The instant Liam's eyes fell on this trove, he thought of nothing else.
Oats, rice, dried beans, pasta, lentils, dehydrated milk, peanut butter, honey, cans of vegetables, meat, fruit. And most importantly, bottled water. Gallons and gallons of it!
Where could he even begin? Most of the goods would have to be tossed out of hand, but even then, there was more food in this one little room than Liam had ever collected in the entire time he’d been on Purgatory. He could think of no greater version of heaven than locking the door and camping out here.
Liam went straight for the peanut butter, not even bothering to check how many years passed expiration it would be. A single thumb’s worth later, and he almost had an orgasm on the spot.
Liam closed his eyes and drifted back to fonder times. “They say that peanuts were originally used by the Incas of Peru to aid their loved ones in the spirit world, and it’s hard not to see why, Thirsty. Peanut butter is high in protein and monounsaturated fat, and is essential for anyone looking to get a large amount of energy in a short amount of time. In circumstances like ours, it might just be the difference between life and death.”
He reached for some Spam next. “What they don’t tell you about canned foods is that the expiration date isn’t half as important as the integrity of the can. Most toxicity comes from rusting of the metal and contamination of the contents inside, and not the degradation of the food itself.” He sank his teeth into the meat, still edible in spite of the time. “It’s the acidity that can be otherwise dangerous. Notice how I’m not going for those canned beets? As much as I would love beets right now, the sugars inside would have most likely broken down and become inedible.”
Next, he went for rice. “There’s a story of a man who discovered a barrel of rice on a wreck outside Beijing, dating back to the early 1800s. The collapsed deck had applied pressure that created a vacuum inside the barrel, and so even though it had been on the bottom of the ocean for hundreds of years, it was still perfectly safe to eat, with all its carbohydrates and fiber intact.” He shoved a handful in his mouth and shed a tear. “Thankfully, we share similar luck.”
Liam reached for more food but paused. His hand quivered as he fought the urge. Now more than ever, he needed to deflect the thought. “Refeeder Syndrome is a well-known condition that’s killed millions of people across the globe.” He stood up and began funneling cans that met his standards into his empty bag. “What happens is… During prolonged states of undernourishment, your body stops producing insulin, and instead burns fat and muscle. This creates an imbalance that affects metabolism drastically. Foods that are normally harmless begin to… Force your body to produce more insulin to overcompensate, at which point your electrolyte balance will be severely compromised. That can affect the… Heart, lung, kidney, even digestive system. Then you get more hungry in spite of eating more food, and the problem compounds itself until death. We can’t have that, Thirsty, now can we?”
He paused, his bag filled. “No, no we can’t.”
With his food and water supply secured, Liam delved deeper into the Xin Yue Jiang. Navigating the decks was difficult without understanding the language, but it wasn’t long before he started to locate more supplies. New clothing found in a cabin was a welcome change from the pilot suit he’d been forced to wear since the crash, even if the cotton from civilian clothes itched after so much time out of use, and the pants was a size too large. Some of the lithium batteries he scavenged still held a charge, letting Liam swap his hand-made torches for a flashlight. The real prize came from a locker in the engineering room. A waterproof GPS locator, built for just this kind of emergency.
There’d be no way to get a signal this far below deck, and that was even if the electronics could still function after so much time on a derelict ship. And yet, Liam dared to dream big. He swapped the batteries in his flashlight back out for the GPS, went to the nearest window for a better signal, and activated the power.
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His heart skipped a beat. The screen flickered but for a moment before stabilizing. A few clicks passed the Chinese characters in what he could only assume was the update message, and Liam was back in business.
The screen went blank, and the little loading circle began to spin in the middle. And it spun. And spun. And spun. And right when Liam hit the cusp of certainty that it would never stop spinning, the screen darkened and the lights turned blue. There in front of his eyes, he could see a full maritime map, complete with longitude and latitude.
“Hah!” Liam laughed. “Looks like there are people out there after all, eh Thirsty?” He didn’t need to know much about computers to know that a GPS wouldn’t just work on its own. Of course his fears were ill-placed. How foolish had he been?
Buoyed by the discovery, Liam switched off the GPS for later use and continued to search the Xin. This day had taken an extraordinary turn for the better…
But then Liam thought he spotted another living human for a beat. Through the dust and grime on a nearby window, he caught the visage of a grown man with a long beard and streaks of grey throughout his hair. It wasn’t until he drew close that he realized his “window” was no more than a mirror, and the specter he had spotted was his own reflection. Closer still, and he could make out the familiar ridge of his nose and slant of his brow, but it had been distorted. His cheeks had grown gaunt, and his forehead was squeezed with wrinkles. Even his eyes had heavy bags below, and the deep, chestnut hue seemed to have faded after so much strain.
It was funny how effectively a man could deceive himself. When spotting his reflection in a pool, Liam had perverted his appearance into the image he wanted, of the strong survivalist celebrity still in his youth. But faced against the truth, there was no way out of it. He was staring into an old, frail stranger.
Not for the first time today, Liam blinked back the tears before they could spread. He still had more exploring to do, and there was too little time before returning to his raft would become impossible.
Liam pieced more of the Xin Yue Jiang’s puzzle back together to distract himself. One of the interior cargo holds had been sealed from the outside, and though it had not been initially apparent what the reason had been, some biohazard tape and the words ‘sick inside’ scrawled hastily on one of the bulkhead doors gave Liam his answer. The dangers of infections worsened when traveling in close quarters, and there could be no better breeding ground for an outbreak than an overpopulated ship at sea. At least the crew had done well to solve their problem before evacuating. Even if he’d had the desire to brave a quarantined room for medicine, the various bulkheads had been locked, if not fused outright.
“Looks like we have our answer, Thirsty,” Liam decided. “Our Chinese friends must have left in a hurry after discovering the outbreak. I just hope the passengers made it out without suffering too much damage.” He turned to leave.
The door thumped behind.
Liam paused. For a moment, he stood in silence, his eyes locked on the bulkhead door. Had he just imagined the noise?
The door thumped.
It can’t be. Liam swallowed the bile in his throat and leaned in.
Thump.
There was no denying it. This wasn’t just the ominous sound of an old vessel fighting against currents. It was a deliberate, precise pound, just on the other side of this door. Something was in there.
Thump.
“Now, that’s strange,” Liam said. “The, ah– cargo hold is most definitely sealed and… By the looks of the rust on the locks, I’d say it’s been that way for as long as everywhere else. There’d be no way for any type of creature to work its way above or below, at least not anything large enough for this kind of noise. So that leaves us with an important question.” He paused, his voice going somber as his usual showmanship failed. “How can anything still be alive back there?”
Thump.
A gurgling hiss followed. The hair raised on the back of Liam’s neck. What concerned him wasn’t the sound, but the source. He had climbed the Andes, traversed the Sahara, fought Siberian winters, lived in the Alaskan wild. He had survived in the most extreme conditions on every continent, and had more direct confrontations with predators of all stripes than any but a handful of others could say.
And yet, he had never heard any sound quite like this.
Thump.
“I think it’s about time we leave, Thirsty. We’ve gotten more than enough from here. We’d best get out of this place.”
Liam threw his luggage over his shoulder and moved to leave.
He needed to go far, far away.