Chapter Twenty Two: Surface
As the group ascended towards the surface, a profound feeling of disorientation and isolation came upon each of them. Even though they all held tightly to one another as they kicked upwards, the total darkness of the fathomless sea that surrounded them brought such a sense of being alone and being…nowhere. It was quite terrifying to each of them. They knew they still faced the sinking ship that stretched out before them because occasionally they would see flashes of light coming from an explosion or a light shorting out. They could hear the rumbling and groaning coming from the vessel as well as the sound of the bubbles escaping from their regulators.
Cody, who had estimated the distance of their ascent to be only 20 or 30 feet, began to wonder if he'd been wrong about it. There was no way to check his air supply in the darkness and he was left to just hope they all had enough to finish the ascent.
What if we're swimming more backwards than upwards? He thought, once again fighting a wave of panic.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the group finally broke the surface. The darkness above them erupted into a sky filled with brilliantly shining stars. They all stared up at it in awe, thinking it was the most beautiful sight that any of them had ever seen.
As his gaze moved from the stars back to the overturned ship before him, Cody realized that his last thought before they surfaced had been correct. They had been simultaneously swimming up and away from the ship which had added more distance to their swim. The Poseidon now lay roughly a hundred yards from them. Only about a quarter of its bow remained above the surface and it was pointed upwards at about 20 degrees. He reached up and snatched the regulator from his mouth.
"Everyone okay!" he asked.
Replies of affirmation came from each of the others and then they all let loose with shouts of joy that they had made it. They all hugged each other as best they could in the water and with scuba gear on. Then they turned their gaze back to the ship and treaded water side by side.
"I lost the raft" Zack said looking down with an ashamed look on his face.
"That's okay Zack, when the lights went off it's a wonder we all didn't lose each other" Cody replied.
"Let's start looking around for something else to float on" Max said.
They all started scanning the surface of the water for anything they might be able to use to keep themselves above water. The temperature of the water was not freezing, but it was cold enough to where they would get hypothermia if they had to stay in it for very long. There were plenty of broken pieces of the ship littering the water but none looked big enough to get up on top of. Suddenly Russell thought he spotted something in the distance.
"Over there! Look! Over by the very front of the ship, it's red…it might be a raft!" Russell said.
It took a few moments but soon the others spotted it. It looked to be about 500 to 600 feet away from them.
"I think you might be right! Good eyes Russell!" Zack said.
"Let's start for it!" Cody said.
They shrugged out of their scuba gear and let them sink away into the depths. Before Cody released his he checked his gauge reading in the starlight. It read two minutes of air left. He sighed yet another thank you to God and released it. Then he turned with the others and began swimming.
When they were about a quarter of the way to the raft, suddenly, for no apparent reason, the three bow thrusters at the very front of the overturned bow powered up. The propellers in each tube started turning. This caused the group to stop swimming and tread water in place again.
"What the heck?" Zack asked as he turned to look at Cody.
Cody just shrugged his shoulders, having no idea why the three thrusters had suddenly come to life.
They resumed their swimming towards the raft.
Several more minutes of swimming passed when they started hearing a whistling sound coming from the forward most of the three thrusters. Shortly after that the engine inside the tube exploded with a tremendous blast. Fire shot out of the tube in a huge roiling ball. Instinctively, all four of them put their hands up in front of their faces despite being a relatively safe distance from the ship. The fire vanished as quickly as it had appeared and they noticed the thruster engine and propeller had collapsed to the side inside the tube. The other two thrusters ran on as if nothing had happened.
"Whoa!" they all said in unison.
"Again, what the heck!" Zack said, once again looking to Cody.
And again, Cody shrugged.
"Hey guys! Look! People!" Max exclaimed.
Sure enough, from where they swam a little more than halfway to the raft from where they had started, they saw three people walk out to the edge of the thruster tube that the fire had just exploded from and jump into the water.
"Thank God, there are other survivors!" Cody said.
Three more people appeared at the edge of the tube and jumped. These new people also began swimming towards the raft.
"Well, let's go guys, let's not be strangers!" Zack said with a big smile on his face.
They headed off towards the raft again.
As they swam, they saw the other people begin to pull themselves out of the water and into the raft. Suddenly Cody saw movement off to the right…big movement.
"Oh no" he said, not believing what his eyes were seeing.
A terrified scream was heard from the distant raft as the members of both groups took in the sight of the Poseidon starting to roll herself over again. The ship loomed above them and seemed like it was going to come right down on top of them, complete with the still turning propeller blades of the remaining bow thrusters.
"Swim! Swim away from it!" Zack shrieked to the others.
Instantly, the four of them turned from the ship and swam for their lives.
… . . . … … . . . … … . . . …
In the Star Tropics lounge, Bob and London were treading water near where the wrap around windows and the floor met. The upward tilt of the bow had significantly reduced the rate at which the lounge was flooding but unfortunately it hadn't stopped it from flooding altogether. The tiny little air pocket the pair now found themselves in was slowly losing its battle against the water. What little illumination the room below them had left did not lend itself to their little space of air so the two were basically in the dark.
Astonishingly, the wrap around windows at the front of the room, even with a crack in them from port to starboard, still held. Bob reasoned that, with the room being mostly flooded now, the window no longer had to fight against the outside pressure. Things were more equalized now.
That might make it harder to break the glass… he thought despairingly.
"Okay, this is it, while we still have this little sliver of air here I'm going down to try and break the glass so we can swim out. Hopefully the bow has lifted close enough to the surface where we can make it in one breath" Bob said.
"Okay" London replied, the fear evident in her voice.
Bob took a deep breath, but right before he dove down the two of them noticed the floor above their heads start to move. It was moving to their left.
"What's happening!" London exclaimed.
"I don't know, just stay with the air pocket, keep moving back with it!" Bob said.
The two of them inched along the floor, doing their best to stay in their air pocket as the ship seemed to be rolling again around them.
"It's rolling back over!" Bob said.
When the port side wall was directly over their heads, at the spot where the wrap around window met the wall, Bob noticed a hand rail enter into their air pocket.
"Grab that hand rail and hang on, we can't keep following the air pocket, the ship's rolling too fast!" Bob said.
No sooner had they grabbed the railing when the window right next to their heads shattered. At hearing the noise of it breaking Bob and London instinctively turned their heads away. At that same instant all the water in the room seemed to fall away from beneath them. The weight of the water against the starboard side of the room had caused the windows to shatter from end to end and the water poured out into the sea below. Bob and London were temporarily left dangling from the hand rail as gravity now acted upon their bodies. The ship continued to roll and soon it was right side up again.
Bob stood to his feet and helped London up. They barely had time to register that they could now see the stars through the empty ship-wide window frame before the sound of rushing water behind them filled their ears. Bob could feel the ship was now sinking very quickly.
"Hurry London, step out through the frame onto the deck!" he said.
He helped her through the frame and she dropped down several feet to the deck below. Bob climbed through and landed next to her. No sooner had they got there then they realized just how quickly the ship was sinking. They had mere seconds to get over the railing before where they were standing would go under.
"We gotta jump. When we do swim away from the ship in case there's any suction" Bob instructed. London nodded back.
They climbed up on the edge of the railing and jumped just as the ocean rushed up along the side of the ship to meet them.
… . . . … … . . . … … . . . …
Zack, Cody, Max, and Russell couldn't believe what was happening. Somehow the Poseidon had missed crushing them to death when it had decided to roll back over. The waves the roll had generated had pushed them a good distance away from the ship. Now the group, along with the other group in the raft who were still some distance away, watched as the now upright shipwreck began to quickly sink stern first into the sea. All her lights were now off and great moaning sounds issued from her in her final death throes. The four watched the ship's last seconds with all kinds of emotions surging through them. For Zack, Cody, and Max, they were watching the ship that contained the bodies of their family and friends vanish into the deep before their very eyes. For all of them they were watching their home for the last several months disappear forever.
A sudden sob erupted from Cody.
"Zack! Mom's in there!" he cried.
Zack instantly closed the few feet between him and Cody and threw his arms around him as both treaded water.
"No Codes, she's not…she's not in there, it's just her body. Mom's with Barbara, Mark, Bob, London, and chef Paulo and they are all somewhere safe…together" Zack said, choking up himself.
Max came over and clung to the twins, crying also. Russell treaded water a respectful distance away before Max reached out and pulled him into the clump as well.
As they watched the rest of the forward superstructure began to settle into the sea, Zack thought he saw something. He wasn't sure, but right at the last second, when the top most level below the bridge was about to go under, he thought he saw two more people jump into the water. He kept this to himself though, figuring it was probably just some debris. Finally, with one last groan followed by a rushing water sound, the last of the Poseidon's bow disappeared under the waves.
All seemed very quiet for a few moments, and then someone in the raft shouted something and a red flare shot into the sky. Zack, Cody, Max, and Russell began swimming towards the raft again. As they got close they started to hear a noise and then to their amazement two helicopters came roaring in from the night. The people in the raft started yelling and waving their arms to get the attention of the helicopters. Finally, after a few seconds of searching, the helicopter's floodlights landed on the raft. The pilots knew they were there. An announcement from one of the helicopters sounded with a thick Chinese accent.
"Stay in the raft, we have radioed your exact position to ships closing in on this location. We will drop an additional raft with a GPS locator beacon, food, and medical supplies in it. Inflate it and the ships will find you. We have to return to our cutter as we are running low on fuel"
With that the extra raft was dropped and the helicopters flew off. One of the men jumped out of the raft and swam over to the one that had just been dropped. He pulled a chord and it self-inflated. It appeared to be just as big as the one that the others were in. The man climbed in and activated the GPS. Then it was quiet again.
"Let's head for that new raft guys, there will be more room in it" Zack said.
The others agreed and they changed course slightly.
About that time one of the people in the raft, a kid, noticed their approach.
"Hey mom, look, there are other people in the water!" the kid said.
Zack thought the kid's voice sounded awfully familiar.
"Hey there! Mind if me and my brother and friends come aboard?" Zack said.
The man by himself in the second raft chuckled, obviously very happy that other people had made it.
"Absolutely! How many of you made it?" he asked.
"Just four of us" Zack replied.
"Better make that six" a voice behind them in the distance said.
Zack, Cody, Max, and Russell all turned around in the water and the people in the rafts joined them in watching two more people swim up.
"It's Bob and London!" Cody exclaimed.
Tears fell from the eyes of all who knew each other, and even a few from those who didn't, as Zack, Cody, Max, Bob, and London swam to and embraced each other.
"How did you…we thought you were…oh thank God you're both okay!" Cody said.
"Same to you guys! How did you all get out!" Bob replied.
"We'll swap you story for story later, right now how about we all get in the raft" Max said.
"Sounds like a plan to me, I've dealt with enough water to last me a lifetime!" London said.
When they all got in the second raft the man who had inflated it jumped into the water again and tied the two rafts together before hopping back into the first one. Everyone was introduced and it was then that the twins recognized the kid. It was Connor whom they had met briefly in the main ballroom before the wave hit and whom Zack had seen rescued from the underside of the piano after the ship had turned over. He and his mother Maggie had made it. The man who had inflated the second raft was named Dillon and the other three people with them were a young engaged couple named Christian and Jennifer and an older gentleman who called himself Nelson.
Everyone looked pretty banged up so Cody got out the first aid kit and went between the two rafts seeing what he could to patch up members of both parties. They shared some of the food supplied in the second raft and tried to keep warm. They swapped stories of their trips through the ship, and shared with each other about those they had lost along the way. Bob and London learned about Carey, Barbara, and Chef Paulo's fate, and the twins, Max, and Russell learned about Mark's. Dillon and the others in his group also told about the people who had been with them that didn't make it. They grieved those that were lost, including hundreds of other passengers and SAS students, but also gave thanks to God for helping them survive. Cody even shared the story about the figure of Christ in the water when his leg was pinned.
And so they floated there atop the burial site of so many, getting to know one another and reveling in the second chance that they had all been given as the stars above them began to wink out with the coming of the dawn.