Crawford Kilian: Tsunami: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

“Listen, you’ve done well to go this long without getting photophthalmia. I see lots of people on their fourth, fifth episode. Most of them are right on the edge of permanent blindness, okay, and they still can’t get it through their heads that they shouldn’t go outside anymore without protecting their eyes.”

“Bernie, I’m supposed to be diving tomorrow. Can I do it with my eyes in this condition?”

“Keep your shades on, okay? Have a good trip.”

As Rachel ran through the Golden Gate and south down the coast, Don lay in a restless doze. Kirstie looked in on him from time to time, before finally climbing into the upper bunk and falling asleep.

He woke at dawn, feeling a little better, and left the cabin without disturbing Kirstie. Morrie was in the galley, drinking instant coffee. They had a breakfast of cornmeal muffins, and talked quietly about the earthquake.

Its epicentre had been right on the Hayward Fault, running east and west through Berkeley and up into the hills, but it had been felt over a wide area. The Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct had been severed, so almost the entire San Francisco peninsula was without water. Hundreds of fires had broken out; the emergency medical centres were crowded with burn victims. Landslides had erased whole neighbourhoods, and aftershocks had brought down many buildings weakened by the first quake. Tens of thousands of people had moved into parks and other open spaces, preferring to risk blisters and snow blindness rather than burial.

The local councils, scarcely recovered from their battles with the feds, were almost paralyzed. Without fuel to run generators and vehicles, they were reduced to what could be done by dazed, disorganized, hungry people. It was not enough.

Another storm had swept in during the night, and Rachel battered through it all the next morning. But the skies cleared behind it; when Rachel anchored in Monterey Bay over the tanker, it was on a beautiful summer afternoon.

The oil barge was anchored a short distance from the tug, while Squid ’s barge was brought alongside Rachel . A crew of mechanics transferred to the barge to prepare the sub; Don went with them, wearing dark sunglasses.

“Let’s take her down tonight, if you’re up to it,” said Morrie as they were eating dinner in the barge’s tiny wardroom. “I want to get a look at how the ship’s lying.”

“Sure,” said Don. He wiped up the last of his rabbit stew with a scrap of bread. Rabbit had become a popular food lately, a cheap source of animal protein; it was the bread that was the luxury.

The radio squawked. Leaning back in his chair, Don picked up the microphone. “Kennard.”

“ Don , it’s Bill .” The captain’s voice was almost unrecognizable in the static. “ We just got a message from Monterey . The natives don’t sound very friendly .”

“Ah. What’s the message?”

“ It’s from a guy called Colonel Mercer . Calls himself the commanding officer of the Provisional Defence Forces of the Martial Law Zone . He says we’reontheirterritoryandwebettergohome .”

“What did you tell him?”

“ I said I’d pass the word to the man in charge , but I don’t think I got through . He kept saying , I repeat , you are to departatonce . Doyouacknowledge ? ”

“Uh-huh. Well, keep trying. Tell him we’re sorry to trouble him, but we’re a duly constituted salvage operation engaged in peaceful work. We won’t cause him any problems.”

“ What if he doesn’t buy it ?”

“Well, I don’t know. But we’re not going home.”

“ That’s the spirit .”

“By the way, we’re going down for a trial run in about an hour.”

When Squid was swung up and out on its crane, the seas were still choppy but predictable, and the operator dipped the submersible into the water without trouble. Morrie let them drop quickly.

“It’s a lot clearer than I expected,” he said as he switched on the floodlights. Orienting himself quickly, Morrie put Squid on a southeasterly course and a steep descent. Sonar pinged briskly, and the screen showed the profile of the bottom. Don had trouble reading the instruments through his dark glasses, but when he took them off the reflected glare of the floodlights made him wince.

“There’s the hull,” he said after a few minutes, pointing to a bulge on the otherwise flat profile on the sonar screen. “We should be right on top of it. Yeah, there she is.”

A thin coating of algae clothed the hull, new growth since Don and Kirstie had first seen the tanker. Colonies of marine life — seaweed, starfish, barnacles — had taken hold here and there. The hull stretched away into the gloom; Squid glided above it, from near the stern to the vast, blunt bows. The water thickened rapidly until visibility was no more than two metres in a brown-black murk.

“There’s the main rupture,” Don said. “It’s not putting out as much oil as it was in the spring.”

They surveyed the whole expanse of the hull and found no new leaks. But Morrie spotted patches relatively free of algae, where the metal shone brightly in the sub’s floodlights. Don called Rachel , Bill Murphy answered.

“We’re amidships, and just found an area that looks like someone’s been testing the hull.”

“ Copy . Can you judge how recently ?”

“The scratches are clean and bright. It must have been since Kirstie and I were here.”

“Maybe our Colonel Mercer,” Morrie suggested.

“ Could be, ” said Bill. “ Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want us around . Do you feel like claim jumpers ?”

“No,” answered Don, “but I don’t like the idea of having to fight somebody for the privilege of pumping gas. We’re continuing with the survey.”

Several places along the hull showed similar marks, though none were deep enough to penetrate the steel. They found no new ruptures.

“We’re in luck,” said Don as Squid rose towards the surface. “Tomorrow morning we’ll secure the valve mounting, and bring the umbilical down. Day after tomorrow we’ll be in business.” Condensation dripped on his head and shoulders. “Unless those people in Monterey make trouble.”

Allison stood on the roof of the Monterey City Hall and looked northeast through binoculars. The sun was long since down, and the bay was black. The ship’s running lights were tiny but bright.

“Think they can do it?” he asked Mercer.

“I dunno. They got that tug and a couple of barges. They don’t look like a holiday cruise.”

“Griswold says they’d need a submersible — one of those minisubs.”

“Maybe they got one.” Mercer squatted down against the parapet, out of the wind. “The hell with ‘em. We’ll go get our gas somewhere else.”

“No,” said Allison. “They’re not getting a goddamn drop of our oil. None. None.”

“Hey, okay — 1 hear you. No need to yell. But what’s the difference? They get our oil, we get somebody else’s.”

“No. The bastards get that oil, they’ll be back for our food—”

“What food?”

“Our food, our weapons. Jesus, there’re millions of people in the Bay Area. Give ‘em gas and they’ll be down here in trucks, like locusts. Uh-uh. I’m stopping ‘em right now, while I’ve got ‘em by the balls.”

“Oh, we got ‘em by the balls, huh? I didn’t notice.”

“You get some artillery in place. That ship isn’t more than four miles offshore from Moss Landing. We’ll sink the bastards.”