Burnt Sea: A Seabound Prequel (Seabound Chronicles Book 0) (11 page)

Chapter 11—The Message

Judith

Three days passed, and
the
Catalina
drifted. The survivors were enthusiastic about their new
tasks at first. The additional duties helped keep everyone’s mind off their
families on the mainland and the thwarted promise of Hawaii. They ate their
first seaweed meal, and even though the taste made Judith gag, it was
satisfying that this meal didn’t deplete their stores. She began keeping a
tally of their days aboard the ship alongside her inventory notes. They had now
been at sea for a full week.

Some people had taken to staring at the waves for hours on end,
searching for imaginary landmarks that appeared and disappeared with each
swell, but Judith would never allow herself to become one of them. She took up
running again. She hadn’t gone more than two days without a run since she was
thirteen, and it made her antsy. She jogged in wide circles around the main
deck, wishing for the straight expanse of a California boulevard. It was cold
all the time now, but this was better than running inside the claustrophobic
little gym, and the treadmills had been unplugged to conserve energy anyway. On
the deck she had to dodge people and run up and down slippery steps. Watching
out for obstacles made it easier to keep her mind from straying to regrets, the
missed opportunities with her family, the life she had lost on land, her
potential future.

Sometimes Esther ran beside her for a few paces, full of questions. She
always popped up in unexpected places. She had taken to sea life better than
most. She would chatter to Judith for a few minutes and then veer off to try to
climb the exhaust vents or trail after Reggie and the crew as they went about
their work.

When Judith wasn’t running or working on the resources inventory, she
hung out in the bridge with
Ren
and Nora.
Vinny
descended from the broadcast tower every so often to
report on the communications (or lack thereof). Simon had sent a woman named
Kim Wu to assist him so he wouldn’t have to pull such long shifts. She had been
in San Diego for an IT conference, but she fit into the bridge team well. The
Internet worked in fits and starts, but precious little information came out of
Hawaii. The Pacific Ocean was beginning to feel like the Bermuda Triangle.

“Where’s the fucking BBC when you need them?” Nora pushed back from the
computer that she had adopted next to
Ren’s
console.
She started twisting her earrings one by one.

“What’s wrong?” Judith asked. She stood at the front window, looking at
the persistent gray clouds that hung above the sea. She missed sunshine so
much.

“Some nut job says a tsunami took out half the Eastern Seaboard,” Nora
said. She scowled at the computer screen. “He’s the only one who’s transmitting
a reliable signal at the moment, but his site is full of conspiracy crap and
apocalypse porn. It’s hard to sift through it for the real news.”

“Where is he?” Judith asked.

“Could be on this ship for all I know. He claims to have ‘sources,’ but
I don’t see how he could have any information when I can’t access a single
major news outlet or social network.”

“He says there was a tsunami?”

“Let’s see . . . triggered by an undersea earthquake . . . he says
every coastal city from Boston to Atlantic City got wiped right into the sea by
a monster wave.”

Judith imagined a map of the US where each section was being
systematically blurred out. It felt cartoonish, impossible. The report had to
be wrong. They needed a more reliable source.

“Does he know anything about the navy?” she asked. “I’m sure some of
them got out of Pearl Harbor before the storm. They would know the truth.”
Judith had begun to think of the navy as a shining beacon of order and purpose.
If they could just meet up with a navy ship, they would be okay.

“Sorry, Jude. This isn’t the kind of stuff you want to read about the
navy,” Nora said. “I’m telling you: he’s full of shit.”

Judith walked around behind Nora’s computer console. “What’s he say
about them?”

“Nothing coherent.”

A white page filled Nora’s web browser. It looked like a homemade site
from the early 2000s, with a simple index function and no sense of design at
all. It contained no images, only a lot of headlines in flashing, multicolored
text. Judith read the first few.

NEW YORK DROWNED!

GOVERNMENT COVER-UP OF YELLOWSTONE RED FLAGS CONFIRMED

RIOTS IN LONDON OVER LIMITED FOOD SUPPLY

ASH PRECEDES SEVEN YEARS OF WINTER

Nora scrolled down. “See, it’s all this doom and gloom stuff, but there
seem to be nuggets of truth every once in a while. He does have a contact page,
and sometimes he’ll post reports from people who might actually know
something.”

“Where’s the stuff about the navy?”

“Hold your horses. Here we go: BATTLESHIPS TURN TO PIRACY.”

Judith bent closer to read the article.

Sources confirm a
coordinated effort by the US Navy to pillage resources from any ships they meet
on the high seas. Warships have been spotted surrounding distressed vessels and
draining them of fuel and food, like a swarm of locusts. Too much like a Robert
Louis Stevenson novel, you think? Think again. The navy is coming, and they
want your fuel. Our sources report that the battleships lure their victims with
promises of aid. Beware, readers of the seas: the navy is not your friend.

Ren
had leaned over from her computer to read alongside
Judith. “He seems pretty sure.”

Nora snorted. “He’s a geek with a decent connection on a power trip.”

“But if he gets reports through a contact page . . .”

“He embellishes,” Nora said. “There’s probably one ship out of
thousands that went rogue. He’s decided that’s not interesting enough, so now
we have the entire US Navy turning to coordinated piracy. And the entire East
Coast being wiped out by one wave! How likely do you think all that is?”

Judith banished the image of the warship blowing a path through the
civilian ships in San Diego harbor. She hadn’t told Nora about that.

“Isn’t it strange that they haven’t issued some sort of statement
themselves?”
Ren
said. “We haven’t heard anything from
a government source since before the disaster.”

“Do you think the government has collapsed?” Judith asked quietly.

“It sure feels like it,” Nora said.

“That’s just impossible.”
Ren
fiddled with
the buttons on her keyboard. “You never think something like this will happen
in your lifetime. I mean, we watch disaster movies and joke about the zombie
apocalypse all the time. Now that this—whatever this is—is actually
happening . . .”

“We’re out of contact, that’s all,” Nora said. “Once we get back to
land, things will be better. But you’re right. I had no idea how bad it would
feel to be off the grid, and I practically live inside the grid.”

“It sounds like the US will never be the same, though,” Judith said.
“Even if that East Coast tsunami didn’t happen.”

She still sometimes believed that they’d sail into a harbor and find it
had all been a mistake. The nightmare would be over. San Diego would still be
intact. All of their families would be fine. She could go back to her perfectly
coordinated life.

They stared out at the restless, white-capped sea. The clouds were
heavy and sullen. Judith hoped there wouldn’t be another storm. It had been
three days since the last one, and she was still waking up in a cold sweat
picturing people tumbling out of the broken dining hall windows.

“What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t here?” Nora asked
suddenly, clearly wanting to change the subject. She climbed out of her chair
and sat on top of the desk behind it, putting her large maroon combat boots on
the seat.

“Studying for finals,” Judith said. It was hard to reconcile the image
of her old
self sitting
in the library in front of a
stack of neatly color-coded notes with her current reality.

“Lame.”

“I’d still be on this ship,”
Ren
said. “How’s
that for strange?”

“That is trippy,” Nora said. “I would be here too, unless I decided to
jump ship in Puerto Vallarta. I thought about it, actually. I’ve always wanted
to live in another country.”

“I’ve had my share of wanderlust too,”
Ren
said. “I work on a cruise ship after all. Cruises aren’t the most badass places
to be a sailor, but I’ve always loved the idea of being at sea every day,
taking shore leave in exotic cities.” She sighed. “Now I just want my feet on
dry land.”

Nora put a hand gently on her shoulder.
Ren
gripped
it for a moment.

“What about you, Judith?” Nora said. “Were you planning a graduation
trip or anything?”

“Not really. I was going to start working right away,” Judith said. “I
guess I’d take business trips eventually. London. Hong Kong. Tokyo. I didn’t
study abroad in college, because I wanted to focus on internships.”

“You were one of those overachievers, eh?”
Ren
asked.

Judith nodded. “I had it all planned out: work for two or three years
and then get an MBA. I’ve had my eye on a CEO’s corner office for as long as I
can remember.”

“It could still happen,” Nora said. “
I’d
hire you.”

“I might never even get my degree now. All that work, and I don’t even
have a BA to show for it.”

“At least you’re alive,”
Ren
said.

“I guess so,” Judith said.

“I don’t know how you two decided what you wanted to do so early on,”
Nora said. “I’m good with computers, but I still don’t know what I want to be
when I grow up, and I’m twenty-eight!”

Judith frowned. A chasm seemed to yawn before her. She had always been
so focused. Her teachers loved to talk about her potential, yet she had
absolutely no idea who she was apart from her ambitions. Suddenly all that
mattered was surviving—and the relationships she had never given enough
time before. She should have taken more weekend trips to see her parents. She
should have spent more afternoons hanging out with Sonya. She should have gone
on more dates!
All that texting and flirting had seemed like
such a waste of effort.
Now she wasn’t sure why she had spent so much
time alone with her goals.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She’d seen what happened when her
financially successful father divorced her mother, leaving her at the constant
mercy of alimony negotiations until she met her new husband. Judith always knew
she would be self-sufficient, successful in her own right. She never wanted to
be vulnerable the way her mother had been for those years. Right now she
depended on the other people on the ship, but this wouldn’t last. They’d have
to find a safe harbor soon.

Footsteps rang out on the broadcast tower ladder. Kim Wu’s shoes
appeared, then the stained knees of her khaki pants.

“Word coming in on the radio! It’s the navy!”

Simon

The
meeting was going well, all things considered. They had decided to meet in the
Mermaid Lounge, the nightclub on the ninth deck, because the Atlantis Dining
Hall was still damp from the storm and smelled like rotting food. The Mermaid
Lounge had a long bar overlooking the sea, round tables, and booths with
couches covered in shimmering velvet. Green drapes hung on the walls, along
with jewel-toned prints of buxom mermaids with artful hair arrangements.

It was early afternoon, but the light coming through the sea windows
was weak. Simon worried about the effect the diminished sunshine would have on
morale. He hardly dared think about what it would do to plant life around the
world. They’d been able to skim seaweed off the top of the sea after the storm,
scrubbing it thoroughly in hopes of avoiding contamination, but he worried
about what they would do if it started to die too.
You can’t think like that. You’ll be back on land soon.

Simon spent too much time worrying these days. They had been at sea for
a week, but already it felt like a decade—or at least like he had aged a
decade. He shook his head and returned his attention to the issue at hand:
space. They were always talking about space.

“We should be allocated another cabin,” Rosa Cordova was saying. “We
paid to be on this ship, and it isn’t fair for so many children to have to
share rooms. The Raines family feels the same way. Their kids are too old to be
crammed together like that.”

“What do you expect us to do, Rosa?” said Horace, one of the runners.
“Sleep in the bowling alley?”

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re not on vacation anymore. You can’t
be so selfish,” Frank grumbled.

“It’s not selfishness,” Rosa snapped. “We need space for the children.
Us old folks are fine, but the children need room!”