Shadow Road: Book 1 of the Shadows Rising Trilogy

6. Leave It and Go

9th of Uirra, Continued

Hours went by. The time for an after-dinner mug of tea came and went, and still Father hadn't returned. I told myself not to worry. I repeated to myself that he had been late before, and that I should stay put. Going to look for him would only create other problems if he came back and found me gone. I got ready for bed, and curled up in my bunk, fully intending to read until he came back.

I must have dozed off.

The next thing I knew, I was lying in a heap on the floor, blinking in sleepy befuddlement as the Galvania'sforward momentum came to a lurching halt.

For several seconds everything was freakishly still.

Then the sound of opening and slamming doors nearly drowned out the voice of the Deck Steward as he came down the hallway, shouting to be heard as passengers began spilling out of their cabins. "Please do not panic! Collect your family and what belongings you can carry and proceed to the exit indicated on your evacuation diagram! The crew will assist you in boarding a safety vessel! Please! Do not panic!"

Shaken, I got to my feet.

The floor was sloping ominously to port, making it difficult to move without falling again. I managed to grab my valise, open it, and stuff my dress into it. What else? I glanced quickly around. Shoes. I would need shoes. I shoved my feet into my boots. Then I pulled on my cloak while trying to think of things my father might need.

Already, another deck steward was screaming at people to "Leave it and go! Leave it and go!"

I snatched my father's heavy oilskin coat off his bunk, put it on over my cloak, and slid his business satchel over my shoulder. Then I was out the door, joining the stream of humanity pouring down our hallway to the larger main corridor.

Nearly a thousand frightened men, women, and children were trying to leave the lower holds through that main corridor, and it quickly turned into a full-contact press. I was swept along, helpless as a twig in a river, propelled from behind by a big, swearing, sweating man clad in nothing but a pair of pants and braces. I couldn't dodge to my left without running into his sobbing wife, and there was an elderly woman to my right, hobbling along on arthritic feet.

People were yelling, calling for loved ones, accusing others of shoving or cutting in line while we all jostled down that dingy green hallway, packing tighter and tighter the closer we got to the entrance to the stairs.

I was still several yards from the stairwell when a loud concussion sounded somewhere in the forward hull, and the Galvania shuddered, the ironworks of her frame groaning and shrieking as if she were being torn apart. Then, suddenly, the floor shifted beneath us again, rising to port and dipping to starboard.

Everyone staggered to the right in our stretch of hallway. This time the ship's distress siren began wailing, its shrill, repetitive 'whoop' grating over already frayed nerves. The acrid stench of desperation and terror rose from a thousand frightened bodies, mingling with the overwhelming odor of sweat and unwashed human. People shouted louder, shoved harder. Like rats caught in a flooding sewer, the only thought on anyone's mind became the need to survive, to reach the outside of our floating tin can before the inside became a watery tomb.

One young man began climbing up the girding, scaling it like a monkey, which prompted nearly a dozen others to try the same thing.

Beside me, the fat man's wife started gibbering in Lodesian, reciting an incantation to her favorite saint.

I searched every face I could see, every broad-shouldered dark tweed jacket, every head of white hair, desperately trying to hold down a growing storm-surge of panic when my eyes didn't find my father. Anywhere.