Escape The Dark (Book 1): Dark Tides

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “Do whatever you want,” he said. “I’m not your mother.” But he gave Cody a hard look and hoped it communicated all the things he couldn’t say. The others might not know about his struggles with addiction, but Cody definitely did. And now Cody had drawn Adam into his drug-fueled getaway.

  Still, a getaway was a getaway. And Adam wasn’t going to complain.

  But he would have to keep himself tightly in check. He had been worried enough about the massive quantities of beer coming aboard this ship. Now, knowing that there were other substances here, Adam could feel the old itching at the back of his brain.

  No, he told himself firmly. You can’t have any. You’re in recovery, and you’re going to stay that way.

  Chapter 6

  April 14

  Adam awoke on his ninth day at sea to the sound of screams.

  He bolted up out of bed, instantly fearful. What did this mean? Was it possible the virus had caught up with them, even out here on the boat? Or maybe the incubation period was longer than anyone had suspected. Maybe one of the passengers had been carrying the thing when they came on board and it was only manifesting now.

  He hesitated at the door. Here was a conundrum. Should he go out and see what was going on, see if he could do anything to help? Or should he barricade himself in his room? If someone out there was sick, his presence wouldn’t help them survive—he would only risk becoming infected himself.

  But, he realized, all the food was outside. The drinking water was outside. He should have thought of this sooner and brought some rations into his room just in case—but it honestly hadn’t occurred to him that the virus might actually crop up on the boat. He would have to go out and get something. Feeling intensely anxious, he opened the door.

  The hallway was empty.

  Adam stepped out, closing his door behind him, and crept along the carpeted walkway to the door that led out to the third-floor balcony. The screaming was still going on, and Adam thought it sounded like it was coming from somewhere below him. He might be able to get a good look from above without risking his own neck. If so, he could come up with a plan for what to do next.

  Lowering himself to a squat, he crept along the balcony to the railing. If they saw him, he thought, they might come up and try to get his help. He would have helped them if he could. As irritating as he found Duane, Max, and Krista, he certainly didn’t want to see any of them die. But there was nothing he could do. Not if the virus had taken him.

  Summoning his courage, preparing to see the worst, he pulled himself up to peek over the railing to the deck below.

  And blinked.

  Max had picked Krista up and tossed her over one shoulder in a sort of fireman’s carry. Krista was shrieking hysterically and pounding her fists against Max’s back. Duane, badly sunburned, was lying in the shade. Adam though he might be asleep.

  Cody was laughing in a way that seemed to border on hysteria. As Adam watched, his friend bent over and inhaled another line of white powder.

  They weren’t sick, then. They were just partying. Still. After more than a week at sea, they were raging just as hard as they had on day one. Adam was amazed that the drugs hadn’t run out yet. How big a supply had they brought with them?

  Max tossed Krista into the hot tub, where she landed with a splash. From his angle, Adam could see that her head had barely missed hitting the deck. She and Max either hadn’t noticed that or were too far gone to care, because they both carried on laughing as Krista tried to splash Max with warm water.

  Adam couldn’t watch any more of this. It was excruciating to know that just a few short years ago, he would have been one of the mindless party zombies living it up on the deck below, oblivious to the seriousness of what was going on in the world. It was even more painful to realize that a strong part of him still ached to throw in the towel, to go downstairs and ask Cody for a line, a hit, something to take the edge off. Why should he bother clinging tooth and nail to his hard-earned sobriety when everything else was ending? His parents were dead. His stepfather was dead. His city was dying. And his last friend was frying his brains in the hot sun.

  Adam sighed, stood up, and headed down to the second deck. The kitchen was there, and the chef, Sara, had been laying out exquisite breakfasts each morning. He might as well get something to eat.

  Sure enough, when he got downstairs, the table was covered with bowls of fresh fruit and a stack of waffles. Sara was there, settling a pot of coffee on a trivet. “Good morning,” she said, offering him a smile.

  “Hey,” Adam said, smiling back. “How are you today?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said with a shrug. “As well as can be expected, I guess.”

  “Breakfast looks really great,” he said. “I can’t believe you have the ingredients for waffles.”

  “We actually had tons of waffle mix on board,” she said. “It’s one of Mr. Granger’s favorite foods, so he stocked up well before the virus hit. I could probably keep us eating waffles for a long time.”

  “Will you eat with me?” Adam asked. “I don’t think any of them are coming up, and I’d hate to see it go to waste.

  Sara smiled. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

  She joined him at the table. Adam fixed a plate, stacking two waffles and piling them high with strawberries. “Might as well go to town on the fruit, right?” he said. “How did you manage to get any in the first place?”

  “Ray grows berries on the boat, actually,” Sara said. “He’s got a little plot at the front of deck two. Mr. Granger thinks it’s stupid, but he hasn’t put a stop to it yet.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Adam said seriously. “We’d be looking at a significant nutritional gap if we didn’t have these berries.”

  “I just hope the plants stay alive,” Sara said.

  Adam cut a bite of waffle. “So,” he said, “what brings you on this excursion? I know you’re not here for the party.”

  Sara laughed. “No, I think Artem would lose his mind if the crew started participating in all that. Not that I want to anyway. I’m not really the drug type, I guess.” She cocked his head at him. “And you’re not either, are you?”

  “No,” Adam agreed. He teetered on the verge of confiding in her that he was an addict—but this was a survival situation. He didn’t want any of his fellow passengers to start thinking that he couldn’t be trusted, couldn’t be relied upon. “I didn’t exactly know it was going to be that kind of jaunt,” he said instead.

  “Would you have stayed on the mainland if you’d known?” Sara asked.

  “No, definitely not,” Adam said. “It was good of Cody to bring me out here, regardless, you know? San Francisco was going to hell fast. At least out here we don’t have to worry about riots and looting and catching a killer virus. Listening to this party going on at all hours feels like small potatoes next to that.”

  “It’s true,” Sara agreed. “That’s why I decided to come as well. Artem sat us down before we cast off—me and Ray—and told us that if we wanted to leave the crew, he wouldn’t blame us. He told us this voyage went beyond the call of duty.” She grinned. “He talks like that a lot. Like we’re in the military or something instead of ferrying a rich playboy around on his private yacht.”

  “He’s a serious guy, isn’t he?”

  “Very serious,” Sara agreed.

  “But you decided not to leave the crew,” Adam said. “Didn’t you worry at all about leaving your family behind?”

  “I didn’t really have any family,” Sara said. “I grew up as a ward of the state. I never knew my parents.”

  “Oh,” Adam said. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It’s all right. I accepted it a long time ago. And it makes it easier to make decisions for my own survival now. I can only imagine how hard it must be for people who have loved ones to think about. How could you leave the city, knowing you were leaving someone behind?”

  Adam was quiet.

  “Did I say something?” Sara frowned.<
br />
  “No, it’s all right. It’s just that…well, I learned that my mother was infected the night before we left,” Adam said. “Part of me still feels like I should have gone to her instead of getting out of the city. Like I should have tried to see her one last time.

  “You’d have died,” Sara said quietly. “You know that. Anyone who comes into contact with the nanovirus dies.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said heavily. “I know that.”

  “You did the right thing to leave,” Sara said. “You had to protect yourself. You couldn’t have helped her, and she wouldn’t have wanted you to die trying.”

  Adam nodded. She was right, he knew. It was just hard to feel it sometimes.

  Before he could think too long on it, Artem came stomping out of the control room.

  “The damn thing is spreading,” he said, holding up a portable radio. “I’ve got the coastguard on the line, and apparently people are jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Putting a quick end to it.” He shook his head. “I don’t see this getting better any time soon.”

  “Shouldn’t we be making some kind of plan?” Adam asked. “Do we know where we’re going? This boat is great now, but eventually we’re going to run out of food or water.”

  “We should be making a plan,” Artem agreed. “Unfortunately, the boss down there is too loaded to carry on a conversation.” He waved a hand at the party going on on the lower deck.

  “We’re going to have to think of something soon,” Sara said, gazing out over the railing. “I have a feeling this is going to get a whole lot worse, in ways we haven’t even imagined yet.”

  The party carried on at all hours of the day and night. Adam coped by spending the evenings sequestered in his little room, reading the books he had brought along with him or sitting on his little balcony and gazing out at the moonlight reflected on the water. In the dark, the world still looked beautiful. It was easy to pretend that nothing was wrong, and that back on the mainland people were going about their business as they always had.

  But that night, Adam’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. He went over and opened it.

  Cody stood there, swaying slightly with the rocking of the ship, his eyes bloodshot. “Hey, man,” he said. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” Adam said dully. “It’s your boat.” He stepped back to allow his friend into the room.

  Cody collapsed on the bed. For a minute Adam thought he was going to pass out, but then he spoke. “You’re not having a good time,” he said.

  He sounded like a petulant child, Adam thought. He sounded like a little boy who was unhappy that his birthday party wasn’t going the way he’d hoped.

  “I didn’t come out here for a party,” Adam said. “I came out here to stay alive.”

  Cody shook his head. “You’re thinking about it all wrong,” he said.

  “Am I? Have you been listening to the news reports on Artem’s radio?” Adam asked. “What am I thinking. Of course you haven’t. You’ve been too lit up to pay attention to that.”

  “You don’t have to be a dick. We’re just having fun.”

  “Right. You’re having fun. You brought enough drugs on this trip to kill a bull elephant. Cody, what are we doing? Do you get that people are dying? Do you get that the survivors are being rounded up and forced into abandoned buildings?”

  “It’ll all be over by the time we get back,” Cody said.

  Adam shook his head. “At this point, I don’t know what we’ll even be going back to. It’s never going to be like it was, Cody. You need to deal with that.”

  Cody sighed and propped his elbows against his knees. “You don’t see the world clearly,” he said. “You never have.”

  “I don’t see things clearly? You’re drunk!”

  “We’re not like those other people back on the mainland,” Cody said. “It sucks, and it’s not fair, and I get that, but the fact of the matter is that we’re a higher class. We’re people of means. When shit like this happens, people like us are the ones who get out of the way. We’re the ones who survive.”

  “You’re crazy,” Adam said coldly. “This is a nice boat, Cody, but if we run out of food or we come across someone carrying that virus, your money isn’t going to protect you. You’ll be just as vulnerable as any homeless person on the street.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “My mother’s dead,” Adam snapped. “My mother got the virus, Cody. And she had plenty of money. Hell, I would know, because she made most of it off of me. And it didn’t save her in the end. Haven’t you been paying attention? The rich were the first to start dying.”

  “Because they got the nanotech,” Cody said. “I didn’t get the nanotech. I always knew that shit was no good.”

  “That doesn’t matter anymore,” Adam said. “Anyone can catch the virus now. We’re not special. We’re not safe.”

  “We’re safe on the boat—”

  “I thought you had a plan for this boat,” Adam said. “I must have been out of my mind not to ask, but I thought you had some kind of vision. But you’re just sitting down there working your way through your stockpile of drugs. God even knows where you got it all.”

  “Why do you care?” Cody asked. “Why do you care what we do?”

  “Apart from the fact that we should all be working together to survive, and none of you are even trying to help?” Adam asked. “I care because you’re my friend, Cody. I care because I don’t want anything to happen to you, and if you fucking overdose we can’t take you to a hospital, and even if we could, the doctors are so busy managing MRI lines that no one has time to deal with a fucking addict who overdid it. We’re on our own out here, and if we don’t take care of ourselves, it’s game over.”

  Cody gave Adam a long, measured look, and Adam wondered whether anything he’d said was sinking in at all.

  “I should go,” Cody said finally. “The guys are waiting on me.”

  “Right,” Adam said. “You’d better get back to your party.”

  Cody turned and left the room without a word, and Adam let himself fall backwards onto his bed, exhausted.

  Chapter 7

  April 21

  As the days passed, things on board the yacht began to shift.

  The meals grew gradually smaller and less elaborate. Although he didn’t confirm it with her, Adam suspected Sara had changed her food preparation on purpose. Maybe it was something she’d even planned to do all along, in which case he greatly respected her foresight. Cody, he thought, would probably have complained about the scaled-down meals at the beginning of their voyage, but the change had been gradual enough that he didn’t appear to have noticed it. Sara still worked all the food groups into the things she served, but they received smaller portions. Half a waffle instead of two, and a little bowl of berries instead of all they could eat.

  Artem’s mood seemed to grow more and more foul. He wore a scowl everywhere he went and snapped at his crewmates. He ignored Cody and the rest of the partygoers altogether, not even deigning to speak to them if they addressed him first. Adam was the only one for whom Artem summoned marginal courtesy. He suspected the old captain liked him for opting out of the drug-fueled rave on the first deck.

  Adam had begun to spend more and more time with the crew. He didn’t want to get in the way, but Artem and Ray allowed him to sit in the control room and watch as they piloted the yacht as long as he kept his hands to himself. It was good to have something to do. He’d finished reading his novels, and although he knew that eventually he would be driven by boredom to start them again, he wanted to wait as long as he possibly could between readings so as not to oversaturate himself with the same story over and over.

  At night, he sat on the second deck with Sara, huddled over Artem’s radio and listening to reports from the mainland. They kept the sound low—Duane had yelled up at them a couple of times to knock it off with the doomsday box before he came up there and threw it in the ocean. The peaceful rocking of the waves an
d Sara’s soothing presence helped Adam to cope with the horrific things he heard on the radio. The death toll was climbing. People were being shot in the streets as the military tried to control the rioting and looting. Abandoned houses were ransacked by people desperate for food and supplies.

  The boat was still safe. For now. But Adam couldn’t help feeling that it was all too good to be true. Even as Cody and his friends partied themselves into oblivion, he felt insanely lucky to be here. Surely the catastrophe on the mainland would find a way to reach out and touch them soon. They couldn’t possibly be safe forever.

  Adam kept track of the passing days with a pen and a napkin he’d taken from the bar on the first deck. He drew a tally mark on the napkin every morning when he woke up. The number ninety had gotten lodged in his head somehow. Three months, he thought as he drew another tally mark. When three months have passed, things will have settled down. We’ll be able to go home.

  He left his room and headed out to the balcony, looking down over the lower decks. Here, too, the atmosphere had changed dramatically over the past couple of days.

  The supply of party drugs seemed to be exhausted. No longer did Cody wear a manic smile and wander the boat like a butler with a narcotics tray. For the last forty-eight hours, he had been lying on one of the loungers drinking can after can of warm beer. The deck around him was littered with empty cans. Adam had the distinct impression that his friend was drinking heavily to delay his inevitable sobering up now that the drugs were gone. It was a feeling he could relate to—too often, he’d started the day after a drug binge with a bottle of liquor to ease the comedown. But it hurt to see Cody putting himself through that hell.

  Krista lay shivering under a heavy blanket, despite the hot sun. Adam suspected she was suffering from withdrawal. Duane and Max were sitting in the pool, each with a couple of beers lined up beside them. They didn’t look like they were having a good time.

  Now, as he watched, Duane got up out of the pool and wandered aimlessly across the deck. Adam wondered how drunk he was. He was weaving as he walked, and at one point he veered perilously close to the railing around the outer edge of the deck. Adam’s breath caught as Duane staggered back, then made his way inside. Maybe he’s looking for something to eat, Adam thought, though in truth he doubted it. He suspected none of these people had had any non-liquid calories in days.