Flotilla (38 page)

At a moment like this, I found out that your mind slows down and everything breaks into little pieces that you can look at. Dad, Stacy, Miguel, Mom and my grandparents - they were all important people in my life. I might never know what happened to any of them ... they may never find out what happened to us. Madison must have been feeling the same way because she grabbed my hand from the wheel and squeezed it.

I squeezed back and then suddenly we were hugging like crazy, both of us crying. All the silly stuff we used to do, used to put each other through ... it was running through my head on fast-forward. I didn't realize how much it all meant to me before. It has never been clearer to me that what I'd been doing with my life, the drugs and the drinking ... what a waste it all was. I had been able to pull things together out here but before now, I'd killed a lot of happy moments because I wanted to be drunk or partying.

So, look, this isn't a 'moral of the story' moment, okay? I don't know ... I can't tell you why I was such a screw-up and why getting high still looks good after what I've put myself through. I couldn't tell you what made me want to be a hero for my sister right at this moment, either. I just knew that I really, really,
really
didn't want us to die right now. I said the silent prayer of a person who just needs it to go right this time - not even sure what all needs to be done, but please make it work.
Please
, I kept thinking ...
please
.

All of a sudden, with a grumbling roar, those engines came to life.

We cheered when we first heard that coughing growl. "Go, Jimmy! Go!" Madison screamed.

She grabbed the back of the Captain's chair and I gunned the motors to warm them up. Those twin diesels had a lot of power and I was saying silent thanks that we were able to find as much gas as we did. I threw the
Horner
forward by shoving the throttle balls out and up as much as I dared.

The
Horner
seemed to jump a bit as she pulled away from the docks and the Colony for the first time in years. It occurred to me:
maybe she was happy to finally get out of the house
. The full power of the ocean had us ... it felt like the trip out on Ignacio's little pilothouse. With the
Horner
yawing and pitching, I honestly saw her as a boat for the first time instead of a dirty bunkhouse.

The E-ring decks were about fifty yards away from us when I spun the wheel hard to the right and eased the throttle up. Madison and I both cheered again as we surged forward ... we were on our way. Obviously, we had no idea what was about to happen.

Our current position is: 35deg31'6.91"N 121deg 5'14.02"W

We were a few minutes into our trip and the lights of the Colony were still pretty close. I had a few minutes to think about what just happened. I looked at the compass - we were facing east when we left so all I had to do was turn the rudder until the compass was pointing north and then keep it there.

Rain was pounding against the windshield and the sound of the water ticking against the glass was all I could hear ... then I heard the CIWS guns go off. The initial joy of surviving everything that had just happened was making me smile like crazy while trying to hold the wheel steady. When I heard the guns, I recognized them immediately ... there's no other sound like that. The smile dropped off of my face.

The sound of the rain against the glass returned and then I heard it again.
ZhhhbbBRaap
! With the sounds of our engines to drown it out, I had no idea where the pirates were. I didn't know if they were on the far side of the colony or if they were right next to us getting ready to board. They could be twenty feet away pointing a gun at my face and I wouldn't be able to see it in this weather. In the excitement I totally forgot about them but now I was terrified. We'd left the safety of the Colony, such as it was, and now we were just one big bright cork floating in the ocean. Would they come after us?

We were moving north and the Colony lights were barely visible through our right windows. Not much was showing through the darkness and rain but a burst of fire caught my attention. I watched the line of tracers again disappear far out into the water. I guess you could tell that they were pointing away from you because you could see a line of them. I wouldn't want to know what they look like when they come straight at you.

"How do they know where to shoot?" Madison asked.

"They must have night vision," I said. The difficulty of steering the boat kept me distracted and I ended up ignoring the next few bursts. "Wish I knew what was going on."

"Don't you have the radio that talks to the
Phoenix
?" she asked. Oh yeah, the ship-to-ship intercom ... I forgot about that. They issued a bunch of walkie-talkie and console sets to people a while back and Dad made us learn how to use them. If you had to talk with Pac Fish, using the radios was a lot better and faster than tramping around the docks to deliver a message. I had her look for it while I kept my eyes on the darkness outside. It's a big ocean but who knows what was out there in all this? We had a GPS unit mounted to the console - I farted around with that for a few minutes to figure out how it worked. After a few minutes I had the display working correctly. We were east of San Nicolas Island and south of the Channel Islands. We wouldn't have to worry about rocks or anything for a while.

I heard a lot of noise behind me. Now that the
Horner
was moving, we had a new problem I hadn't thought much about. Since she was, as I mentioned, a big, dirty bunkhouse ... we didn't have a lot of secured storage. All the dishes piled in the sink had slid out to explode onto the floor of the galley. In the salon, all kinds of clothes and junk were swimming back and forth on the deck. I could hear the contents of the Junk Room crashing around below. Since I was in the Captain's chair, the motion of the ship didn't really bother me. Once you left that chair, though, you were subject to all kinds of things to stub a toe or bang a shin on. The galley cabinets popped open and merrily dumped cans of food all over the place. No time to worry about it now.

Madison had to use her hands to steady herself while she looked for the radio. Two geological ages later she returned holding the little console radio as her prize. "Not sure how well it'll work," I said. "Supposed to be good for two miles and I know we haven't gone that far." The batteries were still good and it as soon as it crackled to life we found out how things were going back home ... back on the Colony.

"Pirates bearing 315 ... forward gun, do you see it? About 1500 yards?"

"I see it, stand by..."
I turned to look at the sudden shaft of pink light that appeared through the rain.

"There's another" - we heard them say - "closer to us at 180."
Another line, this time from the other side of the ship, appeared and then sank out of sight. So far, the pirates were attacking from the north and south ends of the Colony. I was silently applauding whoever decided to attack from where we
weren't.
I turned the boat to face farther east and get us away from the action. The calls of 'pirates sighted' and responding bursts were coming faster now and we continued listening to the radio as it all happened.

"Gotta keep these bursts short ... only call out the ones we can hit."

"They're getting closer to E-ring now, is it time to sink the ships?"

"Give it a few more minutes ... did I see a ship leave?"

"Yeah ... I saw one. Idiots were out there on the E-ring ... they must have been there the entire time."

"Which boat was it-new contact on zero-niner-six!"
An answering 'got it' and burst from the CIWS followed this announcement. I realized that they had seen us and if they were going to sink the E-Ring, we got out of there just in time ... maybe with only minutes to spare. So far - contact was north and south and I knew that wouldn't last. I eased the throttles up to move faster but even then, I knew we wouldn't be out of the danger zone before morning. No sleepy-time for Jim-Jim tonight. The radio crackled again.

"Was that Rick's boat? The Horner?" My heart leaped into my throat when I heard the question.

"Yeah ... think so. His kids are on board the Phoenix, right?"

"We're checking..."
A few minutes from now - they would realize we that we were not aboard the
Phoenix
. What would we do then? The grumbling of the engines was becoming hypnotic and I noticed Madison's eyes beginning to droop. The full scope of everything that had happened hit me like a wave ... all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep.

In between the contact reports, I could hear that they were still looking for us.
"The Horner C crew isn't in the mall with the rest of the civilians."

"Roger that - coordinate with Rick and do a sweep of the entire ship."

Rick ... they must be referring to the Trash Man. The Security team would eventually figure out that we were the people they saw leaving on the
Horner
. They wouldn't be able to do anything about it but other people could. Pacific Fisheries had several colonies along the coast north of here. We were not out of the woods yet.

I pushed it out of my mind and continued piloting the boat in the storm. The rain lashed against the windscreen and I could hear the rough water slapping into the hull. Late at night on a dark sea with no one to talk to is the perfect time to imagine every worse-case scenario you can think of. I kept thinking of the fiberglass hull parting under the heavy seas and leaving us with half of a life-jacket to cling to.

Madison brought me a raggedy old t-shirt and held the wheel while I mopped the drying blood off of my face. I spat dried blood out ... My mouth tasted like I had been sucking on rusty metal. I checked my loose teeth again and was grateful to find that none of them felt loose after all. I had simply imagined it.

For the next hour the boat pushed north on the same course as that run to Mugu Rock last year with Mitch. The radio had better range than advertised ... we were able to continue listening to the Battle of the
Phoenix
. Every time we heard the "contact!" and "got it" calls ... someone was dying. Even if he was a pirate - he was still a person. How are you supposed to feel about that? The sound of the CIWS guns faded out after a while and that was fine with me. I never wanted to hear that sound again as long as I lived.

"We're losing the battle, chief."

"I know it - set condition Delta."

"Condition Delta, sir?"

"Yes...remove D-ring."

I started to cry when I heard that. They were going to shred every boat that was still moored on D-ring and E-Ring to create a buffer between themselves and the boarding pirates. They may not have guns as powerful as the ones mounted on the
Phoenix
but they were a hundred times more mobile. That old tub was powerful but it couldn't corner like an old Sea-Doo. It was just a matter of time before someone slipped in with explosives or took aim with a surplus bazooka round.

But still ... they were going to do this? They were going to destroy people's homes? This is where our friends lived. I know some of them are weirdos but most of them were good people who didn't deserve this. Everything I knew about the Colony, even what I hoped would remain after the Meltdown, was gone forever.

I know the Colony wasn't much to begin with. My initial impression of the place was to call it 'the garbage on top of the water.' That's how everyone describes it when they first arrive. You have to look for a while to see how people relied on each other and to see the community. Ethan, Stacy's Dad, was the one who got started talking about how the Colony was a boom town 'from a social standpoint.'

"A what?" I had asked.

"A boom town. Like in the Gold Rush Days," he replied. Back then, he had explained, towns could grow overnight when they discovered gold and disappear just as quickly. It takes a certain type of personality mixed with drive and weirdness to carve out a living in a place like this. People have to be willing to live and operate in a way they had never known before. "It's always a surprise to me," Ethan had said, "that people could abandon something they had worked so hard to create."