PRINKEPS AMERIKAE
A science fiction novel by
Jeff Provine
The Storm
Chapter I
The lightning flashed green on the western horizon. There was a storm rolling east with its clouds seeming to appear out of nowhere. Instead of thunderbolts, there was a continuous grumbling of booms.
All Jason Chapman could say as he stared out at the storm was, “That’s weird.”
Jason sat on the deck of his new yacht, a prep school graduation present from his father. It was amazing how little a six-figure yacht made up for two decades of being away on business trips. And no material possession, no matter how magnificent, would bring his mother back.
While his classmates were off to Yale as legacies or Harvard as nouveau riche professionals, Jason announced that he was going to take a year off to tour the world. When the maid told his father, the international call had been loud and short. Jason had been assured he was “throwing his life away”, but nothing could stop him now that his trust fund had matured.
Jason set out from New York with a crew of three, letting them do most of the work. He knew how to sail since his father made him join the yachting club when he was thirteen, but even crossing the Atlantic didn’t seem worth the trouble. He was out to find himself, and on the first leg of the journey, all he had found was that he took the easy way out whenever he could.
When they arrived in Dover, he sent the crew back to New York (first class, thanks to his father’s credit card) and set out alone. He felt that he was looking for something hidden, maybe even inside himself, and the only way to get it out was alone, stretched to his maximum. He has just rounded the north edge of the Iberian peninsula, and he hadn’t found anything yet.
The growling thunder gave out a sudden crash, and Jason jumped. He gripped the rail for a moment, then released it slowly. More green lightning made the white yacht turn cyan.
Jason let out a long, cleansing sigh and turned away from miserable thoughts. He looked out at the dark sea and its intermittent flashes of green light. The weather service had not mentioned any storms in the area. Maybe some eurotrash party ship was having a rave and went overboard with its strobe lights and fog machines.
A cold wind blew out from the storm and bit at Jason’s face. With a thipping sound, the sail overhead caught the new wind and pulled tight. The boat rocked and began to slide uneasily backward.
Jason squinted against the wet cold of the wind. Crossing his arms, he pulled his t-shirt tighter over his shoulders. He was glad he had changed into jeans after the sun had set.
“Very weird,” Jason muttered to himself. He tried to mutter more, but his throat closed up until he coughed it free.
After a few days of rarely speaking, it was as if his body were forgetting how. So far he had only occasionally radioed to the coast guards of various countries and done some freeverse poetry with the incessant beep of the global positioning system. He hadn’t had a real conversation since he left Dover.
His voice was gone, but his mind felt clearer without thousands of modern messages buzzing around him. Maybe it was the first step in trying to find himself. So far all he had found out was that sunscreen did not always last the three hours it promised on the label.
The constant rumble suddenly gave out a louder roar. Waves leapt up as if something had been dropped into the water. The party boat must have capsized to make that big of a splash, yet the green lights kept flashing. He wondered if it was some kind of storm.
The yacht rocked beneath Jason’s feet, and he threw out his hands to steady himself. Electricity seemed to spark in the air. Jason’s skin prickled as every hair on his body stood. This was something more than a party boat or sudden rainstorm.
Jason shook his head and looked out at the storm. It was truly billowing, like dust clouds racing out from an explosion. The thunder was becoming deafening now.
Pulling himself to his knees, Jason crawled along the deck, using ropes and handholds to keep from falling over. He fought his way back to the wheel and slid the last few feet across the deck. His hand caught the polished wood of the wheel just before he slid past.
Jason stood tall, pushing himself into the wind and clinging to the wheel for balance. The storm was closer now, as if it were accelerating. Rather than a constant distant rumble, the thunder sounded like a guttural growl with strange deep-throated shrieks.
The lightning seemed to flash faster and faster every second. Fiberglass did not conduct electricity very well, but sea water would once the waves capsized him. A vision of his own death by electrocution flooded Jason’s mind.
Jason made a nervous swallow and let the salty air sting his throat. Redoubling his grip on the wheel, he looked down at the instruments.
Everything was going mad. The GPS beeped, dissolved into static, then reappeared on the next beep, as if it were losing connection with the satellite. The compass was pointed directly west, locked into place and moving northward only when a wave tossed the boat. Next to it, the barometer was visibly rising.
Jason paused and squinted at the barometer. Storms made barometers drop, not skyrocket.
The boat leaped under his feet and interrupted his confusion. Setting his jaw, Jason pushed and pulled at the taut wheel, bringing the boat around to port.
The wind tugged at the sail, dragging the boat toward a better position facing away from the approaching storm. It was as if the little yacht wanted to make a run for it. Jason felt the same.
Rain began to fall, soaking him with drizzle. Jason blinked against the water in his eyes and slowly realized it wasn’t rain. It was a heavy, wet fog from cold and hot air mixing rapidly, like opening the freezer on a sultry day. On a scale a thousand times larger, the moisture poured onto anything cool enough to condense.
The air stank of ions. Jason’s skin continued to prickle, each hair thrusting itself out as far as it would go. The strange growling thunder continued to roar, growing louder with each second.
Turning away from
the storm, Jason shook his head and made an anxious mutter of, “Too weird.”
The mist was starting to slide in front of the boat now. Green
lightning sparked overhead in nearly continuous arcs. The deck was jumping at
random as if he were in river rapids rather than the open sea. Jason had to
brace his knees just to stay on his feet.
He looked up at the sail. It was pushed out as far as it would go, dragging the boat along with it. Still, a boat could never travel as fast as the wind pushing it, and he’d never outrun the storm like this. He reached for the starter button for the diesel engine.
Just as his finger approached the plastic, there was a blinding flash of green light and a loud crack from above Jason’s head. He instinctively ducked, throwing his hands over his head. The rocking of the deck threw him onto his back, which made his arms wag at random. He landed with a dull thud and waited for the sky to fall.
After a second of waiting, he decided whatever had been hit by lightning overhead wasn’t going to fall on him. He opened his eyes and looked up through his fingers.
The mast and sails were gone. Not broken off, but gone completely. There should have been wreckage. They should have fallen and maybe even crushed him. Instead, there was only the dark night air reeking of static electricity and salt water. The rigging had disappeared, vaporized. The lower part of the mast went up a few feet then stopped at a clean break, as if it had been sliced with a knife.
Jason scrambled to his feet and threw himself toward the hatch to the cabin. The deck surged under his feet, tossing him into the air and nearly over the slippery metal hatch. He caught it with his hands, using brute force to grip the slipperiness of the wet painted metal. With a grunt, he threw himself inside and tumbled down the ladder.
Stabs of pain went up his arms and legs, and Jason did his best to ignore them. He’d deal with the bruises later. Right now he focused on climbing back up the ladder enough to grip the hatch, slam it closed, and pull the lock. After fumbling a few times, Jason finally heard the satisfactory thunk of the lock slipping into place. The flashes of green lightning became darkness.
Jason let himself fall to the floor of the cabin and pant a few breaths. The boat swirled around him like something at a discredited theme park. It jumped from wave to wave, tossing Jason and his belongings into the air. He swallowed against nausea and forced himself to sit up.
All he could hear was the muffled droning of the continuous thunder. He had left the shades over the portholes even after snoozing all morning, and the cabin was black. He had done a lot of sleeping recently, living out the sailor’s cycle of sleeping, running the sails, trying to catch a few fish, and eating out of cans. It had been mind-numbingly boring. Suddenly he felt desperate to get back to those tedious days. The brightest flashes of lightning pierced the shades and bathed the cabin in green.
Jason rocked himself back and forth, gradually getting into rhythm with the random waves. He rocked, moving more back than forward. After a few seconds, his thoughts caught up with his actions, and he stopped rocking. He tried to stay motionless until he felt himself move forward.
Something was sucking the water backward, and the boat along with it. Jason felt a pit of fear open up inside his stomach.
Jason shook his head to chase the terror from it. Options began to swirl through his thoughts. He could fight his way back onto the deck and get the motor going to try to outrun it. Or he could try to jam the rudder and send the boat in circles to stall going backward. Or he could stay put and see just what was suddenly draining the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal.
He squinted his eyes. Jason was not a quitter, even in the middle of a storm of green lightning. Throwing his hands out, he found the ladder in the darkness and began to pull himself up.
It was then that the floor fell out from underneath him. Everything went into freefall. All the sounds of the storm went silent. Jason’s stomach jumped up into his throat, and all he could do to cling to the ladder with both his arms and legs.
More than afraid, Jason felt sorrowful. He was sorry he had made as little effort as his father had in making meaningful relationships. He was sorry he ever went on this supposedly celebratory adventure. He was sorry that he had made excuses not to go to shore in Brittany and north Spain. There would never be a chance to see them again.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Jason asked himself.
Most of all, he was sorry that he did not ever do anything with his life. He had so much potential, so much energy, so much intelligence, but he had never done anything more than entertain himself. Not that such a decision would have mattered now. He would be dead after a mere twenty-four years.
Just as Jason felt the end had come and let his grip on the ladder weaken, the freefall ended. It had probably been only a few seconds, but agony had turned it into hours. Time seemed to race to catch up, and Jason was thrown to the deck in fast motion. He heard a loud thump and saw flashes of stars, then he saw nothing at all.