Burnt Sea: A Seabound Prequel (Seabound Chronicles Book 0) (22 page)

He walked along the top deck to the broadcast tower. It had an entrance
through the bridge, but also one directly from the deck.
Vinny
sat in his crow’s nest, staring out at the silent islands.

“Hey.”
Vinny
didn’t respond when Simon entered.
“Do you have anything on the radio?” Simon asked, already dreading the answer.

Vinny
didn’t turn around. “Thought we should be there by
now,” he mumbled. “Didn’t want to say anything. Thought we should have been picking
up signals from the
Phils
by yesterday evening. Maybe
we were just moving slower than I calculated, or we were wrong about our position
after the last storm. There’s so much fucking silence on this radio. I thought
we’d hear something by now.”

“Maybe they don’t have the capacity—”

“Simon. Radio is old. It’s basic. If someone out there were capable of
broadcasting, they would, at least within this range. Whatever happened here
did enough damage to take down the towers and whoever is out there to send a
message. I expected this kind of radio silence at sea but not when we’re within
sight of land.”

“What are you saying?”

“If there’s anyone left in these islands, they’re in more trouble than
us. We’re not going to find help here.”

Simon had hoped they’d reach someone in the mountains, someone on a
rescue mission here. Someone.

“So we keep going,” he said. His voice was hollow and he knew it. “We
keep sailing and hope they’ll help us when we reach China.”

“Yeah,”
Vinny
said. “We keep sailing. And God
help us all.”

Chapter 19—The Harbor

Judith

Michael and Judith brought
Manny back to his cabin. He
was freezing and feverish after watching the sea carry away the ruins of his
homeland for hours. When he grew too weak to protest, they guided him to the
crew quarters deep down on the third deck. His roommate, also from the Philippines,
had been huddled in his bunk already, and he didn’t look up when they brought
Manny inside.

“Manny, you have to eat.” Judith had instructed, rather than coaxed.

She felt too raw and tired from the events of the day to display any
sympathy. She focused only on what Manny needed: food, warmth, and sleep. When
he
didn’t
respond to her, she got Michael to force him
to sit, and then she pulled pieces off the stale bread she had brought from the
dining hall and fed them to him bite by bite.

“Come on, Manny. Swallow.”

Manny ate, staring at nothing and following her instructions like a
machine. When he finished the final hunk of bread, she took the shoes off his
feet herself and made him lie down. She covered him with a blanket and tucked
it tightly beneath the mattress.

“Sleep,” she ordered. Then she took Michael by the arm and guided him
toward the door.

“Wait, Judith,” Manny said hoarsely. “Thank you.”

She nodded at him and left the room without another word.

Judith and Michael stood in silence in the corridor outside Manny’s
door. The dim emergency lights bathed Michael’s face in a haunting glow. His
clothes were still wet from being scrubbed down with detergent after his shift
in the lifeboat. Judith felt fragile, like a porcelain cup that had been
dropped too many times. If he said a word, she might shatter.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No,” she answered. “None of us are.”

“Yes.”

“Would you walk me to my room, please?”

They had to climb five flights of stairs to get to her little
stateroom. The cabin Michael had shared with another crew member for the past
few nights was on the fifth deck, but they passed it without slowing and continued
toward the eighth. Judith reached out to take his hand.

At her door Michael made no pretense of saying good night. He merely
stepped back to let her enter first and followed her into the room.

They undressed each other slowly, gently, not unlike that first night.
This time they were in a different kind of pain. Michael ran a finger along the
tender patches of her healing skin. His hands were icy from the seawater. She
took them between her long, thin fingers and kneaded warmth into them. He
kissed her forehead, traced silent tears down her cheek.

“It’ll be okay,” he breathed into her ear. “We’ll be okay.”

Judith didn’t answer. She simply wrapped her arms around his neck and
pulled him close.

It was the first time they’d spent the night together since their trip
to the atoll. Maybe they would part ways. Maybe the world would truly end. But
right now Judith wished she hadn’t wasted a single minute.

It was still early when she awoke to the sound of Michael’s steady
breathing and his arm pillowing her head. The weak morning light struggled to
break through the clouds outside her cabin window. Judith drank in the warmth
of Michael’s body beside her. She felt sore from the work of the day before,
but some of the heaviness in her heart had eased.

She slipped out of bed and got dressed in the second outfit she’d
acquired through the rationing operation a few days ago. She opened the door to
her tiny balcony and slipped outside, expecting to see the usual stretch of
dull sky and turbulent purple sea. But the emptiness was gone. From the balcony
high in the
Catalina
’s side, Judith
looked out on a city.

Simon

Simon
had found Esther and the other children curled up in the projection room of the
cinema. The projector made a low clicking sound, sputtering ineffectually.
Mangled film lay around it like a giant bird’s nest.

Esther slept with her head on a film canister. Bernadette had fallen
asleep in the projector operator’s chair. Simon left her alone and lifted
Esther into his arms.

“Daddy, we broke the movie machine,” Esther mumbled.

“That’s all right, button.”

“I tried to fix it, only I got tired.”

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Simon said.

Esther’s response was lost in the folds of Simon’s jacket as she
snuggled closer to him. He carried her to their cabin and pulled all her extra
clothes over her head before tucking her into bed. It grew colder every day.

Simon lay awake for hours staring at the ceiling. He wanted to scrub
the sights of the day from his brain, but they floated, bulbous, in front of
his eyes. If
Vinny
was right about the lack of radio
signals from the Philippines, he feared what would happen when they reached
China. With over a billion people, China would have to have
someone
they could talk to. They had
been at sea for nearly two weeks, most of that time without news. Who knew what
the world would be like when they finally managed to reenter it?

Simon rose before dawn the next morning, knowing it wouldn’t take long
to arrive at the next coast. He wasn’t sure where they’d be exactly. He hoped
to assess the situation—and maybe even make contact—before most of the
ship awoke. Esther was sleeping soundly, wrapped up in all of her clothes. She
stirred a bit as he eased the door open, then settled back to sleep, burrowing
further underneath the periwinkle sheets.

The slumbering
Catalina
was
an eerie place. The new duty roster ensured that someone was always up and
keeping watch, but Simon didn’t see anyone until he reached the bridge.

He found
Ren
overseeing the woman she and
Vinny
had recruited to help out in the bridge and radio
tower. Kim Wu, Simon remembered, had worked in IT, and she was a runner. Simon
had encouraged
Ren
to select a few additional people
to teach about the ship’s operations. If nothing else, he hoped training them
would keep her mind off of Nora. Keeping people busy wasn’t a sophisticated
leadership strategy by any means, but Simon would use it until it stopped
working or someone else was ready to take charge.

“How’s it going up here?” he asked quietly.

“We should be able to see the coast any minute,”
Ren
said.

“Has
Vinny
heard anything?”

“I don’t know,”
Ren
said. “He hasn’t reported
in a while. Kim, go up and check on him, would you?”

Kim jumped up and disappeared into the radio tower. Simon wondered if
she was Chinese, and if so whether she could help them speak to people when
they finally disembarked.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked.

“According to the map, we should be making landfall somewhere near Shantou,”
Ren
said.

“Know anything about it?”

“It’s a Chinese coastal city in Guangdong,”
Ren
said, shrugging. “Not much to know. Port. Hundreds of identical skyscrapers.”

“Let’s hope they’re friendly to refugees.”

“
Ren
! Simon!” Kim stumbled back down the
ladder. “It’s
Vinny
. He’s . . . I think he decided to
. . .”

She trailed off, gesturing up the ladder. Then she marched to the other
side of the bridge, as far as she could get from the radio tower.

Ren
looked up at Simon, her eyes already filling with
tears. She must have guessed the same thing he had. It was bound to happen
eventually, but Simon didn’t think
Vinny
would be the
first.

It only took a brief glance into the radio tower to confirm his suspicions.
Vinny
had hung
himself
from
an air-conditioning pipe on the ceiling. His body was angled away from the
windows facing the sea. With everything they had endured, Simon had feared someone
would take this way out, but it was still a shock to see his fear realized.

Simon didn’t look at
Vinny’s
face as he
climbed onto the communications console to disentangle the wire. He had to
touch
Vinny’s
fleshy neck, and he discovered that his
body was still warm. He must have stared out at the sea all night long before
deciding to do this.

The radio headset still sat on top of the console by the window. Had
Vinny
heard something that tipped his hand? What could they
have said to him?

Kim was quickly promoted to head of communications. She refused to go
into the radio tower until Simon and
Ren
had carried
Vinny’s
body out. As they maneuvered him down the ladder,
Ren
spoke softly over his limp form.

“He’s been more withdrawn lately, ever since he started bringing food
to the captain. I should have known—”

“It’s not your fault,” Simon said. “No one could have known.”

“I bet the captain did,”
Ren
said. “He as
good as said this is what we should all do.”

“He’s wrong.”

“I know,”
Ren
said. Tears sat in her large
brown eyes, threatening to fall at any moment. “I should have sent someone else
to bring food to him sometimes. It wasn’t fair to put the whole burden on
Vinny
.”

“We have to keep moving forward,
Ren
.
Vinny
let it get to him.”

“I kind of understand wanting to take this way out,” she said

“Let’s just focus on getting this ship to shore,” Simon said.

He was surprised to realize that he had never once contemplated ending
his life over the past few weeks. It was something he had considered in his
darkest moments years ago, after he lost his first tenure bid and during a
difficult stretch in his freshman year of college. He knew how despair could
creep into you, like an oozing, oily mass. He knew what it was like to feel utterly
paralyzed and empty, when even getting out of bed was a Herculean task. But
here he hadn’t fallen into the downward spiral. Despite everything that had happened,
he felt
more sure
of himself and what he had to do
than at any other time in his life. The battle for survival, both for himself
and the people counting on him, was all that mattered anymore. It had freed
him.

Simon looked up at
Ren
. “We can’t do this
without you.”

“It’s okay, Simon.” She wiped her nose on the shoulder of her uniform.
“I’m with you. I won’t give up.”

They left
Vinny’s
body in the little chapel.
Simon sent a passing porter to get Penelope. He didn’t know if
Vinny
had been religious, but it seemed like someone should
speak words over him. Simon himself had to focus on making contact with land.
With any luck they’d be able to bury
Vinny
, so he
wouldn’t have to stay at sea any longer.

Simon and
Ren
returned to the bridge, and
then Simon climbed back up to the broadcast tower. Kim had gotten to work
quickly, sending distress signals out to any frequency she could find. Kim was
Chinese, as Simon had hoped, but she was a third-generation immigrant. She told
Simon her Mandarin skills were rusty at best.

Simon waited beside her as she trawled the airwaves for voices,
requesting help or information in both English and Mandarin. There had to be
someone who could finally tell them what was going on in the rest of the world.
She searched and pleaded. Finally, someone answered.

“They say to go away,” she said.

“Are they threatening us?”

“No, at least I don’t think so.” She pulled the headphones off one ear.
“They say there’s no food. They say we can’t stay.”

“We have to keep trying,” Simon said. “See if you can get someone
else.”

As the sky lightened, a thin strip of coast and the outlines of
skyscrapers began to appear on the horizon. Simon couldn’t help feeling hope
leap in his chest at the sight. The silhouettes on the shoreline grew in the
minimal light breaking through the clouds. Simon pressed his forehead against
the window. Land. He just wanted to set foot on the land.

Warning messages crackled through the radio, but no one challenged them
directly as they sailed closer to the city. Simon had instructed
Ren
to get as near to the shore as she could, unless
someone actually came out in force to stop them. They weren’t going to let mere
words turn them away. They had to be allowed to come ashore. They had to get
off this ship.

Wrecks began to emerge from the sea around them. A crane rose from what
he thought was a giant cargo ship submerged on their port side. A large steel structure
stuck out of the water to starboard. Was it the keel of another ship? Simon
wasn’t sure. They eased carefully through the water, trying to avoid the wrecks
with their massive hull. Simon held his breath.