by Jack Castle
STRANGER TIDES©
JACK CASTLE
PUBLISHED BY CASTLE BOOKS INC
Copyright ©2018 by Chris Tortora
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed, electric or audio form without written permission.
ISBN-13: 978-1548989071
ASIN: B07FND76KM
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
“Jack Castle's exciting Stranger World Series began chilling readers by guiding them down the Anything Could Happen Road. In his latest addition, Stranger Tides, readers will be intrigued by the depths of adventure, surprising danger, and the deep secrets revealed.” -Joe Butler, Spokesman Review
"For nearly a decade, Jack Castle has been crafting thrilling adventures for my theme park and guiding millions of guests through them. So, it comes as no surprise his talent as a storyteller has expanded to thrill readers worldwide through his Stranger World book series."
-Gary Norton
Owner of Silverwood Theme Park
(The largest Theme Park in the Northwest)
“I’ve taught literature at several colleges over the last 35 years, and Jack Castle is a harbinger of great adventures to come.”
-Dr. James Waller
Former Editor to Vice President Al Gore
ALSO BY JACK CASTLE:
Europa Journal
Bedlam Lost
White Death
The Revenants
Stranger World (series):
Stranger World
Stranger Realm
Stranger Tides
Stranger Origins
For my Best Friend,
Chad Bryant
The guy who first believed.
Acknowledgements
I will always be grateful to my wife Trace, and my two best friends: Chad Bryant and Greg Wahlman for their constant and unwavering support.
I would also like to thank (beta-readers) and crew of H.M.A.S. The Dauntless: Elisa Brinton, Alexandria Tortora and Samantha Neeley for helping me pick apart and polish the first draft, and keep it all straight in this crazy, upside down world.
Special thanks to my new editor Suzanne Holland ([email protected]) and King’s Custom Covers (www.KingsCustomCovers.com) for their spectacular cover design.
“The Sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence.”
-Jules Verne
Prologue
The Factory
“MEAT-WAGON!”
“Coming…”
Henry, a slender teenage boy pushing a rusty, two-wheeled cart, ran as fast as his oversized clodhoppers could carry him. To do otherwise meant punishment in the form of a demotion. If there was one thing Henry did not want out of life, it was to be demoted; because demotion in the “Factory” meant certain death.
He parked his meat-wagon next to the dead body. It was a real fat one. The man’s thin mustache was familiar, as were the blood-stains around his mouth and in the palm of his hand. Aw shoot, I know this guy. Fat boy’s name was Barnaby. Well, it used to be Barnaby. Despite the fact that he was always complaining about work, Henry kinda liked him.
He was always telling all those funny stories about fantastical places that obviously never existed like fairy mazes, and dinosaur jungles. Oh, and let’s not forget my favorite, rivers teeming with shape-changing water-nymphs and swamps filled with zombie-pirates. Henry wasn’t sure if the old man was pulling his leg or not, but he knew no place like that could have ever possibly been real.
Henry considered himself the practical sort. If he couldn’t see it; it didn’t exist. As far as he was concerned, only two places did exist: The Factory where he worked and the bunkhouse where he ate, bathed and slept. Other workers had told him about places above, where the masters lived in the lap of luxury, but he had never seen it for himself, ergo, it was just as mythical as ole’ man Barnaby’s fantasy lands.
“Henry, you gonna stare at the H. R. (Human Remains) all day, or what?” Piotr, a slightly older boy with platinum-white colored hair, suddenly arrived behind him.
Henry didn’t care so much for Piotr because among many other things, Piotr thought of himself as a floor-boss, which he was not. Piotr was only a crew chief, which was only one rank above him. Piotr was also a big fat liar. For starters, Piotr said his mother was a woman named Russia, but if memory served (and it really didn’t) he was pretty sure that Russia was a place, and not a woman.
Henry wasn’t entirely sure how he knew these things. He figured he must have gone to school at some point for he knew other things too, like how the solar system had nine planets and how photosynthesis worked, but he had no memory of actually going to school. Who was to say Russia was any more real than Barnaby’s fairy maze, or the leisure palaces up above. He didn’t know. Henry’s ceiling was literally only as high as the grimy, smoke-stained roof seventy feet above him. The closest he had ever come to seeing anything other than The Factory was the darkened clouds, barely visible through the massive smoke-stained skylights above them. Even this was only when they had to open them periodically throughout the day to let out excess smoke.
Both boys grunted as they lifted up the HR and loaded the cadaver into the meat wagon. Piotr coughed into his hand from the exertion. They both froze while Piotr checked the palm of his hand. No blood. That was good. Piotr didn’t have it. The Black Lung or what everyone else on the floor called it, the Red-Hand. Once you saw blood in your palm, you pretty much knew you were a Goner. Sometimes the bigger men would last for a few weeks but Henry rarely saw any worker live beyond that.
Seeing Henry stare over at his hand, Piotr asked, “Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you?” His grin broadened like a snake ready to unhinge its jaw for a meal, “Maybe get a promotion?”
Henry shook his head. “No. I wasn’t thinking that at all.” He didn’t know why Piotr was so worried. The head floor boss had once explained that they had nothing to fear. They were young; they were strong like bear. He was very clear when he said that the black lung only took down the old and lazy workers. Even though everybody was coughing up blood and keeling over as Barnaby had, they had nothing to worry about.
Piotr lit up a cigarette, and held it there as he said, “Better luck tomorrow, Probie.” The platinum-haired boy took a long drag off his cigarette and then commanded Henry, “C’mon, let’s dump this HR before he gets stiff.”
Henry didn’t talk back, instead, with gloved hands he grabbed the handles of the meat-wagon and began to push. Piotr would only offer assistance when the wagon got caught on something, say a mound of dirt or errant piece of coal, or if a pit-boss was watching he might push as briefly as was necessary.
Their job was simple, body disposal. Load body into wagon. Dump body into chute. Chute took bodies down to the furnace. As far as most workers were concerned, a plump body like Barnaby’s meant less coal was necessary for the leisure palaces to burn up above, which meant less coal needed to be shoveled into the furnaces. Someone as fat as Barnaby would burn a good long time.
Last week they had a record amount of bodies because there had been an uprising. What fools! They didn’t last five minutes against the guards, and certainly not against their guns.
Henry couldn’t understand why so many workers had to make trouble. Why couldn’t they appreciate what they had? The floor-bosses had explained it to them perfectly. You work hard–you get food, and e
ven a warm place to sleep at night. Without this job, they’d be tossed out on the street and starve to death, or be eaten by the packs of wild dogs that roamed the streets at night.
Besides, shoveling coal into furnaces to fuel the steam engines, which powered the city above, was a good job. A noble one. Sure the work was hard, molten burned and machines crushed. It’s what kept wagon-runners like him and Piotr so busy. Pushing around a meat-wagon was a lot better than back-breaking labor like shoveling, or fishing glass out of the furnace where you could easily get splashed by molten lava or your lungs set on fire. Why, streams of hot metal poured down on the glass-retrievers all the time.
Machinists sure as heck didn’t fare much better. He had once seen an oiler get his clothes entangled in the cog wheels, which dragged him right into the machine. The poor, unmindful sap was so mangled out of all semblance of humanity, his flesh was still adhering to the cogs to this day. Such horrific accidents were of little concern to the management.
Henry was lucky to have survived both jobs with as little burns, scars and broken bones as he had. If you didn’t like your job, you could work your way up through the ranks as he did to get a better one, like wagon-runner.
They were about halfway to the chute when Piotr signaled for him to stop. Checking to see if anyone was watching, Piotr commanded, out of the side of his mouth, “Hey Puke, go bring me that shovel.”
Henry hated the way Piotr always talked down to him. He was only a few years older. Henry knew Piotr really didn’t need the shovel, any more than they needed a machinist’s oil can. It was just an excuse to give Henry something to do while Piotr rummaged through Barnaby’s clothes for any valuables.
Piotr would remove belts for the leather and anything else salvageable. Barnaby’s shoes were worn out and his hat was far too big for Piotr, but he’d stuff both in his tattered coat and barter them off later. Piotr was always pilfering things off dead bodies; sometimes living ones too, when they weren’t paying enough attention.
That wasn’t all, either. There were rumors that Piotr had murdered his last assistant. The official record was the ten year old boy had slipped and fallen down the chute into the molten lava. Other wagon-runners had warned him to never turn his back on Piotr, and he almost never did, especially around the chutes and cog wheels.
While retrieving the shovel, Henry knew enough to take it slow, allowing Piotr plenty of time to pocket anything on poor ole’ Barnaby.
I’m sure gonna miss the old man’s stories.
Henry wasn’t sure exactly how long he had been in The Factory. The days just sort of all ran together. He had to be working at least a year, because Henry remembered when he started that his pants were over his shoes, unlike now. So he was no probe, like Piotr said.
Henry flinched heavily at the abrupt sound of glass breaking.
As he spotted the tinkling glass falling from the ceiling, a chrome-plated missile struck the ground with a loud SHRUUMPPPP, and crushed unsuspecting Piotr instantly.
The impact knocked Henry to the ground. For a few moments he remained still, lying face down with his hands covering his head. When the dust finally settled, he flipped over to sit up. Where Piotr and his jam-packed meat-wagon had been only seconds ago, there was now a large chrome cylinder, shaped like a giant dart. It must have been what smashed through the roof. Henry realized, if Piotr had not ordered him to fetch the shovel, he would’ve been crushed too. It was the kind of thought that paralyzes you for a moment.
Staring at the giant chrome dart, he finally began to wonder, Is that a bomb?
If it was, for some reason, it failed to detonate. It just stood there, sticking out of the ground at a slight angle, looking like a miniature Leaning Tower of Pisa with fins on the tail.
He covered his head again when the last of the broken glass dropping down from the ceiling reached him and crashed all around him. Distant alarms began sounding and soon the guards, with their heavy guns, began appearing on the upper catwalks.
Staring up through the broken skylights at the sky Henry saw a giant shadow, shaped like a flying boat, slowly move overhead. It began blocking out what little daylight there was.
Is that a ship? How is it floating?
Suddenly Barnaby’s ridiculous stories had a bit more credence than Piotr’s mother, Russia.
Henry squinted up at the flying boat just in time to see figures leaping off to their deaths and flying toward the ground at high rates of speed.
Why are they killing themselves?
To his surprise, the jumpers didn’t go splat on The Factory floor, as Henry suspected they would. Instead they stopped at the last moment before hitting the ground and stepped down from narrow platforms, about the width of a ladder rung. In turn, the narrow rungs were connected to highly-flexible, telescoping pipes that went back up to the floating ship.
Henry had heard stories of resistance fighters, but he had never actually seen one. He had never even spoken to anyone who had seen one with their own eyes either. So again, he thought it was simply hearsay, but he was beginning to wonder if these guys were them.
The nearest of them looked like a young girl, maybe fourteen. She had mounds of curly hair, welder’s goggles over her eyes and a thick scarf over her mouth.
Probably can’t handle the soot, he thought to himself.
Suddenly, one of the guards on the catwalks opened fire on them. Henry tried to get up but the girl with curly hair and welder’s goggles kicked him in the chest. And in a voice muffled by the scarf, she said, “Stay down kid.”
She turned, drew a chubby, chrome-plated pistol from a worn, leather holster and squeezed the trigger. To Henry’s amazement, a purple beam of light streaked out of the funny-looking ray gun, and with a loud echoing sound, the beam hit one of the guards on the catwalk. The wounded guard bounced off the wall behind him, and then tumbled over the railing to his death.
Henry knew it didn’t matter. In seconds, dozens more guards with heavy rifles would take his place. Whoever these people were, Henry could have told them they didn’t have a chance. There was no way they were getting out of The Factory alive.
As if confirming these thoughts, nearly fifty more guards quick-time marched onto the catwalks along the walls and above them.
Instinctively, the girl ducked as bullets zinged over her head and ricocheted all around them. In response, she removed a cylindrical device out of one of the leather pouches on her belt. It was about the size of fat pen. She flicked off a clear-plastic safety covering with her thumb and depressed a round-blue button.
The chrome missile that had failed to detonate now bloomed like a flower, and Henry heard a whining noise building in octaves. The girl with mounds of hair and welders goggles hit the floor and covered her ears. Henry figured he should probably do the same. But before he could, there was an explosion of blinding white light accompanied with a loud, deafening noise. After the light dissipated, Henry was surprised to find he was still alive.
As his vision began to clear, he saw the girl standing over him with her hand extended toward him. He could barely make out the words she was shouting to him, “Come on kid, not sure how long that E.M.P. blast is going to keep them off our backs.”
He realized the gunfire had stopped. When he looked to the guards, he could see they were all doubled over, either unconscious or dead. Some of them even appeared to be emitting sparks, a few more on fire.
The guards are Robots?
A few minutes must have passed while he was waiting for his ears to stop ringing and vision to clear, because he could now see the resistance fighters moving through The Factory workers. Each fighter was making little flag symbols over each worker. The flags they drew were stark white and magically floated above each person’s head.
“Check this one,” one of the fighters yelled.
Henry could see all The Factory workers either splayed on the ground or kneeling with their hands held up overhead.
“Over here,” the young girl cried next to him.
She had drawn a flag symbol over his head and when he glimpsed it, floating there as if by magic, he could see that it too was white.
That was when he saw the demon for the first time.
As it bounded over to him like a giant dog, Henry realized it wasn’t really a monster. It reminded him of those statues he had seen in a picture once. They were mounted on a church in Paris, France. The Notre Dame.
Gargoyles, that’s what they were called.
The gargoyle bounding toward him had lots of pointed teeth and taloned claws. Henry was fairly certain he only had a few seconds to live, which as it turned out, wasn’t that much longer than Piotr. The gargoyle stopped just shy of devouring him, kicking up soot and causing Henry to cough. The stone golem, who really wasn’t stone, was dressed in a butler’s uniform. And, instead of biting him, it began sniffing him.
“Okay, thissthhhpp one’s good,” the gargoyle shouted gleefully.
Henry had just enough time to notice it spoke with a strong lisp before it bounded away toward another worker with a floating flag above his head.
The girl with the welder’s goggles; the one who was still standing above him, touched the flag above his head again and this time the flag turned from white to a pleasant green.
“Can you stand? Are you hurt?” she asked him.
Henry didn’t answer. He saw the gargoyle sniff other workers and once he gave the all clear, their little flags turned green as well.
Henry wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what would happen if the flag did not turn green.
The girl kicked him lightly with the toe of her boot, “Hey, I asked you a question. Are you hurt? Can you stand?”
Henry nodded.
“Okay, let’s go. I don’t have all day.” She leaned forward and helped him to his feet. He found that he could barely walk. Whatever the blooming flower had done to him, he felt sick to his stomach, and he was pretty sure he was going to throw up.
