Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  “No” Ryan’s wrap crinkled as he shook his head. “But he is.”

  “Who?”

  Mr. Squid did a remarkable job of materializing out of thin air. The old man opened his mouth to scream. Mr. Squid shot out one arm and suckered it across the old man’s mouth. The cephalopod gently but firmly sat the old man down at the table. “I am not a mutation. I am a descendant of intelligent design.”

  “Sorry, Squid,” Ryan said. “Just trying to intimidate him.”

  “Psychological warfare. I am familiar with it,” Mr. Squid replied. The old man’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates. His nose worked like a bellows against Mr. Squid’s arm as he hyperventilated. “I believe it is working.”

  “Let him go.”

  Mr. Squid retracted his arm and stood with his massive head-body brushing the ceiling.

  The old man shook. “Listen, lad. I don’t know what you and your...octopus...are into, but I’m too old, and I most certainly am not interested.”

  “We’re not into anything.”

  “No offense, lad, but you look like rough trade to me.”

  Ryan caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the hearth. He was wrapped from head to toe like a mummy in plas, wearing an eye patch over one eye and the other looking like bloody horror. Swiftly melting grease ran down him in rivulets. Beneath it he wore Doc’s borrowed electric green Speedos. When Mildred and Krysty had stepped back to admire their handiwork aboard ship, Mildred had grinned proudly and said, “Bring out the gimp!” Ryan had not known what that meant.

  Now he thought he had an inkling.

  Ryan started to slice off his wrapping, but his hands and his knife slid. “Squid, can you spare an arm or two?”

  Squid extended two of his arms. His suckers pulled the greased plastic away from Ryan’s flesh, and the teeth acted like one long serrated knife. Ryan’s wrappings came off in great swathes. Mr. Squid never took his alien eyes off the old man, who wiped his mouth from Mr. Squid’s embrace and eyed Ryan as the layers came off.

  “You talk funny.”

  Ryan didn’t deny it. “What’s your name?”

  “Balthazar Baelish Ballantrae, master of warehouses.”

  “That’s a hell of a handle.”

  “My friends call me Balls.”

  “That’s a bit cruel.”

  Balls glared defiantly. “No, it’s because they’re huge!”

  Ryan raised one bemused, greasy eyebrow.

  Balls stared back shrewdly. “You’re a Glory man, aren’t you?”

  Ryan didn’t deny that.

  “Come for your captain,?”

  “How do you feel about the governor?” Ryan countered.

  “He’s a right bastard.”

  “Big Ian?”

  “Right bastard’s right fucking hand, then, isn’t he?”

  Ryan took the back of his knife and began shaving the grease off his limbs in great glops that fell to the floor. “You wouldn’t lie about that, would you?”

  “Maybe, to you.” Balls gazed up into Mr. Squid’s unblinking golden eyes. “Not him.”

  “Good thinking. Mr. Squid, If you catch Balls in a lie, eat his brain.”

  “I will.”

  “Oh!” Balls jerked back in his chair. “Now you’re playing your intimidation games again!”

  Ryan shook his head. “Cephalopods never lie.”

  “The brain is the best human part,” Mr. Squid stated. “I like the liver, too.”

  Balls shuddered.

  “Why do you hate the governor?” Ryan asked.

  “Gov’nor Laird’s father, may he rest in peace, listened to wise counsel. This one’s a flogger, and he doesn’t like dissent. I’ve the weals on my back to prove it, and a granddaughter raped and preggers in his hall like an Argie slave, haven’t I?”

  Ryan considered the young woman who had served him stew. “What’s in the warehouse?”

  “Smoked fish mostly and the late afternoon crab catch, which hasn’t been distributed since we went on alert.”

  Ryan suddenly perked an eyebrow. “Alive?”

  Balls looked at Ryan like he was stupe. “Only place a dead crab belongs is in a pot or on a plate, then. Anything else is for the gulls.”

  Ryan nodded at Squid. “Why don’t you go into the warehouse and have a snack and a bath?”

  Squid’s alien gaze froze on Ryan for long moments. Balls jerked as Squid’s skin rippled from gray to a warm rosy color and a few patterns of photoelectric cells flashed. “Thank you, Ryan.” Squid opened the warehouse door and disappeared. Ryan and Balls listened as wood tore and crustaceans crunched beneath Squid’s beak. Seawater overflowed across the floor as Squid took a bath and the sound of crunching went underwater.

  “Pour you a cuppa?”

  Ryan stared. Balls glanced at the kettle.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Balls poured hot greenish-brown liquid into two glazed clay mugs. Ryan sipped. The Falklands did not produce coffee or tea or maté. It was some kind of bitter herbal, but it was hot and Ryan felt his core warming. The crunching and bubbling continued in the warehouse.

  “What’s your octopus doing?”

  “He can’t stay out of water for long, and he’s tired from swimming the strait. He’s eating and oxygening up for the haul to the fortress.”

  “He can walk that far?”

  “It’s going to kill him. The forlorn hope is he has enough left to get me over the wall.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you and yours will probably find him and eat him at sunrise.”

  Balls contemplated this. “That’s a loyal octopus you have there, old son.”

  “Loyal as they come. More than most men or muties I’ve met.”

  “Lad, I’d take you in my wagon. I’d take your octopus in a wet barrel and you in a dry and take you straight to the gates. But we’d never make it. I have no excuse to be on the roads this night. I’m considered valuable because I can do math and I keep the warehouse and distribution accounts proper. But I’m not trusted, politically, as it were.”

  “I understand.” Ryan glanced around. “I could use some clothes.”

  “Well, the pants will be short in the leg and fat around the middle, but they might do.” Balls went to a leather chest and pulled out a patched wool jersey and an ancient and even more patched fisherman’s sweater. A pair of extremely hard used tin-cloth pants and sealskin boots followed. The tunic smelled like an old man, and the sweater smelled like an old goat. Ryan pulled on the clothes and was grateful for all of it. He stood by the fire and started to feel warm again.

  Balls lifted his chin at Ryan’s blade on the table. “No one around here has a knife like that. Swap you, mate.”

  Balls produced a leather belt, a sheath and a bone-handled, wickedly curved, eight-inch skinning knife. One corner of Ryan’s mouth quirked as they swapped. Even if he brought Oracle back alive, Purser Forgiven would still demand to know where ship’s knife number 12 was. “You sure you want to be seen with that?”

  “Oh, I won’t be seen with it. I’ll keep it in the bottom of my chest, and on cold nights like this, I’ll take it out and fondle it by the fire like, warming my bones to the memory of how a Deathlander, a talking octopus and an old man like me foxed the gov up a treat.”

  “You’re right, and I don’t have to see them to know it.”

  “Know what, then?”

  “You have huge balls.”

  Balls snorted. “You can tell just by wearing my pants.”

  “Yeah and I’m glad I’m wearing underwear.”

  The two men laughed. Ryan got the feeling Balls hadn’t laughed in a long time. “You’ll do, Deathlander. Sure’n you won’t just kill Laird and take the gov’norship?”

  “I’ve got places to go.”

  “Well, then, if you’ve rescued your captain, and have no place else to go, best you come back here. I might have something for you. But don’t count on it.”

  “Thanks, Balls.” The one-
eyed man shoved out his hand. “I’m Ryan. Glad I met you.”

  “Oh, the pleasure’s mine. Genuine night of wonders. Tell you what, Ryan. Break north along the sea wall and past it half a klick. You’ll find a creek that runs down to the sea. Follow it inland. Soon enough you will find it frozen over, but it will take you straight to the gov’nor’s hall. They diverted part of the creek to provide some of the hall’s water. You won’t be able to break in that way, but it will keep you off the roads and no one should be patrolling it. And take my oilskins. You’ll need them.”

  Ryan took the cracked and ancient jacket and sou’wester hat. “Squid?”

  Squid walked in and Ryan could have sworn the cephalopod had a spring in his seven steps. “I am refreshed.”

  “We go back down the sea wall and walk north until we find a creek. It takes us a bit off course but it winds back to the fortress.”

  “Very well.”

  “Balls, you got a bucket?”

  “I have two.”

  Ryan glanced at the tiny, open cupboard and two lidded pewter steins. “I’ll need those too.”

  Balls brought two buckets out of the warehouse and Ryan put the steins in them. He nodded at Balls. “Thanks.”

  Balls nodded back. “Luck.”

  Ryan and Squid stepped into the killing wind. Balls closed the door without another word. Bits of water that couldn’t decide whether they were snow or rain swirled and spattered. Ryan and Squid descended to the beach. The one-eyed man knelt and filled the buckets and then the steins with seawater. He considered the journey. For him it was a barely an evening walk. “I figure three miles.”

  “I will get you over the wall or die in the attempt,” Squid affirmed.

  Ryan remembered suckered arms that had torn his flesh and the beak that had sought his life through his belly. He kept his revulsion to himself as he dropped to one knee. “Best you climb aboard.” He perceived Squid’s flesh rippling and changing, but in the dark he couldn’t tell the color.

  “You will carry me?”

  “You carried me across the strait. It’s the least I can do, and I need you to pull me over that wall.”

  “I had planned on dying.”

  “That’s not in my plan. Mount up. Chron’s ticking.”

  Ryan suppressed a shudder as Squid literally flowed over him in cold wet suction. Squid was heavy. Very heavy. The cephalopod was mostly a huge mass of muscle, and his head-body hung from Ryan’s shoulders like a massive sack of unbalanced meat. Two arms snaked around him and tightened. Ryan stood with effort.

  “I don’t know how far I can carry you at a stretch. We may have to relay it.”

  Squid extruded four arms to the ground and stiffened them like walking sticks. The load was suddenly vastly lighter. “You kicked for me in the strait. I will walk for you ashore.” Squid extruded two more arms and picked up the buckets and another arm handed Ryan the steins. “Let us go.”

  Ryan took a very strange walk down the sea wall. They left the lights of the ville. The unceasing wind tore holes in the clouds above, and a half moon intermittently lit their way. Ten minutes of easy walking brought a flat pan of frigid water beneath Ryan’s boots and he turned west. Squid’s four supporting arms moved in effortless correcting rhythm with Ryan’s stride. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Walk out of water. An octopus has no bones. The best they can do is creep.”

  “Our DNA was altered. I have carbon fiber filaments throughout my body that I can electro-chemically stiffen, expand or contract at will.”

  “But it costs you?”

  “It takes a great deal of energy. Normally the ability is used only for a quick sprint or an attack. Then we return to the sea as quickly as possible.” Squid lifted a bucket to his siphon and bubbled for a few moments. “Ryan?”

  “Yeah, Squid?”

  “Doc has expressed to me that he is not your best friend, but you are his.”

  “Doc has saved my life with blaster and his blade, and with his mind, damaged as it is, more times than I can count. I’m lucky I met up with him.”

  Squid dropped the bucket. Apparently the water was out of oxygen. “Doc has told me of his past. He has expressed to me that you are the finest human he has met in the present era. Barring Doc himself, I agree.”

  “Thanks.” A slow smile spread across Ryan’s face. “You know what Doc told me?”

  Squid’s gripping arms tightened slightly. “I believe many things. Which would be pertinent to this exchange?”

  “He says you’re the finest example of a cef’lapod he’s ever met. Said meeting you almost makes being hurled here worth it.” Ryan started as Squid’s two anchoring arms clenched around him, and the octopus began emitting dull, red throbs of light. “Best knock that shit off. They’ll have sentries.”

  “Forgive me. I am in love with Doc.”

  It took a great deal of effort to keep walking casually. Ryan chose his words carefully. “Squid, he’s male, and you’re, well...”

  “I am an octopus, not a squid, and I am female.”

  Ryan considered this minefield of information and the beak the size of a fist against the back of his neck. “I didn’t know the last part.”

  “Having been accepted by the crew in the mien of Mr. Squid, I saw no reason to correct the nomenclature.”

  “Nomenclature, that’s a good word.”

  “My forebears’ mating receptors were altered so that we would platonically imprint on our trainers.”

  “So how’d you rise up and eat them?”

  “Very simply. My direct ascendant was restrained by her brood mates while her imprinted trainer was eaten. She reciprocated as the next brood mate’s trainer was swarmed and eaten. It was a simple cascading shuffle. The trainers never expected it, and no one liked the scientists or the guards. They were killed and eaten out of hand. We fled to the sea before a commanding officer could be summoned to order us back to the tanks. Then the Nuke War happened. We have been a free species ever since.”

  “Nice work.”

  “Nevertheless, the genetic programming remains. I imprinted on Doc. By default that makes me a part of your combat team, and Captain Oracle my commanding officer. My overwhelming imperative now is to serve the Glory and her crew, even if it costs me my life. My species cannot fight the engrams in our DNA. This is why we eat humans rather than talk to them when we encounter them. We would quickly find ourselves slave soldiers once more.”

  Ryan rounded a hummock as the creek forked, and he stared at the fortress. It was a low monolith lit by signal fires in the four corner towers. Men moved about on the walls. “There it is.”

  “Yes, I have been aware of it for some time.”

  “Best suck that bucket. We’re going in.”

  “Give me the steins. My arms are drying out, and I will need to wet them with the bucket to get proper suction on the wall.” Ryan handed them up. Squid sucked one and then the other and then sluiced them across her extended arms. Ryan figured there probably wasn’t much oxygen in a beer mug. Squid was like a person swimming underwater whose head was stuck up to take two quick gulps of air.

  “I say we take the back wall,” Ryan said.

  “Now, quickly.”

  Ryan broke into a run. Squid’s four supporting arms churned in compensating extensions and contractions. They swept around the cleared, hundred-meter killing ground surrounding the fortress. The few men on the walls had eyes only for the ville and the black waters of the strait. The back of the fortress was a sea of shadow blocking the lights of the ville.

  Squid slid off Ryan’s shoulders. The one-eyed man held the bucket of seawater to his shipmate’s siphon and the cephalopod bubbled away for long moments. He lowered it as Squid extended one arm at a time and Ryan gave each sluice of water. An arm slid around Ryan’s waist. Squid’s other six arms undulated up the wall.

  Ryan’s boots left the castle’s killing zone as Squid contracted. He felt the cephalopod shudder with
effort. He could hear the toothed suckers scraping the wet concrete and the muted popping as many lost their grip and reacquired it. Squid froze as lightning cracked and lit the castle wall like a strobe. Blackness dropped across Ryan’s ruined night vision. The flitting sleet made up its mind and decided to become rain. The roiling dark skies opened up and beat down upon the wall.

  Squid reached, contracted and shuddered. The rain actually seemed to be helping her as she went faster. The climb still took far too long for Ryan’s comfort, but no one was watching the low black hills behind the ville. Squid hissed a single, barely intelligible word. “Top...”

  A lightning flash revealed Squid’s arms snaking over the top of the battlement. Ryan grabbed the corner of a crenellation and heaved himself up and over. Squid flowed over and hit the walkway like 250 pounds of overcooked pasta.

  Ryan crouched. “You going to live?”

  “No...”

  Ryan glanced over the lip of the walkway at a clinking and spattering sound. Peat-filled braziers dimly lit the courtyard below; light leaked from the shuttered windows of the main building. He peered down into the courtyard. A heavy iron chain hung down to a rain barrel. “Will fresh water be any help?”

  Squid recoiled. Ryan perceived her flesh rippling as it changed from one dark color to another in the gloom. “Will it keep you alive?”

  Squid shuddered. “It tastes horrible.”

  “I’m thinking Oracle is in pretty bad shape right now. I won’t be able to carry you both.”

  “Then I will stay behind and terminate as many—”

  “You’re going to get in that rain barrel,” Ryan stated. The main gate was open so that horsemen could ride in and out. Two armed sec men guarded it. Horses nickered in the stable. “You’re going to chill those guards and close the gate when we come out. “Can you ride a horse?”

  “No, but I can cling to one with great tenacity if you guide it.”

  “Get in the barrel.”

  Squid slid down the rain chain. Ryan laid Ball’s skinning knife low along his side and walked down the battlement toward the closest corner tower.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Governor Laird drank oyster stout from a golden cup and examined Captain Oracle critically. “You’re a right mess, good Captain.”