by Jordan Rivet
“I guess so,” Judith said, grinning at the little girl.
“Oh, I got to hold baby Cally today!” Esther said as she dug her fingers into her cornbread. “She’s so small. And she sounds like a kitty when she cries. Her mommy says I can be her ornery sister if I want to.”
“Honorary sister?” Simon asked.
“Yeah, that!”
“That’s nice of her.”
“I want to be a good big sister,” Esther said. “Just like Namie.”
Simon exchanged glances with Judith over Esther’s head. He felt a twinge in his chest at the sound of his other daughter’s nickname. Esther still hadn’t shed any tears over her mother and sister. He wasn’t sure whether he should prepare her more, impress the likely truth upon her. It would catch up to her in a painful way eventually if she didn’t accept their loss.
Based on what Simon had seen of the cloud descending over San Diego and the confirmation that it was volcanic ash, he knew no one could have survived in their city. He still held on to the shimmering hope that Nina and Naomi might have driven out of San Diego and headed south in a hurry, but he couldn’t think of a plausible reason why they would. He and Nina had been stressed and prone to snapping at each other lately, but she would never have taken Naomi and left him. He almost wished she were the type just so he could hold on to a sliver of hope that they had survived.
Rain had begun to fall. The storm was getting worse. Simon could barely see anything through the windows. The sky was a writhing, living black. The ship rolled hard, and Judith reached out a hand to protect Esther’s head from swinging into the back of her chair. Esther smiled brightly at her, unafraid.
“Judith, can you be my ornery big sister until we find Naomi?”
Judith looked startled. Simon had noticed a reticence about her. She kept her emotions under tight control. But Esther didn’t seem to mind.
“Please, Judy.”
“Um, I guess I can,” Judith said.
The wind picked up, howling around them like a wolf in the darkness. Empty chairs—and some occupied ones—began to slide across the floor as the ship lurched. People around the dining hall exchanged worried looks. This was not good.
Simon stood, holding on to the table. His chair fell backwards onto the floor with a crash.
“Everyone,” he called. “I think we should go back to our cabins and wait this out.”
The wind shrieked, and the ship rocked more violently still. Plates and glasses crashed to the floor. The heavy tables began to slide back and forth across the room. Chairs banged against each other, and someone screamed. Then people were jumping up, panicking, stumbling toward the doors, grabbing on to whatever they could.
“Be careful of the glass!” Simon yelled, his voice swallowed by the howls of the wind and the sea. “Stay calm!”
He reached for Esther’s hand, but she tumbled away from his grasp, rolling like a potato bug as the ship swayed.
“Esther!”
A table shot across the floor between them, cutting him off. Simon crouched low, trying to keep his balance. There was a scream from the other side of the hall as another sliding table pinned a woman against the wall. The lights flickered.
“Esther!” Simon yelled. He could barely tell who was who in the chaos. He clung to a pillar for support. He couldn’t lose his other daughter. He had to keep her safe. She was the only thing that mattered now.
The ship tossed like a rag doll in a washing machine. Waves crashed into it, jarring, erratic. People clung to support pillars, the floor, each other. Glass and porcelain shattered. Food tumbled across the floor, which glittered with shards of glass. A collection of dinner rolls bounced back and forth.
Suddenly, a table rolled sideways across the dining hall and crashed through the tall sea-facing windows. Water and wind surged through the opening. Another table pitched through a window further along, shattering it too. Wave upon wave assaulted the opening, the water rushing in and out of the dining hall.
“Esther!” Simon shouted.
He searched the darkness frantically. The crack of thunder and roar of the waves drowned out people’s screams. The Catalina tipped sideways, dipping into a deep, dark trough. They tilted, the floor tipping past a forty-five-degree angle. An elderly man lost his grip on a support pillar and rolled toward the broken window. He disappeared into the black hole, his screams lost in the howling sea.
“Esther! Where are you?”
Shadows and lightning flashed. People stumbled to and fro. Chaos. Confusion.
“Esther!”
“I got her!” shouted a voice behind him. “Simon! Over here!”
He followed the voice, pulling himself around to the other side of the pillar. Judith had Esther clutched in her bone-white hands. Relief squeezed at Simon’s heart. Judith was wedged into an alcove to protect them both from the tumbling furniture, Esther’s arms wrapped tightly around her waist. Esther’s eyes were bright with fear and excitement. Lightning flashed across her face.
Simon waited for the next roll of the waves and then lurched across the floor and fell to his knees in front of them.
“Are you girls okay?”
“Yes,” Judith said, her face white. “Are we going to sink?”
Simon didn’t answer. He lodged himself in front of the alcove, his body between Esther and Judith and the torrent of icy water that burst through the broken windows every time the ship rolled. The others were taking refuge by pillars and in alcoves or stumbling toward the relative safety of the corridor.
“Daddy,” Esther shouted. “I feel sick.”
“We’ll be all right. It’s okay if you need to throw up.”
Esther’s face turned green, but she kept her mouth clenched shut. Simon met Judith’s eyes over her head and mouthed thank you. She nodded, her jaw set and eyes wide. She didn’t let go of the little girl.
Simon gripped the edges of the alcove, his whole body tense, trying to protect them from the tossing sea. The dining hall had transformed into a watery hell. The remaining emergency lights swam beneath seawater as wave after wave surged through the broken windows. Each time the water retreated it dragged glass and food and chairs with it. Pale faces peered out from corners, some covered in blood. Several people vomited as the rolling of the ship continued unabated.
There was no way to move, no way to run for a more protected part of the ship—or the lifeboats. They weren’t safe anywhere now.
Judith
The storm was endless. Judith felt like she had always been there, huddled in that alcove with Esther and Simon, holding on against the sea. She didn’t know how long the tempest actually lasted, but it felt like days. She silently begged the waves to abate. She hated the utter lack of control she felt, never knowing which way the sea would toss them next. They had to make it through. She wanted to live.
Hours passed, but eventually she became aware of the waves lessening. They weren’t throwing her quite as hard against the walls. She didn’t have to tense as much against the churn. Finally—finally—the sea was beginning to calm.
Simon put a hand on her arm. “Judith? I think it’s safe enough to move.” His voice was hoarse, and he was shivering violently.
Judith was almost too numb to feel the cold. Almost. Her sweater and yoga pants were damp and stiff. Salt coated her face from the water that had come through the broken window. The ship still tossed in the waves, but the violence had abated over the hours. Miraculously, Esther had fallen asleep, her chubby arms still wrapped around Judith’s waist.
“Is the storm over?” Judith asked.
“It’s a bit calmer at least,” Simon said. “Let’s get everyone out of here.”
Judith slowly extracted herself from Esther’s grip and stood. Pins shot through her legs like lightning. Simon offered her a hand to steady her, then knelt to wake his daughter.
The sea was still rough, but they were no longer in danger of hurtling out of the broken window. Judith shivered. She had seen two people dis
appear into the darkness throughout the night. She hoped she never had to see something like that again.
They made their way painfully out of the alcove, keeping to the edge of the dining hall. They roused the people crouched around the room, urging them to take shelter deeper in the ship.
Judith found the woman she’d met in the plaza with her son, Neal, crouched by a support pillar. She shook worse than a sail in a storm.
“Get up,” Judith said. “You’ll be safer and warmer in your cabin.”
“I can’t . . .” The woman’s teeth chattered so hard she could barely speak. “He doesn’t want to move, and I can’t carry him. I hurt my knee.”
“Tell him he has to move,” Judith snapped, more harshly than she intended. They had to get somewhere warm. She had to get somewhere warm.
“Neal, honey,” the woman whispered. The mousy-haired boy was curled up with his arms around his head, looking like a drowned rat. “Come on, sweetie, we need to get up.”
Neal shook his head, trembling.
“Get up,” Judith said again. “We have other people to take care of.”
“I can help.”
Esther appeared at Judith’s elbow. Her face had a red mark from where it had rubbed against Judith’s salt-roughened sweater. She crouched down beside little Neal and poked him in the ribs.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
The boy peered out from beneath his arms. In the semidarkness his eyes looked like luminous jellyfish.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I asked you first,” Esther said. Then she started tugging on the boy’s arm. “Let’s go. I can show you a safe place to hide. It’s really warm down there.”
“Where is it warm?”
“By the engines. And they have lots of tools. Do you like tools? Daddy says I can have some of my own when I get big.”
Neal stood and allowed Esther to pull him toward the door leading deeper into the ship. Esther seemed to have things well in hand, and Neal’s mother needed Judith’s help. She draped the shivering woman’s arms around her neck and half carried her toward the door. The floor still swayed.
Neal’s mother questioned her feebly about how close they were to Hawaii.
“I don’t know any more than you,” Judith said. “This storm could have tossed us anywhere.”
She felt like the numbness had moved from her limbs, which were warming up with the exertion, into the core of her body. What if they had been carried too far away from Hawaii? How much longer could they sail before they ran out of fuel? They had almost made it.
After installing Neal’s mother in her cabin, Judith returned to the dining hall. The injured had been moved with the help of the other survivors, and Simon was directing a group of sailors to improvise some sort of patch for the windows. They used whatever they could find, mostly tables reinforced with metal from the few lounge chairs that had been in storage. The other deck chairs had been swept away by the storm.
Simon told Judith he didn’t need any more help, so she headed for the bridge.
Chapter 9—The Captain
Judith
By the time Judith arrived at the bridge it was morning. The sky remained dark gray, with just enough light forcing through the clouds to distinguish it from night. Judith couldn’t wait to see a real golden sunrise again.
Ren was hunched over her computer console when Judith entered the bridge. Nora sat beside her, swigging vodka from a cracked blue bottle. They must have located the captain’s supply. Both women wore the same clothes as last night when Judith left them to have dinner with Simon and Esther. Was that only yesterday?
“Are you guys okay?” Judith asked.
“We’ve been better,” Ren said, reaching for the vodka bottle in Nora’s hand.
“Ugh, are storms always like that?” Judith slumped into a chair and put her head in her hands. “Where’s the captain?”
“Up in the radio tower shooting the messenger. Poor Vinny.” Ren tipped the bottle up and then handed it back to Nora.
“Huh?”
“Vinny finally got in touch with Hawaii,” Nora said. Her eyes were the same bright pink as her hair. “About an hour ago.”
Judith bolted upright.
“And?” she prompted.
“The storm was bad for us,” Ren said. “Longest and worst one I’ve ever been through.”
“Okay . . .”
“Well, we were just on the edge. This thing was massive.” Ren rubbed her eyes, pulling her skin tight across her face. She had kept it together so well over the past few days, taking up most of the slack from the captain, but now she was coming undone. It had to be bad if she was drinking vodka at her post.
“We’ve been blown far off course,” Ren said, “and there were huge storm surges across the Hawaiian Islands. We’re talking Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Typhoon Haiyan on overdrive. This storm is hell-bent on destruction. Hawaii is a disaster zone. Honolulu got it bad, and the little beach towns got it worse. Pearl Harbor is basically a puddle of mud. We can’t dock there anytime soon even if we have enough fuel left to get there.”
Judith felt the world narrowing to a point. They had been almost there. They were supposed to be sailing into the harbor this very moment. She had pictured the Hawaii of postcards, despite the darkened skies. She had seen them gliding into Pearl Harbor, taking refuge amidst strong and reassuring warships, walking across a clean white-sand beach. She couldn’t reconcile that image with what Ren was saying. They were supposed to be safe.
“What about the navy?” Judith whispered.
“Do you know what happens when a storm surge picks up a warship?” Ren asked, her words slurring.
“No.”
“Same thing that happens when a storm surge picks up any other ship and throws it onto the beach.”
Judith slid to the floor. The feeling had finally returned to her limbs, but now she felt like her head was full of cotton. No Hawaii. No navy. The ship was still rocking, making her feel ill.
Nora handed her the bottle of vodka, teetering on the edge of her swivel chair. “We got the net back for a few minutes,” she said. “Apparently the ash from the volcano is spreading in the atmosphere and making it hard for satellite signals to get through. While we were online, we found a site that seems to have the most updated news. It’s on a network with a capacity barely out of the nineties. There have been riots in New York and Atlanta. People are scared.”
“How long have we been at sea again?” Judith said. She took a swallow of the vodka, a drink she had never cared for in the best of circumstances. It burnt her throat like bile as it went down.
“This is the fourth day.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We have to get to land,” Ren said. “Problem is we’re not exactly sure where we are right now. The storm dragged us around quite a bit. For all we know Hawaii is a thousand miles away. I’m still working on figuring out our position.”
“How much fuel do we have left?”
“A little,” Ren said. “But it may not be enough to get us back.”
“Does anyone know we’re out here?” Judith asked. She felt very small. Rain slicked the bridge windows with a viscous film. It was only a trick of the light, but it looked like there was oil dripping down the outsides of the ship.
“Who? The coast guard?” Ren said. “They could be in worse shape than us. I think we’re on our own.”
The door burst open.
“Captain! Captain, sir!” It was Manny, the young Filipino crewman who had helped Judith on the day of the disaster.
“Captain’s in the crow’s nest,” Ren said.
Nora giggled, reaching for the bottle again.
“The ship. She is leaking,” Manny said.
Nora set the bottle back down.
Simon
Simon had found Esther and the little boy, Neal, wedged beneath an engine again. The humming of the machine was soothing. The engine room was deserted, apart fro
m the children. The remaining crew was still working on covering up the broken windows around the ship.
Simon returned Neal to his mother, whose name was Mona. She was shuddering with fever, and Simon instructed the little boy to go to Nurse Laura for help if she got any worse. Then they headed for their own cabin, hoping to settle in for some sleep. Esther ran ahead, while Simon knocked on a few doors to check on people along the way. It seemed like the right thing to do.
In a cabin on their corridor, one that had been outfitted with bunks for four, he found Penelope Newton, the woman with the cross necklace who had helped during the birth of little Catalina. She had insisted on taking a hotel staff cabin with her sons instead of a larger stateroom. “Give it to someone who needs it,” she’d said.
Now the tiny room was full of people. An older woman Simon didn’t know opened the door at his knock.
“And if it be your will, Lord, carry us through the . . .” someone was saying.
Simon started to back out again, but the old woman put a hand on his arm to stop him. Penelope sat on one of the lower bunks, holding hands with people on both sides. She was the one who had been speaking. She opened one eye when Simon entered, then closed it again.
Her three towheaded boys sat cross-legged on a top bunk, looking down on the people filling the room. Horace, one of the runners, still wore the suit he’d had on the first day, the sleeves and cuffs rolled up like Robinson Crusoe’s. Elderly cruise passengers squeezed together on the other bottom bunks. A family of four from Michigan sat on the floor, one child in each parent’s lap. Everyone’s eyes were closed, and they held hands with one or two others.
Penelope’s voice was a strong, sure drawl. “And be with my Jeb, Lord, and protect our sacred union. Your eye is on the sparrow, and I know it must be on my little boys’ daddy in San Diego too. Please guide the hands that sail this ship. And if we are truly living in the Last Days, then Jesus come quickly. Amen.”
Amens circled the room. There was something cozy about the scene, but it left Simon feeling desperately sad. God couldn’t possibly be with them, not if he wasn’t with Nina and Naomi—perfect, beautiful Nina and Naomi on their way to the dentist.