Long Voyage Back (24 page)

`Jeanne,' Jim began uncertainly. 'I . I'm not going in the Army and I guess I have to hide.'

He hesitated. 'Lisa wants to come with me.'

Jeanne looked at him with a strange serenity and nodded once, glancing briefly at her daughter.

`Where will you go, Jim?' she asked quietly.

Jim looked uncomfortable. 'Neil said last night he thought my only chance was to get a small boat and head down the waterway,' he said. 'I don't know.'

Jeanne now looked up at Neil.

`Well, captain?' she asked.

Neil resented her addressing him as 'captain'

Ì'm beginning to think we were crazy to come in that inlet,' Neil replied almost angrily. '

Jim is trapped. If the Army is rounding up young people sooner or later it'll round up Jim. The only haven from the government is out at sea.'

`Can't he stay with Olly on Vagabond?' Jeanne asked.

`Yes,' said Neil, 'but a man on the ketch forward said that the military police came through earlier this morning searching all the boats along the docks.'

Tut why?' Jeanne suddenly burst out. 'What possible use can Jim and others be?'

`How do people like Jim eat?' Neil replied gloomily. 'They have to steal to survive. If they have guns they may end up killing. The government is trying to control chaos.'

`Then perhaps Jim should just go in,' Jeanne said. Neil shrugged and Jim stirred uneasily.

`We shouldn't have come here, Mother,' Lisa said.

`What do you expect to find here?' Neil asked Jeanne in a low, tight voice. Startled, Jeanne stiffened. 'I'm not sure,' she replied tentatively. 'A place to help other people, I guess. A safer place for Lisa and Skip.'

`Safer than what?' Neil asked.

`Safer than the Chesapeake,' she answered, looking at him, adding, less surely, 'Safer than the ocean.'

`Land will never again be safer than the sea,' he responded. `We're here, Neil,' she countered quietly.

Ì hate your going . . . back . . . out there,' Neil said in almost a whisper. Conrad Macklin suddenly burst in from the rain, stamping the floor, oblivious of interrupting anything, and announced that all private housing had already been taken over by either the military or by earlier refugees. There was absolutely no food being sold anywhere. The hospital they'd taken Seth to was so overcrowded it was treating people in tents and garages, or rather not treating them. Hundreds of victims of burns, radiation sickness and retinal blindness were not being

treated at all as far as he could see. Frank had remained to try to obtain attention for Seth. There were no vehicles available for going south and there were roadblocks on every major highway. Macklin ended his report and disappeared below to change and dry off.

When he left, Jim and Lisa still stood in the centre of the wheelhouse with Jeanne, face averted, staring at the floor.

`Look,' Neil said, striding forward so Jim and Lisa could see him. 'I'm going to find out from the Army or Navy what the food and fallout situation is going to be here. If I'm needed in the Navy I'll serve. But I don't think, Jim, that you and Lisa should go anywhere by yourselves. Hold up a bit. Stay here on the boat with Olly. Lisa, at least for now, you should go with Jeanne to the refugee centre.'

`Why can't we all stay on the boat?' Lisa asked.

`Because . . .' Neil began.

`Because we can't flee forever,' Jeanne replied. 'Our duty is to find a place here on land to live and work. There's both farming and fishing here. It must be better than most places. And the only way we can get more food is at the refugee centre.'

`What about Captain Olly?' Lisa asked.

`He'll stay here to guard the boat,' Neil answered. 'In case . . . we need it again.'

Lisa looked up at Jim to see what he was deciding.

Àll right,' said Jim. 'I'll hide here fora while. Lisa . . . you . . . better help your Mom . .

`When . . . when . . . ?' Lisa began.

`We can visit the boat, honey,' Jeanne said quietly. 'We're all just testing what the new world holds for us, Nothing is final.'

Lisa took Jim's hand and after exchanging a look with him, stared at the floor. Ì'll risk helping you, take your things to the high school,' Jim said. Together he and Lisa began to gather up the dufflebags and small suitcases and transport them to the docks. After they'd left the wheelhouse Jeanne stood up and went closer to Neil, who was standing with his hands gripping the stainless steel wheel. wish . . . we didn't have to go,' she said.

`You don't,' Neil answered.

Ì mean . . . but you too . . . have to leave Vagabond.' `Nor do I have to go,' Neil replied quietly.

As Jeanne gazed at him she realized that he was making a subtle appeal to her. Tut ... what would we all do on Vagabond?' she asked after a pause, Skippy holding on to her skirt.

`We would sail south out of the path of the probable fallout,' Neil answered. 'To the West Indies.'

Jeanne visibly flinched. 'They wouldn't let you and Jim out the inlet,' she said softly. Neil hesitated. 'Cowards and lovers will always find a way,' he said. Jeanne gazed at him, flushed, and then impulsively came forward into his arms. She squeezed him, burying her head against his chest. She felt his arms tightening fiercely around her. After half a minute, aware of Skippy tugging gently at her skirt and murmuring her name, she looked up, tears in her eyes. 'I don't want to go,' she said.

`Then don't,' Neil whispered to her.,

Èverything okay, Jeanne?' came Jim's voice from close behind her. He had returned. Still in Neil's arms, when Jeanne turned and saw him, the image of Frank in his boyish face reminded her of all the complications and uncertainties involved in her staying for Neil.

She looked back up at Neil, saw his feeling for her, but pulled herself roughly out of his arms.

`Goodbye, Neil,' she said and brushed past Jim out into the rain. After she had gone, Neil turned to see Macklin seated behind him with a cynical smile.

`Well, captain,' he said softly. 'Nothing like a little pussy to make a solid upstanding Annapolis man into a deserter, is there?'

Neil went at Macklin, his fists clenched, but when the other man ducked and cowered on the settee seat, he stopped himself and strode to the back of the wheelhouse to watch Jim and Jeanne disappear into the dock area. She was gone. He stood there silently for half a minute.

Ì thought you said I lacked heart,' he finally said.

Òh, you do, you do,' Macklin agreed affably. 'But I never said you lacked cock.'

`Thank you,' said Neil and then went quickly down into the main cabin to find Olly. He wanted both to be rid of Macklin and also to advise Olly on caring for Vagabond before he reported for duty. He had decided tb report directly to one of the ships in the Turning Basin and find out what the military situation was and whether he was really needed or not. For him, like Jim, the war was insane and both sides madmen, but the US

Navy, insane or not, was his team and if the game were still being played he had reluctantly decided it was his job to take the field.

Even Captain Olly seemed depressed as Neil went over the boat with him. Neil had requested and the others had agreed that the remaining food aboard should stay aboard for at least the next few days. Neil instructed Olly about where he had had Jim hide their emergency ration supply. He also showed 01ly where the two pistols were hidden behind the partition in Jeanne's cabin; he showed him the five-gallon Jerry jug of diesel fuel lined up with the water containers and now labelled 'water'. Since pirates were still a threat, Olly had disconnected the battery cables from the engine and hidden both the cables and the two ignition keys, letting only Neil know their hiding place. In addition, Olly decided to re-conceal one of the two pistols in the galley where he could reach it on short notice.

When they had finished going over the boat Olly stopped in the rain in the side cockpit and began chuckling.

`You sure don't act like a man who's leaving -his boat forever,' he said. Ì wish I weren't,' Neil said.

`You joining the Navy?'

Ìf they need me.'

`Who's gonna decide? Them or you?'

Neil shrugged. `Me,' he answered.

`Then I'll keep the tea water hot,' said Olly, smiling. `Cynical old bastard, aren't you?'

Neil shot back, smiling in spite of himself.

Ì figure you got too much sense to get involved in a war where if you don't shoot 'til you see the whites of their eyes, you'll die of old age without firing a shot.'

Ì already fought in that kind of war,' Neil said.

Ànd loved it, didn't you?' Olly said, ducking now into the wheelhouse out of the wind and rain, leaving Neil to feel a rush of gloom.

Frank, already depressed by the confrontation with Jim and by his still lingering nausea, was overwhelmed by what he encountered on land. The first confrontation with chaos and panic came when he and Macklin, carrying Seth between them on the stretcher, left Vagabond late that morning. Frank, in the lead, had not even got his feet on the dock when a man in a wet, wrinkled business suit, his greying hair plastered to his forehead, accosted him. .

Àre you the owner of the trimaran?' the man asked. A woman and three children stood behind the fortyish man watching intently.

`Yes, I am,' Frank replied as, he waited for Macklin to lower himself and his end of the stretcher on to the dock.

Ì want to book passage for myself and family on a boat going south,' the man said, his drawn face belying the calm tone of his voice.

Ì can't help you,' Frank answered dully. 'We're not going south, and if we were, we'd have a full ship already.' "I have gold,' the man said, lowering his voice. 'Fifteen thousand dollars worth. You'll need it wherever you're going.'

When Macklin put his end of the stretcher momentarily on one end of a bench, Frank rested his on a nearby railing and looked at the man with surprise.

`Well, you're fifteen thousand dollars richer than I am,' he said. Tut I still can't help you. A trimaran can't take the extra weight.' Despite the rain, five or six other people had clustered around and were listening to the exchange.

`Then take just my wife and children,' the man said. 'They don't weigh much and they can sleep on deck.'

`No, Harry,' the woman interjected. 'I'm not going any place without you. I won't.'

`We're not going south, I'm afraid,' Frank repeated, depressed that a man should be so desperate to leave this place he was willing to sacrifice himself to get his family on a boat. Depressed too that he couldn't help.

`Let's go try somewhere else,' whispered the wife.

The man, sensing Frank's sympathy, kept staring, the woman tugging at his arm, the youngest child tugging at hers, the rain streaming down everyone's faces:

`How about me, captain?' another man asked. 'I'm all alone. I'm a good . .

`Me, too!' shouted a woman from the back of the small group. The crowd pushed towards Frank shouting and holding up money but, picking up the stretcher, he and Macklin plunged roughly through the crowd and strode away.

At the hospital Seth was put on a mat on a garage floor. No doctor or nurse or administrative official seemed to know who was responsible for the patients in Barnaby's Ford Garage and so none of the seven patients lying about the room, some on mats used by car mechanics to work under cars, were being treated. They were out of the wind and rain: that was their treatment.

After Macklin had quickly disappeared, Frank crossed the street to the main hospital grounds to find a doctor. He saw a bulldozer digging up one whole section of the side lawn area in the rain, an act which struck Frank as senseless. He assumed it was part of some long-range construction programme. There were large tarpaulins covering what he thought were building materials until he saw two soldiers carrying a body on a stretcher out into the rain, across the still untouched section of lawn and then dumping the body unceremoniously in the mud next to the tarpaulin. An hour later, when he left the hospital he saw the cover removed, and a pile of corpses being bulldozed into a muddy hole.

Inside the hospital he discovered there were only three doctors left for all of Morehead City. All other local doctors had been called up by the Army to serve elsewhere. One doctor was asleep, having worked nineteen straight hours after four previous days of working almost as long. The second was a surgeon working in the OR on those with serious wounds, mostly burns. The third was a paediatrician who was acting physician for the other thousand or so patients located either here or in the refugee centre. Frank appealed to the nurses and physician's assistants for help. At one point when he was exploding in anger at an indifferent and unresponsive nurse he was dragged away by two Military Policemen whose purpose was to maintain order in the hospital. In the end the best he could do was to see a nurse write down Seth's name and location and tell him that Seth was 'sixteenth on Mr Umberly's list'. Mr Umberly, he gathered, was one of two physician's assistants.

On his way back to Seth he wandered by mistake into a room where the authorities apparently were putting those exposed to severe and presumably lethal doses of radiation. About ten people were lying against the walls or on the floor of what must normally have been a custodian's room, some groaning, one screaming and at least two of them already dead. The room reeked of vomit. All of those sprawled out were badly burned and one man, who had no eyes and whose face was hideously burned - the skin dangling down one cheek - begged in a singsong chant for water. Frank fled. When he finally returned to Seth he found him flushed and breathing rapidly. He explained about the shortage of medical help but withheld the other horrors he had witnessed.

`Well, they warned us,' Seth said in his high-pitched self-mocking tone.

`Who warned us about what?' Frank asked, kneeling down beside him.

`Books,' Seth said, bright-eyed with fever. 'The marchers. The protesters. They all warned us that a nuclear war would be inconvenient. Too many sick and wounded, too few surviving doctors. I should have known better than to get involved in a nuclear war.'