Voyage After the Collapse (The Pulse Series Book 3)

by Scott B. Williams

Scully could tell they were both confused by what he had said. Most Americans he’d met had a hard time with his accent unless he repeated himself slowly. But it was more than that. How could he explain how he came to be paddling through this very channel somewhere in the Keys when he was supposed to be sailing to the Dry Tortugas to rejoin his best friend on the catamaran they’d built together? It would take more than a few minutes, but Scully felt it was worth it since these people had sailed from the direction he intended to go and could probably give him useful information. He put the pistol and its magazine on the deck of the kayak and then bent down to grab the dead man by both ankles. Conversation would be more pleasant after he dragged the body to the opposite side of the little beach and out of sight among the mangroves.

  With that unpleasant task out of the way, Scully squatted down opposite the couple’s dying campfire and they exchanged introductions. Scully learned that Thomas and Mindy had been living in Key West for five years before the blackout happened. Thomas dreamed of the two of them sailing to the islands and living the sort of life Scully and Larry did, and he and Mindy were saving up for a bigger boat someday on which to do just that. In the meantime, the 20-year-old Montgomery 17 anchored there off the little beach had been their weekend getaway for shorter cruises in the Keys.

  “It’s a proven design,” Thomas said. “Even as small as it is, people have taken them from California to Hawaii and all kinds of crazy places. We were going to go to the Bahamas in it eventually, if we couldn’t get a bigger boat first.”

  Scully looked at the lines of their boat and could tell that Thomas was not simply delusional. It looked like a proper little ship, as tiny as it was. The strong sheer and deep rounded bilges separated it from most of the little sailboats in its size range. Scully had seen lesser boats cruising the islands, especially some of the rough open fishing boats built on the beaches in places like Dominica.

  Choosing his words carefully and speaking slowly so they could understand most of what he was saying, Scully told his story of how he came to be here at this most opportune time for the two of them. He told them about the trip from the Caribbean to New Orleans to look for his best friend’s niece and then of the challenges they had faced after finding her. Then he told them about meeting the other woman and her daughter at Cat Island and how the two boats had become separated in the rain that night out on the Gulf. He told them about the flashing blue lights off Cape Sable, and how he had fallen from the palm tree and by the time he realized what was happening, the boat was gone without him, and that’s why his journey was taking him west, to the Dry Tortugas.

  “You can’t go to the Dry Tortugas,” Mindy said. “That’s where we went at first, when we realized we had to leave Key West. We were there for more than a week, but that was before the navy came.”

  “American navy?” Scully asked.

  “Yes,” Thomas said. “Two ships arrived at first, then some smaller boats. They kicked everybody out of the anchorage at Fort Jefferson. That’s the national park there. They said we had to leave the area and warned us not to come back for any reason. They said it was a restricted zone, and closed to all civilian boaters. Your friends could not be there, because they would never let them in.”

  Scully was surprised to hear this, but then again, it explained what happened that night off the beach at Cape Sable. If the coastline was under surveillance by the military and maybe the police too, and had been declared off-limits, Artie and Grant and Jessica had no choice but to leave. Scully knew they’d been forced to leave that Everglades area, because if not they would have certainly come to look for him first or waited for him. But he had not expected that they would be banned from even sailing to the Dry Tortugas. That meant that Larry and Casey would not be there on the other boat either.

  “There are still a lot of people around the Keys on boats,” Thomas said, when Scully asked him how they had gotten here without being made to leave the coast. “Most of them have been hanging out in places like this, sticking to the mangrove islands and backwaters. I don’t know how much longer they will let us do that. We were already thinking about trying to make the crossing to the Bahamas before what happened tonight. Now, I see no other choice. But Mindy is afraid we won’t make it in our little boat. We’ve never sailed across the Gulf Stream before, and I know it has a bad reputation.”

  “Any boat too little when de sea she angry, mon. But when de ocean smilin’ you havin’ no problem. Even de kayak, she go on a good day, mon.”

  “You’re not going to try that are you?” Mindy asked. “That’s crazy!”

  “What else can I do? You seh de navy dem close off Dry Tortugas. So I know Larry, he can’t go, and Artie, he can’t go. Both boats dem can’t go so where else dem goin’ but Bahamas?”

  “Do you really think the situation is any better over there?” Thomas asked.

  “Don’t know, but Larry, he talkin’ about dis place called Jumentos, and Ragged Islands. Larry seh dis place far from de towns and off de path. Anyt’ing better than here mon,” Scully said, glancing at the other dead man in the water.

  “You’ve done a lot of sailing and know a lot more about it than we do. I know you could do it, but I’m not so sure about my navigation without a GPS. We made it to the Dry Tortugas with just the compass, but we’d been there before and it’s not like crossing the current in the Gulf Stream.”

  Scully looked at Thomas and Mindy’s little boat while he sat there thinking. He could visualize the location of the far-out islands Larry planned to go to from his memory of studying the chart. Simply getting across the Gulf Stream to the nearest islands of the Bahamas wasn’t the hard part. He was certain he could make that fifty or sixty mile crossing in the kayak, but first he would have to paddle to the closest point in Florida, and that would entail the risk of running into the authorities. Then, once he made it over to the banks, it was still hundreds of miles, mostly to windward to get to those islands. Larry and the others might give him up for dead by the time he finally got there, if he ever did. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that it wasn’t really feasible. What he needed was a sailboat, even if it was a small one. He had never heard of this Montgomery 17 that Thomas said had such a seaworthy reputation, but Scully knew a good boat when he saw one. It was simply the best option he had.

  “Tell you what mon. You needin’ a captain an’ I needin’ a boat. If you want goin’ dem Bahamas, I can help you. We sailin’ your little boat an’ pull my kayak in de back.”

  Thomas and Mindy looked at each other and Scully studied their expressions in the firelight. He knew they were frightened and but they could choose to trust him or they could continue as they were doing on their own and take the risk that the next time they were attacked it would not end so well. It would be crowded with the three of them on such a small boat, but they needed him as much as he needed them. With any luck at all, the voyage would only take a few days. The two of them had a quick, whispered discussion, and then Thomas turned back to Scully:

  “We want to go. How soon can we leave?”

  “Now,” Scully said. “We leavin’ now an’ reach de open sea while still got de night. Nevah know when someone else comin’ from de bush. Mehbe dem dead guy havin’ friend.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  “BE CAREFUL, DON’T SLIP!” Larry yelled at Casey and Tara as they helped him lift the heavy wooden dinghy over the lifelines. Larry was in such a hurry he didn’t want to bother with lowering it by a halyard. He’d tied off the painter line so it wouldn’t drift away and with his crew’s help dumped it directly over the side. It was still raining, but at a reduced rate as he climbed in and held the boat for Casey. Tara would remain on board with Rebecca.

  “Do you have the flashlights?”

  “Yes,” Casey said.

  Larry took one and stuffed it in the pocket of his foul weather jacket. The binoculars were around his neck and the shotgun she’d brought him earlier was slung over his back. When Casey sat down in the front se
at of the dinghy, Tara passed her a rifle—the short SKS paratrooper Larry had taken from one of the dead men at Cat Island.

  “How is this possible?” Casey asked. “How could they end up here?”

  “Who knows? How is anything possible these days? All I know is that boat is the Casey Nicole. I just hope to God that it’s Scully and your dad that ran it onto the reef.”

  Larry was sure that whoever it was he’d seen moving on the beach and waving a flashlight from the deck of his catamaran, they were probably not aware there was another boat here. Even before he’d told Casey to extinguish the cabin lamps, the port lights of the Sarah J. would have been too low to be seen by the people on the other side of the point. And besides that, it looked like they had their hands full dealing with a boat crisis. But Larry wouldn’t know for sure who it was until he and Casey got closer. He didn’t want to think the worst, but why on earth would his boat be here at Green Cay when he was sure that Scully was at least two or three days ahead of them and surely in the Jumentos Cays by now? Could someone have taken the boat from them?

  Larry rowed as hard as he could until he ran the bow of the dinghy up on the beach, then he quickly tied it off and motioned Casey to follow him. Keeping low, he led the way through the rocks and cactus, working his way close enough to see whoever was there without being seen first. When he reached a spot behind a big boulder where he had a clear view, he raised the binoculars and studied the scene before him. The Casey Nicole was indeed stuck on the reef, some sixty or seventy yards out from the shore. The waves were breaking around her, but the way the hulls were stuck, they were perpendicular to the surf so that the pointed sterns were parting the breakers without taking their full impact. The person on the deck with the flashlight was Jessica, and she was yelling something as Grant and Artie scrambled over the rocks with anchor lines, working to secure the boat against further damage.

  “It’s them, Casey! Come on!”

  Larry charged the rest of way across the island screaming at the top of his lungs. Grant and Artie were both taken aback at first and began retreating into the water before they realized who was yelling their names. Larry didn’t slow down when he reached the water’s edge, instead running right in and grabbing his brother in a bear hug. Casey was right behind him and threw her arms around Grant in the same manner before her dad pulled free of his brother and snatched her up in a bear hug of his own. Artie and Grant were both speechless, unable to understand how Larry and Casey could possibly be there, appearing out of nowhere on some dark and uninhabited beach that they just happened to crash into.

  “Welcome to Green Cay!” Larry answered, when Artie asked where they were. “I guess you got off course? Where’s Scully, how did this happen?” he asked, as the four of them waded back out to the catamaran so that he could assess the situation.

  The news that Scully had been left behind put a huge damper on Larry’s excitement that the rest of them were reunited. But that explained why his boat was on the reef. It likely wouldn’t have happened with Scully on board, but in his absence, Artie, Grant and Jessica had done the best they could. That they made it to the Bahamas at all was a miracle. That they ended up on this island was even more fortunate, even though the Casey Nicole was hard aground and undoubtedly damaged. Larry understood how it happened though. After all, Green Cay was pretty much right along the route that he’d already laid out before they left Cat Island. Anyone sailing it would not have to get too far off course to wander onto these reefs at the edge of the banks, especially at night and in bad weather. Larry and Casey both gave Jessica hugs too as they climbed aboard and then he walked around and took a good look at the predicament his boat was in.

  The good news was that she was sitting at the right angle to the waves and was not getting slammed around and moved a lot. Otherwise, the reef would have already torn her hulls to pieces. The other good news was that she’d gone onto the reef at low tide. When the water came back up, it would be possible to get her off again. But the bad news was that both hulls were ripped open along the keels and she was going to take on water and float lower, though the bulkheads partitioning each hull into sections would keep her from sinking. It was going to take a lot of effort, but Larry was certain that with planning and care, the Casey Nicole could be saved, but she wasn’t going to be ready to sail again for a while. The first thing he had to do was complete what Artie and Grant had started—and that was to secure her so there was no additional damage when the tide did start coming in.

  Larry worked with Grant and Artie on this while Casey and Jessica went back to the other boat to get Tara and Rebecca and let them know what was going on. It was going to take everyone’s effort to pull it off, but with daylight coming soon, Larry was sure they could get the Casey Nicole off the reef and pull her around the rocks and coral heads to a nearby patch of sand beach. If so, they could beach her at high tide with the fenders under the hulls and then use the winches to pull her beyond the reach of the waves so repairs could be made. It would not be easy, but Larry knew the situation could be far worse. At least there was a suitable beach and at least they had the island to themselves. The work might take several days or even longer, but he knew it was doable.

  * * *

  It was not until the first step was taken that Larry could even begin to contemplate his other problem. The midmorning sun was already beating down on the pink sand beach by the time the Casey Nicole was secure and firmly planted on the sand. It was then that Larry finally sat down and exchanged all the details of their separate adventures with Artie, Grant and Jessica.

  He already knew about Scully, of course, but as the details were filled in, he began to feel hopeless that he would find his best friend. Artie and Grant told him of the machine gun fire from the patrol boat, and how they could not even attempt to look for him, but was even more puzzling was Scully disappearance at the first approach of the boat. Larry didn’t think that Scully would knowingly let the Casey Nicole sail away from him just because he saw blue lights. He would know that the consequences of being left behind could be far worse than being found without a passport. It worried Larry because he wondered if something had happened to Scully to prevent his return to the beach and the kayak that would take him back to the boat. If Artie and the others had been able to return there, they could have found out, but now it had been several days. If Scully was okay, Larry could not imagine what he must be thinking by now. And if he had somehow continued on and made it to the Dry Tortugas in the kayak, he would know by now that none of them were there. He would then be facing an almost impossible slog against the prevailing wind to get back to the rest of the Keys from that remote outpost that was now occupied by the navy. Paddling that far downwind was one thing, but to go dead against it was another. And where would he go anyway, even if he made it knowing he had missed his ride on either of the two boats? It would be a difficult situation for him in the best-case scenario, but Larry knew Scully was a survivor and if he could make it to land anywhere, he would find a way to get by.

  But a worse possibility had to also be considered: that the authorities running the blockade might have intercepted him. If so, would they have turned him away and made him go back out to sea, out of Florida waters as they’d done to both the Sarah J. and the Casey Nicole? Larry certainly hoped not, because that would essentially be a death sentence in a kayak. But if they did not subject him to that fate, would they have detained him instead? Larry knew it was a possibility. He was, after all, in the U.S. illegally without documentation or identification of any kind. What would become of him if that were the case?

  Larry didn’t have the answers to any of these questions, but Scully was his best friend and had been his partner for more than a decade. There was no way he could simply sit there in the Bahamas and do nothing, and there was certainly no way he could leave the islands for another possible refuge until he had done everything possible to find Scully and bring him along. That left only one choice. He had to repair the Casey Nicole
and sail her back to Florida and find him. It was not going to be easy and the risks were more than he cared to contemplate, but Larry knew it was what he had to do. He would have to take the long way around the Keys again and start his search at the place on Cape Sable where Scully was last seen, but he could not expect any of the others to go with him. By the time the catamaran was ready to go, he would assess the viability of them waiting here on Green Cay aboard the Sarah J., or else he would accompany them to a more secure location in the Jumentos Cays or Ragged Islands. None of this was going to be easy, but Larry knew the sooner he got started, the better.

  * * *

  Thank you for reading Voyage After the Collapse

  I hope you enjoyed it.

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  WANT TO KNOW WHAT happens next? Landfall: Islands in the Aftermath: Book IV of The Pulse Series is coming very soon.

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  If you missed the first two books in The Pulse Series, they are available on Amazon here:

  The Pulse

  Refuge After the Collapse

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  If you enjoyed Voyage After the Collapse, you may enjoy reading The Darkness After Series, set in the same grid-down world. Turn the page to read a sample excerpt from:

  Into the River Lands

  Book II of The Darkness After Series