by James Sperl
Josh reached the bottom and viewed the destruction with astonishment.
“Looks to have been some fight,” Catherine offered through her fingers. “Check the cabinets and pantry in the kitchen. See what’s left of their stores.”
Josh peeled off, pulling the collar of his shirt over his nose and tucking his chin into his chest to try and repel the thick odor. He slung his rifle back around and began rummaging through the few remaining cabinets that weren’t already flung open and barren. The report was as Catherine expected.
“Looks like they got everything,” he said. “There’s not even a sugar pack.”
Catherine nodded, not at all surprised. “All right, stay with me.”
Josh gripped his rifle again and joined Catherine as she made a sharp left around the stairs and headed aft, stepping slowly toward what was most probably the master berth. The door was closed and recessed into an area devoid of any source of natural light. Catherine searched the wall panel and found the presumable light switch, but was rewarded only with the empty click of the toggle.
“Got your Mag with you?” Catherine said quietly to Josh.
“Yeah,” he replied as he dug out a shiny blue flashlight from his cargo shorts. He twisted the head on it until a light popped on, then handed it to his mother.
Catherine clutched the light in her left hand and aimed the beam at the door to the stateroom. She turned subtly in Josh’s direction but not far enough around to actually see him. “Remember,” she whispered, “watch that trigger.”
Josh nodded, sweat beading on his face.
Catherine heeded her own advice as she adjusted her fingers on the grip of the Magnum and reached for the knob. With a gentle twist the latch was clear of the strike plate and the door pushed open with ease. Catherine clutched the flashlight in her left hand, readying the gun in her right. With a trembling leg, she nudged the door inward.
The room was the complete antithesis of the salon. The bed was made. Clothes were put away. There was even a drinking glass half full of water sitting on a pull down night table. A musky, sweet aroma lingered in the air—perhaps an aftershave or cologne—but the smell was a welcome diversion from the putrid foulness that would resume upon returning to the salon.
She stepped farther into the room and peeked around the corner into the head. Again, more of the same. The facility, as far she could tell, was sparkling clean. The toilet and shower seemed to be in stellar condition and the sparse shelving above the sink area was still neatly arranged with soaps, lotions and other toiletries.
Whatever had happened had taken place outside of this room. And this revelation stirred butterflies in Catherine’s stomach.
The pervading smell in the air was coming from somewhere belowdecks and Catherine had hoped in some bizarre way that the source would’ve been immediately apparent by now. But with the brief inspection of the galley area and the obvious lack of evidence, both physical and odorous, in the aft stateroom the source could only exist in one other area: the forward berth.
“Anything?” Josh asked nervously.
“No. Everything looks okay back here.”
Josh turned slowly in place and cast a long, worrisome stare past the salon and onto another closed door at the forward part of the ship.
Catherine squeezed past him, stepping gingerly over rubbish and broken glass. “You ready?” she asked.
Josh swallowed and nodded as he trailed Catherine over the trash-strewn floor. With carefully placed steps he and Catherine managed to reach the other end of the ship without so much as a sound. And while Josh doubted this stealthy approach would have any real benefit or advantage—especially if what he thought was behind the door was actually there—the mental propping-up it provided soothed him to some degree. In the off chance there was still somebody onboard that wasn’t emitting terrible odors, at least they would have a small, if mostly useless, upper hand.
Catherine tiptoed to the door and placed her sweaty hand gently on the knob. The smell was intense and sickening.
Did she really need to open this door?
With a determination that masked the Jell-O-like consistency of her insides, Catherine twisted the handle, shoving the door in with a swift quick of her foot. She resumed her stance with the flashlight and pointed it and her Magnum into the narrow, blackened space, her breathing coming in rapid, tremulous bursts.
The smell was indescribable.
“Get topside,” she choked out.
“What is it?” Josh asked, intrigued.
Catherine turned, screamed at Josh. “Get topside, now!”
Josh recoiled slightly at his mother’s sudden outburst. And as curious as he was to learn what atrocities lay at her feet, the intensity in his mother’s voice had been enough to assure him that he probably really didn’t want to know.
Catherine watched out of the corner of her eye as Josh trudged through the rubble and ascended the stairwell. Returning her attention to the room she attempted to bury her face in her sleeve as she shone the flashlight over the blood soaked walls. She directed the beam in erratic movements over the room, the jittery light seeming only to emphasize the surreal and horrific scene before her.
Jesus Christ Almighty.
Unable to fight off the pangs of nausea any further, Catherine stumbled from the room, spun and spewed a torrent of vomit with incredible force. She wretched until the “dry heaves” set in then stood doubled over with her hands on her knees as she attempted to catch her breath. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she rose and let the subtle sway of the ship help her find her balance. Reluctantly, she turned back to the open door and forced herself to stare in at the area illuminated by the flashlight.
How could human beings do this?
Somebody or bodies had enjoyed this. Had taken their time. The fact that humans capable of such deliberate monstrosities were out there moving freely in the world shook Catherine to her very core. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all that the human race had suffered a blow, whatever it was. If an eradication on a massive scale could cleanse the planet of individuals ready and willing to commit murder to this degree, then maybe she was all for it. But as soon as this thought formulated in Catherine’s mind a more disturbing and unsettling counter theory sprang forth: what if the world event had, in some way, been responsible for creating people like this?
Catherine shook off this notion like rain from a slicker. Nothing made people evil and cruel. They either were or they weren’t. And whoever mutilated the two men piled in the forward stateroom had done so because the absence of law and societal rules had allowed their true selves to emerge. It was that simple.
Catherine pulled the door closed, catching a last glimpse of a rotting, glistening eyeball as it gaped emptily from the smashed skull of one of the victims. Catherine stood for a moment reflectively and said a small prayer for the men in the other room. Content with her mini-eulogy she proceeded to the stairwell, walking purposefully through the rubble when something on the ground caught her eye.
There was no real reason her attention should have been drawn to it, but something about it’s crudeness piqued her curiosity. She bent over and picked it up.
A single sheet of crumpled paper.
But this paper was not like the standard eight-and-a-half by eleven printer paper that had been so commonly used throughout the world. No, this was more like butcher paper or newsprint. In fact, that’s exactly what it was.
A newspaper.
The cut was precise—roughly one foot by two feet—creased in the middle and of a heavy, durable weight. And what was printed on it had Catherine’s heartbeat accelerating by the second.
There were stenciled items on both sides and it was clear the paper had been printed in a three-column format, but salt water and smudging had fairly well removed any semblance of legibility from either side. It was the head of the paper that had Catherine’s heart in her throat.
Across the top in simple, but large Poynter font were p
rinted the words “New Shanghai”. The name of the paper? Catherine thought. A new city perhaps? Just below this header and to the right, in an unassuming location—which couldn’t have held more prominence to Catherine if it tried—was a simple line of letters and numbers that had somehow evaded visual damage. An informative bit of copy that held the promise of a future in its smudgy inkiness.
Catherine turned in place, clutching the paper in her hands and ran to the stairs, bounding up the steps like a child on Christmas. She reached the top to find the hatch to the engine room propped open. Josh’s head popped up from the cavity.
“They’ve got gas,” he said, matter-of-factly.
This was a feast, Tamara thought. They hadn’t eaten like this in a long time. And to add a cherry to the top of an already delicious cake, the meal was void of anything that had previously swum or crawled in the ocean.
Yes, this meal was a welcome change. Canned pears, Parmesan cheese bread baked fresh on deck in the solar oven, the last of the beef jerky, rehydrated peas with dehydrated onion and last, but most certainly not least, chocolate chip cookies for dessert which Catherine had made especially for Tamara. It was a rare occasion indeed when the oven was fired up, so to have burned precious fuel for something so frivolous as cookies had not been lost on Tamara.
Catherine was in an exceptional mood today. Probably the happiest Tamara had seen her in weeks. And it all seemed to have stemmed from the chance encounter with the sailboat. She and Josh hadn’t mentioned what they saw on board but Tamara could detect a bit of torment in her mother’s eyes upon her arrival back onboard. Superseding this suppressed anguish was a more powerful and encouraging sense of elation that seemed to put a bit of life back in her step. Was it hope? She mentioned to everyone that there was something of great importance she needed to discuss. Something she considered “good news”. And so it was with this carrot that Catherine had set to preparing the five-star meal enjoyed by all.
Tamara looked across the table at Josh as he finished the last of three cookies he had taken from the plate. Washing them down with a glass of powdered milk, Josh only stared off into space as he gulped the remaining white liquid. He hadn’t said much at all since that morning on the boat. She didn’t know if he was just tired or traumatized or both. She knew that he and Catherine had seen something on that ship, but neither was willing to divulge any information about it. He had spent a large part of the morning siphoning and transferring fuel from that boat to theirs and thought this surely must’ve worn him down. He was usually fairly quiet and introspective. But not like this.
Abby, as was her norm, fiddled with her food to the point of irritation. How could she let all of that go to waste? Tamara knew that, really, it wouldn’t be lost and that she and Josh would be quite happy to finish her portions if she chose to relinquish them over to her and her brother. But previous temper tantrums had set the rule so now one must wait for her older sister to offer up her scraps of her own volition.
Catherine stared down at her plate while she chewed at the already ragged nail on her thumb. The wheel in her mind was clearly spinning and Tamara could tell she was composing a talk of great importance in her head. Tamara glanced at Josh and Abby and found both to be equally as removed from the here and now. So Tamara took the initiative and chose to cut through the deafening silence.
“Mommy, what did you want to talk to us about?”
Catherine’s head snapped up at the sound of Tamara’s voice, Josh and Abby also looking at their sister in mild bewilderment. They turned their attention to Catherine.
Catherine eyed her children, sitting up straight as she flattened her napkin in her lap with repeated strokes of her hand.
“Well,” she began, “I wanted to talk to you about a decision I’ve made that will affect us all.”
“What decision?” Josh finally said, stiffening.
“It has to do with something I found on the boat today. Something I wanted to show you. I think it’s a good sign and something we should consider...” Catherine’s voice trailed off as she recognized the bemusement in her children’s faces, their eyes squinty with confusion. She was getting ahead of herself. Reaching into her back pocket, she withdrew a folded piece of paper and set it on the table and began to unfold it.
“Let me start with this,” she said, holding up the smeary newsprint.
“What is it?” Abby asked.
“Looks like a newspaper or something,” Josh said.
Catherine nodded. “That’s exactly what it is. At least, I think that’s what it is.”
“Why did you take it?” Abby said, eyeing the blackened and mucky paper. “You can’t read anything.”
“That’s what it looked like to me, too, when I first picked it up. But then I took a closer look and discovered something.”
“What’s that?” Josh asked.
“Here,” Catherine replied, indicating the small patch of numbers and letters on the front page just below the main heading.
In unison, Josh, Abby and Tamara leaned forward, narrowing their eyes in an effort to make out the black line of text at the tip of Catherine’s finger.
“It’s a date,” Josh confirmed. “So what?”
“Read it.”
Josh looked again. His mouth fell open, his eyes grew as round as saucers. “Holy shit,” he finally muttered. “Is that for real?”
“As far as I know it is.”
“What?” Abby exclaimed, clearly frustrated that she didn’t understand. “What about it? What are we supposed to be looking at?”
Catherine turned the paper so the front faced her children.
“This date,” Catherine started, “sixteen August, two-thousand nine.”
“Yeah?” Abby said, oblivious.
“But today’s August thirty-first,” Tamara said. “I read it in my diary this morning.”
“That’s right, it is,” Catherine agreed, wanting her daughters to reach the same conclusion she and Josh had already come to and share in the rush of discovery. But it was not to be and the seconds of silence seemed like minutes to Josh as he desperately craved the relevance of this newfound information and how it would factor into Catherine’s heretofore unknown decision.
“Oh, for the love of God already. The date is from three weeks ago meaning somebody, somewhere, made that paper,” Josh said, exasperated. “There are still people alive.”
Lights clicked on behind the eyes of Tamara and Abby.
“You mean nothing happened? Everything’s okay?” Abby said.
“I didn’t say that,” Catherine corrected. “For all we know everything that was supposed to happen did. But the fact that someone created this paper certainly lends a great deal to the notion that things are potentially not as bad as first thought. I mean look at this,” she said, indicating the copious amounts of ink smeared and bleeding on both sides of the paper. “There’s a lot of ink here which tells me that there was a lot to report. There were things to say and someone, or many someones, had to research and record these stories. And why go through all the trouble of reporting and printing a paper if you’ve no public to give it to?” Catherine’s head spun at her own explanation, seeing a light for the first time in what had been a very long tunnel. “What I’m saying is, maybe the world is still here.”
The stunned silence hung like a dense, impenetrable fog in the air. Josh looked at Abby who in turn glanced at Tamara, each child trading stares in an even mix of exhilaration and perplexity.
“So, then, what are you saying?” Josh said.
Catherine set the paper down and crossed her hands in front of her. “I know we just had a conversation the other night about our situation regarding food and water.”
“You said we had three weeks worth,” Tamara clarified.
“I did. And we still do. But in light of this new information,” Catherine said, patting the paper, “I feel we should head ashore. Immediately.”
Abby and Tamara beamed from ear to ear. Josh’s eyes dropped to
his plate as he kneaded his napkin.
“I know this is all rather sudden.”
“It’s fine by me. I’ve been ready to get off this boat since the first day we got onboard,” Abby said.
“Yeah, mommy. I’m kinda tired of sailing, too,” Tamara added.
Catherine knew her daughters would view this news in a celebratory manner, each having long ago expressed their restlessness at being confined to such a small area for so long. But it was Josh that concerned her. The transformation she’d witnessed over the past few months in her eldest child had been both inspiring and alarming. To see her son go from the young man she had always known to the man she knew he could be far exceeded her expectations. But this transformation was not without cost and while Josh’s self-confidence built, his withdrawal from family and anything representing social interaction grew. He’d come to enjoy isolation and, in fact, seemed to thrive on it. Catherine knew her recent decision would hit him the hardest.
“Josh?” she said. “How do you feel about this?”
Josh twisted his napkin, but maintained composure. “I mean, I guess. Whatever. Can’t float out here forever, I suppose.”
“All right then. It’s settled. This afternoon I’ll chart us a course and tomorrow at first light we’ll head in.”
Tamara and Abby clapped their hands giddily as if told they were going to Disneyland. Catherine leaned forward and gently grabbed Tamara’s hands.
“Listen, you two. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. We’ve no idea what this means,” Catherine said, briefly lifting the newspaper as if displaying evidence to a jury. “I’m not sure how I feel about it yet myself, but I think given our situation it’s the right choice. And while this paper certainly offers a spark of hope, it’s in no way a guarantee. Now, I know this is a lot to ask of you. But you should try as best you can to prepare yourself for the worst. I can’t tell you what that will be, but I pray to God it’s nothing like today.” Catherine shot a quick glance at Tamara, hoping her mini-confession had eluded her. But Tamara only stared. “So just get that in your heads, okay? This is not a celebration. It’s just the next step.”
