I dropped my eyes down to the interior of the boat. While I could, theoretically, take this boat all the way to Philadelphia, I had no desire to do so. It was too small, for one thing—I wasn’t going to sleep in a ball every night. Still, being on the water was probably safer than going over land, at least for the moment; the only problem was that it was going to add on a lot of time and distance. The best place to cut over from the Pacific to the Atlantic would be the Panama Canal, and I had no idea if it was still in operation.
Going around the tip of South America—past Cape Horn—was also possible, although it would add a huge amount of time and risk. I certainly was not doing that in this boat, especially since it would be winter there. Even if I found a different boat, it would be better to cut across Panama, whether I was able to use the canal or not. From there, it would be a—relatively—short journey across the Caribbean, and I had to believe there would still be boats moving around there. Maybe I could find someone willing to take me up the East Coast. Or I could requisition a new boat. If I made it to New Orleans, I might be able to acquire some aid. Teledyne had an office and a support facility there; if they hadn’t been nuked, I might be able to get some help.
But first, it was time to get my Nordhavn.
Because you could still travel in class in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Eleven
I raised the anchor and worked my way back up the Multnomah Channel. People were a lot more on edge today, and nearly everyone I saw was armed. They stared at me as I passed as if I might rob them, even though I stayed to the far side of the waterway, trying to look as unsuspicious as someone traveling the day after the apocalypse could. All of them assumed—and they weren’t wrong—that I was up to no good. They just didn’t know that my future larceny had nothing to do with them.
I waved, but only a couple waved back. Most continued to stare at me. I didn’t stare; I kept scanning my surroundings. That was a lot healthier. They stared so hard that, if I’d been a distraction, my partner could have snuck up behind them, and they’d never have noticed. Luckily for them, I wasn’t.
Because I was scanning, I saw the ambush well before I got to it. Someone had noticed, probably after watching the traffic going up and down the channel, that most of the people on the water were sticking to the side of the waterway away from civilization, and they had set up an ambush at a dock on the far side of the river. There was some sort of metal box on the dock, and I saw movement behind it.
Sighing, I slowed the boat to idle and pulled out my binoculars. Sure enough, I could see a rifle poking out from behind the box. Not only that, I spotted an accomplice hiding behind a tree on the shoreline. On the side of the river opposite the ambush, I could see two people working on a small boat about the size of the one I was driving. Unlike everyone else on the river, though, those two weren’t watching me. In fact, they appeared to be doing everything they could to look anywhere but at me.
I put the binoculars down and throttled back up. Obviously, the two with rifles planned to shoot at me as the other two swooped in on me with their boat. It probably would have worked on most anyone else. The riflemen would have a stable platform to fire from, while their prospective target would have to fire from a boat wallowing in the channel.
They hadn’t realized I wasn’t just anyone; I was a Teledyne Specialist.
I eased the boat closer to the side of the river the ambush was on, but just before I got to where the men waited, I swung the wheel to the left. I yanked the throttle back right before I impacted the bank, grabbed my rifle and the anchor, and leaped from the boat. I dropped the anchor once I was over land—I didn’t want to be burdened with it, but I didn’t want my boat and supplies to float away, either. Freed from the encumbrance, I took a step as I touched down, then dove forward into a roll on the grass while protecting the rifle. I came up to a kneeling position as the first ambusher raced toward me.
My first round hit him in the chest, and he stopped and looked down at the spreading stain on his shirt. I shot him again, just to make sure, and he crumpled to the ground as I spun toward the second ambusher.
He’d run down the dock to land and had taken cover behind a large tree on the bank. Feeling rather exposed, I ran forward to another tree, then dropped to a prone position behind it. The man fired several times, and I could hear the rounds pass above me. Using my elbows and knees, I crawled forward a little, so I could see around the tree. Apparently, my lack of return fire had convinced him that he had shot me, and he was easing around the tree he was hiding behind to see if I was down.
I wasn’t, and I shot him in the face.
By now, the two men in the boat were racing across the channel, with one guy driving and the other on the bow, looking through his scope, probably trying to figure out what was going on. It took me three tries to hit the driver—it was a long way, and the water was choppy—but I shot him center mass. As he fell backward, he yanked the throttles back with him, and the man on the bow was catapulted into the water.
Knowing the men on land were dead, I ran back to my boat, jumped in, and drove off. I guess I could have swung by the man floundering in the water, but they’d already made me waste a bunch of ammo, and I really wasn’t much of a cold-blooded killer. When not “on the job,” anyway. His boat was nearby, and he was free to go, as long as he didn’t come after me. If he did…it would be his last mistake.
I cruised on upriver, waving to a few people on the far side of the channel who had watched the failed ambush. If they’d known the would-be ambushers or cared about them in any way, they didn’t show it. No one waved back. I shrugged.
Manners were the first things to go in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Twelve
The marina appeared deserted when I arrived. A few of the boats were missing, although my Nordhavn was still in its slip. I drove back and forth a couple of times, inspecting the marina from the far side of the channel, before moving closer.
Coming back was a risk—the manager had a rifle and would know I had taken an extra key if he surveyed the key box. Still, everything I did would be a risk, and acquiring transportation was something I had to do. I was an okay pilot and might have been able to steal a plane—it was a far more direct approach than trying to take a boat to Philly—but it would have been easy to trap me as I landed or shoot me out of the sky. Although the trip would be longer, a boat was more likely to get me there. And maybe, in the interim, someone would kill the Obsidian bosses. It was possible, even if I doubted I would actually be that lucky.
Not seeing the manager, I approached the marina and pulled into the empty slip next to the Nordhavn. I tied up to it and began offloading my gear. It was hard holding a pistol and doing most of it one-handed, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched, and my instincts were normally pretty good. Something was wrong, even if I couldn’t figure out what it was. I kept an eye on the office building and as much of the pier complex as I could see, but I never saw the manager.
Shrugging, I holstered the pistol, picked up a load of gear, and stepped aboard the Nordhavn. It was, quite simply, stunning. The teak deck was in perfect condition, as was all of the paint I could see. The equipment appeared to be where it belonged, too; in fact, everything I could see was the definition of “ship-shape.” Smiling at my choice of boats, I walked into the cabin…and into the barrel of the manager’s rifle.
“Gotcha now, Bitch,” the man said, poking me in the stomach.
I looked down. His finger was around the trigger. I looked back up as I flooded my system with adrenaline, and I smiled at him. He wouldn’t be fast enough.
A good night’s sleep had completely recharged my augmented body, and I was far faster than anything he’d ever seen. I slammed the bag of ammo I was carrying down into the rifle, then off to the side; the bullet grazed my hip as his much slower reflexes finally got around to pulling the trigger.
I released the bag and ste
pped to the side, then drove forward into him, putting all of my considerable mass behind the ulna strike to his trachea. Off balance, he started to backpedal, but his legs caught the small coffee table behind him, and he went over backward onto it. I rode him all the way down, and crushed his trachea as we slammed into it, then again when the table broke, and we crashed to the floor.
His eyes bulged out as he tried to breathe but couldn’t, and I stood him up as his hands went to his throat, not believing—or even understanding—what had happened to him. Before his thoughts could turn to his next move, I pulled him out to the transom, shot him once through the chest, and threw him backward off the back of the boat. Still unable to catch a breath, he struggled weakly, but then the dark waters of the Multnomah Channel closed over his head, and I didn’t see him again.
Don’t threaten someone if you can’t back it up in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Thirteen
Having dumped the boat’s garbage, I brought the rest of my gear onboard and threw the remnants of the coffee table overboard. It was really a shame; the coffee table had been nicer than any of the furniture I’d had in my house.
I took a quick tour of the yacht, carefully, to ensure I didn’t have any other stowaways. The rest of the ship—like the now deceased coffee table—was nicer than anything I’d ever owned. Not that I really owned it now…aside from possession being nine tenths of the law, or however that old saying went. The interior was nearly all wood, with granite countertops in the kitchen spaces. It was incredibly beautiful.
Until I got to the bridge, which was beyond incredible—it was mind boggling. There were more dials, switches, and screens than I knew what to do with. I wasn’t sure where to begin. A plane would have been simpler.
I was about to walk up to the office to get another boat when movement caught my eye, and I looked up. Standing on the dock in front of the boat was a young man wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. His hands were well away from his sides but snapped up above his head when he saw my pistol. He mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear it, so I went outside on the bridge wing.
“What?” I asked.
“Will Mr. Courvoisier be coming down today?” the man asked.
“Who?”
“Mr. Courvoisier.” He nodded at the boat. “He owns the boat.”
“Not anymore, he doesn’t,” I replied. “I need it for a trip, and if Mr. Cour—whatever you said his name was—lives in Portland, he won’t need it anymore.”
“Mr. Courvoisier and his husband live in San Francisco, but they fly up here on the weekends to take the boat out. He usually calls ahead of time. I help crew it for him.”
“Do you know how to start the damn thing?”
“Of course. There’s no sense having a boat like this if you don’t ever leave the dock.”
“How’d you like to crew it for me?”
“You mean…like now?”
“Yeah. You got anything better to do?”
“Well, not really. All my shit got wasted in Portland. I was out hiking when it happened. Didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I came here. Figured I could live on the boat, maybe, until Mr. Courvoisier showed up…if he showed up.”
“So, you were thinking of taking it, too.” It wasn’t a question.
“Well, not really taking it, man. Just living in it until he got here, y’know.”
“But since Frisco probably got nuked, too…”
“It beats living in the woods, man,” he said, shrugging. “It’s a damn nice boat.”
“That it is,” I replied. “The offer still stands. I could use someone to help get me to Philly. If you want to come along, you’re welcome.”
“Philly, huh? Umm, there ain’t no easy way to get there. Like, you’d have to go through the canal or all the way around South America. This thing can go like 3,000 miles or something like that on a tank of gas…but South America’s bigger than that.”
“I’m hoping to use the canal if it’s working. If it isn’t, I’ll go overland and find a new boat.”
“What are you going to do with this boat if you do that?”
“I’ll have to leave it behind. You come along, you can have it if that happens.”
“Really? You’ll let me have it?”
“Sure. I won’t be coming back, no matter how my mission turns out. If you drive me down to the Panama Canal, you can have it.”
“Cool, man, I’m in.” He turned and started walking away.
“Where you going?”
“I’m going to get my camping gear. I’ll also grab some fishing gear from the office if you want. I don’t know how much food you brought, but we’ll probably want to fish on the way down to supplement it.”
I mentally slapped myself on the forehead. Fishing gear would be awfully helpful, and now that he mentioned it, I hadn’t seen any onboard. “Courvoisier not do any fishing?”
“Naw, man; he hated it. He wouldn’t let anyone else do it from his boat, either. Said it was ‘bad for the environment’ or some shit.”
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ll be right down, and we can see what else we might need from the store.”
“Okay,” he said, shrugging. “Just don’t get on Frank’s bad side.”
“Frank?”
“Yeah, Frank runs the store and lives out back. He can be a total dick if you don’t treat him like royalty.” He laughed. “Like managing a marina is such a big thing.” He shrugged. “Haven’t seen him today, though, so he may have run into Portland or something and may have gotten whacked.”
I nodded. “You never know. Having an attitude like that probably isn’t healthy these days.”
And attacking a Specialist is never good for your survival prospects in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Fourteen
We cleaned out the store, taking all the big fishing rods, along with the gear, lures, and anything else fishing-related we could find. We also took a wide selection of engine stuff, lubricants, and anything else that looked valuable. By now, anyone who was going to come here would already have done so, so it was just going to go to waste if we left it.
That’s what I said to the guy—whose name turned out to be Jimmy—and he appeared to mostly believe it. His girlfriend had lived in downtown Portland. They’d had a fight, and he’d gone camping to “get away from everything and clear his head.” He’d come back to find out that the girlfriend—and everything he owned, which was at her house—was now gone. Although the lights were on in his head, I could see that he wasn’t really home—he was mostly going through the motions. Still, he did what I asked, mostly without questioning it, and he knew how to turn on the boat, which made him pretty damn indispensable.
He asked me if I wanted him to top off the fuel and water, which wasn’t something I’d thought of. I’d never operated a boat this big before—Zodiacs were more my thing.
It took us a couple of hours to get everything we wanted loaded onto the boat, and we completely filled the smaller guest stateroom with gear. I had taken the owner’s stateroom, and Jimmy had thrown his meager possessions into the other guest stateroom which, while not as nice as mine, was still a step up from the bunkroom he normally shared with the engineer when he went out with Mr. What’s-His-Name.
“Now what?” Jimmy asked as we dumped the last load in my room. To be fair, I had a lot more room than Jimmy, and one load didn’t take up much floor space.
“Now we get the hell out of here,” I replied. “We should have left a long time ago.”
“So, you want me to start it up?”
“We’re not getting any closer to this boat being yours,” I noted.
“Right.” He scampered off to the bridge. It’s great to know what buttons to push.
I followed behind, although my progress was more sedate than a “scamper.”
“What do you need me to do?” I asked once I caught up with him.
“Go down and untie us, then stand lo
okout at the bow. I can’t see anything right in front of the boat from here.”
I went down to the dock and untied the port side. As I went around to the other, I found two guys and a girl standing in front of it. I pulled out my pistol, but they didn’t even flinch. “Move back!” I ordered. Once again, they didn’t move; they just continued looking at the boat.
Despite what Obsidian said about me, I’m really not a cold-blooded killer, and there didn’t seem to be any need to waste precious ammo on them as they weren’t really doing anything threatening. There was room, and I walked past, ready to shoot them if they moved. They didn’t move, though, and I couldn’t tell if they were even breathing; they looked like zombies and it was starting to freak me out a little as I threw the last line onto the boat and jumped aboard.
I went to the bow where I could look up and signal Jimmy. “All lines aboard,” I yelled. I kept my eyes on the group as Jimmy backed the boat away, then went up to the bridge once we were out in deeper water. As we drove off, I looked back; they were still standing in the same place, although their eyes followed the boat as we drove down the channel.
I shook my head as we went around a bend and they disappeared out of sight. Some people are just too damn creepy in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Fifteen
There was a lot more traffic on the channel now, and we went up onto the flying bridge on the second level so we could get a better view. Most were smaller vessels—more like the first boat I stole—but some of the big ones, as well as some of the houseboats, were now underway. It was the first time I’d seen houseboats, and I wasn’t sure what to make of them. Sometimes several stories tall, they looked like real houses floating on the water. Most of them were bigger than our not-inconsiderable 64-foot length, and I kept a close eye on them as we passed. They did the same, and I could see people with rifles on the roofs of most of them.
The Price of Freedom Page 5
