Daniel Suarez - Influx

And today the Lord had delivered his bounty. Jesus and the Saints had smiled upon them. Cruz kissed the gold crucifix from around his neck as he looked down on the school of tuna thrashing within the purse seine net. Not bigeyes but yellowfin. “Thank you, my Lord.” Just like the old days.

He’d be able to repay some debts. Maybe service the boat. Maybe pay some people. Bribe some people. It was a long list.

Things had been hell since the WCPF Commission had closed high seas pockets one, two, and three near the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Overfishing or not, the Nauru Agreement had well and truly screwed him. He had bills to pay, and his bills were the type that came looking for him with a knife when he was late.

Cruz stared down into the net, trying to calculate his end. The “net of the nets,” as Lolo used to call it. The San Miguel ’s hold was only a quarter filled, and this catch might bring it up to thirty or thirty-five percent. He started roughing out capacity figures for his family’s ancient trawler—mentally removing a portion to account for leaks and pump problems. No good filling her to the gunwales if they went to the bottom in rough seas on the way back. Then there was the extra cost of fuel and food from the length of this journey—the repairs they had to make at Fiji. The bribes to make sure no one reported them.

And then transshipment of the catch to an Indonesian trawler in midocean to hide the catch’s origin. The Indonesian’s cut, too.

Cruz shook his head in worry. What sort of world was this where even good fortune was stressful? But he shouldn’t be ungrateful. The good Lord had provided because the Lord helped those who helped themselves.

He would never have gone out this far, but with all the aircraft and fast boats looking for “illegal” fishing trawlers like his own—and what did that mean exactly, “illegal”? As if fishing God’s ocean could ever be illegal! The eastern high seas pocket was the only way to get away with it, and the risks and expenses just kept piling high. He’d had a recurring nightmare of drowning, and his sister told him it was debt he was drowning in, not water. That sounded about right.

But looking down into the purse seine as another load of tuna came up from it, he nodded to himself. The risk was paying off. He could keep the business going another season. He must. He had to. If the engines didn’t have a major problem. If Greenpeace stayed the hell away from him. If he didn’t get any major fines. If he greased the right palms. So many ifs. A thousand generations had fished the sea, and he was damned if anyone would drive him to poverty on the land.

Cruz glanced up at gathering clouds in the distance. Weird clouds. They were like a massive smoke ring miles across and miles in the air, towering over them.

One of the crewmen shouted up to him and pointed at the gathered clouds. “Benigno!”

He nodded back. “Let me worry about the weather. Just get those fish in the holds.” He knew there was no severe weather predicted for this region of ocean—and nothing had been on the satellite images this morning.

Cruz stepped back into the control house as his taciturn second mate, Matapang, entered from the far hatchway. “Mat, where’ve you been? I sent for you fifteen minutes ago.”

“Can’t just stop what I’m doing every time you call.”

“What’s going on with the port engine?”

The second mate frowned. “It’s gonna give us problems—connecting rod, I think. But it’ll hold for now.” He pointed through the windows. “Are you keeping an eye on that?”

Cruz followed his gaze toward the horizon where the clouds had suddenly turned nearly black. What appeared to be a major squall line had materialized a couple of miles away in the last few seconds. “Heavenly Father!”

The men on deck were now shouting and pointing at the looming clouds.

Cruz had never seen anything like it. It wasn’t behaving like a storm. It was behaving like a… like some sort of mini-typhoon—although there didn’t even appear to be heavy seas. It was all in the sky, as if a massive hammer were coming down onto an anvil of sea. He could actually watch the clouds circling in real time, reaching up into the stratosphere and turning blacker by the second. “What is that?”

Lightning coursed through the clouds ominously. Followed by rumbling thunder.

Matapang walked over to the far side of the bridge and looked down. “We need to release that net and get under way.”

“The hell we do! There’s four million pesos of tuna in that net.”

“Then tie it off with buoys.”

Cruz couldn’t help himself. He got right up in his second mate’s face—the man was half a head shorter than him and thinner. “Shut your mouth! We lose that net and those fish in rough seas, and I might as well not bother to make it back.”

“Your debts aren’t my debts, Benigno. You’re not going to kill us all because—”

Cruz raised his fist. “Shut your mouth, or I will shut it for you.”

The sailors on deck were all shouting now.

Cruz and Matapang glanced forward, reluctant to take their eyes off each other.

But what they saw beyond the bow made them forget everything. Somehow something colossal was rising up out of the ocean. No, that wasn’t even the way to describe it—it was as though the ocean were rising up into a vast hill, lifting up like a single great wave. And yet this wave didn’t move anywhere but up, rising into the sky as the hill began to grow into a looming cone.

Cruz crossed himself as the shadow of it fell across them all.

Matapang dropped a wrench that he’d been secretly holding behind his back, and then he ran out to the railing, where he shouted down at the crew. “Release the net! Get ready to make way!”

The sailors awoke from their stupor—staring at the impossible sight a mile off their bow—and they began scurrying around to set loose their only good net. Cruz watched their preparations with almost as much horror as what he saw unfolding in the sea ahead of them. Almost. For if truth be told, the rising mountain of ocean put the very fear of God into him. He started whispering as he clutched and kissed his crucifix.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done…”

Matapang ran back into the control house. “Stop praying and start closing hatchways!”

Cruz shot a glance forward as a deep roar came to all their ears, and he immediately thought the mountain of water had started to come tumbling down onto them. But instead, the sea was starting to rush into a reverse vortex, pulling them sideways—and upward into the sky.

Lightning flashed again. Thunder boomed.

Cruz kept praying as his gaze kept following the sea up, up into the clouds. It wasn’t cresting. No, instead, it was still rising, like a volcanic cone of ocean a quarter mile across lifting upward, spinning around its center. The entire crew had stopped what they were doing again, most of them collapsing onto their knees, crossing themselves. Praying.

What was it? Cruz had never heard of anything like this in all the centuries of seafaring lore. There was a thousand-foot-tall tower of solid water, the black, swirling clouds parting to accept it.

The ocean was pouring into the sky.

And now the outer edge of that slope finally reached the San Miguel itself. The trawler started listing backward onto its stern as the angle of sea beneath it rose.

Cruz gripped the wheel. “We need to turn about! Start the engines!”

Matapang clawed his way to the windows. “They’re still trying to cut away the net!”

Cruz was past caring about his financial ruin. A bizarre tsunami unlike anything he’d ever heard of loomed in front of them, and if they didn’t turn, they’d be swamped. They’d never crest this titanic monster. They were going to slip down-wave by their stern, and Cruz knew all too well the leaks and weaknesses there. The bilge pumps would themselves be drowned, along with the engines, as the rusted stern hull caved in.