Voyage (Powerless Nation #2) (4 page)

Wisps of smoke trailed lazily from the open door and up into the hazy sky. “Come on, Sena, stop wasting time. Let’s go.”

Inside the long hallway, daylight filtered in through several windows, and people poured out of the stairwell from lower decks. When Sena got closer she saw it was completely dark below.

“No emergency lighting? This is ridiculous,” said Kade.

She didn’t hear him. Sena looked into the blackness and felt a wave of dizziness. Her muscles locked and her feet rooted to the floor. She was not going in there.

“Sena, hey, snap out of it.”

Sena began to tremble. It was all her fault her roommates were stuck down there in the dark. She couldn’t leave them. She couldn’t step into that darkness either.

Her eyes found a point on the ground where the last dim light from the windows reached into the stairwell. She willed her feet to step forward to that point, but they had a mind of their own.

“What’s wrong with you?” Kade snapped. “Look, I’m going after them. You can stay up here if you want.”

He turned to leave, and Sena reached out to catch his arm. “No wait, I can do it. I just need a second.”

Sena hesitated and he grabbed her hand. “Will you come on? I don’t want to lose you in the crowd.” 

Her heart still beating quickly, but for a different reason now, Sena let herself be led into the darkness.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HEY
DESCENDED
SEVERAL
FLIGHTS
of stairs, each smokier than the last. There were a lot of people rushing
up
the stairs, and they literally ran into a few of them. No one knew what was happening, and the sense of panic building in the darkness was ominous. 

People screamed and cried and struggled to push their way up the stairs. Kade and Sena had to fight their way down, and none of the crew was anywhere in sight. A few people with flashlights on the stairs or in the hallway directing passengers where to go would have made all the difference.

She held onto Kade’s hand like she was drowning and it was a lifeline. Although he probably couldn’t feel his fingers anymore he didn’t complain.

At the bottom of the stairs the hallway opened into a long, wide corridor and the press of people around them eased up considerably. Kade talked to her while they walked, and the sound of his voice eased the darkness that pressed in all around her. “How do you know my name?” she asked after taking a moment to gather her courage. He didn’t answer immediately. She glanced at him. In the darkness she couldn’t read his expression. 

He gave a nervous cough. “I saw you were one of Charity’s roommates.”

“Oh,” said Sena in a small voice. She wondered if that was a good thing.

They counted the doors as they went until they reached her cabin. When she tried the handle, she found it was locked, and she fumbled for her keycard.

“How’s that supposed to work if the power’s out?”

“Hotel locks have back-up batteries. Maybe these do too.” She crossed her fingers and slid the keycard into the lock. When she pulled it out, the green light flashed in the darkness and they heard the lock mechanism slide open. She grinned at Kade, though she knew he couldn’t see her.

“Charity? Jessica?” she called as they went inside. The girls weren’t there. It wasn’t surprising, but she was still disappointed. 

“Where else would they have gone?” asked Kade.

“Who knows?” Sena said, trying to think like Charity.
Shopping
was the only thing that came to mind. She felt her way toward the bed and noticed the suitcases were gone. “I think they took their stuff though. They’re probably okay.” That gave her an idea. “Hang on real quick.” Sena climbed a few steps up the ladder to her bunk and groped in the darkness for her backpack. Inside, she rooted around until her hand closed on something small and plastic. She gave a sigh of relief and pulled out her book light. The tiny glow from the little light was as comforting as the sun.

“What do you want to do now?” asked Kade.

What Sena
wanted
was to return to the upper deck, but she had something to do first and it would probably be dangerous.

“You should go back,” she told him.

“What about you?”

“I’m going down the hall a ways, then I’ll be right up. There’s a fire door at the end and I want to close it.” Sena knew from the tour that the engine room was on this deck of the ship and she wanted to do what she could to stop the fire from spreading.

“You can’t be serious. That’s not your job. Let the crew take care of it. Ms. Friedel is going to freak if we’re not back soon.”

“She’s going to freak anyway,” said Sena, “and the crew isn’t coming.” She thought of the one man whose job it was to close all of the doors on the ship. “I’ve got this, you go ahead.”

“Not gonna happen,” said Kade. “Let’s go get this over with.”

Sena shrugged into her backpack and headed for the back of the ship.
The stern
, she mentally corrected herself. 

With every step the smoke grew thicker and more acrid. Sena heard voices and she tried to use her book light to see through the haze. She didn’t understand what she saw. People milled around in the hallway, tugging suitcases out of their rooms. Children fussed and cried. She heard a woman say, “How are we supposed to find our way out? There’s at least ten sets of emergency stairs.”

“I think we should wait for an announcement. It can’t be that bad, there’s not even an alarm.”

“I’m getting my camera equipment,” said a man.

An elderly woman was on her knees, coughing into a handkerchief and a little girl tried to help her to her feet. “Please, Grandma, you’ve got to get up.”

Sena was horrified. The engine area was nearby, and she knew these people all had to be evacuated. She’d witnessed a fire in her apartment building once, and knew that some people couldn’t handle emergencies. They froze up and lost the ability to think straight. Like living zombies, more or less.

“Kade, we—” she turned to him and found he was already ahead of her.

He let go of her hand and shouted, “By order of the captain, all passengers are to evacuate immediately. Do not go back to your rooms. Go straight to your muster stations and wait for further instructions!”

Sena was impressed. She’d never heard Kade sound so in charge.

She moved among the people, orienting them in the right direction. “Go to the end of the hallway and take the stairs up. You can do it.” 

When she was certain everyone was on their way out, she headed deeper into the ship. She thought the fire door was a little ways away, and she intended to finish what she’d set out to do. Not even her fear of the dark was going to stop her.

“Sena, wait!” She turned back and her light showed Kade standing with the elderly woman in his arms, the little girl holding on to his belt loop. “Forget about the door,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’ll be right behind you.” She gave him a push in the right direction. “You need to hurry; neither of them can handle the smoke much longer.”

Kade looked at the woman he was carrying and seemed to make up his mind. “Okay, but you’d better be right behind me.” 

With relief, Sena watched him turn to take the woman and child to the upper deck. She was soon forced to crawl on hands and knees to find air that didn’t choke her lungs. Luckily, the fire door was where she thought it was. She tugged at the large door, grunting. It was heavy and she wasn’t sure she could budge it. This was a job for a trained sailor, not a scrawny fifteen-year-old girl. If the captain had taken charge of the evacuation and hadn’t abandoned the ship with most of his crew, she’d be up on deck or on a lifeboat, not half-choking in the bowels of the ship. 

The thought of the captain filled her with fury. He’d abandoned his own ship and left helpless elderly people and children to burn, all to save himself and his girlfriend. 

Unknown reserves of strength were activated by her anger, and the door closed with a slam.

Sunlight washed over Sena when she opened the door at the top of the stairs. She looked around for Kade, disappointed not to see him. She had thought he would wait for her.

The muster station was more crowded now than it had been before, and it was difficult to make any progress through the throng of people. No one knew what to do or where to go, and the crew members she saw looked as lost and confused as the passengers. 

When she got back to her group, Sena saw that all three of her bunkmates were there. Charity sat on her suitcase, one leg crossed over the other, foot tapping the air impatiently.

“Nice of you to join us,” she said as Sena approached.

Sena shook her head. Charity would never change.

For the next hour or so, they waited anxiously at the muster station for the order to abandon ship. There was no word from the captain, but they saw crew members hurrying by on different tasks. 

Sena's classmates were full of speculation about what had happened as they tried to make sense of the simultaneous power outage and plane crash. The most amusing theory she heard involved a Russian jet firing on them, and the captain blasting it out of the sky with shipboard artillery.

She thought about sharing what she’d witnessed on the bridge, but doubted anyone would believe her.

They waited hour after hour, sitting on the deck and leaning on each other for support. Some of the kids sang songs, and others talked in detail about the movie
Titanic
. There were a lot of tears.

Finally, several people in crew uniforms came forward. Sena recognized Lydia from the tour earlier. Her shirt was untucked and bits of hair escaped her bun. She stepped onto a bench, raised a bullhorn and made an announcement.

“Can I please have your attention? I am Lydia, your cruise director and hostess, and I have good news. The captain has asked me to inform you that the fire we experienced in the engine room has been extinguished, and the situation on-board the
Duchess
has stabilized. There is no need to evacuate at this time.”

The cheer that went up from the passengers was deafening.

Lydia waited for everyone to calm down and then went on. “Unfortunately, we’re unable to bring our generators back online at this time. We ask for your patience while we recover from this unfortunate event.”

Someone in the crowd shouted out, “What about food? I haven’t eaten since breakfast!”

“We will be serving sandwiches on the Lido within the next few hours.”

“I don’t want a sandwich, I paid for the buffet!” Angry murmurs of agreement in the crowd made Sena feel sorry for Lydia. She suspected worse was yet to come.

“I also must inform you that the water pressure in the ship is not working at this time. That means you’ll be unable to flush toilets or get water from the tap.” She held up a red plastic bag labeled
Biohazard
. “Cabin stewards will be coming around to give you biological waste bags for your solid waste, and you can eliminate liquid waste in your showers.”

Sena looked around and saw a number of confused expressions. She wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand. She was still trying to work out what Lydia meant when someone shouted, “I’m not gonna take a dump in a plastic bag!”

Now the crowd was really upset. It took a while before they calmed down enough to let Lydia speak again. “We need everyone’s cooperation. We have our engineers working on the problem now, and we hope to have a solution by tomorrow morning. For now, we appreciate your patience.”

A tall, middle-aged man with short brown hair and worry lines around his eyes spoke from the crowd. “Was anyone hurt in the fire?”

Lydia lowered the megaphone, nodded and wiped her eyes. Everyone became so still that when she spoke, they all heard her despite the lack of amplification. “Twenty people are missing, including passengers and crew. The fire spread through a section of the lower cabins before we could contain it.”

There was a hush following her words, as the passengers took in the information.

When Lydia stepped down from her perch on a bench a final question was asked. “What about the captain?”

Sena looked out toward the wreckage of the airplane. The flames had been extinguished and the rubbish that remained was just a dark blotch on the horizon.

“Staff Captain Brady has been promoted to captain. He will address everyone later tonight.”

With these words, Lydia extricated herself from the crowd, and went, presumably, to deliver her bad news to another muster station.

Mr. Stoddard, the physics teacher, climbed up onto the bench and called for everyone’s attention.

“Students,” he paused until everyone was listening, “I think it’s a good time to talk about the Compton Effect.”

Groans went up all around Sena.

Mr. Stoddard went on, well accustomed to reluctant listeners. “Who can tell me what a photon is?”

No one raised their hand. 

“Think of it as a tiny bundle of energy,” he answered his own question. “There are lots of kinds of photons, but I want to talk about gamma rays. Gamma rays are photons with a hundred thousand times more energy than light photons.”

“Can we go back to our cabins? I don’t think any of us care about this right now,” a student with a nose piercing and neon shoelaces spoke up.

“Do you care about what happened to the ship and that plane?” asked the teacher. He had their attention now. “Bear with me. What creates gamma rays?”

“Wasn’t that what turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk?”

“Yes, exactly. What
caused
those gamma rays?”

Sena jumped in, “A nuclear reaction.” All eyes turned to her for a moment and her cheeks warmed.

“Good, Sena. Now, what would happen if a nuclear weapon was detonated in space?”

Charity leaped to her feet. “That airplane was nuked?”

A loud burst of excited chatter interrupted the lecture, and Mr. Stoddard had to quiet everyone down before he could continue.

“Not exactly, Charity, but there
was
a nuclear explosion.”