Triton (27 page)

She aimed the flashlight up at the enclosed hot tub and waved it back and forth. But nothing else glimmered from the bow. Her heart sank.

“Shine the light over here,” said Jake from the top of the lifeboat, pausing to wipe sweat off his forehead. Naomi continued to tug at the cables.

“Sorry. I thought I saw a flashlight.”

“Probably a reflection. But try them again on the radio.”

Brynn nodded and unclipped the walkie-talkie. “Cedar, can you hear me? Was that you up there with the light?” She watched with a lump in her throat as waves crashed over the whirlpool and sucked it underwater. “If you can hear me, we’re way at the back of the boat . . .” Her voice broke, though, and she trailed off.

Her radio stayed silent.

“It’s no good.” Jake hopped down from the top of the lifeboat and rubbed his hands on his board shorts. “I can’t free the cable. And without power, we can’t use the electric winches.”

Brynn dragged the radio to her mouth again, tears stinging her eyes. “Cedar, you stupid, selfish, misogynist prick, get your
ass
to the back of the boat—”

“Did somebody call me?” said a voice behind them.

They whipped around as Cedar stepped out of the shadows, hand in hand with Sky.

Grinning, he flicked his brown hair off his forehead and tossed a Bible up to Naomi. “We’re going to need that.”

Brynn gasped, dropped the radio, and threw her arms around him. “You’re
such
a loser,” she moaned, squeezing her brother as tight as she could.

He pulled away from her and leveled his eyes with hers. “Brynn, what Zé Carlos said in Hebrew . . . did you translate it?”

She nodded, suppressing another sniffle.

“Not the time, guys,” said Jake. “If we want to launch this lifeboat tonight, we’re going to need a hacksaw—” Just then a wave crashed over the side of the boat and sprayed their faces, and he added, “Fast.”

A hacksaw.

Cedar darted back inside the Opus Dining Room, where most of the tables and chairs had toppled. As the ship tilted, glasses rolled toward the bow and clinked against the forward bulkhead. He ran downhill through the elevator lobby and burst onto the Royal Promenade, lit only with a gray wash of starlight.

The far end was flooded.

He scanned the ominous shop-lined alley, once the heart of the ship. Now a ghost town. With a screech, tables slid along the tile, gaining speed until they splashed into the foaming brine. As he watched, the roaring water gutted Sorrento’s Pizza, blew out its windows and surged upward with renewed fury.

The ship was sinking faster. Cedar tore up the stairs to the Boardwalk, and his eyes darted to the carousel—the horses lurking in the dark, their cartoon faces disfigured in shadow.

Merry-go-rounds broke down all the time; surely they kept tools nearby.

Shards of cracked dishes skittered past his feet. He groped his way up the incline, clambered over the railing and sprawled headfirst on the wood floor. He staggered to his feet—and came face to face with a snarling face, a gaping jaw lined with white teeth, bared fangs.

His heart jolted and he flinched away.

Just the stupid lion. He darted through the other animals—horses, zebras, and a leopard—and sure enough, found a toolbox tucked behind the operator’s desk.

He emptied the tools on the ground. A dozen bolts and screwdrivers leapt from the pile and rolled across the deck, clinging like pinballs through the horses’ feet before they ricocheted out of sight. He rummaged through the rest.

No hacksaw.

Why would they have a hacksaw?

They were supposed to
fix
the carousel, not destroy it. A spray of salt whipped his face, and he glanced up just as a wave crashed onto the boardwalk.

Which meant the lower promenade, where he had stood not thirty seconds ago, was underwater.

Brynn sprinted down
the dark hallway on deck fourteen. There was a workshop on Kid’s Avenue she remembered, toward the bow. They might have tools.

All around her, above and below and behind the cabin doors, the bulkheads squealed with strain. The metal hulk of the cruise ship growled. Just then a bang echoed from the end of the hallway . . . like a door bursting open.

A rumble shook the deck underfoot. She slowed to a halt, her skin prickling.

She peered ahead into the blackness, her breath the only sound, and the dryness in her throat forced her to swallow. A hot breeze whistled eerily out of the darkness.

Her ears popped.

And then, like a ghost, a wall of white water materialized before her. It burst into staterooms and devoured them in seconds, then surged forward. The water’s roar thumped against her chest.

She stumbled backwards, fell, clawed the ground and rose to her feet. Fell again, scuttled on all fours and faceplanted, ate carpet. Spray lashed her neck, whipped the backs of her thighs, sliced her ankles. At last she hauled herself up and ran.

At the stern
, Naomi dug through the janitor’s closet backstage of the Aquatheater. She flung aside mops, brushes, buckets—but no hacksaw. She swung her flashlight up, across the racks of chemicals, buckets of chlorine and cleaning fluids. Briefly, she wondered if they could concoct an acid strong enough to dissolve the steel cables.

She wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Defeated, she slammed the door and bolted back out to the deck—and froze.

Seawater poured over the deck six railing, gushed through the aisles, and made a waterfall down the stadium seating, flooding the Aquatheater.

Where she stood on the stage—on deck five—she was now cut off from the rest of the ship. She watched in horror as saltwater flooded into the bean-shaped pool, overflowed it, and spilled across her feet.

She retreated, and her back bumped glass. Trapped. She flipped around, and her flashlight shone into murky water pressing on the other side, bubbles. The window was meant to look out over the stern from sixty feet; now it was underwater.

From the deck directly above her, a stream of cold water splashed over her hair, and she flinched and staggered backward, sloshing through water now up to her waist. The ship was sinking right underneath her.

“Naomi!”

Someone was calling her name. She spun, and a wave struck her chest and knocked her off her feet, dunked her. She came up gasping for air, but water gushed in on all sides, and the cold thrust of the ocean yanked her under again.

Something flopped into the water next to her. She couldn’t breathe . . . she was drowning—

“Naomi, to your right!”

She flailed to the right, and her arm struck hard foam. A lifesaver buoy. She wrapped her arm inside the ring, and a rope attached to the buoy pulled taught. She felt a tug as it dragged her through a wave and up to the surface. To air. She clung to the lifesaver, panting, as someone pulled her against the current back to the ship.

“Hold on tight,” he barked, and she was lifted out of the water and hauled over the railing onto deck seven.

She collapsed into Cedar’s arms.

She coughed again, let out a whimper, and stared around at four grim faces.

“The lifeboat?” she asked weakly.

Jake shook his head. “Underwater.”

The Submersible

Having failed to
launch the lifeboat, the five of them climbed to the top of the ship, now slanted at a near forty-five degree angle, and gathered at the aft railing of deck fifteen. Only the rearmost portion of the upper decks remained above water.

Cedar held Sky’s shivering waist, and together they watched the behemoth ship plunge deck by deck into the sea. The waves swallowed deck fourteen, devoured the loft suites, and advanced up the basketball court and the miniature golf course. For a moment, the cruise ship’s massive funnel jutted from the water, before it too was sucked under.

Trapped air burst out of windows, exploded doors, and boiled up from the deep, whipping the surrounding ocean into a violent froth. In it, they would sink like rocks.

A hundred yards in all directions, floating debris littered the ocean.

Cedar faced Jake. “What about the inflatable life raft? The one we took to the island?”

“Over there.” Jake pointed to a yellow fleck on the horizon, a mile from the ship. “Wind took it.”

Cedar stared. In the distance, the raft lifted up, caught the wind like a sail, and skipped across the waves . . . gone. “So we got nothing?”

“We have this,” said Jake, holding up the lifesaver buoy.

“And this.” Sky lifted up the Bible.

“We had a whole cruise ship,” said Cedar, his voice tight. “Ten minutes ago, we had a whole fucking cruise ship, and now all we got is one lifesaver and a goddamned
Bible?
”

A wave crashed over the golf course, and the receding foam ripped one of the fake rocks loose. The basketball court sank underwater.

“This is when Jack dies,” Brynn whispered. She scooted along the railing and nuzzled up against Jake.

“
Who?
” said Cedar.

“In
Titanic
.”

A wave crashed the deck, and water sliced over their feet. Beneath them, the boat lurched. They had seconds left.

“We’ll find lifejackets in the wreckage,” said Jake.

“They won’t be enough,” said Cedar. “When the ship sinks, we’ll be caught in the downdraft and sucked down right behind it . . . just like the Triton sucked the ship under. In ten seconds, we’ll be a thousand feet deep. We’ll be underwater for five minutes. Even if we
can
outswim the downward suction, we’ll never reach the surface; all the air bubbles coming up from the ship make the water about as buoyant as foam. We’ll drop through it like rocks.”

“Rocks,” Sky repeated, thoughtfully. “What about those?” She pointed at the miniature golf course, now completely submerged—and the dozen fake rocks bobbing in the white foam.

Hollow
rocks.

“Sky, you’re a genius,” he said. “Everybody grab a rock.”

They waded into the foam and seized five rectangular plastic rocks, each about the size of an overstuffed suitcase, and hauled them back to the last few feet of deck still above water.

Heart racing, Cedar wound the lifesaver’s polypropylene line around the middle of a rock—notching it in one of the jagged dips—and jammed the end under the coil. He yanked it taught. It held. Water washed over his ankles, his knees.

He twisted the line around the other rocks, securing them together in a caterpillar-like raft. He instructed the others to wrap the extra line around their wrists. The crashing waves forced them up against the railing.

“Never thought I’d be tying myself to a rock to stay afloat,” said Brynn.

“Kids, don’t try this at home,” said Cedar.

Together, Cedar and Jake heaved the raft off the stern of the boat, and they all jumped—just as waves crashed in from all sides.

Foam exploded up
Jake’s nose, whipped his face, and jerked his body in somersaults. The line pulled taught around his wrist, cutting into his skin. Water swirled around him, roared against his ears, thrust him downward—just like Cedar said it would. Thank God he was anchored to the surface.

He snapped his elbows over his head, protecting it from a stray debris, and relaxed his body, letting the turbulence wash over him like he did in a surfing wipeout.

After the initial thrust subsided, he hauled himself back up the line and onto the raft. The others followed suit, dazed and dripping wet.

As Brynn, Naomi, Cedar, and Sky—still clutching the Bible—sprawled out on the raft, he felt a stirring of pride.

Zero casualties.

For several minutes, the whitewater rapids roared around them, and they clung, shivering, to the raft. Finally, the ocean went still.

“Now what?” said Brynn, sitting up and dipping her feet in the water off the side.

Indeed.
Now what, Jake?

From the naked ocean, a cold breeze stung his cheeks, and he realized their predicament. They were five survivors shipwrecked in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle on a raft made of fake rocks. They had no food—except for what they could scrounge from the floating wreckage—no water, and no means of propulsion.

And no hope of rescue.

The rest of humanity had just sunk to the bottom of the ocean inside the Triton.

Hours later, the
sun rose over their crude raft, its morning rays gleaming off the wreckage of the cruise ship. No one had spoken since the
Cypress
went down, and Brynn found her voice raspy. “I was afraid it wouldn’t rise again,” she said.

“Me too,” said Cedar. “For some reason, last night felt like the last night on earth.”

“Life goes on,” Jake muttered.

“No, sunlight goes on,” said Naomi, watching the sky. “Not life.”

Their raft bobbed on the waves.

“Do you think life will ever evolve on this planet again?” said Brynn.

“Maybe in another few billion years,” said Jake. “Maybe not. Maybe it was a one-time thing, maybe we were unique.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll just get taken again.”

“That’s really sad,” said Sky.

“I know.”

Cedar stirred the water with his toes, his eyes downcast. “Brynn, what was that Hebrew translation I asked you about over the radio?”

“It didn’t make any sense,” she said.

“But you understood it?”

“Most of it.”

“It was the last thing Zé Carlos said before he vanished, I think he was saying something important . . . what was he saying, Brynn?”

She stiffened. “He was telling God to get the fuck out of his body.”

Dead ends.

Everything, everywhere, every clue . . . all dead ends. Jake knew Brynn couldn’t have translated it correctly. Another dead end. As the sun rose higher, more of the debris lit up around them.

“Well, as long as we’re still here and still alive, we might as well start searching through this stuff,” he said.

“Hey, any chance that still works?” said Cedar, pointing at something in the distance.

Jake following the line of his finger to an acrylic dome bobbing in the water a hundred feet away, glinting in the sunlight. A wave crest pushed it toward the sky, and the ensuing trough gave him a clear view of a tiny, freshly painted, school bus yellow hull.