Apocalypse Unborn Read Online Free PDF Page B

do that,” Doc said. “You could have sold the worms on the dock.”
    “For less than half of what they’re worth,” the black man said. “Besides, we want to find out what Steel Eyes has got going on down south. Figure it could be a gold mine for enterprising types like us. What about you? You got a specialty?”
    “I’m just a mercie,” Doc said. “In search of some new scenery and paying work.”
    “Better keep your eyes open, mercie, and your blaster in reach,” the black man said.
    The rowboat slowly approached the moored ship. The frigate was more than 150 feet long. It had three masts, and the main mast was at least eighty feet tall. Its riveted iron hull had been painted and repainted in thick layers of white. Rust streaks ran from the scuppers, down the sides, like bloodstains. As they rounded the ship, they could read the name emblazoned on its battered stern: Taniwha tea .
    “What kind of tea is that?” one of the few literate rowers asked.
    “Not tea,” the tillerman growled back at him. “Tee-ahh. Taniwha tee-ahh .” He put his palm on the machete handle, daring someone to crack wise. “She is my mother.”
    The black man leaned over to Doc and whispered, “It’s in the Maori language. It means white monster.”

Chapter Three
    As J. B. Dix climbed the rope ladder to the ship’s gangway, the yelling across the water crescendoed. He was one of the last of the prospective passengers to get a boarding token. The people left behind on the pier were making a loud fuss, jeering and booing, shouting profanities, but they kept their weapons holstered and slung. Before the captain had taken his leave, he had warned the crowd that if anyone opened fire on the departing rowboats, the ship’s four-inch guns would broadside them with grapeshot. If the left-behinds still wanted passage south, they were going to have to wait for the ship’s return, a round trip of seven days or more, depending on sea conditions.
    J.B. grimaced, thinking about the already cowering citizens of Morro Bay. They had an unpleasant week ahead.
    Like the ship’s hull, its main deck was made of riveted iron plates, canted on either side of the midline, this to speed seawater runoff into the scuppers. A gauntlet of islander crewmen funneled the passengers along the starboard rail, toward the bow. Block-and-tackled lattices of heavy cable supported the steel masts, and the jib and boom on the bowsprit, providing the crew with ladders to reach the high cross members. Dented sheet-steel awnings along the yard arms shielded the sails. These same crude, battered roofs protected the ship’s wheel and the fore and aft companionways.
    A crane had been set up amidships to shift the boxes from a cluster of waiting rowboats to a large, open booby hatch. As J.B. walked past, he peered down into the shrieking, stinking chaos of the hold. Its living cargo was scared shitless.
    From the bits of conversation J.B. had overheard on the pier, he had learned that the predark frigate had been built as a naval cadet training vessel, designed to navigate near coastal waters and run up into the deeper river mouths. A recent addition was the battery of black-powder cannons on wheeled carriages, each braced with multiple cables strung through sets of block and tackle. Beside the blasters were crates of stacked 9-pound lead balls and canvas bags of grapeshot.
    The islander gauntlet ended at the foremast. Under a wide metal awning supported by pipe struts was the forward companionway, a windowless iron box leading to the lower deck. Ahead of J.B., passengers filed one at a time through the door and down the steep stairs. The slanted roof of the companionway was rimmed with sharp spikes, and each spike was driven through the neck hole and out the top of a stripped, bleached skull. Though the skulls were of different sizes, the features were similar. All had an oval, almost human shape, enormous front-facing eye sockets, and elongated craniums. In place of