Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [1]
The motorboat swung in and bumped up against the tires nailed to one of the jetties.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Fifty.”
He should have asked the price before they left. He was getting taken, but he didn’t have it in him to haggle. He could already hear his voice trembling with uncertainty. He hated scenes. Forget it, he told himself. He yanked out the bills. It didn’t leave a lot. He handed the money to the pilot, hefted the knapsack onto his shoulder, and stepped clumsily from the rocking boat, nearly losing his balance.
He took a few angry steps across the jetty before remembering to ask for directions. But when he turned, the boat was heading back to the docklands.
“Thanks for everything,” Paul muttered. It didn’t matter, he told himself. He had plenty of time. He’d find the way on his own.
He wasn’t prepared for the number of people. There must have been hundreds in plain view, men and women and kids scraping at overturned hulls, pumping fuel from ancient gas machines, pushing wheelbarrows filled with potatoes and withered lettuce. People sat idly on the edge of the dock, smoking, talking; others marched along erratically, arms churning, shouting to themselves.
Paul felt something approaching panic. You didn’t get people like this on the streets in Governor’s Hill. You stepped out the front door and into the car. If you had a garage, you didn’t even need to go outside. The mall—that was the only place you saw lots of people. But even then, there was an orderliness to it, a purposefulness. There were rules.
What a stink! His nostrils wrinkled in revulsion. His world was odorless, anything offensive conjured away by jets of recirculating air. But here he felt instantly filthy, overwhelmed by rank body odor, unwashed clothing, the funk of rotting vegetables and fish.
All at once, he was painfully conscious of his own clothing: the new track shoes, the white T-shirt that gleamed amid the drab, washed-out colors around him. Worst of all was his knapsack—a bright, crayon red.
A flush of embarrassment was working its way up his back into his armpits. There were so many eyes on him. He felt like a robot from a low-budget science fiction film, stiff legs jerking out, one, two, one, two. He wished he could just fade in. He caught another glimpse of his shiny sneakers. What a disaster. At least he could have scuffed them up a little, trudged through a puddle or something.
A man with blue spider tattoos across his face sidled past, almost nudging. Paul swallowed, his body tensed. He was glad he was big. He weighed in at over 175. And he looked older than sixteen, everyone said so. Most of the people here looked skinny, underfed. Still, if a lot of them banded together…
Wharves and jetties shot off in all directions, creating an intricate web of canals, some so narrow that you could jump across, others wide enough for sleek boats to navigate.
He looked for signposts. There were none. He realized he’d been carrying in his head a ridiculous image of neat, suburban streets, marked at every corner. A name—that was all he had to go on, the name of a pier. But how many piers were there? Hundreds, thousands?
He’d have to ask directions. He saw a woman sitting in the doorway of a shack, her head bent over a book. She looked all right; she’d give him directions. He came closer. The book was a tattered department store catalog. Her fingers flipped spasmodically through the pages.
“Excuse me—”
The woman lifted her face to him, and Paul saw her mad eyes.
“I should have gotten the position,” she said fiercely. “They underestimated me. They didn’t realize how good my qualifications were. They know nothing, nothing! I should have gotten that position.”
Nodding awkwardly, he backed away. She was shaking her head, spitting out words. He wanted to turn around and go home. It was a stinking madhouse!