Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [48]
“Don’t touch him!”
Paul saw the blur of Sam’s body, plummeting from the rafters and catching David Sturm around the shoulders. The two crashed to the floor, a few feet from Paul’s chair. Sam clutched a bundle of tubing around Sturm’s neck and tore it loose. A fine drizzle tickled Paul’s face—hot, oily—and he spat it away.
Armitage appeared beside him, a ring of keys in his hand, hurriedly unlocking the straps. Paul leaped from the chair.
“Do Monica!” he told Armitage.
Sam and Sturm were locked tight, skeletal limbs smashing out, whirling them closer to the blast furnace. Paul could see his brother’s hands wrenching at Sturm’s tubes, and a strong jet of water arched across the chamber. Paul flung himself onto Sturm’s back, but he was thrown off effortlessly with a jab from a poker-sharp elbow. He slammed against the scalding door of the furnace, winded.
He saw Armitage pulling the shotgun from Sked’s limp hands, leveling it.
“No!” Paul shouted hoarsely. “No! They’re too close!”
Armitage hesitated. Sturm gripped Sam’s head between his hands, viselike. And for a moment, they were motionless, gazing at each other as if hypnotized. Sturm’s insect drone faltered for a moment, and one hand came away to pat uselessly at the ruptured tubing around his neck. Green water flooded over his fingers. Sam wrenched himself free.
Sturm’s hum deepened and he swayed on his feet. Paul’s heart quickened. He struggled upright, his hands feeling behind him, burning against the iron door of the blast furnace. Sturm limped after Sam, arms outstretched. Paul’s hands closed around the handle of the door, teeth grinding against the pain. Just a few more steps. All he needed was a few more steps. Now.
He flung open the door and gasped from the heat.
“Sam, get out of the way!”
He pulled the lever hard.
Sturm whirled. For a split second, his skeletal face was bathed in a violent orange glow, and then he was engulfed in a roaring column of flame.
Paul flung his arms over his face, heat scalding his exposed skin. A second blast shot out. He clawed for the lever and managed to push it up into place. But the chamber was already alive with flames, licking against the parched walls, crackling in the high rafters. Water streamed from Paul’s eyes as he staggered through the billowing smoke. He nearly tripped over Sturm’s blackened skeleton, clenched tight like a fist, hissing steam.
He could hear Monica and Armitage calling out for him, but he lurched across the chamber, his hands stretched in front of him, pelted by a hail of sparks. Through the smoke he could see Sam. Paul called out to him, filled with relief. Sam was holding something in his hands. Paul squinted. It was the canister of refined water. He met his brother’s eyes for only a few seconds before losing him in a thick swirl of smoke. When it cleared, Sam was gone.
15
THE HULK WAS burning and sinking.
He staggered to the pier beside Monica and Armitage, watching the flames spread through the ancient ship. He was still coughing smoke from his lungs, spitting soot. His hair and clothing were singed.
Flames twisted up through the deck like some magical plant, sending orange shoots along the planking, buckling timbers, twisting up the broken masts. Tendrils of fire pierced the hull near the waterline, and smoke billowed out. With a mighty groan, the hulk listed sluggishly.
Paul watched, feeling nothing. Burning and sinking at the same time.
From the stilt-house roof, he could still see the orange glow shimmering above the center of Watertown, black smudges drifting out across the night sky. Monica sat down beside him.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked.
“No.”
“How