Burnt Sea: A Seabound Prequel (Seabound Chronicles Book 0) Read Online Free Page A

weight of Mount Everest. It had become noticeably darker. The
cloud ate up the sun, the buildings. They were close enough to the dock to hear
people screaming and choking. Some jumped into the harbor to swim.
    Boats sprang into motion around them, some sailing erratically, others
speeding north. Their ship was heading north too, groaning forward, picking up
speed. They sailed parallel to the shore, the ash cloud growing ever closer.
    Judith ran to the other side of the ship, across the narrow bow. She
realized why they weren’t heading straight out to sea. The harbor curved inward
along the coast of San Diego like a crooked finger. Coronado Island separated
them from the open sea on the left. They were sailing directly toward Point
Loma at the mouth of the harbor, but they had to stay close to the shore. Too close.
    Up ahead boats clogged the harbor mouth,
trying to escape. Ships crashed into each other as they tried to force through
the bottleneck. Metal squealed, and shouts and curses filled the air. A few
smaller vessels managed to break free and speed out to sea. But this cruise
ship was the biggest one around. They’d never make it through.
    The wall of cloud neared. Wind whipped across the deck, carrying
shouts, a sulfurous stench, and the first grains of ash.

 
    Simon

 
    Tears
blinded Simon’s eyes as he hit Redial on his phone again. For the tenth time he
heard a blank high note, neither a dial tone nor a busy signal, as if the cell
phone network was screaming under the weight of the cloud.
    Oh God, Nina. He had to get through.
    Simon gripped the railing as the ship crawled along the harbor. A
fishing trawler floundered behind them. It had hit the Catalina moments ago, causing that shuddering jolt, and now it was
sinking. The fisherman stood on the roof of his cabin, staring up at the shore.
    Half the sky was black now. People ran wildly across the harbor front.
As the cloud rolled further across the boardwalk, people fell, choking, sobbing, unable to breathe the ash-filled air. The city seemed
to shake under the weight of the cloud. Simon watched the ash crawl closer,
praying that Esther had found the very deepest corner of the ship.
    Naomi. Nina. If they were under that
mass . . . He punched the buttons on his phone again.
    The wind picked up. It wasn’t the natural landward breeze of a San
Diego morning. It was as if the ash rode on a diabolical wave, pushing the
clean air before it, gobbling up everything in its path. Simon tasted ash, felt
the stinging, glassy grains. He pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth.
Around him others did the same.
    The phone wailed a dirge into Simon’s ear.
    A group of women now surrounded the pregnant lady. She had calmed down
a bit, but she was deathly pale.
    “Get her inside quickly,” he said. “Try not to breathe until you’re
inside the ship. Shut all the doors and windows you can find.”
    “We’ve got her,” said the woman with the cross necklace, “but a few
people went to the front of the ship. You’d better get them before we close the
door.”
    “I’ll be right back,” Simon said.
    The women carefully lifted the pregnant lady to her feet and guided her
indoors. Bloody water gushed down her leg.
    Simon pulled his shirt back up to his nose and ran to the fore. A few
people stood at the rails, staring between the city and the harbor mouth. The
logjam was worse. They weren’t going to make it out of the harbor.

 
    Judith

 
    Judith
bent forward over the railing, as if she could force the ships to clear away by
staring hard enough at them. The ash scratched her throat. She should get inside,
but she couldn’t look away.
    A pair of yachts tangled with a huge sailboat in front of them. Metal
screeched and groaned as the boats tried to find some way to maneuver around
each other. Judith could just hear the curses of the people on board. The
cruise ship bore down on the tangle. They weren’t going to stop.
    At the last second the cruise ship swung to