by LeRoy Clary
The thought of getting the keel stuck in the mud as the tide went out and left us exposed like a single fly on a white sheet of paper, helpless to defend ourselves, didn’t sound pleasant. I’d remember exactly what he said.
For lunch, Sue opened a can of pork and beans, his last bag of potato chips, and cooked his last hotdogs in a frying pan. He and I talked strategy and he taught me the essentials of how his stove, heater, and fridge worked. I paid attention to every word.
He took me outside and showed me how easy the solar panels worked, and the batteries, but what ran the system was a little controller box that changed light into battery power and managed the voltages. That was the key. I needed the controller-box and the panels. My mind was working at lightning speed.
He said, “Know why we’re looking at this?”
“So, I’ll know what I need to scrounge?”
“No. The solar panels are what you’re going to look for when you’re selecting a boat.”
I gave him a puzzled look.
“The sailboats,” he said. “When you’re picking out which one to take. First, look for solar panels on the roof of the cabin. Probably your most important item. Many will have them, especially larger, newer ones. If it already has them installed, you don’t have to mess with learning anything but how to use the power.”
I hesitated. “I’ve never sailed before. Only been on a few small powerboats, so I was thinking of taking a small one, then decided maybe a little bigger, but not too big.”
He opened two more cans of beer and handed me one. “You’re right to ask me along. You’re so ignorant you need help, but not from me. Best to go it alone and learn as you go, these days. Now, listen. A larger sailboat is probably easier to steer and will carry your supplies and all you need. Imagine trying to fit six propane tanks and fifty cases of bottled water into a smaller sailboat.”
“Fifty cases of bottled water?”
“In those islands you’re going to, where are you going to get fresh water to drink if you don’t take it there yourselves?”
My mind went to the image of a small cabin the size of my closet at home, to a boat stuffed with propane tanks and cases of water and God knows what else. Where would we sleep? What about all else we’d need? My initial ist would sink a small boat, let alone the real items.
“Okay, I see that brain of yours going like a racing jalopy and it needs to slow down a mite. You just went from picking a small day-sailer to something as long as a semi-truck, right? Now, let’s take it down a bit. Something in between. Ever start a diesel?”
“No.”
“Depending on a lot of things, remember this: many require up to thirty seconds before you can start them. Some have a yellow light that turns green when ready. But you have to wait—then they will start after heat builds up in the engine.”
“Maybe I should just look for a gas engine.”
“Gas fumes have a habit of settling in low places, like inside the hulls of boats where it can’t escape. There is more than one sunken ship out there in the bay you’re looking at that exploded from gas, so you want a diesel. A little nine-dot-nine horse-power outboard wouldn’t hurt, neither would a little tow-behind rowboat. But remember, all that can wait.”
“Wait?”
“There have been other sailboats out on the water in the last few days. You’re not alone in thinking it’s a good idea to get out of Dodge. Take whatever boat you can safely get, sail north and hide. Let all these local idiots kill themselves off before you consider replacing the boat you steal with a better one, but by then you’ll have a good idea of what will fill your needs and you’ll only face half the people you will now because it’s my estimation half these fools will kill the other half within a month.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed.
He opened two more beers. I refused and he kept both for himself. He downed one and turned to face me. “Think about this. You survive in baby steps. It’s late winter now, so you just have to last until spring. You do what it takes to survive the rest of the winter. After that is spring and summer and by then you will either be dead or know something about sailing and what you need for a better rig. There are other marinas up by Bellingham and other cities. You can use the small boat to scout out what you want for a long-term choice. Right now, it’s all about living for one more day and planning for a week. Do that, and you might make it. Take whatever boat you can get away with and survive a few more days. That’s the important thing.”
It was good advice.
CHAPTER NINE
The old man went to sleep on me while sitting in his recliner. Well, not on me, but in his chair, his head laid back, his mouth open, a beer near his outstretched hand. There was so much to learn from him. Sue and I expected to be up most of the night, and we took long naps so we wouldn’t fall asleep. He awoke late in the afternoon when Sue and I were getting ready to leave.
“Where you goin’?” he asked.
I said, “We have to sneak over to one of the houses nearby and locate kayaks or a boat of some kind. We were going to tell you goodbye and how much we appreciate your help.”
“Not so fast,” he said, standing on weak legs and limping to the door. He pointed along the shoreline. “There’s a trail down there. It takes you to the next house along the shore. Go there. Use the side entrance to the garage and see if they still have their kayaks stored inside. Probably do. Don’t go inside the house. Mom, Dad, and three kids died in there. Just leave them be, not that you could stand to go inside with the smell. I got a whiff of it when I went to check on them a few days ago.”
“I’ll go take a look,” I said to Sue. “Why don’t you try to make a good meal for all of us?”
The little trail took me a hundred yards along the shoreline to the next house. The side door to the garage was padlocked, but the hasp had been pried off and hung limply. I assumed the old man had done it. Nothing else seemed out of place. I told my nose to stop sniffing for decomposing bodies, but it refused to cooperate.
With the side door open, plenty of light streamed inside the garage. There were six kayaks, each stacked neatly on a rack made of two-by-fours against the rear. Two kayaks caught my eye. They were longer, slimmer, and had rudders operated by the user’s feet. I hefted one to my shoulder and carried it to the rocks at the bottom of the hillside, above the tangle of trees, and debris at the high tide mark.
The other soon joined it. I selected a pair of double-ended paddles, and two lifejackets, then I made sure the door was pulled closed in case the old man needed anything else from inside. I followed the path back to the other house.
Sue was stirring something on the stove when a buzz of sound interrupted. I turned to look behind me where the sound came from just as the old man pointed at the small windows and said softly, “Company.”
Two men and a woman were moving down the driveway, each holding a rifle. They didn’t look like bikers, at least none wore the garb of the bikers. She was heavy-set, the men were much the same. They moved slowly, their eyes taking everything in. That is, they looked at everything but inside the small windows where we were.
They couldn’t have missed the fresh tire tread imprints in the soft dirt. They expected to find people, expected to sneak up on them. One tire track from our motorcycle entering with none returning to the road, recently made, meant the rider was still in the house. One person. Easy pickings.
The old man reached for a Winchester rifle that could have been used in every western movie ever made. I said, reaching for the rifle I’d taken off the biker, “Let me talk to them.”
He frowned, then nodded as he aimed.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I called, not wishing to warn them there were three of us. Sue had her shotgun ready, and while the distance was too great to hit them, the sheer amount of noise should be enough for rational thinkers to flee.
They pulled to a stop, consulted with each other briefly, then one man turned to face me. “We’ve talked it over. If
you come out with your hands up and nothing in them, we’ll let you leave.”
The woman giggled, an evil sound that edged the two men a few cautious steps closer. The old man at my side said, “You tried. I’ll take the one on the right.”
As I raised my rifle, the woman lifted a military-style rifle hidden from us. It had been at her side. She sprayed thirty or forty bullets in our direction in one long burst. The men beside her peeled away and dived into the weeds, all but disappearing as they raised their weapons and fired. Both Sue and I ducked from the firing of the machine-guns, while I quickly realized that not one bullet had come through the small windows. None of the glass had broken.
They didn’t know where we were and all the slugs had torn up the first floor of the house instead of the basement.
Both the old man and Sue fired at almost the same time. I fought to steady the scope until I found the man on the left aiming his weapon lower. He now knew where we were.
I shot him just above his left eye. I’d been aiming lower, but my hands were shaking. The old man had shot the other man, and the woman had ejected the magazine in her gun and inserted another. Sue put her shotgun up to the window and fired again. Pumped and fired. Pumped and fired. The old man got into a position to shoot the old thirty-thirty. He fired once.
He said, “Well if that doesn’t bring the whole damned city here, nothing will. It’s like sirens on firetrucks. Everybody’s got to go see what’s happening when they hear them. By dark, there’ll be ten more bodies out there. You two, get out of here while you can.”
“Come with us,” Sue begged.
He shook his head. “Can’t do it, bad leg and all. Besides, my heart pills run out in two more days, and without them, I’m done anyway. I might make it three or four days, or just put the barrel of this in my mouth and end it without suffering the pain that’s coming my way. Sorry, kids. Make a break for it while you can. Sit out there in the bay until dark and good luck.”
“Maybe we can get your pills from a pharmacy,” I said.
He shook his head. “They’re stripped bare or burned. I went into town and looked.”
Sue gave him a hug and whispered something in his ear. I shook his hand and escorted Sue down to the rocks and the kayaks, almost pulling her along. We donned lifejackets, tossed our few belongings inside the footwell where they might stay dry, and pushed the long, narrow boats into the water. I held Sue’s while she adjusted to the tricky balance required to keep them upright, then I adjusted her seat to fit her short legs. When she had the idea, a push sent her fifty feet from shore. She turned back to watch me.
I managed to climb in without tipping it over, but the bottom got scraped as it settled, and I had to use the paddle pressed to the mud to get it moving. When it did, the boat moved side to side with each stroke and advanced hardly any distance.
“Reach back and put the rudder down, silly.”
Sue was grinning. I did as she suggested. The adjustment for my long legs was too short, but the rudder in the water solved most of the problem. If the boat moved to my left and I wanted to go right, the rudder foot-peddles helped. A few more strokes and we were a hundred feet from shore.
We kept going, using the paddles slowly so we didn’t tire, and we didn’t go near the shore where anyone might shoot at us. We traveled together and talked little. I managed to adjust my seat, so my feet touched the pedals.
From behind, we heard more shooting an hour later. I recognized the crack of the old man’s rifle, but the boom of a much larger shell also sounded. We looked behind and found we’d only traveled a quarter-mile or a little more, mostly drifting and waiting for darkness to fall. On the beach, a man appeared. Then another. One shouted, “There they are.”
There was no hurry. We had hours of daylight left and I didn’t want to give anyone on the Everett side of the bay an idea we were heading in their direction, so they could meet us.
I had no doubt those behind had spotted us after the warning shout. We were so far away I was surprised I’d heard the man who said it could see us. Unless they had a fast boat and were willing to sacrifice it to the number of bullet-holes I intended to put in it if they came this way, they had better not follow.
One of them took aim and fired. A splash off to our side and a little in front of us said we needed to paddle faster and put more distance between us. Maybe we were not far enough away, after all.
We put our backs and arms into it. The kayaks sliced through the water as another shell landed, not far from us. The shooter must have been using a scope and was a good shot. We could zigzag but that would slow our overall progress. Another rifle fired, then a third. We were floating targets, but we were gaining distance. Bullets splashed closer as they got our range. We should have paddled faster from the beginning. A shell landed close enough to splash water on me. We were both getting the hang of paddling and were going so fast we left wakes.
A huge explosion behind us erupted so forcefully the concussion felt like the slap of a giant hand. We turned and found an orange ball of fire expanding around and consuming the house we’d been inside an hour earlier. The impact of sound that struck us a few seconds later was a physical thing. We were watching the aftermath. The ball of fire continued to expand, changed colors to a dull red, and then morphed into mostly black smoke that drifted away with the breeze.
The men who had been on the deck of the house shooting at us were nowhere in sight. Neither was the deck or house. The old man must have set a trap.
More likely, he’d set it off himself, not trusting a simple tripwire or similar device that might injure innocents. I remembered the rack of propane bottles I’d assumed were empties even though they appeared to have been recently placed on the ground under the deck, next to the house. A row of seven or eight.
He’d probably barricaded himself inside somewhere, and when the time was right, he set it off, allowing us to escape while taking out most, if not all of the attackers. One final act of revenge and friendship in a ball of fire.
“What happened?” Sue asked.
“That old man refused to be defeated.”
“He blew up his house and those people? On purpose?”
I paddled beside her, keeping my voice soft and fighting back tears. “He was only going to live a few more days. This way, he did some good and killed people we don’t need in our world. And avoided the pain he was going to suffer. That’s what he told me.”
She took a few strokes and finally said, “I could never do that.”
I glanced behind and saw the black smoke still rising. Where the house had been only a part of the concrete foundation remained. The old man was part of the smoke, rising into the late afternoon sky where he could watch our progress from up there. I felt like saluting.
Instead, I paddled slow and sure. The kayaks scooted along, and the mouth of the Snohomish River was directly ahead. The kayak I sat in was bright red, Sue’s yellow. Anyone looking from the shore would spot us instantly and might anticipate where we were going, or they might follow us along the shore.
“We need to turn away as if we just want to take a look at the city from afar.”
“And go where?”
“That island out there,” I pointed to a rugged-looking island with a tall cliff and evergreens growing on top. At a guess, it was a few miles away. “Hat Island, I think. Paddle real slow and we’ll make it seem we’re either going there or back to Marysville.”
Again, she declined to question or argue. That was good, of course, but for me, it provided time to think. Stealing a sailboat was about to get real. I’d had ideas, but the old man had given me a wealth of new information and I intended to use what he taught me. My mind required time to think and digest his advice, then decide how to put it to the best use.
The task was daunting, now that I was actually considering doing it. We had no food, no water, and I had to pee. We were a mile or two from the nearest land. I couldn’t resolve those minor problems, but was considering turning
pirate, creating more problems that would magnify exponentially.
A small wave bumped the side of my kayak and nearly tipped me over—as if the sea-gods were teasing me. All the while I refused to look back at the column of smoke because some of it contained what little remained of the old man who had become my friend in a few hours.
I chuckled because I thought he’d have found that idea funny.
Sue gave me an odd look and paddled closer. I reviewed and tried to prioritize everything he’d told me to look for. First, it seemed to be that all sailboats are pretty much the same. The difference was in the details. Taking one too small would be a complete mistake. One too large was the same, but for different reasons. He had said to look for one about thirty-five feet.
The one item he’d stressed was to find on a boat with solar panels. After that, he had mentioned other things, but that seemed to be the one item he felt we would need the most.
The other important thing was the engine. Diesel. I assumed most were diesel. So, then he’d said to use the glow plug starting option for thirty seconds because the boat may not have been run for a while. It all sounded confusing. Maybe too confusing.
“Sue, listen. When I go ashore to do this, I want you to tie my boat to yours and paddle out into the channel where it is darkest and wait. If things go wrong, I’ll dive into the water swim out to meet you and we’ll paddle to that Hat Island to spend the night. Tonight might end up being just a dry run, to see what is there and what options we have.”
“We were standing in the snow up to our knees a few days ago. Do you know how cold the water is?”
“Can’t be helped. Besides, how crazy would someone else have to be to jump into the water and swim after me?”
She didn’t laugh. So, I wouldn’t mention my observation about the old man and the smoke. She said, “What do you think can go wrong?”
