"What are we going to do?" Elaine asked, a slight tremor in her voice. Her old fear of the mysterious, unknown sea came back, the fear she thought had been conquered and left far behind. They were in the middle of nowhere, helpless and alone. The realization made her shiver, in spite of the heat, and a spasm of dizziness swept over her.
"Elaine, what is it?" Jay was by her side, supporting her. He moved some equipment and helped her sit down.
"A bit faint, that's all." She managed a weak smile. "Phew! Thought I was going to pass out. There's no air. It's so oppressive." Jay too, she noticed, was panting slightly, as if he couldn't quite catch his breath. What was happening to them? Her throat felt tight and small.
"It's probably the smell," Jay said. "Rotting vegetation." His bare body was running with sweat. He gazed around at the solid carpet stretching away on every side. "We daren't risk the engine, the propeller would be fouled in seconds. I guess there's nothing we can do except wait until daylight. Maybe it'll have drifted on by then."
"But if we're drifting with it . . ." Elaine said.
"Yeah. Well, nothing for it, honey, but to wait and see." He put his arm around her, but his skin felt clammy, like the physical manifestation of her own fear, and Elaine didn't feel comforted.
Jay found a grin to cheer her. "Don't worry, it'll be okay." But when he tried to laugh it came out a hoarse choking sound, like the gasp of a dying man.
2008
14
The man, woman, and boy strolled along the broad strip of dazzling white sand. They wore face masks and bright-orange compressed-air cylinders slung on their backs. The line of empty-eyed concrete towers on their left had once been busy tourist hotels, but they were now derelict and vandalized; had been for several years since Miami Beach was evacuated.
The "sea" moved hardly at all. From its scummy cracked surface bubbles of methane and sulfur belched into the mix of gases that had become the unbreathable atmosphere at the tip of southern Florida.
Chase stepped over a heap of decaying seaweed that straggled along the beach as far as the eye could see and held out his hand to steady Cheryl. The slim sixteen-year-old boy, almost as tall as his father, leaped over it and bounded up the shallow slope of sand, not even breathing hard. "You came here before, didn't you, when it was a holiday resort?" Dan asked.
"Yes, just once, the year before you were born. Your mother and I drove down from New York and stayed for three days." Chase grinned at his son through the curved faceplate. "Come to think of it, you were probably conceived here."
"What?" Dan gazed around in disgust, wrinkling his nose. "I hope not. Not
Chase studied the row of concrete hulks and pointed one out. "There, that one. Twelfth floor, Holiday Inn, Collins and Twenty-second Street."
"Are you putting me on?"
"That's where we stayed right enough--though I can't vouch for the conception theory." Chase winked at Cheryl as they walked arm in arm up the slope, their protective PVC coveralls crackling and rasping from the friction.
"Do you think anyone still lives here?" Dan asked curiously. His thick black hair sprouted in clumps through the masks nylon webbing.
"I don't see how they can, do you? This part of Florida and the states bordering the Gulf have been designated Official Devastated Areas. They say that pollution in the Gulf is even worse than on this coast."
"I wanted to visit New Orleans," Dan sighed. "I suppose there's no chance of that, is there?"
"Not if you were hoping to see the Old French Quarter," Cheryl said. "Most of what you've seen in movies and photographs isn't there anymore. Downtown New Orleans is one solid algae bloom feeding off industrial sludge, and the rest of Louisiana is buried in protozoic slime. You can forget Basin Street, Dan."
"Everything I want to see isn't there anymore," the boy complained. "I suppose the Grand Canyon has been filled up with junked cars and Yellowstone Park is a refugee camp!"
It was too uncomfortably near the truth to be taken as a joke, and neither Chase nor Cheryl cracked a smile.
From the highest point on the beach they paused and looked out to sea. There was no horizon. The turgid ocean merged into a milky mist through which the blurred disk of the sun shone blindingly, diffused in a blanket of white. Chase shaded his eyes and wondered which presented the greater menace: the foul ocean, the toxic atmosphere, or the raw sunlight. As the atmosphere's oxygen content thinned, so too did the ozone layer in the ionosphere, allowing cosmic rays and the more virulent forms of ultraviolet radiation through. Unchecked by the ozone, they could cause skin cancer and genetic damage.
