Despite myself, I frowned. Yes, we had found another boat on one of our recent excursions, a bass boat that had been wedged against the building. It had a few holes in its hull, but I’d patched these as well as I could, and it seemed watertight. I just wasn’t ready quite yet to trust our safety to it.
“I dunno,” I began, but it was too late. She’d already seen the frown, already read its intention.
“You don’t let me do anything!” she said, standing so abruptly that her chair skittered backward, tumbled over. She paid it no attention.
“How can I learn to do stuff when you won’t let me do anything? Ever. I can’t spend my life cooped up here, Daddy! I can’t! It’s not fair.”
I put my fork down, suddenly not hungry. “I can’t…it’s just that…I can’t lose you, Cass. I can’t.”
This only seemed to make her madder, though.
“Mom died. I get it. But that was a long time ago, and it wasn’t your fault, Daddy! I’m not Mom. You’ve got to let me live, Dad. You’ve got to let me do stuff. Or I may as well be dead!”
I started to stand, to go to her, to comfort her, but she wasn’t ten years old anymore, and she wanted me to know that the same arguments we’d been having couldn’t be settled with the same old solutions. No more hugs, no more words of comfort, no more sharing my worries, no more empty promises of tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Cassie screamed at me, a wordless, strangled burst of dense, frustrated anger that shattered the relative silence of the kitchen, reverberated off every pane of glass. Then, bursting into the tears she hated, she turned on her heel and ran from the room.
Standing there for a minute, not quite sure of what to do, I fell back into the chair, held the cup of coffee, still warm in my hands.
I turned, looked out the windows onto a swirling, grey day.
I’d need a heavier coat to check the solars and the water plant this morning.
* * *
The next few days were frosty, both inside and out.
The weather got progressively colder, until it was nearly arctic. The wind whipped and whistled between the buildings, stirred up the foamy sea until the water lashed at the exposed buildings. I spent a frigid hour hauling the boat as far into the exposed thirty-eighth floor as I could, to ensure that it wasn’t swept out to sea.
The water was coming up, just as Cassie had said. But I’d already known this. It was at least two or three feet into this floor. Just a foot or two more, and we would no longer be able to use this staging area. We’d have to figure a way to move the boats higher.
It was just a matter of time.
I stood in the gaping hole there on the thirty-eighth floor, watched the storm-whipped waves, saw chunks of ice bobbing on the whitecaps raised by the storm. Sleet fell in an almost solid sheet, hissed and spat like a sandstorm. Upstairs, the outside of the penthouse was completely enclosed in a layer of ice inches thick, and I’d been unable to check on the solars or the water rig for several days.
I supposed they still worked. They’d been through worse. But today and the day before were so cold that I’d had to turn on some portable electric space heaters to keep the pipes inside from freezing—to keep us from freezing. And I was beginning to worry that, should this storm hold out, the power certainly would not.
Cold and sopping wet, I started the climb of the nearly thirty floors back up to the penthouse, feeling every step in my aching knees, my burning lungs.
Old.
I was old, getting older. What was I doing holding her back, protecting her to the point that I allowed her to do nothing? She was right. Someday—hopefully far off, but who knew?—I’d be gone, and she’d be left to herself.
Alone.
For a few years after the deluge, we listened for the dim, intermittent broadcasts on the old crank radio I’d found. But then nothing, nothing for at least a decade, so long ago we didn’t even bother to listen anymore.
And in the last thirteen years, we had seen few people, a testament to the extent of the devastation. I had been too afraid to approach these people, seen at a distance from the penthouse, in small boats, drifting. Probably people like me and Cassie, subsisting, shocked from the loss of it all. Too afraid to reach out to others, too raised on apocalyptic movies from before, where the people who were left killed each other in the competition for the meager remaining resources.
So, we continued alone, not listening for more people, not watching for more people. And at some point, I stopped caring about others. I had written them off years ago, just as I had my wife.
I was alone.
We were alone.
Alone.
I let that thought seep in as I rounded the forty-ninth floor.
How could I do that to Cassie, though?
How could I leave her alone with so little knowledge of the world?
I was crippling her, I realized.
Feeling ashamed and depressed, I finally ascended the stairwell to the penthouse access, came inside, barred the door. I passed my daughter’s room, closed, probably locked though I didn’t check.
For a moment, it seemed as if all the cold in the world was pressed up against the other side of that door, radiating out toward me, only me.
Sighing, I moved on to my own room, opened the door onto a wave of soothing heat. I’d left the space heater on with the door closed, so now I could peel off my sodden clothing, towel dry and put on clean, warm clothes, climb into bed and sleep away the grey day.
I’d worry about the weather, the dwindling electrical power tomorrow. Right now, the warmth of the space heaters, the scritch-scratch of the sleet against the windows lulled me into a kind of sleep.
* * *
Dense.
The water was dense and cold in the dream, colder than I remembered, thicker than water should be. I saw ice floes rise and fall on the wind-wracked waves, felt the close, wet cold that penetrated to the bone, clutched at the heart.
But my numb hands felt hers, just as they always did.
I was afraid to open my dream eyes, but they opened of their own volition.
I saw her face, Connie’s face, rimed with ice, her hair clotted with it, her eyebrows and cheeks frosted.
She slid slowly down into the dusky water, but I still seemed unable to get to her quickly enough.
Our fingers slid against each other, impersonal as icebergs.
And then, as always, she was gone, falling slowly, a leaf swirling away into the condensed darkness of the sea.
And, as always, I awoke in my bed, sweating, gasping, sobbing.
Alone.
* * *
“There’s gonna be some rules, you understand?”
Cassie looked up from her bowl of cereal. I had been up early, breaking into the stores of dried cereal from ages ago, vacuum-packed and still mostly fresh. I’d stirred up a jug of powdered milk and even found a few bags of the tea she liked.
It was all waiting for her when she had stumbled into the kitchen earlier, bundled up for what we both feared would be another frigid day. But during the night, the capricious weather shifted again, and the clouds peeled away, leaving the sky a clean slate from which the sun shone down unencumbered. Though only 8:00 a.m., the temperature was already above sixty degrees and promised to break seventy.
Cassie had shuffled to her chair, raised her eyebrows, poured milk over her cereal, begun to eat.
When I finally spoke, smiling at her over the rim of my cup, she looked blankly at me, as if not comprehending the words coming from my lips.
“Understand?” I asked again.
“Rules?” she repeated, milk dribbling from her lips.
“Yeah, like no going beyond a four block radius of the tower. Like no going inside buildings. Keeping radio contact at all times.”
Realization dawned on her face, and Cassie smiled.
“Like listening to me when I say it’s time to come in. Like—”
“I get it, I get,” she said, standing and throwing her
arms around me. “Thanks, Daddy! I love you.”
I kissed her head, touched her hair.
“I love you, too, sweetie. And I’m sorry. I got to thinking about what I’m doing and why. You’re right. I’m smothering you.”
She peeled herself away, sat back in her chair. I half expected her to protest what I was saying, but she didn’t. And I knew she was right not to.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said, eating her cereal. “I wondered what the occasion was for the cereal.”
I took a swig of coffee. “Living life. I’ve got to let you do it. Otherwise, what’s the point of surviving?”
She chewed her cereal happily, bopping a little in her chair.
“So, today…”
“No, not today. First, I have to be sure the weather will hold, and that all this ice will melt. Then we need to have some lessons in the boat, with the walkie-talkies. You have to convince me that you’re ready for this before I let you go.”
She frowned a little, but her smile returned quickly. “Okay, Daddy. Then can we spend today going over that stuff? Just in case the weather is clear tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
* * *
It was a few days—a few agonizing days, as far as Cassie was concerned—waiting for me to be confident of the weather, of her abilities with the boat, of her willingness to follow the rules I’d set forth.
But when the day came, it was glorious. The sky was blue, the sun white-hot. The water was calm as a pane of glass, smooth as a bed sheet stretched taut. She awoke early that day, started breakfast—nothing too elaborate, nothing that I might linger over. Cassie wanted to get out onto the water, and I chuckled as she waited for me to eat , impatiently watching me drink a second cup of coffee.
I walked with her down the smelly, mildewed stairwell to the thirty-eighth floor, went inside the apartment we used as the boat landing. I delayed a little longer, explaining a few things that I’d already gone over the last few days.
“Daddy, I know, I know!” she said, almost vibrating with eagerness.
“Hey, give me a break. It’s not easy for me to hand over the car keys to my little girl for the first time.”
She gave me a funny look, and I hugged her tight.
In the end, I passed her a backpack loaded with bottled water, some emergency rations, a crank flashlight, some flares, a blanket, knife, first aid kit and her boat shoes. I also gave her one of the walkie-talkies, fully charged and ready to go.
Then, I kissed her on the cheek, sent her out into the world, her world.
For the first time.
Alone.
I watched her lower the boat, watched her row away to the west, pausing to look back several times, wave. Her confidence made my heart ache.
When she had turned the corner, I made the long climb back upstairs, checked the solars, checked the water unit, slumped into a chaise lounge near the pool and waited for her voice over the walkie-talkie.
Cassie came back in about four hours, literally the longest afternoon of my life.
She radioed that she’d found a shoal of debris lodged against the side of a partially exposed structure. It was made up mostly of cars that had been swept there by the water. Somehow, they had piled into a cairn, atop something that prevented them from sinking like millions of their brethren.
I advised her that the pile was likely very unstable and told her to stay away from it. She radioed back that she saw a large truck, a moving van, whose rear was exposed and open, filled with stuff.
I told her to stay away and silence was my only answer for more than fifteen minutes.
When she came back on, she told me, calmly, despite my anger, that she had found a few things and was returning home.
I helped her bring the boat in, tie it up. She showed me what she’d found, mostly odds and ends— books, some fishing equipment, a bag stuffed with medicines and toiletries.
And a telescope.
A simple refractor telescope, nothing fancy, nothing too dissimilar from that used by Galileo.
And like Galileo’s, this telescope opened Cassie’s world and just as effectively brought to an end the old world of her father.
* * *
Cassie was an energetic chatterbox for the remainder of the day. She helped me lug her finds up the endless stairwell to our apartment, hovered over me as I examined each item. One overnight bag was crammed with toiletries—several tubes of toothpaste, still pasty; deodorant; some soap; shampoo; perfumes. Obviously a woman’s bag. She couldn’t have been more delighted by this find if she’d stumbled onto a sack of money.
No, she was more so, because, I realized not for the first time, that she’d never been around money, never lived in a world that used or even needed it. She had a collection of money in her room, pinned to her bulletin board, from hoards of the stuff we’d found over the years. Even some $1000 bills. Without actually counting it, I supposed that she had more than $10,000 in her room, nothing more than decoration.
The reel of the fishing pole was rusted and didn’t spin, but I had a can of WD-40 stashed somewhere that might get it working again. Besides, in this new world, you didn’t throw anything out. Everything had a use or might have a use.
Someday.
The books came in helpful. One was a Physicians’ Desk Reference, the ’19 edition. Sure, it was sixteen years old, but there’d hardly been any advances in prescription medication since it was published. I had actually been searching for one of these for years, eager to have a better understanding of some of the medicines we’d found.
Cassie beamed proudly as I flipped through it. The book was somewhat water-damaged, but still intact. Its pages could still be turned. I kissed her cheek and told her what a great find she’d snagged.
Then, the telescope.
She had only a limited idea of what it was, what it could do. I examined it closely, wiping it down with a soft cloth to clear some of the dirt. It was a high-end device, composed mostly of bronze, sitting atop a teakwood tripod. All of its parts seemed present, and it looked as if it would work with no problem.
It was a simple refractor, with a prism in the eyepiece to correct the upside-down image. Because of this, I supposed that it had belonged to a wealthy condo owner who used it more to look at the ocean and other condo owners than the night sky.
With her following closely behind, I took it out to the patio around the pool, set it up. It did work, with some minor distortion, probably from condensation in the tube or in the eyepiece. I undid a few screws, carefully wiped what I could see, and put it all back together.
This accomplished, I put my eye to the lens and scanned the area. It had pretty good magnification, clearly showing details from structures that were ten blocks away. Practically bouncing out of her skin with impatience, Cassie pestered me to take a look.
When she did, she grew quiet. She had paid attention to how I had manipulated the device, focused it with the knurled brass knob just as I’d shown her. Back and forth, here and there, she aimed, focused, aimed focused.
I laughed, patted her on her bare, slightly sunburned shoulder.
“Don’t stay out here too long, honey. You need to get some ointment on those burns before they get worse.”
She said nothing, so I went in to get a glass of water, skim the Physicians’ Desk Reference a little more closely.
* * *
It didn’t take long.
In fact, I wondered how long they had been there, only a few blocks to the north and east, there on what used to be Eighteenth Street, west of Pace Park and the Opera Tower, just east of the cemetery.
* * *
The next morning came early, after another nightmare. I threw myself from bed, still damp from the night sweats the dream brought with it, dressed quickly in shorts and a t-shirt, went into the kitchen for coffee. The day was dull, the sun obscured by a thin, hazy layer of low clouds. The air was dense, humid and promised temperatures in the 100s.
I wished that I had ice for
my coffee, but ice in a drink was something from yesterday. Maybe again in a lot of tomorrows, but not today. I wandered onto the patio, watched the sunlight play on the pool. Sometime today, I knew, I’d be dipping into that for a while to cool off.
Cassie stood at the northeastern edge of the railing peering into her new toy. Its brass gleamed in the washed-out light, looking like the only real thing there on the roof.
She turned, gave me an energetic wave, went back to her observations.
Settling into a lounge chair, I sipped at the coffee, already regretting the choice on this warm day. I set it aside on a low table, laid back into the chair.
I was already falling asleep in the lazy, humid sun when her voice pulled me back.
“Ummm, Daddy? Daddy!”
I opened a squinting eye, braced my arms on either side of the chair to jump up if necessary. I was hyper-vigilant about her safety, but as any father of a teenage daughter knew, tone of voice was no real indication of the level of the emergency. “Daddy!” could mean anything from “I can’t find my pink top” all the way to “Help, I’m being kidnapped!”
Cassie was still bent over the telescope, but the face she turned toward me looked flushed, excited and alarmed all at once.
“What?” I growled, guessing that this was closer to the pink top scenario.
“You’d better come and look at this…now.”
“Why? You see something?”
“Yeah!”
“What is it?”
“People.”
That single word jolted through my body like an arc of electricity, producing a multi-branching tree of responses.
People?
How many? Where? What were they doing?
What kind of danger did they represent?
My arms already positioned, though now shaking somewhat, I did launch myself up, ran around the pool to where she stood.
“Let me see,” I said, firmly moving her aside and lowering my head to the eyepiece.
People.
Dear God, people, and more than a few of them.
The End in All Beginnings Page 16
