The Seventh Seal

Prelude

The jungle heat was lethal. Its humidity was suffocating; heavy and lung crushing as they struggled to breathe. It squeezed sweat from their bodies in unending drops, while mosquitoes tried to eat them alive. The dense, towering brush around them gave them only snippets of vision past a few meters, and the stench of the rotting vegetation they kicked up was nauseating. Panting, they could taste it as garbage in their mouths. An impenetrable stand of thickly intertwined stalks had suddenly blocked them. The sticky, web homes of black widow spiders pock marked the woven, living wall. Circling around it, they found that the thick, green mass enclosed a rectangular area roughly the size they’d expected.

This was it. They had found it; the perfect place to build, if you wanted to keep all but the most ardent out.

Friar Diaz turned to the sturdy-looking man in charge, Raúl Barone, and pointed. Barone waved up one of the swarthy workers, pointed at a section of bush, and made a cutting motion. The sweat-drenched man pulled on the starter cord and brought his chainsaw to life, shattering the peace of the jungle. Machetes were useless here. It took power tools to cut through this.

Diaz followed the native worker through the opening he formed minding the deadly spiders. Twisted clumps of cut branches littered the ground threatening to trip him as he went in ahead of the workers clearing them. Studying the bush from inside its tangles, the monk was certain these canes had been purposely grown into a wall-like net.

Yes. This was the place. The Book was here.

Twenty feet in, they came to a stone wall. Ten feet of that fence would have been sufficient to ward off anyone back in the sixteenth century, when it had undoubtedly been constructed. Twice that distance would have been the way of the monks. Even with the chainsaw, it had taken over an hour to form this one person wide tunnel.

The worker exchanged his chainsaw for a two-pound sledge hammer and chisel. He had no intention of cutting through the wall. He chiseled holes in the old mortar in five places, one above and two along each side of the opening in the brambles. Barone fixed small, shaped charges into the gaps that had taken over another hour to form. He backed out, gently doling out the detonation-cord, until he was a safe distance away.

The blast wasn’t that loud. The thump carried only for being an unusual sound in the rain forest. The sudden cry and flight of birds was all that told of the disturbance. The workers went in first, clearing the debris from the new, ragged opening. There had been a gate once, but it was lost in the twists of canes and had undoubtedly been blocked up when the monks closed themselves off. It would have been pointless to search for it.

Inside the wall, the jungle growth was normal, if still dense brush, at first. It quickly cleared to a low hill, hardly more than an expansive mound on the jungle floor, covered with leaf litter and guano from the birds in the canopy high above. At the mound’s center was the decaying abbey. The roof was long gone, rotted and collapsed into dust and litter on the old stone floor, while much of the crumbling rock walls remained standing. The openings that had been windows gaped emptily and uselessly.

Insects, several small lizards, and a couple of disturbed tarantulas skittered away in the litter as they walked into the dead building. There had been two floors to the ill-fated structure. The second would have been the monk’s cells with tiny slivers for windows and the barest of essentials. Its floor and interior would have been all wood, which had long-ago decayed back to loose soil on the rough flagstones of the bottom floor. A few trees had managed to sprout in the cracks and their roots spread along them in search of nutrients in the poor soil. They rose surprisingly high from their tenuous positions.

Diaz grinned like the Cheshire Cat. They had told him he was crazy, and to some extent, he knew they were right. Only an unhinged man would really want to find what they suspected was here. But he was sharper than the rest because of it. Even the best professors and archeologists in the world had failed to find this place. It had taken someone as intensely and perhaps as insanely devoted as those old monks to find their hidden monastery and the ultimate secret it held.

The first room of the building had been the chapel. The altar slab was half-buried in debris and litter. Barone motioned and the crew began clearing it off, frightening another tarantula out of its daytime nest and skittering back themselves.

The tarantulas in Hispaniola were not very deadly, they all knew. Yet they surely scared the hell out of you when they popped out of hiding. Chuckling at themselves, but still made nervous for the various spiders around them, they went back to clearing the space and digging.

A few minutes later, the crumbling granite altar and its surrounding area were clear and nothing had been found but a rusting chalice and the bones of two long-dead monks.

Diaz was all but distraught. It has to be here, he insisted desperately. There’s no other place it could be.

Well, let’s keep looking, Barone replied. They probably hid it when they sealed themselves in.

Tired, his hands coated with sweat, a nodding worker lost his grip on his trowel. It clinked off of the edge of the altar slab and landed handle first with a thunk on the newly-exposed floor. Diaz’s head snapped around at the sound. It had been a hollow noise. Barone had noticed it, too. Moments later, the floor stone had been pried up and they were shining lights into a musty, root choked cellar of rotting, wooden boxes and old, ceramic jars and the moldy remains of three other monks, who had been laid to rest alongside the abbey’s few possessions.

Crumbling stairs were spotted about ten feet off and all of the workers scraped away the two inches of soil covering it, finding the wooden trap door a moment later. Rusting iron bound it. With the first pull on the ring, it all collapsed into slivers and dust. Diaz was already going through the gap and into the cellar as they cleared the debris of the door away.

Through the powdery dirt they had kicked up into the humidity’s haze his flashlight beam found the box he sought at the dusty cellar’s far end. It had to be the correct crate. The rest were too small. He chopped through the filthy roots with his machete to reach it. The latch opened with a rusty screech as he forced the lid up, cracking the seal of rust on the hinges. The stench of mold flowed out from the dark, scraps of paper filling half of the box.

His heart sank. It could not have rotted. Not after all these millennia of existence. The academics had repeatedly professed that nothing this holy would be allowed to rot. Had they been wrong? Was this the result of centuries lost in the muggy hole? It had always been in libraries and the homes of scholars before it came here. Had the steamy jungle ruined the ultimate prize?

Wait! His light glinted on a shiny piece of wood in the corner. He moved aside the tattered remnants of whatever papers had sat in that box, and there it was. The Book sat pristine and perfect, exactly as it had to have been. He lifted it out, the first person to touch it in four hundred and twenty years. Adrenalin flowed through him like electricity. He didn’t feel the heat or the humidity.

Awed, Barone couldn’t resist. He reached out and gently took it from the excited Diaz. Behind them, the workers were muttering that something didn’t seem right. There was no gold here, only rotting parchment, other than this one scroll. They saw mere trinkets and trash were there should have been treasure. This was not what they had expected. There was nothing for them here but the slave wages Barone had paid them.

You were paid fairly, Barone snapped at them to shut them up. The cretins had no idea what treasure he held. It was just as they thought. Seven scrolls, offset and rolled one within the other. Each sealed individually at its exposed corner. The first five had been opened as suspected. Barone put his thumb over the sixth seal to hold it in place and moved to put the Book back into the box.

The foreman snatched it from his hands before he could. Machete point in Barone’s face, he demanded more.

This was not the trip we expected, he snarled out at Barone. We only took your pittance of a payment expecting we’d find something to barter or sell back in Santo Domingo. But if this is all there is we’ll take it. Unless you want to pay us for it.

Barone did. With a slug through the head from the .38 revolver no one had known he was carrying.

Diaz caught the Book from the falling man’s hands.

Their foreman dead before he hit the ground, the others backed off as though the pistol was pressing a force field outward. Barone advanced toward the steps and the men continued retreating, slipping on the grimy stairs in their haste.

Padrone, Diaz said in an urgent, horrified whisper.

Barone spared him a glance from the cowering workers, who might yet have tried something. He gave a start and forgot the men as a greater fear struck him on seeing what had terrified the monk. Diaz held the Book out to show him, in his trembling hands, that the sixth seal had come undone when the foreman had grabbed it. Barone crossed himself, which further frightened the workers into running from the cellar and the ruins of this ancient abbey.

May God have mercy on us, Barone prayed fearfully.

1. Cataclysm

The survivors’ lives had become nothing they would have expected. The home brewed beer and the mint tea from plants she'd grown herself, things she would never have imagined being at the center of her life, had become staples. They couldn’t see all the changes that were coming. No one could. Losing the Great Plains had changed the world entirely. Yet, while this may not have been the life they had expected, they were making a good one of it.

It was late September now. Back in that second week of May, twelve miles off the coast of South Carolina, the Atlantic had been rising and falling in gentle swells, the calm after a storm that had literally swamped the inexperienced millionaire in his first and probably last yacht. The sunny, clear skies and warmth over the gently rolling waters were lulling Georganas into a meditative calm in her mate’s chair on the bridge. It was a perfect and sleepy sort of day to be at sea; not the kind on which you expected a distress signal to all ships from the Coast Guard.

Like any nouveau riche kid, the new millionaire had decked his boat out with art and fine china and crystal and all manner of prestige based comforts. All of which were currently under approximately forty feet of water on a sandbar. He'd been lucky for landing on that patch, and luckier they'd all made it out alive. Although, he insisted it had been a rogue wave rather than his lack of seamanship, or foolishness at being at sea during Alex, the early and first named tropical storm of the season.

How much they were going to be able to salvage was going to depend less on his luck and more on her and Richard's skills. The insurance company that had hired them was betting it would be more than the cost of sending them out. From what they knew, the 85 foot vessel was undamaged and easily risible. It was the finery aboard her that was the question mark, and saving such was where Pullman Recovery distinguished themselves.

Rebecca Georganas loved this ship, their work, and the man running it as an older brother. The seafaring Pullman and Georganas families had been friends for three generations and Richard Pullman, twenty years her senior, had always been like an interesting older brother. For twenty-five years he’d managed a dual career with the salvage company and as a professor of Antiquities and World Religions at the private Williams Kline College in the rolling Virginia countryside, before taking over the ship on his father’s death. That had always impressed her.

Rebecca’s brothers had inherited the strong backs and shoulders of fishermen, while her athletic frame was better suited to being in the water. She had been the senior Pullman’s Chief Diver for years. After Richard took over, she became First Mate, as well. What better life could there be for the sea-loving daughter of a Greek fisherman?

It was heaven.

It was about to be ruined.

The first pong pong pong from the Coast Guard emergency system radio caught them off guard. She came alert and looked over at Richard, whose expression was attentive and wondering.

Pong pong pong. This is an emergency report from Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Please give your undivided attention. Repeat. This is an emergency report from Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Please give your undivided attention. Shortly after 12:40 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time today, the Yellowstone super volcano suffered a catastrophic eruption. Details are as yet unclear, but early reports indicate widespread destruction throughout Wyoming and neighboring states. Salt Lake City and Denver are reporting damage and emergency situations beyond their response capabilities. National Guard units are being mobilized from lesser affected areas. For further details, please tune into shore or satellite-based radio stations. Please share this information with your crews. You are encouraged to return to your local ports as early as possible. This message repeats.

At the wheel, Pullman sat breathless and agape, staring at a stunned Georganas, frozen in her chair. Neither spoke nor moved as the message replayed. The sun and the sea outside had not changed, but everything beyond the bridge suddenly felt unreal, as though the murky edges of a dream. What they’d heard couldn’t be real. Could it?

The pounding of boots up the internal ladder brought them out of the aura of shock.

Red-faced and sweating from excitement, the lanky crewman, Eddie Michaels burst onto the bridge. The expression on his face was of fear as much as astonishment. Captain! Ms. Georganas! he shouted. You gotta put on the radio! They’re saying Yellowstone erupted!

The Coast Guard just reported it, Pullman said, mind still numb.

My God, I can’t believe it, Michaels nearly shouted in excitement. Can it really be? What are we going to do? Our families?

We’re okay this far away, Pullman replied, speaking instinctively. There was no real thought behind the assurance, just pure belief that they would be. Disbelief in the reality of it brought a thought to mind, as unlikely as it could be. Switch to satellite radio to confirm this. Maybe someone hijacked the signal.

Michaels found it hard to believe. The Coast Guard signal?

Let’s make sure, Pullman said, doubting it as much as his crewman.

It took less than two minutes to confirm the Coast Guard’s message. It was being reported on every satellite radio station they could pick up. No one could hijack every single station. Pullman sent Michaels to tell the crew they were turning back. There was no thought or question given to the recovery job they were abandoning. Pullman simply turned The Keep instantly under full power and headed back toward their Savannah home.

Richard, Georganas started, but the question couldn’t form. She wanted to know they really would be all right, that their sea-bound world and life couldn’t be changed by an inland catastrophe no matter how vast. Only the mental shock of it was too great. It was too much to take in, much less to think on any details.

I don’t know, he said, knowing her thoughts were the same as his. We’ll have to see what comes of it. They had to find out what was really happening.

This, they learned from satellite radio, was more than they could fathom at once. Everyone had known Yellowstone was a super volcano and discounted the chances of it erupting, despite rumblings and swelling of the dome. But it had blown and the shock wave had been felt from the Pacific Coast to the Ohio Valley. Seismic meters in California picked up twenty-nine seconds of distant rumbling before being thrown off the scale. Reports from areas close to the event were making it clear that northwestern Wyoming and its neighbors were gone; vaporized in an instant or burned out of existence by the pyroclastic flow of burning ash and searing mud racing outward at three hundred miles per hour.

All contact with Livingston, Montana, and both Idaho Falls and Jackson, Wyoming, had ceased within the first hour, presumed burned or smashed into rubble. Aerial and satellite photographs were all but useless for the massive cloud of ash that was miles high and drifting eastward. Numerous videos were being posted by people evacuating ahead of that cloud. One person, who probably never beat the pyroclastic flow, had left a web cam streaming toward the eruption and caught the flow smashing toward it before being swallowed up by the super-heated sludge.

Pullman and Georganas said nothing as they listened to the radio and eventually tuned into broadcast television as they came into range. They could only exchange looks of terrified, anxious wonder and amazement at the immensity of it. They were seamen on the East Coast, but they knew instinctively that this would still affect them. How was a mystery, but they knew it had to. It was going to affect everybody.

Videos of panicked evacuations ahead of the ash cloud were filling the airwaves as they came parallel to the coast, several miles out, running in as straight a line for home as possible. Canada was foregoing customs checks to cope with the stream of people evacuating north. A couple of million easily were already racing eastward for Missouri with as many or more headed straight south.

Adding to the panic were reports of seismic rumblings in Washington state and up into Canada.

Worse yet were the images emerging from Salt Lake City and other areas of Utah. Comparisons to World War II bombings were being made by TV reporters. Salt Lake City was a metropolis of rubble, towering flames, and the dead lying in the streets. The first responders had given up. They had no resources to work with any more. It wasn’t an evacuation. It was everyone running for their lives in any direction they could take.

I’m a little scared, Rebecca finally said as they came up on Hilton Head.

I would imagine everyone is, he replied.

Are you?

He nodded. It was embarrassing and guilt-inducing, but he’d been thinking what it meant for him personally, as much as about the people caught in it. Pullman Salvage made their living off of insurance companies. The recent Colorado flooding had stressed their reserves. The claims from Hurricane Katrina had threatened to drain them back then. But this? This was going to wipe them out. That yacht was going to rot on that sandbar while new claims flowed in from this.

However, he said nothing of his thoughts to Georganas. She had brothers and parents to think about. She didn’t need to worry about being out of a job as well. She didn’t need to stress over where they were going to go from here. Not just yet, anyway. Give her a chance to be with her family first.

The insurance companies are going to go bust and we’re going to be out of business, aren’t we? Rebecca asked, as aware of the consequences as he was.

I don’t know about that, he replied, trying to soften it. There’s still private salvage and speculation.

I guess there will always be people with that kind of money, she said. That never was much of our business, though.

No, he admitted. It hasn’t been. I guess we’ll have to change.

She gave a small laugh. I guess we all will, won’t we?

Perhaps the ash would all fall before reaching the Mississippi, as was being predicted, she thought. So far away Savannah would be spared any of the physical fallout from the eruption. How much protection was that from the Heartland being gone, though? If all the farmland and livestock pastures of the Midwest were gone? Too little food for the nation; so many businesses, if not entire industries wiped out; this was the stuff of apocalyptic movies, not real life. But now it was happening and Rebecca wondered how secure she could realistically expect to be in her cozy studio apartment with her vintage espionage novels and her water colors, both of which had taken her to a different time and place.

Just how much was the world going to change?

For the moment, they sailed on in silence with radio and television both broadcasting updates, which were mostly repeats of what was already known with wilder and wilder speculation thrown in. If the networks couldn’t top each other with new information, they were determined to do so with more dramatic analysis. What they did know with certainty was that everything within a two hundred mile radius of the blast was already dead or dying. That alone was enough to make her feel sick.

They said little, not knowing what to say other than, Oh my God, or Jesus, at the news. Mostly, they spent the hours feeling stunned and with a growing, indefinable worry. She found herself glancing over at Richard, silent and stoic faced at the wheel. Her Greek heritage and upbringing had made her a strong woman. But she found herself needing reassurance that their world was not completely ruined. The thought of life as they knew it on The Keep being at an end made her feel even sicker than the news. Every future she had ever imagined for herself had always entailed working with Richard on this boat. The future had suddenly become a question mark.

2. After Shocks

At the mouth of the Savannah River, traffic rules made Pullman slow their 212 foot vessel. As wide and deep as she was, the mighty river was not the open ocean and wakes had to be kept small to prevent eroding the shoreline. Their berth was an hour away up river. They were close enough now to pick up the cell phone towers. The crew and Rebecca called their families. Unmarried and his parents dead, Pullman had no one to call. The Georganas clan was his family now and Rebecca relayed what her mother told her.

Mostly shrimpers and shallow water crabbers, the Georganas fleet was always out early and back shortly after noon. They had already been unloading, when the news came through, according to her mother. Their newest vessel that had been out at the time, her brother Jack’s mackerel boat, and they had made port further down the coast before The Keep had reached the delta. They were all safe and just as confused, and had kept as much of their catch as they could store safely for their own use. It was more important to have a stock of food, her father had declared when she talked to him on the phone, rather than to sell it at any price. What good was money where there was no food to buy? Apparently, there had been panic-buying everywhere not directly affected and many stores had few groceries left.

Savannah, America’s fourth busiest port, Georgia’s capital in Colonial times, with almost fifty miles of docks and enough iron in its railway system to build the world’s tallest skyscraper, was silent and all but deserted when they arrived. Most of the security guards, port control told them, had felt the overwhelming need to check on their homes and been allowed to leave. One tiny tug was all they had to help them slip into their berth under the cable-stayed Talmadge Bridge. Not many vehicles passed overhead on it. Those that did gave them a sense of rushing back to where they felt safe.

The crew was gone in a matter of minutes, hurried off somewhat by their captain, who wanted them home as safely and as quickly as they did. Even the single guys had parents and siblings. As did Rebecca, who lingered after the last of the crew was ashore.

Rebecca was unmarried and had no current lover, at least as far as Pullman knew. Her staying on with him after his taking over the ship was the reason the operation had held together under him. Dedication to the ship made her reluctant to leave so quickly as the others. It was as important to her as her family, Pullman knew. Still, it was a day to be with family, so after a brief hug and saying, I know we’ll be all right, Richard, she headed for her apartment, leaving Pullman alone with his boat.

For him, there was only a quiet house in the country to worry about. His brother was long gone, somewhere in Europe finding himself for the last ten years. For all he knew, Jonathan was dead. His parents were buried side by side in a quiet cemetery, shaded by ancient oaks dripping Spanish moss. He would check on his house later, once the dock security was back at full strength.

Any pull he felt was to this vessel and to the woman that had just left it. Rebecca was twenty years his junior and he had told himself on taking over the operation that the feelings he had for her were foolish and the result of the end of his twenty-five year relationship with Jan Kessler. However, they weren’t new.

For almost thirty years, he had lived a dual life; part time as a salvager with his father and full-time as a student, then as a professor; an arrangement tolerated by the institution thanks to the influence of a wealthy benefactor. Williams Kline College, WKC, may not have been as well-known or prestigious as nearby Georgetown, but its Religious Studies program was highly enough respected that the dual career would not have been allowed if not for the money he brought in. He’d been with Kessler for most of it, sharing their lives and their work. Only that life had been predicated on a theory that had turned out to be merely a whim and its luster had slowly faded for him.

His feelings for Rebecca had come on years ago, during one of his stints on the boat between research trips, well before it had become clear that his other life was ending. He had ignored them for the same reasons he kept silent now. On taking over the boat, he had expected the feelings to fade over time. Yet, it had been three years and they hadn’t. Working side by side had not reduced it to a simple friendship, as he had hoped, and this disaster had thrust them nearer to the surface. He hadn’t wanted to let her go.

He was in love with Rebecca Georganas and knew he always would be. Yet, how do you tell that to a girl you literally bounced on your knee as a toddler when you had been twenty-one and home from college? The Pullman and Georganas families had been friends for almost sixty years. To her, he was, at best, the older brother that had gone away for a while. At worst, he was a paternal stand-in; her father when they were out to sea. How did you tell that girl you had developed feelings for her?

He stood on the bridge in silence, as dusk grew over the town, and sipped steaming dark tea, an evening habit he had picked up in academia. From their berth, he could see the glow of Savannah’s downtown district. Rebecca would have reached her studio apartment in minutes, being literally walking distance away. They were near the eastern most reach of the Ocean Terminal, almost at the end of its twenty-two miles of docks.

A hub of Maersk and other major lines, it was one of those things you simply had to see to really understand the size of it. Given over to commercial cargo shipping, there was enough going on to keep a large boat and several salvage tugs busy. Improved port safety had left them with less to do at home, which they had supplemented with contract salvage for insurance companies and frequent underwater archeology expeditions. His academic contacts and expertise at handling ancient artifacts had brought them several jobs over the years. It was a decent life, simple in concept, while challenging enough in practice, and you felt like you contributed.

Which hadn’t been the case any longer with his academic career or with Kessler. He had been comfortable as a professor, though not wealthy by any means, and wholly unhappy. He had traveled that road to its dead end.

He gave some thought to calling her, but Jan Kessler had moved on, so it seemed, with a new partner at WKC, both academically and romantically. He wasn’t particularly anxious to re-open those ties. Not even under these circumstances. Her zeal had turned to obsession and had turned him away as much as had realizing that he had gone as far as he ever would in that quest.

When his father had died and the will left him in sole possession of the salvage business, family obligations had trumped mooted academic ambition. The relationship requirements had already been weighing too heavily. He had loved Jan, but she had begun to lose it and couldn’t see it. Had there been anything more he could have done, she wouldn’t have let him. So, he had left WKC and taken over the business. It was not lost on him how he had stayed with the business throughout, as though he’d always known he would need to fall back on it. Although, that too now seemed to have come to an end.

With The Keep pointed eastward, the dark, deep river angled out on his left toward the welcoming sea eighteen miles away. To the right, the dock and the city were as any other mid-spring evening, although it seemed less traffic was passing overhead now. Somehow, Pullman believed he could sense an anxiety rising in the people, and a new mystery inland that was as dark as the sea’s. It wasn’t just his personal turmoil that was causing it.

The center of the nation was all but gone. No one knew what that would mean, how the country would go on, or even feed itself. The news analysts were already predicting the loss of the entire plains states’ crops, half of the nation’s annual production, as well as the collapse of the stock markets. Forest fires were consuming the Rockies and spreading to any towns not burned in the eruption. Nothing was coming from Salt Lake City anymore, beyond stories from evacuees of a city on fire or buried in rubble. Denver was under evacuation orders from the governor. Losses were going to be in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. No one knew how, or when, or if, the economy would recover. Many felt never.

His cell phone rang, surprising him. He saw Rebecca’s number and his first instinct was that something had happened to her or her apartment. He answered quickly, Rebs? You okay.

Oh, my God, Richard, she sounded even more shocked. Do you have the TV on?

It’s turned down, he told her, grabbing the control to bring the volume up a bit and gasped at the sight of the St. Louis Arch on the ground. Jesus. When did that happen?

Must have been right as we were tying up, she said. Can you believe it? A second volcano.

In St. Louis? Where?

St. Louis? What are you talking about? It was in Canada.

Canada? he asked. What was she talking about?

Oh, my God, she said again even more awestruck. The report just switched over. I didn’t know about St. Louis.

Wait. Something happened in Canada and St. Louis?

I walked in to the news that Tuya Butte had erupted in the Canadian Rockies, she answered. It shook everything from Alaska down to Washington State. Now, they’re saying the New Madrid Fault let go by St. Louis.

The worst earthquake ever recorded there, he was reading the headlines with her as they came up on the screen.

Apparently, it shook Chicago and Memphis badly, too, she noted. A lot of people had run there to get away from the ash cloud. They ran right into an earthquake.

What about California? he asked worriedly. The San Andreas has been ready to go for decades.

I saw something about evacuations starting already, she replied. Richard, if it’s aftershocks from Yellowstone and they’re rippling out towards us...

No. That doesn’t happen, he said, then thought better of that answer. He didn’t actually know. It was no more than a vague piece of information in his head, something he’d heard from another professor or something like that. At least, I don’t think it does.

Well, it sure looks like it, she said, We’re in the line of fire.

No. There are no fault lines around here. I’m sure of that. The next ones are out to sea.

You’re forgetting that earthquake we had a couple of years ago, she reminded him. Remember how they said we felt it far away because of the geology under us?

I remember, he said. It wasn’t from a major fault, if I recall correctly.

I’m Googling where the next ones are, she told him. Or trying to. The internet is running slowly, of course.

Everyone is on trying to get information.

This is insane, Richard, she said. He could hear her typing away at her keyboard, trying to find a site that responded. I keep hoping I’m going to wake up in my bunk and it was just a dream.

I wish it was, too, he admitted. But it wasn’t. It surely wasn’t. Nine hours of perfectly clear events with every detail and every second remembered; dreams weren’t like that. He was certain of that. A flashing light from below caught his eye. Port security was signalling him from one of their vehicles. Hang on. Port security wants me.

Pullman stepped out from the side door onto the small platform before the steps down to the long deck. One of the senior guards called up to him before he could ask what they wanted.

We’re locking down the port in fifteen minutes, he hollered out. If you’re not gone by then, you’re not getting out until tomorrow. Without waiting for a reply he got back into his Jeep and headed for the next ship.

I have to go, he told Rebecca.

I heard, she said. Call me when you get home.

Okay. He hung up and tarried only long enough to dump the still-steaming tea and rinse the mug. He didn’t have a bag to worry about. His life off of the ship was a separate thing. There was nothing he took back and forth with him other than his phone and the clothes on his back. He got into the old pickup that had come from his father along with everything else and headed out into the deepening dusk. The streets were mostly clear, but he lived on an oil and rock road miles past town, out past Rincon near Bethel; a small country lane that shows up on a map as a gray line, if at all. It was closing in on full dark as he rolled into the garage of his farm house on three acres. Tonight, more than normally, it seemed like he was all alone in the middle of the forest.

3. Pullman

He tried calling Rebecca as he entered his silent kitchen, but got a busy signal. First the internet and now the cell towers were being overwhelmed. He set the phone on the table and started making a