Deluge | Book 1 | The Drowned

by Partner, Kevin

  “Cool fishing gear,” Lewis said. “The fish sure was ugly, though.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Patrick said, smiling. “But yeah, I learned how to make a fishing line on my SAS training.”

  “You were in the SAS?”

  “Don’t start him off again,” Ellie said. “He’s an actor, remember?”

  Patrick deflated a little. “Well, anyway, we’re eating this delicious…what did you say it was called, Tom? Yeah, this delicious croaker because I tied a bent needle to string I’d unwound from the lifebelt rope. I know we can survive a week without food, but I’d rather have food in my belly if I can get it.”

  “Fosho,” Jodi said. “This is legit mental grub, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “You haven’t heard any more from your uncle?” Ellie said, hoping to catch the girl off balance.

  Jodi swept her blonde hair from her face, and pushed her stars-and-stripes sunglasses behind her bangs. “I would have said. Look, honestly, I can’t say for sure it was him.”

  “What?” Ellie caught the chunk of fish she’d spat out and sat cradling it in her palms.

  “Oh, I got the message and it came from Uncle Buzz, but it was odd. I think he might have programmed it automatically. I didn’t notice at first, but the sent-from number doesn’t look legit. And then I remembered he gave me the cell phone in the first place. He could have programmed it to send the message.”

  Ellie, who’d stuffed the fish back in her mouth and swallowed by this time, shook her head. “So, he’s dead for all we know! What a waste of time! I mean, why send an automated message?”

  “You gotta remember he’s a certified genius. And he wanted me to be safe. He’s the only person in the world who gives two sh—”

  “Oh, that’s charming!”

  “Sorry, Pat. Apart from you.”

  Ellie rubbed her eyes. She was suddenly exhausted. Then she brightened. “Hold the phone. If he set it up in advance then he knew this wave was coming, and when!”

  “Not necessarily,” Patrick said. “He might have programmed the phone to respond to the wave after it happened.”

  “Even so, he knew about it. Jeez, he might even have done it!”

  Jodi hooted with laughter. “No way! Uncle Buzz wouldn’t harm a fly. Best I can guess is he got beta on it and did his best to protect me. I bet he did the same with dad.”

  “Well, he didn’t tell me anything,” Patrick said.

  Ellie sighed. “Whether he was involved or not, he knows what happened, I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe we should go straight to him instead of heading for Atlanta,” Patrick said.

  Ellie shook her head. “No way, that’s over a thousand miles. Look, we did great today. We got enough water to survive, we got some food and we didn’t sink, but we’re not sailing this boat that far. We’re pushing our luck as it is and we’ll be thanking God if we make it to dry land at all.”

  Tom slumped down. “It’s all gone. I mean, how many boats did we see today?”

  Ellie thought about it. “Six. Most from a distance. And I’m not sure they were all crewed.”

  “Aren’t there three hundred million people in the US?” Patrick said. “And we’re right over Florida. The I-75’s somewhere down there. Millions of cars, millions of houses…”

  “Millions of people,” Tom added. “Including my father. And who is left to mourn for them?”

  Ellie sighed. “I’m sorry, Tom, I really am. Julio was…well, he was Julio. But we can’t dwell on it.”

  “Why? Because you have something to live for?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellie said, rubbing moisture into her tired eyes. The boat was silent apart from a gentle creaking as it swayed from side to side, all the usual sounds—the engine, the electronics and the sails—quiet. The sun had gone down and, as they’d talked, the light failed and they were reduced to sitting in a dark illuminated only by Jodi’s cell phone. They would have to switch on the batteries so they could safely get to bed, but for now they sat in the darkness, alone in the middle of a new ocean and all Ellie could see before her eyes was Maria.

  Chapter 15

  Vengeance

  Bobby awoke with a start, his barking cough echoing from tree to tree. The boy who’d been sleeping against his chest groaned, opened his eyes and began crying again.

  Once he’d calmed himself, Bobby pulled Joshua into a hug and stroked his hair. “It’s okay, Josh. It’ll be light soon, and we can go after your mom.”

  The sobbing eased a little. However full of grief and fear the boy was, there was a limit to how many tears he could produce, it would seem. Bobby could feel rough edges to the hair on the back of Josh’s head where it had melted as they’d run through the inferno. Aside from some mild burns on his hands, and sore lungs, he had escaped the house unscathed physically. The mental scars, on the other hand, might last a lifetime.

  As for Bobby, he felt sore just about everywhere. It hurt every time he moved his head against the bark of the tree, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever get the stink of burning hair out of his nose. The bruising Eve’s saucepan had caused was still painful, but the sense that his brain might explode had vanished and he could move without feeling too woozy. His knees ached, and the injured foot hurt when he put his weight on it. All in all, he reckoned he needed a week’s bed rest. Fat chance.

  But he had a mission. Two missions. Maria was waiting for him, and he yearned with all his heart to be with her again. He should never have taken it upon himself to go for help, then he wouldn’t have given Hollick the opportunity to blackmail him. But there was no sense crying over spilled milk, and he was going to be true to his promise to go after Eve. He could force Joshua to go with him on his journey to Santa Clarita. He could, but he wouldn’t. The boy would be destroyed if he was forced to abandon his mother to her fate. Bobby was pretty confident she was still alive, and if there was a chance to reunite them, he’d take it.

  For now, however, he faced a choice. The pack he’d so carefully put together in Pam’s basement was gone, either taken by the criminals or lost in the flames. But there was more than enough in the basement to resupply himself. There was medicine for his injuries, food for his stomach and the means of making them pay.

  And he wanted revenge. Bobby Rodriguez had been in his fair share of trouble when he was younger, but he’d always had a sense of justice. He might, once or twice, have taken something he didn’t own from someone who could afford it back then. But he grew out of that, recognizing that his poverty was no excuse and, unlike many of his fellow gang members, he never exploited his own. He knew what made Moses and Tonto follow that monster Crouch—they needed someone to make decisions for them. They didn’t judge whether those decisions were right or wrong, they just needed a boss to tell them what to do.

  Well, they might not judge, but Bobby Rodriguez would. He wasn’t a murderer, and the idea of killing someone filled him with horror. But the image of Eve—or any woman—in the clutches of an animal like Crouch overrode all his more civilized instincts. He would find them, he would execute them, and he would rescue Eve.

  But should they return to Pam’s first? It would make their journey easier and give them a better chance of overcoming the criminals, but he reckoned it would delay them by at least eight hours. The highway lay to the south, so that was the direction the convicts had come from, which meant they were heading north. Pam’s place was to the southwest.

  No, there wasn’t long enough. By the time he got back here, the trail would have gotten cold and then he’d be stuck with Joshua, a broken promise and unfulfilled revenge.

  He held the boy tight as the sun rose. Their pants were hanging from a tree branch to dry, but they left them there as they got up and made their way to the smoking ruin of the cabin.

  It was as if a giant fist had pushed the building down from above. Roof tiles and solar panels lay shattered among blackened rafters, and the wreckage was now no taller than the boy was.

 
; “Look out for glass,” Bobby said.

  Josh nodded, his eyes scanning the ground for anything he might recognize. Bobby held on to his hand as they skirted the outside of the building, stepping over broken panes and scarred wall logs.

  “I can’t see nothing. It’s all gone,” the boy said.

  “Hold on, what’s this?” Bobby pointed at a section of the roof that seemed higher than the rest, as if propped up. It was the kitchen. He kicked over some half standing timbers. “Stand back, will you? In case it comes down.”

  He could feel the warmth through the soles of his boots, but whereas the rest of the building was dust, tile and ash, here he could recognize some of the shapes. The AGA cooker had survived more or less intact, and he swept away the rubble from its top, and found, beneath a carbonized timber, the roasted remnants of a drawer. His hands wrapped around something smooth and warm inside and then brought out a kitchen knife, blackened but still sharp.

  He felt around in the drawer, but most of the contents had fallen into the wreckage. Then his fingers touched something smaller. A penknife. He glanced across at Joshua, who stood where he’d been told to, just outside the perimeter of the cabin. “Here,” he said, tossing it over to the boy.

  Josh’s eyes widened. “That’s my dad’s!”

  “Well, you keep it, and give it to him when you see him again.”

  “That man said he was dead.”

  Bobby grunted. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  “So, do you think Daddy’s alive?”

  Turning to face the boy, Bobby got down onto his haunches, palms on the warm wooden floor. “Honestly, Josh, I don’t know. But I survived, and those criminals who’ve got your mom survived. Why not your dad?”

  He wasn’t lying. Josh’s dad could be alive. It might be a million to one chance, but right now he needed to give the boy hope.

  And they both needed food and clean water. Bobby found some cans in the wreckage, as well as a canvas shopping bag that had escaped the worst of the fire, having slid under the refrigerator that now stood like the skeleton of a robot, all metal and blobs of plastic. He found a cache of empty water bottles outside, hidden in a pit in the ground that, according to Joshua, was emptied every now and again. Next to it, he found a pipe connecting the house to an underground well. He traced it inside, turned the valve tap and was rewarded with a flow of fresh water he could use to fill as many of the bottles as he thought they could carry.

  “Time to go, Josh,” he said.

  “Are we gonna take the tomahawk?”

  He looked across to see Joshua standing beside a tree stump. He reached down and pulled a long-handled weapon from a recess. “Dad made that so we could keep it outside, but no one would know it was there.”

  “Clever man,” Bobby said, taking the tomahawk from the boy. It was a nice example: a long wooden handle and an iron head with a short, sharp blade on one side and a two-inch spike on the other. If he could get close enough, he was confident he could do serious damage with this. But it was a big if.

  They returned to their makeshift camp beside the shore and pulled on their pants. They were still damp, and Bobby was surprised and impressed that Josh didn’t bellyache about it. He slipped the penknife into his pocket. “Which way did they go?”

  “We’ll look for signs of them up the valley. They said they were on a prison bus when the wave overtook them, and that must have been on the highway. That runs along the base of the valley, heading for Santa Clarita. So they must have been walking north to pass the cabin. But look, Josh, you gotta do exactly what I say, and you gotta leave the fighting to me. Your job is to look after your mom, okay?”

  He nodded, his face set with determination. Then he caught Bobby off guard. “Where’s your family?”

  Bobby sighed and shook his head. “I left my daughter on an island to the west of here, to go get help. So, we gotta find your mom quickly, so I can go back for my girl.”

  Josh looked at him as if considering this deeply. “We better get going, then.”

  They walked past the ruins of the cabin for the last time, and Bobby paused for a moment. “Hold on a minute.” He rolled one of the wall logs over so the blackest side was face upwards, then he kneeled beside it and carved two letters: J and N. Alongside the N he added an arrow. “There. When your dad arrives, he’ll know we went north.”

  He got up, reached into the shopping bag, and handed a smiling Joshua an energy bar. “You’ll have to pick the plastic off, but I don’t suppose some extra heat will have ruined it.”

  They passed through the trees above the slope to reach the track Bobby had taken when he’d first seen the cabin. The rim of the valley climbed on their left side, its stony slope punctuated by scrubby bushes and the odd burst of yellow from wildflowers managing to survive in the arid environment.

  Reaching the track, Bobby looked northward, then turned his gaze to the new inland sea that stretched along the valley wall for as far as he could see. He felt overcome by the longing to see Maria, to hold her in his arms, and he said a silent prayer that she was safe and waiting for him.

  The sun rose into the sky above the other side of the valley, warming their skin as they walked. Bobby was doing his best to ignore the pain because he knew it was only going to get worse the longer he walked. Within a few hundred yards, he’d taken to walking on the side of his injured foot to protect the wound, but that soon triggered pain in his ankle, so he found a long, discarded branch and made a walking stick out of it. Joshua watched him do it, and Bobby thought he saw the boy’s faith in him drain away.

  “How far have they gone?” he asked as they set off again.

  “It’s hard to say, but not too far, I think. It was dark when they attacked the cabin.” he said. And Crouch would not want to wait long to get his hands on Eve. Rage coursed through his veins. Rage on behalf of a woman he barely knew. A woman who’d left him with a head injury that had begun throbbing again as soon as they’d set off. He found himself questioning his motives as he hobbled along, eyes fixed on the trail ahead, looking for any sign of their quarry or, indeed, an ambush. He doubted they’d even consider that he might have survived the fire, but Crouch struck Bobby as the cunning sort. He had an evil intelligence that likely saw enemies everywhere.

  He shook his head to clear it. No, he knew why he was chasing the criminals. He’d made a promise to the boy and he would see it through. And he was the only person who could help her. If he didn’t go after her, she was lost. He could only imagine the horrors she’d endured, mixed with the overwhelming grief of believing her son had died when the cabin burned down.

  His anger drove him on and gave him the strength to push away the pain, at least for now.

  “Look!” Joshua said. They’d been walking for nearly two hours and Bobby was about ready to rest his sore legs and feet for a few minutes at least when the boy ran to one side and reached down.

  “Be careful!”

  He raised a torn piece of fabric in his hands. “This is from Mommy’s dress!”

  Bobby took it from him. It looked as though it was from the hem of the skirt Eve had been wearing. In his mind’s eye, he saw her trying to make a run for it, and being grabbed from behind. And the rage rose up again.

  “Here, have a drink and something to eat,” he said, handing a bottle of well water to the boy, then stabbing a can of peaches with his knife and sawing the lid off. His body cried out for rest, but he would push on. This was, at the very least, confirmation that she was still alive, and that gave him hope.

  In the end, they almost walked past their quarry. The sides of the valley were getting closer together before meeting no more than half a mile farther along. Bobby’s plan had been to cross onto the other side there, then walk south until he found a way to Santa Clarita. And perhaps that was why they almost stumbled on the criminals.

  It was midafternoon, and the sun was skirting the western side of the valley, which reared high above the path they walked along. Fir trees covere
d the slope below them until they descended into the water. And then he heard it. Someone shouted, followed by loud shushing noises. Bobby grabbed Josh by the shoulder and pulled him off the road and behind a large pine, where they crouched down. He put his finger to his lips and touched his ears. They sat listening, but could hear nothing beyond the chatter of birds and the sighing of the wind between the trees, tickling the branches.

  Bobby peered around the thick trunk of the pine tree, moving his head from side to side, trying to find any sign of movement. “There they are! Down by the water.” He gestured to where, in a tiny gap between the trees, he could see a group sitting on the slope and casting shadows onto the waves.

  Josh strained to look.

  “Now, you remember what I told you? You have to stay out of the way. Leave them to me,” Bobby said. “Follow me.”

  He crept out from behind the tree and darted across to the next, keeping the boy by his side and moving down the slope, but keeping the same distance from them. When they made it to the waterside, he began moving closer until he could clearly make out their voices. He sat with his back to the tree and listened, holding Josh tight.

  The reedy voice of Moses was the first one he heard. “That sure was nice. Would’ve been better hot.”

  “Well, why don’t you have a word with room service, you dumb ox!” Crouch snarled, silencing the other voice instantly. “You got no appetite? Or don’t you like dining with such company as us? Is that it, my lady?”

  Joshua’s body froze as he heard his mother’s voice, shrill and desperate. “No. I’m just not hungry,” she said.

  “Well, maybe you’ll feel better once you’ve freshened up a little. You sure will smell better. Moses, come give me a hand.”

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “You’re gonna have yerself a bath, lady.”