Read Online Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi - Free Book Online Page A

you, he’ll eat you raw.”
    The crowd mumbled discontent, but they gave way under Tool’s gaze.
    “Pima!”
    Nailer and Pima turned at the shout. It was Sadna, hurrying toward them, Nailer’s father in tow. Sadna swept up to hug Pima.
    Nailer’s father halted a step behind. He inclined his head. “Guess you saved my ass, Lucky Boy.”
    Nailer nodded carefully. “Guess so.”
    Suddenly his father laughed and grabbed him. “Damn, boy! You’re not going to hug your old man?” It hurt Nailer’s stitches and Nailer winced in the man’s grip, but he didn’t fight the embrace. His dad said, “I woke up in the middle of that damn storm and had no idea what the hell was going on. Almost killed Sadna before she explained things.”
    Nailer glanced worriedly at Pima’s mother, but Sadna just shrugged. “We worked it out.”
    “Damn right.” His dad grinned and touched his jaw. “She hits like sledgehammer.”
    For a moment Nailer worried that his father was carrying a grudge, but for once the man wasn’t sliding high. He seemed almost rational. As clean as the beach. Already, he was craning his neck to see how food was being distributed.
    “Tool’s up there?” He laughed and clapped Nailer on the shoulder. “If Lucky Strike’ll hire that dog, damn sure he’ll take me. We’ll eat good tonight.” He began shoving through the crowd toward Lucky Strike’s guard detail. He didn’t look back at Sadna or Nailer or Pima at all.
    Nailer breathed a sigh of relief. No hard feelings, then.
    The inventory of the beach and the ship breakers continued. Rumor had it that they’d missed the heart of the storm. It had passed to their east, up Orleans Alley, roaring through the old city ruins and then tearing farther north into the sea wreckage of Orleans II. Damage all the way up through the guts of the place, people said.
    Which meant that they’d been lucky at Bright Sands, and missed being flattened.
    Even with a glancing blow from the storm, the damage to Bright Sands Beach was immense. They found bodies everywhere, tangled in kudzu vines of the jungle, stuck in the trees high up, floating out in the surf. Lucky Strike organized scavenge parties to take care of the dead, burning them or burying them according to their rituals, and making the place safe from disease. Names rolled in.
    Bapi had gone missing, either torn apart in the storm or drowned, but gone nonetheless. No one knew if Sloth was alive or dead. Tick-tock and his entire family were found, no sign of damage on them, but all of them dead anyway.
    All the scrap and rust buyers who contracted with Lawson & Carlson had fled inland to wait out the storm. With no companies like GE buying scrap for their manufacturing operations, or shipping companies like Patel Global Transit looking to buy scavenge to sell overseas, the ship-breaking yards were idle. The accountants and assayers and corporate guards who weighed and purchased the raw materials that came off the wrecks had left, and with no one around to buy their product, the ship breakers used their days cutting and renewing their shacks, scavenging the jungle, and fishing for food in the ocean. Until things got organized, people were on their own.
    Pima and Nailer went scavenging for food, collecting green coconuts that had fallen, before turning to the pools and tides. Out in the distance, the outcrop point of an island was visible.
    “There’s crabs out that way,” Pima said.
    “Yeah? Should we go that far?”
    Pima shrugged. “Better scavenge without competition, right?” She indicated the silent ships. “It’s not like anyone’s going to miss us.”
    They took a hemp sack and a bucket and went seeking, working their way across the sand, out along the spit that led to the island. All around, the ocean was a glittering mirror. Breakers rolled up to the shore, white as a baby’s teeth. The black hulks of the broken ships stood out in the sun, looming monuments to a world that had fallen apart.
    Far