Dead Reckoning (36 page)

             
“How are Brenda and the girls?” I asked Jeff tentatively.

             
“They’re fine,” he said. He looked at Charlie and then sheepishly toward me. He raised his eyebrows in a sort of nonverbal question.

             
“Kelly is back at the house. It’s just the four of us now.”

             
Jeff performed the squinted smile one might make when experiencing a sharp pain—it was the facial gesture of condolence. It's next to impossible to know how to behave in the presence of an adult who has just lost a dear member of his family much less a child like Charlie. Jeff did well.

             
“Let’s go back to the RY,” Jeff said.

             
“We’ll go escort your visitors,” Dean said while motioning to his brother.

             
As we walked down the beach, Jeff hooted toward the boat.

             
Heads popped out from below decks.

             
“It’s ok,” he said.

             
Three adults and two children spilled onto the deck. I thought I knew who those people might be. A plank of wood lowered to the beach and people filed down, their arms held wide for balance.

             
Within seconds, Jill and Sonny had me in an embrace. Brenda grabbed Charlie and bear hugged him. Brenda had lost a lot of weight since I’d seen her last. She was always cute but could have been described as pudgy before. She was positively slender as she held Charlie. At only 5’2”, Brenda was dwarfed by Charlie now.

“We're so glad to see you!” exclaimed Brenda.

Tommy and the Riggins girls stood quietly by, unsure of what to do.

             
While Brenda held Charlie, she looked at me and mouthed the word “Kate.”

             
I pursed my lips against the emotion and shook my head. Tears welled in her eyes as she mouthed “the girls.”

             
Shit, I exclaimed. I broke free from Jill and Sonny, leapt over the bulkhead, and ran around back to the crawl space. Everyone followed.

             
I scrambled inside and found Kelly crying and rocking back and forth.

             
“We're ok, honey. Charlie and Tommy are fine. We’re all fine.”

             
Kelly wrapped her arms around me.

             
“There are two people here to see you,” I said.

             
She looked out through the hole curiously.

             
I pulled her out as Jeff's girls screamed and yelled happily: “Kelly!”

             
Kelly smiled for the first time since I had returned.

Brenda’s brothers escorted Joe and
the Blackmans to the house. I introduced everyone to everyone else. And our group suddenly grew to sixteen.

             
We all exchanged stories of our experiences since my disembarkation at Bush Point. It turned out that the rest of the RY's trip was uneventful. Just as expected, Brenda's brothers had protected her and the girls, and they were hardly the worse for the wear when Jeff arrived. They spent time repairing the RY and outfitting it for whatever voyage lay ahead.

             
We had talked through a number of different plans, and finally settled on going to see if my friend, Sean McMasters, was indeed holed up in the mountains near Port Angeles as I suspected. I was fairly certain of three things: If he had survived The Red Plague, he would be there; he’d be better prepared than anyone else; he would welcome us. Backup plans included coming back to Shadow Beach and trying to make it there, sailing back up to Gilligan’s Island, and taking one of the thousands of sea-worthy boats that must be still around and trying to get back to Kwaj.

             
The children listened for a while but eventually peeled off into their groups to play. The Blackman boys hit it off right away with Charlie and Tommy, and the girls immediately became inseparable again. The adults were a little more guarded at first, but we also quickly formed into a collegial group. With their military training, Brenda's brothers immediately tried to take charge and lead our group. Joe resisted that notion outright, and Jeff had already earned the allegiance of Sonny, Jill, and I. So no true leader immediately emerged. That was all right, though, since we had proved that leadership by committee could be made to work. I think everyone was truly impressed that we made it all the way across the Pacific against such odds. It earned us quite a bit of credibility.

             
We decided to leave for Port Angeles the next day. We sat silently watching the children play and contemplating what lie ahead.

             
Charlie rubbed his eyes, sneezed, and then coughed.

             
Are you all right, I asked.

             
Everyone turned to look at him.

             
“Yes,” he said.

2
5

Shadow Beach/Langley, Whidbey Island, WA

              Despite my assurances, Josh and Dean insisted on standing watch overnight. I admit that I got my first good night's sleep in a long time knowing that someone else was on the lookout for bad guys.

             
Yet, I awakened to one of my worst fears: a wheezing sound coming from my little boy's chest. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead as I leaned in to listen. I pressed my wrist against his head and felt his cool, clammy skin. I unzipped his sleeping bag and ran my hand over his chest. His heart thumped quickly inside, and his feverish body warmed my hand.

             
I quietly awakened Jill and told her what I had found. She crawled over to him and placed her head against his chest and listened. She squinted as if trying to focus on something.

             
Jill got up and walked out to Dean who was sitting outside on second watch. He nodded and spit something on the ground. Then he got up, looked around, and walked up the plank into the RY.

             
Jill came back over to Charlie and me and sat down.

             
“Should we do something to bring down his fever?” I asked.

             
“I'm not sure yet.”

             
Dean set the first aid kit down next to us and went back to his post. Jill fished out a thermometer, lifted Charlie's shirt and arm, and placed it in his armpit. He shifted and whined softly, as if annoyed, and then went back to sleep.

             
After a minute, Jill removed the thermometer and reported the results: one hundred and two degrees.

             
“That's high,” I said.

             
“Not really,” Jill contradicted.

             
“I stashed away some children's ibuprofen,” I said. “I'll go get it.”

             
Jill grabbed my arm.

             
“We don't want to bring his fever down,” she said.

             
“Why not?”

             
“We get fevers for a reason, and it's to fight the infection.”

             
“But you know how uncomfortable a fever is.”

             
“Yes, and the effort to make us comfortable has been one of the biggest failures of modern medicine. We defeat all sorts of important natural defenses against disease by masking symptoms. We stop coughs that are designed to rid our lungs of fluid. We cover up pains that are designed to force us to stop using joints so they can heal. We stop diarrhea which is supposed to flush poisons from our intestines. And we reduce fevers that are one of our best natural defenses against infections.”

             
“But you can't let a fever get too high, right?”

             
“Right, but 102 isn't too high. If it gets much over 103 we'll have to do something, but this is actually good for him. A person won't die until it gets up around 106.”

             
“106, really?” I asked. “Hell, most of the time I wished I were dead with a fever of even a hundred.”

             
“Viruses and bacteria don’t like it either,” Jill pointed out. “102 or 103 won't kill you, but it will kill many invaders.”

             
“I see. Just the same, shouldn't we at least start him on antibiotics?”

             
“If it's a virus, it won't do any good. And it could do some harm. Antibiotics aren't that easy on your system, you know?”

             
“Yeah, I know. It kills the good bacteria in your intestines.”

             
“Among other things,” Jill said.

             
“I'm just worried that he has what Tommy's grandmother had.”

             
“I thought you said it was pneumonia?”

             
“Yeah, but I don't know for sure.”

             
“Yeah,” Jill said to no one in particular. “Let's just see how he does today before we jump to any conclusions.”

             
I couldn’t bear to go through this again. Jill sat there next to Charlie and stroked his arm. I was so glad that Jill was back with us again. She leaned over and rested her head against my shoulder.

             
“It makes it worse, you know?” I whispered.

             
“What does?”

             
“Having them back.”

             
“What, the worry?” Jill asked.

             
“Yes. I had resigned myself to them being gone. If something happened to either of them now, I, I don't know. I couldn't go on.”

             
Jill took my hand and said: “We won't let that happen.”

             
“The problem is: we don't have that much control anymore,” I lamented.

. . .

As a group, we decided not to leave with Charlie being sick. The wind was generally from the west, and that meant fairly benign weather, at least in the short term. When the wind backed to the south, it meant an approaching storm, and when it veered north, it usually meant cold and sometimes snowy weather.

             
Despite the high overcast, we could still see that old bellwether, Mount Rainier. And since Mount Rainier remained uncapped—that is, its top was not obscured by clouds—it was unlikely to rain in the next twenty four hours. Unlike so many old wive’s or farmer's tales, the one about a cap on Mount Rainier actually had a basis in science. When Mount Rainier's top became obscured by clouds it meant that moist flow off the ocean had developed, which almost always preceded rain by about twenty four hours.

             
So we stayed put and continued final preparations for our journey.

             
Charlie's health declined at such a pace throughout the day that, by dark, I was preparing to head out to look for some strong antibiotics. We had the garden variety stuff like Amoxicillin, Penicillin, and Erythromycin, but that wasn’t good enough for me. Jill feared that Charlie had pneumonia and, despite her assurances that pneumonia was normally caused by bacteria easily treated with such broad-spectrum drugs, I wanted the real stuff, just in case. We started him on Amoxicillin, but I planned to take no chances.

             
“I'm sure the pharmacies have all been cleaned out,” Brenda pleaded with me.

             
“Maybe, but what should I do, wait until it's too late? If I go now, maybe I can find something before it's too late.”

             
“Or maybe you'll get yourself killed,” Jill said.

             
“I'm not going to do anything stupid. But I'm also not going to sit here and watch my son die.”

             
I looked around to make sure Tommy wasn't within earshot.

             
“It was too late when I got to Tommy's grandmother, but she carried on for a week or more. Charlie is healthier than her, and maybe he can beat it, or maybe the Amox will work, but I'm not going to find out too late that it's too late.”

             
“You saw the stores,” Joe said. “What are the odds there will be anything left in a pharmacy?”

             
“Not good,” I said, as I picked up my backpack and slung it over my shoulder.

             
It was as useless for them to try to talk me out of going as it was for me to try to talk Jeff and Sonny out of coming with me. So we set off to check out the closest pharmacy, Langley Drug.

             
We covered the five miles to Langley in a couple of hours and arrived there at what I reckoned to be around midnight. We surely could have gone faster, but we walked the road in darkness and only occasionally switched on our flashlights on to verify our course. As we walked in silence, I thought back to the dogs I had encountered as well as the figure I saw down in Langley as I passed by. When we passed the spot of my dog attack, many of the carcasses were gone. It made for a hell of a story anyway. Our walk was entirely uneventful, but I spent most of it tensely fretting over what I would do if we couldn’t find any antibiotics.

             
We knew we were getting close when the smell came up. We split up as we edged inside the city limits, Jeff and Sonny on one side of the street and me on the other.

             
Langley Drug was one of many shops that lined Main Street in downtown Langley. By my recollection, it was the fifth store on the south side after we passed Second Street. Glass occasionally crunched under foot as we moved slowly along the street. I accidentally kicked a bottle as I walked, but we otherwise made little noise. We were getting good at stealth.

             
We all stopped when we heard a sound in the distance. The sound came from the bluff above Langley, and it grew louder as we listened. Then headlights came over the hill and began to descend into the town.

             
I joined Jeff and Sonny and we ducked into a gutted-out building. The vehicle pulled onto the main street and idled along, music blaring. The men laughed and carried on. Finally, the unmistakable orange truck stopped several buildings down and the men got out. I peered around the corner and watched them walk toward a building on the other side of the street. Anger surged through my veins.

             
“Oh no,” Jeff whispered. I had told Jeff and Sonny about my encounters with those three, but they didn’t know it all—Jill and Brenda were the only ones who knew about all of my suspicions.

             
They entered the building. Fear and doubt crept up on me just as my anger reached a rolling boil. My emotions battled for a few seconds, and, finally, anger won. I stepped out and began walking toward the building.

             
“What are you doing?” whispered Sonny nervously.

             
I kept walking. I pulled out my gun and pulled back the slider to chamber a round. I knew the clip was full. Jeff and Sonny scrambled up behind me and grabbed me.

             
“Matt, you got your stuff back. It’s water under the bridge. This isn’t worth it,” Jeff pleaded.

I stopped. “That’s not the half of it,” I said, my eyes boring into Jeff’s.

Whether Jeff and Sonny truly understood at that moment or not, they stopped trying to stop me.

             
The truck continued to rumble in the roadway as I walked by. Country music blared from the stereo. The men thrashed around noisily inside the building, oblivious to the approaching menace. They’d obviously had the run of the island for too long.

             
I got to the front of the building and looked in. The men rummaged through the CDs of the small music store. There were no weapons in their hands. The truck’s headlights shined from behind me into the building. I had all the advantages: the light, the element of surprise, and most importantly, just cause.

             
I raised my gun and stepped into the building. Glass crunched under my foot, and they all turned.

             
“If any of you move you are dead,” I said.

             
The men shielded their eyes from the light behind me.

             
“Who the fuck are you?” asked one of them.

             
“Hey man. Take it easy,” said another. “We’re just looking for tunes.”

             
I walked to within five feet of the men. There was no doubt that they were the guys—Tommy described the truck to a tee. Sonny and Jeff followed in behind, weapons drawn.

             
“I don’t give a fuck about this store,” I said. I turned to illuminate my face.

             
“Hey, we were just screwing with you, dude,” one of them said. “We gave you your shit back.”

             
“I don’t give a fuck about that either,” I said. “I know you assholes have been down to Shadow Beach. I just want to know which one of you raped my wife and daughters.”

             
The dread that spread across all of their faces told me everything I needed to know.

             
“You mother fuckers,” I heard Jeff whisper under his breath. He attempted to push past me, but I stopped him with my left arm.

             
“I’ll take care of this,” I said calmly.

             
The last drop of fear drained from my body and left only anger. There wasn’t a single cell in my body that didn’t want those guys to suffer terribly. I had no idea if one of the guys was the main culprit, but as far as I cared, they all represented the same thing. I chose at random and pointed the gun at the man on my left.