Plastic Sea — What's Left, Page 23
By Inkroost · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: The orange float with limp Roka in it hangs on a rope halfway up the patchwork hull, dripping, while Nane climbs a rope ladder beside it. Nane: 'Pull him up!' Panel 2: Two deckhands lift Roka over the red railing under his arms, the duck tucked into his jacket. Panel 3: Roka collapses on the steel deck, coughing. Nane kneels and throws a blue tarp over him. Nane: 'Easy. Easy.' 'You're out of the water.'
Image description
Roka's float is hauled up the ship's painted hull on a rope, deckhands lift him over the rail, and he collapses on deck as Nane covers him with a tarp.
About this chapter
In the dark at the bottom of the sea, something is counting. On Candyreef, a candy-coloured island of floating trash, Roka wakes to a water bag in the face from his street crew, lifts breakfast from the old woman who would have fed him anyway, and tells the kid who follows him that he doesn't owe anybody. Then the gulls lift all at once, and a Maw eats half the island. A day and a night alone at sea later, the Garden Ship fishes him out and orders him to walk its treadwheels for fish heads. Roka is nobody's slave, so he goes looking for something to steal instead, and breaks into a barnacled case dredged from the seabed. The silver dust inside climbs into his arm and says hello. It is polite. It is curious. It wants every human dead. And it has just started counting again.