The Roaming (Book 3): Haven's Promise

by Hegarty, W. J.

  Out of her road leathers, Genevieve’s physique was on full display. Her arms and legs and abs were toned and muscular, her shoulders and back were equally defined. Her body was a work in progress that she cultivated daily with two hours at the gym. And even barefoot, she was taller than Ahole.

  Genevieve and Ahole seemed like an unlikely pair. Whereas she carried herself in a calm and reserved manner, he was flamboyant and could be aggravating. In the eyes of those unfamiliar with Ahole, he was seen as an arrogant asshole, hence the moniker. Genevieve quickly saw through the bravado, and his persistence and confidence won her over. Ahole possessed a quality that she desired now more than ever. His inherent kindness was a trait sorely lacking in most of her suitors, pre- and post-crisis.

  “Rebirth, mate. You come out of de-cons naked as the day you were born, free from sin and all that,” Ahole said with a laugh and a shrug. “To the uninitiated it may appear demeaning, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. But it’s mostly harmless.”

  “Mostly?” Lillian asked.

  “Yeah, I’d say it’s completely harmless except for those blokes with the tiny peckers.”

  This caused an unexpected snort from Vanessa, who unintentionally spat beer from her mouth and nostrils all over the bar.

  “Like that one, do you, love?”

  Genevieve simply shook her head as she’d no doubt heard a variation of this joke a hundred times before. “Some people are frightened. Some don’t seem to care, but one fact remains. Everyone that comes through de-cons for the first time smells so bad that no one is looking at them in that way.”

  “Amen to that, sister.” Ahole raised his glass.

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” said Lillian.

  “Most don’t,” Genevieve suggested.

  “It’s an ego thing,” Trix added. “Everyone thinks everybody else is looking at them when the truth of the matter is most of us are just minding our own business and want to get through our day as smoothly as possible.”

  “Cheers to that, mate.”

  ~~~

  Ames and Catherine were all that remained of Haven’s original mechanical staff. In the earliest days of the outbreak, when Captain Kayembe docked in St. Lucia to pick up his family, hundreds of people fled the ship. The mass exodus was in the false hope that their governments would protect them from the growing crisis or at the very least have answers. Why they thought St. Lucia would provide those answers was anyone’s guess. Haven lost a large percentage of its support staff during this desperate bid, including all janitorial.

  Ames had been tinkering with engines for as long as he could remember. His parents always said he was born with a wrench in his hand. Young Ames could often be found playing with one of his father’s tools. When he was given the choice, a hard metal gadget won out over a soft plaything every time. Ames wasn’t his given name; one rarely picked his own nickname. His birth name was James. When his little brother was born five years later and eventually learned to speak, the child couldn’t pronounce his older sibling’s name properly; it always came out as Ames. His parents thought it was cute, so it stuck. Twenty-five years and change later, Ames was all he went by anymore. He often dreamed of his little brother; his fate kept Ames up at night. His parents’ fates as well, for that matter. The safety of his daughter trumped all of them, and he would never risk leaving her alone in this world. The rest of his family would have to make do without him.

  At St. Lucia, he was near to disembarking himself. Had it not been for his young daughter’s fear of the panic-stricken crowd amassed by Haven’s exits, he most assuredly would have. In hindsight, she probably saved their lives. Now he endlessly toiled away at the ship’s inner workings. Haven was meant to be a state-of-the-art vessel running mostly on enormous battery banks and next-generation computers that eclipsed anything that Ames was remotely comfortable with. That was where Catherine came in.

  Catherine was a protege of Arnold. She spent four years in school learning the intricacies of solar power and other renewable energy sources. If Haven had a hiccup in its power supply, Catherine knew the cause and the remedy with barely a second glance. She originally applied for a position on Haven’s sister ship, the Ice Queen, but unbeknownst to her, Arnold pulled a few last-minute strings and she wound up on Haven with the same captain and crew he’d worked with for so many years. She appreciated the effort but would have much preferred the colder climate the Ice Queen was slated to test in. All of that was moot now, as she was just happy to be alive.

  Tate was the youngest in mechanical, and it showed. After his rescue a few months prior, he spent more time fawning over the excursion team and their exploits than Ames cared for. Tate took to life aboard Haven with a vigor; he ate up all the ship had to offer and was more than happy to do his part. Ames often said that if Tate would put in half the effort listening to himself and Catherine as he did trying to absorb everything that Ahole and the other excursion team members said, Tate could rival the pair of them in their knowledge of the ship’s operations. As it were, he was tasked with showing Marisol and Isaac the finer details of janitorial duty.

  The three of them all looked like your typical mechanics wearing one-piece blue jumpsuits and heavy work boots. None of them were clean—their uniforms showed signs of long, hard hours—but they were certainly not what you would consider dirty. Marisol and Isaac were given matching uniforms as well.

  “It’s not glamorous work, like getting to leave the ship and hunting for supplies, but cleaning up after people has its perks, too.” Tate tried his best to put a positive spin on a clearly undesirable position.

  “Such as?” Marisol remained unconvinced.

  “Well, a job well done, for one. A sense of accomplishment. You can take pride in the knowledge that when one of those stuffy Elites sits their ass on a clean commode, they’re only able to enjoy that luxury because of your hard work.”

  “Or,” Marisol began contemptuously, “people can clean up their own shit. I just don’t fucking get it. How is it that at the end of the world people still can’t clean up after themselves?”

  “The lady has a point, Tate,” Isaac said as he examined a mop. If he wasn’t mistaken, this was the first time he’d held one since his high school days working part-time at a sub shop.

  “Hey, guys, I know you’re cops and you want to be doing something more with your time, but cut me some slack here. I don’t make the rules, and I’ve got no say in who gets placed where. And honestly, you’re shitting all over my trade. I’ve got to admit, that stings a little.”

  Tate escorted the pair through the steel hallways of the underbelly of the ship. They eventually made their way to the upper decks, where people lived. “Start on deck seven and work your way bow to stern, looking for trash or spills. Oh yeah, make sure to hit each bathroom. There are plenty on each deck. Continue up to deck twelve. That’s the Elites’ living area. Their quarters are off-limits and sometimes they won’t even let you on the floor to clean, but at least hit the common room and the lavatories.”

  Isaac was making the best of a bad situation. Marisol, on the other hand, was silently fuming.

  “That’s pretty much it,” Tate said as he nervously scratched the back of his neck. “Not much to it, really. Do you have any questions?”

  If looks could kill, Tate would have dropped on the spot. Marisol had no words; disgust and contempt were the flavors of the day. The former police officers headed off to complete their assignment, one pushing a cart of cleaning supplies and the other a bucket with a mop.

  Back in the mechanical office, Ames was going over schematics. He was looking for weak points in the ship’s inner workings. Better to get ahead of potential problems now rather than be surprised during an emergency. While he was changing a burnt-out fuse, he asked Catherine to hand him a screwdriver to tighten down a loose wire housing.

  Catherine obliged, happy for a break from studying endless electronics manuals. As she handed off the tool, she made a point to
touch Ames’s hand. If he even noticed, he ignored her advances, as was usually the case. She’d been trying to break down his shell for weeks with no luck. Maybe he just wasn’t interested. His aloof nature—at least as far as she was concerned—was baffling. Sure, she wasn’t the only attractive single woman on board, but they had so much in common and they already knew each other well. Maybe he was just so devoted to his work and his daughter that he didn’t have time for a relationship. There was always Tate; he was easy on the eyes, for sure, and the way he wore his uniform unzipped down past his navel, exposing his ripped chest and abs for all to see, was certainly enticing. But he was just a nineteen-year-old child as far as the twenty-six-year-old double-degree holder was concerned.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” said Ames. “It’s little piddly shit like this wire housing that’s going to fuck us in the long run. For every loose wire or burnt-out fuse we come across, ten more are probably out there waiting to stop this ship dead in the water.”

  “What do you suggest we do about it?”

  “I don’t know. Build a big fucking sail? I do know one thing. We can only jerry-rig stuff for so long.”

  Before Catherine could answer, Tate returned. “Well, they’re off, and man are they pissed,” he said as he entered the shop. He was oblivious to the fact that he was interrupting a conversation. “At least the lady is. The dude seems to be taking it well enough.”

  “What did you expect?” Ames said while keeping his eyes on his work. “They are laughably overqualified for the job. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell Naomi’s thinking up there in acclimation sometimes.”

  “You think maybe we should put a word in for them, maybe try to help them get relocated?” Tate suggested.

  “You want to push a mop, be my guest. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  “Ames is right,” Catherine added. “If they don’t do the nasty stuff, then we have to, and if I never touch another mop again, I can die happy.”

  Marisol and Isaac were only on their third bathroom stop of the morning. They had a very long and very frustrating day ahead of them. The whispers and pointing fingers of passing shipmates didn’t go unnoticed and only added to their frustration.

  “This is ridiculous, Isaac. What kind of grown-ass man leaves used toilet paper on the fucking floor?”

  “I know,” Isaac replied, scrubbing a toilet in the adjacent stall.

  “What are we even doing here? This doesn’t make any goddamn sense. I could understand if Todd doesn’t want us in security. He doesn’t know us. Fine, I get it, but this? This is fucking stupid.” Marisol jammed the scrub brush hard into the toilet, spraying filthy water all over herself. “Fuck.”

  “Sure, this stinks, but I mean, we’re here. We might as well make the best of it,” Isaac replied, barely able to contain his laughter. “Pun absolutely intended.”

  “Ha fucking ha.”

  “At least we’re off the road. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Honestly, I’d rather be back on the road. At least then I could help somebody—anybody.”

  ~~~

  Lancaster struggled under a mountain of seemingly endless dirty dishes. Does everyone aboard this ship eat at the same time? he wondered. He and Damon had been in the kitchen doing what they both agreed was menial work since before sunrise. Hours passed; morning turned to afternoon and afternoon turned to twilight, and still he scrubbed. He briefly thought of his wife he so callously left behind all those months ago, and it dawned on him how many dishes she must have scrubbed for the man over the years. He struggled to remember if he ever cleaned up after just one meal in four decades of marriage.

  Damon didn’t fare much better; he had been cleaning fish for an eternity. His fingers were raw; a myriad of tiny unseen cuts stung, and the smell became nauseating. He was never a fan of seafood, and this day only reinforced his stance. Each fish that crossed his table increased his ire. He found himself imagining just how much longer he could sit at this prep table before he plunged his knife into Sweet Lips’s neck and be done with the whole thing.

  Sweet Lips was about as laid back as they came, but he did not tolerate laziness. Not in his kitchen. Growing up poor on Oahu, he learned young the responsibility of a hard day’s work and the pleasure of a good meal afterward. He was handpicked by Kayembe to run Haven’s kitchen after the captain met him on the Big Island while on vacation.

  “You’re doing good work, fellas,” Sweet Lips praised, only halfheartedly. “Dishes and fishes make the world go round.” His words of encouragement didn’t seem to have the desired effect on his new employees. “Our food stores are supplemented by a daily supply of fresh fish. So if you don’t like seafood, you’re kind of assed-out. Fish for breakfast, fish for lunch, fish for dinner.”

  “Surely all the water used to clean this endless stack of dishes is wasteful?” Lancaster’s attempt at weaseling out of his job didn’t go unnoticed. “Perhaps the water could be of better use elsewhere?”

  “Don’t even worry about it, Donald. We have multiple desalinization plants aboard Haven. Backups for the backup. Clean, fresh drinking water is never going to be an issue aboard Haven, so you can scrub away without a worry. I appreciate your concern, though.”

  Damon had been irritable since the minute they stepped foot in the kitchen more than twelve hours prior. “Why can’t we do some cooking, man? I’ve been doing the same shit all day.”

  “Everyone starts in the trenches, my man. Someday another new head will take your spot and I’ll move you up to vegetable prep. Onions and potatoes as far as the eye can see.” Sweet Lips spread his arms over an imaginary garden. “We grow them ourselves in Haven’s very own greenhouse.”

  Damon was relieved to at last finish cleaning his pile of fish. He slumped over his station, spent.

  Sweet Lips wheeled another huge cart of fresh fish to the prep table. “I’m going to need a hundred more cleaned, descaled, and ready for the freezer. Then I can let you guys go for the day.” With that, Sweet Lips strummed on his ukulele—which was always within arm’s reach—and began singing a tune.

  “Man, fuck this!” Damon yanked off his apron and tossed it to the floor in a heap before storming out of the kitchen.

  Lancaster was left in stunned disbelief as Sweet Lips nodded in the direction of Damon’s now unmanned station.

  “Those fish ain’t going to clean themselves, old-timer,” Sweet Lips said to Lancaster as he watched Damon storm off. He shrugged. “Mahalo.”

  ~~~

  Stowage’s proximity to the engine room deep in the bowels of the ship made it and the surrounding areas loud, stuffy, humid, and hot. Machinery clanked away and the constant hum of the engines echoed throughout the massive storage area. Far at one end of the extensive room, de-cons was secured by a double set of locked steel doors.

  Sam overlooked the sheer scale of this section of the ship during his brief tour while entering de-cons just a few days prior. All manner of provisions was stored here, along with trinkets and junk to be saved for possible use later. Otherwise, most items kept in stowage were useless remnants of a world gone by. No longer would people need ornately carved masks or novelty plates and shot glasses from various ports. Shirts advertising assorted Caribbean nations were packed away by the hundreds, possibly even by the thousands.

  Stowage was organized into three sections. The first was the largest by far; it consisted of all the miscellaneous goods that were currently of no use but saved all the same. The second-largest was runover dry goods for the kitchen. Haven was well-stocked in that department. If the decision-makers rationed properly and never sent out another excursion, they could feed every man, woman, and child aboard the ship for at least a year. That was saying nothing of supplementing their food stores with daily fishing. They usually dragged a net just outside of a large bay door, the same opening that the excursion team used to dock with. Daily they brought in more fish than the ship could possibly consume. The excess
was put on ice; some was even used to supplement the livestock’s feed.

  Jewelry and precious stones and anything that could be used for bartering were kept under strict lock and key, accessible solely by Krysler, who answered to Todd, who himself deferred only to Captain Kayembe.

  Stowage was the backbone of Haven’s economy. Stockpiles determined the rationing of food and beverage throughout the ship. A heavy fishing day would result in a temporary suspension of frozen beef and poultry. Prior to disembarking on its maiden voyage, Haven was stocked with food, drink, and alcohol to serve nearly ten thousand guests and staff for a month without having to go to port for resupply. With the head count dwindling to just above three hundred souls in less than two weeks at sea, the rations were more than enough to sustain those that remained for a very, very long time.

  Security was tight ship-wide but nowhere more so than stowage, which also happened to double as a staging ground for excursions. If the unthinkable happened and the dead were to gain access to the ship through a careless excursion team, the entire area could be sealed off and dealt with at Todd’s leisure.

  De-cons was hosed down from floor to ceiling and the filth of its occupants washed away. Sam grit his teeth upon seeing the blood from what he assumed could have only been Bernie’s cell. It was casually disposed of with the rest of the detritus.