6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1

by Anderson Atlas

  Ben is cooking again. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s humming and flipping, stirring and mixing. He serves up the fake eggs and the bacon and is all smiles. I guess cooking cures the idiot in him, or maybe just pushes it below the surface. Either way, he’s more pleasant to be stuck with now that he’s got some way to contribute.

  We’ve been on this boat for one day and one night so far. Most of my worry and apprehension is fading. It’s similar to approaching a vehicle that you’ve pulled over. You never know who or what is in that car and what their state of mind might be. It’s one of the most dangerous places to be when you’re a cop. You’re vulnerable when you peek into that window. When you finally see the person, you get a release. I’m feeling that release. It’s remarkable how well we are all dealing with this tragedy.

  After everyone eats, I help Markus and Josh clean up.

  Ian sips his coffee and stares off into space. He then says exactly what I’m thinking, what we are all probably thinking, “Why don’t I feel terrible? Billions of people died just days ago. Shouldn’t we still be in mourning?”

  “You don’t know how many people have died. There are other continents,” Rice says. She scoops the remainder of her eggs and bacon onto Andy’s plate. “Maybe it only hit the states.”

  “Well, technically, the virus could still be crawling across the globe. Maybe reaching more secluded places by now. We’re probably still in the middle of the event,” Josh concludes.

  “Event?” Rice snaps.

  Ian goes up top. There’s fog all around us. I’m surprised at how thick is seems. Ian looks over a map. “I’m hoping we get to Atlantic City by nightfall. That way we can drop anchor and no one will have to keep watch.”

  Because it’s early morning, a cool breeze flows over the boat. I feel it on my skin and smile. I look at Ian. He smiles back. “Now, this is sustainable living,” he says. “Too bad we have to use diesel fuel and not a renewable energy source like solar panels.”

  “I’m sorry, but this is far from sustainable,” Markus says. He’s sitting on a cushion next to the wheel. “We will run out of fuel eventually.”

  “Already burned half the tank,” Isabella mutters. She’s pacing for some reason. “And we’re not to Atlantic City yet.”

  “If we run out, we get more.” Ben says, joining us up top. “Shit, we’ll need more gas for the stove, too, eventually. Those four tanks won’t last us that long.” He’s sipping on some rum.

  “What if that gets harder to do?” Markus asks.

  Andy and Rice make their way up to join us. “We’re not gonna be on this boat forever, are we?” Andy asks.

  “No, just until we get to Cuba,” Rice answers. “That’s not that long.”

  “But I like it on the boat. There are no . . . dead people.” Andy’s eyes are full of worry and fear.

  “Then what?” I wonder.

  “Eden is there. The survivor city,” Ian says.

  “Isn’t there a chance we get there and it’s gone too?” Josh asks. “What keeps them from getting sick?” His hands are shoved deep into his pockets and he shifts nervously.

  Markus says, “‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.’ That’s from Psalms.”

  Tanis ignores Markus. “So, we’re gonna join a bunch of survivors on Cuba and restart the human race?”

  “As long as they have hot water, I’m in,” Rice takes Ben’s rum and sips it. “We rebuild society and have some babies.” She looks at Ian. I want to laugh, but I don’t. So she has a crush on him. He’s a good looking man, and smart too.

  “Maybe make some changes while we’re at it,” Ian ads. “No more capitalism. We’ll just live off the land, keep everything fair, and outlaw pollution of any kind.”

  “What a pipe dream!” Ben snips. “Keep smokin’. Then pass what you’ve got over here so I can puff puff, too.”

  “Shut it,” Isabella orders. “Ian’s right. We make new rules. One’s that change things for good.”

  Rice shakes her head, “You two sound like communists.”

  Josh points at Rice and stabs his finger at her. “I’m with you.” Then he looks at Ian. “Sounds like you want fairness, which is an inherent impossibility. There are genetic differences that determine all our abilities. Some are smarter than others, some are stronger. It’s a matter of survival of the fittest. Always has been. We’re just animals with opposable thumbs. Fairness is an illusion. Children use fairness to get what they want.”

  “You sound like my father.” Ian replies. “And the only reason you think there’s no fairness is because you’re programed to protect the system by the very school that taught you about the world. You let people get so rich they take over countries and pollute entire hemispheres, all because you’ve been taught that being dirty rich is the American dream.”

  “No,” Josh retorts. “I’ve got my own mind. I can look at the evidence and weigh its reality and its consequence. I’ve also learned from historians how corrupt all communist governments have been. Talk about fairness, if you were the government, you always had more than the little people. The little people were under your boot. In fact, the communist governments were the worst polluters of all. They just hid it from their people through control of the media.”

  “People should always have the right of self-determination,” Markus adds. “That is why capitalism worked for so long.”

  “Before it killed the world,” Ian injects.

  “Some stupid virus killed the world, not capitalism,” Josh corrects. “You can’t kill the world for profit. Because money becomes useless.”

  “Got a point there, brainiac.” Ben laughs.

  Josh goes on, “Tom Palmer understood that libertarianism is the application of science and reason to the study of politics and public policy. That is, libertarians deal in reality, not magic. Government doesn’t have magical powers. They can’t ignore the laws of economics and human nature.”

  “Ah, but capitalism did get out of hand,” Markus clarifies. “Greed took over. Television and entertainment warped the minds of too many people. Eden should be pure. The rules should be strict, but according to God’s will.”

  “No way!” Ben snaps. “No way I’m living under religious rule. They’d off me for sure.”

  “Yeah, I still like the idea of freedom,” Josh says. “Natural rights are always the same. No matter what president or leader is in power. No matter what system you have, the natural rights are life, liberty, and property. When you break those rights your system fails because people will eventually fight to regain the natural rights. We know what they are because we all understand them at the very core of us.”

  “But our system was so corrupt,” Tanis replies. “The natural rights didn’t mean shit. And we couldn’t do anything about it. Like anyone’s vote mattered. Every election since Taft was rigged. Democracy is a joke.”

  “How would you run a government?” Ian asks.

  “You just make a bunch of rules that work and that’s it. No messing with it,” Tanis answers.

  “That’s what a constitution is, dork.” Ben laughs again.

  “Yeah, but not some outdated thing written by posers in wigs.” He throws a cookie at Kat who is going from person to person, sucking up attention.

  “I’ve got some ideas about what should be in a constitution,” Ian says. “There’s a theory out there that has yet to be disproven. It’s called spontaneous order. It’s basically the understanding that most of the order in society, from language and law to the economy, happens naturally, without a central plan. The constitution should only protect the law which protects the freedom.”

  “Well, it needs to level the playing field, too. Because true democracy could get oppressive. Especially to minorities,” I interject.

  “Trouble comes in when you strip rights from one, say rich people, and give to the other. That’s not fair. You can’t fix unfairness with more unfairness. That is logically flawe
d,” Josh says. “The U.S. grew one of the largest middle class groups in history. That’s how I know it was as ‘fair’ as was possible.”

  Ian hands the wheel to Isabella and walks off, giving up on the conversation. I watch him walk to the front of the boat. I know what he’s feeling. I feel it too. It’s a kind of darkness. Even in the morning light it is dark around us, an eclipse that is blocking out all hope.

  I sit in the middle of the ship, trying not to think about those that I’ve lost, when Andy comes up to me. He’s so young and cute. “Hi there.”

  He sits next to me. “I’m hungry.”

  “I’d cook you the biggest cake you’ve ever seen if I could.” I poke his nose. He doesn’t smile. The boy is very traumatized. His brain needs a distraction. “Here, let’s make some food.”

  His eyes widen. “Really?”

  In front of me is the rear mast and behind that is a large box, full of tools and supplies. I pull out a bag and a few boxes. “What’s your favorite food?”

  “Sapaghetti,” he says, saying it wrong like every kid does. “And corn.” I dump the boxes of stuff on the settee. We pretend that bolts are corn, tape strips are noodles, and rubber plugs are meatballs. Screwdrivers are our utensils. We pretend to eat slowly and delicately and talk about school and friends.

  Our fake dinner is interrupted by Ian’s frantic calls. “Survivors! Come quick!”

  We all run to the font of the boat. There’s heavy fog. Deep in the shrouded horizon we see another boat. It’s a beautiful sight, and I want to jump up and down like a cheerleader.

  “There it is!” Rice yells.

  “Can you get closer?” Markus yells to Isabella who slows the boat to a crawl. I finally see a small fishing boat.

  “There are two men aboard, fishing!” Ian says excitedly.

  All of us jump up and down, waiving and screaming as our boat gets closer and closer. The other boat is around two to three hundred yards away. I don’t see anyone on board. A thick cloud of fog pushes between us and I lose sight of them. When visibility returns, the boat is right in front of us. I scream to stop. Everyone braces. We ram the boat. Little damage is done because we are going so slow.

  “What happened to them?” Rice asks. “I thought you said there were two people on that boat.”

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Josh interjects.

  “I didn’t either,” I say. We’re so close we can see the name of the boat, Day Job. It’s a large fishing boat, and by the look of it, completely loaded. “Josh, I need your help.” I run to a jumble of ropes and start to untie and untangle one.

  “What do you need?” Josh asks.

  “I need to find something like a grappling hook. I want to get along side the boat and hook it to us.”

  Josh runs off. I drag the thick rope to where we are closest to the Day Job. Josh returns with a large pole with a hook at the end. The boat is floating away now. I tie the rope to the pole and throw it, javelin style, to the deck of the Day Job. “Someone hold the end of the rope,” I order.

  Ben takes the rope and wraps it around his arm.

  “Anybody there?” yells Rice. No one answers.

  Ian shrugs. “I thought I saw someone. Really, I did.”

  “They have fishing poles!” Tanis yells.

  “Yes, lets get what we can from the boat.” Markus suggests. “God has given us some help.”

  “Tell him we need a Playstation, too,” Ben says. “Oh, and some Cajun spices.”

  Ian has his hand on his forehead. “There were two people there.”

  “Must be the light playing tricks on you,” Josh says. “The refraction of light in these water vapor clouds can be misleading. Probably happens all the time.”

  “Nerd alert!” Ben hollers.

  I slip off my pants and shirt and jump overboard in my underwear and bra.

  The water isn’t too cold, but it shocks my system. I swim to the deck at the back of the Day Job and climb up the ladder

  The boat is a mess. There’s bird poop everywhere. Whoever was out in this boat must have had a good catch before they disappeared. I carefully study the mess. There were definitely two men aboard. I see signs of a struggle. There’s blood splattered on the hand railing and one of the cabin windows is broken. There are two full cups of cold coffee, two sandwiches in the cooler, and two tackle boxes. There are a dozen fishing poles, but that’s typical.

  There’s a splash. Ian climbs aboard the Day Job.

  “Need some help?” he asks. We are both standing in our underwear. I notice his thin but muscular body, then turn from him quickly, blushing, as I remember that I am in my underwear as well.

  “Yeah, um, there was a struggle here,” I say. I planned on becoming a detective once I did my time. I have an eye for detail. “Looks like the two men had a fight and probably fell overboard.”

  “I agree, but I can’t believe they just fell overboard seconds ago. I must not have seen them fishing.”

  “Sorry, Ian. These men have been gone for quite a while. There’s mold on the coffee cups and the fish ice has melted. I don’t think you saw anyone fishing. Look at the fishing poles. All the lines are pulled in. See the bait? It’s dried up.” I point to the bird poop. “Do you see how the bird poop is on top of the blood? So they went overboard a long time ago.” I conclude. “You could have seen a — ”

  “Ghost?”

  I laugh, “No, a mirage or something. Like Josh said. The fog played tricks with your eyes.” I catch Ian looking at my breasts. I let him, only crossing my arms when the chill gets to me.

  “I’m feeling kinda creeped out over here. Let’s grab some of this fishing gear and get off this ghost ship.”

  We recover two tanks of propane, some rum, whiskey, and lots of beer left in the cooler — plus a ton of fishing gear. Ian siphons off the remaining diesel fuel from their tank, giving us about twenty gallons to add to our supply.

  Later that night we all crowd the deck of the Pioneer and share the whiskey we found.

  “I tell you Ian, when it was my watch last night, I saw some shit in the dark. Thought I saw a couple of boats. There might have been a light too, further out to sea. It flashed. On off, on off. Then it’d move over here and then over there.” Ben pointed all around him. “But they weren’t lights, they were too faint. I was seeing shit. I was seein’ ghosts,” he says, lowering his voice. “But I saw them plain as the zits on my ass.”

  “No way,” Josh reasons. “Ghosts are impossible.”

  “The human soul is a powerful thing,” Markus says. “Sometimes the soul can get trapped on Earth because it loses its way.”

  “So, we’re going to be seeing ghosts all over the place now,” Tanis mutters.

  Ian looks away. “I saw two men fishing. No, it was foggy and my brain has been in a frying pan for days. It was just a hallucination. Ghosts aren’t real.” His eyes shimmer with moisture that he’s trying to hide. Again, I think I can feel what he’s feeling. He’s feeling cold and panicky. Unsure and alone in his head even though we’re all right here next to him. I feel it too. This isn’t over. We’re still in the middle of the storm.

  Chapter 1.30

  Isabella:

  Last night was bad. We hit a storm off the coast of Virginia. We all got real sick. Stupid sick. We blew our guts all over the boat and had to watch that dog lap it up. It was Ben’s fancy chicken parm dish. It tasted good on the way down, but not on the way up. I’d passed out without knowing what time it was and when I woke up the boat was sitting on a sand bar half a mile off the beach.

  I look over the side of the boat, squinting in the bright morning light. There are puppets close by. Too close. I look through Ian’s binoculars at the shore. There are dozens, and more coming. They can’t get to us yet, but when one decides to take a walk into the big blue, they all will.

  Ian shows me some map of the East coast he’d found. “I think we’re at the Oregon Inlet Bridge.” He points out some of the landmarks. “See, the beach over there en
ds and starts again over there. The only place with such a narrow inlet is at the Oregon Bridge.”

  “Get to your point.” I say, still feeling nasty from being sick all night.

  “We’re by North Carolina,” Ian answers. He can see on my face that he needs to give me more. “Well, this map has tide warnings and storm warnings all around cape Hatteras. It’s where some currents collide to make big storms and even bigger waves.”

  “I hope you’re saying we’ve past that point,” Hana says, joining us from below. She’s rubbing her head and looks how I feel.

  “No, but we can go inland from here to Florida. Way easier that way,” Ian concludes. “It’s called the Intracoastal Waterway. Safe and slow waters.”

  “We’re not going anywhere without a new boat,” I mention. “That might be more difficult with all those puppets on the beach.”

  “We’re only sitting on a sand bar. All we have to do is dig ourselves out and wait for the tide to come back in,” Ian says. “Should be easy.”

  I grunt. My whole body feels twisted. I grit my teeth and tuck the pain away. For the next four hours, me, Ian, Hana, and Josh dive a few feet down to the bottom of the boat and scoop out sand from under the hull. We move lots of sand. It’s not hard at all, plus, the water is warmer. Over time, the water gets deeper as the tide comes in.

  Just after lunch, one of the puppets on the beach wades out into the waves, coming right toward us, and keeps walking into the water. I watch as its body disappears under the water, and then its head. “We’re almost out of time!” I yell.

  Just as I thought, more and more puppets follow the leader. They don’t make good time, which is good. I don’t have any energy left to crack skulls.

  We finish digging out a channel around the boat and climb aboard to dry off. Soon, the boat starts rocking. Everyone cheers. Ben makes a satisfying lunch while Ian backs us off the sand bar and into the Pamlico Sound. To the east is a thin strip of barrier islands and to the west is North Carolina. Today, the ocean seems to have forgotten the violent storm of yesterday.