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

by Jordan Rivet

Judith

  Judith and Manny waited anxiously as the captain listened through the headset. Ren hovered beside him, arms folded over her crisp uniform. Once, the captain snapped his fingers sharply, and Ren leapt to get him a scrap of paper and a pencil.

  Outside the huge windows the sky grew darker still.

  The other crewman, Vinny, whimpered softly. Judith stayed as far from him as possible in case he vomited again. She joined Manny in the second row of computer consoles. She’d only known him for about ten minutes, but she already felt like they were a team. She found a box of tissues by one of the computer consoles and helped him wipe the blood from the cut above his eye.

  She thought about what the captain had said: it wasn’t just San Diego. This incident, whatever had happened, was not isolated. She had assumed the rest of the world carried on as usual, watching the reports from San Diego with fascination. They would organize relief efforts, fund-raisers. One day she’d be able to look back on it and describe what it was like to be here.

  But what if other cities really were affected? What if they were at war? Wars were something that happened in other countries, to people on the news. She was too young to experience one firsthand!

  “Are you praying, Judith?” Manny whispered.

  “What?” She had closed her eyes, her hand still holding the wad of tissues over Manny’s brow.

  “I am praying too,” Manny said. His eyes were wide and scared. “Every minute since we are leaving the shore.”

  “No, I just . . . What happened to your head anyway?”

  She didn’t want to admit how terrified she felt. She tried to ignore the way the captain’s jaw worked back and forth as he listened to the radio.

  “I fell,” Manny said simply. “It is nothing. We are hitting something, and I fell against the cart for the bags.”

  “You’re a porter?” Judith asked.

  Manny nodded. He seemed about to say more, but then the captain straightened from the computer console. His face was waxen, the life drained from it at what he had heard.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is as I feared.”

  Simon

  The plaza was packed now, and arguments began to break out. People were getting restless. Fear seeped through the crowd like the smell of rotting meat. The passengers teetered on the edge of hysteria. Simon felt it too.

  Where were the officers? The emergency protocols? The ship must have standard procedures in place for accidents. Why weren’t they being used?

  Simon fought down panic and climbed back onto the café table. It wobbled a bit, but he wasn’t too heavy. He had to keep everyone occupied. Where is the captain? He called for everyone’s attention. The crowd took a long time to quiet down, but eventually silence descended. Wide-eyed faces turned toward him.

  “The captain should be arriving any minute,” Simon said. “And everyone will get some food soon. We need to find out what’s going on out there. I don’t like the look of that sky. Has anyone been able to get on the Internet or reach anyone on the phone?”

  “I’ve been trying. Can’t get through,” said a man sitting on the plaza floor with a laptop open on his knees.

  “Aren’t we too far away from shore?” someone called from the balcony.

  “We’ve been sailing for barely an hour.”

  “I can’t even get a busy signal.”

  “It’s no use!”

  They grumbled and tapped at their phones, but no one had managed to get any sort of connection. Simon was so used to being able to call or text his wife at any moment. It was surreal to be completely cut off.

  “The ship must have its own computers,” Simon said. “Anyone know how to get into those? Someone from the crew?”

  The tall sailor who helped them at the gangway had been sitting on the staircase. He stood.

  “The cruise director and most of the reception crew ran for it when they saw the security guards go,” he said, voice booming across the plaza. “They thought they’d be safer in the terminal building on the waterfront. They’re the ones with access to the computers at reception. But if anyone’s good with that stuff I’m sure they’re not that secure.”

  “I can help.” A young woman leaned over the second railing. Her hair was bright pink and spiky. Her face glinted with piercings. “As long as the computers are running, I can get into them. I’ll try to get a connection.”

  “Thank you,” Simon said. “Can you also figure out how many people are supposed to be on board?”

  “You got it.” The young computer expert saluted and disappeared from view.

  “What next?” someone asked.

  The crowd looked expectantly at Simon. He opened his mouth, but before he could answer, a voice spoke from the top of the grand staircase.

  “Well, well.”

  The captain had arrived.

  Murmurs pattered around the balconies like rain on a roof. The captain had silver hair and a craggy face, and his brass buttons shone. He looked every inch the hero. Simon breathed a sigh of relief and stepped off the table.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” the captain said. “You seem to have things well in hand.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m glad you’re here to take over now,” Simon said. He noticed Judith, the blond jogger, standing behind the captain with a short, dark-haired man in a crew uniform, barely more than a boy.

  “On the contrary,” the captain said. He had a slight accent. “My sniveling hotelier seems to have run off, along with my pilot and half the bridge crew. How would you like to manage passenger affairs for the time being? I need to sail this ship, which is something I don’t ordinarily do, incidentally.”

  “I was only getting things started,” Simon said. It had been a long time since anyone had actually been eager to give Simon more responsibility over people. He just wanted to find his daughter, find answers about Nina and Naomi.

  The questions started to hammer down again.

  “Captain, what happened?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Can we turn around?”

  “Was it a terrorist attack?”

  The captain held up a hand. That was all it took to get people to be quiet again. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of his nose. The tendrils curled into nothing above the stairs.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I am Captain Ignatius Martinelli. We are currently sailing directly to the Hawaiian Islands. The disaster is centered in the contiguous United States. We’re gathering information via radio, but it’s sporadic at the moment. The cell networks are down, as you have probably noticed. I have reason to believe San Diego is not the only city to have been destroyed. You will be able to disembark in Hawaii in four days, where we should learn more.”

  A firestorm of questions burst forth as Captain Martinelli paused to take another drag on his cigarette.

  “Destroyed?”

  “Four days?”

  “What about our families?”

  “Which other cities?”

  “Are you sure San Diego is destroyed?”

  “Four days!”

  “We’re supposed to be going to Mexico!”

  “Are we at war?”

  Captain Martinelli raised a hand. “Not war,” he said quietly. “Yellowstone.”

  The word was a gong.

  “You mean the volcano?”

  Captain Martinelli inclined his head. For a heartbeat, the plaza was deathly silent.

  “Ridiculous!” someone shouted.

  More voices joined in, panic escalating again. It was like someone had let off a hundred fireworks.

  “That’s conspiracy theory stuff!”

  “Was it really the volcano?”

  “Why didn’t we have any warning?”

  “If we’re not at war, why can’t we go back to the city?”

  “What do you mean, destroyed?!”

  Captain Martinelli raised his hand again. It took longer for the crowd to calm down this time. Simon’s numbness had begun to recede, replaced by bone-
rattling shakes. The captain wasn’t making him feel better.

  “That cloud you saw rolling over the city was volcanic ash,” Captain Martinelli said through another puff of smoke. “It contains glass and sulfur, among other things. It is dangerous to the lungs and very heavy when wet.”

  The captain spoke calmly, but his words set off another flurry of conversations around the plaza.

  “Yellowstone is hundreds of miles from San Diego.”

  “He’s lost it.”

  “I want to go home!”

  Frank, the older man with the mustache, leaned over and spoke to Simon. “I was in Washington when St. Helens blew. I’ve seen this kind of ash before. He could be right.”

  Simon tried to recall everything he knew about the volcano deep beneath Yellowstone National Park. It was one of the world’s only supervolcanoes. If it truly had erupted, the results would be catastrophic. Apocalyptic even.

  Nina. Her name beat in his mind like a drum.

  “Another few minutes in port,” the captain continued, “and the ash would have clogged up our engines worse than a pound of sand in a gas tank. Over the next few days it will fall atop buildings and vehicles. Add a bit of rain, and it will get heavier and heavier, until they collapse under its weight. Everything close to the eruption will be as flat as Kansas soon.”

  “But we’re in California!”

  “I think he really has lost it.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Can we get a new captain?”

  “You may do as you like,” the captain said. He didn’t seem to share the fear and panic that thundered around the plaza. He just sucked on his cigarette like it was his only source of air. “As I said, we are on course for Hawaii. Perhaps we’ll reach it. Perhaps we won’t. If that was the Yellowstone supereruption, we won’t have long no matter what we do.”

  Tremors ran through the crowd. Conspiracy. Fear mongering. Lost it. Impossible. Apocalypse.

  Could it be true? Simon remembered what the apple pastry man had said about the earthquakes. The image of the ash cloud rolling over the city was forever burned into his memory. The explanation fit, but if it was true—if the captain was right—God help them all.

  Nina. If the Yellowstone volcano had erupted, was there any chance at all that she and Naomi had survived? Such an event could wipe out the entire continent.

  He had to stop this spiral of thoughts. Simon climbed the steps to where the captain stood. Frank followed him.

  “Sir,” he said. “My name is Simon Harris.”

  The captain shook his hand. His palms were dry as dust.

  Simon spoke quietly so the other people in the plaza couldn’t hear him. “I’m not sure we should get everyone worried about Yellowstone until we know for certain. We’ve all seen the documentaries and . . . well . . . I can’t see people staying calm for long. Has it been confirmed?”

  Captain Martinelli looked him in the eye. Simon shivered. Emptiness. It was like there was nothing at all behind his irises.

  “We’ve just been in touch with another ship via radio,” the captain said. “Cell towers are down all along the West Coast. The ship was just off San Francisco. Or where San Francisco used to be. They saw it all.”

  Judith stirred nearby, but her severe face stayed still.

  “Are you positive it was Yellowstone? Maybe Mount St. Helens . . .” Simon felt like he was grasping at straws, looking for anything that could pull him out of this spiral.

  “The volcano blew,” the captain said. “They’re saying it was the big one. No one within a hundred-mile radius is talking. At all.” The captain took a long drag on his cigarette. “The ash has spread across the West and as far away as Ohio.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “This morning. 7:00 a.m. on the nose.”

  “Why weren’t there warnings?” Judith interjected. “We could have done something.”

  Her face had gone deathly pale. She must have seen the documentaries too. The boy in the crew uniform beside her looked equally scared.

  “Like what? Evacuate the entire North American continent? Send everyone running through Mexico? It was too late. I suppose the government knew they couldn’t do enough. Perhaps we’ll get to Hawaii and find the president holed up in a bunker.”

  “This can’t be real,” Simon said.

  The captain shrugged. “We’d better hope Hawaii doesn’t close the borders.”

  Simon looked out at all the people. He felt detached from his body, as if he were eyeballs and a racing, sputtering heart suspended above the steps. The plaza contracted before his eyes. This couldn’t be real.

  The captain’s words infected the crowd like a virus. They were angry, scared. They didn’t want to believe it, but the captain was the only one with access to news of the outside world. Simon saw the situation escalating. It could erupt at any moment. He found his lungs again. Breathed in.

  “Hey! Everyone listen to me. We don’t know if what the captain says is true. It’s just too soon. I was in New York when the Twin Towers fell. Back then we thought every major city was under attack. We thought the world would end right alongside Manhattan. It didn’t. Before we start crying apocalypse, let’s focus on the trip to Hawaii. Let’s all pitch in, folks. It’ll be good for us.” He turned away from the crowd. “Captain, will you help us get everyone settled? We need your authority.”

  The captain lit another cigarette. Simon wanted to throw his lighter across the room.

  “Do whatever you want,” Captain Martinelli said. “I intend to sail us to Maui and watch the world end from a white-sand beach.”

  He turned and walked back up the stairs.

  Chapter 5—Catalina

  Judith

  The plaza boiled like a kettle. The captain disappeared down the corridor they had come from. He had delivered his news and abandoned his passengers to deal with the consequences.

  People gathered in front of the shops, talking in tight groups, some weeping. Even the children had adopted their parents’ somber attitudes. They clutched hands and hid behind legs as their mothers and fathers grappled with what was happening. There were quite a few children, Judith realized, many with orange life jackets securely fastened around their small bodies. She had always thought of cruises as the domain of retirees, but this one catered to families. Bright colors—cartoonlike and cheery—adorned the shops. One corner had a playground with low, soft things to climb on—all fish themed—like the play area of a shopping mall. In addition to the expected assortment of gifts and designer goods for sale, there was a game shop and an ice cream stand.

  Judith heard a shuddering sob. A pale woman sitting on the floor near her spoke softly to her mousy son.

  “Neal, sweetie, we’ll go home as soon as we can. I know you’re scared.”

  “I’m cold, Mommy.” The boy’s teary eyes were wide and luminous.

  “I packed sweaters in our suitcases.” The woman hugged the boy close. “We’ll find them after we have some lunch.”

  Judith felt very alone. It couldn’t be true about San Francisco. Her mom and the kids would be all right. She would see her father again. The captain had to be wrong. The whole country couldn’t be wiped out, even if the volcano had erupted. She had too many things she wanted to do with her life, too many plans. There had to be some mistake.

  She joined Simon and an old man with a large gray mustache.

  “We need to keep people busy and avoid a panic,” Simon was saying.

  “You’re right,” the older man said. “That kind of fatalism never did anyone any good.” He jerked his head in the direction the captain had gone.

  “I agree with Simon,” Judith interjected. “We should also figure out how much food and fresh water we have.”

  “I’m sure Ana Ivanovna can help us with that,” Simon said. “First, we need to get everyone fed in an orderly fashion and organize some people to—”

  “Excuse me.” A voice broke into the conversation. “Why are you making th
e decisions now? You don’t work for the cruise line.” It was a middle-aged woman, Latina in appearance, wearing a polo shirt, with sunglasses on a cord around her neck. Several children surrounded her, including a sharp-eyed adolescent girl.

  “I’m not deciding anything,” Simon said. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “Why should you be in charge?”

  “I’m not trying to be in charge.”

  Judith thought it was perfectly obvious that Simon should be calling the shots. He was remarkably calm considering the circumstances. And he wasn’t as unsettling as Captain Martinelli, that was for sure.

  “There’s room for everyone to lend a hand,” said the man with the mustache. “No reason we can’t be civilized.”

  The woman eyed them. Something about her face made Judith think of a seagull. “I’ll gather the passengers for the meal.”

  “Thank you,” Simon said. “Everyone will feel better once we get some food in us. What’s your name?”

  “Rosa Cordova.” The woman swept back up the steps, the children following her. Simon gave Judith a look that was probably meant to be a smile and then started down the stairs.

  “I have to find my daughter,” he said.

  Judith shivered. She still wore her jogging gear. The plaza had grown darker, colder. Many of the lights were off. The skylight above them looked like dark sunglasses. Was that ash? What would they do if the sky never cleared?

  She thought about her family, but she couldn’t reconcile what the captain had said about San Francisco with reality. They would get to Hawaii in four days and discover it was all a terrible mistake. They just had to hold on until then. The first order of business was to get warm.

  She went into one of the shops, smelling wood polish and cotton when she pushed open the door. No one manned the register. Her debit card was tucked into the pocket of her running shorts, but that wouldn’t do her much good here. She hesitated, then put on a sweater with the Catalina’s logo screen-printed on the back. She found a pair of navy-blue yoga pants and pulled them on over her running shorts. The feeling of thick cotton against her skin was comforting, almost like a hug. She pulled off the tags and pocketed them. She’d find a way to pay later, when the world was back to normal.