machinery. Souvenirs from a dead civilization and a different way of life—leather luggage with gold lettering, chromed espresso machines with complex levers and dials, soap bottles with French labels, and designer sunglasses—things Wes had heard about, but never seen. It was all junk now. The metal rusted, the leather faded, the paper rotted with mildew, even the plastic that was meant to never degrade had now cracked and melted. It all blended to make a new kind of landscape, a mountain of floating refuse.
First Daran and now this—could his day get any worse? Or was he just irritated that he’d lost another opportunity to kiss her? He’d meant what he said, but he was surprised at the depth of his feelings for her. He’d been worried when he hadn’t seen her reading on the upper deck—and the lack of the Slaine boys disturbed him as well—and when he’d heard the screams he feared the worst—and to see her like that, her jacket torn off her shoulders . . . he could have pounded Daran’s head against the floor until he was still. Wes felt sick and ashamed of his crew, and wondered if he’d made the right call to take on those boys.
Farouk stood by the navigation system and looked up nervously as Wes approached. “They weren’t on the radar—I swear it—they came out of nowhere,” he said.
“How bad is it?” Wes asked, directing his question to Shakes, who was at the helm.
Shakes couldn’t answer, as he was throwing his full weight to pull the wheel starboard with the help of Daran and Zedric on either side, the three of them fighting to steer the ship as the trashbergs squeezed
“Move!” Wes yelled as he took the helm. “You can’t steer your way out of this!” He pulled on the gearshift levers. The two engines and their propellers were side by side, and he figured if he threw one into reverse and the other forward, they would force the boat to pivot.
But the hull continued to tear. Wes powered both engines as high as he dared.
“She’ll hold!” Wes said. “STEADY NOW!” The bow was starting to turn, forcing half the ship to push through a mound of trash. He scrambled to keep his balance as the trashberg pushed from below, lifting the front of the boat precariously out of the water.
“We’re losing her!” Shakes warned.
Wes glared at the wheel. “Not on my watch! HOLD ON!” He jammed both engines into reverse, and the hull vibrated as he fought for control of his ship; the screeching grew louder as the boat pushed against the behemoth. The water behind them began to bubble as the propellers spun wildly, captured in their own wake. It looked as though the trash mountains would claim their ship for their own.
Shakes yelped as a wave of debris tumbled over the deck, but that was the worst of it. Since the engines were both taken from ex–military tankers, they would tear the boat apart before they stopped turning. But Wes understood he could make use of their power by jamming the starboard engine back into forward while he let the other rev in neutral for a moment. He was using the two engines to pull them out of the trashbergs by force alone.
They watched as broken refrigerators, rusted toasters, waterlogged couches, and a coffee table missing two legs fell from the sky, crashed onto the floorboards. The furniture slid together, forming grotesque living room sets before washing back into the ocean as the ship tilted to the other side. A moldy Barcalounger remained on the deck, its leather pocked with holes.
Wes kept a firm grip on the wheel, wrestling with the breakers, and steering away from the trashbergs until they were in relatively calm waters.
Farouk slapped him on the back. “We did it.”
He nodded and relaxed his hold. “Take it,” he told Shakes. “I’ll check out the damage.”
Once on the deck, he saw Nat there, helping the boys clean up. The Slaine brothers were smart enough to keep their distance, he noticed sourly. He would have to deal with them later. Put the fear of god into them if they thought they could get away that kind of crap on his watch.
“How bad is it?” Nat asked, pulling a scarf around her neck.
“We got stuck in the middle of a trashfield.” Wes sighed. “We’ll need to go around; it’s dangerous running too close to them. We could end up stuck on a pile of junk, or worse, buried underneath one.”
Shakes came out to help and pushed a lounge chair off the deck and into the churning waters. “Guess your trip just got extended,” he said.
“Wonderful.” She sighed.
Wes wiped his forehead with his glove and peered over the railing to study the long ugly gash on the side of his boat. “Luckily it didn’t hit the inner hull.”
“Otherwise?”
“We’d be sunk, literally,” Shakes said cheerfully. “But don’t worry, that hasn’t happened yet.”
“Good thing I don’t charge by the mile or you’d be in trouble,” Wes said, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
Nat started to laugh, but her laughter quickly turned into a cough. She buried her face in the crook of her arm. “Well, it’s not a perfume store, that’s for sure.”
Wes sighed. The trashbergs smelled even worse than the ocean, and the thought of extending the trip even farther would be a challenge for everyone, but he couldn’t let it sink their spirits. “Looks bad, but we can patch it up, can’t we, Shakes?” Wes asked.
“Not like we haven’t before.” Shakes nodded. “We’ll get right on it.” He stared at Nat. “Hey—you look different,” he said. “What is it?” He squinted at her face.
“My eyes,” she said shyly. “You can’t see the difference? Really?”
“Our friend Shakes is colorblind.” Wes winked. “It’s all right, Farouk will fill him in,” he said, as the youngest boy openly gaped at Nat, but said nothing.
“Come on, don’t stare,” Shakes said, pulling Farouk away so they could return to the bridge, leaving Wes and Nat on the deck. As the boat drifted out of the trashberg’s shadow, they were able to see the full extent of the garbage mountain.
“It’s endless,” Nat whispered, fascinated by the immense ziggurat of rot and decay and discards in front of her.
“Continents of junk,” Wes said.
Nat shook her head, troubled by the sight of all that waste. The world was irretrievably broken, filled with refuse, from Garbage Country to the poisoned oceans, and the rest was an uninhabitable frozen nether land; what kind of place was this to grow up in? What kind of world had they been born into? “Is it like this—everywhere—in all the waters? Surely in some places the waters are clear?” she asked hopefully.
Wes narrowed his eyes. “Maybe. If the Blue is real.” He removed the locator from his pocket and began to punch in a new course on the blinking green screen. He had nabbed the satellite phone from an abandoned LTV a few years back in garbage land. It was military-grade and had the ability to track and plot a course from live satellite data. If he was caught using or trying to sell the thing, it would mean his head, but he kept it for emergencies. “We’ll have to go way out of our way to dodge ’em. Some are ten or fifteen miles across and there’re bigger ones swirling all around.”
As the boat plowed slowly through the churning waters, the surf was wilder on the far side of the junk mountain, and dark, filthy water rose in waves and washed over the deck again.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Wes said, holding out his hand to help her avoid stepping in the toxic wash.
She took his hand and they picked their way down to the lower cabins. “I’ll take you up on your offer, if you don’t mind,” she said, as they walked down the stairs and he let go of her hand. “To move, I mean.”
Wes nodded. “Sure.”
Nat watched him silently, wondering what would have happened if the ship hadn’t hit that trashberg . . . if they had been able to . . . if he had . . . what difference did it make? At least he hadn’t tossed her overboard when he found out the truth about her. Wasn’t that enough? What did she want with him anyway? She couldn’t be feeling what she was feeling, if she was even feeling anything for him.
Even so, she moved her meager possessions over to his cabin. Instead of hammocks, the captain’s quarters had a real bed. One bed. One small bed. “Um, Wes?” she asked.
“Yeah?” he asked, pulling off his boots and sweater, so that his T-shirt pulled up above his belt and for a brief moment she saw the hard muscles on his stomach.
