Read Online Burnt Sea: A Seabound Prequel (Seabound Chronicles Book 0) by Jordan Rivet - Free Book Online Page A

him with every
second spent searching.
    After ten minutes he opened the engine room door. A loud roaring filled
the cavernous space, rattling his eardrums. The big engines looked like windowless
cars lined up in the center of the floor. A metal catwalk ran around the outer
edge of the two-story room. Simon stepped onto it from the doorway, his
footsteps clanking.
    A pair of men stood on the catwalk, staring down at the engines. One
took a long swig from a hip flask. They must know what was going on outside
then.
    “Excuse me,” Simon shouted above the noise. “I’m looking for a little
girl. Pigtails. Blue T-shirt. Have you seen her?”
    The man with the flask looked at him, eyes bloodshot, and answered in a
language Simon didn’t understand. The other man nodded and uttered what sounded
like a curse word. Simon gestured toward the machines. The men shrugged and
didn’t stop him, so he climbed down a flight of metal steps to the lower level.
    His feet vibrated with the motion of the engines. He walked along the
room, calling for Esther. It was well lit, even though the rest of the ship
seemed to have switched to emergency power. The fluorescent lights threw sharp
shadows across the machinery.
    “Esther! Are you in here, button? It’s Daddy.”
    He reached the end of the room and rounded the big engines. He started
back, passing a row of machines with pipes running out of them, perhaps pumps
of some kind.
    “Esther?”
    “Daddy?” Her voice was so small, Simon almost
didn’t hear it above the growl of the machines.
    “Yes, button. It’s me. You can come out now.”
    “What’s going on? Are we at sea?”
    A pair of large eyes appeared beneath one of the big pipes along the
edge of the room. Esther stood. There was a long smudge of grease across one
side of her round face, as if she had lain down on the floor. For some reason
the sight made Simon want to cry.
    “We’re sailing somewhere safe right now.”
    “Where?”
    “Hawaii. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
    “Where are Mommy and Namie ? Are they sailing
to Hawaii too?”
    Simon looked down at his daughter, with her messy pigtails and her blue
Thomas T-shirt, and finally let the truth engulf him. He sat on the floor and
pulled Esther onto his lap, hugging her close. She felt small and warm in his
arms. He would keep this little girl safe no matter what happened next.
    “Mommy and Naomi were in San Diego, Esther. They . . . they’re . . .”
How could he explain this? What if he was wrong and they got out? “There was a
big volcano in Wyoming. It erupted. When that happens, there’s lots of ash in
the air and it can go really far away if the explosion is big enough and the
wind is strong. It’s really dangerous, like poison.”
    “Is that the smoke we saw?”
    “Yes. That was the ash from the volcano. If anyone breathes too much of
it, they . . . they could die.”
    “Can’t they hold their breath?” Esther asked.
    Simon passed a hand over his eyes.
    “Not for long enough,” he said. “Not when there’s that much ash. If it
rains it also gets really heavy, and it can make houses fall down on people.”
    “What if they went far away?” Esther said. “Like us. We got away on
this big boat, right?”
    Simon cast about for a hundred different reasons why it might be true.
What if they found gas masks? A safe basement? Was it
possible? What if they had decided to drive to Mexico instead of going to the
dentist? Would they be far enough away in time?
    “We did. We were really, really lucky. I think most people weren’t as
lucky as us today.”
    “Is Mommy dead?” Esther spoke so quietly that Simon wouldn’t have heard
her if he hadn’t been dreading those very words.
    “I don’t know. I think so.”
    “And Namie ?”
    “They were together.”
    “Can we go back and find them?”
    “I don’t think we can go to San Diego again for a while. Maybe weeks.”
    “Did our house fall down?”
    “I don’t know, button.”    
    “What are