by Chris Weitz
And then the way opens up, and we’re in Long Island Sound. South of us is the island, sticking out into the ocean like a rotting fish. North of us, the coast of Connecticut appears and disappears in the mist.
At this distance, everything seems the way it was Before. Everything, except for the fact that I’m on a tugboat piloted by a kid from Harlem, heading for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
I let the drone of the engines and the buffeting and slapping of the water on the prow flow over me. It takes on the quality of a dream, the ship plowing its way endlessly through the sound, the water repairing the wound, the north coast of the island always in sight.
Captain has a dirty, marked-up map that, with his perverse insistence on changing the name of everything, he calls a “chart.” The notes refer to the location of abandoned ships that have gotten stuck in the channel, marinas, diesel pumps, and “farmsteads.”
After a few hours’ slow but steady progress, we dart toward the land and stop at an abandoned old dockside with a domed blue-gray fuel tank looming over it. From the engine room, they fetch a device that looks like a giant metal hypodermic with a shovel-handle plunger and a big coil of rubber hose. They use it to siphon fuel from a pump on the quayside, and finally I can be useful, hauling canister after canister of stinking diesel back to the boat with the others while Donna and Theo stand guard. In an hour, we’re off again.
We stop at little docks poking out of the undergrowth, where ragged kids stand, offering fish and vegetables. Looking at them I feel like we’re explorers discovering tribes along the Amazon.
The vegetables are homegrown, fresh and muddy and idiosyncratic, each pepper or onion or carrot lopsided and twisted and different from the other.
Captain exchanges news and packets of letters with the locals. I trade some bullets for a bunch of carrots and onions. Holding the carrots by their green stems, I remember a school play.
First grade, Miss Emerson’s class. Rock Soup. I am a suspicious villager; Donna is a starving Russian soldier. She makes a soup of water and stone, and offers to share it with me and the other peasants. But, she suggests, it would be ever so much better if only we added a few carrots. By the end of the play, she has hoodwinked us into making a rich beef stew with vegetables.
“Do you remember Rock Soup?” I ask Donna.
She just looks at me like I’m nuts.
Over my shoulder, I hear Captain exclaim, “The Old Man?” and laugh. I turn around and see that he’s talking to a white kid with straggly dreadlocks, who gesticulates like he’s insisting that Captain take him seriously. Captain waves him off, and we hop back onto the Annie, her engines still running.
We finally stop as the sun sets. I’m sure Captain has some word for this time of day. Anyway, his chart indicates a safe harbor. We moor on a long rope (a “line,” of course, not a rope). That way the current carries us into open water, and we can just cut ourselves loose if we have to.
In the dying light, we eat dinner together, our weapons laid down at our sides.
Spider, the first mate, serves up some thick, spicy brown stew. He’s cooked the onions until they’re sweet, and the carrots are soft and rich. The sauce tastes of curry. We ladle it over bowls of jasmine rice.
I pause for a second at a hunk of meat that bobs up to the top of the pot.
“What?” says Spider.
“Nothing,” I say, and spoon it into my bowl.
“It’s chicken,” says Spider. “I raise them myself.” He savors a bit, his eyes closing. “This was LeeAnne.”
“Sorry, LeeAnne,” I say.
“Thanks, LeeAnne,” says Donna.
We drink from scavenged bottles of yellow wine that have been cooling over the side. The labels say 2000 RAMONET MONTRACHET. Whatever it is, it tastes bright, like laughter and sunshine, and suddenly things don’t seem so bad.
We find ourselves telling stories. Captain wants to know how we got to Harlem, so we tell him about the Union, the library, Grand Central. The weird thing is that we find the whole thing funny, like it was just an amusing bunch of stuff that happened to us long ago, or happened to a completely different bunch of people. We don’t talk about SeeThrough.
Captain tells us about skirmishes with the Uptowners and the Fishermen, river pirates and voodoo priests and wild dogs. How he got command of the Annie in what he calls a “cutting-out expedition.”
“What do you know about the Old Man?” I ask. “I heard that kid back at the dock talking about him.”
“Aw, he’s out of his mind.” He chews on some rice. “He said somebody he knew saw the Old Man. Said the Old Man cured some fool of the Sickness. Said the Old Man was an angel sent from the Lord to heal the righteous.”
“Forget that,” says Spider, cutting in. “The Old Man isn’t an angel. Nothing like that. He’s a dude the Sickness can’t kill. He has, like, a mutation? An immunity. And there’s these kids? They, like, worship him and do everything he says, because they think he’s magic.”
“Because they miss their parents,” says Theo. “They’ll follow anybody.”
“There is no Old Man,” says Kath. “People made him up. They like to think somebody knows what’s going on. But nobody does. Because What Happened doesn’t make any sense.”
Captain sizes up Kath. “That’s a pretty gloomy outlook.” Kath just laughs.
“I know these folks are from downtown. What about you?” says Captain, looking at Kath. “Where are you from?”
Kath doesn’t even pause. “Midtown,” she says. Then, when it’s clear that’s not enough, she adds, “I’ve been hiding out on my own. Found a stockpile of canned food in an old restaurant.”
I know she’s lying, and I think the Harlem kids must know, too.
“Alone?” says Captain. He thinks it over. “Well. It’s hard to be alone in this world.”
“You think kids are doing the same thing all over?” says Peter. “I mean, Europe and China and everything?”
“Same thing,” says Captain. “Tribes and loners and a lot of killing. People used to growing stuff or living hard are probably doing pretty good. Don’t tell me those kids living off garbage dumps in the Philippines and whatever don’t have it better than Before. But for people used to having things their way? That’s a hard road, man.”
“The meek shall inherit the earth,” says Peter.
“I don’t know about meek,” says Captain. “The world’s gonna belong to the ones who never had much.” He smiles, without malice. “That’s why Harlem’s gonna take over.”
Soon the wine is done. The plates get dunked over the side in a little cage. A black and silver cloud of mackerel nibble at the scraps. Peter asks what’s for dessert, and he’s obviously kidding, but then Theo brings up a sack, and inside it is a bunch of apples.
“From Solon’s place,” says Theo shyly. “I thought you might want them.”
I pick one up. It’s fat and firm, with a long stem and leaf still attached. The dusty skin takes on a keen shine when I rub it. It tastes even better than the wine. Sweet as honey. Crisp as daylight. We all sit together quietly, munching away and smiling.
The dark gathers around the ship, and Captain says it’s time to get some sleep; he wants to move as early as possible in the morning.
“We’ll keep watch fore and aft. Three hours each watch.” Theo takes the first watch in the back of the ship. I take the first watch up front.
The bow is stepped up from the rest of the boat. You can lean into the apex of the rail and poke your head over the edge and watch the water slop around the hull. The big rope slacks and tenses with a creaking sound like a bullfrog.
It’s still early, but after half an hour of staring at nothing happening, I’m getting sleepy. It feels as though this is the first time we’ve stopped struggling since we set off from the Square, and my brain is crying out like a pulled muscle. I can hear snoring from below: Captain or Spider.
There’s a noise behind me, and I turn, gun at the ready. But it�
��s just Donna, standing there awkwardly, clasping her hands in front of her.
“Are you busy?” she says, which is kind of odd. What I would be busy with is beyond me.
“No. I’m not very busy,” I say.
“I thought maybe I would help you, like, watch,” she says. “I can’t sleep.”
“Sure,” I say.
She rests her arms over the edge of the rail like me, which is hard for her because she’s so short. She looks like a skinny cat somebody’s lifting by the armpits. We stare at the shore for a long while. Then:
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what?”
“For… in the library? When you told me, you know, you like me?”
I frown. “I didn’t tell you I liked you,” I say.
“Okay… okay, when you told me you”—she clears her throat awkwardly—“loved me.” Her eyes flick over at me, then back to the shore. “It was really sudden,” she says. “I needed some time. To figure out how to respond.”
“Nobody needs time for that kind of thing,” I say. “It’s easy. You either love somebody back, or you don’t.” Now I look over at her. “It’s okay, Donna. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, it’s not okay,” she says, and then her words come out in sort of a syncopated rush. “It’s not okay? Because I didn’t know what to say because I was surprised and I hadn’t thought of you that way I mean I knew I loved you like family? But this was different and like it took some time to adjust to like when your eyes are adjusting to the dark or something? You can’t see stuff at first and I was worried? Because once Wash and I did stuff I don’t even want to talk about that but you are so much more of a man than he ever was and I’m scared because what if you’re not interested in me anymore if we really get to know each other I mean we know each other but not like that and did I mention I’m a virgin? And what if you’re disappointed and then that Kath girl with the tits and everything you’re obviously like besotted with her so why am I even saying this except that even though it’s all peaceful now I have a bad feeling and I think we all might die really soon? So that kind of like focuses your mind and I figure what’s the point in not saying anything and I love you, too, even if you don’t love me anymore which probably you were just saying anyway because otherwise why would you go for Kath maybe because you were mad at me and I’m sorry I’m really sorry I love you and that’s it I said it.”
She’s said all this while looking out at the water, and it takes me a while to piece it all together. While I’m doing that, she turns to look at me, kind of scared and sad. Then she says, “Okay, I better go.”
And I take her hand and lean over and kiss her.
Her mouth is soft and sweet, still tasting of apples. She closes her eyes and reaches an arm around my neck, and at first it’s gentle, but then we’re holding each other and kissing hard, and it feels so right that I figure if I died just now it wouldn’t be so bad. But then I pull away a little.
“Wait,” I say.
“Wait for what?” she says.
“Just… this. I want to do this the right way.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I have to… I don’t know, tell Kath. Break up with her.” It already sounds stupid as it comes out of my mouth.
“Are you serious?” says Donna. “It’s the apocalypse. You’ve got, like, scruples?”
“I mean, it’s not like we were boyfriend and girlfriend, or anything, and maybe she already broke up with me, I don’t know… I mean, she—”
“Please stop talking about her,” Donna says. She looks upset.
Then, with what looks like a serious expenditure of mental effort, she gets her head around it. “No,” she says. “You’re right. I mean, you’re not right in my book, but you’re right in yours. That’s you. And you’re… I love you, that’s all. So, okay.”
“I love you, too,” I say, which may not be very original. We kiss again, not about-to-have-sex kissing, more hold-that-thought kissing.
We wait out the rest of the watch, Donna leaning into me, and for the first time I can remember, I’m happy.
Around us, in the quiet, it gets darker.
CHAPTER 34
OKAY. OKAY. OKAY.
Holy shit.
Like…
I’m in love. I mean, I was in love, but that was me on my own. But now I’m in it, with him. He’s in love, with me. We’re both in it together.
And suddenly I love everyone, even stupid McGee.
I even feel sort of sorry for her, although that makes me seem really conceited. But I do. I mean, I don’t mean her any harm. Like, I didn’t mean to hurt her when I talked to Jeff.
But I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the trip on the boat, like, I wouldn’t exactly call it romantic, but for once we weren’t getting shot at, or eaten, or otherwise traumatized. And something seemed—clean. Out on the water, it was almost totally free of the smell of rotting flesh. I don’t know.
When we left Manhattan, I took a little nap, and I had a funny little dream; I was back in first grade and we’re doing this play called Rock Soup? Which is only amusing if you know where your next meal is coming from?
So when Jefferson brought it up out of the blue, I thought it was pretty freaky. I wondered if you could chart the thoughts of two people who knew each other, like, on a graph but in a zillion dimensions, because that’s how complex thinking is. How many times would their thoughts snake around to cross at just the same point? And I felt crazy close to him, this image of a six-year-old Jefferson in my mind, this handsome young man there beside me, and suddenly the whole thing with Kath really didn’t matter and whether or not it would be a smart thing to tell him how I felt didn’t matter, either. Life was too short. Really too short. So I went up on deck after dinner, and I looked at him and said, “Jefferson, I know this isn’t the right time, and I know these aren’t the right circumstances, but I love you more than anything or anyone in the world.”
Okay, I don’t think I said it, like, exactly that way. Maybe it was a little less full-sentencey.
But anyway, damn, I guess sometimes things just work out. Like, how could I possibly stack up against the Blond Angel of Death? I thought the best thing that could happen was at least I would get it off my unimpressive chest. Sort of emotional barfing. Okay, that sounds terrible. But—well, it’s been a pretty shitty couple of years, so I wasn’t expecting too much. I thought I was basically charging a machine gun.
Is it wrong to be happy?
Screw it. I am. Nothing I can do about that.
Still—maybe he’s not really into it the way I am. I keep on thinking stuff like that, like, maybe I’m too skinny. Maybe I’m too fat. Maybe he wouldn’t like me naked. Maybe he wouldn’t like me psychologically naked. That’s just a sampler. But then I look at him; I know that he does love me. And that he always did.
The horrible thing is that the fricking boat is so crowded. This huge thing has happened, but nobody knows except me and him, and it’s just super awkward not being able to be alone. I know that the world is ending and it shouldn’t be a big deal to tell people we’re, like, going out. But—I don’t really know the protocol.
Note to self: The expression going out doesn’t really fit a post-apocalyptic lifestyle.
Then again, it’s kind of weirdly delicious, him and me having this big secret. Our eyes keep meeting, and it’s like there’s this sort of invisible love-beam passing between them, while everybody else is busy pumping the bilge, whatever that is, or feeding the engines with diesel.
Peter can tell something’s going on. He’s always had an amazing sense for gossip, and his antennas are totally buzzing. At one point, he intercepts one of my looks and triangulates between me, Jefferson, and Kath. He comes up to me and says, “Girl, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I say, blushing and smiling my ass off. I go and pretend to coil some rope.
Kath, on the other hand, seems none the wiser. Which doesn’t surprise me, gi
ven that she’s pretty much impossible to read anyway. She just does as little work as she can and stares at the passing landscape.
Maybe she wouldn’t even care. Maybe she was just using Jefferson for, like, rest and relaxation, or for a way out of Uptown, and now that she’s free of Manhattan, she’ll be moving on.
Which, go for it, honey. Don’t let the door hit your perfect ass on the way out.
I don’t know. Part of me wants to get someplace, get off the damn boat, get some time alone with Jefferson. But part of me doesn’t want to leave this moment, ever, like this time is sacred, like this boat is a cramped pocket universe. As long as we stay afloat, everything is pure potential. As soon as we leave, time starts again.
We tootle up the river or the bay or whatever the hell it is. Around noon, a wind comes up, and snow-white little waves march toward us from the east. They’re beautiful. But maybe I’m just a dizzy, lovestruck moron and everything is beautiful. I try that theory on for size, strolling around the boat and checking everything and everybody out.
Yep. I’m finding loveliness everywhere. The rust on the metal deck. The dried blood on my forearm. The scar on the back of Theo’s neck. Brainbox’s premature crow’s-feet that he gets from squinting.
When I pass Kath by the rail, I say, “You know, you have beautiful eyes.”
She looks at me like she thinks I’m high. Which I guess I am.
We keep heading east, and the shadows stretch longer and longer ahead of us as the sun dips behind. It’s still light out when we round this kind of shoulder of land and we see a stubby little lighthouse that Captain says is called Orient Point, which, I think, is a beautiful name.
