Flotilla (31 page)

He slammed me into the wall. "So ... smart! So ... friggin' ... smart!" He was punctuating his words by slamming me into the wall again and again and yet, he was watching his mouth in front of Madison. How ironic. In some back corner of my head, I was watching it all happen to me like it was a movie. After a few more thumps, I could hear a crunching sound: he'd broken through the cheap paneling that hid one of our closets. He pulled me back toward him to see the damage and then pushed me away to where I slumped against the couch. Both of us were pinned to where we were by the sound of his voice.

He picked up the half-empty beer can and hurled through the window of the galley. The shattering glass made Madison start to cry and although I didn't want them to, some tears started rolling down my face as well. Dad's face was a mask of fury and something else...despair, maybe. His hands opened and closed and his entire body just vibrated with a dark energy.

After a few minutes, Dad went to the sink and leaned against the counter, staring at the floor and trying to compose himself. The cording in his arms stood out as he squeezed the cheap countertop with his hands like he was trying to lift it off the floor. Rhythmic squeezing - his muscles jumped with the effort. I slowly became aware of his voice as he started talking about how much he hated himself, hated the colony ... It sounded almost like crying, but no tears left his eyes.

"You know nothing about trying to keep it clean," he said, in a pause. "I tried to make everything work. Keep everyone happy. It never works." He looked at the two of us on his couch, like he had never seen us before. I guess that's how we looked too, starting back at him in fear. Who was this guy? Where was the nice guy? What had become of our Dad?

I guess everyone sees their parent lose it at some point. Some people wait longer than others but the effect, when it happens, is jarring. You get an idea that Dad or Mom are some type of rock-like characters who never snap regardless of how bad things get. Cold and remote, maybe, but imposing and strong nonetheless. But Dad snapped...all this stuff, everything that happened - Dad finally came apart and it wasn't pretty to watch.

He looked at us and he had the weirdest combination of anger and sadness I've ever seen on anyone. He didn't say anything, but he just kept staring at us and then back at the floor - his hands just kept working that part of the counter and I could hear the old particle-board that it was made out of creaking with the effort. Finally, he stood up from the countertop he'd been massaging. He left the ship by a side door and we didn't see him again for a couple of hours.

We had nothing else to do so we kept watching the cable feed from shore. The horror was non-stop and with every passing hour a new development would pop up. The attacks in LA were timed with some communique that claimed responsibility for dumping poison in the drinking water - using the water to put out the fire would expose people to poison-laced steam. Then there was something in Seattle - a dirty bomb or something. Then a plane crashed in Orlando and they said it was filled with Caesium-137.

"What's 'Sezium'?" Madison asked.

"I have no idea," I replied. Why 137 and not 136? I should have paid more attention in chemistry. The bugs were scary and nobody really knew anything...the talking-heads just kind of gawped at each other after a while and I started ignoring them...trying to think and work things out as much as I could.

A tapping at the door got my attention and I looked up. Stacy was standing there, looking very upset with eyes red from crying. I opened the door and she almost fell into my arms (a nice diversion, even with all of this happening) saying "they can't leave - nobody is letting us leave!" I got her a towel or something and she wiped her face, swearing endlessly about the idiots on the
Phoenix
who 'commandeered all boats for a rescue operation'. Her parents were on the
Phoenix
and all she could think of to do was pack her stuff and wait for them to put them off the boat. I noticed for the first time that her bags were on the front deck. This little stuffed bear that I won for her at the arcade on the
Phoenix
was sitting on top.

Her parents came for her and took her back to the
Seas of Cheese
- the 'rescue operation' was a rumor, they said, no one was taking the boat anywhere tonight. More news would come in the morning, Stacy's mom said, waving to us and cracking jokes - she said this would blow over in a day or so and I wanted to believe her more than anything. Even though she was smiling and laughing, I could see that the humor wasn't reaching her eyes. She looked very afraid and I think the fact that I could see that made me more frightened than ever. They left soon enough and it was back to Madison and me ... alone again. Madison came over to me and we huddled there next to the couch, just holding onto each other because there was nothing else to do.

Our current position is: 35deg12'55.89"N 120deg53'56.17"W

The sun was getting toward the horizon again when we heard the PA system go off again. "
All boat captains report to the Phoenix for an update to the original emergency planning session. No exceptions - the meeting is in 7 minutes
." He repeated the announcement a couple of times and then clicked off. The snap of the switch echoed in the small speakers. I suddenly became irritated about them ... they were rigged haphazardly along the ring docks. Nobody cared about the Colony enough to get stuff like this right. Why should this mess be any different?

Madison and I huddled together under a blanket and watching the news. We hadn't seen Dad, I didn't know where he was or if he heard. My shoulder ached faintly from Dad's outburst but it wasn't bad. I don't think it even bruised. The shock of it was worse.

Another hour went by, the pens were forgotten and we were eating from a half-stale bag of corn chips. Neither of us wanted to think about what Dad would do when he got back ... if he got back. Finally, as the lights were winking on in other boats, we heard a familiar footstep approach the front door and he was inside the boat again. Wordlessly, he moved to the refrigerator. Another beer snapped open and he returned to the salon where he leaned against the stairway rail. It was a replay of the earlier conversation and both of us inched slowly away from him. Dad stared at the far wall for a long minute before speaking.

"It seems," he said, "that I've been drafted." We stared at each other in silence for a few moments before he continued. "They're asking for anybody over 18 to go help the National Guard in Los Angeles with the evacuation. Actually, they want anyone over 15 - I told them that you were 14 and that you needed to take care of your sister. No one asked for your birth certificate, so you're off the hook." He put the beer can down and pressed his hands to his eyes, hard, like he was getting a headache or something.

"But what about mom?" I asked. I wanted more than anything to get back onto shore.

"What about her?"

"Are we going to get her?"

"No. Right now it's chaos on the mainland, Jim. We'd just be in the way if we tried."

"So what are we going to
do
?" I was starting to get whiney. I hate that about myself.

Dad took a breath and tried not to explode. "I know ... I'm getting to that. Someone needs to watch out for Madison." He was silent for a moment, thinking about something. Now that I think about it, I realize that he was remembering a very unpleasant conversation ... something that had taken place before he came to get us. "They told me I should leave her with the neighbors or on the
Phoenix
but screw that." He looked up at me from his seat. "I don't have a choice."

"What?"

"I need you to stay here on the
Horner
...with Madison. It's probably the safest place in the world, right now. If it gets worse, you'll have to use the
Horner
to get her out of here and get to safety."

Dad had experienced quite a change of heart in the past few hours, I thought.
Didn't he put me through a wall on this boat a few hours ago,
I asked myself. What kind of crazy talk was this with his 'stay with Madison on the boat' crap? Again...the right angles were coming too quick and too fast for me to keep up and so I said the most logical thing that came to my mind.

"Huh?"

"I need to trust you, Jim. You have to do this."

"What?" I asked, even though I knew what he was saying.

"You have to take care of Madison," Dad repeated. "You're probably going to have to sail this thing out of here."

"But...me?"

"Yes."

You know how you imagine that moment when you stop being a boy and become a man? You keep imagining that it somehow happens like a show on the Disney channel - you have your dad clap you on your back and go, "Son...today
you're a man
!" That's how I always pictured it, stupid as that might sound.

I imagined that reaching this stage in my life would have a little more pomp and circumstance, a little more drama to it. I start looking at my life like a big production number ... I wonder if everyone does that? Sadly, I wasn't going to get the big moment. Dimly, like I was watching myself on TV, I could see that this was the moment that I was always waiting for. It wasn't happening the way that I expected.

Dad turned and went to the counter underneath the stove. The stove didn't work ... we cooked off of the hotplate. He reached underneath and pulled out a flat metal box with
Sig Arms
stamped into the lid. It had been duct-taped to the underside of the stove back where you wouldn't find it right away. He opened it and pulled out a heavy automatic pistol. I was shocked to know that it was there. Dad had found a hiding place on the boat that I wouldn't have thought to check.

You had a gun on this boat?" Madison was incensed. She picked up a lot of left-wing stuff from mom and hated guns on moral principle.

"Yep," Dad replied, not wanting to get into this discussion with my sister. "I'm leaving you the shotgun."

He went to his room and we heard a cabinet open a few seconds later. He returned to the salon with a scuffed-up shotgun. The nylon stock was nicked and faded gray with age. "That's a Remington Express 870, Jim. It's loaded with double-aught buckshot and I've got some spare shells in the same place - you'll find it." He placed the shotgun across the bar underneath our flatpanel and then he stuffed the pistol into his waistband behind his back.

"Why don't you stick it in front?" I asked. That's what they always did in the movies and we never covered gun transport at the
Barco de Arma
.

"I'm not putting going to risk 'testicide'," he said. He stopped and looked up at me. "Please do not ask me to go into details." Dad returned to the galley and took a knee. He reached out to us, grabbed our hands and pulled us to him. "They aren't giving me much time, so listen close." He looked up into our eyes and I was struck with a wall of emotion. I guess this was what it might have been like if he was the normal kind of dad he was supposed to be. Even after all that had happened, it took this kind of emergency to bring it out of him.

"Wait 3 days for me," he said. "If you don't hear from me by then, leave a message for your mom." He went back to his room and pulled out a small backpack - he stuck in some food bars, water and a can of beer. Stuffing the items inside, he threw over his shoulder and continued the lecture.

"I have absolutely no idea what's about to happen," he said. He seemed like he wanted to say more but then he turned and started for the door. "They want us ready to launch in fifteen minutes." He gave Madison's neck a squeeze but skipped doing anything similar for me. "Don't let them take the boat - leave the colony if you have to. If you do leave, go north." He was about to leave but then backtracked to the bridge. He flipped open a cabinet underneath the throttle. Dad pulled out map after map before opening one and spreading it across the floor. It was a map of the coast from San Ysidro to Oregon.

"Here," he said, tapping a point on it. "We're here." His fingers moved up the chart. "If you head north, keep the land just in sight on your starboard side, you should be free and clear 'till you get up to Washington. Use the GPS and the compass; they'll keep you from drifting too far."