Apocalypticon (18 page)

They started back east across the Poplar Street Bridge. “How many days to Disney?” Ben asked.

“On foot? Maybe...a month?”

“A month?! Good God.”

“Yeah,” Patrick agreed. “I really wish we’d sorted this out before we got off the train.”

“At least you got to piss on Barry Bonds’ ashes,” Ben said. “There’s always a bright side.”

“I didn’t piss on them. I just reduced him to them.” He stopped short in the street. “Do you think I should go back?”

“No,” Ben said, squinting down into the river below. “I think you should flag down that boat.”

They skidded down the bank, waving their arms and hollering at the girl in the gray and orange speedboat. “Hey! Stop! Please! Hey! Heeeeey!” Ben shouted.

The girl looked up, dazed and doubtful, as if she expected these two yahoos rolling down the hill to be a mirage. But when Patrick tripped and skidded face-first into the water, the splash snapped her into reality. “Oh my God!” she cried. She jumped up, sending the boat rocking precariously. She slipped from one side to the other as it shifted under her feet. “Hey! Help! You guys, help me!” she cried, bobbing up and down like a human buoy.

“No,
you
help!” Ben shouted. “Come over here and pick us up!”

“I can’t!” the girl wailed. “I don’t know how to drive a boat!”

“Use the steering wheel!” Patrick said, shaking the water from his face.

“It’s broken!” she cried. “Help!”

“See if there’s a wide, flat object in the boat you can use to drag on the port side to set your drift eastward,” Patrick hollered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she sobbed.

“Okay,” Patrick shouted, slowing his words down. “Do you see a wide, flat object in the boat?”

Ben didn’t wait around to hear it all a second time. The current was pulling the boat quickly now, and soon the girl would be past them and too far downriver to catch. He sprinted down the bank toward the destroyed MacArthur Bridge, losing ground as the speedboat cut rapidly through the water. It pulled even with him just as he reached the submerged trestles. He leapt onto the floating barge, losing his footing for a second, righting himself as the boat skimmed past, and with one last surge of power, he sprinted across the barge and vaulted into the air. He landed in the rear of the boat with a hard crash that nearly capsized the whole thing.

Ben groaned in pain as he sat up. He looked around the boat and grabbed a small Rubbermaid cooler from under one of the seats. He thrust it into the icy, yellow-capped water on the eastern side. Slowly, the nose of the boat began to drift to the left, until they ran up gently on the bank. Ben fell over the side of the boat, scrambled his way to the prow, and heaved the thing up the sandy gravel. When it was secure, he let go and collapsed backward onto the rocky beach, wheezing heavily.

“Holy cow!” Patrick cried as he ran open-mouthed down the bank, clapping his hands. “Ben! Are you okay?” he shouted downriver. “That was amazing!”

The girl peeked over the edge of the boat, shaking visibly. “Mister?” She reached out with one finger and prodded his kneecap. “Hey. Mister?”

Patrick arrived, skidding to a halt near Ben’s shoulder. “Stand back!” he cried, throwing his hands up as a barrier. “I know CPR!”

“Patrick,” Ben said weakly, his chest heaving, “don’t  touch me with your lips.”

They gave him a few minutes to catch his breath. “That was amazing!” Patrick said again, once Ben began showing positive signs of life. “You were like Batman!”

“That’s because I
am
Batman.” He squinted up at the girl. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” she said seriously. Ben examined the girl. She had nuclear blonde, almost white hair down past her shoulders, with dark brown roots nearly an inch long at the base. She was small, probably no more than 5’3”, with a remarkably tiny waist. She had large, cartoon character green eyes and wore tight, fashionable jeans with a v-neck t-shirt under a gray cardigan and dark purple scarf. She was easily the trendiest girl he’d met since the apocalypse. “My gosh, you saved my life!” she gushed. “I would’ve
died
in that boat, I
know
it!”

“How long were you floating?” Ben asked.

“Two days!”

“Really?” Patrick asked. He looked inside. There was no sign of food, no weapons, no provision of any kind. “Where are you going?”

“New York,” she said.

Ben raised an eyebrow. “New York, like...
New York
, New York?” She nodded.

“You’re trying to get to New York from Missouri by boat?” She nodded again. Patrick squinted at her. “I have to tell you, I think there’s a serious flaw in your plan.”

“What?” she asked, her big eyes confused and searching.

“For starters, New York is that way,” he said, pointing northeast. “This river goes in for all intents and purposes what we’re going to call the exact opposite direction.”

“Oh,” the girl laughed, “I know that! I’m not an idiot.” Patrick shot Ben a look. Ben shrugged. “I’m taking this to the ocean,
then
I’m going
up
the ocean to New York. I looked on a map. It all connects.”

“Yes, I guess technically, that’s true,” Patrick said.

“Man, that is a dumb plan,” Ben decided. The girl’s face fell.

“Why?”

“Well, for starters, you don’t have the keys to this boat,” Patrick said, examining the console.

The girl slapped her forehead. “
That’s
what they key was for!” She reached into her pocket and produced a little orange floatable keychain with a grimy key dangling from the end. “I found this on the floor of the boat, and I was like, ‘Someone dropped their car keys!’” She laughed. “I’m an idiot!”

Patrick did his level best to keep his face from falling into a hard grimace. He pushed on bravely and tapped the gas meter. “And, um, for seconders, you’re out of fuel.”

“I know, right? The stupid thing doesn’t work!” She gave the hull a good kick. “You guys saved my life!”

“Some of us more than others,” Ben said.

“I didn’t know boats needed keys, too,” the girl continued. “I mean, they’re not cars.”

Patrick nodded. “That is absolutely true. Boats are not cars.”

“Gosh, I got in, and the boat started going, and I was like, ‘Perfect! Next stop, New York!’ But then I couldn’t steer it, and the motor wouldn’t go, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m gonna get to the ocean, and I’m not gonna be able to stop! I’m gonna float all the way to
China
!’”

“Your views on geography are fascinating,” Patrick murmured. “Can I ask why you’re going to New York?”

“I need to get out of here. Everyone is so...weird! I can’t take it anymore. I need to go back to New York, where things are normal.”

“Back? Are you from New York?” Ben asked, surprised. “I
knew
that journalist was a nut job!”

“Yeah. I mean, not originally or anything. I’m originally from Hannibal. But it’s so, ugh,
stupid
there. I moved to New York when I was, like, eighteen.”

Patrick clapped Ben on the back. “Cannibalism, Ben. It’s all about the cannibalism.”

“I was back home visiting when all the stuff happened. You know? That bombing?”

“Yes, we’re familiar with the large-scale event that nearly extinguished life on the planet. Please continue.”

“I need to go back to New York. I miss my goldfish.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Patrick, can we sidebar for a second?”

Patrick jumped to his feet. “Capital idea! A sidebar on the sandbar!” They walked down the bank a hundred feet or so and turned their backs to the girl sitting by the boat.

“Do you think we should tell her about New York?” Ben asked. “Specifically, that everyone in it is dead?”

“I’m not sure it’d do much good. I don’t think she knows what words mean.”

“Stop it. I’m serious. I mean, she can’t take a boat to New York anyway.” Then he added, uncertainly: “Can she?”

“Again. More proof of why I’m in charge.” But Patrick rubbed his chin and thought carefully. “
Technically
, it’s possible, yes. But in that boat? It’s not built for distance. It’d probably break down before she got to Myrtle Beach. And I don’t know where the hell she thinks she’s going to find gas. Of course, if we could dredge up some cooking oil--“

“What is it with you and cooking oil?” Ben hissed.

“What? It’s an incredibly versatile product! It fries potatoes, it softens bunions, it repels hippies, and it powers gas-guzzling locomotives! It’s the wonder product of our generation! We could probably find enough of it to send the boat back up to Hannibal, but definitely not to New York.”

“And she obviously doesn’t want to go back there.”

“Obviously.”

“So tell me if I understand you correctly,” Ben said. “She can’t go upriver, because she could only go as far back as the place she’s trying to get away from, and she can’t go to the ocean, because a whale would eat her and her broken boat somewhere in the Atlantic.”

“I don’t think those are the words I used, exactly, but that’s the general idea, yes.”

“So it’s really in her best interest to start a new life somewhere between here and New Orleans.”

“I would not presume to know what’s in her best interest,” Patrick insisted. “But looking at it from our perspective, it’s safe to say that yes, she would be better off resigning herself to a new life in a reasonably populated city along the Mississippi.”

“So what you’re saying is that it’s basically our moral duty to commandeer both her and her boat and steer them safely into port at Memphis.”

“I--oh, I see what you’re doing,” he said, wagging a finger at his friend. “I definitely did not say those words. I’m pretty sure ‘commandeering a person’ is the literal opposite of moral duty.”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“We shouldn’t try to ‘commandeer’ anything. If we want her to take us to Memphis, we should just ask her to take us to Memphis.”

“I know, but it feels weird asking her to do that. It feels like tricking her.”

Patrick blinked at him. “Tricking her?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re not
tricking
her if we’re
asking
her. Once again, one is pretty much the exact opposite of the other.”

“Then why do I feel bad for asking her?”

Patrick put his arm around Ben’s shoulder and jostled him. “Because she’s a pretty girl, and you’re not used to pretty girls doing anything nice for you because they’re usually drawn to much taller, handsomer men, so any time one does do something nice for you, you subconsciously think you must be tricking her into being nice to you.”

“She is pretty, isn’t she?” Ben asked.

“And you are short,” Patrick said, “and not terribly attractive. But, hey, you saved her life. She probably would’ve drifted into the ocean if it weren’t for you. And gotten eaten by a whale, or whatever dumb thing you said. Did you notice there’s no food in the boat? No blankets, no tent, no fishing poles, no survival gear of any kind? She couldn’t even figure how to steer the boat when given clear instructions.”

“Those weren’t exactly clear instru--”

“You literally saved her life,” Patrick interrupted. “And you did it by leaping into a moving boat from a barge! You were like an especially uncoordinated flying squirrel!”

“I thought you said I was like Batman.”

“The clarity of time has shown me that it was really more like an especially uncoordinated flying squirrel. Either way, it was heroic. You’ve at least earned the right to ask for a ride.”

Ben brightened a bit. “That’s true.”

“It is true! There’s no harm in asking for a little ride.”

“No, it’s just a little ride.”

“A very little ride! You know what? You know what? It’s not even a ride. It’s a
drift
. We’re asking for a little
drift
.”

“Yeah, a little drift down the river. And when we get to Memphis, she can fuel up and go wherever she wants.”

“Sure she can.”

“There’s still one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m no good at talking to girls. You do it.”

“Heck no. You’re the shining hero here. She’s much more likely to say yes to you.”

“I’m going to screw this up.”

“Probably,” Patrick agreed.

“My hands are already sweating,” Ben said, wiping his palms on his jeans. “What if she says no?”

“Then we brain her with the hammer and commandeer the boat.”

“I’ve really enjoyed this little pep talk.”

Patrick winked. “Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

They walked back up the bank to where the girl was sitting. Ben sat down on the gravel next to her while Patrick wandered up the bank, trying to be inconspicuous. “Listen,” he asked. “Do you think we could...uhm...catch a ride? Maybe to...uhm...Memphis?”

“Oh, totally!”