Free Apocalypse Unborn by James Axler Page A

attacker, quickly confirming there were no signs of life—or death.
    The boarders then split up, entering the fore and aft companionways in a simultaneous rush. After a few minutes belowdecks, the crewmen spilled back into view and immediately lurched to the rail, coughing and gasping for air.
    Eng raised the megaphone and shouted an unintelligible question across the gap.
    One of the boarders raised his head and drew a forefinger across the front of his throat.
    All dead.
    A quiver of shock ran through the white frigate’s crew. They were stunned speechless.
    Ryan turned to look at the captain. Under the man’s heavy brow ridge, glistening stripes, tear tracks ran down his scarified cheeks. Blood trickled over and off his broad chin, dripping upon his chest. He had sunk his sharpened teeth into his lip.
    A moment later the groaning and lamentations began.
    Passengers watched uneasily, hands on weapons, as the islanders wept openly, as they beat their chests and pulled at their own hair. Ryan figured that they not only knew the dead crew, but were probably related. Only ties of blood could wring forth such grief.
    Meanwhile, the boarders hastily departed the death ship. They didn’t pause to rifle the cargo on the main deck, which seemed strange to Ryan, as it was there for the taking, and in great quantities. They climbed back onto the Taniwha tea , seven hard men shaken to the core by what they had seen.
    The bowrider stepped up to the captain, reached out a trembling hand and carefully placed a half-dozen gold rings on his palm. Rings of great weight, fashioned to fit huge fingers, like his.
    Eng clutched them in a white-knuckled fist. Raising the megaphone to his bloody mouth, he bellowed another urgent command. The crew scrambled to reset the sails.
    The islanders were abandoning their dead.
    Only now there was barely enough wind to put the iron ship in motion. It crept slowly south for about twenty minutes, then the wind died off altogether. They hadn’t sailed far. Ryan could still see the silhouette of the derelict on the horizon, backlit in crimson.
    When the wind went slack, it got very quiet. Quiet enough to hear a faint croaking noise from high above them.
    At the captain’s signal, the crew began lowering the upside-down crucifix from just below the crow’s nest.
    The bird creature nailed to it was still alive. Still talking, albeit in a weak, rasping voice.
    “See?” the flying mutie said to Eng as the cross came to rest on the deck. “The wind is gone. I can’t bring it back. I can’t bring it back because I have no power over it. Never had. Never will. It’s superstition that makes you think my kind has any control over the wind. Blind superstition. We ride it, that’s all. We ride it in the air just like you ride it on the water. Please, let me go, now. Please, I’m begging. My suffering is worth nothing to you.”
    Eng gripped the handle of a machete proffered by one of the crew. Using the cross beneath as a chopping block, he swung the blade down in a blur, and in one swipe hacked off the bird man’s head at the neck. While crewmen pried the nails from twitching feet and wings, the captain planted the severed, startled head on a vacant roof spike.
    Suffering had decorative value.
    Deathlands kitsch.
    “Porangi!” the captain shouted at the passengers, spraying blood and spit out the big end of his megaphone, and waving impatiently for them to step forward. “Death swims these waters,” he howled. “It is closer than you can imagine. It will find us long before dawn. Without wind, we cannot sail away to safety. Without wind, we must stand and fight.”
    “Fight what?” a familiar voice demanded.
    Ryan turned and saw Jak Lauren, arms folded, a defiant scowl on his white face, his ruby-red eyes glittering with menace.
    “The taua ,” Eng said. “That is our name for them. Things that swim and crawl. Things that climb and leap. Broad-tailed, slime-covered things. The taua roam the