Triton (15 page)

Onscreen, Brynn, Cedar, and Jake had launched the life raft and were paddling frantically back to the ship. The tiny figure of Brynn was waving her arms.

“I think they’re trying to signal us,” said Sky. “Can you zoom in?”

Naomi panned the camera, centering the raft on the screen, and zoomed in on Brynn, who they could tell was acting out clues like in a game of charades.

She kept pointing at the water and pretending to haul something out of it.

“I think she means the anchor,” said Sky. “She wants us to weigh anchor.”

The anchor
.

Naomi’s gaze flicked back to the meteor impact, where distant clouds of vapor billowed on the horizon—and she felt the blood drain from her face.

Uh-oh.

“I think I know why,” she whispered.

The meteor. Naomi knew enough about meteors to know they packed enormous kinetic energy; a water impact could displace millions of tons of seawater in a split second, which would spread in a gigantic wave—obliterating everything in its path. Unless they moved fast,
Cypress
would be broadsided by the wave and capsized.

Naomi scanned the dizzying array of switches and instruments spread before her on the bridge.

Focus, Naomi. Focus. The anchor. But you couldn’t just yank up the anchor; it took half an hour. She had seen the crew do it loads of times. They wouldn’t have enough time.

She just needed to get it off the seafloor so they could turn.

She leaned over the Machine Automation System—a monitor displaying all the ship’s technical systems—and reversed the anchor winch; the chain began to rise out of the water at a crawl.

“How can I help?” said Sky.

“Go out and throw them some rope. They might need help getting aboard . . . oh, and while you’re at it, fetch us some lifejackets. We might not have a ship for much longer.”

A few minutes
later they were all back on the bridge, dripping wet. Brynn scanned the horizon, her heart pounding. The sea appeared deceptively calm.

A tsunami.

They were going to get hit by a tsunami. They should have stayed on the freaking island.

“Angle the bow toward the impact,” said Jake, dragging a pair of binoculars out of a nearby cabinet. “We want to present the smallest cross section to the wave.”

Naomi pushed all the levers to their maximum positions, and the deck lurched gently underneath them. Like the night before, the cruise ship did nothing at first. Then slowly it began to turn, picking up speed.

Jake raised the binoculars to his eyes, his eyebrows knotted. “Come on,
turn
 . . .” he muttered.

“We’re turning as fast as we can,” she said.

“It’s not fast enough.”

“Want me to get out and push?” said Cedar.

“Yeah, would you?” Jake swiveled the binoculars along the horizon. “How fast does a tsunami travel?”

“In deep water, five-hundred miles per hour,” said Cedar. “Until it reaches land.”

“Jesus. Can we turn faster, Naomi?”

“Bow thrusters and azimuths are on full power. We’re turning as fast as we can. This ship’s over a thousand feet long, she can’t turn on a dime.”

The bow inched across the water. All at once, the anchor chain dragged to the right and snapped taut. The winch lugged under the strain, fighting inertia.

“We’re not still anchored, are we?” said Jake.

“It’s a big anchor,” said Naomi. “We’re trying to accelerate
and
pull it up from the bottom at the same time; there’s going to be resistance.”

Jake raised the binoculars again, and his eyebrows scrunched together. “I see the wave.”

Cedar backed away
from the windows. He took the binoculars from Jake, and the sight through the eyepieces chilled him.

A wall of water rimmed the horizon. Only by the speed of whitecaps whipping up its face could he tell its breathtaking speed.

By now, the ship was steaming forward. The cliffs crawling by off port. But they still had forty-five degrees to turn before their heading lined up with the wave.

Too late.

Cedar lowered the binoculars, hands trembling. He could see the tsunami bearing down on them with his naked eye now. Through a lump in his throat, he swallowed.

Slowly, the wall of water ascended. The shallow seafloor near the island was forcing the wave up and out of the ocean, concentrating the spread out mass of water into a single, deadly crest. As friction slowed down the bottom more than the top, the wave had begun spinning . . .
rolling
. Already, the suction it created underwater was tugging the anchor chain away from the ship.

Then, in slow motion, the bow began to rise. The five of them stared in terrified silence. On the bridge a hundred and fifty feet above the waterline, Cedar stood eye to eye with the foaming crest. Still, the peak rose higher, an impossible slope of water blotting out the sky, looming over their ship, casting the bridge into shadow.

Oblivious, the
Cypress
veered right up the tsunami’s face, listing hard to port. Then the bow punctured the wave, water surged over the deck, the impact threw them forward and flattened them against the windows. Cedar couldn’t believe his eyes.

Bubbles streamed up from the bow, now fifty feet underwater. Unable to lift the ship, the wave had simply swallowed her whole. With an agonizing groan of medal, the surge dragged the cruise ship backwards and advanced across her deck, submerging more of the bow.

The wall of water reached the bridge and slammed into the windows. The collision made a single splinter in the glass, but miraculously the panes held. On the port wing, through the window Jake had broken, water flooded in with the strength of a fire hose, but left them untouched. The five of them rose to their feet, gaping at the sight through the windows—the bubbles swirling through deep turquoise, the sun dimmed to a prick through a hundred feet of seawater.

As far as Cedar could tell, the entire front half of the
Cypress
was underwater. The bridge—all the way up on deck twelve—was completely underwater.

“This is awkward,” said Sky.

“I think we’re riding the wave,” said Jake.

A moment of strange peace passed over them, the roar of the tsunami now muted. The ship creaked and moaned under the pressure, but held fast.

A dark object loomed out of the depths, hurled toward them by the violent currents. Through the murky haze, Cedar made out a length of rusted chain, each iron link the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

The anchor.

It slammed into deck eleven, just below them, and a dull explosion echoed into the deep. The anchor raked across the front of the
Cypress
, tearing it to shreds and littering the ocean with debris before it moved on. Right before their eyes, the rising bubbles reversed direction and were sucked downward into the anchor-sized gash in their cruise ship.

The ship lurched again and threw him backward. His body slapped against the wall. A crushing tremor propagated from stern to bow, vibrating the deck underfoot—the wave was dragging them through the sand.

The water ahead lightened. Sunlight, rippled off the ocean’s surface, now only fifty feet beyond the windows. Then twenty. Then ten.

With a slurp, the water receded off the bridge windows and crashed over the sides of the bow, and a moment later they heard a deep rumble as it broke over the island behind them.

Just like that
it was over. Silence swept through the bridge. The sea continued to churn and foam, but the
Cypress
stayed put—miraculously, still afloat.

They all released their breath in a collective sigh. Jake counted heads; though badly shaken, they all looked uninjured. Thank God. If they had waited another minute before turning the ship, they would all be strewn across the island as debris right now.

They had survived a freak meteor. On the horizon, where it hit, an enormous white cloud billowed into the stratosphere—water vapor, boiled instantly in the collision.

“I’m sick of this crap,” said Cedar, heading for the exit. “If you need me, I’ll be up in the Royal Loft Suite taking a nap.”

“You do that,” said Jake. “In fact, why don’t we all rest up. Sky and Brynn, you two join him—take your radios. Naomi and I will take first watch on the bridge.”

Finally letting their fatigue show, the two younger girls hurried after Cedar, leaving Jake alone on the bridge with Naomi.

“So what do you think that was?” he said.

“The tsunami?”

“The meteor. You think it was just a meteor?”

“What else would it be?” she said.

“I’m asking you. It was your theory.”

“
My
theory?”

He pointed at the ceiling. “That thing in space those astronauts are checking out, right? The interference zone.”

“I liked it better when it was just a meteor.”

“Me too,” he said.

“We don’t know anything for sure.”

“Fair enough.” Jake faced forward, taking in the endless expanse of glittery ocean. “We were lucky.”

“Well . . . .” Naomi leaned over a monitor. “I wouldn’t say lucky. The tsunami dragged us backwards and snapped off one of the azimuth thrusters. We’re stuck in the sand now, run aground . . . we’re
beached
.”

Jake peered toward the shore, still a quarter mile away. “Can she sail?”

“We’re stuck in the sand,” she repeated. “We’re down an engine. We have a breached hull and who knows what kind of structural damage—this ship isn’t a freaking surf board, Jake. Even without all that, I don’t know how to pilot this ship.”

“Naomi.” Jake met her gaze. “This is the second time you’ve saved our lives as captain. Can she sail?”

Naomi stared defiantly back at him. “We’re stuck in the sand.”

“Can we get unstuck?”

“Maybe if the tide rises, I don’t know. I don’t know
anything
.”

“Can we dump weight? Sewage? Water?”

“Maybe water,” she said. “The ship has onboard desalination plants, but we always keep enough for three days just in case—about two million gallons—but I don’t know.”

“How much weight is that?”

The tension in Naomi’s eyebrows indicated she was doing the calculation in her head. “Sixteen thousand tons.”

“Good. That’ll make a difference,” he said. “Wait for high tide, dump all the water, and reroute all power in the remaining two thrusters. We’re getting off this godforsaken island if it’s the last thing we do.”

“Why?” she said. “Where do you want to go so badly?”

“The East Coast,” he said. “I want to see if it happened there too . . . how widespread it is.”

“How widespread what is?”

“I hope I’m wrong,” he said, “but I have a hunch that at midnight, two nights ago, every single living organism vanished from the face of the earth—and we are the only creatures left.”

The Security Office

“Where’s the fourth
food pallet?” said Cedar, counting only three in the dining area. Despite the tsunami, nothing in the Royal Loft Suite had slid more than a few feet. He scanned the living area, then jogged out onto the balcony. “We brought up four from the kitchen, now there’s only three. Where’s the fourth pallet?”

“Maybe there were just three to begin with,” said Brynn.

“I’m not an idiot,” said Cedar, storming back through the suite. He searched the downstairs bedroom, the bathroom, even the master bedroom upstairs. Nothing. There had been four pallets, he was sure of it. “Who took it?”

“Who cares?” said Brynn. “There’s like a billion down in the kitchens.”

Cedar ignored his sister and grabbed Sky’s elbow. “You or Naomi . . . did you come up here for food while we were exploring the island?”

“We weren’t even thinking about food,” she said.

“And no one’s left the bridge since.” He spun away from her. Swept overboard? No, nothing else in the room had slid more than a few feet.

“Why does it even matter?” said Brynn.

Sky explained for him. “I think he’s worried that one of them is gone . . . yet none of us moved it.”

“Well, maybe there were only three.”

“Brynn, how many times have I been wrong with numbers?” said Cedar.

“You’re always wrong.”

“Look at me and tell me,” he said. “How many times have I been wrong when it comes to numbers?”

She shook her head, a glint of fear creeping into her eyes. “Never.”

“We loaded four food pallets onto four carts,” he said. “You brought one. Jake brought one. Naomi brought one. And I brought one. Jake didn’t ask Sky to bring one because she was shivering in the walk-in freezer and he didn’t think she could handle it.”

Sky stared at him. “You noticed that?”

“I notice everything.”

“So . . . what are you saying?” said Brynn.

“There were four crates. Now there’s only three,” he said.

“Then where’s the fourth one?” she said.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“You think it vanished like everything else?”

He shook his head. “So far only living things have vanished,” he said. “The food wasn’t living, it didn’t vanish.”

“Then where did it go?” said Brynn.

“Someone took it,” said Cedar. “We’re not alone on this ship.”

Jake lowered the
binoculars. “There’s a crescent moon just rising. What does that mean?”

Naomi peered at the ceiling, her eyebrows tight with concentration. “I think the tide will be highest directly under the moon.”

“Why?” he said.

“Gravity. As the moon orbits, it literally pulls the ocean around with it.”

“You’re making that up.”

She grinned. “It’ll be high tide when the moon’s directly above us.”

“So . . . five more hours?”

“Five more hours,” she agreed. “Then we’ll dump the water and throttle up.”

“Guess we have some time to kill,” said Jake, setting the binoculars on a nearby console. “What do you know about the interference zone?”

“Just what they said on the news,” she said. “There’s something way up there we can’t see.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. No one knows. There was this observatory in Hawaii taking ultra-precise measurements, and the outline of something big showed up. Some kind of triangle. No one knows what it is.”