Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One

by de la Cruz, Melissa

  She covered her mouth in horror, but Shakes only grinned, clearly enjoying the story.

  “I start to convulse, right, and the repo man freaks out; they can sell babies on the black markets for good money, just another way to keep the war machine going, but no one wants a defective one. They don’t want me anymore, they tell Mom and Dad. They don’t even apologize, and they stick them with the hospital bill, too.”

  “Ouch.”

  “My parents didn’t care—they got to keep me.” Shakes smiled. “Course it bankrupted them, which is why I had to volunteer.”

  “That’s horrible,” Nat said quietly.

  “That’s life.” He didn’t seem too perturbed. “I get blackouts, too, sometimes seizures; everyone thinks it’s just frostblight, so I get to pass as normal.”

  “Not sure ‘normal’ is the right word.” Nat smiled.

  He chuckled. “Many won’t disagree with you there.”

  “So are your folks still around?” she asked.

  “Just my dad,” Shakes said.

  “Are you guys close?” she asked. She knew she was prodding, but she was always curious about the people who still had parents.

  “Not really.” Shakes grimaced and tossed the twig into the bin. “We never were, I guess, since he never forgave my mom.”

  “For dropping you?”

  “For having me,” he said. “He’s not a bad guy, but you know how it is.”

  She didn’t, but she nodded sympathetically “So they tried to take you away—like they did Wes’s sister.”

  “Wes’s sister?”

  “He said they took her away because his parents hadn’t applied for the second-child license.”

  “That what he told you about Eliza?”

  “Yeah.”

  Shakes didn’t say anything. He only looked confused. “But I thought . . .”

  “Thought what?”

  “That they got a pass on it. You know, the law makes an exception in their case. Because Eliza and Wes . . . they were twins.”

  “Huh.” She didn’t know what to say to that.

  “He always told me that . . .”

  “That what?”

  Shakes tossed the twig away. “Nothing. Forget I said anything,” he said, looking nervous.

  She saw his discomfort and changed the subject. “So what are you guys going to do after this?”

  “After we drop you off? Go back to working casino security I guess. Maybe by then, they’ll have forgiven old Wesson.”

  Nat smiled. “Thanks for the bark.”

  “Anytime,” Shakes said, giving her a salute.

  27

  DARAN WAS TRYING TO TAKE THE STONE, and she was struggling, but this time, there was no escape, and he was jeering at her, and laughing, and she was so cold, so cold, and there was nothing she could do, the fire would not start, and the little white bird was dead, and there was no one to help, no one to break down the door, she was all alone, and he would take it away from her and then he would toss her overboard to die, and she was angry, so angry, but there was nothing, she could do nothing, and she was weak and helpless, furious and frightened and she was calling . . . calling out . . . and there was a terrible noise, screeching . . .

  Wailing . . .

  She awoke to the sound of loud shrieking echoing through the cabin walls. Nat fought through the haze of sleep and saw Wes standing, paralyzed in the middle of the room, shirtless in his pajama bottoms, listening.

  “What is it?” she whispered. It was a long, high screech, a ghostly howling, unearthly, like the sound in her dream. She was cold, so cold, like in her dream, so cold.

  Wes shook his head and pulled on a sweater, and she followed him as they walked out of the room to find the rest of the crew standing stock-still outside their quarters, listening to that strange, horrible sound.

  “Wailer,” said Zedric, his voice cracking.

  The shrieking continued, and Nat thought Zedric was right, there was something about the sound that felt like grief, the sound of keening—later, she would liken it to the moans of a mother who had lost her child—it was a whining, a doubled-down sort of pain.

  “Wailer. Like funeral wailers,” Nat said, thinking of the elaborate funeral rites that had become the norm for those who could afford it, where professional mourners were hired to wail and cry and pull their hair to show the level of wealth and the depth of bereavement of the family. The more elaborate the show of grief, the more expensive. Like everything nowadays, it was a tradition that started in the Xian and trickled out to the rest of the remaining world.

  Nat had worked as a mourner once, walking in front of the funeral casket of a high-level casino boss; she’d learned the tricks to faking a good cry—a few drops of Nutri to start the tears flowing, then a little imagination—and she was soon sobbing away. It wasn’t that hard to tap into the sadness she carried inside. The pit boss who’d hired her was impressed, offered her a steady gig as a griever, but she was done. She’d been emotionally exhausted after the experience, had wrung her soul dry for some exec who didn’t care that his staff had to pay the cost of their own uniforms and housing from their tiny paychecks.

  “It’s out there,” Zedric repeated, then crossed himself. “Coming to get us—”

  Daran smacked his brother on the head. “Get a hold of yourself, man!” He turned angrily to Nat. “I told you—I told you that bird would call it! That bird was a bad omen!”

  Even Shakes and Farouk looked nervous, but Wes scrunched up his face with disdain. “Wailer’s just another bogeyman story. To keep people out of the waters.”

  “Just because no one’s seen it doesn’t mean it don’t exist,” Zedric said sullenly.

  “You’re right, people have only heard the cries.” Wes nodded. “The wailer is a myth as old as this dead sea.”

  “What is it?” Nat asked.

  “Some kind of animal, they say, like a dinosaur, a Loch Ness thing, although it would be a miracle if there’s anything that’s survived in this ocean.” Wes mimicked drinking a glass of water. “If you swallowed a pint of that poisoned water every day, you’d screech like that, too.”

  The sound continued to grow louder, and Nat thought she could make out words in the awful noise, that the wailing made sense somehow, that it was communicating, sending a message across the ocean. Then it was silent, and Nat held her breath, hoping it would go away.

  The sound was so familiar . . .

  “And if it’s not an animal, what is it then?” she asked.

  “People. Dead people,” Wes explained. “Some say the wailer’s a phantom of all the spirits of those that have been taken by the black waters. The pilgrims the slavers deceived and dumped, or the souls of the slaves that were tossed overboard when they were of no use to their masters anymore, or they didn’t fetch a good price at the flesh markets. They’re trapped together, cursed to haunt the dead oceans forever.”

  Nat shuddered at the thought. So the wailer was just another type of thriller—except one that could swim. So why did she feel as if she could understand it then—almost as if she felt its pain? She began to shiver violently, her teeth began to chatter, and she felt as if she might faint.

  “Nat—what’s wrong?” Wes asked, and he held her, rubbing her arms with his, enveloping her in his embrace. “You’re shaking . . . you should go back to sleep.”

  They stiffened as the air filled with long, low moans, echoing off the cold water. The screams grew in volume, and the sounds were no longer far away, but louder, closer and closer.

  “It’s here!” hissed Zedric, just as a large boom resounded from the ceiling.

  “Something’s hit the ship!” Farouk yelped.

  “What now,” Wes muttered, releasing Nat and running toward the steps heading to the upper deck to see what had happened, but he was thrown backward as ano
ther boom echoed through the cabin, and now there was the sound of tearing—a ripping, horrible noise, loud and angry—as if the ship were being torn apart piece by piece.

  “WHAT THE . . .”

  The boat lurched as the first engine died, and started to spin in a broad arc, rolling hard to one side as the remaining engine drove them in an out-of-control circle. A moment later the second engine failed abruptly and the ship coasted to a stop.

  “The engines!” Shakes cried as Wes leapt to run upstairs, but Farouk pulled him back. “Stop! We don’t know what’s out there!”

  “Let me go!” Wes said, as he pushed Farouk away.

  Nat followed him up the stairs.

  “Stay back!” he yelled.

  “No—if there’s something out there—I might be able to help!”

  He shook his head but didn’t argue.

  They ran up to the deck together and looked down. There was a massive steel engine hatch on the aft deck, tossed upside down like a tortoise shell. The other hatch was sinking quickly into the dark waters. Only bolt holes remained where the hatches had been torn from their mountings. In the bilge, the starboard engine was nothing but a smoking black void—a broken hose leaked gas and water into the pit. There was a hole in the bottom of the ship where the propeller had been torn free and water was pouring into the cavity. The port engine was still in place, but impossibly damaged. Its thick steel housing had fused together, melted, as if it had been run through a blast furnace. Shards from the motor were strewn all over the deck. One engine had been torn deliberately from the ship, and the other one completely burned.

  “There!” Nat said, pointing out to the distance, where the darkness coalesced into a massive, horned shape above the water.

  “Where?”

  “I thought I saw something—” But when she looked again, a faint light shone through the clouds, and whatever it was vanished. She blinked her eyes—was it merely a trick of the light?

  The rest of the crew crept up on board. Daran kicked at the remnants of the motor while Zedric muttered voodoo prayers under his breath. “The wailer did this . . . we’re cursed,” he whispered.

  Shakes sighed. “So much for the trashbergs.” The massive trash mountains were the least of their concerns now.

  “We’re stuck!” Farouk groaned. “Without an engine we’re dead in the water.”

  “Looks like it.” Wes nodded, frowning.

  Nat was silent as the crew contemplated the latest disaster.

  They were adrift in a vast poisonous arctic sea.

  28

  NO ONE SLEPT. WHEN MORNING FINALLY came, Nat found the crew gathered on the deck. Wes had ordered them all back to bed the night before, the Slaine brothers grumbling and peeved, Farouk whimpering a little, at the latest setback with the loss of their engines. Only Shakes and Wes appeared untroubled.

  “This is nothing.” Shakes smiled. “When we were in Texas, we went for a month without eating, right, boss?”

  Wes shook his head. “Not now, Shakes.”

  “Right.”

  The boys were rigging a sail and Nat watched as Wes drove a bent crowbar underneath a plate in the center of the deck and heaved the square of steel upward. Zedric raised two more panels in the same manner.

  “Secret compartments?” Nat smiled.

  “It’s a runner’s boat,” Wes said with a grin.

  Nat looked down through a crisscross of metal braces into the hold and saw a water-stained cloth wrapped around a steel mast.

  A sail.

  She was impressed. “You knew this was going to happen?” she asked.

  “No, but I prepare for everything. You can’t sail the oceans without one.” Wes shrugged. “Never thought I’d need it, though. I never thought Alby would turn into a fifteenth-century ship. All right, pull it up, boys,” he ordered.

  Shakes smiled. “See? I told you, we’ve got options.”

  “Yeah, we’re not dead in the water just yet,” Farouk said. “C’mon, Nat, you know we got game.”

  “Farouk, stop flirting with the lady and help me with this,” Wes grunted, and the boys struggled to erect the makeshift sail.

  “Nice work,” Nat said, walking over to put a hand on his arm—an affectionate gesture that was not lost on him. Or the crew. She felt Wes stiffen under her touch, as if a jolt of lightning had sparked between them.

  “Who’s flirting with the lady now?” Shakes laughed.

  Nat blushed and Wes’s smile deepened.

  There was a moment of solidarity and Nat felt that after the ugliness of what happened earlier, things had settled. The sail caught wind, and for now, everything would be all right.

  • • •

  That evening, Nat retired to her bunk in Wes’s cabin. Wes was already sleeping in the bed, an arm thrown over his eyes. He slept like a kid, she thought, looking at him fondly. The ship was moving silently through the ocean, the rocking had stopped for a moment, and Nat was glad. She turned her back to him, quickly changed into a T-shirt and climbed in next to him.

  “Good night,” Wes whispered.

  Nat smiled to herself. So he wasn’t as out of it as she had thought. She wondered whether he had watched her change, whether he had seen her out of her clothes, and she realized she didn’t mind—she was more than a little intrigued by the idea . . . all she had to do was turn around and put her arms around him . . . Instead, she fiddled with the stone around her neck, and the moonlight caught its glow, sending a rainbow of colors around the small cabin.

  “What is that?” Wes asked, his voice low in the darkness.

  Nat took a deep breath. “I think you know . . . it was Joe’s.”

  “He gave it to you.”

  “I asked for it,” she said. She could sense him stirring in the dark, next to her, and now he was sitting up, staring at the stone.

  “Do you know what it is?” he asked.

  Nat felt a reckless inhibition take hold, and the voice in her head was seething—telling her to keep silent—but she did not. “Yes,” she said finally. “It’s Anaximander’s Map.”

  The smugglers and traders named it after the ancient Greek philosopher who charted the first seas. But on the streets they just called it the Map to the Blue. The pilgrims believed that the Blue was not only real, but that it had always existed as part of this world, merely hidden from sight and called different names throughout history—Atlantis and Avalon among them. They swore that the stories that had filtered down through the ages—dismissed as myth and fairy tale—were real.

  She watched him absorb the news. She had always assumed he knew she had it, and that it was the real reason he had taken the job. Runners like Wes knew everything there was to know about everything in New Vegas. He might be a good guy, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “You know the story, don’t you?” Wes asked. “How Joe won it in a card game.”

  “I don’t, actually.”

  “They said the guy he won it from was shot dead on the Strip the next day.”

  Nat was silent.

  “Why do you think he kept it for so long?” Wes asked.

  “Without using it, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it’s real?” he asked.

  “He did live an awful long time; you know what they say, it’s supposed to be . . . well, keep you young or something. Anyway, look for yourself,” she told him, taking it off and handing it to him.

  Wes took the stone and held it gently between his thumb and his forefinger. “What do you mean?”

  “Hold it up, look through the circle. Do you see it?”

  He did, and exhaled, and Nat knew he saw. “Joe didn’t see it. He looked through it and saw nothing. Maybe the map wouldn’t reveal itself to him somehow. That’s why he never used it, because he didn�
�t know how.”

  “This is incredible,” Wes said.

  “How long till we get there?” she asked.

  “I’m guessing ten days,” Wes said, studying the route. “More or less.” He told her that, as many runners had guessed, New Crete was the closest port, but many ships had crashed or beached or gotten lost in the dangerous waters of the Hellespont. This route sketched a hidden, winding passage through the uncharted waters, to an island in the middle of an archipelago. There were a hundred tiny islands in that grouping; no one knew which was the one that led to the Blue. Except for this map.

  He gave it back to her to hold.

  “Don’t you want it?” she asked, almost daring him.

  “What would I do with it?” he asked her, his voice soft.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  For a long time, Wes did not answer. Nat thought maybe he had fallen asleep. Finally, she heard his voice. “I wanted it once,” he said. “But not anymore. Now I just want to get you where you need to go. But do me a favor, okay?”

  “Anything,” she said, feeling that warm tingle all over again. He was so close to her, she could reach out and touch him if she wanted, and she wanted, so very badly . . .

  “If Shakes ever asks you about it—tell him you got it a five-and-dime store.”

  She joined him in laughter, but they both froze, as the sound of the wailer broke over the waves again—that awful, horrible scream—the sound of a broken grief—a keening—echoing over the water—filling the air with its mournful cries . . .

  That thing, whatever it was, was still out there. They were not alone.

  Part the Fourth

  COMRADES AND CORSAIRS

  Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest