Dark Waters

Chapter 4

Four

The corrugated steel of the shipping container was freezing, wet with sea spray, and completely rough. We lay there for what felt like hours, our bodies shaking after the dangerous escape as the massive metal box bounced in the heavy currents. The train car was gone, swallowed by the deep gray water behind us.

We cannot leave it like that, I wheezed, my voice cutting through the heavy rush of the wind. I was clutching my left arm against my ribs. My shoulder was a terrible knot of pain, burning with every breath. It is completely out of the socket. I need you to pop it back in.

The girl looked at me, her eyes wide with fear. I, I do not know how to do that. I could hurt you even more.

If we get caught in a bad current and I only have one arm, we drown anyway, I snapped, sitting up and bracing my boots against a steel ridge on the container roof. Grab my wrist. Put your feet against my chest, and pull straight back. Don't stop.

Her hands shook as she wrapped her fingers around my arm. She took a shaky breath, placed her wet boots against my ribs, and threw her weight backward.

A sharp explosion of pain blinded me. I let out a choked roar as the bone resisted, then slid back into place with a sickening, wet thump. I slumped forward, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down my face despite the freezing air.

You did it, I muttered, moving my arm stiffly. The sharp pain faded into a deep, heavy ache.

She collapsed back onto the steel, staring tuned into her dirty, raw palms. I'm Zoey, she whispered, her voice sounding incredibly small against the giant ocean.

David.

Two days passed in a blur of survival. The shipping container was completely closed and empty inside, keeping us perfectly afloat, but it offered zero shelter from the weather. We were totally exposed, drifting slowly through a world of nightmares. As we floated, we got a closer look at the wreckage. We drifted past half submerged highway signs, floating cars spinning slowly in the currents, and the sharp tops of roofs peaking out like tiny islands.

With nothing but time and the steady lapping of the water against our steel raft, we talked. Without the walls of the train or the divide between our neighborhoods, we finally shared who we were.

Zoey was twenty two, a college graduate from the high society towers whose entire life had been full of steady rules, safety protocols, and protections. I was twenty eight, a repair worker from the lower sector grid who had spent his life watching those same protections rot away from the bottom up.

I do not understand how you can be so calm about this, Zoey muttered on the second afternoon, hugging her knees to her chest to stay warm. Her expensive jacket was torn and filthy, the clean look of the upper towers completely gone. The central leaders, they had safety plans for everything. Bad weather, broken systems. It does not make sense that no one is coming.

The plans were written by people who live above the clouds, Zoey, I said directly, staring out at the oily water. They built the system to protect their own money, not the people. Down in the lower sectors, we have been living through smaller versions of this collapse every day. Blackouts, shortages, broken power grids. You just never had to look at it.

She looked away, staring up at the distant, tilting high rise buildings still blowing black smoke into the gray sky. My parents were up there, she said softly. They did not believe the warnings either. They thought the support pillars could never break.

Everyone is single when the world drowns, I murmured, a heavy weight settling in my chest. I do not have family left in the towers. But I have a daughter. Maya. She is eight. Her mother took her out of the country to the eastern coast before the borders closed last year.

Zoey looked at me, showing real kindness through her exhaustion. Is she safe from the waves?

The eastern coast is higher ground, built on solid rock, I said, my hand tightening into a fist. But the world communications went down the second the earthquake hit. If the computer in that train car was our last local link, then the only way to send a message now is a classic radio broadcast.

I WIPED the salt water from my eyes, staring into the horizon. That is the only reason I was on that train heading toward the lower docks. There is a high radio tower on the old industrial hill. If I can get to the transmitter, I can send a signal through to the eastern side. I need to know if she is alive.

By the end of the second day, our quiet drifting came to a sudden, terrifying end.

A low, rumbling sound echoed across the water, and the current beneath our container suddenly sped up. The slow tide had dragged us into a narrow channel where the ocean was rushing through the ruins of a broken bridge.

David, look! Zoey yelled, scrambling to her feet and pointing ahead.

My stomach dropped. The current was pushing our container directly toward the sharp, twisted remains of a massive steel bridge support. Sharp, torn metal and heavy iron beams stuck out of the water like rows of razor teeth. If the container hit those sharp edges at this speed, the steel walls would be ripped wide open, filling the empty inside with water and dragging us straight to the bottom.

Worse, a broken fuel line from a sunken boat had leaked thousands of gallons of oil across the surface. A stray spark from a hanging power line had caught it. A massive patch of burning water was spreading directly in our path, thick black smoke rising into the air.

We were being sucked right into a trap of fire and tearing metal. We have to move! We have to jump! I shouted, looking quickly around the floating debris.

Where? Zoey panicked, coughing as the thick smoke hit her lungs. There is nothing but deep water!

There! I pointed past the burning oil, looking through the thick haze and rising smoke.

Rising out of the rushing water on a steep, rocky hill that sat just above the flood line was a tall metal structure. It was not the clean upper towers. It was the old industrial hill, and sitting right at the very top was the high radio tower.

It was a total coincidence, a direct path to the one place I needed to go. But the gap between our fast moving container and the rocky edge of the hill was growing wider as the water swept us toward the broken bridge.

We jump for the rocks now, or we go down with the box! I shouted, grabbing her hand just like I had on the train roof.

As the shipping container hit the first piece of floating trash, tilting hard, we jumped off the edge, flying through the smoke toward the steep, muddy side of the hill.

We hit the wet ground hard, scrambling and clawing our way up the mud to escape the rushing water and the heat of the burning oil. Breathing hard and covered in dirt, we turned back to look at the top of the hill toward the radio tower.

We were not alone.

Standing along the metal walkways at the base of the tower were several figures. They were not wearing the clean uniforms of rescue teams or high sector police. They were ordinary survivors from the lower sectors, holding old tools and flashlights to see through the smoke. As they saw us drag ourselves onto their only remaining piece of dry land, their faces filled with relief. Two of them dropped their tools and hurried down the muddy path, reaching out their hands to help lift us up to safety.