Lack of nookie.
It had been too damned long since she’d had a boyfriend. Or even a hook-up, for that matter. Not that a quickie was something that normally rang Tabitha’s bell, but once or twice in her life she’d gone for the gusto to take the edge off a dry spell. Just not recently. Hence, her skewed perception of the temperature,andjust how compelling Spencer was seeming.
Should she attempt a few in-and-outs with Spencer? A handful of part-time tension-relievers? Clearly, nothing long-term could come of it. He was a Merchant Mariner, after all, so there could be no “dating” to be had. She lived in Florida, and he pretty much lived at sea.
Tabitha began a lovely daydream where, during Spencer’s “shore leave” periods, they would get together and work out any frustrations that had built up in the time they’d spent apart. It was a tantalizing thought, and one that had the heat in her craft seemingly rising even higher.
Staring absently out one of her three acrylic viewports as she chewed the last of her sandwich, Tabitha sighed heartily. Then blinked. What the…?
What the fuck was going on with the fish?
The aquatic wildlife, which previously had been milling about doing…typical fish things, had suddenly and oddly grown still and grouped together, in…protective mode? If Tabitha had to guess, she’d say the schools looked agitated. Perhaps a shark in the vicinity?
She moved to look out another of her portals when her blood ran cold.
The ground on which she had a visual a few feet below her, began to heave and buckle.
Almost before she could wrap her head around that, the sub began to vibrate, and her ears signaled that a huge pressure change was occurring.
Holy shit.An earthquake.
Tabitha had never experienced one before, but she’d read up and trained for just such an event.
Quickly ditching her sandwich wrappings and trying to ignore the jolting movements within the sub, Tabitha scooted her ass into the helmsman’s seat and was just about to get the hell out of Dodge—head for the surface—when a thunderous rumble sounded from somewhere above. The sub was suddenly and violently rocked, and a noise unlike any she’d ever heard while inside a sub, filled her ears. She was thrown from her chair onto the floor and as she struggled to look up, she watched in horror as the inner, titanium hull of her vessel began…
Oh my God. It was buckling. Being crushed from above.
The lights blinked out, plunging her into darkness.
Was this it? Was this how she died?
Thoughts of Sheila, then Spencer flashed through her brain. How would her sister fair without her? Would Spencer mourn the fact that they’d never gotten to know each other?
Just as she prepared for the rush of water that would end her life, the distressing movements stopped. All sound ceased. An eerie hush descended.
Tabitha swallowed, hard.
Okay. Assessment.
Her electric motors had clearly died, and as she struggled to her feet, she realized she wasn’t up to her knees in water.Yet.She patted herself down, looking for injuries, then marveled that she was still completely intact. And alive.
The emergency lights blinked on.
Thank God for batteries.
Tabitha looked around slowly, her keen eye taking everything in. She quickly concluded that even though she hadn’t bit the big one, she was good and truly fucked.
Whatever had come crashing down onto the sub—and she assumed it was part of the shitty pier—it had landed directly on her conning tower, stoving the top of the sub in and cutting off all possible egress from her top hatch.
Well, there was always…
Crap.
On further inspection, the turmoil in the water had also sent her sub butting up directly into one of the crumbling concrete stanchions, which meant her secondary escape trunk—the one that led out the front—was also blocked.
To top things off, despite the superior tensile strength of her hull, therewasa slow leak coming from above. It was sending—by her reckoning—just under a quarter inch of water per minute into the cabin.
After a quick mental calculation, that meant that Tabitha had approximately four hours before the entire craft became flooded,ifthe flow rate didn’t change.
