Long Voyage Back

by Luke Rhinehart

  Ìf we live through this madness we have to create a new world,' she said, her eyes seeming to make a personal appeal -to Neil. 'We have to create a family, support each other, end the selfish divisions that led to this horror.' She looked at him for confirmation.

  Neil felt an unaccountable heaviness. He supposed it was because he didn't think the species that killed a hundred million of its own kind in one day was likely to be too great on its next go-round. If there was a next go-round.

  `First we have to survive,' he replied.

  `Yes,' she said, seeming to relax some of her intensity. `But, my God, how cold-hearted this war is making us survivors. I think you're the only friendly face I've seen all day.'

  `Cornered and fleeing animals aren't nice,' Neil said.

  She nodded and frowned. 'Back before you rescued me I could have killed with that butcher knife,' she said softly, looking, Neil saw, quite puzzled and a little saddened by the knowledge. 'How depressing that is.'

  Neil didn't comment. Two passengers were leaning out over the coaming in the port cockpit and he wondered why until he saw that one of them was being seasick. Ànd that's the way of madness,' Jeanne went on and, pausing, she looked up at him. 'I'm glad I spared you,' she said. Suddenly and unexpectedly she was smiling up at him. Ì am too,' Neil replied, smiling back.

  `My personal Captain Luck,' she said.

  `How so?' he asked, puzzled.

  `You said that before we can create a new world we have to find the luck to survive,' she said, strangely gay all of a sudden. 'I guess I found you.' She paused. 'Although I hope your style isn't always to throw me overboard.'

  After the horror of Point Lookout, Crisfield was as quiet and relaxed as a tourist and fishing town should be. There were no mobs and few boats. Neil supposed survivors from the Philadelphia area had more options to flee to than did those south and east of Washington and Baltimore.

  After Vagabond was tied up at the dock in front of a large green fishing trawler named the Lucky Emerald, he assisted his passengers ashore. Most were bewildered; it seemed to Neil that if someone had offered them a boatride back to Point Lookout many of them would have crowded aboard. As they were leaving, Jeanne came up beside him where he stood overseeing the exodus.

  `Can't we invite some of them to stay with us?' she asked him.

  `That's Frank's decision to make,' he replied, feeling something of a liar. 'When he comes we can reconsider it.' `They have no place to go,' she said. Ànd we have nothing to feed them with,' Neil explained. Ì was in their place four hours ago' she said, looking away.

  Ì know,' he said gently, frowning. 'But we can't save everybody. We'll be lucky if we can save ourselves.'

  `We should try to save as many as we can,' she said.

  `We haven't enough food to last ourselves more than two or three days,' he went on. '

  That's our job now: to try to get some supplies aboard.'

  Ì'd like to invite that woman with the nursing child,' Jeanne persisted. Neil looked at the retreating passengers.

  Àll right, Jeanne,' he answered. 'But let her know the food situation.'

  While Jeanne hurried forward to overtake the nursing mother Neil turned to Jim. When he did, he saw that the man with the .45 was still sitting on the settee and beside him the much younger man, Jerry, with the pink shirt and green pants. Neil .went over to them.

  `What are your plans?' he asked the older man. `What are yours?' the man countered.

  `We wait here until ten to pick up the owner, then we're heading out of the Bay into the Atlantic.'

  Àll right.'

  Àll right what?'

  `We'd like to come along.'

  Neil studied the man. His business suit seemed somehow inappropriate, fraudulent. The man's round, unshaven face never seemed to vary its placid expression. The young man beside him was morose-looking.

  `Who are you?' Neil asked.

  `Conrad Macklin,' he replied. 'This is my friend Jerry.' `What do you do?'

  The man shrugged. 'I used to be a marine,' he said. `Paramedic. After Vietnam, I flew planes, freelancing. Now ... I sail a trimaran.'

  `We don't have much food,' Neil said.

  Macklin shrugged again.

  `We're going shopping,' Neil said, feeling irritated.

  `Could you two contribute some cash to the cause?' Macklin took out his billfold, removed two hundreddollar bills and handed them to Neil.

  `Jim,' said Neil, turning away. 'I want you and Jeanne to go into town to the nearest supermarket and buy everything you can carry. I'll give you three hundred dollars and don't hesitate to pay double for anything you can get. Triple, if you have to.'

  Jeanne reappeared in .the wheelhouse alone.

  'What happened?' Neil asked.

  `She'd hooked up with a man and he had a car,' she answered, looking saddened that her offer had been rejected.

  Neil wrote out a brief list of basics for Jeanne and Jim and sent them off. Skippy had fallen asleep during the sail, so Neil had Lisa begin making an inventory of the cans and boxes of food already on hand. Although uneasy about the presence of Macklin and his friend, he decided Macklin already had what he wanted - namely a boat to escape in -so now there should be no worry.

  He worked briefly setting up Lisa with the inventory and then went back up into the wheelhouse.

  'I've got an important job I'd like you to do for us,' he said to Macklin.

  'Yes?'

  'We've got a bent propeller shaft and can't get it out,' Neil explained. 'We need a slidehammer puller, it's a tool. I want you to try the boatyard over there and see if you can rent, buy or borrow the tool. How about it?'

  'Why don't you go?' Macklin asked.

  Neil met the man's cold gaze with equal coldness.

  'You'll help when I ask you to help or you're not sailing with us,' he said, feeling absurdly for an instant like he was in some western in which both he and Macklin were about to go for their guns.

  Macklin in fact looked down at his .45, again cradled in his lap, and caressed the barrel once with his left hand.

  'That sounds reasonable,' Macklin said and, standing, put the gun into a shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket. He smiled for the first time. 'Relax, captain,' he went on. 'I'm just out to save my ass like the rest of you.'

  'A slide-hammer puller,' Neil repeated coldly.

  'Got it.' Macklin ambled off the boat.

  'And I want you,' Neil said to the man named Jerry, 'to go

  along the docks and see if there's a water outlet we can get water from.' The man - he seemed only a couple of years older than Jim - nodded and went off. The other thing is fishing gear, Neil thought, as his mind immediately returned to the task of preparing the ship for a long survival voyage. It would help if they had extra nylon line and metal lures, another rod too, maybe. Those might actually be easier to pick up than food. He looked restlessly ashore: Jeanne and Jim were already returning, and emptyhanded. The two of them jumped down on to the side deck and came over to him.

  `There was a line forty yards long outside the supermarket,' Jeanne explained. 'And then the manager came out, counted about twenty people and told the rest of us to go home. He was closing after those twenty.'

  Èvery other grocery store was closed,' Jim added. 'Half of them were boarded up and the others had an armed guard.' Neil simply nodded.

  `Give me the money, Jeanne,' he said. As Jeanne fished in her pocket for the cash he went on to Jim, 'We need to get water aboard. All we can get. I sent that guy named Jerry to locate an open tap. Fill the tank and all the plastic jugs.'

  `How about that leaky ten-gallon container?' Jim asked.

  `That too,' Neil replied. 'I sent Macklin - that's the man with the .45 - after the puller. I'm going to take a shot at getting us some supplies. Stay here, get your .22 out again, and don't let anyone aboard except Macklin. When he's back, have him stand guard.'

  `You trust him?' Jim asked.

  Ì trust him to keep unnecessary peo
ple off the boat,' Neil explained. Òkay.'

  Neil hesitated, gauging Jim's character.

  `This time . . .' he began, as Jim looked at him attentively, ìf you feel you have to shoot .

  . . shoot.'

  `Macklin?' asked Jim.

  Ànybody,' Neil replied.

  The situation in Crisfield was as Jeanne and Jim had described it. Fortunately, the local hardware store was open.

  `Cash only,' a clerk announced as he entered. 'All prices triple what's marked.'

  Neil went to the fishing gear section and quickly picked out three lures, two wire leaders and 500 feet of 30 lb test line. As he walked to the cashier he grabbed two kerosene lanterns. The manager said he didn't sell kerosene, but Neil bought the lamps anyway. Back on the main street he considered his tactics. He'd hidden his gun under a loosefitting jacket and the bag of supplies he was carrying. He'd become aware throughout the day of a feeling he hadn't had for a long time: that he was ready and able to kill, had in the past killed, and that this readiness gave him a power and confidence in this situation, since the missiles had started flying, that was essential for survival. He felt he could sense when others lacked that readiness - as with the grey-haired man on the yawl who was holding Jeanne - and when they did have it, as with Macklin. This feeling of power had always bothered him, ever since he'd first sensed it in Vietnam more than a decade ago, but he knew it was now one of his chief assets. Neil passed a closed grocery store behind the door of which sat a fat man with a shotgun across his knees. Neil felt it would be easy enough to take such a store, but it didn't feel right and he walked on. Ahead he saw a line of about twelve people outside a large Foodtown store. He went around to the back. The first rear entrance was locked but at the other end of the back of the building he saw another. A man with a white apron was exiting with an armload of boxes. When Neil followed him back to the door the clerk turned.

  `You can't come in this way,' the young man said.

  Neil pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and held it out to the clerk. Ì'd like to go in and do a little shopping for my family,' he said casually. The boy squinted at the bill, grimaced and shook his head. Ì just can't do it,' he said. 'The manager would know.' Neil let the hundred flutter to the ground and pulled out his gun.

  `Tell the manager I pulled a gun on you but that I promised to pay double for all my food.'

  Neil pushed past him, restoring his gun to his pants, and entered the back of the supermarket.

  Inside was frenzied order: it was a normal supermarket except that people were all moving twice as fast as usual and their trolleys were twice as full. The shelves were three-quarters empty. The room was noticeably unlit, the usual harsh glitter of a supermarket absent. Neil looked back at the aproned clerk - whom he noticed pocketing something, presumably the hundred - and patted his waist where the gun was. The boy smirked uneasily.

  Neil took an empty metal trolley and, putting in the bag of fishing gear, entered the fray. He knew he'd have to take what he could get. Which wasn't much. He found six cans of pears in syrup and eight cans of mixed fruit: that was all that was left in the canned fruit section.

  In the dried fruit section he was luckier. Since dried fruit was ridiculously expensive and not that necessary except to a starving man, there was a lot left. Neil took it all. There was still dried noodles and spaghetti and he threw a bunch of that in. A large bag of potatoes. Frozen and refrigerated foods he avoided and with that thought he became aware that Crisfield had no electricity. He wondered how much of the rest of the world also lacked it. There were dried crackers left and he grabbed some, but all the canned meats were gone.

  Forty minutes later, his trolley overflowing, Neil headed again for the back door. There was now a man standing beside it with a rifle held awkwardly with its butt on the floor. Neil took out all of the rest of his money, a hundred and sixty dollars, and held it out. .

  `To save time I'd like to leave this back way,' he said. `Here's what I owe plus a tip.'

  `What's the trouble, Calvin?' a man asked, coming up behind Neil.

  `He wants to leave the back way,' said Calvin.

  `Here's more than enough money to cover my purchases,' said Neil.

  `How much money you got?'

  À hundred and sixty dollars,' Neil said, handing it to him.

  `Shit, mister,' the manager said, taking the money. 'This don't cover much more than half what you've got there. Our prices are triple.'

  `Then I'll go to my boat and bring back more money.' `You do that.'

  Neil pulled out his gun and pointed it at the belly of the man with the rifle. Ì'll take my food with me now, though,' Neil said. `Won't I?' he asked the manager sharply.

  `Let him go,' the manager said, backing away.

  And Neil left.

  As he pushed the trolley across the bumpy backlot of the supermarket he felt relief. The food situation had been his greatest worry. Now, although what he'd bought normally wouldn't last six people more than a week at the most, rationed it might go a month. He'd even brought a large container of dog food for the meat content for humans. He picked up speed when he hit the smoother sidewalk of the main street. It was almost five o'clock, and if Macklin had obtained the puller, he could start work on the propeller shaft before Frank got back. If Frank got back.

  When he came around the corner to head to the dock Neil stopped. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Ahead of him was the fishing trawler Lucky Emerald, and in front of it was nothing. Vagabond was gone.

  16

  Abandoning the food cart in the parking lot Neil ran to the edge of the dock, his eyes searching the water for the trimaran. It wasn't in sight. Even while the dread in his stomach told him the boat had been pirated he tried to think of why else it might have been moved. Frank had returned and taken it to a boat yard . . . But they would have left someone to tell him, and as he let his eyes search up and down along the docks he saw no sign of either Vagabond or a member of its crew.

  He needed a boat he could use to give chase. But chase where?

  Àhoy, Lucky Emerald!' he shouted at the trawler. A big, red-faced man came to the door of the deckhouse and looked down.

  `What happened to the trimaran?' he shouted up.

  The man looked to where Vagabond had been, then out into the bay.

  `Sailed out of here close to an hour ago,' he said. `Was there any trouble aboard?'

  `Not that I saw.'

  `Where'd she head?'

  The man stroked his chin and scowled.

  `Southwest,' he said. 'Out the main channel.'

  `Have you got a small boat I can borrow to give chase? Neil asked. 'My boat's been stolen.'

  The man shook his head.

  Neil went back to his food trolley and wheeled it up to the dock next to the Lucky Emerald.

  `Keep an eye on this for me,' he shouted up and went to

  find a boat. Macklin had pirated Vagabond. Neil raged at his own stupidity. He'd assumed Macklin wasn't a sailor and wouldn't try anything with a motorless sailing boat, but if he found a puller he may have felt he should take Vagabond while the taking was good. Poor Jim.

  Over the next forty minutes Neil went down the docks and to two marinas trying to buy, borrow or steal some craft with which he could pursue his trimaran. No one would help him. Twice he was turned away by someone with a gun. After he'd gone to the last dock in the village he turned back in fury. He stopped a young man walking along carrying a fuel tank and asked him for help but got another `Sorry, fellow.' On the street again, a police car came towards him with its siren wailing and Neil tried to wave it down. It whizzed past.

  At the dock where Vagabond had been tied he saw Frank standing with his hands in his pockets staring dull-eyed out at the water.

  `Frank!' he called.

  `Where are you hiding Vagabond?' Frank asked with a puzzled frown as Neil came up to him.

  `She's gone, Frank,' he answered. 'Stolen. Close to two hours ago.'

  Frank's al
ready tired face looked stunned.

  `Wh ... what?'

  `Two men, I think,' he went on. 'And as far as I know Jim and Jeanne Forester and her children are still aboard.'

  `Stolen?' Frank repeated, looking bewildered. He walked past Neil to the edge of the dock to look out the channel towards the bay. Several gulls circled behind a small runabout but there was no sign of Vagabond.

  `We've got to get a fast boat and catch Vagabond before she gets too far down the bay,'

  Neil said to him.

  Frank looked at Neil with glazed eyes and didn't reply. He hadn't shaved and looked haggard. He turned back to the water.

  'If Vagabond gets too far away there's no hope for any of us,' Neil persisted. 'I can't get through to the Coast Guard by phone. We've probably got to get Vagabond ourselves. In another few hours everything will be lost.'

  Neil saw that Frank was in shock and he felt a similar helplessness beginning to flood his own body. A small fishing smack putted slowly by along the channel and the little old man standing stiffly at the wheel looked at Neil and smiled and winked. Neil, engrossed, didn't register anything at first and then came alive.

  `Hey, captain! Ahoy there!' he shouted, and ran to the edge of the dock. The old man was facing forward again and Neil thought he must not have heard. He felt his shoulders slump, but the fishing smack abruptly swung left away from them and kept circling until it was motoring back to. the dock. As Neil watched and Frank came up beside him, the boat, the Lucy Mae, angled into the dock.

  `That boat's too slow,' Frank said.

  `Not with this light wind and rising tide,' Neil answered and watched as the Lucy Mae coasted forward, banging first one piling and then the next, and being stopped inches short of the Lucky Emerald only by the old fisherman's wrapping a line around a piling.

  `Pretty neat, huh?' the bald old man on the Lucy Mae said, smiting a big grin. 'Ain't got no reverse. Makes docking a challenge. Help you, Cap?'

  `Yes,' Neil said quickly. 'Pirates stole our trimaran about two hours ago and kidnapped four of our people, including a woman, two children.'

  `You own that big three engine spaceship?' the old man interrupted.

  `Yes.'

  `Saw her sailing out of here about four-thirty,' the old man said. 'Thought I'd got trapped in a Star Wars movie. Nice ship though, if you don't mind looking like you just got in from Mars. When I ....'