James Axler - Iron Rage

She and Ryan both turned. His lone blue eye was wide.

Maggie stood a step away from the hatch below. Or rather her slight torso did. Her head was missing entirely. A pulse of blood shot up from the terrible vacancy between her shoulders, then her headless trunk toppled down the ladder.

Ricky puked. The stink of vomit, added to the reek of fresh blood, excrement, burned flesh and lingering peppery gunpowder smell, made Krysty’s head spin.

“Arliss,” Trace snapped without turning, “get every hand available to work the bilge-pumps.”

His wrinkled, sunburned face was white beneath his beard, but he bobbed his head. “Aye, Captain.”

He vanished below, slipping slightly in Maggie’s blood.

“Captain,” Nataly said in a strained voice, “those blasterboats are getting mighty close—”

“On my mark, start your turn to port,” the captain said. Nataly stood back upright, her hands white on the wheel.

“Don’t see much of a break, up ahead,” J.B. murmured.

Krysty didn’t, either. The summer-green reeds and rushes on the left bank waved in the breeze in a line unbroken as far as the eye could see. She realized Ryan was gripping her arm, tightly enough to hurt, but she didn’t say anything. It reassured her more than it felt bad.

“Three,” Trace said. “Two…”

“Captain, I don’t see—” Nataly began.

“Now! Hard aport!”

“But it’s just land!”

“Now, nuke it, do it now !”

Ryan let go of Krysty’s arm. He started to grab for the wheel.

But Nataly, her normally narrow eyes now saucer-wide, began to crank the big spoked wheel counterclockwise for all she was worth. The Mississippi Queen began to heel to the right as her bow swung left.

They were curving toward what indeed looked to Krysty like solid land at a good rate of speed. She gripped the sill in front of her with her right hand and Ryan’s arm with her left. Bracing was the only thing she could think of to do.

The vessel shuddered to another hit.

The land rushed toward them. Krysty held her breath.

“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc crowed from behind them. “I see it!”

Then Krysty did, too. The weeds were thinner directly in front of them, stretching twenty or twenty-five yards to either side. The Queen ’s bow slid smoothly among them, right into a channel Krysty would have bet her life a few seconds ago was not there.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” Trace said, “welcome to Wolf Creek.”

An explosion came from behind. It was as loud as rolling thunder, and made the stout little vessel rock violently back and forth. Instantly Krysty’s keen nostrils smelled fresh smoke, and not just of burned black powder.

“There’s another fire in the cabin,” Avery yelled from the hatch in the aft bulkhead.

“Get anybody who’s not pumping out the hull to fight the fire, Avery,” Trace ordered. Her voice was getting as thin as hope.

“That’s us,” Ryan said, straightening. Krysty went with him.

“Ryan,” Trace called. Krysty saw her sway despite Mildred’s strong hand supporting her. “Have that albino scout of yours keep his eyes skinned. Stand ready to repel boarders.”

“Right,” Ryan said.

“Nataly, take us up-channel at least a mile. Then look for the best place to ground her.”

The first mate had the steel back in her spine. “Aye-aye!”

“Mildred, help me…lie down. Then you’re relieved from tending me to join your friends. I need to pass out now.”

“Then let us help you out on deck to get you laid down,” Mildred said, working her hands professionally up the captain’s solid body as she stood up. “I’m not laying you down in this slop, no way.”

Trace’s short-haired head lolled on her neck. “What…ever.”

Her eyes rolled up in her head. Mildred was ready, but still had to bend her knees to hang on to the woman when her knees sagged.

“I’ll help you, Mildred,” Krysty said. She went to support the now-unconscious—or perhaps semiconscious—captain from the left.

It feels good to be able to do something, she thought. Even if we’re nowhere near safe yet.

* * *

“FIREBLAST!” RYAN EXCLAIMED as the sound of cannon fire echoed between the banks of Wolf Creek.

But when he paused in chopping away burning planks from the starboard side of the Mississippi Queen ’s cabin to look astern to where the dull booms came from, he saw nothing but clear green water on Wolf Creek. They had rounded enough of a bend in the stream that the original screen of weeds that had shielded the creek’s mouth had passed out of sight. But he could clearly see two big banks of smoke like river-hugging fog, off above the flat land with its tall grass. The tops of the smoke clouds were already tinted gold by the rays of the sun sinking into the horizon.

“Poteetville and New Vick,” Arliss said grimly. The ship rigger was perched perilously atop the weakening roof of the Queen ’s cabin forward of the fire, directing water from a canvas hose into its hungry red heart. “They found better things to play with than us. Meaning each other.”

“Think they’ll follow us this way?” Ricky asked. He was taking a break from manning the deck pumps, which worked on a teeter-totter sort of principle, like a railway flatcar. Although now that they were in a side channel, and out of the line of fire, Myron had throttled back the Diesels and diverted some power to pumping out the water gushing in through the breach. Instead Ricky and Jak were kicking the burning planks chopped free overboard.

There wasn’t enough power to spare for the above decks pumps too. Myron clearly reckoned that if the boat sank, it would take care of the fire, anyway. So his priority was keeping her afloat. His prime enemy as he saw it was water , and Ryan couldn’t disagree.

Avery laughed. He was pointing out to Ryan where to cut with the ax, plus helping out with one of his own.

“Not triple likely, kid. They probably forgot all about us. The only stuff we had worth stealing’s burned to the waterline. Least as far as they know.”

“The only reason either bunch really had for shooting at us,” Arliss pointed out, “was that they’re both plain mean. They’ve been rival king-ass fucks lording over this stretch of river for generations, each with only the other to give them any kind of check. And it went to their heads.”

“So are they meaner than the countryside hereabouts?” Ricky asked.

“Unless the stickies or the swampers got themselves some cannon,” J.B. replied, “I’d reckon yeah.”

“Too slagging right,” Jake said. He was handling the portside hose, where Krysty and Mildred worked the pump, while J.B. and Doc operated the starboard one that fed Arliss’s.

Ryan wasn’t pleased about Krysty working as hard as she was so soon after her concussion. But since the concussion wasn’t literally life-or-death, but putting out the fire might be, he knew better than to try to order her to sit this one out.

“But we gotta beach her soon,” Lewis said. “Then everything changes.”

It was the longest speech Ryan had heard the lanky man make. His tone carried a sense of doom. And if Ryan had any doubt the Queen was doomed—at least so long as she stayed in open water—Arliss chilled it at once.

“She’s riding lower in the water as every minute passes.”

“At least we mostly got the fire beat down,” Avery stated.

“What happens if we go down?” Ricky asked.

“Nile crocodiles,” Jake said with doleful satisfaction.

Ricky emitted a yelp of terror. Everybody laughed. He blushed.

Suzan came back aft. “Captain’s compliments, Ryan, and she asks that you present yourself on the bridge at your earliest convenience.”