a moment, staring up the muzzle of Ryan’s longblaster and glaring into his scope. Ryan was fairly certain he had made an enemy. The pod leader sank beneath the waves. The stern of the dinghy splashed down as the towrope was released.

  Manrape called from the wheel, “Rudder’s free, Miss Loral!”

  “Doc!” Ryan called.

  “Magnificent, Ryan! You were—”

  “Break out your oars, slowly and calmly. Come back to the ship.”

  “Aye, indeed!” Doc broke out the dinghy’s oars and rather adroitly began sculling back to the Glory.

  “Drop sail!” Miss Loral shouted out. “Let the Doc catch up!”

  Ryan caught Loral’s eye. “Acting Commander, I didn’t mean to—”

  “You did just fine, Mr. Ryan.” Miss Loral shot her wolf grin. “You’ve been told before. There’s a reason most ships never land in the Deathlands—because you’re all mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Cove ahead!” Ricky cried out. “Looks like it has anchorage!”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ricky!” Loral called. Optics broke out across the deck. The Glory had spent most of her second career after skydark in short jaunts and island hopping. Few of her current crew were used to this kind of long, unrelieved, undermanned, endless open ocean sailing. Most were very ready for a stretch of their legs on land.

  Ryan observed the coastline of Argentina. It was cold, gray and miserable, and it was snowing. They had raised Uruguay the day before. He had caught long-distance views of the blasted corpse of Montevideo and his rad counter had ticked up a few clicks. They had sailed on across the mouth of the Rio Del Plata and his counter had clicked higher. No one had any desire to sail upriver and see what had happened to Buenos Aires. The air had freshened and the wind had grown colder as they had rounded Cabo San Antonio. Ryan hunched deeper into his coat.

  The Glory was not ready for winter in the South Lantic. They had cut every spare blanket into capote coats and capes, and with all the casualties, the crew were able to layer with hand-me-downs. They were in desperate need of woolens, slickers and cold weather gear for the Horn. Ryan was doing all right for the moment with his fur-lined jacket and his weaponized scarf. He had wrapped his feet Russian style in scraps of wool and pulled his combat boots over them.

  Ryan sniffed something almost like coffee and turned.

  “Cold enough for you, Orca Whisperer?” Mildred asked. She wore a blue plaid blanket coat and a pair of borrowed binoculars around her neck. Mildred bore two steaming stoops and held one out. “Last of the chicory.” Ryan gratefully accepted and sipped the hot, bittersweet brew. Mildred smiled. “Last of the sugar, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mildred gazed out over the gray water at the Argentine coast. “We’re in a heap of trouble, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mildred raised her binoculars and scanned the coast. “I always wanted to go to Argentina. See and hear the real tango in the square at San Telmo.”

  “What’s tango?”

  “Just the most sensual dance in the world.”

  Ryan liked dancing. Despite his chilling reputation in the Deathlands, he was also known for being able to shake a leg at a festival or ville hootenanny. Dancing with Krysty usually led to some very energetic lovemaking. “How’s it go?”

  “You could spend your entire life perfecting it.” Mildred scanned the empty, snow-drifted beaches. “There were dancers in my time who did nothing else.”

  Doc joined them. He wore both his uniform coat and his frock coat over it. “Oh, the tango, the samba, the dances of South America, they were such exquisite things, Ryan. I do hope they have been preserved.”

  Ryan tried to wrap his mind around doing nothing except dancing.

  Mildred’s voice dropped. “Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.”

  Ryan snapped up his spyglass. A man was riding along the beach atop what appeared to be a giant long-necked bird without wings. The man wore a broad-brimmed black hat. His long black hair flew behind him as did his fancifully colored woolen cape. He pulled off his hat and waved and shouted. Sand and snow flew from beneath the huge bird’s massive clawed feet as the rider spurred his mount to renewed speed. Ryan had to admit this was a new one for him.

  “Cowboys, riding ostriches.” Mildred shook her head. “Wow, we missed Argentina completely and raised the Island of Misfit Toys.”

  Ryan chalked it up to one more bastard obscure, predark Mildredism.

  Doc tsk’ed. “No, that is a gaucho riding some mutated or upbred form of rhea, I should think.”

  Mildred rolled her eyes. “Fine, gaucho and the Technicolor Dream Poncho, whatever.”

  The one-eyed man scanned the bird rider. He didn’t appear to have a blaster, but he carried some sort of coiled rope whip or flail on a wide leather belt sewn with silver coins. Beneath the belt he bore what appeared to be a silver-handled chef’s knife big enough to behead a horse. He carried a small guitar-shaped case on his back and saddlebags across his bird.

  “Miss Loral!” Ryan called. “Contact on shore!”

  Loral squinted through her binoculars. “Don’t see that every day.”

  Mildred sighed. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Miss Loral snorted at the sight. “Rad-addled ridiculous.”

  Koa glanced at the rider and then up at the sails. “Ridiculous or not, the way he’s catching up, Bird Boy is doing close to thirty knots.”

  “Thay!” Onetongue lisped admiringly. “That’th one fath’t bird!”

  “Fast indeed,” Doc agreed. “The African ostrich has been known to sustain speeds of up to forty miles per hour. However, this Ratite seems twice the size of any ostrich I have ever heard of, and, unlike the African ostrich or the usual South American rhea, which mainly eat plants and insects, the overlarge and somewhat scimitar curve of this noble creature’s bill bespeaks of a predatory bent.”

  Oracle called from the quarterdeck. “Miss Loral, take us into the cove! Furl sails and break out the sweeps. Bring us within hailing distance and have Mr. J.B. load canister! Sharpshooters to the tops! We are on foreign shores. Let us see if this man has anything useful to say.”

  “Aye,
Captain! Sweepers to the blaster deck! Prepare to furl sails!”

  The Glory turned landward. The bird rider noticed this development and spurred his bird on. The topsmen rolled up sail and down on the blaster deck six pairs of very long oars slid out the blaster ports and began back rowing to bring the ship to a halt.

  J.B. shouted up the gangway. “Starboard battery loaded with canister, Captain! Blasters run out!”

  “Thank you, Mr. J.B.!” The Glory slowly stroked into the cove. The cove contained a cracked concrete quay that looked like it might service a fairly large ship. A few collapsed buildings bore the unmistakable signs of having been harvested of all valuable metal and timber long ago.

  “Mr. Hardstone! Throw the lead!”

  Hardstone stood on the ship’s chains and heaved the lead. The weight plunged into the water, and he payed out line. “Seven fathoms by the deep, Captain!”

  “Back sweeps!” Oracle ordered.

  The sweepmen groaned like galley slaves belowdecks as they heaved against the oars and stopped the Glory’s forward motion. She came to a halt about thirty meters from the quay. The bird rider came tearing up to edge of the barnacled concrete and leaped from his saddle. He swept his hat and bowed low.

  “Hello, ship!” the man called out in a thick accent. “Hello, ship! Ahoy!”

  Oracle strode to the rail and called out across the nearly still surf. “Buenos dias, Senor!”

  “Buenos dias, Capitán!”

  Oracle called out in English. “May I ask your name?”

  “I am Strawmaker! Walter Strawmaker!”

  “How may my ship and I be of assistance to you, Senor Strawmaker?”

  “I wish to take ship with you immediately.”

  “You wish to buy passage?”

  “I will work for my passage.”

  Oracle regarded the man shrewdly. “Passage to where?”

  “Well, wherever you are going.”

  “I see.” Oracle shrugged. “What skills have you?”

  “Well.” Strawmaker grinned. “I have my ax!”

  Atlast scowled from the bowsprit. “Doesn’t ’ave an ax, does he? He’s got a great big knife!”

  Mildred struggled for patience. “An ax is a guitar.”