Cody pulled one down for a closer look. “They are.”
“What the hell?” Adam said. Why would the people on this ship have killed themselves—and all at once, by the look of it—if they had this much food? This was a huge store. They could have lived weeks more—months, probably—on what was here. For Adam, Cody, Sara, and Artem, it would last even longer. There were fewer of them, after all.
“Here.” Cody had found a few canvas bags, and now he tossed two of them to Adam. “Fill up. Let’s do this fast. I want to get out of here.”
Adam nodded and began pulling cans out of the cupboard and loading them into the bags. “This is insane,” he said. “I thought we might find something over here, but I never dreamed it would be this much.”
“Someone’s looking out for us.” Cody whistled, long and low. “Check this out, will you?”
Adam glanced over his shoulder. His friend was holding up a handle of vodka. “Put that back,” he said.
Cody ignored that. “There are more of them!”
“Don’t bring those,” Adam said. “Bring food.” He opened another cabinet and discovered jars of peanut butter and unopened boxes of crackers. “And throw me another one of those bags, will you?”
“I’ve got room for both,” Cody assured him, tossing a bag over. “I’m not leaving any food behind. Don’t worry about that.”
That wasn’t what Adam was worried about. The sight of more liquor frightened him more than he wanted to admit. They had failed spectacularly at the goal of taking care of themselves in the early days of their voyage, mostly because Cody and his friends had been wasted the whole time. Now he finally had Cody back, could finally work with his friend to make plans for the future. He didn’t want to lose him to the alcohol again.
“Let me take it,” Cody said. “It’ll be good for all of us. You know everyone needs to blow off a little steam back on that yacht. Can you imagine the good it would do Artem to have a few drinks?”
He might be right about that, Adam thought.
“If you’re going to take it, you have to carry it,” Adam said. “And make sure you get all that oatmeal. Don’t leave even one canister behind to make room for the booze. I mean it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Cody held up his bags, then gestured to the empty cabinet behind him. “I’ve got everything,” he said. “Are you happy?”
“I’ll be happy when we’re back on the yacht,” Adam said. “This place gives me the creeps.”
Cody nodded. “Let’s get out of here, then.”
Chapter 14
The tender bobbed in the water for far longer than Adam was comfortable with while Artem debated whether or not to allow him and Cody back on board.
“You say they were all dead,” the captain said.
“We’ve been over it five times now,” Adam called up. He was cold and exhausted, and he felt dirty and unpleasant after the things he’d seen on the tanker. The decaying bodies. “They were dead, but not of the virus. They’d killed themselves.”
“They might have killed themselves because they knew they had the virus,” Artem said.
“There would have been blood,” Adam said. “Have you ever seen anyone show symptoms before?”
“No,” Artem admitted.
“Well, I have,” Adam said. “And it’s a bloody mess. There would have been blood all over the deck of that place, unless they killed themselves literally the first time someone coughed.”
“Which they could have done,” Artem said. “We can’t rule it out.”
“Look, we have food,” Cody said, his voice snappish. “We found a lot of it. We’d like to share it with you two. But we can’t do that from down here, so let us up.”
Artem looked as though he was pondering this. “Okay,” he said finally. “Send up the food, and then I’ll throw a ladder down for you.”
“Like hell,” Cody said. “Send the ladder down first.”
“Adam?” It was Sara, leaning over the railing a few yards down from them.
“Yeah?” Adam said.
“Steer around to the other side of the boat,” Sara said. “I’ll let you up.”
“You’ll do what?” Artem barked.
“You’re outvoted, Artem,” Sara said. “Three to one. I want to let them aboard.”
“I’m the captain!”
“That doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Adam said. “Nobody outranks anybody in a survival situation.”
He could tell that Artem was furious, but in the end the captain stepped back and allowed Sara to lower the ladder. Cody climbed up first. Adam handed him bag after bag of food, then ascended the ladder himself.
When he reached the top, Artem and Sara were unpacking the new supplies.
“This stuff is great,” Artem said. “This will last us weeks.”
“Months, I think,” Adam said. He wanted to ask Artem whether he was glad, now, that he’d let Adam and Cody back aboard. He wanted to say something smug and self-righteous. But he held back.
Cody showed no such self-control. “Are you going to thank us?” he asked. “If we hadn’t been brave enough to go over to that tanker, you wouldn’t have this food. We were right.”
“Okay,” Artem said with the patronizing attitude one might show to an annoying grade-school child. “You were right and I was wrong.”
Cody huffed a little, but thankfully, he let it go.
“I’m going to go take a shower, if no one minds,” Adam said, getting to his feet.
“No hot water,” Artem called after him.
Adam didn’t need the reminder. He also didn’t care. As soon as he reached the shower, he felt himself begin to shake. It was as if his body had been completely overwhelmed by the things he had seen today.
He got into the shower and let the cold water cascade over his head, trying to wash away the horror. All those people lying dead in the tanker. All those people having completely abandoned all hope. What could have happened to them to make them give up like that?
Would it eventually happen to Adam? Or to Cody or Artem or Sara?
No. We’re not like that, are we? We’re survivors.
He braced his hands against the porcelain wall of the shower and bent his head, letting the water strike the back of his neck and pound away the tension. Someday, he thought, there would be warm water again. Someday he would be able to take a hot shower. God, what a glorious day that would be.
But today there was food. At least there was that.
He got out of the shower, dressed in the cleanest clothes he had—laundry had gone the way of overhead lighting and hot water in the past few days—and rejoined the others on deck one.
Sara had just placed a massive bowl on the table. “Oatmeal,” she said, seeing Adam come down the stairs. “And I put in some blueberries. They’re some of the very last ones from the freezer, but it felt like a special occasion.”
“I think so,” Adam agreed, giving her a smile.
“I heated up some stew, too,” Artem said.
“I thought we couldn’t use the stove?” Adam said.
“We can’t. I heated it up over the candle,” Artem said. “I’m afraid it’s not as hot as I’d like, but it’s certainly better than nothing.”
“I’ll say it is,” Adam said. “Hot food wins every time in my book. Where’s Cody?”
“Making drinks,” Artem said. He hesitated. “Vodka and orange juice. I figured it would be all right just this once.”
“I think so,” Adam agreed, although he resolved to himself not to drink any vodka that came his way. His shower had restored him considerably, but he still felt shaky and uncomfortable about the things he’d seen on the tanker. It would be all too easy to start drinking to forget, and he knew only too well what lay at the end of that road.
Cody emerged from the bar with a tray of cocktails and set it on the table. “These aren’t too strong,” he said. “We haven’t been eating well lately. So, you know. Don’t be afraid to try them.” He looked at Adam as
he said it, and Adam got the feeling that Cody really wanted him to try the drink. That it meant something to him, on a personal level. He wants to do something for me.
Was Cody still afraid that Adam would leave him?
Maybe it was something more, he thought. Cody hadn’t exactly been in the best place mentally over the past several days. Adam, who thought he had been holding up a lot better than his friend had, had felt badly disturbed by the things he’d seen on the tanker. How would those things have affected Cody, who was already in a shaky state?
He accepted one of the cocktails when the tray came to him, held it to his lips, and pretended to drink. It was hard for him. He could smell the vodka. He could practically taste it. His body remembered the way it felt. The steady patter of lies that came along with his addiction started up in his head. You can have a sip. A sip won’t matter. Just taste it. You’ve been good for ages. You deserve this.
He put the cup down untasted. “It’s really good,” he lied to Cody. “Thanks for taking the time.”
Cody smiled. It was a weak smile, Adam thought, the smile of a man who is coming apart at the seams. But it was better than nothing.
“This whole meal looks really good,” Adam said. “Is it really okay to eat all this oatmeal at once?”
“I think it’s important that we do, actually,” Artem said. “Better to build up our strength while we can. Tomorrow it’ll be back to rationing, but yes, today we eat.”
“It’s good that we let ourselves have days like this,” Sara said. “It’s good that we’re not just surviving to survive. There’s still…you know. Something to live for.”
“Something to live for.” Adam huffed out a laugh.
“What’s funny?” Artem asked.
“It’s just the way things change,” Adam said. “Last year, if you’d asked me what I was living for, I don’t know what I would have told you, but it definitely wouldn’t have been a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of stew. But now…I don’t know. It’s not even just the fact that this is the only good thing that’s happened recently. I’m legitimately excited about this meal. It really does feel like a treat.”
“That means you’re adapting,” Artem said. “The people who are going to survive in this new world will be the ones who can adapt. The ones who can learn how to do more than just keep their bodies going. The ones who can figure out a way to be happy some of the time.”
Looking at the food on the table, feeling the swell of joy in his gut, Adam knew that he would be able to do what Artem was describing.
That’s why the people on the tanker killed themselves, he realized. Not because they couldn’t keep their bodies alive, but because they had nothing left to stay alive for.
I don’t feel that way. I’ve never felt that way. Not since the moment this began.
Suddenly feeling bolstered, Adam refilled his bowl of oatmeal. “This is a really excellent dinner,” he said, smiling at his shipmates. “It’s definitely worth being alive for.”
Sara smiled. “I’m glad you think so,” she said, then flicked her eyes sideways at Cody.
Adam followed her gaze. His friend hadn’t touched the food. He was sitting on his hands, in fact, and rocking back and forth slightly. He looked like an anxious child.
No, Adam thought suddenly, realization sinking like a stone in his gut. That’s not what he looks like.
What he looked like was a strung-out junkie.
What he looked like was Krista, in the final weeks before she’d left, when she and her friends had increased their drug intake to help them forget the fact that the drugs were about to run out.
What he looked like was the way Adam remembered feeling in the car on the way to rehab the day Cody had driven him there with the last of his stash coursing its way through his system.
He looked fried.
But he couldn’t be. The drugs were gone. Adam remembered the hopeless look on Krista’s face, the shakes that had wracked her tiny frame during the early stages of her withdrawal. If there had been more drugs on the ship at the time, Adam was sure she would have taken them.
Was it possible Cody had hidden them from his friends, that he had been keeping them in reserve for himself? Maybe he hadn’t wanted to run out. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to share.
But that didn’t feel right. You could say what you would about Cody’s flaws, but from the moment they’d boarded this ship, he’d been eager to share everything he had with everybody present. He had pushed drugs on Adam, even knowing that as an addict Adam was likely to refuse. Hell, wasn’t he still doing that right now? Wasn’t he still fighting to share his alcohol among the rest of them? There had been no reason to do that. He could have kept all the vodka to himself, and most likely nobody would have complained.
Besides, Cody had been torn up when his friends had left for the mainland. If he could have kept them aboard by offering them more drugs, Adam felt sure he would have done it.
So there weren’t any drugs.
At least, there hadn’t been when Krista, Duane, Max and Ray had left.
Could there be some now?
Of course there could, he thought. Everything on this table was new. Everything they were having for dinner tonight had come from the tanker. And if they could find all these things over there, why couldn’t Cody have found something else? Something illegal?
He couldn’t have. I was with him the whole time!
But Adam hadn’t been watching him. Not the whole time. Not in the kitchen, when they’d been emptying supplies into canvas bags. He’d taken his eyes off of Cody then, hadn’t he?
Suddenly Adam felt sure he knew exactly what had happened on that boat. He could almost see Cody reaching into the back of a cabinet, feeling the give of a plastic bag against his fingers, pulling it out to see that fine white powder. He could almost feel the strange, self-destructive joy that came along with knowing you had scored.
But what should he do? Should he tell the others what he suspected?
Right, he thought. As soon as you do that, Artem will start insulting Cody again, and Cody will overreact, and everything will get worse, not better.
No, the only thing to do was to wait it out. Cody couldn’t have found very much of any narcotic. Whatever he was on would work its way out of his system, probably by tomorrow, and no one ever needed to know. They didn’t need to borrow trouble or conflict, not when they were all getting along so well for the first time in days.
Adam got up, went to the kitchen, and brought back the peanut butter and crackers. Cody brightened a bit at the sight. Artem frowned.
“We just had a big dinner,” the captain pointed out.
“But we’re celebrating.” Adam didn’t want to call attention to the fact that Cody had hardly touched his oatmeal. “We’ll just have a little of this. For dessert. Come on, when was the last time any of you had peanut butter?”
“It’s got to have been a year,” Sara said.
“Really?” Cody’s eyes widened.
“Well, I never kept it in the house, even before,” Sara said, shrugging. “I always figured I could run to the store and get some if the craving hit me.”
“Wouldn’t you like some now?” Adam asked.
She nodded. “That’d be really good.”
Artem scowled.
“Oh, come on, Artem,” Sara said. “Weren’t you just saying how we should take advantage of the opportunity to be happy? Who knows when it’ll come around again.” She grinned. “We could go and sit by the pool and eat peanut butter and talk. It would be like this was all a party.”
“This is not a party,” Artem said.
“It wouldn’t kill us to pretend,” Adam said. “Just for one night.”
Artem sighed. “All right,” he said. “I can see I’m outvoted again.” But this time he didn’t look too annoyed about it, and he joined the others when they sat down on the side of the pool. He even rolled up the cuffs of his pants and dipped his toes in the chilly water.
They all a
te a generous helping of peanut butter and crackers, even Cody, and when his friend wasn’t looking Adam leaned back and emptied his vodka and orange juice over the side of the boat and into the water below. He listened as Artem told stories of his days captaining for Coronado Cruise Lines, of his marriage and his divorce, of his descent into alcohol and his termination from his job on the cruise ship.
Artem had lost everything to alcohol, Adam realized. It was no surprise he was so averse to Cody’s behavior since they’d set sail. He must see a lot of himself in the things Cody was doing.
And that was a feeling to which Adam could relate all too well.
Chapter 15
A Month Later – July 4
“Did you know,” Sara said, “that we’ve been at sea for thirteen weeks?”
“Really?” Adam leaned back out of the refrigerator. “It feels like longer than that.”
“And shorter too, somehow,” Sara said. “Do you think Artem would let us use the stove today?”
Adam shrugged. “I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said. “What are you thinking of making?”
“Just oatmeal,” Sara said. “Same as always. But I’d rather heat it up all the way.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Adam said. He paused, thinking. “Do you think we could put some peanut butter in the oatmeal?” he asked. “Would that be any good?”
“Might as well try it,” Sara said. “But you know once we do it we’re committed to eating it, even if it tastes like garbage.”
Adam nodded. “I wouldn’t throw away food,” he said. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Do you think Cody is going to come out of his room today?” Sara asked, pulling down one of the jars of peanut butter. “I didn’t see him at all yesterday.”
“I don’t know,” Adam said. “I saw him early yesterday morning. He was around when Artem and I were listening to the news. But he disappeared again pretty fast.”
Sara hesitated. “He’s on drugs again,” she said. “Isn’t he?”
Adam sighed. He’d tried to keep his friend’s downward spiral a secret as long as he could, but Cody had lost weight and had dark circles under his eyes. He walked around the yacht like a ghost, when he walked around at all, and he almost never spoke to any of the others. “I think so,” he said. “I think he found something on the tanker.”
Escape The Dark (Book 1): Dark Tides Page 11
