Some Fine Day (7 page)

I have to wonder at the kind of people that would doctor me and then throw me back down here without even a blanket to lie on. I wonder why they’re bothering, why they didn’t just kill me or leave me on the beach. Unless they’re criminally stupid, they must understand that a hostage situation would be suicide.

In school, we were told that within a year of the Transition, of the Culling, there was no one left on the surface. Those who didn’t succumb to disease or starvation or war were swept away by the canes. This is gospel. Chapter and verse. I’ve never questioned it.

Maybe a remnant of a remnant survived.

I work it through as I stare out at the dark water, endless in every direction.  There’s no more coral reefs, or apex predators like sharks. They vanished decades ago. The marine food chain was radically disrupted. Jellyfish seem to like the warm, acid oceans just fine, but they’re in the minority. I guess other species could have adapted though. That’s a food source. And while there’s obviously no kind of large-scale agriculture, a small group could forage enough fruits and vegetables to survive. They grow stuff, too, I can see container gardens on the decks of the other boats.

And what they can’t grow or forage, they take from us.

But again, that’s not the biggest problem, not by a long shot. The biggest problem is how to avoid the canes. It’s what drove us underground in the first place. Nothing can withstand the storms. Adapting is not an option. There is only one option, I’ve always been told. Go down and go deep.

I think back to the beach. Their behavior after the attack.
The heaviest activity appears to be around the scientific equipment. . .

If they had the LIDAR and other instruments, they could see the storms coming. Track them, and move accordingly.

They could run.

I can’t believe military intelligence doesn’t already know about this. Which in turn explains the presence of the contractors. They weren’t worried about toads. They were worried about humans.

Could my father have known?

Could he
not
have known?

At least I’m sure he and my mother made it to the mole, Jake too. Not knowing if they were dead or alive would just consume me.

I doze for a bit, and when I wake up, I have to pee. They didn’t leave me anything, just the water bottle, but the top is way too narrow and I’m too exhausted to even try. So I crawl to the hatch and pound on it, the stitches tugging painfully every time I lift my arm.

“Hey!” I yell, and it feels good to hear a voice, even if it’s my own and it sounds both puny and too loud in the enclosed space.

Finally I hear boots above. There’s the sound of a key turning in a lock and the hatch swings upward.

“What?” an exasperated voice says.

“I have to go,” I say, squinting in the sudden light of a lantern.

“Go?”

“Yes,” I say. “To the bathroom. You must be familiar with the concept.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Please.”

“Ah Jeez. . . Captain said. . . oh, all right then.” A hand reaches down and roughly hoists me up. “The head’s that way, last door to starboard.”

The head? I think. Whose head?

“Bathroom,” he says, noting my bewilderment. “On the right.”

He
is a guy in his mid-twenties, lanky but strong, about six-foot, with a short carroty beard and matching hair just a touch longer than would be permitted at the Academy. His hazel eyes are not openly hostile, but neither are they at all friendly.

He marches me down a dim passageway, then stops and leans against the wall. I open the door to the “head” and discover a coffin-sized room almost entirely occupied by a dingy steel toilet with no seat. Add the pitching of the ship and it’s like trying to thread a needle inside a urinal during an earthquake. Barefoot. I try not to touch anything or look too closely at the floor. God knows what kind of microscopic civilizations are thriving in here.

When the unpleasantness is completed, I’m tossed back in the hold. As the guard’s footsteps recede overhead, I press my face against the porthole and this time I see stars and a sliver of moon. They keep me anchored in the darkness until the rocking of the ship eases me into unconsciousness once again.

A decade in, it became clear that the superstorms were only growing stronger. There would be no return to the surface.

The next six days are a miserable blur. I bang on the hatch when I need to use the head, and it’s either the redhead or another one, even taller with ebony skin and cornrows. Neither will speak to me or answer any questions. They give me one meal in the evenings, usually a cup of lumpy potatoes mixed with black seaweed. It’s stiflingly hot down here during the day, but cold at night. At least the fever hasn’t returned. I don’t know if I could survive it in my current state.

The first day after discovering the stitches I spent hours trying to get the barrels open, hoping they might contain food or something that could be used as a weapon. It’s pointless, they’re made of stout wood and the tops are nailed shut. My nails are cracked and bleeding by the time I give up. After that, I fall into a kind of lethargy. I dream about my mother, and Jake. About food, and clean sheets, and mugs of hot tea. Term must be starting by now. It would have been my last.

I scan the empty blue sky through my porthole, imagining there’s a satellite up there taking a picture of the ship and beaming it on to the ones searching for me. I know it’s unlikely; the whole thermosphere got screwed up by carbon dioxide, and many of the satellites that still work have erratic orbits.  Thousands are just space junk now, since we can’t send maintenance crews and have no launch capabilities. But enough still send signals that reach the meteorological substations.

If
there was a clear window above the ship at some point, and
if
a functioning satellite was passing over, and
if
military intelligence crunches the data in time. . .

Well, it’s something. Otherwise, there’s no hope at all.

On the seventh day, the hatch opens in the morning, which has never happened before, not without my banging on it. I expect to see one of the regular guards. But it’s someone new. A boy, a little older than me, somewhere between eighteen and twenty, I’d guess. Tall, with tan skin and a long, dark blonde braid. Jeans cut off at the knee and a clean white T-shirt. He has the high cheekbones and close-set blue eyes of a Northerner who’d probably be pale as milk if he didn’t spend half his life under the blazing sun. He takes in the dirt and the smell and his face hardens, but he doesn’t say anything, just offers me a hand. It’s much gentler than the usual. He seems to know where I hurt and makes an effort not to put too much strain on my arms.

“This way, please,” he says, leading me down the passageway to a door just past the bathroom.

I’ve never gotten a
please
either.

The room beyond is small and plainly furnished: bed, table and chair, shelving with wooden rails to keep the contents from spilling when the ship rolls. There’s a sandwich on the table, and a bottle of water. My stomach rumbles.

“Go ahead,” he says, in a faintly clipped accent I’ve never heard before. “I brought it for you.”

I pick up the sandwich. It’s white bread with some kind of synth meat that doesn’t smell very fresh. Probably the contractors’ spam rations. We always ate well at the Academy. The accommodations were Spartan, sex-segregated dorms with standard issue metal cots and a three-drawer dresser to hold our meager personal items. But the food was good and plentiful. It had to be, since we were burning about three thousand calories a day in training.

The sandwich tastes as nasty as it looks but I gobble it down in four bites. My hands are so dirty they leave black smudge marks on the bread. I feel like a feral cat that’s been coaxed into the light with a scrap of food, fur on end and bracing for a kick at any moment. But the boy has the decency to pretend not to notice, looking me in the eye with neither animosity nor disgust. I sense an anger simmering there, though I’m not sure who it’s directed at.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a look at your back,” he says. “You’re lucky; whatever injured you missed the right lung by less than an inch.”

“Are you a doctor?” I ask warily.

“I’m a physic,” he says. “I help sick people, if that’s what you mean.”

I sit awkwardly on the bed, trying to keep my nightgown from riding up, as he inspects the wound. He doesn’t touch me. I appreciate that.

“What was it?” he asks.

“Glass shard,” I say, pulling my coat back on.

“Yes, I thought something like that. The edges are sharp and neat, no tearing. Deep puncture though, infection is what we need to be on the lookout for now.”

He reminds me of the Academy medic, a brisk but humane woman who was ruthlessly proficient at putting our battered bodies back together again.

“Can you tell me how long we’ve been at sea?” I ask.

“Nine and a half days.”

I picture the beach at Archipelago Six, no doubt still crawling with military. I’m sure my father is among them. He’d be pulling out all the stops, especially when they fail to recover my body. I have no idea how far a ship can sail in that amount of time, but it must be hundreds of miles at least.

“What are you going to do with me?” I ask, wishing he’d offer me some more food.

“That depends on Captain Banerjee,” he replies evenly.

“Are you the one who sewed me up?”

He looks at me and I notice that his left iris is slightly bluer than his right, which is more of a slate grey color. “Yes, I am. You were in bad shape. Some of us thought. . .”

“It wasn’t worth it?”

He shrugs, embarrassed.

“What’s your name?” I ask, thinking I should try to make friends with the ones who don’t seem to want me dead.

He hesitates, but only for a moment. “It’s Will.”

“OK then, thanks Will,” I say. “I guess you saved my life.”

He shrugs again, as if that’s not a burden he really wants to carry. “It’s my job. I’m sorry I didn’t come to check on you sooner. You shouldn’t have been left like that. I’ve been stretched thin these last few days.” He points to the corner. “There’s a bucket there, and a towel, if you want to clean up a little.”

I nod. Anything to prolong my time out of the hold. The thought of going back fills me with dread. We could be at sea for weeks. I’m afraid I’ll go crazy if they leave me in there.

He excuses himself, locking the cabin door behind him. The saltwater burns like fire on my half-healed cuts and scrapes but it leaves me feeling human again, even if I have to put my dirty clothes back on at the end. When I’m done, I lick the last crumbs off the plate and sit down on the bed. I don’t wait long.

A minute later, the door bangs open. It’s the woman with the scar and the braid. Her left arm is in a sling. She doesn’t have to tell me that she’s the law around here. It’s evident in the way she holds herself.

“You’re a bloody tough one, aren’t you?” she says without preamble.

This doesn’t seem to require a response, so I keep my mouth shut.

“OK, listen up. We need another physic. Will’s overwhelmed, and we took a lot of casualties last week. I’m not in the habit of picking up strays, but you’re a special case. You have skills.” She pauses and her gaze narrows a fraction. “Just don’t mistake my generosity for weakness of character. If I have reason to think you’re making any less than a wholly committed effort to patch up my crew, I’ll throw you overboard myself .” She says this in a very pleasant, cultured voice that is much more convincing than shouted threats would have been.

“Yes ma’am,” I say. “But I’m not sure I understand. Physic?”

Banerjee’s eyes are hard and black like onyx, her face more handsome than beautiful. She’s probably in her middle forties, although there’s an ageless quality that makes it hard to pin her down by a decade either way.

“Don’t play with me,” she says coldly. “We’re way past that now. Your people are gone, and so is your old life. The sooner you accept that, the easier it’ll be for all of us. Sick bay is overflowing, and I have no patience for misguided courage.”

Her eyes flicker over my coat, like they did on the beach. I look down and notice a small white nametag on the right breast pocket that says
L. Davidson, R.N.
She thinks I’m a nurse. I briefly consider trying to play it off, but I’d probably end up killing my patients. Not that they don’t deserve it.

“It’s not mine. I borrowed it,” I say. “I’m sixteen. And my name’s Nordqvist. Honestly.”

Banerjee’s expression darkens. Suddenly her hand whips out and seizes my chin, turning my face into the light. She scrutinizes me for a minute, then curses softly and lets me go.

“That’s too bad,” she says.  “We’re not very big on dead weight around here. Damn Will for convincing me to waste antibiotics on you.” She sits down at the table and rubs her forehead. “Any technical knowledge of remote sensing equipment? Solar panel maintenance and repair?”

I shake my head.

“Navigation? Botany?”

“Not really.”