The Monster Missions Read online

  Dedication

  For my four blessings.

  You guys are the greatest mission of my life.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Laura Martin

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  The morning before I left the Atlas forever started the same as every other. I always woke up early, but thanks to Wallace’s snoring, this morning was earlier than most. I winced and peered over the edge of my bunk at him. He lay in the middle of the narrow bunk, his arms splayed wide. For a skinny sixteen-year-old, he had the snore of a man twice his age and size. I debated shoving him off his bunk to teach him a lesson but almost immediately discarded the idea. It was the mean part of my brain that wanted to do that. The nice part of my brain, which would probably wake up any moment now, knew that he was exhausted from working with Dad in the engine room the day before. It wasn’t fair to rob him of sleep, even if he’d robbed me of mine—besides, a quick glance at my watch showed that I was supposed to be up in ten minutes anyway. I lay in bed a second longer, wondering why beds were always the most comfortable right when you had to get out of them, before slipping silently from my bunk and pulling on a threadbare sweatshirt to ward off the ever-present chill of our tiny cabin. I was just easing my way toward the door when my dad sat up.

  “Heading out already?” he asked, barely stifling a yawn as he slipped out of bed and past the snoring Wallace to see me off.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” I whispered, “but somebody sounds like he swallowed part of the ship’s engine.” I jerked my head toward Wallace, eyebrow raised. Dad glanced over at my sleeping brother and stifled a yawn.

  “If you’re tired enough, you can sleep through just about anything,” he said. “Maybe Gizmo isn’t working you guys hard enough.” He finished this statement off with a wink, and I grimaced.

  “That’ll be the day,” I said. “He has us starting early today, since we’re only going to be able to scavenge for a couple of hours.”

  Wallace grunted in his sleep and rolled over. Dad held up a finger to his lips.

  Sorry, I mouthed silently as I slipped the straps of my backpack over my shoulders.

  Dad nodded, wiping the sleep from his eyes with the palms of his hands. He still had a smudge of grease above his right eyebrow, evidence of his hard work in the guts of our ship. It wasn’t easy to keep a ship like ours in good working condition, but Dad and Wallace and their crew of fellow mechanics and engineers managed it year after year. They had to—our survival depended on it.

  “Be careful down there,” he said. “No unnecessary risks.”

  I nodded, knowing full well that unnecessary risks were some of the only ways you found anything useful these days. All the easy stuff had been picked over fifty years ago when everything first went under. Now we were lucky to find scraps. Today might be different, though, I reminded myself. This particular site hadn’t been scavenged yet—at least that’s what our boss, Gizmo, had told us.

  “No unnecessary risks,” I repeated with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. My dad smiled back, and I pretended not to notice the worried crease in his forehead as he gave my shoulders a quick one-armed squeeze. I slipped out the door. I knew my choice of occupation on the Atlas was a hard one for him to swallow, especially since we’d lost my mom a few years ago, but we both knew full well that there was no such thing as an easy job these days.

  If I’d thought our cabin was cold, the narrow hallway was downright frigid, and I hunched my shoulders inside my sweatshirt as I tried not to think about what the water temp must be today. I’d find out soon enough. Around me the metal of the ship creaked and groaned familiarly as I made my way toward the stairs at the front of the ship. The walls on either side of me showed the jagged marks of years of repairs and reconfigurations, and I ran my finger over one of the many thick welts of metal as I walked. Exactly like scars, I thought. Scars that showed battle after battle that the Atlas had fought and won, scars that showed the evidence of its transformations over the years from luxury to lean efficiency. I liked scars. Scars proved you’d survived.

  I finally reached the stairs and started making my way up, flight by flight, toward the deck. The chilly damp of the lower level seemed to stay with me, though, and I hurried my pace, hoping that the exercise would warm me up a bit. My legs were burning by the time I finally reached the top deck and walked out into the early morning air of the Mediterranean. I’d asked my dad once why we still labeled sections of the ocean by their original names. It didn’t seem to make much sense now that the world was covered by one massive body of water, but he’d told me not to ask such silly questions. That was where he and I disagreed, though: I didn’t think any questions were silly, not when it came to the ocean. I took a deep breath, letting the salty freshness scrub away the musty staleness of the inside of the ship, and headed toward the stern.

  The ship was practically deserted this early, but I still kept my head down as I made my way across the worn deck, passing the large chicken coop where the ship’s fleet of hens snoozed safely in their nests. They were some of the only domestic animals that had survived the Tide Rising. Animals like cows and sheep required grass to survive, and we didn’t have any of that anymore. However, it turned out that chickens could thrive on fish guts and the occasional cockroach, and because of that, we had eggs and the rare piece of chicken in our soup. It was a luxury we didn’t take for granted. During the day the hens would peck around, roosting on top of the large storage crates that peppered the deck.

  Although, unless you really looked, the crates themselves were almost unrecognizable since every square inch of available surface had a gardening box attached to it. It wasn’t much, not like on a grower ship, but the herbs and vegetables we were able to cultivate on deck did help supplement our diet of fish, fish, and more fish. The layout was a far cry from the original deck design, but it worked.

  Once upon a time the Atlas had been a small cruise ship used for vacations, and if you looked closely, you could still see where there used to be frivolous luxuries like a swimming pool and a running track. The very idea of wasting so much space was laughable now, but I liked to imagine what life was like before, when people sailed on the ocean for fun and not because it was the only way to survive.

  We were on the move after having been anchored for two days, and above me on the huge masts the sails were filled with a breeze that moved the massive ship. They seemed disproportionate and out of step with the rest of the ship, for good reason: they had been an afterthought. When the tide had started rising, cruise ships were uniquely suited to take on large groups of people, but they weren’t designed to run without fossil fuels—fuels that would be hard if not impossible to come by once the water level rose. So the ship’s architects had scrambled to put together a system of sails and rigging that would allow the Atlas to maneuver itself using the wind instead of the engines, which would eventually be scrapped and melted down.

  A lot of things had needed to be altered or reverted to earlier, less-wasteful forms of technology in order to navigate this new, water-
filled world. It had been a bit painful for the human race to take a giant step backward. They’d had to give up so many of the resources, technologies, and conveniences that they’d fought for and rediscover methods of survival carved out by their ancestors, but when your choices are life and death, the decision becomes a lot easier.

  I made it to the rail of the ship and glanced around for Garth. He was nowhere to be seen, so I leaned against the rail and watched the horizon, where the faintest line of pink and orange was just beginning to glow. I loved sunrise. I loved sunset, too, but I was usually working or eating when that happened. Sunrise, though, that was mine. She and I had a thing—a standing appointment, you could say—and I mentally forgave Wallace for waking me up early. The few extra minutes of quiet, especially on board a ship that was usually anything but, were a treat. The blaze on the horizon brightened into a warm burnt orange that reminded me of the heart of a fire. I ran my hand over the familiar chips and dents of the railing and sighed. Sometimes it felt like I’d memorized every nook and cranny of this ship. Who knew, by the end of my lifetime I probably would have.

  Despite the fact that I had always been fully aware that I would probably live my entire life aboard the ship I’d been born on, the idea still chafed me a bit. It wasn’t that I disliked life aboard the Atlas—you couldn’t exactly dislike the only existence you’d ever known—but that I hadn’t chosen it. It had been chosen for me. Just like what I would eat for breakfast was chosen by the ship’s cook, how much survival credit I’d receive for the salvage I found was chosen by my boss, Gizmo, and how much electricity our cabin would receive was chosen by the Atlas’s captain. That was probably the reason I’d decided to go rogue and become a scavenger: it was literally one of the only ways to get off the ship.

  I shook my head and forced myself to focus on the day ahead. A life of choice was a luxury we couldn’t afford after the Tide Rising, and that was all there was to it.

  “Sorry,” Garth said as he skidded to a stop beside the rail twenty minutes later. It wasn’t unusual for Garth to be late, but this morning he was an exceptional mess. Half-dressed, with his shirt on backward and only one shoe on, the other held in his hand, he looked like he’d rolled directly out of bed and taken off at a dead sprint. Which he probably had. I raised an eyebrow at him and glanced up and down, not doing a thing to hide my judgment.

  “Overslept,” he said as he hopped up and down to put on his other shoe.

  “Well, if we don’t hurry, we’re going to have to dive hungry.”

  “I’m not doing that again,” Garth said, already turning to head toward the Atlas’s mess hall. “The last time that happened, Gizmo the grump decided to keep us down there for an extra hour on a hunch.”

  I snorted. “I forgot about that. Didn’t you threaten to eat your own wet suit?”

  “Let’s just say that if Gizmo asks what happened to the chunk by my wrist, I’m blaming it on mice,” Garth said dryly, and I rolled my eyes.

  Sometimes I wondered if I’d have had the guts to sign up to be a scavenger if Garth hadn’t signed up with me. Everyone started to work on the Atlas at age eleven. It used to be nine, right after the Tide Rising, so eleven really did feel like a luxury. As far as jobs went, scavenging wasn’t one of the most desirable, that was for sure. You weren’t even supposed to work as a scavenger until you were fifteen. It was too dangerous to send someone younger than that into water that seemed to get more and more hostile with each passing year. The pressure of diving that deep could kill you if you weren’t careful, and the water temperatures could get so cold you risked hypothermia even with a wet suit.

  Despite all that, it was the only job on the Atlas that seemed tolerable to me. Which, considering I was routinely shoved headfirst down small underwater holes, was really saying something. Scavenging was one of the jobs no one really wanted, which is why bending the age requirement was something Gizmo hadn’t even blinked at.

  I could smell breakfast long before I saw it. You’d think that, having grown up on a diet primarily made up of fish, seaweed, and more fish, I would have become immune to the overpowering smell, but I hadn’t. My stomach rumbled regardless as I made my way up to the counter to collect my halibut wrapped in its seaweed wrapper. Garth grabbed a second one when the worker wasn’t looking and tucked it into his pocket. That move should have probably grossed me out, but you couldn’t be friends with Garth and let that kind of stuff bother you. He’d definitely stored worse things in that pocket. I gulped my breakfast down quickly, barely tasting what everyone on board called a briny burrito as I made my way after Garth down the stairs and toward the back of the ship to the scavengers’ dive room. It was time to go to work.

  The dive room was already full of the rest of the Atlas’s scavenging crew when we came in. Once, the clatter of gear and the overpowering smell of mildew would have overwhelmed me, but not anymore. This tiny room, with its mismatched jumble of wet suits and half-broken dive equipment, was my smelly second home. I mumbled what was supposed to be a hello around my last mouthful of burrito and went straight to my locker.

  “You two better hustle if you don’t want Gizmo on our case,” said Ralph, a scavenger a few years older than me, as he finished zipping up his thick black wet suit. “We’ll only have about two hours to scavenge this new town before we have to move on.”

  “Do we know the name of the town?” I asked, yanking my own wet suit out of my locker.

  Garth groaned and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “You always ask that, and we never know. Unless it’s something big like Chicago or London or something, no one ever cares about the name of the town.”

  “I care,” I said.

  “You’re weird,” Garth said.

  “There’s that, too,” I said, pausing just long enough in my gear check to grin at him. He chose that moment to burp loudly. When I shot him a disgusted look, he threw his hands up defensively.

  “What?” he said, his green eyes crinkling up at the corners as he grinned at me. “If I did that in my mask, I’d be smelling it for the next two hours.”

  “So instead you made us smell it,” Ralph muttered as he shouldered past us and toward the back of the dive room, where I could just make out Gizmo with his customary clipboard and scowl.

  “What’s that?” Garth said, peering at the small metal box I’d just fished out of my bag.

  “I’d have shown you this morning if you hadn’t decided to sleep in, Sleeping Beauty,” I said.

  “Beauty sleep,” Garth scoffed. “I’d need a beauty coma, and I’d still look like a walrus sat on my face.”

  I rolled my eyes. Garth was overly self-conscious of his appearance these days. He’d shot up about three inches overnight, and he’d broken his nose a few months ago and it hadn’t set right, giving him a crooked and slightly flattened appearance that I barely noticed but he obsessed about. I decided to let the walrus comment slide and held up the tiny rusted box.

  “I’m tired of going into a building with nothing but a headlamp,” I said, showing him the square with its flashlights embedded in each side. “I used some broken headlamps and patched them together. Now I can just turn this on and toss it in a window or a chimney or whatever, and I’ll know if there is anything unpleasant waiting to greet me.”

  “Makes sense,” Garth said. “But I think you’re going to get in trouble if Gizmo sees that,” he said. “You remember what he said after he caught you with that . . . what was that thing again?”

  “A sand sucker,” I said, and I felt my face flush the bright, embarrassed red it always got when I was reminded of a failure.

  “I believe Gizmo called it a giant waste of time,” Garth said.

  “That’s because it didn’t work,” I said. “If it had worked, he would have probably liked it.”

  “Not Gizmo,” Garth said. “If it isn’t his idea, he’ll hate it. Didn’t he say if he caught you messing around with junk like that you’d get fired?”

  “Something like that,” I
said as I quickly shrugged my gear on. I tucked my flippers and my face mask under my arm before shutting my locker and turning back to Garth. He wasn’t quite finished getting ready, and I tapped a foot to show my impatience.

  “Relax,” Garth said.

  “You know how Gizmo feels about us being late,” I said. “It makes him all twitchy.’

  Garth grinned. “I like making Gizmo twitchy.”

  “You would,” I said as I followed him out of the dive room and down the hall to where I could hear the other scavengers already queuing up. We got in line at the back of the pack just as Gizmo showed up dressed in his flashy blue wet suit. Unlike the tattered and patched black ones we wore, his was pristine, and I couldn’t help but be a little jealous of how well it fit his stocky frame. The worse your wet suit fit, the colder you were. I was always cold.

  “Good morning,” Gizmo said, and everyone grumbled a half-hearted good morning in return. “Today we have some luck on our side. The town we’re scavenging was buried under the sand until the recent storm stirred things up enough to uncover it. I don’t have to tell you that it means we have some prime scavenging on our hands today. Captain Brown could only grant us two hours, though, as we have a trade meeting scheduled with the Blue Oyster and the Sundial the day after next and our schedule is tight, which means no screwups.” He paused to look each of us in the eye. “Stick to the methods you’ve been taught,” he said with a special glare in my direction. I avoided his eyes, pretending to be preoccupied with cleaning out my face mask.

  “Should be a good haul,” Garth said in my ear as Gizmo started in on his usual lecture about the price per pound of iron versus copper. I nodded. “Do you ever wonder how many other towns are out there, just waiting underneath the sand for some big storm to stir things up enough for us to find them?” Garth said, looking dreamy-eyed. It was no secret that he loved scavenging more than the rest of us. For me it was a job, one I’d taken to gain access to the ocean that existed beneath the waves.

  “But don’t you feel like we owe it to the towns somehow to know their names?” I said. “I mean, if we forget their names, isn’t it like they were never even there? It seems wrong somehow.”