Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter 2
—Salvage

She took a shortcut
up the old elevator shaft. The elevators had been
replaced with ladders in one of the early bouts of energy-saving enthusiasm
when the group that had taken refuge on the
Catalina
realized they would
be calling it home for the long haul. Esther reached the top rung of the ladder
and hoisted her compact body out of the shaft. She used to wish she were taller
than her five feet and one inch, but instead of growing tall in her teenage
years, she grew strong. Now, at twenty-two, her body had matured into a small,
powerful shape, well suited for crawling through the engine room and fixing the
machines and contraptions that made life on the
Catalina
possible after
all this time.

A metallic
clanging echoed through the ship, a different timbre than the howls of the
wind. That was a good sign. Esther followed the noise to the starboard lifeboat
deck, taking a detour through the huge storage facility that had once been a
cocktail lounge. The wind whistled a high-pitched note as it tore around the
ship. Sea spray coated the deck in a slick film. Esther found one of the repairmen
leaning over the side of the ship. Reggie was a muscular seaman who’d been on
the crew of the
Catalina
before the big eruption.

“What’s the
damage, Reg?” she shouted above the wind.

“’Sup, Esther.
Storm drove a piece of sea crap into the lower third. Wong and Pieter are down
there now, patching up the hole.” He nodded toward a set of lines pulled tight
over the side of the ship. They dropped into blackness below.

“The water is
still coming in through the engine room.”

“Yeah, we had some
trouble with the patch, but I think it’s sorted out now.”

Esther breathed a
little easier. The ship was barely holding together these days. “Did you save
any scrap metal for me?” she asked.

 
“Won’t have much left after this one. I
think we hit a half-submerged hull,” Reggie said.

“Ouch. Cally said
something about a shipping container. We got a cargo haul nearby?”

Sometimes they
came across sealed shipping containers floating together like whale pods. These
could be goldmines, depending on what was inside, and the containers themselves
were extremely useful.

 
“Don’t think so,” Reggie shouted. Sea
spray clung to his short, thick hair like frost. “Just scraps. Have to get it
from Judith if you want the full story, though.”

Esther rolled her
eyes. “I’ll pass.”

“Don’t blame you.
I haven’t been in the mood to talk to her in about four years, the bitch.”

“At least she
doesn’t hate you.”

“Hard to tell,
innit? Look, I doubt she’s forgotten about last time,” Reggie shouted, “but you
might be able to pick up bits and pieces without Judith noticing if you want to
brave the wind.”

“I’ll give it a
go,” Esther said.

She had a knack
for fixing things and—she believed—for improving them, but it was
an ability that got her into trouble as much as it got her out of it these
days. Their leader, Judith, hadn’t been particularly happy when one of Esther’s
improvements backfired. Judith didn’t seem to understand the concept of trial
and error.

Esther left Reggie
watching out for his men in the waves below and made her way along the outer
promenade. The hull dropped away beneath her feet. It was a patchwork job.
They’d collected debris from the wreckage of the world for years, reinforcing
the
Catalina
to protect themselves from the driving winds and colossal
waves of an atmosphere gone haywire. The six-hundred-foot pleasure cruiser
hadn’t been built for the battering it had sustained over the past sixteen
years. They’d lost massive sheets of steel and fiberglass in the first storms.
Twice they’d lost members of the crew when debris ripped across the decks like
a giant’s razor blade. Back then they hadn’t yet learned which storms they
could ride and which ones they’d have to flee. Even so, they were safer at sea
than on land.
 

Esther cut through
a damp corridor toward the aft deck. At the blunt stern of the
Catalina
,
a steel shield bent around a deck that had once been open to the sea breezes.
It had been an atrium for sunbathing and swimming. Now, they needed to protect
this space, to keep out the sea. A door that originally belonged on a boxcar
sealed the entrance. Esther tied herself to one of the strong tethers they’d
found in a capsized cargo vessel and pulled open the heavy door. Immediately,
the wind whipped inside, driving water against Esther’s skin so violently that
it was like being pelted with pebbles. She pulled her storm goggles up from
around her neck and stepped into the gale.

The sky was a
violent purple, with driving swirls of gray and black. Every flash of lightning
revealed the striations of the ash-filled atmosphere. Seawater rampaged across
the deck. The rain came in sickly fits, never enough to provide as much
freshwater as they needed. They were lucky to have a decent desalination
system.

Above Esther’s
head, the big wind turbines spun too fast for her to see the blades. The
churning of the waves would be running riot on the turbines attached to the
stabilizers below the sea. They’d get some serious power reserves out of this
tempest. It was a good thing too. The half-starved solar panels on top of the
ship barely produced enough for everyone’s basic needs on a normal day. They
could shoot a batch of water through the desal system and replenish their water
tanks. They were getting low. It took a lot of energy—and a lot of clean
water—to run a floating village of over a thousand survivors. This storm
would likely replenish their supply of seaweed too, a vital source of nutrients
that was becoming harder to collect with each passing year.

Esther fought her
way through the wind to the salvage apparatus, her boots clinging to the rough
deck. Twenty-foot swells buffeted the ship, constantly forcing her to shift her
balance. She hoped to spot some useful material before Judith’s people took
over. She needed metals that weren’t corroded and brittle. Her latest idea
would make the behemoth of a desalination system more energy efficient, but
Judith was stonewalling her, especially after what happened last time.

The salvage
apparatus was primitive, a series of cables and ropes attached to a modified
winch used to hoist debris out of the sea. The hooks, nooses, and magnets on
the cables could be tossed after any prize that floated into their path. In the
early days, it had been easier to pick materials off the surface. After the
disaster, the volatile weather patterns wreaked havoc on coastal towns, washing
their contents, their resources, and their populations into the deep. Even now
there was wreckage to be found on the water, and they had to be ready for it.
Of course, salvaging was safer on a calm day, but sometimes storms threw
treasures their way. Once, the waves had dumped an entire case of canned vegetables
onto the bow, missing Bernadette by about six inches. Esther’s mouth watered as
she remembered those few bites of canned corn. She’d felt nearly delirious
eating something that wasn’t seaweed or some sea creature.

Unfortunately, the
salvage apparatus was already in use. A small, wiry man was busy unhooking the
cable from a curved piece of metal that might have been the hull of a small
boat. He saw her coming.

“Not for you,
Esther. Not after last time. Judith’s orders.”

Manny was another
original crew member of the
Catalina
. He’d left the Philippines to work
for the cruise line, guaranteed money good enough to send extra home to his
family. He’d only been aboard a few months before the
Catalina
became a
survival vessel. These days, he was Judith’s right-hand man.

“Come on,” Esther
pleaded. “Just let me have a look. Judith won’t let me use parts from the
stores anymore.”

Manny shook his
head, flinging water from his curls. “Fish the stuff out of the sea yourself,
and maybe you’ll get to keep it.”

“I only need a
bit,” she pressed.

“This is community
property now,” Manny said. Sweat and seawater pooled in the deep scar above his
right eyebrow, a memorial of their escape from the land.

Esther edged
around him, stepping in time to the rolling of the ship. Sure enough, a row of
rivets the precise size she needed lined the scrap. It didn’t look like it had
been in the sea for very long. The rivets shone against the steel without a
hint of rust or corrosion.
Could someone somewhere be manufacturing
new
steel?
That seemed unlikely.

“Please, Manny.
Frank
thinks I’m onto something.”

Manny hesitated,
appearing to reconsider. Frank Fordham would always be respected for developing
their freshwater system, no matter how much the infighting affected everyone
else. Esther wanted to show that her contributions to the ship were just as
valuable as his.

Manny seemed about
to relent when a shrill voice split through the wind behind them.

“What do you think
you’re doing? You’re not on duty.”

Judith, ash blond
and authoritarian, teetered over to them. A tall woman in her late thirties,
Judith was the acting captain of the
Catalina
,
though she wasn’t a sailor, and the mayor, though she wielded power like a
dictator.

Rust
, Esther
thought.
Too late.
“I’m just taking a
look,” she said.

“After what you
pulled last time?” The sea spray had slicked Judith’s normally carefully
maintained hair to her chin. “I’ve told you before: you can’t keep
‘experimenting’ with community resources.”

“That was an
accident, okay?”
Why do people have to
keep bringing that up?
“Besides, these rivets don’t have another immediate
use. Please, Manny.” She turned her back on Judith.

“Manny.” Judith’s
voice was sharp, like the edge of an oyster shell. Manny would do whatever she
wanted.

“Don’t worry,
Judith. This piece is for storage.” Manny had finished unhooking the steel from
the cable.

“There’s gotta be
more than enough of that stuff in storage by now,” Esther said. “What are you
going to use it for anyway?”

Manny ignored her.
The rivets glinted in a flash of lightning. They would be perfect. Esther was
having problems controlling the pressure levels and she needed something new to
hold everything together. She had been so close. She sighed as Manny dragged
the scrap away.

Judith studied
Esther, birch-white hands on her bony hips. “You should be sleeping when you’re
not on duty. And I told you to stop messing around with the salvage. We can’t
afford to sacrifice more resources to your experiments.”

Esther ignored
her. She stepped over to the railing and hooked herself to it so she wouldn’t
have to put all her attention into staying firmly planted on board. She scanned
the darkness below, hoping for a bit of storm debris that she could use. Salt
water drenched her clothes and pasted her hair to her goggles.

Judith shouted
above the wind. “Esther, everyone in the community needs to do their part.”

“Go away, Judith,”
Esther muttered. She had to restrain herself from voicing her dissent loud
enough for Judith to hear her above the howling of the wind. “I’m sure you have
something better to do, you corroded old sea hag.”

Judith didn’t hear
her, and Esther was almost sorry about that.

“It’ll be poor for
morale if you don’t follow the routines,” Judith said. “You, better than
anyone, should know how important the routines are, considering who your father
is.”

Esther glared at
her and then continued to search the water for any sign of metal. She’d be
happy for fiberglass or plastic too, for that matter. Every little bit helped.
She shouldn’t have to fight Judith at every turn just to get something that
could help everyone in the long run—if her ideas ever worked, that is.

“Esther, are you
listening to me?” Judith snapped her fingers, then stumbled sideways as a
particularly large swell crashed into the ship.

Esther gripped the
cold railing. The wave broke and tumbled against the steep hull beneath her.

“Not really,”
Esther said under her breath.

“We will talk
about this tomorrow. It seems we need to revisit the terms of your probation.”
She wobbled back toward the makeshift door.

“Can’t wait,”
Esther said, staying at the railing.

She wished it didn’t
matter what Judith said. The
Catalina
was
supposed to be a democracy, but these days it was impossible to get any real
work done without Judith’s blessing. Esther needed freedom to experiment, to
prove she wasn’t just wasting time and materials. So what if she sometimes
smashed things up in the name of progress? She was on the brink of a discovery.
She could feel it.

Chapter 3—Neal’s Tower

The sun came up
in a riot of blues, purples, and grays. The ash
wasn’t visible anymore, but the clouds over the seas were never still, never
normal, or at least what normal used to be. Esther and her father, Simon, were
lucky to have a tiny porthole interrupting their yellowed wall. She could watch
the sunrise struggling to break through the fog. The sea changed colors too,
from gray to indigo to green, still choppy after the storm.

Esther sat on the
edge of her narrow bunk, rubbing the salt from her eyes. Her bed folded down
from the wall and was covered in a thin blanket and a sheet that had once been
periwinkle blue. She pulled her boots back on, still wearing the stiff jeans
she’d put on the night before. She hadn’t even salvaged anything useful,
despite her long watch. She should have stayed in bed.

A few feet away
Esther’s father slept with his back to her, snoring gently. They had shared the
tiny crew’s cabin for sixteen years. Bigger families than theirs occupied the
staterooms, some now holding three generations. It wasn’t easy to share such
close quarters with her father. When Esther was a teenager, all she had wanted
was space. She’d found solace in the engine room, tinkering with parts and
assisting the engineers. She grew to love the inner workings of the ship, and
it gave her something to do far away from her father.

Simon mumbled in
his sleep, and Esther watched him for a moment. She and Simon got along better
after she learned to spend as much time as possible outside of the cabin. Now,
though, she wished they spent more time together. He hadn’t been himself
lately, and she was concerned.

As a frightened
six-year-old, she had clung to her father, her tiny hand perpetually in his.
They helped each other through their sadness, through their fear, through the
loss of her mother and sister. On the day the slumbering volcano deep beneath
Wyoming blew, Simon had been walking Esther to school while her mother took her
sister to a dentist appointment on the other side of town. Simon and Esther had
decided to take a detour along the San Diego boardwalk.

She remembered the
day. It had been sunny. The morning sky hanging over the harbor was so
pristine, so perfect. Esther had thought in her six-year-old way that it was
the same blue as one of the Easter eggs her big sister had brought home from
school. She’d been carrying a purple backpack, eating an apple pastry from a
stand on the boardwalk, and chattering to her dad about the birthday party she
would attend that weekend. She’d asked solemnly if he thought she looked like a
boy when she wore shorts. Her dad had patted her right on the top of her head
and laughed. She missed the sound of his laugh.

They’d been too
far away to hear the volcanic blast, but they saw the cloud of ash and sulfur,
the poison and darkness, thundering toward them. It had been Esther’s idea to
flee to the ship, some lucky stray thought that made her point a silent, sticky
finger at the
Catalina
sitting in the dock. Simon took one look at the
sky, picked her up, and ran.

They’d joined
other runners. The ship’s security guards had abandoned their metal detectors
and luggage scanners at the first sign of the descending disaster. A few of the
paid-up passengers and a skeleton crew were already on board. Esther and her
dad had dashed up the gangway with hundreds of others, looking for some way to
escape the ash cloud. The old captain had jumped into action, pulling the ship
away from the dock and sailing it around the bend of the harbor and as far away
from land as they could go.

Esther left the
cabin and closed the door gently, careful not to wake her father. These days he
spent too much time in their cabin or hiding out in some corner, scribbling
away at his graph-paper ledger. It was the only blank book he’d been able to
get his hands on lately.
It’s all Judith’s fault
,
she thought. Her father was so strong. He didn’t deserve to be
pushed aside like this.

Esther jogged down
the main staircase and grabbed a roll of fried seaweed from the Atlantis Dining
Hall, which was already buzzing with people chatting about the storm. She
couldn’t see Judith, but she wanted to avoid the inevitable lecture for as long
as possible. She took her breakfast topside and lingered on the main deck for a
while, breathing the salt air and watching the pure blue breaks in the clouds.
The sky seemed clearer lately, she thought, but immediately pushed down the
hope that rose with the thought. There was no going back. Better to focus on
the practical, tangible things.

But Esther felt
restless. She wanted more than the same routines, the same worries, even the
same seaweed breakfast. The frying gave the food a satisfying crunch, but
inside it was the same rubbery texture as most of their meals since the last
canned vegetables had been cracked open. Esther spit out a shell fragment that
had made its way into her roll and watched it fall until it was indistinguishable
from the white foam beneath her.

She glanced back
at the sloping edge of the
Catalina
and
spotted Judith emerging from the starboard entrance.
Rust.
Esther ducked behind an exhaust vent and darted portside.
She’d hide out with her friend Neal until her shift began. Judith wouldn’t
bother her while she was on duty.

Neal’s perch was
in the broadcast center jutting above the bridge. From here, he managed
whatever communication was possible with ships around the New Pacific. They depended
on radio because the satellites in the earth’s atmosphere no longer functioned
reliably.

She climbed the
ladder past the bridge to the broadcast center, which everyone called Neal’s
Tower. A few flakes of white paint still clung to it like barnacles. She pushed
open the trapdoor.

“Made it through
the night?” she called.

Neal jumped back
in his chair and yanked his headset off his ears. There was a permanent dent in
his mousy brown hair from the band. “Esther—gotta go, adios—hey,
Esther. Yeah, all’s well up here.” A pink tinge spread through Neal’s cheeks.

“No need to look
so surprised.”

“Oh, I was just .
. . glad to see you, Es.”

Neal tapped a
switch on his control panel and swiveled from side to side in his chair a bit
too casually. Neal was perpetually laid-back. From his faded T-shirt down to
his orange bowling shoes, he always looked casual, but today he seemed
distracted.

The broadcast center had a wide desk filled with
now-defunct computers facing the tall windows. Neal slept on a cot in the
corner, and he’d removed some of the broken equipment to make room for a few
belongings. A handmade mobile hung from the ceiling with cutouts from old magazines
featuring extinct sports, and a small collection of maps were scattered across
the floor. This was Neal’s sanctuary.

Esther hoisted
herself onto a long-silent computer console and sat cross-legged. “Nice rider
that was,” she said. “Had a bit of drama with the old pump. Cally managed to
screw things up, but fortunately I checked up on her.”

“What?” Neal said.
“Oh yeah, the storm. Wasn’t too bad. I got good intel on that one and knew it
wouldn’t be a drowner.”

Neal swiveled
around in his chair to adjust a knob.

“Missed a chance
to get some extra parts, though,” Esther said. “Judith’s on my case.”

Neal frowned.
“When did things get so bad between you two? You used to hero-worship her.”

Esther shrugged.
“Not my fault she turned out like this.”

She jumped off the
console and paced across the floor—three steps forward, three steps back.

“What did she do?”
Neal asked.

“I
almost
talked Manny into giving me some
of the salvage, but then Judith turned up, chirping about duty and community.
Now she wants to have a talk about my probation. She better not put me on bilge
duty.”

“It’s a shame she
doesn’t mean all that duty stuff,” Neal said. “She just wants to control
everybody.”

“Well, I’ve about
had it.”

Esther leaned on
the console and looked out to sea. The horizon was distinct, a rare separation
of sea and sky. She sometimes envied Neal his windowed perch above the ship. It
was an eagle’s nest with a view only interrupted by the hodgepodge of windmills
behind them. The sun was almost visible. “You ever think about leaving, Neal?”
Esther asked.

“My tower? I come
down to eat sometimes. You’d know that if you weren’t always in the desal room,
tinkering with Frank.”

“I mean the
Catalina
.
You ever think about
leave
leaving?
There are other ships out there,” Esther said. Neal was quiet. “The process is
a pain, but it might be worth it to get away from
The Judith Show
.”

“What about your
dad?” Neal said quietly.

“I know.”

Esther loved her father
for his wisdom, his patience, the way he made her feel safe in the midst of
catastrophe. But as she faced her adult years, she yearned for independence,
for a change that didn’t seem to be on the horizon for her. She wanted to test
her ideas and her abilities somewhere besides this floating small town. She
loved fiddling and asking questions and experimenting, but there was only so
far she could get on her own. There were other ships out there surviving as
they did: tankers, battleships, cargo vessels that had been repurposed when the
land rejected them. If Judith wouldn’t let her prove herself here, maybe she
could do it somewhere else.

Esther turned to
face Neal. “If things were the way they used to be,” she said, “if we still
lived in California, I’d have gone off to college and then started my own life
by now. My dad would understand. And I could always come back.” But if she left
now, the
Catalina
would be lost in the vastness of the sea. Perhaps
they’d meet again, but it could take years. She hesitated, unsure whether to
voice the idea that had been growing in her since the night before. “I’ve also
been thinking about land,” she said.

“Land?” Neal
scoffed. “You want to die of starvation? Drowning would be a hundred times
better.”

He was probably right.
Sixteen years ago, if Esther had stayed on land their fate would have been
worse than drowning. The ash cloud from the volcanic blast had spread, choking
and heavy, as the
Catalina
ran. They had tried to travel to Asia, to
seek refuge on the shores of Japan or even the Philippines. But as they sailed,
the world changed beyond recognition. The ash filled the atmosphere, wreaking
havoc on weather patterns and decimating the world’s food supplies. Where the
ash and poisonous gases didn’t spread, drought and famine did. The sea
revolted, sending surge after surge up coastlines across the world,
obliterating whole cities in a whirl of water and sound. Island populations
didn’t have a chance: Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines. Communications were
disrupted across the globe as the ash blocked out satellites and waves toppled
communications towers. But the people huddled in the hallways and cabins of the
cruise ship didn’t yet know the extent of the devastation.

By the time they
reached the shores of China, the borders were slammed shut. Voices crackling
over the old-fashioned radio waves reported that the famine had been so
extensive the Chinese government was refusing to admit stragglers from the Americas.
They shut themselves in to starve, bury, and mourn.

And then the
Catalina
drifted. They faced treacherous coastlines and almost certain starvation
inland, so the sea became their refuge. They modified the ship to help it
weather the storms and learned to harvest the waters for sustenance. Food was
scarce, but it was still more plentiful than what had survived the more extreme
temperature changes on land. People left now and again, joining the crews of
passing vessels, beginning futile searches for lost loved ones. A few jumped
into the sea. No one could blame them. But still, 1,003 survivors remained. And
somewhere, perhaps, land waited.

“It’s been a while
since we heard what’s going on there,” Esther said. “And the weather’s getting
a little better. For all we know, there could be decent harvests on land
already, if there’s anyone left to grow anything. Can you imagine eating corn
every day?”

“I’ve thought
about it,” Neal said. “Leaving. But not to land.”

“You want to join
the
Amsterdam
or something?” Esther
asked. The
Amsterdam Coalition
was a
group of cargo ships that floated together around an old oil platform and
refinery. It served as a trading hub for all the people who still survived at
sea. Once a year, the
Catalina
docked with the
Amsterdam Coalition
to trade salvage and replenish their fuel
supply. It would be a decent place to start over.

Neal shook his
head. “Not the
Amsterdam
. The
Galaxy
.”
His face was flushed, and he stared intently at the radio control panel.

“What’s that?”

“It’s another
cruise ship . . . or actually a group of cruise ships,” Neal answered. “They
maintain a regular position north of Hawaii.”

Esther cocked her
head at this. Most of the ships they knew about were like the
Catalina
,
floating aimlessly to conserve as much energy as possible.