“Sure, Jason. You’re welcome.”
Jason nodded, drew back his head, closed the door behind him.
Weird kid, Nick thought as he turned off the light. Weird kid.
Jason woke with a cry of terror bottled up in his throat. He gasped for air and stared wildly into the night. His heart throbbed in his chest like a diesel.
He listened to the stillness for a moment and tried to decide what it was that had awakened him. An aftershock? A cry for help?
Broken fragments of his dream rattled in his head. He couldn’t feel anything but a sense of alarm. Something must be wrong. He swung his legs out of bed, opened the cabin door, and padded down the hall to the crew’s dining area. He opened a door and stepped out onto the narrow steel deck. A cool spring night floated up around him. Frogs and crickets called to one another in the midst of the silence. The river glimmered like a thread of quicksilver in the moonlight. A distant navigation beacon blinked downriver, marking a channel that probably no longer existed. It was the only sign of humanity in the entire magnificent desolation of the Mississippi.
Nothing had happened, Jason realized. It had been a bad dream, that was all.
He made his way back to his cabin, imagining that it would take forever to fall back to sleep. Somewhat to his own surprise, he found that slumber reclaimed him with ease.
Jason woke to feel gooseflesh on his arms. The weather had cooled during the night, and the sheet he’d used for a cover was not enough to keep him warm.
He blinked open gummy eyes and looked at his watch. 8:13. He smelled bacon. His stomach rumbled. Time to get up.
Jason pulled on some of the clean clothes he’d found in one of the crewmen’s lockers—they were too big, but he could roll up the legs of the jeans, and if the sleeves of the shirt hung down past his elbows, it would just help to protect him from the sun.
He strapped on a pair of sandals that he’d found—the other footwear was too large—then made his way forward. He found Nick sitting at the dinner table, looking through a stack of manuals. Dirty dishes were piled up in front of him.
“Smells good,” Jason said.
Nick looked up from his manuals, his chin propped on one fist. Shaved, cleaned, in clean clothing, Nick looked a lot less like an escaped felon than he had the previous day. Maybe, Jason conceded, he really was an engineer.
“Bacon,” Nick said. “Eggs. English muffin. Want some?”
“Sure.”
“Want coffee and orange juice with that?”
“Juice, sure. I don’t drink coffee.”
Nick stood, stretched, yawned. “Young people don’t need coffee in the morning,” he said. Jason frowned down at the manuals, tried to read them upside-down. “What are you reading?” he said.
“I’m going to try to work the radio. Maybe I can get a message to my family.” He looked at Jason. “Your family, too, maybe.”
“My dad’s in China.”
“I can’t get China with that radio, I suppose, but I can get someone to try to pass a message to him. I know that the Red Cross does that sort of thing.”
“I don’t know where he is, exactly.” Jason tried to remember his father’s itinerary. Would he still be in Shanghai? Or was he in Guangzhong by now? He hadn’t paid his father’s schedule much attention since he found out he wasn’t going himself.
Nick looked at him. “Any other family here in the States?”
Jason thought for a moment. Aunt Lucy lived in Cabells Mound, and he had watched Cabells Mound burn. Even if she survived, her home probably had not. Also she was elderly and wouldn’t be able to look after him. There was another elderly aunt in upstate New York, but he hadn’t seen her in years.
“My dad’s the best bet,” he said.
“Well,” Nick shrugged, “I’ll try. How would you like your eggs?”
“Scrambled.”
Thoughts of his family left Jason downcast. When Nick went into the galley, Jason decided he didn’t want to hang around waiting and being depressed, so he stepped out onto the deck and was surprised to discover that Michelle S. was now high and dry on an island. The river had dropped to a lower stage since the middle of the night, and the mud reef on which the towboat had grounded was now above the level of the water, a muddy plain that stretched several hundred feet in all directions. The island had caught a lot of debris, and its upstream flank was walled with driftwood, logs, and with what looked like a green-roofed metal storage shed, deposited on its side with a door hanging open. The whole island was covered with dead fish. Flocks of crows and water birds were feasting on the corpses. Their croaks and calls were almost deafening.
The day was gray and cooler than yesterday, for which Jason was grateful. A wind made singing sounds as it gusted over the superstructure.
Jason made his way forward to the blunt bow. The tow stretched out before him, fifteen long barges laid out three abreast, all lashed together with steel wire held taut by big ratchets. The nearest barges were domed with pale green metal, and a complex network of pipes ran fore and aft along their length. There was a short mast on the middle barge, with a red flag and a light on top.
Jason jumped up on the prow, balanced for a precarious moment, and then jumped across to the nearest barge. Metal rang under his feet as he landed. The wind gusted toward him, bringing a sharp chemical smell.
He sneezed.
There were a pair of huge blue rubber gloves lying on the barge near his feet. Why blue? he wondered. He wandered forward along the green roof of the barge. More blue gloves were scattered here and there. A gust of wind ruffled his hair. He sneezed again.
He jumped easily to the next barge in line. He wondered if it would be possible to skate on the barges, roll along the smooth metal tops and hop over the piping. Do it fancy, land fakie and jump the next pipe going backward. It would be easy enough to leap from one barge to the next.
Pity that the pipes were mostly horizontal. Otherwise he could ride them as he’d ridden the tower rail in Cabells Mound.
The next gust of wind brought a strong chemical sting to his nostrils. What was in these barges?
He looked up, saw the short mast planted on the barge in front of him. The mast’s red flag, he saw, was metal, so it would always stay rigid whether there was wind or not. The flag had lettering on it. Jason jumped onto the barge—the chemical smell was stronger now—and approached the flag.
NO SMOKING
NO OPEN LIGHTS
NO VISITORS—EVER
A chill finger touched Jason’s neck. Now he knew why Michelle S. had been abandoned by its crew. The gusting wind backed around to the southeast, and the chemical smell blew strong at him. Fumes raked the back of Jason’s throat. He ran to the side of the barge and peered over the side, into the gap between this barge and the next.
A foul chemical lake lay beneath the barge.
One or more of the barges had broken open during the quake, or when the tow went aground, and had been leaking its cargo ever since. Until this morning the river had carried the stuff away, whatever it was, but now the river had dropped and the noxious mess was pooling on the surface of the tow’s little mud island.
Jason whirled, looked again at the red flag through eyes that stung in the chemical reek.
NO SMOKING
NO OPEN LIGHTS
The barges’ cargo had to be explosive. Otherwise the barge wouldn’t be flying the red danger flag. Otherwise the crew wouldn’t have abandoned ship.
NO VISITORS—EVER