SALT: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

by Colin F. Barnes

  “There’s more going on than we realise,” Singh said. “I’ve known Jim a long time, and that wasn’t him last night. I fear he’s losing it. With the nonsense about your Frank going after him, Marcus, and Faust’s group being a pain in the ass, it’s too much pressure for anyone to handle.”

  “Hey, I had nothing to do with Frank, and there’s a reason for that… that’s not why Jim’s freaking out. I’m sure it’ll all come out in the wash in the end.”

  Eva stepped away from Marcus and headed for the exit. “I’ll come back tomorrow if Mike hasn’t changed in the meantime, Doc,” Eva said. “Thanks for letting me see him.”

  “Take care, and don’t do anything stupid. That wound needs time and rest to heal.”

  Eva waved to the doc without turning back and reached out for the door, but Marcus got there first, opening it and standing back for her to walk through.

  She muttered her thanks.

  Once outside, she turned to him. “You’ve got to go easy on Jim. He’s a good man.”

  “Hey, I know, but he’s not infallible, you know.”

  “You fancy taking over, do you? You see all this chaos as an opportunity.”

  “Every day is an opportunity, love.”

  Marcus smiled at her and walked off down the corridor. Instead of turning right to head out, he turned left toward the main staircase.

  “Hey, where you going?” Eva said.

  “Engineering,” he called back. “I need to have a word with Stanic about Ade. And we can see if anything crops up to help us with our little problem.”

  “Let me know if you discover anything.”

  He stopped then and turned back to face her. “Wait, what? You not coming after all, then?”

  “No, you go. I’ve got something else I want to follow up.”

  “I’ll come with you, then.”

  “No,” Eva said. “I’ll go on my own. Don’t even dare to follow. I appreciate you looking out for me, but nothing’s going to happen in broad daylight with everyone out doing their business. Besides, I’ve got a manifest to get.”

  “If that’s what you want, love. It’s your life. Don’t say I didn’t try.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked off, his long black coat flapping out behind him.

  Eva couldn’t tell if he was an asshole naturally or whether he had to work on it. Whatever, she wanted to check on Danny, and while there, she wanted to drop in on Jim, maybe get some answers about his reaction to Mike, or at the very least the manifest.

  Chapter 20

  Jim woke and threw up on the floor as he tried to get off his bunk. His head pounded, and his guts churned. He swayed and fell back, hitting his head against a shelf, which sent him sprawling on his ass. He clenched his jaw and held his breath as pain shot up his spine.

  “Motherfucker.” His skull seemed on fire inside and out, thanks to the rum, and to hitting his head on the shelf. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward, trying to stop his vision from swirling. His throat burned, and he spat out the rum-laced saliva. Wiping his face with the blanket from his bunk, he stumbled to his feet, resting his hands against the door to regain his balance.

  The cabin was lit by weak moonlight. The wind had got up, making it harder for him to remain standing. Waves smashed against the hull. They might as well have been smashing against his head.

  Jim’s family picture stared back at him, reminding him of the man he had been, judging him for the man he had become. With a flash of fury, he swiped the pictures from the door and ripped them up, throwing them to the floor.

  “That’s not me,” he slurred, “was never me.” He didn’t recognise his old self any more. It didn’t just seem like a lifetime ago, it seemed like someone else’s lifetime ago.

  Falling back onto the bunk, he sat on the radio, realised he’d been cradling it all afternoon, hoping for a response, hoping for something to just make some fucking sense. He raised his arm, ready to throw the radio against the wall, smash it to pieces to replicate his life. But he couldn’t do it; his fate was still tethered to that little screen. All he wanted was to see his message received, to know they were still there.

  He let the radio fall from his hands safely onto the bunk as he collapsed onto his side.

  Jim’s breath came long and slow. His heart rate dropped, and as though connected, the waves seemed to calm. But his mind still raged. He thought about Faust.

  Her sneering face mocked him. She knew, he thought. The way she kept going on about his lies, she must know. It was too late now for the truth to come out. There was nothing to say any more. Besides, he thought, if Mike ever manages to speak again, he’ll tell everyone what he saw, who he saw. They’d put it together and realise Jim had known all along.

  They would revolt. Rebel. It would tear the place apart.

  Did he care? Beneath it all, he still did. Even if he couldn’t go on, he wanted to give the others a chance. Faust had to be dealt with as a priority. He remembered Graves saying it would be dealt with, but she was still there, alive, a ticking time bomb.

  Sitting up, Jim reached to his nightstand and picked up his regular two-way radio. Switching to Marcus’s private channel, he depressed the switch and said, “Graves, you there? It’s Jim. Come in.”

  He knew he sounded drunk, didn’t care.

  Again he tried, “Graves, pick up. I don’t have all day.”

  The radio squelched with static. The EM field was still fucked up by the solar storms, but the two-ways should still work within the small distance of the flotilla. The bastard was ignoring him. He was about to press the button again when Graves’ voice came through the tinny speaker.

  “Jim, what’s going on, what do you want?”

  “It’s not done. We had an agreement.”

  “We do, and it will be done, but on my schedule.”

  “You bastard, don’t fuck with me. I warned you before, Graves.”

  The signal was cut. This time, Jim didn’t stop himself and threw the two-way against the opposite wall of his cabin with as much force as he could muster. It shattered into pieces. Bits of plastic flew in all directions, and the circuit board broke in half. The remnants clattered to the floor. Jim stood, grabbed his knife, and left the cabin. If Graves wouldn’t uphold the deal, he’d sort it himself.

  ***

  Faust leaned against the bars, looking bored, when Jim approached. She looked up and stretched a sneering smile across her vicious face, although her expression faltered when Jim locked eyes with her.

  Perhaps it was a natural reaction to a predator, he thought. Something about his intentions translated to her and knocked her down a peg. But still, she puffed herself up, held out her chin, and started to spew a tangle of profanities.

  “Had second thoughts, Captain?” she said. “Want some company, after all, huh?”

  When she spat in Jim’s face, he reached out and grabbed her scrawny throat with his right hand, crushing her windpipe, watching as her face turned a dark shade of purple.

  She kicked uselessly, scratched at his face, but he continued to squeeze, pulling her face into the bars. Ignoring her pathetic attacks, he leaned his face in like a lover going in for a kiss.

  “You tell me now, what the hell do you think you know about me?” He could smell his own foul breath as he slurred out the words with heavy breaths. “Enough for me to end you right here?”

  She choked; her eyes bulged.

  He eased his grip slightly.

  “I’m waiting. What do you know? You’ve got five seconds.”

  “I, I…”

  “Jim? What the hell?”

  Jim let Faust go and staggered back, dropping his knife to the floor. “Eva? It’s not what I…”

  Eva gazed at Faust, then back to Jim, her eyes wide, her mouth o
pen, trying to form words. Jim stumbled toward her, his hands gripping her arms. He tried to talk, but the words intermingled with his sobs. Eva pushed him away but held onto his jacket to stop him from falling over. “You’re drunk,” she said. “Where’s Duncan?”

  Jim just shrugged.

  “Come with me. Let’s get you settled.”

  As she led him out of the brig, she took a look over his shoulder and shook her head.

  On the way back through the corridors and up the stairs to the cabin quarters, a number of crew members stopped and asked how Jim was. Eva had managed to avoid most questioning by saying he was ill. And he guessed he was. Not just drunk, but sick to the core.

  He looked at his right hand and saw the redness of where he’d gripped Susan Faust’s neck. Was he really going to do it? Was he really going to kill someone with his bare hand? “I’ve fallen so far,” he said, dragging his feet as Eva propped him up. “I’m not a good man.”

  “Are any of us good?” Eva said.

  “You, you’re good. Always were. Me, I’m a liar and a coward.”

  “You’re just drunk, Jim. You’ll see things definitely when you sober up.”

  “I would have killed her if you didn’t come.”

  “You don’t know that,” Eva said, but Jim could tell in her voice that she didn’t believe it.

  It was pretty clear to anyone watching him what he would have done.

  He took a breath and steadied himself as they approached his open cabin.

  Chapter 21

  Eva stepped into Jim’s cabin and gagged at the smell. She avoided stepping into a pool of vomit. A bottle of rum, empty, lay on its side by the smashed remains of a two-way radio. Old photos, ripped like confetti, littered the floor and the bunk.

  “Christ, Jim, you did in a number in here, didn’t you?”

  He slumped onto the bunk, dropping his head to his chest. As he did so, the momentum of his weight knocked something off the bunk. A radio thudded to the floor.

  Eva picked up the radio. It wasn’t a two-way; it looked like some kind of military VHF unit. A wire from the radio snaked up past the porthole, and she saw it was coming from one of the pipes. The wire must be an antenna, she thought.

  Jim raised his head and opened his eyes. When he saw Eva holding the radio, his face dropped. “I can explain… it’s not what you think…”

  That was when she noticed dozens of long, thin pieces of paper, curled like shavings of wood, scattered across the bed sheets. “What the hell is this?” Eva said, picking up one of the curled papers. Coded text was printed on one side, and she realised it came from a small printer on the edge of the radio. The screen was blank, but the power was on.

  “Who have you been talking to?” Eva said, her voice high and taut, her face flushing with anger and confusion. Jim reached out but fell back. Eva turned and closed the door, locking the latch. Leaning into Jim, she shook the radio in front of his face. “Tell me, Jim,” she shouted. “What’s all this code? Where’s this from? This is connected with the volunteers, isn’t it? Is this why you were so eager to know what Mike was trying to say?”

  Her heart pounded against her chest, and her hand shook. It felt like the day she realised the world as she knew it was coming to an end. A huge, unimaginable shock to the system. Here was this man, one of the few she trusted, and he appeared to be the same as everyone else: a duplicitous coward.

  For a minute they just both stared at each other. Eva refused to back off, waiting patiently for the truth to come out. As it would. She knew. She’d been in enough interrogations to know that once confronted, it was only a matter of time.

  Jim’s first thoughts would be about self-preservation. He’d think of ways he could explain this away, like a husband caught cheating on his wife. “I can explain” were usually the first words out of someone’s mouth. They’d go through a few rounds of that before trying to blame someone else, only here, Jim had no one else to blame. This mess was all his, and there was no escape. No way out. The only course of action left was the truth.

  “I can explain,” Jim said.

  Eva said nothing, waiting for the process to begin.

  Another minute passed, then another. Finally, wiping his face, and perhaps sobering up enough to realise the situation, Jim said, “You’re right.”

  “About what?”

  “This is everything to do with the volunteers and Mike. I’ve been lying to you since day one. Before, even. And the same goes for everyone on the flotilla. No one knows the truth. Perhaps Mike does, but well, you saw him.”

  “What’s on these papers?”

  “Messages. Encoded messages.”

  “Who from?”

  Jim squirmed and scrunched his face, reacting to some inner pain.

  “Sit down,” Jim said. “It’s easier if I explain from the start.”

  He leaned over and opened the porthole. The fresh salt wind brought swift relief from the stench in the cabin. He threw a pillow over the pool of vomit and sprayed a few squirts of deodorant to help mask the acrid scent. He threw the bottle of rum out of the porthole, watching as it drifted away on the tide.

  Eva waited patiently as he fell to his knees and gathered together the confetti of his past life. When he was finished, he sat back on the opposite edge of the bunk and rested his back and head against the grey steel bulkhead. With a deep breath, he looked Eva directly in the eyes and said, “It was always about survival. Secrecy was paramount.”

  “Go on,” Eva said, still holding the radio that had now taken on the qualities of a talisman or holy relic, its value incalculable. It represented a way to others, a way to a new understanding of the world. “Tell me everything. Leave nothing out.”

  “I was captaining the Alonsa. We’d been at sea for four months. This was after the drowning. It happened so fast. We saw the waters rise while we were still in Southampton. The deaths came as quick as the water.

  “We had communicated with the weather centre on and off for a few days before the first earthquake, as a storm had kept us in dock. That was during the first few days of the solar storms, before the big ones took out the satellites and the power grid.”

  Eva remembered that well. She’d already said goodbye to her family a few days before when she headed off on a huge counter-smuggling raid on one of America’s biggest drug importers. She and a dozen of her team boarded a naval destroyer, ready to intercept a transatlantic cargo ship carrying one of the biggest shipments of cocaine in recent history.

  Within a day of the grid going down, they’d lost contact with their chiefs in Baltimore, and even the ship’s radio didn’t work because of the amount of EM interference from the storms.

  “People panicked,” Jim said. “Half the passengers got off the ship, and I watched them as the waves hit, killing them instantly. Every small vessel capsized. We broke away from the dock and drifted on the storm. Luckily we managed to steer away from land and head out down the English Channel before the worst came.

  “Radio communication remained sporadic to non-existent during that first week. We heard reports of most of Europe drowning. With the winds and the constant electromagnetic interference, planes crashed out of the sky. We saw one go down in the Atlantic.

  “I knew by then it was over.” Jim wiped his face and took another breath.

  Tears were dripping down Eva’s face as she reflected on a similar experience.

  On the destroyer, they had tried to make contact with no luck. Had tried to save other seagoing vessels, but the high winds and tall waves had capsized so many boats and ships that had tried to survive.

  “After the seas finished rising,” Jim continued, “we had already lost ninety percent of our passengers. Many people took the life rafts, thinking they could make it back to land, not understanding that land was not a conc
ept any more.

  “Others just couldn’t go on. Those who left their families behind joined them in going over. I’ll never forget that. The sea was still warm as it came up from the Earth’s crust. We drifted down past Argentina toward the Western Peninsula of Antarctica. For a while we got stuck on drifting ice as the ice-shelf had completely come away from the main part of the continent. But within days it melted.

  “Before our very eyes we watched an entire continent melt into the sea.

  “We used the last of the fuel to head north up the west coast of the Americas. Our navigator relied on manual navigation, but with the near constant storms and the difficulty of spotting stars, we drifted off course.

  “Eventually we ran aground here. The Bravo was already here. We managed to link the boats, using them as a safety barrier to bring other vessels in. During those early days we had nearly six hundred survivors.

  “A year later, when you arrived, it was less than a quarter of that. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In those early days, radio communications were spotty. Some days we’d get through, most of the time not. I found that radio,” Jim pointed to the one in Eva’s hand, “on the Bravo.

  “Over the course of a week I spoke with a doctor on a science vessel. Angelina, her name was.”

  “Was?”

  “I’ll get to that. Angelina started to explain what her group of ships was doing and the dire state of things. Before the event, she’d worked as a lead virologist for the CDC. She and a group of researchers were tasked with investigating a new kind of marine-based bacterium. This was just a few weeks before the event.

  “Angelina told me she believed it was manmade. She believed it was government-made. The full details of its origin were classified, but then the world drowned, and there was no longer anyone to report to.”