Blood Ocean

by Weston Ochse

  She struggled against Chito’s grip as he held her tight. She shrieked, pounded his back, and scratched his face, but he held her tighter. Then she spasmed. Bile shot from her mouth, gushing over his shoulder. Her blue irises were gone, rolling up into her skull. Her whole body quivered, as she gasped and dry heaved, over and over and over.

  Then she died.

  Kaja felt his own breath disappear as he stared at the bleak, dead eyes of the girl. He stepped out of the way. It seemed more respectful that way. At least in death she could see what she’d lost, what she’d missed more than her own humanity.

  Finally he drew breath, turned and stalked out of the room. He needed to punch someone in the face.

  THEY’D NEVER HAD to bury a monkey before. It seemed wrong. On the slab, resting beneath a cover, it took on the form of a child. Although Lopez-Larou knew what it really was, a part of her heart went out to it. So helpless. So small. So dead.

  Chito and several other Water Dogs, who’d been standing numbly around the bodies, made room for the girl’s mother and father. They slumped to the slab, dripping water like tears. They knelt and began to pray. The other Water Dogs joined in.

  It had been so close. Lopez-Larou had taken everything she knew about the brain and drug interaction and had actually thought she’d known the answer. The best technology available had been at her disposal and at the end of the day she was nothing more than a two-bit drug dealer with grand illusions about her medical ability.

  Bottom line was that she’d killed the girl and the fucking monkey.

  And now Kavika was lying in the submarine’s medical suite waiting for her to do the same to him.

  Come on, girl. Kill me, why don’t you? Life isn’t bad enough being attached to this fucking monkey. I need you to kill me, too.

  Not that Kavika could actually talk, but she was sure this was what he’d say if given the chance.

  She could still remember the girl’s eyes, and how they’d bulged when she’d realized the monkey was no longer part of her. It was as if she couldn’t live without it. Her death had nothing to do with the drugs. The drugs couldn’t kill anyone in the dosage she’d been provided.

  Lopez-Larou felt her grief pressing against her anger as she watched Amy’s mother and father weeping, their arms around each other and resting on their daughter. Water from their bodies had pooled beneath them and the other Water Dogs, rippling with their sobs, and as she watched the rippling water Lopez-Larou finally cried, too.

  Then, after a time, the Water Dogs took the wrapped body of the girl with them into the sea, and Chito took the monkey elsewhere. She’d heard him talking with the others; he had something planned, but she didn’t know what.

  They left her alone with the empty slabs and the pools of water. She wiped her cheeks with her palms. What was she going to do with Kavika? This entire endeavor had been about freeing him from his enslavement. She had neither the knowledge nor the fortitude to go about trying once more. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it.

  Thankfully, she was saved from making a decision by Kaja, who entered the Morgue Ship with fire in his eyes.

  “Come on,” he said. “Now it’s Kavika’s turn.”

  “What? We can’t. He’ll turn out just like the girl.”

  Kaja shook his head sharply. “Not this way. I have a plan.”

  She pressed her hand against Kaja’s chest. “But he’ll die.”

  “That’s the plan.” He turned to go and marched for the door. “You are coming, aren’t you?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “GET UP, YOU old drunk.”

  Kaja swept into the medical suite with Lopez-Larou following closely behind. Ivanov sat sprawled in a chair in the corner of the room, a bottle of vodka perched on his lap. He stared at Kavika, and at the monkey attached to him; his face was so long his chin seemed to be melting into his stained, grimy shirt. His eyes were red-rimmed and bright.

  Kaja grabbed the bottle and set it on a nearby table. Ivanov swiped for it, but was a shade too late. “I said get up. We have to kill Kavika.”

  Ivanov grunted, his attempt at a laugh. “You do it too happily. Why not try and make it seem like an accident?”

  Kaja grabbed the Russian under his arms and lifted him to his feet. The movement brought Ivanov’s face inches from Kaja’s, who turned his head as a gust of vodka fumes hit his face.

  “I let his father down, too, you know.”

  “Enough of that. You want a priest, I can find you one.”

  “Bah. Fucking priests. We had one on the ship. I torpedoed him into the deep when he told me one too many times that the plague was God’s will.” Ivanov hiccupped. “Fucking God’s will, my Soviet ass.”

  Kaja glanced back at Lopez-Larou. As much as he didn’t mind the old man’s stories, now wasn’t the time. “Would you mind taking him?”

  He passed the Russian to the diminutive but solid Mexican girl, who wedged her right shoulder beneath Ivanov’s left, then wrapped her arm around his waist. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Torpedo room.”

  “Ha ha!” chortled Ivanov. “Same as the priest.”

  Kaja went to the table and lifted Kavika and the monkey into his arms. He had to be sure to support them both, otherwise the umbilicals would rip free.

  He shouldered past the Russian and the Mexican and out the hatch, then into the hall. He’d been to the torpedo room several times and knew the way.

  Glancing down at the figure of the young man in his arms, he couldn’t help but smile. Kaja had been hard on the boy. He’d let him get beat down. He’d even ignored a chance to help him take on the Corpers. None of that had stopped him.

  Part of Kaja had hoped that any of the things he’d said or done would have convinced the boy to find another life. He could join Princess Kamala’s shipwrights or deckhands with no loss of dignity. It would make Kaja’s life easier as well; every time he saw the boy, he saw the boy’s father in miniature. Kapono’s shadow was long enough to stretch across the years.

  But another part of Kaja, one that had grown over the last few weeks, felt pride. Pride as a leader of men; pride as an older man; pride as a father himself. He’d put hurdles and walls before the boy and the boy had found ways to bypass them. Instead of quitting, he’d tried harder. Thinking of the many Pali Boys now winging their way across the city, Kaja was hard-pressed to find one who had showed half the determination of the boy he now had in his arms. The same boy who in his search to overcome his fear and become a man had lost his best friend and his uncle, and had had his life taken away from him so that some old white men could profit off his blood.

  Kaja would be damned if he’d let that happen. He’d already been talking with Chito and several other leaders of the Water Dogs; their command of the water and the Pali Boys’ command of the air created a perfect partnership, especially when presented with a mutual enemy.

  He took a set of stairs down a level, leaning heavily against the rail. The last thing he wanted was to slip and fall. The pipes and walls of the submarine were already too close for comfort. The thought of living aboard such a thing beneath the waves for so long made Kaja a little sick in his stomach. He could barely take sleeping inside his cargo container with the doors open.

  They finally made it to the engine room where Purin was already waiting. The ceiling was a few feet higher here, but the walls, floor and ceiling were still painted the same immutable, claustrophobic gray. Pipes still hugged the ceiling, but the floor was cleared, with the exception of a central control panel like a raised dais. A wheeled rack of missiles stood in one corner, ready to be loaded into the two forward tubes, which were accessed by a door opened and closed from using the control panel.

  “Is everything ready?” Kaja asked.

  “I don’t take orders from you.” Purin turned to Ivanov, who was limping in with the help of Lopez-Larou. “Captain, what are your orders?”

  Ivanov pushed away from Lopez-Larou and stood in the middle of th
e room. He swayed and for a moment, Kaja thought he’d fall. But the old drunk managed to find his balance. He pointed to Kavika. “Now what is it you’re going to do with the boy?”

  “Long or short version?” Kaja adjusted the weight in his arms.

  “Short version,” Ivanov said.

  “Okay.” Kaja pointed to a torpedo tube with his chin. “We’re going to shove Kavika and the monkey into that tube. You are going to fire it and Kavika is going to die.”

  Everyone in the room stared at Kaja for a moment. Ivanov rubbed his face with his hand to get blood flowing into it.

  “Okay. Better give me the long version.”

  Kaja nodded. “I thought so. First we’re going to wake the boy. Lopez-Larou has some stimulants that will wake both him and the monkey. Then we’re going to tie them together so that they can’t pull each other apart when they’re struggling.”

  “Struggling?” Ivanov looked to Lopez-Larou for clarification.

  She merely nodded.

  “Then we’re going to shove them in a tube and fire them into the water. The Water Dogs are waiting below and will attach them to the line and pull them to the bottom.”

  “That will kill them,” Purin said.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  “And you think this is a good thing?” Ivanov asked.

  “I think that as long as these two are alive, one of them is in control of the other. Get rid of brain activity and you get rid of brain waves; I hope that we can pull Kavika back to the surface and give him CPR, and by then the monkey will be dead and he’ll be free of it.”

  “It sounds too simple,” Purin said.

  “Sometimes simple is good,” Lopez-Larou offered. “I had all the same questions when he told me. But the more I think about it, the more I think that this is a solution that could work.” She shrugged. “It has to. We have nothing else.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Ivanov said after digesting the information.

  Kaja closed his eyes and adjusted the weight. The muscles in his arms burned. He needed to relieve the pain somehow, but he’d be damned if he’d allow his Pali Boy to lie on the floor. His Pali Boy. Not part-time Pali, but full-time. The boy hadn’t leaped into the wind like tradition, but he’d done so much more. He’d gone against the Corpers, and if he survived this, it meant that he was a favorite of Pele.

  Kaja remembered so many times he and the older men had talked long into the nights. Rice wine or weed hooch stinging their brains, remembering how much space they had on the islands, and the challenges to their very survival. The symbol of Don Quixote was important to Pali Boys. Fighting against something bigger than one’s self had been a founding principle, and one that elders like Kavika’s father, Old Wu and Kaja had tried to instill in the younger Pali Boys. Most often they didn’t understand, but it was this struggle for the unattainable that had kept the floating city alive. It ruled their lives and helped them to survive in the face of seemingly impossible odds. It had transfixed his ancestors and allowed them to leap into the trade winds, only to be pushed back into the mountain. Being a Pali Boy meant that you embraced faith, optimism, confidence, and courage, all wrapped into the memories and traditions of warriors who’d fought for King Kamehameha back before everything turned to shit.

  Ivanov returned. His captain’s cap rode his head, gold oak leaves of his rank stitched into a black background. He’d cleaned his face and changed his shirt.

  “This had better work,” he growled.

  Kaja shifted the weight once more. “Can we get started?”

  “Right.” The old captain nodded. “Purin, open tube one.”

  The immense Russian pressed a button on the keyboard. With a rush of air and the snap of a metal hinge, the door to the tube clicked open. He opened it the rest of the way and pulled out the torpedo rack. About ten feet long and three feet wide, the curved cradle was more than adequate to hold Kavika and the monkey.

  Kaja sighed with relief as he gently lay his Pali Boy down, adjusting first Kavika’s head and then the monkey’s. They were head-first into the tube. He straightened their legs and arms, adjusting here and there to ensure that they wouldn’t get hung up in the tube when it fired.

  When he backed away, he looked at Lopez-Larou. “Ready?”

  She nodded and stepped forward. From the pouch at her waist she produced a slender box. She opened it and removed a long syringe. Then she removed a needle, which she attached to the syringe. Together it was as long as her forearm.

  “What’s in it?” Ivanov asked.

  “Atropine.” She prepared the syringe for use. “It’ll kick start the dead.” Seeing the look on Ivanov’s face, she added, “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “Keep it to yourself.” The Russian looked to Kaja. “The Water Dogs are ready?”

  Kaja nodded, unwrapping several lengths of scrounged electrical wire from his waist. He tied Kavika and his monkey together at the knees, waist and torso. He barely had enough wire to tie both sets of arms, and had to press them together to get the space he needed to tie off. When he was done, he tested the knots and stood back.

  “Ready whenever you are.”

  THE UNIVERSE WAS ruled by his heartbeat.

  Ker-thump.

  Ker-thump.

  Ker-thump.

  He ran through a world made of trees. Rooted to the sky, the branches hung everywhere beneath a rain of leaves. Sometimes he’d jump, leaping impossibly far, his entire body extended so that it was one synchronized piece, taut from toe to fingertip, prepared for the grasp, rotation and swing of the next branch that would propel him high into space.

  He was gree.

  Suddenly a great pain coursed through him. The greens, browns and yellows of his tree-filled universe evaporated in an explosion of white so bright that it seared his senses.

  There was gree but it was not his.

  He was not what he was.

  He was something different.

  His eyes snapped open. Blinding light greeted him.

  “Kavika? Can you hear me, Kavika?”

  Strange nonsensical warbling noises assaulted him along with the light. But the light was dimming. His vision was clearing. He could make out shadows within the light, strange warbling shadows.

  “Kavika?”

  “Gree,” he replied, searching in vain for the universe of trees and the feeling of freedom.

  “Kavika!”

  “Gree.” White hot pain and warbling. Had he fallen from the trees? Was he on the ground?

  “Oh, God,” came a different voice. “His mind is gone. What if...?”

  “Don’t say it.”

  He felt himself being shaken. Strong hands gripped his shoulder.

  “Kavika!”

  “What?”

  Hands held his face as his vision cleared. The white universe had faded to a smear of grays. A man stood before him, a man who he’d known from before the pairing. It was someone who he’d swung through the air with... not trees, but something else, something...

  “Pali,” he murmured.

  “Yes. Yes!” The face glowed. “He’s going to be all right.”

  “How’s the monkey?”

  “Alert.”

  “So now it’s time.”

  “Gree.” The word was said, but it was outside of his head. And it saddened him. The gree was gone.

  “Hurry now,” came a rough warble.

  Then he was pressed into a dark tunnel. A number of loud clicks was followed by a clang as darkness sprang around him. Memories were coming to him: of people he knew, of things he did. They came in a jumble and made little sense, but he did know that they were his... and not the gree’s.

  The he was propelled violently forward. His head sliced hard into water as bubbles soared around him. He almost took a breath, but something inside of him warned against it. He bit down on his lip to keep it from opening. But the gree struggled behind him. It hadn’t done the same. It struggled and roared into the water, but bindings tying them
together kept it from lashing out.

  Then hands grabbed him. He and the gree were propelled deeper and deeper. His head began to hurt with the pressure, but still they went. He had to breathe, but if he did he’d die and he didn’t want to die. He wanted to return to the land of... was it trees? Or was it nets? His mind spun with the idea of swinging from net to net above a sea of ships, the dull gray horizon never-changing.

  They came to a cable as thick as a tree trunk. Using that as the anchor, he and the gree were pulled down and down and down. Handholds on the cable were used to propel them. Deeper. Deeper. The pressure in his head was intolerable.

  His face scraped the cable as he bounced lower and lower. A block of orange paint momentarily captured his eye. In it was a number—169.

  Then in a flash he knew that the gree was dead. He was overwhelmed by emotion. His eyes flooded with tears and without knowing it, he sobbed and in the sobbing, he let the water in. He coughed violently. His body convulsed. Fear and grief surged through him in a violent riptide of emotion. His vision turned black, and everything became dull. He coughed and inhaled the ocean, and his eyes shot wide as he realized that he’d ceased to move. A face in the water hung close to his own but it dissolved as his mind succumbed to the reality of death.

  He fell into nothing.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HE CAME TO slowly.

  Everything hurt.

  His chest felt as if a cargo container had fallen on it. His arms and legs ached. His head pounded so badly he had trouble keeping his eyes open. Even when he could, the world was nothing more than a silvery smear. Twin spikes of pain lived somewhere on his back. But the worst of it was inside. Emptiness. A space where something had been was now void.

  Then he remembered everything.

  The attack on the Corper ship.

  The battle for revenge.

  The escape.