Read Online The Apocalypse Ocean by Tobias S. Buckell, Pablo Defendini - Free Book Online Page A

“With Bakeem?”
    The runner nodded. Her eyes were still wide. “The Doaq attacked. It is after you, ma’am. One of the Runners heard it demand your location from an Ox-man still alive on the lower floor. Then he leapt out the window and ran on a broken leg to us.”
    “Bakeem stayed at the lookout?” Kay asked. He should have come back, or be following behind the Runner.
    But the Runner blinked. “Bakeem’s dead,” she said. “I heard the Doaq attack the lookout even as I ran.”
    Kay leaned on the table. That news shouldn’t have hurt. But it did. She’d gotten close to Bakeem, she realized. Close enough to care a little.
    “Did you see it with your own eyes,” Kay demanded.
    “No, I ran, and I didn’t look back. But …”
    “Then we don’t know, do we, for sure?” Kay muttered, and threw the note to the ground. The Runner said nothing, just stood there, waiting to see if Kay had more orders. Kay shook her head. “Go. Leave.”
    The Doaq would be here shortly, she realized.
    All her carefully laid plans crumbling, Kay made her way down to the basement. She’d been careful to remain a puppet master, but the Doaq had figured her out.
    Maybe it had caught and figured out how to torture the information out of Nashara. Maybe Nashara had just done it out of spite before dying.
    Or maybe Nashara was alive. But if so, where was she?
    Kay shook her head. No, it was probably one of her people it had caught. Kay crossed the length of the basement and stopped. “Jerome.” She called one of the armored-vest-wearing Ox-men over. “Bakeem’s dead.”
    The Ox-man regarded her with a placid gaze. “At the look out?” he asked in his in his sparse, simplified way. “Who?”
    “The Doaq did it. It’s looking for me.” Kay watched his reaction. The Ox-man expressed sorrow with a slight slump of his shoulders, and then a bit of dull anger, and resolve.
    Perfect.
    “You’re my Number One now,” Kay told Jerome. “The Doaq will be coming, and it’s time to set up the welcome Bakeem and I planned for it. How long do you need?”
    Jerome unconsciously brushed at the shaggy hair all around his face as he thought. So freaking slow, Kay thought. But reliable. And strong. And brave to a fault. “It began already. Runners said the Doaq comes. I prepare.”
    “Well done,” Kay smiled. “Then send everyone out.”
    Jerome nodded, looked around the room, and shouted, “ Out !”
    Ox-men, Runners, and other guards all walked out, occasionally glancing back at her as they did so.
    Once they’d all left, Kay crossed to the piled up wooden crates at the back of the basement. Nashara’s gifts. Most of them had been pried open, their contents distributed. Rocket launchers, high-powered machine guns, explosives, and other goodies.
    Only one crate remained untouched.
    “Hello,” Kay said, running a hand over the top of it.
    She’d risked a lot for this.
    She sat down on top of the crate, removed a knife and an apple, and began to methodically cut slices off.
    The sound of gunfire began in the distance. Jerome and his Ox-men laying down fire against the Doaq. Several RPG rounds crumped into the street, shaking the walls. 
    This had quickly turned into a mess, hadn’t it?
    Her hands shook. She put the knife and apple down, and faced the door as screams and shouts floated from nearby houses. She’d been too focused on trying to grow her little empire. Too focused on fighting the biggest fight. Too attached to Placa del Fuego. Now it would all be ripped away.
    A tear surprised her, and she rubbed it off her cheek with a fingertip. She looked at the liquid. Where did you come from? She wondered. It had been a long time.
    If it was death that came, she told herself, wiping her fingertip on her trousers, it was a delayed one. One that sniffed and hunted her down in the sands of Okur. The one that that tried to devour her in the refugee camps.
    She had lived and thrived for two years. It was two years more than anyone