by Jordan Rivet
“Get her inside quickly,” he said. “Try not to breathe until you’re inside the ship. Shut all the doors and windows you can find.”
“We’ve got her,” said the woman with the cross necklace, “but a few people went to the front of the ship. You’d better get them before we close the door.”
“I’ll be right back,” Simon said.
The women carefully lifted the pregnant lady to her feet and guided her indoors. Bloody water gushed down her leg.
Simon pulled his shirt back up to his nose and ran to the fore. A few people stood at the rails, staring between the city and the harbor mouth. The logjam was worse. They weren’t going to make it out of the harbor.
Judith
Judith bent forward over the railing, as if she could force the ships to clear away by staring hard enough at them. The ash scratched her throat. She should get inside, but she couldn’t look away.
A pair of yachts tangled with a huge sailboat in front of them. Metal screeched and groaned as the boats tried to find some way to maneuver around each other. Judith could just hear the curses of the people on board. The cruise ship bore down on the tangle. They weren’t going to stop.
At the last second the cruise ship swung to the left and made a slow, lumbering arc around the struggling ships, narrowly avoiding the tangle. As they eased around, the boom of the sailboat scraped along their hull, making a shrieking sound worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. Judith felt like making that sound herself.
The harbor mouth was a solid mass of flashing steel and flailing sails. She could barely distinguish one ship from another. There was no way they were going to dodge that. Behind them, what had once been a billowing cloud was now a massive wall bearing down on them like a fog bank.
A few others on the deck stared out at the devastation, pale faced, shaking. The man from the promenade had joined them. He stared at the city, phone still pressed to his ear. Tears filled the corners of his eyes but didn’t fall. Judith looked back at the harbor mouth, her own eyes dry. They were almost there, but it wouldn’t matter. They weren’t going to get through.
Suddenly, a steely mass appeared on Judith’s left. That was the port side, wasn’t it? A warship cut through the water beside the cruise ship, sitting low in the water. Navy sailors wearing gas masks moved purposefully across the deck about ten feet below Judith. A single sailor manned a crow’s nest that was level with the deck of the cruise ship.
As it came even with them, Judith locked eyes with the sailor standing there. Thick eyebrows above a gas mask. A strong, high forehead. A crisp uniform. Then the warship passed her, carrying the sailor with it.
Ahead, the jam of ships pulsed like a tangle of sea snakes in the harbor mouth. The wind whipped violently around them, seeming to come from all directions at once. The warship didn’t slow as it approached the jam.
It must be there to help, right? It’s the US Navy!
A heavy whump sound burst forth. A shell exploded from the warship into the gaggle of civilian boats in the harbor mouth, blowing a yacht into the sky. Chunks of fiberglass rained down with the ash. Seconds later the warship fired another shell into the mass of ships. A wider gap opened. Screams rent the air. A third shell exploded, and then the warship barreled into the civilian boats, its prow cutting through them like butter. Boats fled from the warship as quickly as they could, but some were already sinking. A gap widened like wake behind the warship.
Whoever was steering the cruise ship must have seen the gap too, because they sailed in behind the navy vessel, keeping close as it plowed through the smaller boats.
Judith’s fingers wrapped so tightly around the railing they hurt. The warship was wide and low, but she didn’t think the path it cleared would be big enough for them. Nevertheless the cruise ship squeezed into the space after it. Every second Judith expected to feel the bone-rattling jolt of a collision.
But the other boats were fleeing the navy vessel, and the cruise ship slid through too.
For a moment the clear blue of an empty sky burst above a pure crystal sea. Then the ash rolled over Judith’s head.
Simon
Simon felt numb as the navy ship shoved struggling, sinking civilian vessels out of its way. Their occupants leapt into the water or hung on to scraps of fiberglass. Bodies floated, some in pieces. People were dying not forty feet away. He’d never known with absolute certainty that people near him were dying. But it was happening now, on the boats, in the water, in the city behind him.
Nina. Naomi. Their names roiled in his mind. Was there any way they could have survived the onslaught of that cloud?
Miraculously, their cruise ship was able to follow in the path of the navy vessel. Whoever was steering knew what they were doing. They cleared the mouth of the harbor and swung perpendicular to the shore. Then they headed straight out to sea.
The water beyond the harbor mouth was clear as glass for a moment. Sparse sunlight rippled on the sea, more like twilight than morning sunshine. The sky was the blue of sapphires.
Boats fleeing to sea shattered the illusion. The ash rolled above them. The bomb—or whatever it was—must be enormous. As far as Simon could see down the coastline, billowing ash spilled over the land in a solid mass. The thin shirt over his mouth and nose wouldn’t protect him for long.
Simon waved to the others on the deck, gesturing toward the interior of the ship. They needed to get inside if they had any hope of surviving this. But many ignored him, staring numbly at the whirl of destruction that was once their city.
Simon edged along the railing and tapped the blond girl in running shoes on the shoulder. He gestured to his nose covering and pointed to the ship. She nodded and helped him round up the others, dragging a man in a suit firmly by the arm when he didn’t respond to her right away. Simon’s eyes stung. He closed them to slits, and white powder accumulated on his eyelashes like snowflakes.
As they reached the nearest door and pounded on it to be let inside, something changed in the wind. At first it was subtle, but as the door slid open and the young crewman helped people inside, Simon became more sure. They had sailed into some sort of slipstream, a current that blew parallel to the coast. It was sweeping the ash in one direction, but they were sailing away from it. As Simon stepped into the ship, he looked back. The shoreline, once San Diego, cowered under its noxious cloud, but the ash went no further than the wind current that was already dusting them off for their journey out to sea.
Chapter 3—The Ship
Simon
Shell-shocked people filled the entryway of the ship. Some sat on the floor, huddling against each other like families in a hospital waiting room. Others stared vacantly, disconnected from reality. A handful of people had sustained injuries on their run to the ship: scraped knees, twisted ankles, spreading bruises. Confused passengers asked overloud questions, unable to figure out how their cruise ship had turned into a bomb shelter. Some had been inside their staterooms when it happened. They hadn’t even seen the cloud.
The tall sailor closed the double doors behind Simon and the other stragglers, sealing them off from the ash, and then darted away to check the other doors. There was no sign of any other cruise employees. Where were the officials? The hospitality folks? Where was the captain?
The survivors reeled, looking for someone to tell them what to do. Panic rose. An old man began shouting, and his wife hissed at him to be quiet. A child wailed. Simon was too numb to feel terrified, but his hands shook.
The group around the pregnant woman was the quietest. The women were clearly distressed, but they had something tangible to do. Their charge lay on a couch, breathing too fast and sobbing as the woman with the cross necklace spoke to her in a soft Southern accent. Her three boys stood back, clutching each other, and kept their eyes fixed on their mother. She was the calmest person around as she coaxed the pregnant woman to breathe more slowly. The others in the group hung on her every word, and it helped. Someone needed to do the same for everyone else.
No one looked at him. The panic was reaching a feverish pitch. Children and adults alike cried in corners, clutching at each other. The pregnant woman screamed, her breathing becoming more urgent. The sharp smell of blood tinged the air.
Voices rattled around the entryway, growing in intensity, bordering on hysteria.
“We’ve been nuked!”
“None of the phones work.”
“It’s the terrorists!”
“WE’RE GOING TO DIE!”
This wasn’t helping. Simon waved his arms, trying to get people’s attention. “Everyone, we need to calm down and—” No one was listening.
“I think a power plant exploded.”
“No way. Had to be the Russians.”
“Or the Chinese!”
“I want to go home!”
Suddenly the blond jogger, who’d stayed close to Simon when they entered the ship, climbed onto the empty reception desk. She had a glass cup in her hand that she must have found in the lobby somewhere. She hurled it to the floor behind the desk with a smash and shouted, “Shut up and listen, people!”
In the sudden silence following the crash, she turned to Simon expectantly. Red-rimmed, frightened eyes followed her gaze. He nodded at her and cleared his throat.
“Okay. Sorry to yell,” Simon said. “I think we need to stay calm and figure out what’s going on.”
“Stay calm!” The suited man roused from his stupor. “Did you see that cloud?”
“We’ve been nuked I tell you!” shouted a voice from the back. “It’s already too late!” A few heads nodded in agreement.
“We’re poisoned!” said a middle-aged woman wearing a wide hat with sunglasses swinging from the neck of her polo shirt. She clutched at her throat.
“I was just outside.” Simon spoke slowly, as if he were soothing a frightened horse. “I saw the cloud. But the wind currents are keeping the ash close to land. As long as the ship keeps moving out to sea, we should be okay.” He had no idea if that was true or not. How long does radiation take to kick in if you aren’t in the initial blast? It had to be almost immediate at this range, and his skin was still firmly attached to his body.
“What happened out there?” asked the elderly woman who had shushed her husband. She appeared to be one of the passengers.
“Are we at war?” asked an old man with a thick accent.
“Was it the terrorists?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Simon said, “but panicking won’t help right now.” He stayed still, fighting to use his best, authoritative teacher voice, the one he used to calm students the day before a big final. “I think we need to focus on helping this lady and getting the kids calmed down. We should also find the captain.”
One by one the adults—and some of the teenagers—nodded. They looked at him anxiously, waiting for him to tell them what to do.
“Uhhh, okay. Let’s try to arrange care for any injuries. Does anyone here have medical training?”
Nobody volunteered. The ship had to have a doctor or a nurse. Someone else should be taking control by now, telling them where to go. All Simon wanted to do was search for Esther, but the crowd was still watching him. They huddled together, strangers pressed against strangers, many whimpering.
“Maybe we should move further into the ship,” Simon said finally. “It’s pretty crowded here. Is there a central meeting area or dining hall or something?”
“We can go to the plaza,” said one of the passengers. “It has space for hundreds.”
“Good. Let’s try to get everyone together there. And let’s find someone official from the cruise who can help us.” He singled out the older couple. “Would you two please take all the children out of here so we can give the lady some space? And would you”—he turned to an Asian woman with an ID card on a lanyard around her neck—“please ask around for anyone with medical training?”
On cue the pregnant woman hollered again. Simon felt like throwing up. He went over to the group surrounding her as the people he had delegated leapt to their duties.
“Will you be able to move her?” he asked quietly. The blood smell was stronger.
“It’s too late,” said a tiny older woman with long lavender hair. “This child’s coming any second.”
“Okay, we’ll get out of your way,” Simon said.
“What can I do to help?” The blond jogger had climbed down off the desk.
“Can you find the bridge?” Simon said, turning toward her. She looked scared but determined, and she’d already proved she could keep a cool head. “See if you can find the captain or an officer to take over.”
“No problem,” she said. She gave a sharp nod, setting her ponytail swinging.
“Thanks. Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Judith.”
“I’m Simon.”
Judith bared her teeth in what was probably meant to be a smile, but her face was grim. She turned and ran down a passageway.
“Okay, the rest of you, let’s head to the plaza and settle everyone down,” Simon said. The pregnant woman screamed. “And see if we can find a doctor!”
Judith
Judith jogged down the dim passageway. She was heading for the front of the ship, but beyond that she had no idea where the captain should be. Doors lined the passageway, ornate numbers set in plates beside each of them. A pile of suitcases had been abandoned on the carpet. She leapt over them and ran on. If she kept running, kept her heart rate up, maybe she could avoid the terror that threatened to overwhelm her. How can this be happening?
At the end of the passageway she found two elevators. She pushed the buttons, but the panel where the numbers should appear remained blank. No elevators then. There was a service door nearby with a porthole-like window in it. She was reaching for the handle when a face appeared in the window, right at eye level.
Judith gasped and jumped back. The face disappeared, then the door cracked open. A young man with a mop of black hair above a round, dark face emerged. He wasn’t much older than Judith, and he was very short. He wore a white uniform with a sailor’s collar and a blue embroidered logo that said, “Catalina: Your Island at Sea.”
“Excuse me,” Judith said. “I’m looking for the bridge. Can you help me?”
“Bridge?” The young man’s eyes were the size of headlights. He had a cut above one eye and blood dripped into his eyebrow.
“I need to find the captain.”
“I’m not allowed on the bridge,” the young man said softly.
“It’s an emergency,” Judith said.
He looked around the passageway, still halfway behind the door, like a rabbit peeking out of a hole.
“What’s happening?” His voice sounded like a child’s.
For a moment Judith wanted to cry. “I don’t know.”
They stared at each other, lost, fearful.
Get a grip, Judith, she thought. You’re both adults. She adopted a confident voice, the one she’d practiced to use in her interview to describe her accomplishments. The interview! It was too late for that now. She supposed she wouldn’t need her sharp gray suit now, but she pictured herself dressed in it anyway, hair in a perfect chignon.
“Take me to the bridge,” she commanded.
The young man nodded and beckoned her into the stairwell. As they climbed, he chattered like a frightened bird.
“I am Manny. I am from the Philippines. I am only working here for three months. I heard the screaming, and some of the crew ran away. I am thinking the ship is safer than the land.”
“You’re probably right.”
“What’s your name?” Manny asked.
“Judith Stone.”
“You are a guest?”
“What?”
“A ship guest,” Manny said patiently. “We do not call them passengers here.”
“Oh, no. I ran to the ship when the cloud started coming down. I’m from San Diego.”
“I am sorry for your family.”
Judith stopped short. Her final step echoed through the cold stairwell. She stared at Manny without really seeing him. Her family was in San Francisco. Her father ran a busy tech company and rarely had time to see her. Her mother and stepfather were preoccupied with their second family—a spoiled four-year-old boy and a colicky baby. Judith had barely thought of them. They were in San Francisco. They would be far enough away from the bomb or chemical attack or whatever was going on out there. Wouldn’t they?
“They’re fine,” she said. They had to be.
“As I say, I am sorry,” Manny said. He seemed to take comfort in having something to do. He walked quickly through the ship, urging her to watch her head when they stepped through a low doorway. He pointed out the passageway leading to the galley, the service elevator, now silent, and the back entrance to the captain’s clubhouse. “For the vip guests.”
“The what?”
“You know, the extra-special people. The vip guests.”
“VIPs?”
“Yes. I am thinking this is the first time you are on a cruise ship.”
“I don’t really like the ocean.”
“But you are living in San Diego?”
“I go to college there. They have a good acceptance rate for Stanford Biz.” She’d had her eye on Stanford since junior high. Her father was an alum, of course, and she’d peppered him with questions. Not now, Judy. I’m busy. That’s how it always was. He often forgot that she had only gone by Judith since her tenth birthday. Judy was a kid’s name. But she was going to Stanford Business School. Someone would clear up this mess. The military. The cavalry. An image of the navy ship blasting through the jammed civilian boats in the harbor flitted before her, but she pushed it down.
“This is the bridge,” Manny said.
They arrived at a plain white door at the end of a long corridor lined with identical doors. She’d expected something grander, perhaps with a voice-recognition panel or fingerprint scanner or something. Manny hesitated. She waved at him, indicating that he should hurry. Manny pushed open the door and stepped back to allow her through.
