The Pit (The Bugging Out Series Book 4) (28 page)

I wanted to believe that.

The hells we’d been through were behind us now. That, too, I wanted to believe. As farfetched as it might have seemed not too long ago, I was beginning to consider that there might be some semblance of a government left. One that, after stumbling through foolish and tragic mistakes, was gaining its footing in this new world. It, like the rest of the nation, had been whittled down to the minimal amount of moving parts necessary to maintain some functionality. The organs of the state had been starved to something closer to what the founding fathers had envisioned. Institutions lean and focused on the necessary.

It had only taken the near destruction of the nation, and the human race as a whole, to bring about that possibility.

That, though, was a distant consideration at the moment. If anything, this was a new beginning not only for governments, but for those they served. For people like those of us aboard the
Northwest Majesty
.

It had taken a week while the fuel was transferred to prepare the once luxurious cruise ship for departure. In shifts it was cleaned, debris removed, though there was no major damage to it. The
Vensterdam
had suffered the totality of the Russian assault. The
Northwest Majesty
’s systems were mostly intact, and repairs made those that weren’t at least serviceable for the six hundred or so who would board her.

Provisioning took up the final days in Skagway. Pallets of MREs and canned stable foodstuffs were loaded. Enough to feed those aboard during the journey home, and to leave with each group who departed to supplement what they would, hopefully, have waiting upon their return. In Bandon we’d left a healthy amount, enough for months. Enough to carry the whole of the town’s population through the end of the year and toward spring. With what we’d be bringing back with us, we could make it through the next fall.

There was the hope, though, that there would be more waiting for us. Things to harvest when the time came. Things green and alive and wonderful.

That was the hope. In fact, I believed, in the long run, it was our only hope.

But that desire had to be paired with what I knew. With certain realities. How could relationships, lifelong friendships, continue unless predicated on some new understanding? Or on accepted avoidance? Could I erase what had happened and just hold with better memories? Football games and double dates. Ditching school and hunting trips. Superbowl bets and too many laughs to count.

Could I?

Should I?

The apparent lie Neil had told me, as hard as I’d tried to force it out of my thoughts, refused to exist in that state of denial. Whenever I saw him aboard, walking with Grace, or playing tag with Krista in one of the empty ballrooms, it rose again, hanging there in the negative space between us like some sickness. I didn’t let on that I had any doubts about the story he’d shared, but, in all honesty, I tried to avoid those moments where we would end up alone together. Doing so was easy enough most of the time. He and Grace were treating the voyage as a sort of last getaway before the realities of a new family member began to draw near.

But in those few instances where I did stand with my friend, away from others, the thing that was nothing and everything all at once gnawed at me inside. And when it did I found myself shifting any discussion that arose to the old, and the familiar. To reminiscences of our youth. Of the place where we’d come to know and trust each other.

It was a place, a time, a feeling I feared I’d lost forever.

“What are you thinking?”

I turned away from the rail and saw Elaine just behind me. She stood in a spot where, in another time, in the old world, vacationers would be strolling about, on their way back from one of the ship’s restaurants, or on their way to one of the nightly shows which certainly played in those happy times.

“I’m not sure.”

She stepped closer. Then close.

“People who stare at the ocean are usually thinking of somewhere they want to be.”

It took me a moment to trace my thoughts, and then I realized she was right.

“Missoula,” I said. “A long time ago.”

“Why?” she asked, genuinely curious.

I could’ve answered with a simplistic explanation that I wanted what had been then to be now. That, though, wouldn’t scratch the surface as to the why. It would keep the reason, which was born of doubt, an impossible uncertainty, close. Just for me.

But I was more than just me now. I was part of
us
. I couldn’t keep what was tearing at me to myself anymore.

“Neil lied to me,” I told Elaine.

She shifted position and stood next to me at the rail now, listening. Wanting to know.

“When he was buzzed back on the dock we got a look at his passport. We were looking at the stamps after Grace took him for a walk to sober up.”

“I remember,” Elaine said.

“I told you before how he warned me about the blight,” I reminded her, and immediately the look about her changed to one of coming realization.

“He went to Brazil,” she said, recalling what I’d shared. “He was part of an advisory group or something. Working on the blight.”

“There were no stamps in that passport from anywhere south of the US,” I said.

She puzzled visibly over the inconsistency.

“Maybe it was just a mistake,” she said. “He might have had to replace the passport.”

“Most of those stamps were from years before the blight hit,” I countered.

She thought on that for a moment.

“I don’t know, Eric. I wish I had some explanation.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“You obviously haven’t talked to him about it,” she said. “Is this really important enough to tie you up in knots?”

“No. No, it’s not. This is the first thing resembling relaxation any of us have had in...”

“I get it,” she said.

“There’ll be time,” I said. “Once we’re back in Bandon and settled in. It can wait.”

That’s what I told her. But it wasn’t the reality I was projecting.

“You need a break,” Elaine said. “From everything.”

“That’s why I booked us this cruise,” I told her, trying to lighten the moment.

In her eyes I could see that I was failing miserably.

“Look, I get that you can’t just let go of what he said completely. But can you put it aside for a while? For me?”

I imagined I could. If what had transpired was vexing only me at the moment, I could, as Elaine requested, put it aside. Especially for her.

“I can do that,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and took my hand. “Come with me.”

O
f all the necessities that had been stripped from the
Northwest Majesty
during her appropriation by the government for use as transport, the tailor and dress shop aboard remained relatively well appointed. Few in the post blight world had seen any need for evening gowns and tuxedos.

Elaine, though, was one of those who did.

“Overdressed really doesn’t begin to convey how I feel.”

That was what I said to Elaine as we walked hand in hand across the ship’s atrium, past faux greenery still vibrant, our attire more fitting to a night of fine dining and dancing than to some post-apocalyptic journey home. She’d found a tuxedo that fit my trimmer than usual frame almost perfectly, and a long dress that hugged her form in ways that made me forget the why of our being where we were and allowed me to just cherish how absolutely beautiful she was.

As we passed a gleaming panel of glass I took in my reflection.

“Lipstick on a pig,” I said.

Elaine nudged me playfully.

“What are you saying about my taste in men?”

We continued on, others aboard glancing our way with approving looks. As we descended a shallow flight of stairs toward the lounge I heard music. Not canned tunes piped through speakers, but real, simple, beautiful music. A piano.

Coming into the lounge I saw the source of it.

Angela Schiavo sat at the piano which was a fixture in any ship’s lounge, her fingers tapping the keys with light precision. She was not in uniform, but attired as a civilian in scrounged clothes, jeans and a blouse, that softened her appearance and highlighted the simple beauty about her. Sitting next to her on the instrument’s cozy bench, alternating between watching her play and just watching her, Martin seemed to very much agree with my assessment. To put it plainly, he looked smitten.

“I hope you’re okay with the music I arranged,” Elaine said.

Schiavo and her team were accompanying us on the voyage home. On everyone’s voyage home. With the first stop being to transfer us to shore, they would continue on, to Santa Barbara to disembark the Yuma group, and then onto San Diego with the group which had survived in that city. From that point, there was no indication where she and her men would be sent.

This was very likely one of the last times we would have to spend with her.

“Shall we?” I asked, stepping onto the small dance floor and offering my hand to Elaine.

“Yes,” she said, her acceptance both formal and touching.

Then we danced. We looked into each other’s eyes and moved to the music. There was no precision to our steps. My attempt at leading approximated as much, but it wasn’t about the obvious things we were doing. Not about the swaying and the posture and the proper hold.

It was about being. Just being. With her. In this place. On our way home. To a better place and future.

That was the thought I held onto. Both of us did. So fiercely did Elaine and I embrace that disconnect from the blighted world that neither of us noticed that the music had stopped.

“We have a problem.”

Elaine and I froze mid-step. It was Schiavo. She’d come onto the floor, Martin with her. Beyond them, Westin stood next to the piano, his M4 in hand.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Someone’s missing,” she said.

“T
he Marine garrison in Skagway entered the pit after we left to retrieve the bodies and any buried supplies,” Schiavo said, standing next to the radio where it had been installed on the bridge. “There were seventeen.”

I looked to Elaine.

“Kuratov had eighteen,” she said. “Including himself.”

Right then Neil entered the spacious bridge and stood next to Lorenzen.

“Westin said something’s wrong,” my friend said, and Schiavo brought him up to speed quickly.

“We were all relying on witness counts, captain,” Lorenzen reminded her. “That number was based on what we were told. Could’ve been wrong.”

“Off by one,” I said.

Schiavo nodded, staring absently at the diagram of the ship she’d had the first officer pull for her. The long rolls of paper blueprints were spread out upon the navigation station table. Every compartment was depicted. Every cabin, every closet, every engineering space.

“Could be,” she said.

“But you don’t believe that,” Elaine said, reading the captain’s demeanor and body language.

“No,” Schiavo said. “I don’t.”

“You think he got aboard,” Neil said. “Kuratov.”

“I do,” Schiavo confirmed.

“Any real evidence that it’s him and not one of his men?” Elaine asked.

Schiavo shook her head.

“Call it a gut feeling,” she said.

It was a feeling I tended to agree with.

“If I’m one of his men and I crawl out of that hole, I surrender,” I said. “My leader promised me survival, and what did he deliver? I know I can have a full belly if I hand myself over. If I try to go covert...”

“Then you’re going to be treated like a spy,” Schiavo said, finishing what I’d laid out.

“Kuratov doesn’t have that option,” Lorenzen said. “Not after executing prisoners and holding children hostage.”

“He’s a dead man if we find him,” Elaine said.

“When we find him,” Neil corrected her.

There was bravado in the exchange. But truth as well. Kuratov, if he was aboard, could be desperate. But he was certainly dangerous.

“There were dozens of people loading the ship before we left,” I said, remembering the controlled chaos on the dock. “He could have grabbed a case of MREs and walked up that ramp in the midst of it all.”

“No one would have noticed,” Lorenzen said. “All anyone was thinking about was getting home.”

That was true. Everyone wanted to get home. To leave Skagway and set sail for places familiar and longed for. In that haste, though, had we skipped one very vital step in making sure our voyage would be successful?

“The big bad wolf was dead,” Schiavo said. “Except, maybe he wasn’t.”

*  *  *

T
here were hundreds of spaces in which Kuratov could hide. Thousands, possibly. Passenger cabins, crew cabins, closets, engineering spaces, ducts, shops, restaurants, dry storage lockers, lifeboats.

“We split up,” Schiavo said after gathering her team and the few of us who could support them.

None of the seven listening to Schiavo thought that was anything close to a wonderful idea.

“I don’t like it either,” she admitted. “If we double up, that’s four teams. It could take days to check everywhere.”

“We could enlist some help,” Elaine said, back in her pseudo tactical gear after changing from the evening gown. “We have people from Bandon who manned perimeters and have been in some serious skirmishes.”

“That’s exactly what I don’t want,” Schiavo said, looking to me. “Stealth. Quiet. This requires that, too. If this turns into a panicked free for all, he’ll just hunker down. We need to catch him when he moves. When he breathes. When he coughs. Hell, when he farts. It’s move and listen. Move and watch. We take our time. That’s how I say we handle this.”

For as much as the plan was unpalatable, her theory seemed close to spot on. Kuratov would have to leave some sign of his presence. Some trail. Being observant might very well be the best approach.

Armed and observant.

“All right,” Schiavo said. “We have eight warm bodies.”

“Nine.”

The correction came as that late addition to our group approached.

“Martin...”

Schiavo eyed him, puzzled and pleased. He carried a silver Winchester pump, a bandolier of 12 gauge shells slung over one shoulder. That he’d joined us in the ship’s empty theater was surprising. That he knew what was happening was not. Schiavo, to maintain good relations with the three communities on the voyage south, had informed Martin, Danforth, and Perkins of the possible threat to be dealt with. She’d asked them to keep the information confidential, while suggesting that they come up with some reason to have their people stay in groups.