“Good evening,” he said in what sounded not quite like an Australian accent. “Moving in, are you?”
“We’re taking this boat,” Laura said. “It’s not yours, is it?”
“Might be.”
“Then I’m just going to keep loading it up with our stuff until you figure that out.”
He grinned with half his mouth. “Fair enough. You going somewhere, then?”
“Might be,” Tristan said.
“Listen, I’m what you might call a water-troll. Seeing as this here quay is my bridge, if you’d like to use it, I’m going to have to exact a toll.”
“How about you skip it?” Laura said. “Housewarming gift.”
He shrugged, speargun rising up his shoulder. “I’d like to make an exemption, but it’s a union thing.”
“And what’s your toll?”
“A kiss.” He grinned, shark-like. “Nah, I’m taking the Mickey. Just tell me where you’re from and where you’re going.”
“Here’s a compromise.” Laura stepped forward. “You get out of our way, and we don’t rehome twenty bullets into your lungs.”
The man pulled back his chin. “Now that’s downright unneighborly.”
Laura reached for the back of her waistband. “Then maybe you should move to a more friendly location.”
“What does it matter?” Tristan said. “We came from Redding.”
The man glanced at her, mouth open in thought. “Up north?”
“Couple hundred miles.”
“How is it?”
“Overrun by a gang. I was hoping we’d do better down here, but I forgot to account for the trolls.”
“Trolls are plenty good people. Keep out the riffraff.” He slicked water from the back of his head. “So where you off to?”
“He doesn’t need to know that,” Laura said.
“What’s he going to do, swim after us?” Tristan said. “Hawaii. We’re sailing to Hawaii.”
“Good one, I hear it’s beautiful this time of year.” He smacked the boat’s smooth side. “You know how to run her then, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure? Last guy who tried to swing out of this little cove had an odd idea about parking.” The man pointed off the dock. Tristan peered into the darkness. A mast projected from the water, its drenched rigging weaving in the currents. The man waggled his eyebrows twice. “I’d rather not have my little waterway snarled up any further.”
Tristan cocked her head. “Do you know how to sail?”
“Reckon so.”
“Then it sounds like you’d better teach us. Because we don’t know shit.”
“Tristan!” Laura said.
“Who cares? What could he possibly do with this information?”
“Then why does he want to know?”
“I’m right here, you know.” The man scratched the stubble on his neck. “I ask where you’re from ‘cause I’d like to know where to go. I don’t know if you’ve been outside lately, but the world’s a bit of a mess.”
“Have we got a deal, then?” Tristan said.
“Sure. Long as you let me come with you.”
“Trapped on a boat we don’t know how to use with a man we don’t know,” Laura said. “I think my mom warned me about stuff like this.”
Tristan stuck out her hand. “Teach us to sail. If you’re not some maniac, we’ll see about taking you to the islands.”
* * *
The man’s name was Jack. He was from some place in New Zealand Tristan had never heard of. He had a weak chin and strong arms and never shut up.
Every morning, he arose from his boat across the marina and swam across the cool water to their pier. For days on end, he spoke of nothing but ropes. The standing rigging that supported the mast. The running rigging that maneuvered the sail. He taught them knots for cleats and ropes. He shredded a plastic bag, tied it to the top of the mast, and delivered lengthy lectures on wind.
“The wind is your friend,” he said, stamping across the deck, where he insisted they spend as much time as possible to get a feel for the sea. “But it is also your enemy! Do you know why, Alden?”
“It’s like fighting a stronger opponent in kung fu,” Alden said. “If you try to resist his force, you’ll be broken. But if you can redirect his energy, you can use it against him.”
“Very good. As the ancients knew, the wind hates karate.”
“Kung fu.”
Jack flipped his hand. “Ah, the wind doesn’t care about your words. Or your intentions. Wind doesn’t care what you want. It’s going to just yank you right along. Your job as a sailor is to keep it from overpowering you. You don’t get to be boss of the wind. All you can do is come along for the ride, preferably in a way that’s not going to tear you to pieces.”
He shielded his hand against the glare on the water. “There’s a great metaphor for this. It probably involves a tiger. Hang on a minute, almost got it.”
“If you’re going to ride one,” Tristan said, “make sure you don’t let go?”
“Nah, that’s no good. Forget it, let’s just pretend I explained it using tigers. Now then, Alden, when you’re sailing, where’s the best place to have the wind?”
Alden shrugged. “At your back?”
“Heh! Hardly. Not unless you fancy getting clubbed in half by a runaway boom. And that’s if you know how to wing the jib. If not, your mainmast is sitting right behind the jib sucking up all its wind. Not too efficient, eh? What you want is wind in both sails. That means running at an angle.”
There was much, much more of this, most of it gibberish Tristan could hardly begin to absorb. After several days of lectures and lessons, she began to despair: Jack might not be wear-your-skin crazy, but she feared he spoke an English only he could understand. They’d hitched their wagon to a loser, a madman. Every day they spent on the pier, skin burning and peeling in the late summer sun, she felt that much further from Hawaii.
Then he took them out on the water.
He untied all the lines, started the engine with a bulky key that clearly wasn’t standard-issue, and motored them out of the marina. At a clear berth from the rock breakwaters, he cut the engine, leaving the sails down as he let the wind straighten the boat.
“Out of the way, damn it,” he said, guiding Laura ungently from the sails. “Think of it like a sex club. You don’t get to touch until you’ve watched.”
He reeled up the main’s halyard, sail flapping in the wind, and tied off the line. The boat pulled forward, cutting into the chop; Tristan braced herself. Jack trimmed the main, angling them against the wind, and set to work on the jib. The sails flapped madly. He worked with the assured snap of someone who’s spent years honing their expertise. Within moments, he calmed the sails. The ship struck southeast, straight for the red rise of the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Pretty easy, right?” he hollered.
“Oh sure,” Tristan yelled into the wind. “As easy as crashing into a bridge.”
He loosened the main. “What you don’t want is all this flapping. Is there any situation where flapping’s a good thing? Flap your gums, balls flapping in the breeze. Those of us in the know call it luffing, and it’s a good way to ruin your sails.”
He demonstrated how to tighten the main just to the point where it ceased flapping. He loosened it again and beckoned Tristan over. “Give it a shot. You probably won’t dump us overboard. And if you do, the sharks have probably already eaten.”
She laughed hollowly and took up the rigging. The line pulled hard. She pulled back, tightening the sail. Its flapping shrank in volume but increase in speed until it was a single long noise. Then it smoothed and she could hear the hull slicing over the sea.
“Well done!” Jack smacked her on the back. “Who said women were bad luck on boats?”
Tristan grinned. The wind ripped at her hair. Spray misted from the prow. Sunlight glanced from the downtown windows. Her heart thumped with the power of a task overcome. Alden laughed and joined t
hem.
“Can I try?”
“I dunno,” Jack said. “Think you got what it takes to wrestle the sea?”
He let them play with the rigging for three hours, taking over whenever they began to drift too far or the wind shifted too drastically. Laura declined her turn, watching the sea and the shores instead. For the better part of an hour, soaked by mist, battered by wind, enthralled with the boat’s clumsy responses to her clumsier maneuvers, Tristan forgot the world had ever ended.
At last, Jack took back over and turned around, showing them how to work against the wind. At the mouth of the marina, he struck the sails and used the engine to navigate back to the dock.
They barbecued fresh fish in the parking lot and boiled pasta. Jack charred the fish skins black, the pepper searing Tristan’s nose, and forked the meat onto paper plates. She drained the spaghetti and dumped in one of their two jars of alfredo.
“Went great out there today,” Jack said around a mouthful of hot whitefish. “You take to sailing like a fish to whatever it is fish live in.”
“When do you think we’ll be ready to set sail?”
“Couple weeks? This is insane, you know. You won’t know hell-all about navigation. You better pray to Poseidon I don’t die of scurvy mid-trip, or you’ll be more screwed than a thirteen-year-old’s beanbag chair.”
They sailed for hours every day. When they weren’t at sea, they struck out at the shops around the marina, gathering up any food they could eat without any cooking. Jack guessed it might take them three weeks to make Hawaii under ideal conditions. Another week or two if there were storms or they missed it the first time past. A restlessness coiled and grew in Tristan’s stomach. Jack combed the other boats for analog gear: maps, stopwatches, compasses, a sextant, a barometer. They collected bottled water and fishing gear and lifejackets.
They set a date. Before Tristan knew it, it was time to go.
Laura asked her on a walk on the eve of their departure. The night was cool, still. A stray dog trotted down the street, nails clicking.
“We’re really doing this?” Laura said from under the trees lining the marina.
“I didn’t spend the last three weeks trimming jibs just to get this glorious tan.”
“It’s been so quiet here. Maybe we should stay.”
“What are we going to do when the Trader Joe’s runs out of garbanzos?”
“Move to one of the other thousand Trader Joe’s in this state?”
Tristan shrugged. “How long until all the old things are broken and gone? Five years? Ten? I don’t want to wait until I’m desperate to start learning how to live.”
Laura scuffed the sidewalk. “And you trust Jack to not gut and scale us the second we can’t see land.”
“We stopped keeping watch like three days after we got here. He’s had a million chances to butcher us.”
“I suppose if he gets the ocean madness, I can just shoot him.” Laura laughed. “Leaving us adrift with no fucking clue how to get home.”
“That’s the spirit.”
They made the last of their preparations with the dawn. Jack had found a tri-corner captain’s hat, which he donned before gunning the engine.
“And now begins the first journey of the Fool’s Errand.” He grinned back at the others. “I rechristened the ship, by the way. I know it’s tradition to bust a bottle of champagne, but I reckon a new era calls for new traditions. We’ll drink it instead.”
“Can I have some?” Alden said.
“Of course!” Jack said. “There’s no law at sea!”
They hove across the waters. Gulls soared beside them, cawing foul. The ship glided past silent Alcatraz toward the red span of the bridge. Its shadow engulfed them. Tristan whooped.
Jack turned and winked. He angled the boat southward. Beneath the wind, a vast hum sounded in Tristan’s bones. She scanned the patchy skies, but couldn’t find the jet.
Laura stumbled back into Tristan’s hip, knocking her against the cabin. “Oh my God.”
Tristan swore, righting herself before the pitching waves could toss her to the deck. Laura shrank into the cabin wall. Tristan followed her gaze west.
A black orb hung in the sky, as massive as a moon. For a crazed moment, Tristan thought it was the moon, inbound to dash the Earth into dust—but the object held steady, miles out to shore, engines humming for miles and miles. Tristan was too frozen to scream.
13
There above the Rogers’ farm. Shawn’s hand clawed into Ness’ shoulder. “No way.”
“They’re coming for the canister,” Ness murmured.
“What canister? What they?”
“The aliens. The aliens who gave everyone the Panhandler.” Ness didn’t dare move. “Could it have been an accident? The infection? Wait, couldn’t be. There’s no way the virus would kill humans unless it was designed for us.”
Down the mountain, the creature settled onto the lawn and turned in a slow semicircle, two meaty tentacles raised above its head.
“That means they’re hostile,” Ness said.
“The alien invaders?” Shawn’s voice cracked. “No fucking shit.”
“Aliens wouldn’t necessarily come here to kill us.”
“Then why else would they fly all that way? To sell us space insurance?”
Two more creatures disgorged from the craft. One spread its tentacles and tipped back its head to the sun, like a man receiving the prophet’s word.
“Maybe they’re here to tell us the good news,” Ness said. “The fact they haven’t disintegrated the two of us implies either they haven’t seen us, or they don’t care about us.”
Shawn slicked sweat from his forehead. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You’re the one going all Sherlock Holmes up in here.”
A prickle climbed Ness’ neck, as if a hungry tick were on its way to the safety of his hair. He shivered in the August heat. “How should I know? What about you? All that time you spent dreaming about the end of the world, you never thought about what to do if you were attacked by crazy aliens?”
“That’s enough.” Shawn’s voice was calmly forceful, a brick wrapped in terrycloth. “If you’re gonna sit there shaking like Elvis’ left hip, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. Nothing.”
“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?”
“This is our land. Our home. We’re staying.”
Far down the slope, one of the aliens turned their direction, two ropy tentacles held over its head. The other two beings scuttled around the side of the house, disappearing from sight. Ness held his breath. If he could have held his heartbeat, he’d have done that too. The first alien turned and followed the others.
Shawn turned to look at him. “You don’t want to just give up our home, do you?”
“Our ancestral estate? The one with the dirt floors and the shit-pit?”
“Our shit-pit. That we built with our own hands. If they want it, they can try to come take it.”
Ness wanted to object that they had already, in essence, taken the entire world, but that would be a rational argument, and Shawn wasn’t exactly approaching this from a rational perspective. And how could he? Down the valley, life that wasn’t born on Earth was strolling around one of Earth’s many nondescript patches of grass.
“We could run away,” Ness tried.
“Yeah? You know someplace that’s guaranteed alien-free? How do we know these guys won’t fly back to the mothership in five minute and leave us in peace?”
Panic curdled Ness’ nerves. He wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Why didn’t Shawn just pack up their stuff and drive them away? Why should Ness have to convince him they could always come back later, or build a new home? How was it his responsibility to not be the dumb one? It was overwhelming. Too big to grapple.
Even in the moment, he knew he was falling back into old patterns. But that only made him want to give up more.
“Fine.”
Shawn grinned and adjusted his binoculars. With the jet engine spooled down, Ness could once more hear the buzz of the flies. Something tickled his leg. He jerked his foot, slapping at it, then froze and stared downhill. Insects whirred in the heat. Shawn shifted occasionally, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. Ness tried to think through the implications of the ship in the front yard and its alien crew in the back yard, but even in the shade, the heat seemed to boil his brain. He returned to the same premise over and over—there were aliens, and they didn’t like us—but the fuse never burned any further than that, never sparked an explosion of epiphany. The solution was always the same simple thing. Get somewhere the aliens weren’t, and stay there.
An hour later, the three beings returned to the front yard, gestured at each other for a minute, climbed into the ship, and launched into the hot blue sky.
“Told you.” Shawn stood and stretched, grimacing at his stiffness. “Now don’t you have a ditch to dig or something?”
Ness had planned to smoke more meat that afternoon, but couldn’t stomach the idea of sending up a big white signal screaming “HERE I AM.” Instead, he wandered the slopes with his shotgun, pretending to hunt pheasants while he watched the skies. At dusk, Shawn stoked the evening’s cookfire and Ness strained his ears for any rumble of engines. Shawn grinned at the tinder, jabbing it with a brass poker taken from the Rogers’. Ness liked to think he could hide his anxiety, but somehow Shawn always knew.
The creatures stayed gone the next day. Ness fiddled with the radio, heard nothing but static. It would have been the perfect time to start working on the bow he’d meant to build—bows were silent, and their ammunition easily manufactured—but that was going to be a complicated project, one he didn’t want to interrupt should the invaders return. Instead, he pieced together an atlatl, a lever with a small notch or basket at the end that was used to throw spears with extra strength and distance.
After three days, he began to doubt what they’d seen. Perhaps it had been a prank. A bizarre hallucination. Shotgun over his shoulder, he dropped down to the Rogers’ farm. The yellow grass was scorched in a wide circle. Prints marred the dirt: deep gouges from their pointed, crablike legs; shallow furrows left by their squirming, eel-like limbs.
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 119