“Are you getting in or what?” he snapped. Then he saw the look on her face.
“Behind you,” she whispered.
Wes sniffed the air and sighed. He knew the stench well, knew immediately what was standing behind him. With one graceful motion, he unholstered his sidearm and fired before he’d even turned around. The first bullet struck the deck of the boat and the second flew past the creature’s ear, tearing a chunk of flesh from the earlobe. The thriller, a rotting corpse of a boy that had most likely huddled in the shadow of the canvas, staggered backward, away from him. It was human in shape, but its skin reflected no light and his eyes were a blind, glassy white. Wes emptied the rest of the clip into the air, and the creature dove into the black water.
He exhaled in relief until he saw it wasn’t his only problem. “Nat! Get in the damn boat!” he yelled, firing his weapon once more.
Nat turned to look behind her and screamed. A rotten corpse was reaching for her. It was a girl once, but no more; the face hung from its ear, the flesh had decayed to a turgid, swollen mass, and it was grasping for her with its cold, dead hands. It slumped to the ground, as Wes shot out its knees. “COME ON!” He extended his hand and she finally took it.
They were everywhere—swarming the boardwalk, shambling out of the shadows, out of the rotting carnival booths and the broken carousel. There were so many of them, some of them fell through the rotted wood planks of the pier into the black water. The thrillers were far from mindless, moving with intent, their hands and feet grasping for holds.
“They’re not dead!” Nat said shakily, as he pulled her into the boat.
“Tell me something new,” he muttered. But he knew what she meant. Saw the horror on her face as she processed the information. The thrillers weren’t dead at all. They were very much alive—conscious—their distress and desperation unnerving in its intensity.
“SHAKES! CUT THE ROPE!” he ordered, sliding his key into the ignition and jamming the engine out of neutral. The boat was still moored to the pier, and as he pulled forward, the two aft ropes snapped, their long lines whipping through the air. A third line, wrapped over the bow, pressed against the front of the craft, slowly sawing at the hull. The sound was excruciating.
Nat pulled a knife from Wes’s belt and severed the rope. Her hands on his waist unnerved him for a moment, but he quickly recovered and nodded. “Good call.”
The gray cord went flying across the deck and slapped Daran hard in the back. “Watch it!” The soldier glared in their direction.
“Sorry!” she called.
When he saw it was she who had caused it, he grimaced and tried to smile. “It’s all right!”
But the boat was free, and they shot away from the pier, out of danger finally—when from belowdecks came the sound of a gunshot. He cursed the slaver and his lazy crew. Wes and his boys knew how to secure a ship from a thriller infestation, but obviously the slavers didn’t care to take the same precautions.
“Take the wheel,” Wes ordered, giving Shakes command of the ship.
“I’ll come with you,” Nat said.
He didn’t argue, and Daran followed them down the stairs as backup.
• • •
Down below, Zedric had a gun pointed at one of the creatures. The thriller had a gunshot wound in its shoulder where the soldier had shot it. Under the bright lights of the cabin, Nat could see the thriller’s face. It was a girl. Her skin was mottled and gray, and her purple eyes were lifeless as the rest. And she was wearing a familiar-looking pair of light-gray pajamas.
“Help me,” she whispered. “Please.” Her hair—Nat saw that underneath the mud and the dirt and the filth, the girl had hair the color of light, a bright, dazzling yellow. She was a sylph, or had been once, and Nat felt her blood run cold at the discovery. What was happening to them? Why were they like this?
Daran raised his gun to fire, but Wes grabbed the barrel. “Give it a rest, man, we’ll let this one swim,” he said, twisting the weapon from the soldier’s grip.
The creature saw her chance and dashed away, out onto the deck, and there was a splash as she fell into the ocean.
Zedric kicked the wall but Daran hustled him out of the cabin. “Come on! She didn’t touch you? You’re sure?” he said, yelling at his brother.
“Why’d you do that?” Nat asked Wes, staring at him. “Why’d you let her go?” He never shot to kill, she had noticed.
He put away his gun and led them back upstairs. “She’s not our first stowaway. They all want to come with us, hitch a ride out to the water.”
“The thrillers?”
“Yeah.”
Nat looked out at the pier, where hundreds of them had gathered, shuffling and groaning, their arms reaching out toward them, begging, asking for something. There were a few more bright-haired sylphs underneath the grime, and white-eyed ones with silver hair. Drau. They had to be, but these weren’t frightening at all, just incredibly sad. It was why Wes didn’t shoot them. Because the thrillers weren’t attacking them, they were asking for help.
She had never been close enough to see them before. When she had escaped, she had seen them from a distance, and had managed to keep away from them, but now she saw all too clearly the truth.
So there was one thing the government hadn’t lied about.
Those who were marked by magic were marked for death.
The thrillers weren’t the victims of chemical testing or nuclear mutation. They were people. Marked people. Magic people whose mages’ marks rotted them out from the inside, melting their flesh, their bodies decaying while their minds remained tragically alert. The military herded them into the safe zones and centers to keep them away from the rest of the population, kept the borders tight for that same reason.
It was why the military personnel in K-Town didn’t care to arrest the marked girl working as a cashier. As far as they were concerned, she was already where she belonged. She was already refuse, already part of the garbage. The thrillers were escapees from MacArthur, refugees who could not find passage, left to roam the Trash Pile, unable to die.
Looking for refuge, hoping for the Blue.
Just like her.
If she stayed, the magic inside her would kill her slowly, draining her of life, but keeping her alive. She would be trapped in a decaying physical shell, while her mind was alert to the full breadth of the horror happening to her.
She watched the marked masses flailing on the pier, their terror and their desperation at their inability to escape. Take us with you. Take us home.
Wes looked at her. “Ready to go?”
They were out of the shallows and in the open sea.
Nat gave him the same answer she’d given just a few days ago. “Ready.”
If she stayed, she would rot. But if she went . . .
She closed her eyes. There was a monster in her, a monster that was part of her, and the closer she drew to it, the closer the dark voice in her head sounded to her own.
There would be fire and smoke and devastation in her future. She would be the catalyst for something terrible. She could feel the power within her, the wild, savage, and uncontrollable force that had the ability to destroy entire worlds.
I am the monster, she thought. The voice is mine.
Part the Third
THE
VOYAGE BETWEEN
“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?”—“With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross.”
—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, “THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER”
21
SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SO HARD ON him about his boat—Nat felt a little bad about that—because even with her inexperienced eye, she noticed that, like the LTV, Wes had improved upon its structure to fit its new environment. H
e had upgraded the hull, attaching layers of steel and carbon fiber paneling over the old aluminum shell, and every inch of the craft was painted—splattered, really—with shades of gray and black paint, a camouflage meant to mimic the dull sludge of the ocean.
The crew cabin was outfitted with bunks, the beds nothing more than metal mesh hammocks strapped to the walls, each with a blanket. The room next to it had a big plastic picnic table bolted to the floor, near a black charcoal grill. The ceiling above the grill was open to the sky, so the smoke could escape, and piled next to it were a few wood crates filled with food stores they had brought on board for the journey.
The ship offered little privacy and no amenities, but what else was new. Unless she was tossed in solitary, back at the center she had had a cot in the middle of a room the size of a gymnasium. She found a corner bunk that looked unclaimed and threw her pack on the rough blanket. She peeked through the dirty porthole. Outside, the gray sky was nearly indistinguishable from the gray waters of the Pacific. The toxic sea never froze but seethed with poison, occasionally glistening in the dim light of day, glowing in iridescent colors. It could be beautiful if it wasn’t so deadly, its shimmering waves swirling with clouds of orange and green, the waves dancing on occasion with slim wisps of fire, yet another product of the ocean’s unknown chemical cocktail.
She heaved herself up on the hammock and rested her head against the wire mesh. But after a while, she felt claustrophobic in the cabin and wandered out to the upper deck. She found Wes leaning against the rail, staring out at the dark water.
“Find something?”
He pointed to a distant spot in the middle of the ocean surrounded by large black ink dots.
“What are those? Island groupings?” she asked.
“No—those are trashbergs.”
“Trash—oh, like icebergs?”
“Made of trash, yeah.” Wes smiled. “The ocean’s full of them.”
Nat had seen it on the nets, how the pre-Flood oceans had once been flat and blue and empty. Now the Pacific was packed with junk, clouded with chemicals, dense and cluttered with trash, a floating Garbage Country. It was a briar patch, the perfect place to hide, the perfect place for slavers to loot and prey on pilgrims and refugees.
“Think we’ll make it?” she asked, almost as a challenge.
“Sure hope so,” he said, with that signature grin of his. “I need those credits.”
She smiled at that. “Sorry about freaking out about the boat earlier . . . I was just . . . anyway, it was rude of me,” she said.
“No harm done.” He smiled and scratched the scar on his face. She hadn’t noticed it before, the thin white line above his right eyebrow.
He must have noticed her staring. “Souvenir from Texas. I fell in the avalanche, and Shakes accidentally hit me with the ice pick while digging me out. I thought he was going to kill me instead of save me.” He laughed.
“Nice one.” She smiled, liking the way the scar made him look at once more dangerous and more vulnerable. “Sounds like that happens to you a lot. Bet your girlfriend wasn’t thrilled, though.” She wasn’t sure why she said it, but it came out before she could think.
“Who said I had a girlfriend?” he said, raising his scarred eyebrow. His dark eyes crinkled.
“No one,” she said.
“Well, I don’t anymore, if anyone’s interested.”
“Who’s interested?”
“Are you?” He looked her straight in the eye.
“I could ask the same of you,” she scoffed.
“So what if I was? Interested, I mean.” He shrugged.
“It wouldn’t be a surprise,” she said. “I’m sure half the crew has a crush on me.” She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but it was fun to rile him up a little. So he was interested, was he? About time he admitted it.
“Only half?”
“Well, I don’t like to brag,” she said coyly.
They stared at each other and Nat felt the pull of those warm brown eyes of his, the color of honey and amber, playful and glinting. She faced him so that they were inches away from each other, their bodies almost touching. They were outside in subzero weather, yet she had never felt so warm.
“What are you doing?” he asked finally.
“Same thing you are,” she replied.
He shook his head. “Don’t start something you can’t stop,” he warned.
“Who says I want to stop?”
He stared at her and there was a long, fraught silence between them, and for a second she was scared to breathe. Wes turned to her, leaning down, his face so close to hers, it looked as if he was going to kiss her, but instead he changed his mind at the last minute. He wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was staring at the stone she wore around her neck.
He pulled away and looked back at the churning waters, tossed a pebble from his pocket into the ocean. “What do you want, Nat?” he asked.
“I could ask the same of you,” she said, trying to keep the hurt from her voice. Did he know about the stone? Why had he stared at it like that? You can’t trust a runner. They’ll sell you up the river for a dim watt.
He frowned. “Listen, let’s start over, can we do that?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself, something that’s not in the official records, something Farouk couldn’t dig up about you.”
“So you can get to know me, you mean? Why?”
“Why not? Like I said, it’s a long road ahead of us.”
Maybe he was lying and he did have a girl back in New Vegas. Maybe he had more than one. Or maybe he really only wanted to be friends. Nat couldn’t figure out which possibility bothered her more.
“Go on, tell me something,” he said. “Tell me about the first time you were in the Pile.”
“How did you . . . okay, fine.” She inhaled. “You’re right. I’ve tried to get out before. This isn’t my first trip through the G.C. I was an orphan, just like you’d guessed. I was living with Mrs. Allen then—the lady who raised me. It was her idea to try and get us out of the country when I was six years old. She wanted a better life for both of us, lost her faith in the RSA.”
Wes leaned his chin against his hands. “What happened?”
“The runner who’d taken all our money didn’t pay the right bribe at the first checkpoint, so after the guard waved us through, he called in the border police and we got hauled in for not having visas.”
“In our business, we call those donkey men,” said Wes. “Clueless guys who don’t know the deal.”
“They took her away, and I never saw her again,” Nat said softly. Mrs. Allen wasn’t her mother, but she was the only mother she’d ever known. Her eyes misted a little. “Mrs. A found me when I was a baby. She says I was a DFD,” she said, hugging herself tightly. Dumped for Deployment.
“Your folks were soldiers then.” Wes nodded.
“That’s what she told me.” Mrs. Allen had explained to Nat that it happened a lot, people leaving their kids, not wanting to take them wherever they were stationed, thinking it was kinder to leave them than to bring them to the front lines; abandonment as a form of love. “I guess they were army. I don’t know. I have no idea who they were.”
“So what happened to you?” Wes asked.
She shrugged. “The usual. Ward of the state. I grew up in a group home.” She didn’t mention the real reason her mother had abandoned her. The reason Mrs. A had tried to hustle her out of the country.
“And I thought Shakes had a sob story.” Wes smiled.
“Worse than mine?” she asked.
“Ask him to tell you later, it’s a doozy,” he promised. “Must have sucked, growing up like that,” he said. “Group homes are no joke.” He shot her a sympathetic glance.
“Yeah, well.” She nodded. “At least it’s over now.” She was touched by
his concern, even though she was sure there was an ulterior motive behind it, especially with the way he ran hot and cold toward her. She was a card player, she knew the deal. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me, Wes, why’d you take this job? I’m not paying you enough—not for the risks that are out there. What’s in it for you?”
“Maybe I want to see what’s out here, too,” he protested. “If there’s such a thing as paradise—I don’t want to be left behind.”
But Nat knew there was something behind his smile. Something he wasn’t being honest about. She tucked the blue stone underneath her shirt.
That made two of them.
22
WES WATCHED HER WALK AWAY FROM THE railing, then went back to staring out at the water. He wondered how much of her story was true. Who was she, anyway? She said she recognized him from somewhere, and Wes wondered whether she was right and he had just forgotten. But he was certain that he’d remember meeting Nat. He scratched the scar on his forehead. Funny how she’d wondered about it, just like Jules. That story about Shakes and the pickax was a lie. But maybe one day he would tell her the truth. The one he’d never even told Jules.
On his first date with Juliet Marie Devincenzi, she’d laughed when he’d told her the story of the avalanche, all that rigmarole about how he’d made Shakes feel guilty about the scar.
Wes was still on deck by the rail when Shakes found him, staring at a photo he’d pulled from his wallet.
“Put that away,” Shakes said with a grimace. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I know, I know,” Wes agreed.
“Look, boss, Jules was all right, but . . .” Shakes shrugged.
“But?” Wes asked.
“You know why,” his friend reminded him. Shakes had never liked Jules very much and blamed her for some of their trouble.
Wes put away the photo. “You think she really died at the Loss?”
“It’s what I heard. What’s the problem, boss? She left us high and dry after that Dreamworks hit. I mean, rest in peace and all, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but she messed you up good.”
Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One Page 11
