Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  Richard lit the storm lamp that hung overhead, setting it swaying. Nailer held still, trying to guess his father’s mood as the man pulled a scavenged chair around and straddled it. The lamp’s swinging glare cast shadows across them both, looming and swooping shapes. Richard Lopez was sliding high, burning with amphetamines and liquor. His bloodshot eyes studied Nailer carefully, a snake waiting to strike.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  Nailer tried not to show fear. The man didn’t have anything in his hands: no knife, no belt, no willow whip. His blue eyes might be crystal bright, but he was still a calm ocean.

  “I had an accident on the job,” Nailer said.

  “An accident? Or you were being stupid?”

  “No—”

  “Thinking about girls?” his dad pressed. “Thinking about nothing at all? Daydreaming like you do?” He jerked his head toward the torn image of a clipper ship that Nailer had tacked to the wall of their shack. “Thinking about your pretty sailing ships?”

  Nailer didn’t take the bait. If he protested, it would just make things worse.

  His father said, “How you going to pay your way around here, if you’re off your crew?”

  “I’m not off,” Nailer said. “I’m back tomorrow.”

  “Yeah?” His father’s bloodshot eyes narrowed suspiciously. He nodded at the rag sling holding Nailer’s shoulder. “With a gimp arm? Bapi doesn’t do charity work.”

  Nailer forced himself not to back down. “I’m still good. Sloth got cut, so I got no competition in the ducts. I’m smaller—”

  “Smaller than shit. Yeah. You got that going for you.” His father took a swallow from his bottle. “Where’s your filter mask?” he asked.

  Nailer hesitated.

  “Well?”

  “I lost it.”

  Silence stretched between them. “Lost it, huh?” was all his father said, but Nailer could tell that dangerous gears were turning now, fueled by the rattle of drugs and anger and whatever madness caused his father’s bouts of frenzied work and brutality. Underneath the man’s tattooed features a storm was brewing, full of undertows and crashing surf and water spouts, the deadly weather that buffeted Nailer every day as he tried to navigate the coastline of his father’s moods. Richard Lopez was thinking. And now Nailer needed to know what—or he’d never escape the shack without a beating.

  Nailer tried an explanation. “I fell through a duct and into an oil pocket. Couldn’t get out. The mask couldn’t breathe, anyway. It was full of oil. It was done for.”

  “Don’t tell me it was done for,” his father snapped. “That’s not your say.”

  “No, sir.” Nailer waited, wary.

  Richard Lopez tapped his booze bottle idly against the back of the chair. “I’ll bet you’ll want another mask now. You were always complaining about the dust with that old one.”

  “No, sir,” Nailer said again.

  “No, sir,” his father mimicked. “Damn, Nailer, you’re a smart one these days. Always saying the right thing.” He smiled, showing yellow teeth all splayed out like a hand, but still the bottle tapped against the back of the chair. Nailer wondered if his father was going to try to hit him with it. The bottle tapped again. Richard Lopez’s predatory eyes studied Nailer. “You’re a smart little bastard these days,” he murmured. “I’m almost thinking you’re getting too damn smart for your own good. Maybe you’re starting to say things you don’t mean. Yes, sir. No, sir. Sir.”

  Nailer could barely breathe. He knew now that his father was mapping out the violence, planning to catch Nailer, to teach him some respect. Nailer’s eyes went to the door. Even with his father sliding high, the man had a good chance of catching him, and then everything would be blood and bruises and there was no way he’d get back on to light crew before Bapi cut him.

  Nailer cursed that he hadn’t just gone straight to the safety of Pima’s shack. His eyes went to the door again. If he could just—

  Richard caught the flick of Nailer’s gaze. The man’s features turned cold. He stood and pushed his chair away. “Come here, boy.”

  “I got a luck gift,” Nailer said suddenly. “A good one. For getting out of the oil.”

  Nailer kept his voice steady, trying to pretend he didn’t know his father was planning on beating the hell out of him. Playing innocent. Talking normal, like there wasn’t about to be pain and screaming and a chase. “It’s right here,” he said.

  Walk slow. Don’t make him think you’re running.

  “It’s just right here,” Nailer said again as he opened the door and reached outside. He grabbed Moon Girl’s luck gift and offered it to his dad. The bottle gleamed in the lamplight, a talisman.

  “Black Ling,” Nailer said. “The crew gave it to me. Said I should share it with you. Because I’m lucky for you having me.”

  Nailer held his breath. His father’s cold eyes went to the bottle. Maybe his father would drink. Or maybe he’d take the bottle and hit him with it. Nailer just didn’t know. The man had become more unpredictable as he worked less on the crews and worked more in the shadow world of the beaches, as his drugs whittled him down to a burning core of violence and hungers.

  “Let me see.” His dad took the bottle from Nailer’s hand and checked the level of the liquor. “Didn’t leave much for your old man,” he complained. But he cracked the screw and sniffed the contents. Nailer waited, praying for luck.

  His father drank. Made a face of respect. “Good stuff,” he said.

  The violence seeped out of the room. His father grinned and toasted Nailer with the bottle. “Damn good stuff.” He tossed his other bottle into the corner. “Way better than that swill.”

  Nailer ventured a smile. “Glad you like it.”

  His father drank again and wiped his mouth. “Get to bed. You’ve got crew tomorrow. Bapi will cut you for sure if you’re late.” He waved Nailer toward his blankets. “Lucky boy, you.” He grinned again. “Maybe that’s what we’ll call you from now on. Lucky Boy.” The man’s yellow horse teeth flashed, suddenly benevolent. “You like the name Lucky Boy?” he asked.

  Nailer nodded hesitantly. “Yeah. I like it.” He made himself smile wider, willing to say anything to keep his father in this new good mood. “I like it a lot.”

  “Good.” His father nodded, satisfied. “Go to bed, Lucky Boy.” His father took another swallow from Nailer’s luck gift and settled down to watch the storm as it rolled toward them.

  Nailer pulled a dirty sheet over himself. From the far side of the room, his old man muttered, “You did good.”

  Nailer felt a flush of relief at the compliment. It carried with it the whiff of a father that he remembered from before, when he was small and his mother was still alive. A different time, a different father. In the dim light, Richard Lopez could almost be the man who had helped Nailer carve the Rust Saint’s image into the wall above his mother’s sickbed. But that had been a long time ago.

  Nailer curled in on himself, glad to feel safe for the night. Tomorrow might be different, but this day had ended well. Tomorrow would handle itself.

  6

  THE STORM ROLLED onto the coast with all the implacable power of an old-world tank. Towering cloud banks built on the horizon and then swept inward, bearing steady rain. Thunder grumbled over the ocean and lightning lit the underbellies of the clouds, flashing from sea to sky and back again.

  The deluge opened.

  Nailer woke to the roar of storm on bamboo walls. Wind and water poured in through the open door, lit by explosions of electricity. His father was just a shadow slumped beside him, mouth open, snoring. Wind whirled through the house, scraping Nailer’s face with cold fingers, then leaping to the wall and tearing away Nailer’s picture of the clipper ship. The paper swirled madly for a moment before being sucked out the window into darkness, disappearing before Nailer could even try to grab it. Rain spattered his skin, coming in cold where palm thatching was already tearing away under the increasing battery of the winds. />
  Nailer crawled over his father and stumbled to the door. Outside, the beach swarmed with activity, people moving skiffs deeper into the trees, chasing after livestock. The storm looked worse than just a blow, maybe a city killer even, the way the clouds swirled and scattered lightning across the wrecks offshore. Even though the tide should have been out, the waves and breakers were big all across the beach, the storm surge pressing inland.

  His father claimed that the storms were worse every year, but Nailer had never seen anything like the monster bearing down on them. He turned back into the shack.

  “Dad!” he shouted. “Everyone’s moving higher! We need to get out of the surge!”

  His father didn’t respond. The night crews were pouring off the wrecks. Men and women scrambling down hemp ladders, dangling and dropping like fleas jumping from a dog, plummeting into the increasing surf. Electricity outlined the black hulks against day-bright sky; then everything disappeared into blackness. Rain slashed the beach.

  Nailer scrambled around the shack, looking for possessions to salvage. He tugged on his last set of clothes, grabbed the phosphor grease, found the silver earring and the luck bag of rice that he’d been given. The house creaked and heeled as wind gusted. The tin and bamboo wouldn’t last long.

  The storm was a city killer for sure, what some people called a party wrecker or an Orleans Surge. When Nailer peered back out into the storm’s rage, he could see now that everyone was fleeing for heavy shelter. Shadow people clawing out of the darkness, hunched against curtains of wind and water as they dashed for safety. Running for things like the salvage train, with its iron freight cars that might not fly away.

  Nailer dragged all their possessions over to his father’s inert form. He pulled the sheet off the bed and fumbled one-handed with their belongings. His wounded shoulder burned with pain at the frantic effort. He shoved everything into the sheet and tied it in a bundle. More rain poured through the disintegrating thatch. His father’s pale skin gleamed with rain water and yet still he didn’t move.

  Nailer grabbed a tattooed arm. “Dad!”

  No response.

  “Dad!” Nailer shook him again. Tried to drive his nails into the man’s dragon-decorated flesh. “Wake up!”

  The man barely stirred, sunk so deep in amphetamine blowout that nothing affected him.

  Nailer rocked back on his heels, suddenly thoughtful.

  If they took the full brunt of the city killer, there wouldn’t be anything left here. He’d heard that sometimes a surge could move the coastline inland as much as a mile, turning beaches and trees into a murky swamp sea, the new ragged tide line of rising sea levels. A big blow could easily move the hulks of the ships as well. Might shove them right over the house, even if it didn’t blow away.

  Nailer straightened. He hefted the sheet, groaning at the cumbersome load. When he reached the doorway, the wind blasted him, lashing his face with rain and sand and leaves. More lightning slashed the beach. In the flickering light, a chicken coop tumbled past, all the birds already gone, every one of them lost to the gray roar. Nailer looked back at his father, conflicted emotions warring within him.

  The man wasn’t moving. The chemicals in his brain were so depleted he wasn’t going to come awake even for the storm. Sometimes when the crash was bad, his father could sleep for two days. Nailer normally blessed the peace his father’s drug crashes brought. It would be so much simpler…

  Nailer set down the sack of possessions. Cursing himself for his own stupidity, he plunged into the storm. The man was a drunk and a bastard, but still, they were blood. They shared the same eyes, the same memories of his mother, the same food, the same liquor… Family, as much as he had.

  A maelstrom of sand and copper screws and plastic shards swirled around him, the debris of the ship-breaking business ripping at his skin as he ran barefoot down the beach to Pima’s shack. Rust flakes, bits of insulation, a roll of wire. Trash strippings flying like knives.

  A gust of wind drove Nailer to his knees and sent him crawling, his shoulder a bright blossom of pain. Sheet metal whipped overhead, flying like a kite—a roof, a bit of ship, it was impossible to tell. It slashed into a coconut palm and the tree toppled, but the blast of the storm was so loud Nailer couldn’t hear the collapse.

  Crouched on the sand, he squinted through gushing rain. Pima’s shack was gone, but the shadows of the girl and her mother were still there, fighting the storm, trailing ropes, struggling to hold onto a blurry shadow.

  Nailer had always thought of Pima’s mother as big from her work on the heavy crew, but now in the storm, she seemed as small as Sloth. The rain cleared briefly. Sadna and Pima were lashing down a skiff, tying it to a tree trunk as it bent in the wind. Debris scoured them. When he got close he could see that Pima had taken a cut to her face and blood ran freely from her forehead even as she worked with her mother to secure the lines.

  “Nailer!” Pima’s mother waved him over. “Help Pima hold that side!”

  She threw him a line. He twisted it around his good arm and hauled, the two of them handling one end of the skiff, shoulder to shoulder as Pima made the knots fast. As soon as it was knotted, Pima’s mother motioned him and shouted, “Get up into the trees! There’s a rock hollow higher up! It should give shelter!”

  Nailer shook his head. “My dad!” He waved back at his own shack, a shadow still miraculously upright. “He won’t wake up!”

  Pima’s mother stared through the blackness and rain toward the shack. Her lips pursed.

  “Hell. All right.” She waved at Pima. “You take him up.”

  The last thing Nailer saw was Sadna’s shadow plunging into the wind, running down the beach, surrounded by lightning strikes. And then Pima was dragging him up into the trees, scrambling through the whipping branches and the roar of the storm.

  They climbed wildly, desperate to get out of the surge. Nailer looked back again at the beach and saw nothing. Pima’s mother was gone. His father’s shack. Everything. The beach was scoured clean. Out on the water, fires burned, oils somehow ignited and blazing despite the torrents.

  “Come on!” Pima tugged him onward. “It’s still a long way!”

  They fled deeper into the jungle, scrambling through mud and stumbling over thick cypress roots. Torrents of water rushed down over them, filling the wood-cutting trails of the forest with their own muddy rivers. At last they reached Pima’s destination. A small limestone cave, barely big enough to hold them both. They crouched within. Rainwater poured over the brink in a miserable torrent. It pooled around them so that they huddled ankle deep in cold water. Still, it was sheltered from the wind.

  Nailer stared out at the storm. A city killer for sure.

  “Pima,” he started, “I—”

  “Shh.” She pulled him back from the water, deeper into the hole. “She’ll be fine. She’s tough. Tougher than any storm.”

  A tree flew past, flying as if it were a toothpick flung by a child. Nailer bit his lip. He hoped Pima was right. He’d been a fool to ask for help. Pima’s mother was worth a hundred of his dad.

  They waited, shivering. Pima tugged him closer and they huddled together, sharing heat, waiting for nature’s violence to pass.

  7

  THE STORM RAGED for two nights, trashing the coastline, tearing away anything that wasn’t tied down. Pima and Nailer huddled through it, watching the roar and rain and holding close as their lips turned purple and their skins pimpled with cold.

  On the third day, in the morning, the skies suddenly cleared. Nailer and Pima forced their stiff limbs to move and stumbled down to the beach, joining a ragged assemblage of other survivors who were streaming toward the sands.

  They broke through the last of the trees and Nailer stopped, dumbstruck.

  The beach was empty. Not a sign of human habitation. Out in the blue water, the shadows of the tankers still loomed, randomly scattered like toys, but nothing else remained. The soot was gone, the oil in the waters, everything shone brigh
tly under the blaze of morning tropic sun.

  “It’s so blue,” Pima murmured. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the water so blue.”

  Nailer couldn’t speak. The beach was cleaner than he’d ever seen in his life.

  “You’re alive, huh?”

  Moon Girl, grinning at them. Covered with mud from whatever bolt-hole she’d found, but alive nonetheless. Behind her, Pearly and his parents were coming onto the beach, shocked expressions on their faces as they tried to register the changes.

  “All in one piece.” Pima searched down the beach. “You see my mom?”

  Moon Girl shook her head, her piercings glinting in the sun. “She might be over there.” She waved vaguely toward the train yard. “Lucky Strike’s giving out food to anyone who wants it. Credit for everyone until the ship breaking starts again.”

  “He saved food?”

  “Couple rail cars full.”

  Pima tugged Nailer. “Come on.”

  A crowd of people were gathered around the scavenge train, all of them waiting for Lucky Strike to dole out supplies. Pima and Nailer scanned the faces, but there was no sign of Sadna.

  Lucky Strike was laughing and saying, “No worries! We got enough for everyone! No one’s starving while we wait for old Lawson & Carlson to come back from MissMet. The rust buyers might be hiding from hurricanes, but Lucky Strike’s taking care of everyone.”

  Lucky Strike was grinning, his long black dreadlocks tied back, but Nailer knew he was also telling people there wouldn’t be any rioting for food. And if there was anyone people would obey, it was Lucky Strike.

  Lucky Strike had been collecting real power ever since his first bit of luck freed him from heavy crew. Now he smuggled everything from antibiotics to crystal slide into Bright Sands Beach. He had deals worked with the boss men to do whatever he liked. His hand was in the gambling dens and the nailsheds and a dozen other businesses, and the money just rolled in, turning into gold nuggets that he hung glittering from the tips of his dreadlocks or else drove through his ears in thick gleaming rings. The man dripped wealth.