Seeking Safe Harbor: Suddenly Everything Changed (The Seeking Series)

by Albert Correia

THERE was just enough light for Millie to see Denise let go with her first hand. She began scooting after the girl, moving her hands along the handrail she was holding onto instead of removing them as they moved.

  When Denise let go with her other hand, Millie quit scooting and rushed to catch up. When Denise lost control and began to slide toward the ocean, Millie was close enough to shoot out a hand to grab the teenager’s wrist.

  Denise looked gratefully at the old woman, but pleaded, “My rifle. I’ve got to get my rifle.”

  Millie spoke with compassion, but firmly. “Honey, you’re worth a heck of a lot more than a rifle. Let it go. I’ll pull you up.”

  The sailboat was carried by the wave for several seconds, the stern high, the bow down and moving to starboard. Then the wave that hit the boat from the side dissipated and the swell that had been carrying the sailboat finally passed through. The water was leveling off, the hole left by the explosion quickly filling again with water. The La Sirena rocked as the water sloshed around it, but it began to settle as the ocean resumed a gentle roll in the aftermath of the disturbance.

  “Well,” Millie said as she helped Denise scramble back to where she was previously, “it looks like we made it through that all right.” She let go of the girl’s wrist.

  “Yes, thank you! You saved my life!”

  “That’s a nice thought” the old woman said, “but I think providence had more to do with it. The boat straightened up at the right moment.”

  The boat was now moving smoothly, powered by its small diesel engine, the propeller back underwater. They no longer needed to hold onto the rails, but most did, anyway. Denise let go with one hand and rubbed the wrist of the other. “Say, you’re strong.”

  Millie laughed. “I wouldn’t say strong, but I’m not weak.” She saw the blood on Denise’s arm and lowered her head to look at it. “What is that? Did you scratch yourself when you started sliding?”

  “I’m not sure what it is. It happened around the time I was shooting at the light.”

  Millie took Denise’s arm and lifted it so she could get a closer look at the wound. “It’s too dark to see much, but I swear it has signs of a burn. I think a bullet zipped right through there.”

  “I was thinking the same thing, but I really don’t know. I didn’t feel it when it happened.”

  “Things ought to get a lot calmer now,” Millie surmised. “We should be able to get some lights on so I can take a better look at it. I’m sure you people already had medicine and bandages, but we brought some, too, and they’re in the main salon. I imagine they’re strewn all over the place after what we went through, but they should be easy to find. I’ll collect them up and have that little bullet wound taken care of in a jiffy.”

  They started back toward the cockpit, but before they were halfway there, their mission was interrupted.

  * * * * *

  When the giant swell hit the boat, Zach jumped up to resume his place at the wheel. He knew he would be powerless to control their course… among other things, the rudder and propeller were out of the water… as long as the stern was sticking so far in the air, but he wanted to be ready when the time came.

  As it was, the boat went straight ahead until a wave hit the bow on the port side, causing it to yaw to starboard. Immediately after, the boat settled in the water, and the rudder and prop moved back down below the water line. That put him in control of the boat’s movements, so he eased the throttle forward and turned the wheel slightly to port to get them back on course.

  The prevailing winds from Hawaii to California blow directly into the face of a boat, so sailboats under sail have to tack most of the way. The La Sirena was temporarily powered by its engine, which allowed it to follow a direct course.

  The ocean still hadn’t settled completely, but Zach decided the boat’s slight rocking wouldn’t stop them from doing some checking into their situation. Many bullets had hit the boat, and they’d been tossed around violently by the explosion-born waves. Things could be broken.

  “Glen, go below and get the twelve-volt flashlight. I want to check our perimeter before I turn the lights on.”

  “Dad, I’m wounded,” Glen said from behind.

  Stunned, Zach turned to look at his son.

  “What did you say?” cried Stacey from the side of the aft cabin.

  “I was hit in the shoulder,” Glen replied. “That’s why I had to throw the dynamite early.”

  Both parents were at his side in a second, and Denise, already halfway back, ran the last ten feet to get to him. Millie quietly headed down to the salon.

  When he saw the blood, Zach tore off the youngster’s shirt so they could get a look at the wound. Both he and Stacey got close to inspect it, but it was hard to see in the dark just how much damage was done to the shoulder. “We need light, Denise,” he said.

  “I’m on my way,” she replied as she hurried down the ladder into the salon.

  A few seconds later, she returned with a large flashlight. Millie was right behind her with bandages, anti-bacterial medicine, a bottle of painkillers, and a bottle of water. George was on his way down the ladder into the salon.

  Stacey took the light and backed up a little. The flashlight was almost as powerful as the one that had been shining on them, so she told Glen to close his eyes and look away before she shined it on his shoulder.

  Zach looked at the wound. It was on the outside top of his right shoulder. Despite all that had happened, it had only been a minute or two since it happened and the blood was still flowing heavily. He saw that Millie had come up next to him with the medical supplies and water. “Great, Millie. Thanks!”

  “I used to be a nurse,” she told him. “It was a long time ago, but I remember quite a bit.”

  “Take a look,” he said, moving aside so she could get in close.

  Millie poured water on a cotton swab and cleaned around the wound. She looked closely at it, and then told Glen to move his arm back and forth. He did, wincing as he did so.

  “Okay,” she said, “now up and down.”

  He again followed her orders, and again winced in pain

  “Was the pain you felt in the muscle or the bone?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Kinda in my skin, it seemed like.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. It missed the bone, or you wouldn’t have been able to move your arm that way.”

  “Mind if I take a look?” Zach asked. “I’m no doctor, but I had to do some first aid on a couple of wounded guys in the Middle East.”

  It was Millie’s turn to move over so he could get a better look.

  He wiped more blood from the wound and examined it. “I agree. No bone damage. Go ahead and treat the wound.”

  “I will,” she said, preparing the bandages. “Then I’ll fix Denise’s wound.”

  “Denise?” cried Stacey, almost dropping the light at the same time.

  “It’s nothing,” Denise protested. “Not anything like Glen’s.”

  Zach checked on Denise while Millie was treating Glen’s wound. She had to grab Stacey’s arm more than once to keep the light on it. Stacey kept looking over Zach’s shoulder to see her daughter’s wounded arm.

  “It’s only this,” the girl said, showing them where the bullet creased her arm. “Like I said, it’s nothing like what happened to Glen.”

  “It’s not so much what it is,” Stacey said, a note of forlornness in her voice that was not in keeping with her usual upbeat attitude. “It’s what it could have been.” Her children were injured. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

  Zach put his arm around his wife. “It’s not what we got ourselves into,” he reminded her. “It’s what has happened to the world. We had nothing to do with it, but I’m not sure there’s any way we can stay away from it. Once we’ve checked on my mother and father, though, we’re going to try.”

  Millie finished dressing Glen’s wound and turned to work on Denise. “I’ve given your son the strongest anti-pain medicin
e I have – strong aspirin,” she told the Arthurs. “It’s not on par with what you get at a hospital, but it will help. I recommend he get some rest now.”

  “He’s been sleeping on a berth we made out of the dining table area,” Stacey said. She quickly shunted her feelings of despair aside and was ready to get on with what needed to be done. “That’s not an issue, but we need to clean up down there first.’

  “I’ve got almost everything picked up,” George called out from below.

  “Great… thanks, George!” Stacey said. “You and Millie have already been a great help. Glen, I’ll set up your bunk.”

  “And your daughter’s arm is bandaged,” Millie said. “She ought to rest, too. In a few days, she’ll be as good as new. It’ll take a little longer for your son, though.”

  “Thanks, Millie,” Stacey said. “You can sleep with Denise in the V-berth. There’s a couch that makes into a bed for George on the side opposite where Glen sleeps.”

  “Before we settle in,” Zach advised, “I need to do what I started out to do before we heard about Glen’s wound. We need to know we’re finally alone out here. Stacey, after you get Glen set up, check the radar for larger craft. I’ll use the flashlight to look for small boats nearby.”

  He took the flashlight from Stacey and started around the boat, shining the light out over the ocean as he went. Stacey set up Glen’s bunk quickly – it was just a matter of turning the table over on a swivel and adjusting the seats. Denise got the sheets out and put them on the bunk as Stacey went back up to the cockpit and turned on the radar.

  Once they got Glen settled in, Denise and Millie went to the forward cabin. Both climbed onto the V-berth bunk without bothering to pull the blankets back or disrobe. In seconds, they were asleep.

  George went up to the deck and joined Zach walking around the vessel. After adjusting the radar to study different distances for over two minutes, Stacey turned it off and went to join Zach and George, who were just then nearing the bowsprit.

  “There’s nothing as far as the radar reaches,” she told the men, “except for the island behind us, and there’s nothing moving around it.”

  The men looked relieved to hear that. They had already looked over the starboard side of the ocean and it was clear. Zach shined the light dead ahead now, and all three looked out for anything that wasn’t part of the ocean. There was nothing but water. They continued around, all scanning the ocean as far as the light shined.

  Zach even shinned the light directly below them to be sure there was nothing near or attached to the boat. They were determined to inspect every inch of the ocean around them.

  It never occurred to them to check what was on the boat itself.

  Chapter 22

  NO ONE saw the automatic rifle behind them. It slid back toward the center of the forward deck when the boat rocked and the port side raised up for a moment, and it stopped at the center when it hit the hatch that Glen had used to go below deck.

  They were looking the other way and it was dark, so they wouldn’t have seen it, anyway. It was the next day before they saw the weapon again, and it wasn’t any of them who found it.

  The three continued looking out over the port side until they reached the stern. They maneuvered around the barrels of fuel. Zach shined the light on the barrels and discovered that three of them were hit, and fuel leaked out onto the deck.

  Fortunately, the boat was watertight and the fuel had washed overboard. It would require some cleaning up the next day. Probably a sixth of the fuel was lost, but it didn’t pose a problem.

  Zach next passed the light over the dinghy, which was trailing along behind the boat, tied to it by a twenty-foot line.

  “We won’t need the dinghy any more tonight, Zach,” Stacey said. “Should we bring it in and hang it on the davits?”

  Zach flashed the light on the little boat, shaking his head. “No, we’ll need to clean it up before we hang it, and none of us is up to that right now. We all need to get some rest tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll do a thorough inventory, check the damages, and clean up whatever got broken in our skirmishes. You and George should head below and get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch. George, how much experience do you have on boats?”

  “I’ve done some fishing and a bit of sailing,” George responded. “And if we’re under power, I can handle a watch with no problem.”

  “That’s good, because we’ll keep the motor going until we get things in order tomorrow,” Zach told him. “However, I’m not turning any lights on, including the running lights, for the time being. We’ll rethink that once we’re clear of the islands. Right now, we need to get as far away from here as possible, and I want everyone else to sleep all night. We’ll do three-hour watches. George, I’ll call you in three; you’ll wake Stacey for the watch after your turn.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’ll show you your bunk and get some linen out for you,” Stacey told him, leading him down into the salon.

  When the two were gone, Zach took one last look behind the boat. They were leaving Hilo and the big island of Hawaii behind them. He could see a faint light in the sky where the city was, probably the result of the fires that were growing in size. He glanced again at the dinghy, which was skipping through the waves behind them. All looked in good shape, so he moved into the cockpit where he could keep an eye on things.

  All was quiet. The La Sirena motored smoothly away from Hawaii and everyone except Zach was asleep. He was comfortable, looking out into the dark night and periodically checking the radar.

  Even when the light shined on the dinghy, no one had noticed the fingers that grasped its transom. As time passed, and all but the man on watch slept, and the sloshing waters hid the sound as a man’s arm reached over the transom.

  He slowly climbed into the little boat.

  Chapter 23

  STACEY was on watch when the sun rose the next morning. Whatever the skies might be like in other places in a world ravaged by a nuclear holocaust, there was no unpleasantness in the skies over the Pacific Ocean east of Hawaii this day.

  It was the kind of day that made the Arthur family fall in love with cruising. The sky was a clear and pristine blue, artistically enhanced with a few cotton-like clouds. The sun threw light out upon an ocean that rippled with small waves pushed by light breezes, and there was just enough nip in the air to tell Stacey it would not be an overly hot, nor cool, day. There was enough wind to tell her that they would still make good time when they hoisted the sails and turned off the engine.

  It was a beautiful sunrise, and she decided to walk to the front of the boat to see it better. The autopilot was on, so she needed do nothing before she climbed over the side of the cockpit onto the port side deck. A quick glance back over the diesel barrels told her there were no boats in the waters behind them for miles Satisfied with that, she looked left and right, with the same result, and then started toward the bowsprit to get an unobstructed view of the of the rising sun.

  Like her husband, she was a thorough person. It occurred to her that looking over the barrels had given her a look at the ocean several hundred yards distant, but nothing closer. There was space between two of the barrels, so if she craned her neck a little she could get a better look. She stopped, turned, leaned to her right, and looked between the two barrels. In that way, she could see the ocean that was nearer, and the corner of the dinghy they were towing.

  She saw nothing there except the ocean and the corner of the dinghy. She wasn’t interested in the dinghy, and paid it little heed at first. But something seemed… strange. Was that a part of a shoe she saw?

  She reached back into the cockpit and grabbed the weapon that she kept on the seat beside her during her watch. Bending over and keeping behind the barrels, she stepped quietly toward the stern. Peering over the last barrel, she was able to see the entire dingy – and the man who was sprawled across it, apparently asleep, or unconscious or…

  “Hey!” she yelled. The prone man did not
move. She called again. Then again, louder.

  “What?” Zach called from the cabin below.

  “You better come up here, Zach. We have a… situation.”

  A second later, the hatch leading down to the aft cabin slid open and Zach climbed up on the deck. He had on shorts and a t-shirt, and an AK-47 was in his hand. The deck above the cabin was over a foot higher than the deck Stacey was on, so he could see the dinghy as he walked over to join his wife. He stepped down and walked over to the aft rail.

  He shook his head. “He couldn’t have been there the whole time,” he opined.

  “No,” she agreed. “It was dark last night, but you shined the light on the dinghy, and I certainly would have seen a body if there’d been one there.”

  “He must have come from the boat that was after us… but how?”

  “Are you going to kill him?” asked Millie, who heard the commotion and came up behind them to look over their shoulders at the man lying on the dinghy.

  “No,” Zach stated emphatically. “Maybe the rest of the people in this world have come to that, but we haven’t.”

  “Besides,” Stacey added, “for all we know, he’s already dead.”

  “Don’t think so,” Millie advised them. “I can see a slight movement of his back.”

  The two Arthurs turned to stare at the white-haired woman.

  “What? You think I’m blind just because I’m getting a little older? Look for yourself. It’s faint, but he’s breathing. Not sure how good of shape he’s in, but he’s clearly alive.”

  “I see it,” said Denise, who had come out on deck and was atop the aft cabin. Glen and George came up behind Millie.

  “It’s too bad, then,” Zach sighed. “That means we have a prisoner on our hands.” He turned to his son. “How’s the shoulder?”

  “It hurts when I move my arm, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.”

  “Denise, how’s your arm?” Stacey asked.

  “It’s just a scratch,” the girl replied. “It’s nothing.”

  “Good,” Zach said, half in jest. “Because I need you to go below and bring me the .38. The AK-47 will be too cumbersome to carry down there.”