The Boat (12 page)

Steve noticed.

“No, I just meant, if something went wrong then she could alert
Big Daddy
and–”

“
Really
?
Big Daddy
? Alert
everyone
on
Big Daddy
?” Adam looked around theatrically, raising his arms. “And what are
we
? Nothing and nobody? You don’t
care
if the disease comes back to
Flyboy
?”

Steve shook his head, frustrated. “No, I didn’t say that, I just meant…look, it was no big deal. We were going to bury the old lady and then be back before anyone could–”

“So you admit you did it secretly? To circumvent me?”

“What? No. You’re twisting my words. Now, listen to me…” Steve stepped up close to Adam, getting right in his face. Panic flew across Adam’s features. “You aren’t the king. We have no king. You run your business and I’ll run mine.”

“Oh, now you don’t want to work together, is that it? We’re not good enough for the
Big Daddy
ThreeBees crowd?”

Steve is disgusted by the shimmer of tears that appear in Adam’s eyes. “Of course we want to work together, haven’t we been? We just wanted to get the old lady buried. That’s all. No big conspiracy, okay?”

“No conspiracy, huh?”

“No. None.”

Adam nodded but Steve saw the nasty, triumphant gleam come into his eyes. “Then why didn’t you tell us about the other dead guy?” Adam stepped forward at the confusion in Steve’s eyes. Now
he
was the one in
Steve’s
face. “What,
exactly
, did that guy die of Steve? Was it anything…
catching
?” Adam’s eyebrows were raised almost to the level of his slightly receding hairline. In his mind, he’d just delivered the incriminating blow…the dramatic line that puts an end to all the bullshit. He imagined everyone sitting, breath held, waiting for Steve to crumble out a confession.

But to his chagrin, Steve laughed bitterly.

“I fucking hope it’s not catching…he committed suicide.”

People huddled around Steve, asking about Denny, visibly shaken. Steve had no doubt that probably a quarter of these people, maybe more, had contemplated it for themselves at some point during the cruel festivities of these last two months. He remembers lying down next to Amelia in the woods, waiting and hoping for a quick death.

Adam had been moved back by the crush of people wanting to hear about Denny. He felt angry and frustrated, as though Steve had gotten the better of him in a test of wills. He felt Steve was always doing that…undermining him and trying to short-circuit his authority over
Flyboy
and the people on it.

He hadn’t been the first person aboard, but he
was
the first one who was starting to figure out the complicated controls on the bridge.
Flyboy
wouldn’t be much good to anyone come cold weather if she couldn’t be sailed south, he’d been fond of telling everyone, patting himself on the back. No one bothered to point out that, eventually, they would have gotten the bridge figured out. Everyone was too panicked, too tired and distraught to think clearly. Most everyone had lost someone. It wasn’t a time of great clarity for anyone.

Except Adam. He’d been pretty clear-headed once he got on
Flyboy
. Calculating, even. He’d begun to shape his new society, bending the tired, sad people to his will. Mostly they’d been more than happy to let someone else take control. But not everyone…not Steve and a handful of men that followed him around like lovesick skunks.

That’s when Adam had floated the idea of expanding to a tug…ostensibly for protection and maneuverability because they hadn’t gotten
Flyboy
figured out as far as sailing her. The bridge was a complication filled with gauges and screens that no one currently aboard had enough degree of nautical experience to work. They had found her here, anchored like a small island, and here she still sat. That was okay for now as they waited to see if there were more survivors. But come cold weather, they’d need to pull anchor and sail south. Without YouTube, without the internet, learning
Flyboy
was catch as catch can.

Also, Adam really just wanted Steve and his merry fucking men on another ship. Out of his hair and out of his plans.

But he didn’t want them to leave entirely. They were good protectors and good providers. And Adam considered himself way too important to make the harum-scarum land runs. Who would step in if something happened to him? These people would be done for.

When
Big Daddy
had found
Barbra’s Bay Breeze
during a scouting trip, and Adam had seen how Steve looked at Maggie, he’d decided that the people already on board her should stay on board. There was nothing wrong with their accommodations, he’d pointed out…they were safe and relatively content. Why not leave things as they were?

Also, in the back of his mind, he’d begin to imagine an armada, an entire fleet with
Flyboy
in the lead, with
himself
in the lead. It would be glorious.

He just had to make sure he stayed on top. Of everyone.

He waited until the crowd had dispersed and Steve was on the low platform that ran across the back of
Flyboy
, ready to mount his jet ski. Then he approached him.

“I want that mystery man, that John Smith, brought back here to
Flyboy
. I want to meet him. To determine where he should go.”

Steve shifted uncomfortably. “Listen, Adam, I think we should be cautious with that guy. There’s something off about him; Maggie thinks so, too. I’m going to put him on
Big Daddy
where I can keep an eye on him.”

Adam felt his impatient rage bubble up.

“Oh really?
Maggie
thinks so, too? You and Maggie agree that there’s something
wrong
with the guy?” Steve opened his mouth to speak and Adam shushed him with a brisk, chopping movement of his hand. “I don’t care what you and Maggie think. You’re both horrible judges of character, based on who you each associate with.” Adam felt a cruel giggle wanting to rise but he forced it down, forced his face to stay passive. Probably Steve was too dumb to get his meaning, anyway. “Bring him to
Flyboy
. Today.”

~ ~ ~

“Any change?” Steve asked and waved to Singer who sat in the distant rowboat. Singer gave him the finger and turned so that he was facing the shore, showing ThreeBees his back. Steve sighed and pulled a chair up next to Maggie’s. The gun was lying next to her, just in reach. It made Steve uneasy and he wanted to say something about it, tell her to pull it in closer, but he knew she wouldn’t. He was surprised she had it near her at all. She didn’t like guns.

Maggie glanced at Steve and then at Jade who had fallen asleep on the deck bench. Jade’s hands were fisted together under her chin as though she had fallen asleep praying.

“No, no change. He still seems sick but it’s hard to tell from this far away.” Her tone was mildly scolding. “Are we just going to wait and see if he keels over?”

Steve sighed and shook his head. “I guess so. I don’t know what else to do. With everything else going on, I just…”

At the honest despair in his voice, Maggie reached out and squeezed his hand. “It has gotten kind of eventful lately.” Her tone is dry but not unsympathetic.

Dave had driven John Smith to
Flyboy
that afternoon and while he did that, the rest of the people on ThreeBees had buried Denny at sea. All they’d done, really, was wrap him in a sheet and slide him over the side while Randy said the Lord’s Prayer. Steve had been heartsick about it and he felt cowardly, too. He’d glanced out to the rowboat at Singer–to see if he was watching–and then doing so struck him as morbid. So he turned back around.

It didn’t seem right, tipping this young man’s body into the ocean; it made it seem unimportant, too much like tossing garbage.

Jade had been right about that.

They’d have to think about doing things another way if (when) someone else died.

Maggie squeezed his hand again and then she leaves her hand in his. “We’re all struggling. No one knows what to do about anything. We just have to figure it out as we go along.”

The thought depressed her. Is this what it will be now until she dies? This boat? These people? No, actually, it’s going to get a lot harder. They are going to run out of fuel, they are going to run out of canned food. Eventually, they may run out of water…what then? They can’t stay on the boats forever, anchored out here like small islands of sanity. It wasn’t permanent; none of it was permanent.

The thought of permanence depressed her; the thought of change scared her. For the millionth (billionth?) time, she found herself wishing for her old life back. She wanted her house, she wanted a shower, she wanted to do laundry on a bright Sunday morning…she wanted Joe. That, most of all.

She took her hand from Steve’s and stood. “Take over for a minute?”

“Sure,” he said. “You okay?”

She didn’t answer.

He watched after her until she was out of sight in the salon and then leaned down and scooted the gun closer.

“She likes you,” Jade said, startling him. Her voice floated across the deck in the gathering dark. She sat up and stretched and looked to where her brother sat, forlorn and rocking on the late-afternoon waves. As if he sensed her gaze, he looked over his shoulder. He gave her a small wave and she raised her hand in turn. “He’s not sick. I’d know if he were.”

Steve looked at her a moment more and then his gaze returned to Singer. “It won’t be too much longer. Before we know for sure.” He didn’t ask if she understood or if she was okay with any of this. He knew that she didn’t and she wasn’t. Would he be? If it were Amelia out there in that rowboat? If it were Maggie?

That’s why someone else needed to make the decision
, he thought. Loved ones are not always the best arbiters of our fate. That brings Amelia to mind again, what he had to do to her at the end. Had he been the arbiter of her fate?

So far, no one had ever recovered from being sick. Not that anyone on the boats seemed to know of, anyway. If you got sick you died, and if you died from the sickness, then you came back to life. If you happened to die from something else–car accident, say–then you didn’t come back.

It was the sickness, itself, that was the trigger for reanimation. But what was the sickness? Where had it come from? Could it have been a natural occurrence? The final pandemic which scientists and religious nuts alike had posited at one time or another? Possibly, but it didn’t ring all the way true to Steve. Especially when you added in the fact of the dead coming at least half way back to life. That was crazy, voo-doo shit. Or, maybe, weren’t there frogs that did something like it, too? Essentially dead until rain hit them or something?

Steve shook his head. He didn’t know and felt pretty sure that no one ever would. Not in his lifetime anyway. And what was his lifetime going to be now? Drastically reduced, that was for sure. The means and ways for injury and death were doubled, trebled…and no hospital in sight. No one to save us, he thinks. We are on our own.

A splash from the side of ThreeBees yanked him from his reverie.

“Jade?” he said, standing, automatically grabbing the gun, already knowing where she has gone. “Jade!” He saw her now, five feet from the boat and swimming in an easy breaststroke. She rolled onto her back, kicking. The water seemed to shatter around her as the light of the setting sun was splashed into a million pieces.

“You would go, too,” she said. “If it was Maggie.” Her low voice carried easily to him even though he couldn’t see
her
anymore; she was merely the dark star around which the broken, sparkling water swirled.

“Jade, come back, please. What if it isn’t–if Singer isn’t–safe?”

He thought he caught a glimpse of white teeth and then she must have rolled again, her arms and legs working in a languorous way. He watched until he saw her emerge at the rowboat, pulled aboard by Singer. She looked like an oil slick come to liquid life.

He considered his options and in the end decided to leave them be.

What right did he have to judge if Jade was willing to put herself on the line for her brother? What right did he have to decide if companionship was enough of a reward to merit such a risk?

Steve put the gun down and sat back in the deck chair, vowing that he’d not be the judge anymore. He’d learned his lesson. With Amelia, he’d learned it.

~ ~ ~

John Smith watched Adam with careful attentiveness. He studied his mannerisms and the inflection of his words. Adam was IN CHARGE and John knew what that meant…it meant that he had to get close to Adam. He had to absorb some of Adam and reflect it back to him, because that’s what made a man like Adam like and trust you.

He didn’t care what Adam was saying and paid almost no attention to the words themselves. He just nodded, keeping a look of concern on his face while he thought about other things. He trusted his intuition to tell him if Adam was saying something that actually mattered. So far, nothing.

For Adam’s part, he found that he really liked John Smith. Liked and trusted him, despite what Steve had to say. The guy was courteous and let Adam talk. He was really listening, Adam could tell, and he seemed to really like Adam…possibly even admired him.

“Steve runs the day to day stuff on the tug,
Big Daddy
. No one is really the leader on
Barbra’s Bay Breeze
–we usually just call it ThreeBees, by the way–they basically just do what I tell them. They are kind of an annex to
Flyboy
…a castoff, if you will.” He laughed and John Smith laughed too. And he stopped laughing just before Adam stopped. Adam liked that…he and John were simpatico.

“What did you think of Steve? Kind of a dick, right?” Adam kept his tone neutral, testing John, trying not to lead him too much.

“Yeah, he was a dick. I noticed that.” John’s voice was smooth and calm. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded just slightly. Adam nodded back, almost without realizing he was doing it.