Each took a turn quietly fetching enough of their gear to survive on the high seas for the few days “at the most” that Campbell had promised it would take for them to work their way back to Nantucket. He had become a fairly good navigator and despite the lack of ability to take star shots or use the now defunct international GPS system, he was certain he could get them all home. Nobody back there would know anything of the Ginger Girl’s voyage. The thing was a secret to their brothers and sisters on Nantucket. They’d make up a story about a storm, them being the only ones to escape. If the Ginger Girl did miraculously make it back, so what? What would the captain do, banish them?
Monroe snuck into the dispensary where the FNDz inhibiter drugs were held and doled out daily to the still infected crew. He grabbed a little extra just in case and put the pills in a small leather bag. Twenty minutes before they were to change watches, they lowered one of the two whaleboats into the sea. As they worked, Campbell pumped a steady stream of lubricant on the block-and-tackle to minimize any squeaking while the ropes moved through the blocks. They assured each other again that this was the right thing to do. Campbell and Smith handed their gear down to Monroe and then climbed down into the boat themselves. With a nod from her compatriots, Smith cast off the lines and Campbell and Monroe pulled against the oars.
Frayed nerves, mixed with a deep sense of shame and betrayal caused them to commit two grave errors. The first (after tearing all of their gear apart three times) was to accept that they had left the dark little leather bag holding the inhibiter drugs on the deck near the railing. The Ginger Girl was already out of sight when they concluded their search. Campbell offered his reassurance that it wouldn’t matter - that they would be home long before the drugs already in their systems wore off. The second error was Monroe and Smith’s alone: they had accepted Campbell’s boast that he was the navigator he claimed to be.
After three days of looking at endless ocean, they ran out of food. On the fourth day they each sipped their last drop of water. On the sixth day they began to become delirious with thirst. On the seventh day Monroe got the fever; the first sign of Cain’s. In twenty-four hours or less and he would completely succumb to the disease. Campbell and Smith, knowing that they wouldn’t make it another day without water, waited until Monroe was nearly comatose with fever before bashing his head with an oar, just enough to insure that he was unconscious, but not enough to kill the man. They then took turns slacking their thirst, licking at the heavy bleeding that poured from the pumping gash in Monroe’s scalp and keeping the wound open until the man bled out. The next day Campbell got the fever and it wasn’t but a few hours later when Smith did too.
In the end the fiendish bacteria in Smith won the race with Campbell’s, turning the sailor into a raving, homicidal, lunatic who mindlessly, gleefully gutted open her friend with a large filleting knife that she kept strapped to her leg. For many more days, Smith both satisfied her primal sexual urges, grinding against her shipmate’s carcasses, while at the same time gorging on them. Mercy finally arrived in the form of a squall, which capsized her asylum and drowned her proper.
On the night that the fugitives had taken off with the whaleboat, the twins lay awake in their bunks taking in the random thoughts of the crew. Many were asleep and they rode the dreams of these people together like shadows lurking off stage in the dreamer’s minds. They were aware of the three who were taking the hunting boat, but didn’t see how it had anything to do with them and so ignored it.
I could taste the fear of the ones on the Eagle.
It was delicious.
They wept with fear.
They did. Wept. Fouled themselves. I could smell their piss and shit.
We aren’t supposed to use those words.
No. But we like those words.
Could smell their piss and shit and vomit.
Yes.
I would like to do it again. Make them piss and shit and vomit.
They both giggled at the bad words.
In the morning, Dean stood by the empty whaleboat bay with his hands behind his back, one hand holding the other’s wrist so that he could keep himself from punching the railing. Twenty-four hours out on this Godforsaken mission and five of his eighteen crew were dead or missing. He chose to show Palmer and Sanders nothing but a calm game face. No point in beating a dead horse on this one. There could be nothing learned except – “Mr. Sanders. Please poll the crew one last time and determine if we are going to have anyone else jump ship.”
“Aye, Cap.” Sanders began to turn.
“Oh, and Sanders?”
“Aye.”
“If anyone says that they are indeed interested in leaving,” he waived a hand toward the frigid ocean, “inform him or her that they may swim. We’ll most definitely be needing the services of our other boat.”
“Aye, Cap.”
“I’ll let Palmer turn The Girl out, Mr. Sanders, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, sir. Mr. Palmer’s next in line. Crew could hear more from him. I’ll just make my way around and quietly poll as you asked, Cap.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sanders.” Dean turned to his bosun. “You may prepare to make way, Mr. Palmer.”
“Aye, Cap’n. And sir?” Dean turned his gaze from the iceberg that they were still anchored to and gave his full attention to Palmer. “Not so bad, sir. Monroe, Campbell and Smith, sir. They never quite fit in – if you know what I mean, Cap’n, sir.”
Dean felt a bloom of heat move up his neck as he tried to retain his steam. “That will be all, Ensign. Make way.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Palmer stepped to the front of the poop. “That’s it then,” he called out to the crew. “Wall and Cinders on the windless. Everyone else, man you’re stations. We’re making way.”
PART TWO
A Nation By Another Name
CHAPTER NINE
Delmarva
Any route north was a mass of chaos and despair. The Jarvis family was running for their lives. They had heard the rumors that Delmarva was safe, that the C&D Bridge still stood. For Tillie’s parents, the only logical step was to go south, toward the coming onslaught, and pray for deliverance.
They had found a refugee camp in the southern suburbs of Wilmington and, choosing safety in numbers, they spent a night out in the open, waiting with everyone else for some kind of government direction, some instruction for evacuation. In the early dawn hours, someone spotted the Fiends pouring down Route 95 and thousands of people broke and ran. The tent city was trampled to dust, dozens of people crushed under foot. Tillie remembered her little sister Emily holding her hand as tightly as she could, Tillie hardly aware of it; like holding hands with a butterfly. Her sole focus, follow Dad, get to that bridge.
They could see the white towers in the distance; the huge white cables leading down to the bridge deck like strings from a web. The height of the towers gave the illusion of closeness and many people started sprinting, using up their reserves of energy too soon. Tillie’s father had been a long distance runner in high school. He knew how to husband his and his family’s strength. They would ultimately pass hundreds of people who had collapsed from running in the high heat, begging for help.
When the entrance to the bridge finally did come into view, Tillie could see the Sentinels. Like giant black spiders, they were suspended in the fanned out bridge cables. Then the frightening looking machines began to pull back, and her dad screamed at his family to run with everything they had. A sound wave of terror caught up to them through the ranks of the running refugees. Tillie had a position of height now, and a quick glance over her shoulders told her why. The Fiends were pulling down the rear of the mob, their hoots and howls, screeches and laughter, mixing in with the horror filled shrieks of the refugees. Then another huge pack of Fiends appeared out of the woods to their right. This group cut the retreat of the refugees in half, and suddenly the Jarvis’ had the infected right on their heels. The horror of the crowd was repl
aced by the even louder scream of a jet engine, and the north anchor of the bridge behind them exploded in a shower of concrete, steel and fire. The blast wave knocked everyone on the bridge to the deck and the North Tower itself began to crumble. Huge cables swayed. As the wounded bridge whipsawed beneath their feet, the deafening sound of separating steel and concrete got them all up again.
There were maybe fifty healthy people who had gotten to the center of the bridge, with twice as many infected right behind. When they reached the South Tower the Jarvis’ saw something almost as frightening as the Fiends behind them. A phalanx of black Sentinels stood at the end of the bridge, their spider-like legs overlapping to form a fence of sorts. The refugees hesitated only for a moment and continued to surge forward as those in the rear were pulled down, hacked and bitten, shredded limb from limb. There was another jet scream and then the center of the bridge erupted. The leaping concrete forced the family to the deck just as the Sentinels opened fire.
The Atchison assault shotgun is a deadly piece of armament. Add a belt with hundreds of rounds of ammunition and multiply that by the thirty robots firing away, and a hail of death came upon the stragglers and their tormenters like a great disintegration ray. The Jarvis’ tumbled forward as refugee and Fiend alike were shot to pieces with high explosive rounds. In short order, hundreds of people were reduced to bloody flying chunks. The Jarvis family was the only group to survive. A lone Sentinel led them off the bridge just as a third JDAM-equipped 500lb bomb found the South Tower. They watched as the bridge groaned out a final thundering death rattle and collapsed haphazardly into the canal below. When the dust cleared, the horror of the feast on the opposite side came into detailed focus. The Fiends far outweighed the stranded refugees. Assorted random and pointless pops of small arms fire could be heard above the screams. In a manner of minutes the healthy were either being infected or devoured. For a moment, the Jarvis’ paused in deer-like astonishment, observing the slaughter only 600 feet away. Then the Sentinel prodded them toward the containment camp.
That was ten years before. Tillie still thought about it nearly every day, and certainly every time she set eyes on a Sentinel.
Niles Plimpton stood in front of the bank of curved windows that made up the circular private penthouse level of what had been Delaware’s Delmarva Capital Trust Building. He surveyed the city below him and decided it was good. A black Armani silk suit with a white Egyptian cotton hand made shirt, and a tightly knotted, sky blue silk tie carved his figure into one of refinement and strength. As he brushed a piece of lint off his sleeve and watched it float to the floor, he noted that he was in control of the world outside this window, and after considerable work, he could finally enjoy taking it all in. He was forty-two, with a young face that could pass for thirty. A few grays were weaving their way into his thick black hair, and a considerable amount of time navigating his yacht around the nooks and crannies of the Chesapeake over the years had sun-kissed his eyes with a few crowfeet. Otherwise his skin was smooth and thick with youth. The room behind him was elegantly decorated in a clean modern seaside motif that suggested that the penthouse, rather than being at the top of a six story office building, was instead set along the dunes of the outer banks of Delaware. His view included the short brick buildings that made up the government center and the more majestic legislative building that once contained the rulers of Dover, the capital of Delaware. The capital building had a new purpose: the chamber for the patrician citizens who oversaw the new nation of The Shore.
During the formation of the United States, the naturally isolated Delmarva Peninsula had been absurdly carved up between the states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. This isolation offered a geographical haven during Omega; with the Chesapeake to the West and South and the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean to the East, the Delmarva Peninsula was really an island primarily reached via bridges from Wilmington across the Chesapeake, and the Delaware Canal to the North. It was an island defended by a people who saw their isolation as making them somewhat separate from the rest of their countrymen. Once severed from the rest of the ruined nation, its inhabitants embraced their new status fully.
In the distance, Plimpton could almost make out the head of the Delaware River and beyond that, the southern tip of New Jersey and a still operational and incredibly critical nuclear power plant that provided so very much. To his right was the Air Force base that he could legitimately call his own – or at least his and the consortium of others who made up the governing body that oversaw The Shore. He briefly glanced back toward the river and saw the big sails of The Eagle coming back from another raiding mission and a smile of pride crossed his face. He surveyed the germs of new commerce coming to life in the streets below and was again made aware of the weight of the challenge that he had overcome. The Shore, infection free almost from the time the last bridge was blown those many hard years before, was also free of the encumbrances associated with being part of the United States. For many Shoremen like himself, it was a dream come true - if only the world hadn’t gone to hell in a hand-basket to achieve it.
When he finally heard her repeat his name for a third time, Niles was aroused from his reverie by the grating voice of Martha Kincaid. “Niles? Can we bring this meeting to a start?” He turned away from the window and faced the seven people seated around a large conference table supporting a model of the entire peninsula. He noted, not for the first time, how flat the Shore was in full relief. The only features that broke it up were the several rivers and tributaries that wandered out from its fertile center. Otherwise it was mostly farmland – rich farmland that had fed millions before the Omega; the damn Russian’s never-ending winter forcing all cultivation indoors.
Two of the seven wore military uniforms: an Air Force colonel, and an Army major. Niles felt a pang of pride as he looked at the two men, Quale and Thompson: visionaries who had seen the light and had followed him from the research facilities at Carnegie Mellon to this place of obvious strategic importance. The other five were Martha Kincaid, a former bank regulator turned Delaware State Senator, Vicar Wentworth, The Shore’s spiritual guide, Lawrence Ashton, bank exec, Dietrich Pelham, hedge fund manager, and Paula Brown, United States Senator in abstentia. All had known each other for at least a decade or more, all were of The Shore, and all had the same goal, now realized, of a separate nation on an island off the coast of America. Except for Pelham who had a slight Swiss accent from a childhood of European schooling, they all spoke with the dialect of the particular isolation that was their ancestral home. It was classically Mid-Atlantic, heavily rooted in English cadences, and unlike any dialect spoken in the United States.
Plimpton took a sip of his freshly made tonic and gin and sat at the head of the table. “Forgive me. I was just once more admiring that which we have wrought. Finer weather brings a whole new shine to it, wouldn’t you agree?”
Martha acknowledged the feat with an appreciative nod and continued, “The Eagle has made contact with a hostile ship.”
“Yes, I see her out there.”
“A Sentinel was lost, another badly damaged. An attempt on a schooner that claimed to be of the Northern Government. They had devil children aboard.” The final comment brought the sounds of casual movement in the room to silence.
Plimpton let the news settle in his mind without revealing a shift in his features. He looked around the table and focused on Colonel Quale. “Colonel?”
Quale said, “Not much more than that, yet.” He glanced at Major Thompson. “Pretty shaken, I gather?”
Before he could respond, Thompson was interrupted by Vicar Wentworth, who with scorn filtering through his gritted teeth said, “Traveling with the devils. Our fears about our Northern neighbors are confirmed.”
Plimpton offered the reverend a weak acknowledging smile while hoping dearly that the old man wouldn’t go off on some kind of religious rant.
Thompson said, “Captain Miller didn’t radio. Just word from the radio tech himse
lf. Sketchy on the details.”
Ashton, who in a former life was the biggest agricultural banker on the peninsula, and now the Governor of Salisbury, said, “Fiend babies aside. You say it was a government ship?” He cleared his throat and raised his considerable bulk from his chair. “Folks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Just a matter of time ‘til they notice us.” He focused on Quale. “Especially with these raids.” He pointed at the sea on the relief map. “Long Winter’s passing. Got their feelers out, they do – maybe using them devils. Time will come, sooner than later, when we will want to trade with those people. It is critical that they not feel threatened by us.” He focused on Quale again. “Despite our significant might, we are not in the position to take on what is left of the much reduced but still powerful U.S. military.”
“Agreed,” said Senator Brown. “When we finally reach out, or visa-versa, it is in our best interests to remind our Northern neighbors that we are not worth the pain it will cause them to try to bring us back into the fold. We can’t be so threatening that we give them no room to back down.”
“Trade!?” roared Wentworth. “You bankers and professional politicians – trade with those who would consort with the devil himself?”
Plimpton waved his hand in dismissal while taking another sip of his drink. “Please, ladies and gentleman, these arguments are more than settled, let’s not rehash. Let your nervous systems return to their pre-Omega states and be done with fear. Like us, our northern neighbors have their hands very full patrolling their own borders and rebuilding their own society. Successfully declared independence and fought off the demon hordes have we. We are a long time off from any kind of trade. The Shore is doing just fine, thank you very much” He turned back to Martha. “Get a full report. Losing the Sentinel…. Very unfortunate. We’ll meet again in the morning.” Everyone’s dismissal was fully implied.
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