SALT: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Read online

  In hushed tones, she said, “Well? What did you find? Keep your voices down.” She indicated the ducting hole by way of explanation. “We don’t want to be overheard.”

  “It’s gone,” Duncan said.

  “What is?”

  “The scuba gear.”

  “For fuck’s sake. Is this Faust’s lot, you think?”

  Duncan shook his head, shaking his wild mane. “Only one person has the key to that locker. My dad. And there’s worse news.”

  Eva just waited for him to get on with it.

  “The locker rooms are ablaze. I’ve closed off the store, but I don’t know how much longer we’ve got. We can’t get down to the lower decks; they’ve been sealed off.”

  Eva looked at Stimson. The girl wilted under Eva’s gaze. “Stimson, when was the last time you know for sure the access to the lower levels was still open?”

  “I don’t know exactly, Miss Morgan, but it was at least two weeks ago.”

  “So someone must have been planning this since then. A coordinated attack. This isn’t good.”

  Danny appeared by her side, tugging at her arm.

  “What is it, Dan?” Eva asked, keeping her voice soft, trying to hide her general annoyance.

  “There’s smoke coming through,” he said before placing the fabric over his mouth.

  Eva looked round, and sure enough, it was coming through gaps around the door where the frame had distorted over the years. It only took a small crack for it to find a way in. It snaked up through the ducting. It wouldn’t be long before someone spotted it, she thought.

  Seemingly hearing her thoughts, Danny whispered, “I can climb up there. Let me go. I’ve climbed higher places than that. Me and Xi used to go exploring in the Alonsa. I’m good at that kind of thing.”

  She initially dismissed the idea of sending Danny up there. What if one of Faust’s group caught him? Would they be so callous, so evil as to harm an innocent boy? It seemed too much of a risk to take. She couldn’t let the poor kid shoulder the responsibility for their survival. “I can’t let you do that,” Eva said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s dangerous here anyway,” Danny said. “What if the fire comes through?”

  Kid logic. She couldn’t refute it. But still, he was just nine years old. She had promised Jean she would take care of him. Eva looked up at the ducting hole and knew Danny probably wouldn’t have any problems in scaling it. His slim shoulders would get through the baffles too. He could get out, perhaps gather help.

  She hated herself for thinking it.

  Hated herself for not finding another way out.

  Despite that, a plan was already falling into place in her mind. The cogs fitting together to present their only real option: Danny would climb up and out onto the main deck. From there he could go over the side and onto the exterior row of fishing boats via one of the rope ladders. As long as he kept hidden, he could climb across the boats until he reached the end and joined the flotilla on the northern edge, where he could either go into the Alonsa or carry on to Graves’ quarter and fetch help. Or, once on deck, try to free one of the main doors, but they’d still have to negotiate corridors full of smoke and flame.

  “Please,” Danny said, “let me try. I want to help.”

  Sweat dripped from her forehead, the pressure and heat getting to her. She looked at Duncan; he stared back at her with the same haunted expression she suspected that she wore at the thought of sending a child out there as their last hope.

  “You’ll just take a quick look first, okay?” Eva said, her guts churning with anxiety.

  Danny turned and started to scale the ducting pipe like a spider monkey. Before Eva could reach him, he leapt off the top and caught the edge of the mounting frame, effortlessly pulling himself into the main ducting.

  “Just a look,” Eva whispered up to him. The boy nodded and continued to climb, placing his feet either side of the slim cylinder, using the ridges as rungs.

  Chapter 30

  Jim woke with a blinding pain in his head. The sub felt like it was rocking violently to the side, but he knew it was coming from within, the rum sloshing around inside him, the alcohol in his blood. He leaned over and coughed, spittle splashing against the dark floor. He touched his head and felt a bump swelling on the side, near his right temple.

  He got up on unsteady legs, using the overhead pipework to stop him from falling. A few deep breaths later he started to regain a semblance of balance. The tanks on his back clanked against the reactor as he turned to grope for the door.

  The memory of striking his head and knocking himself out came to him.

  Was he contaminated with radiation? Was that the source of his illness rather than the booze? He doubted it; he didn’t feel that much differently to how he felt when he arrived on the sub. Drunk is drunk, and he knew all too well what that felt like. He opened the door and stepped out into the passageway, sloshing through the stagnant water.

  He turned to regard the glowing red radiation beetle next to the door.

  There was something about it that had bothered him before he went inside.

  Taking it off the wall, he turned it over and saw that it had been tampered with. Prising the back off with his fingers, he saw that someone had twisted a pair of wires together, shorting the circuit.

  Now why would someone do that? It appeared to him that having a nuclear reactor intact would be quite the asset to the flotilla. He knew that they were designed to last thirty-plus years and could easily provide all the power ever needed for the flotilla.

  Too late now, though, he thought. The flotilla was self-destructing, and he was at the centre of it.

  He considered his next move. He could either stay on the sub until he starved or died of thirst—not a pleasant way to go—or perhaps he could go out and dive to the base of the mountain and let the ocean drown him.

  But as he weighed up his various options, he realised he couldn’t go without seeing Duncan one more time. He needed to tell him about the reactor. Even if Jim wasn’t going to stick around, he could give his son a final gift and at least tell Duncan how he felt. How proud he was of him, how much better a man he was than Jim.

  With his decision made, Jim staggered to the lockout hatch.

  From the controls on the outside, he initiated pressurisation and waited for the water to be expelled so he could climb inside.

  Once inside, he hit the button to let the water back in. The process took a while, allowing him to breathe and calm and let the effects of his bump ease.

  He shook with cold as the water climbed up his legs, waist, and chest. Biting down on the regulator, Jim took small breaths until the lockout had completed its procedure and the hatch opened.

  Shivering with the cold, his limbs feeling like rubber, he pushed off, out through the hatch, not bothering to replace the chains and lock.

  The water was so dark it felt to Jim that he was swimming through crude oil. His arms were barely visible in front of his face. But he kept kicking and driving upwards, becoming ever more desperate to break the surface.

  He didn’t know how deep he was when he took the last breath through the regulator, a shallow inhalation that stopped halfway, his lungs expecting more. He spat out the regulator and tried not to panic but to keep swimming upwards with graceful movements, nothing too extreme, so that his oxygen would last a little longer.

  An orange light undulated on the surface some distance to his left. Directly above him, the silver kiss of the moon marked his destination. He was close now.

  What was that orange light?

  It seemed to flicker independently of the ocean’s tidal dance.

  As he pondered and kicked his legs slowly and steadily, trying to ignore the fact that his lungs wanted to burst from his chest and steal what little ox
ygen they could from the water, he noticed a shadow tracking him from below. He stopped kicking, letting himself float upwards as he looked down into the inky depths.

  Something nudged Jim’s hip, knocking him about. Jim pulled his legs up and spun around, trying to see what it was. He just caught a glimpse of a tail fin flicking away, the moonlight shining on its tip.

  Sharks.

  Nearing the surface, where the cloud cover had blown away to reveal a full moon, the light of which penetrated the first few meters of the water, Jim saw a pack of them, at least a dozen, tracking his movements from below and from the sides. They had him surrounded even as he breached the surface and replenished his straining lungs with air. He began coughing immediately, choking on the smoke.

  He looked to his left and saw the flames rising in the sky, the smoke dancing away like the spectres of the dead, heading up and up. All around him, he saw fins approaching.

  Another nudge against his leg. Much harder this time.

  They were getting nearer.

  The flotilla’s edge remained at least twenty meters away.

  Jim screamed for help and kicked out, catching one of the sharks with his heel. He doubted he would last long, but by God, he would try.

  As he frantically kicked and clawed his way closer to the flotilla, he reached down and grabbed the fishing knife from his belt. He spun around to see one of the fins come closer, the great dark skin of its body rising up in the water.

  Jim struck out with the knife, skimming it across the surface, scraping the blade against the shark’s hide. It darted away, crashing its tail fin against Jim’s chest, making him drop the knife. The shark’s blood looked like crimson oil.

  The other fins drew closer before disappearing beneath the water.

  Chapter 31

  Eva looked up at Danny as he climbed to the top of the ducting shaft, his small, agile body quickly scaling the cylinder, blocking out the light from above. When he reached the top, he slowed, pressing his face against the baffles, turning left and right.

  “Well?” Eva said, fighting the urge to try to climb up there and bring him back.

  He tilted his head down against his chest. “No one’s here,” he said, his quiet voice echoing down the ducting.

  “Okay, good work, Dan. Come back down. Be careful, though.”

  “I can get up,” he said as he pushed his shoulders against the fan baffles, shifting the unit up and clear. “I’ll get help.” He stepped up onto the next ridge, clearing the baffle completely and pushing his head above the deck.

  “No, Dan, come back down. It’s too dangerous.” Eva stepped across to stand directly beneath the hole and watched in horror as Danny lifted his legs out of the ducting and rolled away out of sight. “Dan! God dammit.” Eva kicked the extractor unit. “He’s going to do something stupid, and it’ll be my damned fault.”

  Patrice, Duncan, and the others gathered round and looked up into the night sky, waiting for Danny’s face to peer back down, but they saw nothing. Heard nothing.

  Eva stayed in place until her neck started to cramp.

  “Come away,” Duncan said, gently turning her away by her shoulders. “Someone might see us. We should move into the machinery store, just in case.”

  “How can we just let him go? What if Faust’s people are out there right now… what if…” She pushed Duncan with frustration and barged her way through Patrice and the others until she reached the door leading to the galley. She placed her hands on the handle to open it but immediately recoiled, the heat singeing her skin. “Fuck it!” She kicked out again, striking the door.

  “He’s a smart kid,” Duncan said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. Let’s all just calm down, think rationally.”

  She spun and faced him then. “Rational? Calm? We’re trapped here and a young kid is out there on his own with a bunch of fucking psychos. What’s there to be calm about? I’m fucking mad as hell, and I don’t want to stand around doing nothing.”

  “There’s nothing else we can do,” Patrice said. “We’re blocked at all levels; we can’t go lower, and these are the last two rooms. We just have to wait and hope that Danny can bring help.”

  “And all the while we just stand by and burn to death?”

  “Look,” Duncan said, raising his voice and adding a bit of grit. “I get that you’re stressed and worried. We all are. I don’t even know where my dad is. But you know yourself, from your previous career, that doing dumb shit is what gets people killed.”

  He had a good damned point. Eva clenched her jaw and yelled inwardly, releasing her frustration. Closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths, she remembered her father trying to show her how to fish. His gnarled farm-worker’s hands gripped hers around the rod as he showed her how to cast. The float, thin and long with a bright yellow tip, splashed into the water until it bobbed upright, shifting on the river’s current. For three hours she sat on the boat while he snoozed, all the while concentrating on the float.

  She never did get a bite, but it taught her a lesson in patience and focus.

  “You’re correct,” she eventually said, her heart rate dropping to a comfortable level. “Dumb shit is what gets people killed. That’s why I’m so worried. Kids aren’t exactly the clearest of thinkers in dangerous situations. But as we don’t have another option right now, I agree that we should wait.”

  It never appealed to her, despite her lesson. Even when she was on a job, following or monitoring some perp, she always had to fight that desire to bust them there and then. She would just have to fight the urge now, do the sensible thing and wait it out.

  Sitting down in a dark corner of the room, she joined the others in a tense, pregnant wait. A wait that she had hoped would be rewarded with not just their rescue but Danny safe and in one piece. Patrice and the rest of his crew sat in the other corners, staying out of direct sight of the ducting, just in case one of Faust’s people saw them.

  Duncan joined her, moving his great bulk next to hers, making her feel like a child.

  “I’m sorry,” Eva said, keeping her voice low. “I understand it must be tough not knowing where Jim is. But like Danny, he’s smart and would no doubt have got himself somewhere safe.”

  “I don’t know. He’s been in a bad way lately, making tough decisions, taking a load of flak from everyone. It can’t be easy for him. Then there’s the trouble with Frank and Susan… the sabotaging. I don’t know how he holds it all together.”

  Eva wanted to say that he didn’t, that he relied on the bottle, and that he had external support, although the key term there was “had”. Eva touched the radio through her jacket pocket and thought about confessing what she knew to Duncan. Dismissed it, not even knowing how to start the conversation or seeing what good it would do.

  Knowing his father had lied to him all this time would break Duncan.

  Duncan and Jim, more like brothers than father and son. They were the twin backbones of the flotilla. She couldn’t be the one to break that—not now, anyway.

  “He’s got a strong will, Dunc. It’s why we’ve all survived for as long as we have. Without his commitment to organise and facilitate things, we’d have descended into chaos long ago.”

  “But that’s what’s happening now, though, isn’t it? The chaos. It’s seeping through the cracks, finding a way to get into people’s minds. And not just Faust’s people either; we’ve never had this many killings in such a short space of time.”

  “I’m working on that,” she said. “We’re getting closer.”

  “Any ideas on what happened to Mike before he came back like he did?” Patrice said, leaning over into the conversation.

  “I’m afraid not,” Eva said, not wanting to give too much away. “I’ve got to go through Dr Singh’s notes to see if there’s any hint, but even she didn’t really understand w
hat might have happened to him.”

  Patrice nodded as he sat back, leaning against the wall.

  Eva noticed Stimson and some of the younger members of the crew starting to yawn and wipe their eyes. Eva’s eyes were tearing up too. The smoke had found a way into the room, and even with the open duct, it was affecting them.

  From the ducting, a flicker of shadow caught her eye. Someone walked past, obscuring the scant light afforded them by the moon. She heard a man’s voice. She recognised the Germanic accent immediately—Faust’s Jack Russell of an agitator: Dietmar.

  It was just three words. “Drop it now.”

  A glass bottle fell from the ducting, spinning, turning.

  The flaming cloth hung out of the opening, the flame licking at the oily sides of the extraction duct. Eva rose to her feet, opening her mouth to warn the others.

  Duncan’s eyes grew wide. He launched away from the corner, his arms outstretched like a wide receiver trying to catch a football.

  Patrice helped Stimson and the others up and headed for the door to the machinery room. He opened it and ushered everyone inside as Eva grabbed Duncan’s arm, pulling him away and around the large extraction units, towards the other side of the room, where Patrice stood, holding the door open, waving at them to hurry up.

  The bottle hit the top of the extraction fan casing, toppled over to its side, the fuel inside sloshing up its sides.

  Eva and Duncan reached the door. Eva pushed Duncan and Patrice inside before grabbing the handle and backing into the machinery store. As she closed the door, she saw the bottle flip over and crash to the floor, the glass shattering and the fuel spilling out across the floor.

  The flaming cloth ignited the fuel, sending a blast wave of heat towards Eva as she slammed the door shut. But it wouldn’t close completely. The hinges had worn and slipped, leaving a quarter-inch gap up the side of the metal jamb.