Voyage (Powerless Nation #2) (14 page)

Ted looked at the others in disbelief. “You’re going to take his word over mine?”

“There’s no way to prove anything,” Danny said diplomatically. “You might as well sit back down, we’re not throwing anyone overboard.”

The wind went out of Ted’s sails, and he sat down weakly. He put his face in his hands and began to cry.

Claire attempted to comfort him while everyone tried to find something else to look at. Sena caught Kade’s eye and he glanced away quickly, mumbling to himself about fairness and accusations until Lydia told him to shut up. 

There was no food or water ration that day.

The next few days were windy and they prayed for rain, but the clear sky mocked their need. The entrance fly on the dome canopy snapped in the wind, making a tearing sound as the wind ripped it away from the velcro every few minutes and then blew it shut again.

Each time it opened, Sena stared out at the blue expanse surrounding them. It looked so good to her. She imagined scooping up the cool liquid in her cupped hands and bringing it to her face, water dripping from her chin as she drank and drank.

Danny told them all on the first day that if they drank seawater, the water in their bodies would be drawn away from their organs and blood to try to dilute the salty liquid. In short, it would kill them.

What if she didn’t have any water left in her blood? Sena felt dry as dust. Surely, salt water was better than no water if she was on the verge of death anyway.

Claire noticed her gaze and put an arm around Sena. “I had a dream last night. My little boy was here with us and he said we shouldn’t give up hope.” Her voice was weak and papery. “Do you believe in a higher power?”

Sena shrugged, too weak to talk.

“This past year I’ve spent all of my energy hating God. I didn’t know why he took my son. I thought it should have been me.” Claire's cheeks were dry, but her voice was full of tears.

“I was so busy hating, I forgot about my daughter and husband. God only took one of my kids, but I’ve lost them both.” Claire went on in her raspy voice. “I can’t let it end this way. I have to live so I can tell Dee I’m sorry and show her how much she means to me.”

Sena thought about her own mom. Was she out there somewhere, wishing she could make things right with her daughter? Did she wonder where Sena was and regret the years of neglect and abuse? Would her mom face down death for her, like Claire was doing for Dee?

Lydia reached over and squeezed Claire's arm. “You’re a good mum, and I know you’ll make it back to your girl. Do you want to pray together?”

Claire nodded, and the two women clasped hands and took turns speaking their prayers aloud. When they finished, Lydia asked if anyone else wanted to pray. Sena shook her head. Kade and Ted declined too, but Danny said a few words. He prayed for strength to survive another day, and grace to accept whatever happened to them.

Sena prayed silently, forming a single word over and over again in her mind.

Water
.

That night, Sena was awakened by something bumping into the raft.
Shark!
 

Danny said sharks bumped their prey to see if it would fight back. If it didn’t, the shark would attack. 

They couldn’t fight back. No one was strong enough to hit the shark with the oar. Even Kade had gone back to staring at the canopy. Heart racing, Sena waited for the shark to stop bumping and tear the raft apart.

Nothing happened. The gentle bumping was repeated every few minutes, but it looked like there would be no biting or screaming. She was awake now with no hope of falling back asleep. Her throat was filled with cotton and she could think of nothing but her thirst.

Sena dipped her fingers in the water that pooled on the floor of the raft wherever the weight of a body depressed the floor and then brought the moisture to her mouth.

Just a taste
, she told herself.

The seawater was so good and wet. The saltiness didn’t bother her at all. 

She had to have more. 

She tried to scoop water in her cupped hand but it dribbled out when she bent her arm. Her frustration filled her with anguish and she leaned her mouth to the water, intending to lap it up like an animal.

Claire stirred at her movement and caught her breath when she heard the sound of Sena’s slurping. She pulled her back from the water, into the warm, bony contours of her body. “No baby, no, you can’t…”

Sena fought like a wild thing, her ruined voice an unintelligible shriek. She would die without a drink. Did Claire want her dead? She clawed and kicked at the woman, feeling her matchstick legs behind her heels. Why wouldn’t she let her go?

Claire held firm, and the fight drained out of Sena within moments. She didn’t have the strength to move. Her whimpers filled the raft with the weight of her sorrow, but she wasn’t ashamed.

When Sena opened her eyes again, daylight filtered in through the orange canopy. Nauseous, she leaned weakly against the side tube of the raft. She felt a soft bump.

“Did you guys feel that?” she rasped. 

Weary eyes flickered in her direction then wandered away.

The door flap blew open in a gust of wind and she saw something floating in the water nearby. It bumped into the raft and the flap blew shut. She tried to process what she’d seen.

Office chair
, said her deprived brain.

Danny had been right. She was hallucinating from drinking the seawater.

The bumping continued and she covered her ears, though there was no sound. What was it, and why wouldn’t it stop? It was driving her crazy. How could the rest of them stand it?

A horrible thought came to her. Maybe it was Charity’s body, haunting them because they hadn’t saved her.

Sena had to know what it really was.

The struggle to free herself from the thermal suit she shared with Claire was almost too much for her. Claire groaned for her to stay still and sleep, but made no effort to stop her. Bit by bit, Sena fought clear of the suit until she was free.

The cold water on the bottom of the raft was a shock, as was the wind that tore into her when she opened the flap and looked out.

She stared. 

They were adrift in a sea of office chairs.

Sena blinked her eyes to clear them and looked again. The office chairs were still there, and so were a lot of other things. She saw broken pieces of wood, bags of charcoal, tennis balls, bowling pins, and a case of chapstick. The chapstick would feel so nice on her lips, she wished it wasn’t a hallucination.

Then she gasped. A box of soy milk bobbed on the water, climbing up and flowing down the slow rolling surface of the sea.

“Kade,” she whispered. He rolled away to face the back of the raft. 

“Danny,” she said. He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Do you see anything weird outside?”

He sat up, disturbing Lydia, who also sat up. His eyes widened. “Are those…” he paused to clear his throat, “…office chairs?”

Sena’s body trembled. If the chairs were real, then the soy milk might be real too. She looked for anything she could use to bring it close enough to grab. The oar maybe?

It was heavy in her hand, and her weakened arm muscles strained with the weight of it. She forced herself to hold it steady and reached through the door of the raft, trying to stir the water and bring the box of precious liquid closer.

Her lips moved in a silent prayer.
Please.

It was a slow, tedious process, the box inching toward her until a rogue wave lifted it and brought it bumping directly into the entrance of the raft. She leaned down and grabbed it, pulling it inside and cradling it against her chest. 

It was real.

The soy milk was watery and cool in her mouth. It tasted like the leftover milk in the bottom of a bowl of granola cereal, and it coated her throat with a rich nuttiness as it went down. Even though she wanted to keep drinking, she stopped and passed the box to Claire after a few swallows. 

Claire gave it to Ted, and Sena watched to see if he would pass it to Kade. 

He did. They all studied Kade carefully, and after a few sips he passed it to Danny. The box of life-giving liquid made two complete rounds before it was gone. They looked longingly at the empty box in Lydia’s hands. 

When Ted asked, “Are there any more out there?” Sena couldn’t believe she hadn’t already thought of it.

She pulled at the fasteners that held the canopy to the raft until they came away and she tied the cover in its partially open position so they could all see out. The occupants of the raft gaped.

They floated in a sea of rubbish and debris… and salvation.

Drifts of apples, oranges and shoe insoles rose and fell with the motion of the sea. She saw bags of grass seed floating next to bags of whole walnuts. There were plastic bottles of every kind of oil she could think of, including olive oil, motor oil and baby oil. A couple of bags of flour nudged against boxes of wine and a case of Pepto Bismol, while bags of potato chips and cans of diet soda jockeyed for position on the waves.

There were also couches, end tables and wooden picture frames riding the swells, along with pairs of jeans, sweaters and an army of white crew socks and underwear. It was like Walmart had exploded in the middle of the ocean.

“It’s a miracle,” breathed Lydia.

“Let’s get it,” said Kade, with more spirit than Sena had seen from him in days.

In short order, they had a pile of food in the bottom of the raft, and they tore into it with groans of pleasure.

Sena bit into a ripe plum and its succulence exploded in her mouth. The juice dribbled from her lips and down her arms, while she devoured the sweet, moist flesh. She had never tasted anything so good.

Claire ate cherries so quickly Sena thought she had to be swallowing the pits, and Danny scooped guacamole dip from a container with an actual chip.

More quickly than she’d have believed possible, they were all replete with food. They leaned back against the tube walls, exhausted from their frenzy.

Where had it all come from?

Several theories were presented, and immediately dismissed as too far-fetched. Then Sena had a sudden memory of Mr. Stoddard’s lecture onboard the
Duchess
about container ships. Excitedly, she told them what she remembered, about how they carried food, furniture, and much more.

“That might be true,” conceded Ted, “but it doesn’t explain how it all got into the sea.”

“It could have been a boat crash,” said Danny.

“Don’t you think the containers would have just fallen overboard and sunk? What broke them open?”

Sena crawled to the opening to take some photos. Their good fortune was too incredible to believe. She wanted proof.

She saw lots of cans of soda and decided to focus on those for now, though she wondered why there was only diet soda. She saw two or three buckets floating nearby and realized they would be perfect for storing their food and catching water if it ever rained again. A large piece of plastic with a cheerfully bright yellow symbol on it caught her eye too. The black and yellow would make a nice contrast for a photo. She aimed the camera and waited for the waves to give her a better angle.

Alarm bells went off in her head when a wave tilted the plastic toward her and she read the word printed below the yellow symbol
: Radioactive
. 

She clicked her picture and then realization dawned. She turned to the others. “I don’t think we should eat any more, guys,” she said slowly.

“Are you crazy?” said Kade, drinking a diet Coke. “This stuff totally saved our lives.”

“Why not?” asked Claire.

Sena pointed at the sign on the plastic. Claire rose to her knees to get a better look, and then she screamed.

It’s not
that
bad
, thought Sena. She looked back toward the sea and saw what had made Claire scream.

Floating in the cold water was the dead body of a man.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“W
HAT
SHOULD
WE
DO
?” asked Claire.

“Nothing,” shrugged Ted. “We can’t do anything for him now.”

“What about the food?” asked Kade. “Do you think it’s radioactive?”

“I doubt it,” Ted said. “I’m sure they don’t really put radioactive materials on container ships.”

Ted’s words didn’t make Sena feel any better. She remembered how Mr. Stoddard had said that container ship freight wasn’t always checked or documented properly.

“You should get a picture of him,” Kade told Sena.

 “What? The body?” said Lydia, dismayed. “You don’t need a picture of that. Give the poor chap his privacy.”

Sena looked at the man, floating face up in the debris. His straight black hair floated away from his head in a halo. He was wearing a nondescript, dark uniform but his features were too swollen to make out. He might have been someone’s dad or brother. Someone that would never know what happened to him.

Reluctantly, she snapped a photo of the dead man. Maybe someday it would help bring closure to someone. She turned away and realized Kade was staring at the body. 

“Did you get a picture of him?” he asked.

Sena nodded. “How come?”

“Don’t you recognize the outfit? That’s the same thing the Koreans were wearing when they boarded the
Duchess
.” 

Sena spun around to get another look, but the body was already drifting away. “Are you sure?”

Kade shrugged. “I guess so.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know for sure. I’d say they weren’t ever on the airplane. I always wondered how they survived that crash. This makes more sense. They were from the container ship, and lied to the captain about the plane when he picked them up.”

“Or he lied about where he got them.”

“Could be,” agreed Kade.

They both fell silent, thinking it over. If they hadn’t been in the plane crash, then how had they gotten their burns? And why had the container ship sunk? Maybe they were sea terrorists, like pirates, blowing up ships and escaping. Sena knew her theory was a stretch, and she struggled to make the pieces fit together. She was sure it had something to do with the radioactive symbol she’d seen.