Loe raamatut: «Genesis Sinister»

Chapter 1

The Gulf of Mexico

Screams rolled across the waves.

On the deck of a fishing scow, a blond-haired woman was being dragged backward by her hair. She was shrieking and struggling as a pale-skinned man with tattoos down his exposed right arm yanked her across the decking against her will. A snatch of blond curls tore from her scalp as she tripped, and she slammed against the wooden deck with an agonized moan, tears streaming down her flushed face. Another man stepped before her as the one with the tattooed arm cursed. This one had dark eyes the color of midnight, a mop of black hair on his head and dark stubble along his jaw.

“Hold ’er down!” he snarled at his partner.

The man wore leather trousers and an open shirt, and where his chest was exposed the blonde woman could see dark chest hair tufting from his weather-tanned skin alongside a puckering of scars where he had been burned many years before. At his belt, the man had a holster in which he had jammed a long-barreled Colt revolver, its chrome finish marred from overpolishing. His name was “Black” John Jefferson and he was a pirate.

Fern Salt, his colleague with the tattooed arm, obeyed with a nod, grasping the blonde by her wrists and slapping at her breasts to hold her down, stretching her taut as she tried to kick away. Salt pawed roughly at her left breast for a moment, laughing cruelly as he squeezed it. The woman was twenty-two, with apple-red cheeks and a belly already round with child. She screamed again, tears washing down her face.

All around them aboard the listing scow, the sounds of violence played out in a cacophonous symphony, gunshots and screams rolling over the waves. The sea was calm, and it seemed to urge the violence to hush with the sound of every softly lapping wave against the side of the boat.

One of the crew, a cousin to the blonde woman, scrambled across the deck to help her, alerted by her screams and followed by another of the pirates. Glancing over his shoulder, Black John snatched the Colt from its holster and squeezed the trigger, holding it upside down and blasting a single 9 mm bullet behind him. With the boom of discharge, the bullet cut into the sailor’s right leg just below the knee, and he let loose a bloodcurdling scream as his leg exploded in a burst of blood and splintered bone. Another of Black John’s crew, the man following the sailor across the deck, finished the job swiftly with a single bullet to the man’s head.

Black John turned back to his task at hand. Unbuckling his belt and loosening his pants, he reached out for the screaming blonde. His fingernails had been painted as black as his nickname, and they glistened in the sunlight like the shells of insects.

“Quit shoutin’, girl,” he hissed, his eyes narrowed with fury. “Makes no diff’rence to me if you’re alive or dead, just so long as you’re still warm.”

With that, Black John grasped the woman’s skirts with one of his beautifully manicured hands, ripping away the bottom half of her dress to expose her crotch. Then, he got about his business as Fern Salt held her down with one tattooed arm. Salt’s other arm was scrubbed clean and hairless, unnaturally pale where another tat had been removed. All around them, Black John’s shipmates were rushing through the scow, sacking her and dispatching the last of her crew with cold professionalism as the ruined engine spit black smoke into the morning sky.

Beside the scow was a larger boat, and from a distance the pair seemed restful as they floated on the clear waters of the Bay of Campeche, far enough out from the coast that they couldn’t be seen from the shore by the naked eye. The larger of the boats was a sleek sixty-foot cutter, its sides painted the same blue-green as the waves. The cutter was shaped like a dart in the water, flared at the aft with a long body that tapered to a brutal point like a stiletto blade at the front. The cutter’s name was La Discordia, although papers filed in El Cuyo still had her listed by her original name, La Vara de la Esperanza, or The Wand of Hope. La Discordia loomed beside the smaller vessel like an older sibling, her dark shadow cast over the other’s slanted deck.

La Segunda Montaña, the smaller vessel, was listing to one side where it had been wounded. The screams and shouts that had emanated from the scow as the crew of the larger vessel boarded her were dwindling now, the sounds as brief and sudden as bird calls, and, like those bird calls, they were ignored or unheard by anyone who might have intervened.

Aboard La Segunda Montaña all was pandemonium. Harpoons had been used to attach the two boats, trapping the smaller vessel as her captain tried to get out of the larger one’s path. The scow had come all the way from the north, seeking freedom and a new life. Instead, one of those hooks had gone straight through the first mate’s torso, gouging a hole through his chest even before the ships locked together. Now he was wedged upright, his body splayed against the safety rails that lined the scow’s deck, screaming as the harpoon point held him in place, his ruined guts spilling down his legs.

Belowdecks, two pirates called Six and Xia were standing in the fishing scow’s tiny hold. Xia held the sharp edge of his blade across a girl’s throat while Six looked around the shabby little room. The girl had dark hair and pleading eyes, and Xia had already had his way with her.

“What is that?” Six asked, jabbing his outstretched finger at a box in the corner of the living quarters. The box had wooden sides and was open at the top, its lid propped against the wall. The box was half-full of stones, not one of which was more than an inch across; they looked like shale that had washed up on the beach.

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted, the glistening tears still drying on her pretty face. “It was here when we boarded. Belongs to the captain, I think.”

“Belongs to us now, hermanita,” Xia growled, and he drew the blade closer to the girl’s throat, six inches of knife glistening in the light cast by the round portholes. Xia was a large man, broad-shouldered and with a suggestion of Malaysian or Polynesian to his appearance, especially around the eyes and the golden tint of his skin. He wore an undershirt and cutoffs, and a long white scar ran almost the entire length of his left leg, from groin to well past the knee. He had gotten the scar in a knife fight on a plantation that had almost ended with the authorities hanging him. But only almost.

The girl struggled in his grip, trembling with fear.

“Floater this size don’t need ballast,” Six said as he nudged at the stones with the tip of his blaster. Six was broad-shouldered, too, with a gold hoop depending from his left earlobe. He wore his hair in a topknot on his otherwise shaved head, a gunslinger’s mustache drooping down over his top lip. He licked the bristles absentmindedly as he spoke, eyes narrowing as he looked at the strange contents of the crate.

“Something in it, mebbe?” Xia suggested, gripping the girl tighter as she struggled. “You, keep fucking still.”

Six rummaged through the stones with his free hand, turning them over as he plunged deeper into the crate. It was just a little deeper than a foot, and the broad-shouldered pirate reached down until he could distinctly feel the crate’s bottom. “Nothing in there,” he said. “Nothing but stones.”

“Worth something, you think?” Xia asked.

As he spoke, the girl finally pulled herself free, wrenching out of his grip before Xia knew what was happening. Still pressed against her throat, Xia’s blade cut through her flesh as she yanked herself away, and blood began to spurt as her carotid artery was compromised by its touch.

“Shit me, Xia,” Six spit as the girl lumbered toward him, blood shooting from her nicked artery.

The blood seemed to blast out of her neck with the power of a jet, spraying the walls of the cabin and turning the lone porthole red in just three seconds as the girl screamed in agony.

Six leaped out of the way as the screaming girl barreled toward him, sidestepping as she fell toward the crate. The force of the rushing blood was lessening now, the furious jet turning into a steady stream of red that washed down the girl’s tattered clothes. She slumped against the crate, blood flowing across its contents, and Six and Xia listened as her scream turned into a whimper and then to nothing.

“Damn, I liked her,” Xia said. Then he shrugged as Six glared at him. “What? She got free,” he added.

Six nodded. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he reached down and pulled the girl off the crate by her long hair, tossing her to one side. She slumped against the wall of the hold, blood still running down her neck and turning her dress crimson.

Within the crate, the bloodied stones seemed to pulse and move where the blood seeped through them. Six watched for a moment before dismissing the thought as nothing more than an optical illusion. Then he grabbed the box and hefted it from the deck. “Shit like this gotta be worth something,” he decided. “Only thing on this death trap that is.”

Xia glanced at the dying girl before he followed Six up the little flight of wooden stairs and into the main cabin. She stared back, eyes wide with shock, the red pulse at her neck now turned to nothing more than a drizzle. In six minutes she would be dead from blood loss, and already her body was turning cold.

* * *

THE CAPTAIN OF LA SEGUNDA Montaña was a portly Latino called Alfredo. A man of indeterminate age with the leathery tanned skin and cropped hair that could place him anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five, Alfredo struggled with the wheel as the boat listed farther to starboard. He was trying to bring the little scow back to true as his crew fended with their unwanted boarders. Alfredo had traveled a long way with his cargo; he still believed in a higher purpose.

He watched as one of the marauders leaped down from the cutter, brandishing a sword with a wickedly curved blade in one hand. The man had olive skin and brown dreadlocks that clattered with beads as he moved, and he smiled as he spotted the captain standing in his little box of a cabin, wrestling with the wheel.

“Please, señor,” Alfredo called as the pirate approached him. “Don’t hurt me. My ship, she will sink if I don’t—”

The dreadlocked pirate drove the tip of his sword into Alfredo’s chest, wrenching it down through his body from sternum to crotch as the man howled in agony. “What makes you think I’d give a shit about your boat?” he hissed, wrenching the blade free. The captain’s guts came with the blade, spilling over the bloodied deck as he sank to his knees. And he screamed long and loud.

“For goodness’ sake, shut him up!” Black John Jefferson commanded as he tightened his grip in the blonde woman’s hair. “I can’t concentrate on the task at hand with all that screaming.”

The “task at hand,” as Black John had described it, left the blonde sobbing, and the pirate cursed her even as he spilled his seed inside her. He pulled away from her and stood as his companion, Fern Salt of the tattooed sleeve, took his turn on the girl. All around them, mayhem reigned, and Black John smiled as he saw the bloody hell he had encouraged. The last of the ship’s crew was being hoisted high in the air by four of Black John’s crew as another used his bobbing form for target practice, shots clipping chunks from the helpless sailor’s ear and cutting two of his fingers off his hand as they hit. Finally a bullet pierced the man’s larynx as he screamed, and his scream turned to a gurgle as his ruined body was tossed overboard, the blood pouring down his flailing limbs.

Black John hurried over to the side of the ship as the man was thrown, wrenching his Colt Anaconda from its holster even as he ran. Steadying himself against the rail, Black John took aim at the bobbing figure before blasting a single bullet through the man’s forehead, ripping his skull apart in an ugly red blotch. The sailor continued to bob in the ocean, eyes wide but their spark gone.

Black John turned back to his crew, eyeing them with his ferocious glare. “For goodness’ sake, ex him when you’re done,” he berated. “No witnesses. Not ever. That’s the code, lads.”

Chastised, the pirate crew muttered their apologies as they checked the old scow’s cabin for anything of value. Black John smiled grimly as he marched across the deck to where Fern Salt was having his way with the pregnant blonde. Gun still in hand, he shot the woman in the face, killing her instantly.

Delirious with passion, Fern Salt shook for a moment before realizing what had happened. “What did you do that for?” he shouted, his ardor disappearing like a snuffed flame. “I wasn’t done pricking her, man!”

“No witnesses, Mr. Salt,” Black John said in reply, an ugly sneer marring his dark features. “No witnesses.”

Still staring at the bloody body of the woman, Black John aimed his pistol at her swollen belly and stroked the trigger once more. Salt was splattered with blood, and he growled as he turned and glared at Black John as the sadistic pirate walked away, fury raging through him. With a guttural shout, Fern Salt began to charge across the sloping deck at his colleague.

Black John was a survivor who had relied on his quick wits to keep him alive up to now. He heard Salt charging at him and he stepped aside automatically, his long coats swishing about him as he brought his pistol around. Salt slammed into him still, knocking Black John with his shoulder and shoving him a half-dozen steps onward with a roar. Off balance, Black John went down, tumbling to the deck with his first mate atop him.

“What do you think you’re doin’, Mr. Salt?” Black John bellowed.

Salt was too angry to respond. He scampered back, reaching for the long-barreled Llama Comanche revolver he wore in an open shoulder rig. The Comanche had a six-inch barrel and, at some point in its history, someone had painted a naked, openmouthed woman reclining along that length.

“You’re a maniac,” Salt snarled as he freed the Comanche from its holster.

Black John smiled as he brought his own pistol to bear on the mutinous pirate. “Mr. Salt, surely you cannot be serious—”

Salt pulled the trigger, blasting a volley of .357 bullets into Black John’s chest. Several missed, cutting splinters from the deck in furious bursts of wood, but three bullets hit, striking the captain with force enough to shake his whole body. Black John’s pistol blasted, too, but he was a fraction of a second slower in getting that first shot in. His shots went wild, clipping Salt only once in the hard muscle of his upper left arm.

Salt bellowed in pain as the bullet winged him, jabbing with his Comanche and blasting another burst of fire at his captain. Black John lay writhing on the deck, blossoms of blood appearing on his clothes like opening poppies, a dark wound in each one’s center.

“Bastard,” Salt spit as his weapon finally clicked on Empty.

Standing there, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed heavily, Salt became aware of his seven colleagues around him. They had boarded with him and Black John to take whatever cargo the ship might have.

“What happened, Fern?” Six asked, still hefting the crate of stones.

Salt became suddenly very aware that Six had a gun trained on him under the base of the box he held, a little snub-nosed thing, its finish the color of storm clouds.

“Cap’n’s out of control,” Salt muttered, shaking his head. “You seen it. You all seen it.”

For a moment, Six and his companions stood in silence, each man poised with his own blaster. Then Six nodded and clicked the safety back on his pistol, the others following suit a moment later.

“Killed the girl an’ the baby, just to make sure,” Salt continued. “The unborn fucking baby. No witnesses, my eye, he just went kill crazy. It’s sick, man.”

Six took a step away, motioning for the others to follow with a tilt of his head. “Let’s get back to La Discordia and get out of here. Time’s ticking and the clock’s never kind.”

Xia looked Captain Black John Jefferson up and down for a moment, the man’s blood pooling around him where he lay sprawled on the deck. “You want we should take him with us, Six?”

Six shook his head without looking back. “Screw him,” he said. “Salt’s right—he always was a sick bastard.”

“Yeah,” Xia agreed, plucking the Colt Anaconda from the dying man’s grip. “An’ he cheated at cards.” With that, he blasted off a single shot into Black John’s skull, finishing the job that Fern Salt had started.

Two minutes later, the graceful dartlike form of La Discordia was sailing away, cutting through the sea at some speed. Behind it, the little fishing vessel known as La Segunda Montaña lurched toward the water, its prow sinking beneath the waves. The pirate crew whooped as they departed the scene of the crime. They had gained only a few trinkets, a box of stones that had been washed in blood, but there had been women on the ship, and the men had been satisfied. Piracy was not always about goods; frequently it was simply an exercise in staving off boredom. The ability to live free, away from the baronies and their oppressive rules in the north, was something every crewman treasured.

Which was ironic, in that the passengers aboard La Segunda Montaña had also come in search of freedom. They were refugees, escaping a madness that seemed to engulf the northern territory of America. The villes had fallen but something had risen briefly in its place, a religion based on stone. Alfredo, the late captain of La Segunda Montaña, had lived the past few months of his life under the name of Alfredo Stone, in acknowledgment of his new faith. The people aboard his boat had come south in search of freedom, trying to escape the insanity that swept across the north after the fall of the baronies, trying to find somewhere to live. Instead they had merely found somewhere new to die.