Kanto Maru

My empty stomach turned as the woman next door screamed for her baby’s life. The man roared and banged around the ship’s cabin, causing our shared wall to shake. My nails cut into my palms as the baby wailed over everything. It took all my restraint not to intervene.

On the bed, Katrina held our daughters tight against her breast, weeping. Her tears plastered their hair to her cheeks. We knew they’d come for us next.

A skin-prickling scream came through the walls and we heard the infant’s cries fade into the distance quickly. I didn’t see the splash, but my blood ran cold.

My eyes met Katrina’s, wide with horror, as the man stifled the woman’s cries for help. I trembled as we turned to our girls. Layla held her hands over her ears like Mommy asked, while Esther fussed in Katrina’s smothering grasp.

Would this nightmare at sea ever end? With a jolt, I stood up, kicking the stool back against the wall. Katrina jumped and shook her head in desperation as I shook with rage. I grabbed the closet rod I had removed and turned to the door. I stopped and took three steadying breaths with my eyes closed. My family needed me. I couldn’t risk removing the barricade.

As my tremors subsided, the metal door banged dully. Katrina gasped and held the children closer. Layla peeked from under Mommy’s arm, and Esther pushed against Katrina’s breast.

I glared at the door, half scared to death, half begging the brute to uncage me. He shouted several profane threats and slammed against the door. Failing to break in, the anarchist stomped off to assault the next cabin.

I collapsed onto the carpet, my adrenaline wearing off. Burning with fever from dehydration, I curled into a fetal position as my muscles seized.

“Shh. It’s alright. Everything will be okay.” Katrina consoled the girls as my vision dimmed. I couldn’t pass out now. We needed food and water.

“Did the bad man leave?” Layla asked from her mother’s lap.

“Yes, Sweetie. He’s gone now.” I mustered the strength to roll over and watched her pat Layla’s head.

“Is the baby okay?” She wasn’t looking at her sister.

Katrina looked away, tears welling in her blue eyes.

“Mommy?”

“God is watching over the baby.” She held a hand to her mouth to silence a sob. “He’s watching over all of us.”

Our eyes met again as I took in my family. Black circles shadowed her eyes, and her hair twisted in greasy knots around her ears and shoulders. In the last few weeks, her face had thinned to a skeleton with skin. Though Layla appeared healthy, excluding her bony shoulders and her own nest of tangled golden hair, she was starving with us.

But baby Esther suffered the most. Katrina couldn’t breastfeed, and once the baby passed out from screaming, she still slept fitfully on her empty stomach.

I clenched my teeth and forced myself to my knees. Things had to be worse back in California. If the roving mobs didn’t burn our home and murder us in the street, the government would have seized our property and relocated us to a shelter where there was no law. As we hid, dying of hunger and thirst in the middle of the Pacific, I convinced myself we’d have died much sooner back home.

My family was withering away. I sighed and Katrina eyed me warily as she rocked Esther. Layla peeked out the porthole on her knees, and I prayed she wouldn’t see the discarded baby floating in the waves below.

“I’m going for water.” My voice rasped. My dry throat burned like fire.

“Jack, please.” Despite her dehydration, Katrina never lost the dew from her eyes. “What if you don’t come back?”

“If I stay here, we’ll all die within a day. If I find water, we might live long enough for help to arrive.” I apologized with a smile, and in my soul I pleaded with God.

“We’ve been a drift for weeks. No one is coming to save us. Please.” Her lip trembled. “Stay with us in our last moments.”

I always struggled to refuse her, especially when I knew she could be right. But if there were a chance to save my family, I had to try.

“Barricade the door after me. I will come back.”

One look in my eyes and she knew no one could stop me. She nodded and turned to distract the girls as I dismantled the furniture barricade. Once clear, I peeked my head out and scanned the hallways. Looking over my shoulder one last time, I burned the scene into my mind. It wouldn’t be my last memory. It was my motivation. I blew Katrina a kiss and silently closed the door.

With metal pole in hand, I snuck down the hallway, careful to mute my steps. I passed cabins with muffled voices, but no sign of the terrorists. Ignoring the elevators, I came to a staircase. The gold handrail spiraled with the steps to the residential levels below and to the facilities above. I listened for anyone else on the stairs. Hearing nothing, I slunk up to the main deck.

After the anarchists sabotaged the switching room and seized control of the ship, they raided every cabin they could, confiscating all food and water. We hadn’t heard from the crew of the Kanto Maru in several days, but we assumed whoever survived the initial takeover had barricaded themselves in the control room and radioed for help.

When I reached the main deck, I had to grab the railing to keep the salty gust from knocking me over. In the distance, indigo clouds boiled and lightning flashed within a gray curtain of rain.

Worry and relief fought inside my chest. Within an hour, we could have fresh water from the safety of our port window. But without power, how would the ship fare in a cyclone?

Through God’s providence, we would have water, so now I could search for food. As I skirted along the glass walls, I kept to the shadows and watched for anyone else wandering around. Strangely, no one else dared to venture out of their cabins.

The fresh food on board had spoiled, but I hoped to find something packaged. Under the circumstances, I didn’t mind living off Pop-Tarts or granola bars until help arrived. So long as we didn’t starve.

The smell of rot hit me as I entered a hallway. Following the putrid stench, I came to the doors of the dining hall. Though tightly closed, the doors couldn’t hold in a month’s fermentation.

If my stomach hadn’t been empty before, it would have emptied after I opened the door. The air seeped like oil, and my eyes burned as I waded through the biohazard. With the doors opened briefly, anyone on deck would soon know I was here. Not even the cyclone could blow away the fetid fog.

With my shirt collar pinched over my nose, I ducked behind the smorgasbord of sewage and slipped into the kitchen from hell. Whatever food had been cooking at the time of the power outage remained spilled, or growing, where it had been.

With tears blurring my vision, I slipped on something foul. As I fell I lost my weapon and reflexively reached for the counter. A sauce pan flew through the kitchen, clattered around the metal appliances, and eventually rattled to a stop on the tile floor.

The fall on my back knocked the wind out of me, and I gasped as the vile green and yellow concoction in the pan rained over me. I spat and dry heaved until I thought my tongue and stomach would leave my mouth. If only my brain could disconnect itself from the poison I had ingested. When I finally got myself under control, I couldn’t even use my shirt to filter my breath anymore.

I stripped and slung the soiled shirt under a counter just before the kitchen door squealed. Holding my breath, I crawled under a preparation table and tucked in my legs.

Footsteps fell lightly on the tile and wove their way closer to the fallen pan. I couldn’t see them from where I hid, but the metal scraped on the tile as they picked it up. I searched for something to fight with as their steps circled around the kitchen toward where I had fallen. I had my choice of a pepper grinder, a mixing bowl, and a silicone whisk within reach.

Why couldn’t there be a knife? I was in a kitchen, for heaven’s sake. I assumed the anarchists had confiscated everything and quickly pledged myself to the way of peppercorn. With my spicy bludgeon in hand, I quietly slipped from under the table and stalked down the aisle in a crouch, opposite the footsteps.

A pair of skinny jeans appeared with the dripping saucepan swinging at their side. With the pantry to my back, I stayed low and snuck through the broken doors.

Someone had already scavenged what they could. Torn bags of dried rice, beans, and pasta littered the floor. Dismissed as ‘inedibles’ under current circumstances. Not a Pop-Tart in sight.

Joyful tears came to my eyes as I gathered a few undamaged bags in my arms. Even if we couldn’t cook, we could survive. As much as I wanted to take it all, I knew I couldn’t carry everything and deep down, I hoped someone else like me might find it.

With several bags under my arm and my pockets stuffed with loose food, I turned to leave. The fallen grain crunched under foot.

“Who’s there?” A woman called out.

My heart stopped. Thoughts flew through my head faster than I could latch onto them. Images of my family huddled in the cabin floated before my mind’s eye, solidifying my resolve and bolstering my will to fight my way to them.

I took a deep breath and prayed.

“I just needed some food. I don’t want any trouble.” Please understand. We just want to live.

“Is there more?” I could hear the tears in her voice. Relief washed over me, and with a sigh, I slowly rounded the corner.

“There’s plenty.” I locked eyes with a brunette as disheveled as me and gave a meek smile. Her eyes darted to the bags under my arm. She shuttered and dropped to her knees.

As she brought a hand to her face and whimpered, I stepped down a different aisle and checked the foul-smelling dining room. No one else seemed to have heard us. I glanced at her over my shoulder and escaped into the fresh air.

I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t seen any of the terrorists. Having left right after an attempted break in, I was sure they’d be crawling around on deck.

On my way down the stairs, a scream echoed from our floor.

I slid down the rail and sprinted along the hall. The floor tilted as a great swell rocked the ship, the cyclone’s first greeting.

Keeping my balance, I pounded the carpet and skidded to a stop in front of our door. Still locked. The screaming continued down the hall.

I beat the door frantically and called to Katrina, my fingers digging into the bag of rice. Katrina scramble to disassemble the barricade and when she finally opened the door, I brushed past her, tossed everything on the bed, and ripped the second rod from the closet.

She caught my wrist as I rushed back into the hallway. Turning me with a scowl, she searched my eyes, and when she found the fire blazing within, she stepped back as if burned. With a white knuckled grip on the pole, I stalked into the hallway.

I could feel her eyes on my back, wondering what was going on, so I called over my shoulder.

“This ends now.”