Chapter 5 - The Submerged City
They drove the boat deep into the drowned labyrinth of Oakhaven. The water was level with the second-story windows of the surviving houses. Street signs peeked out from the dark ripples like tombstones. It was a ghost town, eerily silent beneath the steady patter of the rain.
Silas cut the engine to avoid drawing attention, using a single oar to row them through a flooded avenue. Elara huddled in the bow, clutching her locket, her eyes wide with trauma.
"You did good back there, kid," Silas rasped.
Elara looked at him and gasped. In the pale moonlight, she could see a dark, ugly stain spreading across the side of Silas’s shirt. "You're bleeding!"
Silas glanced down at his side and gritted his teeth. "Graze from a bullet. Just tore the meat. I'll live."
But as the hours passed, Silas’s rowing slowed. The adrenaline was wearing off, replaced by the creeping lethargy of blood loss and the freezing cold. The water around them was toxic, a soup of raw sewage and chemicals. If the wound got infected, he wouldn't last two days.
"We need shelter," Silas mumbled, his skin growing pale and clammy. "Can't stay on the water. Too exposed."
Up ahead, rising from the fog like a leviathan, was a massive commercial cargo barge. It had been swept miles inland by the storm surge and was now hopelessly wedged between two decimated office buildings. It was rusted, imposing, and completely abandoned.
May you like
"There," Elara pointed. "We can hide there."
Silas nodded weakly. By the time they reached the rusted hull of the barge, Silas couldn't stand. Elara had to loop his arm over her small shoulders, straining with all her might to help him climb the emergency ladder hanging from the deck. The ember of survival inside her was being forced to burn brighter, hotter, pushing back the despair.
