Hush (Dragon Apocalypse) (20 page)

“So... what? You expect me to jump off the ship so this thing will leave the rest of you alone?”

Jasmine said nothing as she lowered her head.

“Oh,” I said.

“I can think of no other reason Rott would manifest so aggressively. He’s never before molested us within this realm.”

As it happened, our conversation unfolded near where I’d been writing to Infidel. I barely had to walk a yard before leaning down to lift up the book. I clumsily ripped out the half-finished letter and folded it into a thick bundle. I tugged away the bandana that hid my hideous coconut skull and tied the letter within the cloth. Flies landed on my gloved fingers as I worked.

I took one look back at Jasmine. I sighed, or tried to. “The first time I died, it was just a dumb mistake.” I shook my head. “I mean, it’s something you might tell a seven year old: ‘Don’t run with a knife in your hand!’” I stared down at the bundled letter for a long time. “I guess it’s appropriate that my death was careless, given how careless I was with my life. But you know... good things came of it. I’m going to have a daughter. I want to be there to watch her grow up.”

“I understand,” said Jasmine.

I looked back to the stern. Infidel was floating there, next to Jetsam, her eyes fixed on the doom that drifted toward us.

Even at this distance, I could hear that Jetsam was singing again, a little barroom ditty called ‘The Death Song.’

“Oh you can die from scurvy,

And you can die from plague

You can croak when a rattle snake

Bites you in the leg

You can die from shaving

From a thousand tiny cuts

Or go out in a world of pain

By a swift kick to the...”

Mako jumped up and grabbed his brother by the ankle, yanking him down.

“That’s enough,” he said.

Enough,
I thought, though the thought had nothing to do with Jetsam’s singing. Instead, the thought reflected a sense of peace that settled over me. Jasmine was asking me to die. But was this such a sacrifice considering I was already dead? I’d had my time in the world. I wanted more. But deep down, I recognized the fundamental selfishness of the desire. Who was I, among the hordes of mankind, to dare ask for more than my allotted time? I’d gotten a lifetime. Wasn’t that enough?

I said to Jasmine, “You seem to know more about being dead than I do. It caught me by surprise that there was something after life. What happens once I throw myself down Rott’s throat? What follows death after death?”

“I’ve never had the courage to find out,” said Jasmine, turning her face away, hugging herself.

I slowly walked to the back of the boat. Was I doing the right thing? If my life had ever caught the attention of a biographer, it’s a sure bet he could have written my story without checking a thesaurus to find a synonym for ‘self-sacrifice.’ Maybe I could wait a little while longer, until the dragon was actually chewing on the timbers, just to make sure what I was about to do was really necessary.

Infidel’s boots were a good two feet off the deck as she studied the approaching monster. Curiously, in life, whenever I dreamed of Infidel, I nearly always dreamed we were flying. It was natural to see her in this element. And in her white armor trimmed with silver, it was a simple thing to imagine her in a wedding gown. She deserved a more regal ceremony than our shared vows in the midst of that shadowy jungle. Yet those vows had been made, and I held them to be sacred. This was my bride, she wore my ring, she carried my child, and for her I would throw myself into the teeth of any monster.

And such a monster! Rott was fully at the surface now, a bloated corpse crawling with flies, riding so high upon the waves that its dead, flapping jaws opened to reveal a cavern more than large enough to swallow the
Freewind
. The sky was no longer sunset red, but black as a million oil-black gulls, feathers falling from wings of bone, spiraled through the air in vast clouds to feast upon the corpse of their carrion master.

The Romers seemed paralyzed as they stared at the horrid thing less than a ship’s length off the stern.

“The waves smell like pure vinegar now,” said Cinnamon, wrinkling her nose.

“Should we... attack it? We have bows,” said Mako. It was the first time I’d ever heard him sound doubtful.

“Even it wasn’t already dead, that thing’s the size of an island,” said Rigger. “It wouldn’t even notice.”

“How can it notice anything? It has no eyes! Nothing but empty sockets!” said Jetsam.

“Something’s drawing it to us,” said Sorrow. “Something...” She turned toward me, her eyes full of understanding.

“Is there nothing we can do to... to discourage it?” asked Mako.

Rigger shook his head. “How do you discourage the dead?”

Taking this as my motto, I embraced my final moment with gusto. I walked to Infidel, whose head was conveniently at the level of my own thanks to her defiance of gravity. I spun her and gave her a powerful hug, taking care not to crush her. I pressed my coconut jaw against her cheek and tried to whisper, “I love you no matter what,” though my kazoo voice bleated the words in such a graceless tone that the Divine Author alone knows what she might have heard. Then I thrust the folded letter into her grasp, leapt to the railing, and with a roguish tip of my tri-corn hat announced, “As I stand in the vestibule of self-abnegation, I wish to say that I have no regrets. Unfortunately, that would be the foulest lie. I fiercely regret my impending absence.” I fixed my pecan eyes squarely on Infidel, who looked utterly confused by the erratic behavior of Sorrow’s driftwood construct. I directed my final words to her alone: “If I had a thousand lives to give, I’d give them for you. My life was nothing but an empty glass until you filled it with the wine of your company. May the Divine Author guide his sacred quill to write the happy ending you deserve.”

All the Romers were staring at me with mouths agape. I gave them a crisp salute, then turned and leapt toward the decaying beast. The jaws surged forward upon the waves as if driven by hunger. The tip of one of his teeth tore through my shirt as I fell into the chasm of his mouth. As Rott’s wicked fangs closed behind me, it occurred to me that my farewell speech might have been more effective if I’d remembered to mention my name.

CHAPTER TEN

BODIES IN MOTION

T
HE BLACK, BLOATED
tongue was covered with a wriggling carpet of worms that oozed pale puss as I tried to gain my balance. The tongue was a mass of muscular knots, stiff with rigor mortis, but my boots had trouble finding traction in the slime. The rotting skin covering the dead muscle peeled away as I slipped down to my hands and knees. The brown putrescence that bubbled up and soaked into my gloves would certainly have cost me the contents of my stomach, if I’d had a stomach. I shook my hands to cleanse them, but succeeded only in splattering the awful ick across my face. I prayed to the divine author that my paper tongue was useful only for speech, and completely insensate to taste should a drop find its way past my ragged lips.

The vinegar swells pushed Rott’s jaws to chewing lazily, slamming me against the boney mouth roof. Despite the unpleasantness of my surroundings, I felt strangely unthreatened. The beast was too dead to even swallow. Would I have to crawl down its gullet to meet my final end?

I was toppled by a sudden jolt. As I rolled over, I saw that the beast’s snout had collided with the rudder of the
Freewind
. If I was to save the ship, it was apparently up to me to march into Rott’s stomach. The dragon of entropy was also the dragon of indolence.

My gloves found purchase in the crack of a massive tooth. I pulled myself up and struggled to advance, inch by precious inch, through the cavernous mouth. In the dim shadows at the back of the gullet I saw shapes, vaguely human. I drew closer and found that the undulation of the waves had caused the beast to regurgitate the corpses of sailors. The dead men surged toward me as the body rode on a particularly energetic swell. The walking dead I could have faced bravely, but these were the half-digested dead, as listless and lifeless as their master. I let loose a buzzing scream. Even without brains to give the dead sailors purpose or muscles to drive their limbs, their advance was effective. I was knocked over by their collective weight, struggling helplessly as they dragged me down beneath their slimy, acid-dripping forms. My left leg slipped deep beneath the tongue and with a sudden jolt I was limbless from the knee down, my wooden foot sliced free by the beast’s closing teeth.

I had no time to dwell upon my own dissolution, however, for behind me was a far louder crunch. I strained to look backward and found half the rudder of the
Freewind
splintered. Was my sacrifice in vain? Was the beast not to be satisfied until all the ship was in its bowels?

“I’m the one you want,” I shouted, as the jaws clamped shut, plunging me into utter darkness. “I’m the lost soul you seek!”

There was a loud crash behind me. Light suddenly filled the mouth, bright as dawn. I pushed aside the liquefying décolletage of a decaying woman to see the source of the illumination. The teeth at the front of the mouth had been shattered. Standing in the gap was a goddess in pristine white armor, her hammer ablaze. She had a red bandana tied tightly over her mouth and nose to protect her from the stench as she swung her weapon in wide arcs, shattering columns of ivory thick as tree trunks to rid the beast of fangs. Yet her eyes weren’t focused on the demolition. They searched the cavernous mouth, narrowing as she spotted the mound of corpses that even now dragged me down the gullet.

In a flash she reached me, planting her feet on either side of my shoulders as she pulverized the half-gelatinized bodies with roundhouse swings of the Gloryhammer.

“Infidel!” I cried, as I grabbed her pristine white boot.

“Stagger!” she answered. “Is it truly you?”

“I’m the lost soul you seek,” I said, in what would have been a sob if my tongue had been up to the task. “How did you know it was me? You haven’t had time to read the letter!”

“‘The vestibule of self-abnegation’? Please. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“Sorrow didn’t build me with a tongue. She just gave me the power of speech a few hours ago.”

Satisfied that she’d cleared away the corpses, she grabbed my outstretched hand and pulled me, freeing my lower half from beneath the rotten tongue.

“Your leg,” she said, looking pale.

“It doesn’t hurt,” I said. “Sorrow can make another.”

“Not if I kill her first,” she growled. “How could she do this to you?”

“I don’t believe it was personal,” I said, as Infidel helped me stand.

“Why did you jump into this damn thing’s mouth?” she asked.

“Rott knows I should be dead. Sacrificing myself is the ship’s only hope. You have to let me finish this.”

“This thing can’t chew without teeth,” said Infidel, swinging her hammer to pulverize the fang nearest us.

“Look at the size of the jaws!” I protested. “It can swallow the ship whole!”

“If it can catch us,” said Infidel, thrusting her hammer into the gap left by the missing tooth, then shooting skyward, dragging me to freedom. We arced back over the
Freewind
, my remaining boot clipping the crows nest as she dropped toward the bow. There was a giant cleat there that held a rope as thick as a woman’s arm. Infidel dropped me, then wrapped the rope over her shoulder and launched herself toward the sky once more. She grunted as the line went taut, having flown only a few feet beyond the tip of the jibboom. Her right arm, holding the Gloryhammer, was thrust straight before her. The rope was tight enough a man could have walked upon it.

With a squawking bark, Menagerie sank his teeth into the rope and began to flap his wings furiously.

The bow of the
Freewind
creaked as this single point of force created by the two aeronauts strained to move the ship through the undulating sea.

“It’s as good an idea as any,” shouted Jetsam, as he threw himself to hug the main mast then pushed his feet out behind him and began to vigorously kick against the air.

“That’s the spirit!” shouted Mako. He turned to his siblings and shouted, “Throw anything you can overboard! Lighten the load! We’ll outrun death itself!”

“You’re mad!” snorted Rigger. “These three can’t drag the ship no matter how hard they try. It’s a simple matter of mass!”

He ducked as a barrel shot past his head, courtesy of Poppy, though I don’t think she’d intentionally aimed for him.

“Given that you’re floating on an enchanted ocean being pursued by a fundamental force of nature manifesting itself as an enormous snake, I admire your devotion to logic,” Sorrow said to Rigger. “But if the Gloryhammer can move a person through the air, why can’t it move a ship?”

But any sense of optimism that Sorrow might have been trying to build was demolished as the
Freewind
shook violently, knocking everyone off their feet. Rott’s jaws had just flapped shut, trapping the entire rear of the boat.

“Rott’s momentum was greater than our own,” Rigger said, rising to his hands and knees. “You can’t just stop a mass like that! You can’t drag a ship forward on wishful thoughts!”