Free Revelations by Paul Anthony Jones

Rhiannon’s hand in one hand and Thor’s leash in the other and started after Jacob.



The Vengeance cut silently through the Pacific Ocean, heading south just twenty miles off the west coast of North America. As the submarine pushed ever closer to the equator, the temperature of the water surrounding it gradually climbed, echoing the growing excitement of the crew as they drew, mile by mile, nearer to their destination.
    Just over three thousand nautical miles separated the Stockton Islands off northern Alaska from Point Loma, California. At an average speed of twenty knots it was going to take the crew of the Vengeance just under a week to cruise down the West Coast.
    Life onboard the submarine was incongruous for Emily. The crew, safe in their familiar surroundings and with the familiarity of routine to take their minds off the almost uncountable variables that were at play around them, carried on as if all was normal.
    Rhiannon too had settled into a routine of reading from a collection of old paperback novels—Emily supposed every book was now old —and watching British TV shows on the sub’s entertainment system; typical teenage stuff and Emily did not begrudge her this brief period of normalcy. It was a chance for the kid to just float along on the current of life for a little while, buoyed by the friendly faces and the easy pleasures of life that come with being thirteen and possessing few skills other than being young.
    Hell! Even Thor seemed more than content to lounge the hours away in Emily’s room or occasionally wander through the corridors with one of the crew who wanted a little canine company. Thor was good therapy for everyone.
    So why was she finding it so difficult to relax? Emily knew she should take full advantage of this time of almost assured safety being onboard—or was it in board for a submarine?—the Vengeance afforded her and just chill out, even if it was only for a little while. But she just could not seem to sit still for more than a half hour before she found herself restlessly wandering the corridors, looking for something to do or for someone to talk with.
    But finding someone to converse with was almost impossible. Shorthanded, the crew were pulling double- and even triple-shifts. So Emily found herself alone for most of the time.
    So, for lack of anything else to hold her attention, she set herself to the task of conditioning herself. Abandoning her bike riding back in Stuyvesant, followed by the long drive to Alaska, and then spending those long weeks on the road and holed-up in the Stocktons had sapped the strength from her legs. The submarine had a well-equipped gym, it even had a stationary exercise bike she tried a couple of times, but it just wasn’t the same as her bike, wasn’t as thrilling as feeling the air rushing by her as she hurtled along the empty roads and lanes of the East Coast. She missed that, missed the freedom.
    So Emily took to jogging through the passages. Running laps back and forth between her room and the engine room until the sweat soaked her back and chest, and until the almost constant nagging sense of anxiety she felt in the pit of her stomach was drowned out by the thumping of her heart and the thrum of her blood through her veins.
    Each evening, the few off-duty crew not needed in the command center or ordered away from their positions by the captain congregated in the galley for dinner. The ship’s cooks were all dead so the job of preparing food fell to a different crew member each evening .
    Emily quickly found out that a lot of the submarine’s would-be culinary masters were as suited to food preparation as she was to a career as a professional singer, and she was about as tone deaf as you could get. To say the evening meals were a surprise (pleasant or otherwise) would be a grave underestimation of the word, but at least there was beer, albeit tightly rationed to a single bottle a day to ensure no drunkenness. To their credit, the sailors