by Jordan Rivet
She was clear of the burning oil now. She wiped the salt water out of her eyes and checked her progress. The speedboat was coming toward her. For one wild moment she was sure it was Michael coming to save her. That was the boat that had brought him to her. Then it was pulling up alongside her, and Simon was reaching out a hand.
She stared at him for a moment, the sour taste of betrayal in her mouth. He’d left her. He’d chosen Esther. She wasn’t his daughter.
Simon must have taken her hesitation as an indication of shock. He leaned over and pulled her into the boat. She came to her senses and helped, just managing to scramble over the gunwale. She landed hard on the seat. Cuts from the explosion covered her body. Bruises were already forming, ugly and dark, on her legs.
Simon was talking, saying something along the lines of you’ll be okay thought you were dead so glad to see you’re all right sorry about Michael.
Judith remained silent as they returned to the Catalina and were hoisted back on board. Maybe she was in shock. People came to help, wrapped them in blankets, summoned food and water. Judith looked around at the familiar faces, the deck, the lifeboat bays. She was exhausted. Manny knelt beside her, placed something soft under her head.
She let the world around her fade to black.
Simon
Simon lost track of Judith as people came to help her away. He wanted to speak to her, to explain. There was something in the way she had looked at him when he found her swimming toward the ship. Something cold, a little dead even. She must be in shock after what she’d just endured.
Simon returned to the bridge, where he found Kim sitting on the floor. Ren handed her a drink of water, and she explained what they’d learned about China’s response to the disaster and impending famine. They wouldn’t find a haven here.
The land had rejected them again.
Captain Martinelli had the helm. He didn’t look at Simon and the others. He sailed them away from the burning harbor, humming slightly.
“How much fuel do we have left?” Simon asked.
“Not much,” Ren said.
“Be specific.”
“We can get far enough away from the coast that a storm surge won’t throw us back on land. That’s about it.”
“Let’s do it,” Simon said.
“Excuse me, Simon,” Captain Martinelli began. “I’m the one giving ord— ”
“Not anymore. Get us away from the coast, then cut the engines.”
The captain shrugged and obeyed.
“Get everyone together,” Simon said. “The whole community. It’s time we made a decision.”
Chapter 24—Later
Simon
Simon sat at the bar in the Mermaid Lounge. He liked working here. The wide windows provided a decent view of the sea, but it tended to be less crowded than the Atlantis Dining Hall. The sky outside swirled dark and purple.
Simon was writing in a blank notebook he’d taken from the bookshop. The sea was still for once, and a light wind coming through a broken window ruffled the paper as he scribbled page after page. He’d assign someone to fix the window soon, but in the meantime he enjoyed the sea breeze.
He was putting the finishing touches on an extensive plan allotting duties on a rotating basis. It included rationed break time, meal shifts, deck time to make sure everyone got enough Vitamin D, and even who would be on call if a storm came up. It also officially set up a council to make decisions for the ship. Every adult would participate on a rotating basis. The plan was far more detailed than the one they had developed on the journey from Guam, but it followed the same principles. Crucially, it completed the blurring of the divisions between former crew, passengers, and runners. They were all equal now.
After their disastrous attempt to seek refuge in China, they had decided to stay on the Catalina for a while. They would drift. They would wait out the troubles. They’d salvaged a fair amount of food as they drifted along somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. They were learning to mine the sea for sustenance: fishing, skimming seaweed, dredging up shellfish whenever they drifted into shallow waters. They would be nearly self-sustaining, at least until the world calmed down.
It might be for a few months or even a few years, but they’d learn to take care of themselves. Until the skies cleared and they were able to communicate with people on land, they couldn’t keep wasting fuel by sailing where they wouldn’t be allowed to stay.
Frank found Simon in the Mermaid Lounge. He wound his way through the tables and the bits of salvage stored in piles around the room.
“Simon, do you have a minute?” he asked.
“Sure, Frank,” Simon said, putting down his pen. “How are you?”
“As good as can be expected.” Frank scratched a finger through his walrus mustache.
“Weren’t you on salvage duty this morning?” Simon asked.
They had come across a current of flotsam, and they’d been working all morning to pull up anything they might be able to use somewhere on the ship. They had begun stockpiling any raw materials that might be valuable. Who knew what the world’s economy would be like next time they connected with other survivors?
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Frank said. “I picked up a few things that might be useful. I might try building a reverse-osmosis system . . . for desalinating water.”
“Doesn’t the ship already have a water system?” Simon asked.
“It does, but it’s an evaporation system. It uses the energy from the engines to evaporate the salt out of the water while we’re moving. The ship uses up water reserves whenever we’re not actually sailing anywhere.”
“So we’re using up our water supply now that we’re not running the engines?”
“At the moment, yes,” Frank said. “Since we don’t know how long we’re going to be here, I figured I’d start working on a new system.”
“You don’t need my permission, Frank,” Simon said. “It sounds like a great idea.”
“To be honest, I was hoping you’d tell me not to, because you have a plan to get us back to land soonish,” Frank said.
“I wish I did. Anything you can do to make our lives here more sustainable would be great. We need to wait this out.”
Simon believed the situation on land would only get worse. As the famines set in, more people would die. They would fight each other for the remaining scraps of food. They would despair. At least on the ship they were safe. They had a small number of people who could take care of each other, and they had the entire sea at their disposal.
“Roger that,” Frank said. “I’ll get to work then!”
There was a light in Frank’s eye as he turned to go. Everyone needed something to do, something that gave them purpose. If they were going to stay on the ship for a while, they’d have to stay busy to survive.
And one day the land would welcome them back.
Judith
Judith and Manny sorted through salvage. They were on suitcase duty on the lido deck. It was amazing how well suitcases floated. They were usually full of strange and useful things that could be cleaned and dispersed among the people of the Catalina.
“That’s the last of it,” Judith said, tossing a pair of children’s T-shirts onto a pile. “Would you mind taking these down to Constance in the plaza? I’m going to keep working on the socks.”
There were always spare socks. They matched them up as well as they could, relying on size even when the colors didn’t go together. The other clothes would go down to Constance Gordon, who was a seamstress by trade. She had set up a shop in the plaza, where she could mend and sort clothes while baby Cally gurgled away on a pile of fabric beside her.
“No problem,” Manny said. He wrapped his arms around the T-shirt pile and lifted it, his face disappearing behind the folds.
Judith spotted a familiar blue shade in the stack.
“Hang on a sec.” She reached forward, not wanting to stand as her legs were still healing, and pulled the T-shirt from the middle
of the pile. It was damp, but the screen print of Thomas the Tank Engine was still intact. “Okay, go ahead.”
“I will come back for more soon,” Manny said. “And then maybe we go for some dinner. I can help you walk.”
“Sure, thanks,” Judith mumbled, staring at the Thomas T-shirt in her hands.
Manny turned and tottered toward the door, the clothes piled higher than his dark curly hair. Where most people on the ship deferred to Simon, Manny took his cues from Judith. She had become his lodestar. For her part, she liked having an ally.
She tried hard to think of Manny as her supporter, not her friend. She had lost too many friends. Nora. Michael. She had made the mistake of becoming too attached. They had bonded through the brief, intense trauma of the disaster, but their deaths hurt her far too much. She would guard her heart in the future. She had already set up a barrier between herself and Ren by refusing to talk about Nora.
Judith had been betrayed. By the land. By the navy. By all the people who had refused to help them. By all the people she had put her faith in.
And by Simon.
Things would never be the same between Judith and Simon. She wouldn’t let on how she felt, of course. Simon was very popular right now. But she would be a little colder, a little more distant. She’d begin gathering people who resented how much power Simon had accumulated, how much control he now had over what happened on the ship. She’d build up her own supporters, and she’d use Simon’s precious rotating council system to do it. She had plenty of time.
Judith crumpled the Thomas T-shirt in her thin hands.
Eventually, she’d make her move.
*****
Find out what happens to Judith, Simon, Esther, and the Catalina in the action-packed post-apocalyptic trilogy: The Seabound Chronicles.
The adventure continues in . . .
Seabound
When an apocalyptic catastrophe decimates the land, a lucky few escape to sea. 1,003 survivors make their home on a souped-up cruise ship called the Catalina. After sixteen years, the strain begins to show in a floating world of distrust and shifting allegiances.
A young mechanic named Esther wants to prove herself, but she tends to bash things up in the name of progress. When disaster strikes the water system on Esther’s watch, she’ll risk everything to fix her mistake.
But is Esther ready for the dangers she’ll face on the post-apocalyptic ocean? Can she save her friends about the Catalina before it’s too late?
Read Seabound now!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jordan Rivet is an American author from Arizona. She lives in Hong Kong with her husband. Prone to seasickness, she likes to watch the ships in Victoria Harbour while standing on solid ground.
Also by Jordan Rivet:
Seabound
Seaswept
Seafled
Burnt Sea
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www.jordanrivet.com
Please consider leaving a review of Burnt Sea on Amazon to help other readers decide whether they’d like to buy this book. Thank you for reading!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank everyone who has been so supportive during this writing adventure. I couldn’t do this without the encouragement and enthusiasm of my writing and reading friends.
The hours I’ve spent working on this book—even the sad parts—have been more fun in the company of the terrific Hong Kong writing community. Thanks especially to Willow, Laura, Amanda, Betsy, and Collier.
My critique groups have helped me with their attention to detail, their honesty, and their wisdom. Thank you for being excited about the Catalina’s journey and for gasping at all the right places.
I’d like to thank the early readers of this book for their insights: Willow Hewitt, Rachel Marsh, MaryAnna Donaldson, Ayden and Julie Young, Brooke Richter, Sarah Merrill Mowat, Rachel Andrews, Laura Cook, Betsy Cheung, and Sebastian Brown.
Thank you to the AC crowd for inspiring me to set bigger goals and bring my author game to the next level. Thanks, also, for the laughs.
James at GoOnWrite.com has done it again with an awesome cover. Marcus Trower continues to be my favorite editor. I’m grateful to both of them for helping me put together a professional product.
Thank you, husband, for keeping me honest, giving me space to write, and listening to me when I think out loud.
And I especially want to thank the readers of The Seabound Chronicles for your warm response to my books. I’ll do my best to keep you guys entertained.
Thanks for reading!
Jordan Rivet
Hong Kong, 2014
CONTENTS
Dedication
1—The Earthquake
2—The Cloud
3—The Ship
4—The Plaza
5—Catalina
6—The Dining Hall
7—Day Two
8—The Storm
9—The Captain
10—The Meeting
11—The Message
12—Guam
13—The Beach
14—Lifeboat
15—Aftermath
16—The Shops
17—Decisions
18—Contact
19—The Harbor
20—The City
21—Retreat
22—Burnt Sea
23—Seabound
24—Later
The adventure continues . . .
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
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