As they came along the eastern point of Plum Island the waves began to grow, their foamy peaks whipped off by the breeze, sending salty spray across the deck. The crew reefed the sails in further, drawing the tack down along the masts and making them fast. For the first time in a long time, Dean allowed himself to feel genuine pleasure. He was removed from the isolation that was the banishment to Nantucket. He could mentally stretch his arms out again. As a descendent of explorers he needed to be free. To wander, to find adventure, was built into his DNA. As he breathed freely, taking in his surroundings anew, the puck’s unintended invasion of his senses seemed to dissipate. Perhaps that was the key: focus on something else and be aware that such focus would diminish the puck’s hold. He called for a tack and the three heavily timbered booms swung to port. Everyone shifted their weight as the Ginger Girl heeled to the opposite board. Eliza found herself briefly leaning against Dean for support. He glanced down at her face. The cold wind brought tears to the edges of her bright hazel eyes. She smiled at him briefly, caught her balance, and patted his gloved hand.
The pucks observed all of this, absorbed the emotions, and felt the gamut of sensations that both humans had felt. What Dean couldn’t know and what the puck’s knew intimately, was that Eliza’s pulse had quickened, that she had tried to stay it while regaining her balance, that the sensation troubled her as she attempted to concentrate on anything else but the man standing beside her. Stewart had also had a brief uptick in his heartbeat. For the pucks, this was new. Their primary experience with the human heart was one of fear and loathing. This was different. This was something that they had only read of in books: angst, warmth, yearning and regret, mild embarrassment, and most of all, hope, desire, and the fear their consequences.
Fascinating,” said one half of their shared mind.
I don’t think I like it.
No, not one bit.
As the Ginger Girl turned west, the crew let out her sails for the downwind run and the keel righted itself to almost level. Though she ran at a good clip, the following seas were faster, lifting the stern, rolling under the hull, then lifting the bow and carrying on toward the distant point that was the northern tip of Long Island. With the breeze at their backs the chill was less noticeable and the passengers who were unfamiliar with sailing felt more at ease. Wenfrin Blakely, for one, was very at ease on the sea. Growing up in San Pedro near the Port of Los Angeles, he had owned a small day sailor given to him by his father who was a local yacht-racing champion. Most of his idle time as a youth was taken up with an old Catalina Capri 14.2, and as he became more confident over the years he would take the small open boat across to Catalina Island and eventually up to the Channel Islands. Once he graduated from university and decided to fully embrace the world of law enforcement, he’d let go of the joy of the ocean. Now, as he leaned on the stern rail that rose up and down with the swell, he felt regret over that loss. He’d never sailed on anything so big as the Ginger Girl. He felt downright giddy; wanting to take the helm and call out commands to the sailors. Despite his underlying fear of the challenges ahead, he was also thrilled. He would be doing two of his favorite things: sailing and driving a locomotive. He would also be seeing home. He hoped that it wouldn’t be too much of a disappointment. Then his eye caught those of the pucks. They both looked rather pale. Heck, the male looked downright seasick. Shee-it, if they weren’t odd-looking creatures. His first reaction upon seeing them was that they were beings from the worst of nightmares, but now, looking like this: clothed in heavy snow gear that camouflaged what they really were… They looked downright pathetic with the big moving sea beyond them. Gretel reached out to his mind.
What are you looking at Black Blake?
Wen reeled back with the abrupt entrance of another consciousness in his head. Then Hansel joined in and Wen felt instantly, horribly seasick. Almost immediately he turned to the leeward rail and vomited. “Get out! You’re not supposed to be doing this!” he screamed out loud.
You think because we are ill that we are weak, Hansel barked into the recesses of his brain.
“No! Stop!” Wen heaved the last of his breakfast and continued to gag raw bile.
Hansel and Gretel spoke into his mind as one. We feel ill, but it is you who have lost self-control.
Eliza finally realized what was happening and glowered at the pucks. “Enough! You made a promise! You must not break your promise!” The pucks left Wen’s mind and looked instantly chastened. Eliza pointed at both of their faces. “Never again. Do you understand? If you break the trust of these people you do not get to go on the trip. If you break the trust of these people at anytime during the trip, you ruin it for us all. Do you children understand?”
The pucks sheepishly nodded. Hansel clacked his sharp teeth together and then ran his tongue across them as though trying to get rid of a foul taste.
“Say it aloud,” barked Eliza.
The pucks spoke at the same time, “Never again.”
Eliza turned to Wen. “I’m sorry, Mr. Blakely.”
Wen looked deeply shaken. “I’m going to clean up.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stepped down the gangway toward the head below.
When the Ginger Girl came out of the lee of the island and turned northeast again, the squall that had been slowly closing in hit her bow full in the face. Icy wind, sleet and heavy wet snow lashed into everyone on deck. The effect was like switching from a cold damp breeze to being blasted by a fire hose of freezing water. All of this while the ship heeled dramatically. The sails were further reefed and Captain Dean guided his guests down below to his aft quarters. As the pucks stepped down the gangway, they turned as one to look back. Mr. Burrows stood at the helm as though the weather didn’t affect him at all. He had lifted the solid visor up on his helmet. He winked at the pucks and spoke to them with only his mind. Watching you devils. And just so’s you know, it’s already been agreed. You make the littlest step toward betraying us and we’ll make you watch as we cut open your bellies and run your guts up the mast. Enjoy your tea. He smiled broadly and slammed the visor back down.
Below deck, Cookie had warm sandwiches and tea ready. Despite the intense rocking of the ship and a 25-degree angle to port (causing most of them to cling to the walls, table or any handhold available) everyone got to enjoy the bleed-over from the twin’s happy discovery of the cheese in the warm sandwiches. No one seemed to mind this particular invasion of his or her senses.
Dean gazed at the pucks and made strong eye contact with each of them. Neither of the odd looking people... were they people?... anyway, neither of them made any effort to enter his mind. Instead they seemed suddenly shy. There was just the surprise sensation of their youthful taste buds, so easily pleased with bread and salty fat, to remind him of his age and apparently already diminishing sense of smell and taste. He watched the others of this odd assortment of would-be-adventurers and found them to be equally at ease (perhaps the marshal was still a bit put off, but who could blame him). He turned to MacAfee. “Assuming things progress as they are now, when can we expect the rest of your team and when do we start this crazy mission? Summers may be getting longer, but it’s still going to be harsh weather out there and it’s only going to get worse as we dicker around.”
MacAfee smiled and gave a nod to Hernandez. “The rest of my team is here now. They’ve observed us on our two land excursions and at the beginning of today’s trip. Part of their assignment has been to determine whether our current helmet tech can shield us completely from the twins.”
The pucks stopped chewing and looked at each other. Gretel turned to the rest, “We have not been aware that others have been watching us.”
Hernandez let a brief smile escape from her lips. “That’s been our assessment as well.”
MacAfee said, “When we get back to the main lab, you’ll get to meet them. I think we can move forward as planned.”
The Ginger Girl was safely anchored and battened down against the c
ontinuing squall. The guests had returned to shore and Dean instructed his crew to meet in the galley. It was there that he told them of the gene therapy. That Elizaandra Sherr was a successful test. That but for a small bit of inactive bacteria harbored in the most primitive part of her brain, she showed no evidence of FNDz (aka Cain’s) in the rest of her body and was considered incapable of passing the disease to others. The ramifications of this were obvious. The entire crew would be offered this therapy – the only catch being that they had to volunteer to continue the mission. The government wasn’t prepared to administer any therapy without it being in a controlled situation. He then asked if there was anyone who was not prepared to move forward. No one raised his or her hand. When Dean left to return to his cabin the galley erupted into speculative glee.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sea Battle
Eighteen hours later, Plum Island fell below the horizon line as the Ginger Girl sailed south. The newcomers had been assigned a bunk and had already spent hours on a first, second and third attempt in a Virtusim training mission. Inside the sim, they were attempting to get an old N&W class steam locomotive up and running. Sergeant Tim Green was bored with his watch for potential Cain’s-addled zombies and/or their slightly more vicious children. A firm that hadn’t been informed on the real details of the mission had quickly built the simulation. This portion was focused on the team working through the myriad of difficult steps that would be their actual mission of getting a train engine, which had been built in the 1940’s, and most recently commissioned for tourist rides twenty years before, up and running and out of the purpose-built museum space that it was supposedly housed in. Then onto real working train tracks and fetching enough coal to make the thing independent enough to steam its way across the country. Oh, and find water for the engine and its canteen. The logistics were daunting. Given the short notice, the programmers had pulled some sims from the very Virtu-tactics war-gaming programs that Green used to train regular soldiers up in Nova Scotia. Having never met a puck, and given the fact that the government wanted to keep a lid on how dangerous the things could be, the programmers simply made the infected human’s kids a bit smarter and ten years old. Meanwhile, Wen and his “team of helpers,” as he called them (actually mechanically minded Ginger Girl crew members), were having a devil of a time getting the train out of the station, much less on its way across the country. While they struggled inside the museum, Sergeant Green and his squad mates, corporals Katherine KK Kelly and Ida ID Gomez, had wiped out their potential adversaries in short order. The simulated infected people and their frightful but poorly simulated children were stacked up like cordwood down Hull Street. Green spotted Chief Hernandez – Dez – who had positioned herself along with Colonel MacAfee between the goings on in the train museum and the massacre on the street. MacAfee was armed with a Glock and a dictation stick. Green could see the colonel’s lips moving as he spoke into the stick. He caught Green’s look and paused to nod a good job before continuing with his verbal note taking.
Wen and his team had managed to lubricate all the moving parts of the big locomotive. The huge glossy black painted machine appeared in the Virtusim to be fully restored to mint condition. Wen figured that after a decade of winter, that was probably optimistic, but that was beside the point. Getting the monster out the door was proving to be much more difficult than he ever considered. His team had put water in the boiler and had gotten a fire going in her belly using nearby timber. In the sim anyway, there hadn’t been any coal lying around. Coal and the cars to carry it were down the line at the Contex power plant.
As Green watched from his position across the street, he heard yelling, then smoke began to pour out of the museum and everyone had to evacuate. Blakely stepped out of the glassed-in train showroom last, cursed at the sky, then made a gesture toward his head like he was taking off a hat and disappeared from view.
In the real world, all of this was taking place in the galley of the Ginger Girl while the whaling vessel was under full sail. Her destination: Richmond, Virginia and the Old Dominion Train Museum. Wen finished ripping his helmet off and screamed for real in front of all the others who sat around him still immersed in the simulation. One by one they took their helmets off too.
MacAfee, who had a real dictation stick in his hand, glared at Blakely. “You can’t do that, Wen. You can’t just walk out of the simulation. We have the simulation so that we can get it right. If we get smoked out when we are really there, we have to figure out what to do to solve it.”
Blakely slammed the table. “This fuckin’ sim, pardon my French, is a piece of shit. The only thing that’s gonna happen that is real down there is that old train isn’t going nowhere, cause it’s a rotting hulk in a weather-beaten old building with snow-buried, iced-over, rusty old tracks and switching gear that’s rusted solid. Whoever wrote this piece of shit program, pardon my French, had his head up his ass. This is a stupid waste of time. And fuck if, pardon my French, them Virtu children zombies is nothing but a joke compared to Hansel and Gretel here, who given half a chance, could mess our shit up and we wouldn’t even get out of the station anyway. The only thing this sim has been good for is showing us the reality of the folly you got us on.” Wen held up a hand and counted off his fingers. “Sail up the Chesapeake as far as we can, hike to this train with all of our gear, get a nearly hundred year old steam engine up and running, get it out on to the main track, get ourselves some water.” He started on the next hand. “Get ourselves some coal and then get ourselves all the way across the country against who knows what kind of fucked up, pardon my French, mess left over after the Exodus and years of nuclear winter and maybe Cain’s folks and their young’uns. Get ourselves to a big ass ship in the Port of Los Angeles that none of us except one dude on this whaling ship is remotely qualified to operate.” He started counting on the other hand again. “Get that big ship out of what must be a disaster of a harbor, sail all the way down to Nicaragua and hope, hope that big ass, pardon my French, new canal is open enough and still working, so we can get to the other side, then come all the way back up here and expect not to be long dead. What was I thinking when I signed up for this shit? Pardon my French. That’s right, I don’t have rights anymore! Oh, and trying to do all of this while not puking under sail.”
McAfee smiled. “Well, when you put it like that, Wenfrin, you make it almost sound like a romantic saga.” Blakely offered a gruff chuckle in response. “That’s why we have the sim,” continued the Colonel. “Now let’s get back in there and figure out how not to smoke ourselves out.”
Wen looked sideways at the Colonel then shrugged. “Heck with it. Not like I’ve got better to do.” He looked at the handful of sailors who were his engineering team. “Let’s get that room aired out, boys.” He put his helmet on and everyone else followed suit.
After another two hours of seemingly fruitless labor, and the gunning down of the occasional wandering zombie, the front end of the big black steam engine slowly emerged from its resting place. Suddenly the sim froze and like a god from above, George Sander’s voice broke through. “All hands. We have a vessel sighted two miles off our starboard bow.” Everyone pulled their helmets off and immediately scrambled up the gangway.
It was wintery dusk topside with patches of ice and small icebergs drifting by. A light but steady breeze kept the Ginger Girl’s sails full. Dean and his officers stood along the starboard rail holding various binoculars. Though it was getting late in the day, the full sails of a three-masted barque could be seen on the horizon. The boat was on a reach and was clearly pointed in a way that would cause it to intercept the Ginger Girl. McAfee, Dez, Wen and Eliza joined the men at the rail. McAfee said, “Down here? We should be approximately twelve miles out from Ocean City. A dead city. No reason for a sail coming from that direction.”
“Nope,” said Dean.
Sanders said, “Jamesbonds would have spotted it sooner but mistook it for another iceberg. Fact, there’s enough bergs out
here I was, with the Captain’s permission, about to angle us toward shore. We need to find an anchorage until tomorrow’s first light.”
McAfee let his binoculars rest on his chest. “Well, clearly they mean to have a conversation.”
Wen spoke up. “Not to stick my nose where it don’t, but Marshals Service has been receiving bulletins on upticks in piracy. Now that there’s some trade happening again…. Old time occupations and all. Ruthless stuff I hear.”
“We’re well aware of the piracy issue,” said McAfee. “There’s been no reports from down this way. No reason for anyone to come down this way.”
“Well, that’s somebody,” said Dean. He turned to Sanders. “Have Mr. Kneedham and Mr. Kile man the guns.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Boatswain Palmer kept peering through his binoculars. “It’s the Eagle, sir. Could only be.”
“You’re talking about the Coast Guard cutter?”
“The same, sir. Steel hull. More than eighteen hundred tons. Two hundred ninety-five feet. Trainer for the academy. I know. Served on her in my first stint with the Guard. They’ve painted out the CG colors, but that’s her without a doubt.”
The approaching tall ship was big and white and they could now spot with the naked eye sailors moving about the foredeck and amongst the rigging.
“What else?” asked Dean.
“We can maneuver better than her, sir, but in a race she’ll run us down. No weapons when she was a commissioned vessel. Just a trainer for junior officers and underclassmen at the academy.”
“Hmm,” said McAfee. “As far as I know, she’s not part of the existing Navy. God knows where she’s hailing from. Let’s hope she’s still friendly and unarmed.”
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