Hurricane Fever (7 page)

*   *   *

An older man, hardly much thicker than the mast of the
Spitfire
and wearing gray jeans coated in daubs of different-colored paint, approached Roo in the late morning to watch him chipping the last of the foam out of the hull. He folded his arms across his armless shirt after running his hands over a shaved head.

“Where’s your boy?” the man asked.

Roo stopped and wiped at sweat with a rag in his shorts. “School.” He’d called an automatic cab to pick Delroy up.

“The day after a storm like that?”

Roo stared at the holes in the inner side of the hull. “Wasn’t that bad of a storm for anyone on land,” he said. “We used to them by now, right?”

The man chuckled. “You know, when I first moved down here as a kid, there were a bunch of wooden-built houses. That’s back when the big hurricanes only hit every five years or so. And when the next one hit, those stick houses just blew away. And for a while, the land would just sit there empty. Then these state-side contractors would show up, get all excited, and build another bunch of wooden houses that would stand a few years. Until the next one hit.”

The fiberglass guy would be here later this evening. Before he came, Roo needed to scrub down the hull and get all the scum and barnacles blasted off so it was clean enough to paint. He nodded absently as the man continued talking.

“Eventually the insurance companies stopped insuring anything other than hurricane-ready houses,” the thin man, who introduced himself as Samuel, said. “All bunker houses now. Concrete roofs and concrete walls. Brick if you can afford to ship it. Extra strong tie-downs for your solar panels.”

“There was a reason people who lived here a while used to build just concrete and storm shutters,” Roo said. Though, he thought bitterly, even building with concrete wouldn’t help much in some situations. Like living too close to the water.

“Uh huh,” Samuel agreed while eyeing
Spitfire
’s hull. “Look, you ever try the shark-based bio-paint for your anti-fouling?”

Roo looked over at him. “No.”

“You got that old copper-based shit.” Samuel walked over and scraped at a bit of it with a thumb. “It’s soft. Copper stops some of the growth but you still end up having to jump in the water and scrape barnacles off your boat’s bottom every month. I used to like the lead-based bottom paint, much more effective. Illegal up here, though. But a nice, hard paint. Didn’t ablate off too much over time, kept the shit from growing on your hull and slowing you down. But regulations didn’t let us little people have it, even though large shipping companies had their exemptions to put it on their container ships. But the shark paint’s good. Expensive, new to market, but good.”

Roo eyed the man much the same way he was eyeing
Spitfire
’s hull. “And you’re selling?”

Samuel smiled. “You buying?”

There was a marine supplies store right here near the boatyard. Roo wondered what toes he’d be stepping on here. “What does the bio-paint do for drag?”

“Oh, bio-paint reduces friction. You’re adding a couple knots to your ship’s speed, as well as keeping the crap that grows on the bottom of your boat off for a couple years. Like owning a whole new ship. I mean, these are real sharkskin cultures, mixed in with the bonding agents. Once you get that coat on and it solidifies, the bottom of your boat is an oceanic creature.”

This was like buying a joint off the first person you met coming off the plane, Roo thought. Shark paint was military, still not for general sale. Definitely illegal for civilians.

Not that it stopped offshore factories from producing it and kicking it around marine yards around the world for sailing enthusiasts looking to get more speed out of their ships.

And it was going to be expensive.

Roo picked up a hose attached to a power sprayer. “I have to clean off the hull so they can repair the damage,” he said. “When I’m done, you can buy me a beer at the bar and tell me what you think it’ll cost for you to paint that on.” That’d give Roo time to feel the man out a bit more. Make sure he wasn’t getting entrapped. Though the man’s sunburned, scaly face indicated he all but lived here in the scorched, gravely boatyard.

Samuel’s answer was drowned out in the whine of the compressor and blast of water as Roo started stripping mossy seaweed and barnacles off from below the waterline with each wave of the power sprayer.

*   *   *

No man was truly an island unto himself. But nowadays on a boat you could get pretty damn close. Roo had been sailing around the world aboard a catamaran for long enough to feel fairly comfortable as a modern vagabond.

There was a 3-D printer and a supply of plastic and metal raw feed for it. He could build basic parts for the ship. Emergency sealant foam took care of most quick emergencies, like the puncture they’d taken. The watermaker used reverse osmosis to create drinkable water. Solar panels along the cabin top, and extras that folded out of the davits on the back and on the top of the mast, meant that they were usually well charged up.

Some cruisers wandering around the world had small meat stills along with their refrigerators. Steaks grown inside by feeding microbes seawater, which then laid down and reproduced cloned meat from some long-lost original sample.

But those machines broke down too much, and Roo wasn’t good at keeping them going. Better to just find a port of call and buy what you needed. He wasn’t going to go through the hassle of trying to turn the netting area in the front of the catamaran into some sort of square garden, or dabble in aquaponics.

He was just too damn lazy for that shit.

But he liked knowing he could pull up the sail, with a larder full of a few months of canned goods and frozen foods, and head out where his whim took him.

This summer, Delroy and he were supposed to sail south. Down through the Caribbean to see Martinique. And then a long stretch out in the Atlantic to get all the way to South America. The great cities down there were something Delroy should experience.

But the boy’d been struggling with classes. That was the main reason Roo’d sent him back to school right away after the storm, instead of asking him to help get the boat ready over the last few days.

They fell into a rhythm. School for Delroy and work on the boat for Roo. Delroy helped paint the hull when he got back, which was tricky business. Laying down lattice for the bio-paint to adhere to as it slowly bonded with the hull rewarded patience and precise fingers.

Later in the week, the two of them worried over tracking another powerful storm brewing in the Atlantic, but this one headed for Florida.

There was always a bit of guilt about being relieved the storm was off to hit someone else. But at least state-siders could still use vehicles to retreat along the highways and wait out the storm.

Roo had thrown himself into refitting the ship, and dropped into bed each night tired. Bone-deep weary.

And, he knew, ignoring the data hanging on the chain around his neck.

I’m not ignoring you, Zee, he thought. I just can’t face it all just yet. He needed to get everything sat back in place, shipshape, before he could take on the heavy weight of figuring out what was in the damn tree frog drive. He’d charged in too quickly in Tortola, instead of playing it safe. That left him making things up in the field.

If the person had been less worried about public violence, the whole scene in Road Town could have ended very badly.

Maybe that was an excuse for his delaying. But Roo had always worked his way sideways toward things.

And with the tree frog hanging just inside his shirt as he worked, he felt like he still had a piece of his old friend with him. When he really dug into it, he was going to probably have to let it go. Come to terms with Zee being dead.

Roo had never been good about that sort of stuff.

*   *   *

With
Spitfire
back in shape and just a few days left in the boatyard for them to relax, Roo made a trip to the Tutu Mall area a couple miles down the road, with an electric Haier hatchback he’d rented for the afternoon, to pick up more deep-frozen food for the catamaran and an extra set of batteries.

They’d come close to draining the ship’s battery bank in the storm. And the last few days of clouds hadn’t helped; they were still running a bit low. Last night the virtual talking heads had started chattering about yet another storm that could possibly turn and start coming for the islands. One of three forming up in the overheated middle of the Atlantic.

Better to get prepared for even worse, everyone said. No breaks this year in the constant summer-long hammering of storms up through the middle of the Caribbean and lower East Coast of the U.S.

Roo parked the car, picked up a battery in each hand, and walked across the gravel of the boatyard, through the sporadic forest of boat hulls with their masts towering overhead.

A table saw kicked up a whine in the distance, a bit of vibrato kicking in as it bit metal. Someone else blasted music as they painted a hull.

Always a handful of people working on hauled-out boats. Other boats were still and quiet, some wrapped in polypropylene. In storage. Waiting out the hurricane season.

Roo’d gotten used to the rhythm of the boatyard already. He’d been in enough of them.

So the two men in jeans and shirts off near one of the boats caught his eye.

Casual wear. But clean clothes. Not covered in paint splatters, barnacle slime, or dust from sanding. No oil or grease.

Roo kept walking toward the
Spitfire
. He’d already gotten halfway through the yard. It was a point of no return. He’d keep walking to the boat.

And maybe they weren’t there for him.

He thought about the green tree frog drive hanging from his neck, suddenly pressing hard and sharp against his chest. Thought about the man in the floral shirt glaring at Roo as he pulled away from the dock.

There was a woman waiting by the
Spitfire
’s stern. Pale-skinned, slightly freckled, blond hair ponytailed back, and wearing a gray pantsuit. She looked a bit flushed in the boatyard’s heat. The air hung still over the mangroves and bay here, and it cooked everything. Worse: it was midday.

Two bodyguards flanked her.

They were heavy and serious-looking, but more bouncers than killers. Because killers was the vibe Roo got from the two angular men out in the shade of the ancient Pearson 42 a couple hundred feet away.

“Hello!” she said, as he approached the boat.

Roo put the batteries down. “Hello,” he said, warily, looking up at the largest of the two bodyguards. The man could have been in one of those Strongest Man competitions, representing Iceland and picking up massive logs to throw across a field in feats of strength. A real-life Viking.

The man could break Roo in half with his bare hands.

“You’re Prudence Jones,” the woman said.

Roo looked back from the Viking to her. She had, he thought, very sad green eyes.

“You’re Prudence Jones,” the woman said. She knew it. It wasn’t a question. She’d found what she wanted.

And nothing had happened. The Viking hadn’t attacked, or done anything. Just stood there, scanning the yard.

“I’m Zachariah’s sister,” the woman said. “I know you’re the last person he called.”

Zachariah … Something in Roo wanted to correct her. No one ever called Zee Zachariah. Not that Roo had known of. But that was his first name.

“There was a lot of encryption on my phone,” Roo said at last, and carefully. “How’d you find out about that call?”

“I paid a lot of money to Heimdall Incorporated here to crack the last call he made. And find out where. I flew down here the moment they tracked you down, along with two of their bodyguards.”

Two.

Roo glanced briefly at the shadows under the chocked hull of the other boat down the yard. The other two men were leaning against the keel, faces in the shadows.

Well, he thought. She was either lying or hadn’t realized she’d picked up a few extra guests for this meeting.

“My brother’s dead, Mr. Jones,” she said, her voice quavering slightly, getting his attention back. “My brother’s dead, and of all the people in the world, he called a stranger right before he died.
You
.”

“Come on board,” Roo said, picking the batteries up and moving for the stepladder on the back scoop of the port hull.

The other bodyguard, who had a more Hell’s Angels sort of look going, but cleaned up with a suit and mirrored sunglasses, moved to block him.

Roo looked incredulous and the woman shook her head. He stepped back while Roo moved up the ladder onto his boat. “Leave the muscle to guard the boat,” Roo told her as he turned and held out a hand.

She looked dubious, for a second. Then nodded.

He glanced back and around, then waved her in past the cockpit into the
Spitfire
.

“Your brother called to ask me for a favor,” Roo said, closing the door behind her. “He left a message. He was a good friend, not a stranger. I’m sorry to hear he passed, Miss…?”

“Kit,” she said.

“Kit Barlow?” Roo asked, making sure of the last name.

She nodded. “Mr. Jones, I recently got a phone call saying Zachariah died of a hemorrhagic fever. From the CDC. They didn’t let me bury him. He was already cremated, and handed over. I never even got to…” She took a deep breath. “I never even got to see him one last time.”

Roo pulled a seat cushion off the bench near the table and pushed it up against the side window. All the curtains were already drawn against the sun. A sort of twilight filled the main cabin. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re sorry,” Kit said in a monotone. “The CDC was sorry. Everyone’s sorry. Do you know what I do for a living, Mr. Jones?”

Roo stopped and looked at her. “What do you do for a living?”

“I work for an insurance company in Boca Raton. Do you know what the statistical chances of a fit male in Florida dying of hemorrhagic fever are?”

The bench had a small catch. Roo unsnapped it and opened the lid. The bin under the seat bench was full of emergency supplies. Medical kits, water filtration straws, rope, expanding foam, and whatever else Roo thought might come in handy. “I don’t know,” Roo said.