Read Titanic 2020 t2-1 for Free Online Page B

the Internet, or, indeed, a computer. Well, they could just wait a few days. Maybe it would teach them to appreciate him a little more. There was nothing to stop him sending a message to them via his school, of course. It had a website.
    School — he was actually missing it, a tiny little bit. Not the work, obviously, but his friends. Messing around. If he could have changed anything about the past few days it would have been to bring Gary Higgins with him on this adventure. They would have had a cracking time together.
    Thinking about Gary reminded him of his expulsion. What choice had his headmaster had? None at all. He'd been reckless and disruptive and had almost destroyed a school bus. He should e-mail Mr McCartney and apologize for his actions.
    Jimmy logged on to the school website, and clicked on Mr McCartney's e-mail address. He wrote,
Dear Mr McCartney.
Then he hesitated. He knew what he
should
write. He knew what he
ought
to write. But he was Jimmy Armstrong, and there was really very little doubt about what he
would
write.
     
    Dear Mr McCartney. How're you doing you scabby-faced baldy-headed vulture? Do you know that your secretary looks like a hamster? Does she keep nuts in her cheeks? Does she have an exercise wheel? Are you having an affair with her? If you are your children will be scabby-faced baldy-headed vultures too, but with the added attraction of big teeth and cheeks for nuts. Yours sincerely, Jimmy Armstrong.
     
    Jimmy's finger hesitated over the 'send' button — but only for a couple of seconds. He was finished with school. He was on the high seas now, he had a job and he was getting paid for it.
So stuff you, McCartney!
    He sent it.
    ***
    Jimmy was a journalist now. He typed a headline:
Small Earthquake in San Diego — Not Many Dead.
    It was true, there weren't many dead. But what he couldn't know, not yet anyway, was that the earthquake would set off a chain of events that would lead to the end of civilization as we know it.
    Really. 

7
San Diego
     
    I t is a universal truth that teenage boys, given the choice of either throwing a bottle they have recently found high into the air and watching it smash or setting it gently out of harm's way, will almost certainly choose to throw it.
    Given the opportunity to throw
two
bottles, they are unlikely to compromise by smashing one and saving the other.
    The boys in question were called Cameron Rodriguez and Patrick Hernandez, a fact which we are only aware of because just a few days after throwing the bottles they were both dead.
    They lived in a housing project in San Diego, California. It was a rough area, and dangerous. Often, when they wished to play undisturbed by the local gangs the boys wandered out of the project and squeezed under a high wire fence on to a stretch of lush grass surrounding a laboratory owned by a company called Boris Bio Tech. On the morning of the San Diego earthquake the lab's entire staff were taking part in a softball tournament several miles away.
    They felt the earthquake, but didn't for one moment think that it might affect their laboratory or indeed, lead to the end of civilization as we know it. Why would they? They were enjoying beer and hotdogs, while back at the lab the vibrations caused a faulty latch on a cupboard to give way. As a result approximately thirty bottles fell from their shelves. Of these, all but two landed harmlessly on the carpeted floor. The two that didn't bounced off a desk and through an open window. It was a ground-floor lab, so they didn't have a great distance to travel before landing, perfectly intact, on the soft lawn outside.
    They might have remained there until staff discovered them the next day, and the world would not have been ruined, but for the inquisitiveness of Cameron Rodriguez and Patrick Hernandez. They were just having fun. They could not know that Boris Bio Tech's main work was top secret or that it developed poison gases for use in chemical warfare. Not to attack other