“Pima,” he started, “I-”

“Shh.” She pulled him back from the water, deeper into the hole. “She’ll be fine. She’s tough. Tougher than any storm.”

A tree flew past, flying as if it were a toothpick flung by a child. Nailer bit his lip. He hoped Pima was right. He’d been a fool to ask for help. Pima’s mother was worth a hundred of his dad.

They waited, shivering. Pima tugged him closer and they huddled together, sharing heat, waiting for nature’s violence to pass.

THE STORM RAGED for two nights, trashing the coastline, tearing away anything that wasn’t tied down. Pima and Nailer huddled through it, watching the roar and rain and holding close as their lips turned purple and their skins pimpled with cold.

On the third day, in the morning, the skies suddenly cleared. Nailer and Pima forced their stiff limbs to move and stumbled down to the beach, joining a ragged assemblage of other survivors who were streaming toward the sands.

They broke through the last of the trees and Nailer stopped, dumbstruck.

The beach was empty. Not a sign of human habitation. Out in the blue water, the shadows of the tankers still loomed, randomly scattered like toys, but nothing else remained. The soot was gone, the oil in the waters, everything shone brightly under the blaze of morning tropic sun.

“It’s so blue,” Pima murmured. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the water so blue.”

Nailer couldn’t speak. The beach was cleaner than he’d ever seen in his life.

“You’re alive, huh?”

Moon Girl, grinning at them. Covered with mud from whatever bolt-hole she’d found, but alive nonetheless. Behind her, Pearly and his parents were coming onto the beach, shocked expressions on their faces as they tried to register the changes.

“All in one piece.” Pima searched down the beach. “You see my mom?”

Moon Girl shook her head, her piercings glinting in the sun. “She might be over there.” She waved vaguely toward the train yard. “Lucky Strike’s giving out food to anyone who wants it. Credit for everyone until the ship breaking starts again.”

“He saved food?”

“Couple rail cars full.”

Pima tugged Nailer. “Come on.”

A crowd of people were gathered around the scavenge train, all of them waiting for Lucky Strike to dole out supplies. Pima and Nailer scanned the faces, but there was no sign of Sadna.

Lucky Strike was laughing and saying, “No worries! We got enough for everyone! No one’s starving while we wait for old Lawson & Carlson to come back from MissMet. The rust buyers might be hiding from hurricanes, but Lucky Strike’s taking care of everyone.”

Lucky Strike was grinning, his long black dreadlocks tied back, but Nailer knew he was also telling people there wouldn’t be any rioting for food. And if there was anyone people would obey, it was Lucky Strike.

Lucky Strike had been collecting real power ever since his first bit of luck freed him from heavy crew. Now he smuggled everything from antibiotics to crystal slide into Bright Sands Beach. He had deals worked with the boss men to do whatever he liked. His hand was in the gambling dens and the nailsheds and a dozen other businesses, and the money just rolled in, turning into gold nuggets that he hung glittering from the tips of his dreadlocks or else drove through his ears in thick gleaming rings. The man dripped wealth.

“Keep back!” Lucky Strike shouted. “Keep on back!” He was smiling and looked confident, but he had a line of hired goons standing behind him to back up his authority.

Nailer scanned the arrayed thugs, recognizing some of the killers that his father ran with. It seemed like Lucky Strike had collected the best of the worst for his protection. Even the half-man was there. The monster’s huge muscled form loomed over the rest of the thugs, its doglike muzzle snarling and showing its teeth to scare back the hungry people.

Pima caught the direction of Nailer’s gaze. “That’s the one my mom’s heavy crew used to pull sheet iron. Said he could lift four times what a man could.”

“What’s it doing up there?”

“Must have figured out that working muscle for Lucky Strike pays better than heavy crew.”

The half-man bared its fangs again and rumbled a warning. The crowds that had been closing in on the train cars backed off.

Lucky Strike laughed. “Well, at least you all listen to my killer dog, huh? That’s right. Everybody step back. Or my friend Tool here will teach you a lesson in manners. I mean it, everyone, give us some space. If Tool doesn’t like 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.