Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(16)

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 brightly 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.”