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twenty-nine
feet of her--
so if you were to dive down there and go scavenging, you
'd find her wheelhouse at about one hundred and forty feet and the rest of her
below
that."
"Intact?" Tasha slid closer, enthralled with the conversation. "You mean like
it's
still new?"
"Well, not quite. The Ethel C has been down there for a long time, so she'
s in pretty bad shape. The hull is probably corroded. But as I said, she is
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still
upright and divers say that she has a very impressive haul. Over the years,
they
've brought up the navigation equipment and most of her portholes, along with
silverware,
mementos, picture frames, pocket watches, jewelry--
things like that. People pay big money for treasure like that."
"Dang," Malik breathed. "I'd love to dive down to a shipwreck. Imagine all the
stuff
down there."
Carol nodded her head in agreement. "It's romantic, in a way."
I tuned them out, thinking about the wreck of the Ethel C, sitting on the
ocean's
floor, dead--
and yet, in a way, still alive in the recovery operations conducted by the
divers,
and alive in the memories of men like the chief. It was sadly poignant. After
all,
death wasn
't the end anymore. Staying in your grave was strictly old school. And if
there was
such a thing as a soul, what proof did we have that it
291
lived on? What if our souls were trapped inside those rotting corpses--
able only to watch in horror and revulsion as our own bodies turned against
those
we loved? What kind of an afterlife was that? That wasn
'
t heaven. It was hell. Eternal life equaled zombie. Better to achieve
immortality
another way. Regardless of our religion, regardless of what we believed, the
cold,
simple truth was that none of us had a fucking clue what lay beyond this life.
The
only kind of eternal life we could be sure of was the kind enjoyed by this
shipwreck
--
living on in the memories of others. Like a myth. An archetype. The professor
had
been right. We were monomyths. All of us. Every survivor. If humanity was able
to
survive, if five hundred years from now Tasha and Malik
'
s descendents sat in a classroom and learned about ancient history, we would
take
the place of Hercules and Superman. Come hear the tale of Mitch, the warrior,
and
Runkle, the trickster, and Lamar, the hero.
Bullshit.
A fat seagull darted down to the ocean'
s surface and then flew back up into the air. Something red dangled from its
beak.
I noticed more birds doing the same. They were feeding off something floating
on
the tide. We were too far away for me to tell what it was. I figured it was
just
seaweed.
Yawning, the chief checked the GPS and nodded with satisfaction.
"We're getting closer," he said, clearing his swollen nose again. "We should
be able
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to see the jack-up in a little while. Not a moment to soon,
292
either, if you ask me. The sun's going to be brutal today, out here on this
open
water. We'd have to deal with sunburn and exposure on top of everything else."
Carol smiled. "Between a bad case of sunburn and an army of zombies, I'll take
the
sunburn."
He returned her smile and Carol blushed, and then quickly looked away. The
chief's
ears turned red. I stifled a grin. Maybe there was hope for the human race
yet.
"Don't be so sure," the chief told her. "We've been out here all night,
exposed to
the elements. We're all dehydrated. A few hours with the hot sun beating down
on
us and we'
re going to be in even worse shape. First we
'll blister. Then we'll--"
"That's okay," Carol said, holding up her hand. "You can spare me the gory
details.
I believe you."
"Sorry."
"You lost your hat. If we had some sunscreen, I'd rub some on your head so
that you
don't get burned."
The chief turned beet red.
I hid another grin. He had a lot to learn about talking to women if he was
going
to be the last player on earth. Taking another break from rowing, I leaned out
over
the side and trailed my fingers through the water. It was cool, and felt good
on
my skin. The sun climbed higher into the sky, reflecting off the ocean
's surface, shimmering like headlights on a busy city street.
And then something bit my finger.
Screaming, I pulled my hand out of the water.
293
The others looked at me in alarm. Tasha and Malik jumped up and ran to my side
of
the lifeboat, rocking it dangerously back and forth.
"What's wrong?" Malik asked. "What'd you see?"
I glanced back down in the water. A dead fish floated just a few inches below
the
surface. When it turned, I saw that its belly was missing. Its mouth gulped in
an
0 shape. There were no teeth, but that hadn
't stopped it from trying to swallow my finger. I held my hand up in front of
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