Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey

Author:Geoff Rodkey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101571941
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-05-28T21:00:00+00:00

PIGS

My first impression of being dead was that it was awfully loud. There were screams and shrieks and great blasts of noise and chaos, and when I opened my eyes, I was still sprawled flat on the deck, but there was fire and blood everywhere and something was hurtling down through the sky at me. I rolled out of the way in a hurry, and it thudded to the deck right where I’d been lying, making the planks shudder.

It was a body. Actually, part of one—when I looked up into the mast, the rest of it was still hanging there, tangled in the ropes.

Then I heard a cracking sound and looked to the forward mast in time to see the upper third of it splinter and tumble halfway to the sea before it snagged on its own ropes.

I sat up. Dead pirates lay all around, the deck red and slick with their guts. The ones who weren’t dead were either scrambling to raise what was left of the sails or running belowdecks to man the cannons. I couldn’t see Ripper Jones, but I heard him somewhere behind me, bellowing orders.

I got to my feet and swooned, almost falling back over. Something was making it next to impossible for me to stand up straight. I put a hand to the side of my head and found an angry lump the size of a fist where Guts had hit me with the cannonball.

I looked around for Guts and saw him standing at the deck rail, struggling to heave a barrel almost as big as he was over the side of the ship. As I watched, he managed to get it over, and the barrel plummeted out of sight.

He turned, scanning the deck with his fierce eyes, and saw me. We stared at each other for a long second.

Then he went over the side.

It took me a few seconds of wondering why he’d jumped in the ocean before I realized that whoever had just unleashed the volley of cannon fire on us was probably reloading, and this was a stupid place to be standing once they finished.

I ran to the spot where Guts had been and looked over the side. The barrel was bobbing in a field of debris—everything from clothing to bodies to big hunks of wood from the ship—and Guts was frog-swimming through the junk to get to it.

I looked out across the sea. It was almost sunset, and the island in the distance looked even farther away than it had been the first time I’d seen it.

But it beat waiting for the next round of cannon fire.

I took a deep breath and jumped overboard.

It was a long way down. I felt like I was in the air forever, and most of the way I regretted jumping. Then I was plunging down through the cold water, and I wasn’t coming back up fast enough, and I realized my shoes were pulling me down.

I broke the surface and was gasping for air when a wave hit me and I got a lungful of water instead.

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