Burnt Sea: A Seabound Prequel (Seabound Chronicles Book 0) by Jordan Rivet

before
he could answer, a voice spoke from the top of the grand staircase.
    “Well, well.”
    The captain had arrived.
    Murmurs pattered around the balconies like rain on a roof. The captain
had silver hair and a craggy face, and his brass buttons shone. He looked every
inch the hero. Simon breathed a sigh of relief and stepped off the table.
    “Don’t let me interrupt,” the captain said. “You seem to have things
well in hand.”
    “Thank you, sir. I’m glad you’re here to take over now,” Simon said. He
noticed Judith, the blond jogger, standing behind the captain with a short,
dark-haired man in a crew uniform, barely more than a boy.
    “On the contrary,” the captain said. He had a slight accent. “My
sniveling hotelier seems to have run off, along with my pilot and half the
bridge crew. How would you like to manage passenger affairs for the time being?
I need to sail this ship, which is something I don’t ordinarily do, incidentally.”
    “I was only getting things started,” Simon said. It had been a long
time since anyone had actually been eager to give Simon more responsibility
over people. He just wanted to find his daughter, find answers about Nina and
Naomi.
    The questions started to hammer down again.
    “Captain, what happened?”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Can we turn around?”
    “Was it a terrorist attack?”
    The captain held up a hand. That was all it took to get people to be
quiet again. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of his nose. The tendrils
curled into nothing above the stairs.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, I am Captain Ignatius Martinelli .
We are currently sailing directly to the Hawaiian Islands. The disaster is
centered in the contiguous United States. We’re gathering information via radio,
but it’s sporadic at the moment. The cell networks are down, as you have
probably noticed. I have reason to believe San Diego is not the only city to
have been destroyed. You will be able to disembark in Hawaii in four days,
where we should learn more.”
    A firestorm of questions burst forth as Captain Martinelli paused to take another drag on his cigarette.
    “Destroyed?”
    “Four days?”
    “What about our families?”
    “Which other cities?”
    “Are you sure San Diego is destroyed?”
    “Four days!”
    “We’re supposed to be going to Mexico!”
    “Are we at war?”
    Captain Martinelli raised a hand. “Not war,”
he said quietly. “Yellowstone.”
    The word was a gong.
    “You mean the volcano?”
    Captain Martinelli inclined his head. For a
heartbeat, the plaza was deathly silent.
    “Ridiculous!” someone shouted.
    More voices joined in, panic escalating again. It was like someone had
let off a hundred fireworks.
    “That’s conspiracy theory stuff!”
    “Was it really the volcano?”
    “Why didn’t we have any warning?”
    “If we’re not at war, why can’t we go back to the city?”
    “What do you mean, destroyed ?! ”
    Captain Martinelli raised his hand again. It
took longer for the crowd to calm down this time. Simon’s numbness had begun to
recede, replaced by bone-rattling shakes. The captain wasn’t making him feel better.
    “That cloud you saw rolling over the city was volcanic ash,” Captain Martinelli said through another puff of smoke. “It contains
glass and sulfur, among other things. It is dangerous to the lungs and very
heavy when wet.”
    The captain spoke calmly, but his words set off another flurry of
conversations around the plaza.
    “Yellowstone is hundreds of miles from San Diego.”
    “He’s lost it.”
    “I want to go home!”
    Frank, the older man with the mustache, leaned over and spoke to Simon.
“I was in Washington when St. Helens blew. I’ve seen this kind of ash before.
He could be right.”
    Simon tried to recall everything he knew about the volcano deep beneath
Yellowstone National Park. It was one of the world’s only supervolcanoes .
If it truly had erupted, the results would be catastrophic. Apocalyptic