When I faced the other direction, into the wind, the blood drained from my face. Across the horizon as far as I could see stretched a black wall; flashes of lightning lit up the dark sky every few seconds. It was a monster storm.
I slid across the cockpit past the wheel and looked at the barometer. The mercury was incredibly low, and it kept falling as I watched.
I gulped, wishing it were a nightmare. I never thought I’d witness a barometric crash—especially hundreds of miles from the nearest port, in an old sailboat with beaten-up rigging.
“What the hell is that, Cap’n?”
My Master’s certificate made me a seasoned sailor in Prit’s eyes. He didn’t care that the license only authorized me to pilot small vessels, or that I’d never been more than a few miles from shore.
“Not sure, Prit,” I said as I turned and hastily started furling the jib. “If it’s what I think it is, we have a big problem on our hands.”
“How big?” the Ukrainian asked as he helped me shorten sail.
“Prit, this is serious.”
Lucia peered out through the hatch wide-eyed, watching the wall of clouds race toward us.
“We could be dead in a couple of hours,” I said quietly.
3
Had that supercell blown in when the world was still inhabited, the Hurricane Center would’ve tracked every moment of it. Someone would have consulted the Center’s list of names and baptized it. Having a name made it easier to track and allowed news reporters to add drama when the hurricane made landfall, as if it were an erratic, destructive, evil person rather than a low-pressure center. But no one was around to do any of that. So let’s call it Edna. Not a bad name.
When Edna finally touched down at Casablanca, nobody witnessed the devastation of that city or how Edna leveled what little was still standing and buried thousands of Undead in the ruins. And no one witnessed the fury she unleashed two hundred miles offshore. No one but three people.
4
“Watch out, Prit!” I shouted as a wave the size of a two-story building crashed into the Corinth II’s battered hull. The rigging moaned and the mast bent dangerously to starboard. The cabin was completely submerged. I was sure the boat would capsize.
I wiped the saltwater out of my eyes and tried to make out the bow. Two seconds before, the Ukrainian had been there, struggling with the foresail as it flogged in the wind. As blasts of water sprayed in all directions, I finally spotted Pritchenko. He was wrapped in a rain slicker, clinging to a lifeline, coughing and gasping like a drowning dog. He’d been hurled against the mast, but his life jacket had cushioned the blow. If the water had dragged him a foot on either side of the mast, he’d have been tossed overboard.
“You OK, Prit? Answer me, dammit!” I cupped my hands to project my voice, but although he was just ten feet away, the wind was howling so loud he couldn’t hear me. He must’ve guessed my question, and he gave me a thumbs-up.
The hurricane whipped us around mercilessly. We nearly drowned a dozen times. Even brand-new right out of the shipyard, the sailboat wasn’t built to withstand wind gusts that strong, but the Corinth II rode the monster waves admirably.
Two hours into the storm, the halyard that held up the jib broke with a shriek and flew off like a flapping witch’s cape. After that, we battled the storm with just a ragged piece of mainsail left, trying to stay ahead of waves that threatened to swallow us. My arms were stiff from gripping the wheel for so long. Our only chance for survival was to steer with the wind and waves directly astern.
Each time one of those monsters broke over the deck, the boat slowly climbed the curved surface of that wave, topped by swirling, dirty foam. There, the wind pounded the entire hull, sending the boat racing to the crest. Then thousands of tons of water, moving at top speed, thundered as the boat rushed down the other side, its bow pointing into the hollow between two giant waves. When it reached the bottom, it was held tight between two giant waves, and, for a few seconds, the wind stopped blowing. Then the next wave lifted the Corinth II, and the cycle started all over again. It lasted for hours.
I could see only one way this could end—a treacherous wave would turn the boat a few degrees to port or starboard and point the boat straight down into the hollow. When the next wave struck, the boat would capsize.
An ominous creaking shook me out of my gloomy thoughts. A small crack the width of a pencil appeared along the mast. It hadn’t been there a second before. Every time the boat reached the top of a wave, the crack got longer and wider. The mast could last only a couple minutes before it broke completely.
“Prit! Prit!” I yelled, flapping my arms and pointing to the mast. “Cut all lines and rigging!”
At first the Ukrainian looked confused; then the gravity of the situation hit him. If the mast was still tied to the boat by the braided steel shrouds when it broke and fell overboard, it would drag all the rigging with it and form a giant sea anchor. The Corinth II would lose all maneuverability, and we’d drown in seconds.
Prit wasn’t a born sailor, but he was a fast learner. His quick reflexes had kept him alive through all the madness while billions of people died. He grabbed the nearest sail and, with his rigging knife, attacked the sheets and halyards that attached the sail to the spar, then struggled to release the steel cables. The veins in his neck bulged as he levered the knife blade. Even in the gusting wind, I could hear the growl he let out when the end of his knife broke off.
“It’s no use!” he shouted, waving his broken knife. “I can’t get the damn thing loose!”
I froze. We were dead. Totally fucking dead.
A fist hit me in the back. Still gripping the wheel, I turned and saw Lucia. She’d come on deck, wearing a life jacket, like we were, but no rain slicker. Rain and waves had drenched her in seconds, but that hadn’t fazed her. Her eyes glowed with a fierce determination to stay alive.
“Try this!” she shouted in my ear as she held out a long heavy object.
I grabbed hold of it as best I could. It was one of the HK assault rifles on board. It would be hard to pull this off, but I didn’t have any better ideas.
“You’ll have to do it! I have to keep us on course! You shoot out the backstay, then pass the rifle to Prit so he can do the same at the bow!” I coughed as I swallowed mouthful after mouthful of saltwater as the boat’s cockpit flooded.
Lucia nodded and steadied her right arm on the rail, above the wheel. The wind whipped straight into her face, driving rain and saltwater into her eyes.
“Stay calm, honey, stay calm,” I muttered, more to myself than to her.
We were at the top of a huge wave when alarming sounds came from the mast. Pieces of carbon fiber peeled off lengthwise, leaving a hole in the mast as wide as my finger. The rigging howled and threatened to collapse. The sailboat heeled sharply as it rode the crest of the wave. With a roar, it rushed down the slope in a waterfall of foam.
For a couple of seconds, the wind stopped. The Corinth II was protected in the thirty-foot-high gap between two huge waves. All was surreally calm. I could plainly hear the raindrops falling onto the deck. That lull was what Lucia had been waiting for. She calmly slung the HK over her shoulder, aimed at the mount holding the backstay to the hull, and pulled the trigger.
The HK sprang to life in Lucia’s hands, though she could hardly control its powerful recoil. A string of holes appeared in the rear deck and pieces of teak, fiberglass, and hot metal rained down on us. Two of the bullets hit the spot where the stay was attached to the hull. When the bullets tore into the steel cable, drawn taut by the enormous power of the wind in the sail, it snapped like a twig and unraveled before our eyes.