The Pulse

by Scott B. Williams

  Artie was surprised at how brightly the white sand beaches of the island glowed in the moonlight. It was almost like daylight against that white sand, and he could clearly see the outlines of the dunes and the sea oats that grew on them as they rounded the west end of the island and entered the sound to turn east to the anchorage area. The long excursion boat dock came into view, and as they sailed past the end of it, they saw something else—a small campfire on the beach, situated in a hollow between the high dunes that had made it invisible to them from the Gulf side of the island. A few yards out in the water from the fire, leaning over several degrees from upright, was a small monohull sailboat that was apparently aground on the bottom. Two anchor rodes could be seen leading from its bow and stern out to deeper water, and there was a third trailing off towards the beach. As soon as the Casey Nicole appeared past the pier, someone by the fire jumped up and began yelling and waving for help.

  “Sailed dat boat too close to de beach, dat mon,” Scully said.

  “Or, he could have been out here and dragged anchor when those squalls blew through the other night,” Larry said.

  “Could it be a trap?” Artie asked. He’d seen enough at Isleta Palominito and the Cay Sal Bank to be suspicious of everyone they encountered on the water.

  “I don’t think so,” Larry said. “But why don’t you bring the shotgun on deck anyway, just in case. I think what we have here is simply a fellow mariner in need of help, and he may be able to give us some useful information about the conditions ashore, if he’s local. Scully, let’s come about and sail within hailing distance on the other tack. I don’t see a dinghy of any kind on the beach, so he must have waded ashore when he couldn’t get it off.”

  Artie laid the shotgun in the cockpit and helped Scully with the sheets. There was just enough wind to power the sails and allow them to maneuver, but with the ocean swell blocked by the island, the water was nearly smooth. They came around and sailed to within 50 feet of the beach.Then Scully put the bow through the wind again, allowing the jib to go aback momentarily and stall the boat long enough for a quick conversation.

  “I’ve been stuck here for two days!” the man on the beach yelled back in response to Larry’s inquiry. “We had some hellacious thunderstorms that came through in the night, and once my anchor started dragging, I couldn’t get another one set before I was swept onto that sandbar. I went aground at high tide, and there’s no way I can get her off by myself.”

  Artie started to relax. The man’s story certainly seemed plausible, and the boat was hard aground. Though the depth at this distance was probably three feet and no issue for the Casey Nicole, this man’s monohull obviously had a deeper keel. Larry yelled back that they would try to help, and then pointed to an area of deeper water out beyond the stranded boat where he wanted to anchor.

  “What can we do?” Artie asked.

  “We can try to pull him off if we can get a firm set on our own anchors. He doesn’t have a windlass or a decent winch on board, besides being alone. I can’t do much with this arm, but if you can work our winch, and Scully and the owner can get on board the boat and try to heel her over some more, then I think we can drag her to deep water. That’s just a little J/27, not very heavy for a keelboat, but draws almost five feet.”

  When anchor was set, Artie helped Scully launch the two-seat kayak and, once he was in sitting in the boat, passed him the end of a long length of spare anchor line. Then Scully paddled away, first taking the line to the bow of the stranded boat, then continuing on to the beach to get the owner and explain what they were going to try to do. Artie and Larry waited until Scully and the owner returned to his boat and climbed on board from the kayak. Scully secured the end of the line to the main bow cleat of the J-boat, and at Larry’s direction, Artie took up all the slack from the other end and wound several turns around the big drum winch mounted in the center of the catamaran’s cockpit. This centrally mounted winch served mainly to handle the jib sheet and halyard loads, but Larry had sized it to do double duty as a windlass in just such emergencies. As Artie began putting tension on the line by cranking the winch handle, Scully and the boat’s owner used their combined body weight to heel the boat much farther over on her side by hanging on to the boom, which Scully rigged to stick out perpendicular to the hull. By leaning her over and getting some of the weight off the keel, it was a fairly simple matter to pull her free of the sand, but it was still a lot of work for Artie, who was sweating profusely by the time the job was done. Scully helped the owner reset his anchor just downwind of the catamaran, then the two of them paddled over and came aboard.

  “I can’t thank you guys enough,” the grateful sailor said as he shook hands with everyone. “I didn’t think I would ever get out of this fix. I’m Craig, by the way.” Craig went on to explain that he’d decided to take to the water as a last resort, but really wasn’t prepared to do so and didn’t have much experience cruising or much of what he needed on board.

  “I bought the boat for day sailing, mainly, with the idea of getting into racing later. I never thought I would try to go somewhere on it, but as things got worse, it occurred to me that leaving by water might be the best option. Trouble is, I didn’t have paper charts for this area, and of course the GPS is down. I knew some people from the marina that used to sail out here to these islands all the time on long weekends, though, and they talked about what a good anchorage this was. It was my first time to sail out of the lake, believe it or not, but I found my way here okay, I just wasn’t counting on those storms.”

  “Lake? Do you mean Pontchartrain?” Artie asked with great interest.

  “Yeah. I kept my boat at South Shore Harbor Marina.”

  “Is that on the New Orleans side of the lake, I’m guessing?”

  “Yeah, it’s just a few miles east of the Causeway, but west of where the I-10 bridge crosses the lake.”

  “Oh man, that’s fantastic!” Artie said, then seeing the look of confusion on Craig’s face, he explained: “We’ve sailed all the way from St. Thomas to get to New Orleans to find my daughter. I can’t believe we were lucky enough to run into someone out here who’s just come from there since the lights went out.”

  Craig shook his head. “I feel for you if your daughter is still in New Orleans. There’s nothing good happening there, and I would hate to know I had to go back there looking for someone I loved. What a nightmare that would be!” Craig went on to describe his experiences in the city since the pulse had occurred. If what he said was true, and they had no reason to doubt him, the entire city had descended into anarchy and chaos. Craig described gun battles between the police and large gangs, and rampant, unchecked looting, burning, and rioting. He said some people began trying to leave the city by the second day, mostly on foot, and then a much larger number began leaving within a week, when everyone finally realized help wasn’t on the way and the grocery stores were cleaned out. Craig said he would have been completely out of food, too, with no way to get any more, if not for the fact that he’d had a key to his dock neighbor’s larger cruising boat. The absentee owner lived in northern Louisiana and kept the boat at South Shore for vacation cruising. Knowing they would never be able to get to the marina until all this was over anyway, Craig said he didn’t feel bad about going on board the boat and taking the leftover provisions that were still there after her last Florida trip. He said he’d often driven to the marina in the middle of the night during storms to check the vessel’s dock lines, and he knew the owners were grateful for that and would want him to utilize supplies that wouldn’t do them any good.

  “After that, I thought I might be able to just hang tight there at the marina for a while and see if things got better, living on my boat and keeping a low profile. But it didn’t get better; it just got worse. I knew I had to leave when some guys came in at night and stole a Catalina 42 that was a few docks over. It was just a matter of time before every boat in the marina would be taken, as people got desperate to get out of the city. I was
afraid they’d just kill me and take my boat, so I got out of there the next morning, as soon as there was enough wind. I didn’t know where I’d go, but I knew I had to get out of Pontchartrain, because it’s just a big bowl surrounded by land. I knew about this place and planned to hang out here awhile and then decide about going to Florida, or who knows where. But then that storm blew me aground, and I’ve been on the beach ever since, until you guys found me.”

  Artie was growing more anxious and restless the more of this he heard. “Did you hear anything about what was going on down in the Garden District, or around Tulane?” he asked.

  “No, I haven’t been in that area at all since the lights went out. All I know is there are fires everywhere and for days there was so much gunfire it sounded like a war zone. It’s got to be bad down there. It’s bad all over the city.”

  “Have you heard any news from other parts of the country?” Larry asked. “Does anyone know for sure what this event was, and exactly how widespread it was?”

  “Everyone says it was a cataclysmic solar flare. They say it was something scientists have been claiming could happen for years, but few people really took seriously. There are rumors that some people have been in contact by ham radio with operators in Europe and Asia and that there was some damage there, but nothing like in North America, and from what you guys are saying, in the islands too. I don’t know where I’ll go from here now. I had thought about trying to make it down to the Caribbean myself, but if nothing’s different there, I don’t know now.”

  “We’ll probably head south again ourselves,” Larry said, “only not to the eastern Caribbean, but down to the Yucatán, or maybe somewhere among the islands off the Mosquito Coast.”

  “That sounds good. I hadn’t thought of that,” Craig said. “Hey, I know I’m not going back to New Orleans any time soon, if ever. I’m sure you have charts on board for these waters, but I just remembered, I’ve got a street map of the city and a Louisiana state road map. They might come in handy if you don’t already have them.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Artie said. “I’ve got a map of New Orleans, but it’s in my car, of course, and that is parked at the airport.”

  “Those will be much appreciated,” Larry said. “As you know, nautical charts show almost nothing of the details on land, and we’ve got to come up with a plan for quickly getting in and out of the Tulane area to look for Casey, without wandering around guessing which is the best route.”

  “It’s the least I can do, guys. I really appreciate your taking the time to help me out of this bind. I don’t know if I would have ever gotten the boat off without your help.”

  The next morning, Artie, Scully and Larry said goodbye to Craig, who was now securely anchored in deep water and had decided to stay at Ship Island for the time being, at least as long as it was safe there. They sailed off the anchor and headed west in the Mississippi Sound, passing to the north side of Cat Island, another large barrier island in the chain that protected the mainland coast. Their destination was a pass into Lake Pontchartrain called the Rigolets. After discussing all the options with Craig, and studying his city street map, they decided that the safest way to look for Casey was to make use of the many man-made canals that penetrated the city from Lake Pontchartrain. Larry could wait safely offshore in the lake with the boat while Artie and Scully paddled into the city in the kayak at night, keeping a low profile and hopefully remaining out of reach of the dangers that they imagined plagued every street. The canal that would take them closest to the university area emptied into the lake near West End Park, right around the corner from the marina where Craig had kept his boat. They decided that before going there, they would first paddle up a smaller canal to the west of the Causeway—one that would take them right to the New Orleans International Airport where Artie’s car was parked, and, he hoped, still locked, with his .22 pistol in the glove compartment.

  “I know it’s going to take some extra time,” Larry said when Artie protested, “but having an opportunity to grab another weapon, any weapon, is not something we can afford to pass up. You know what we’ve already been through, and you heard what Craig said. I think you and Scully need to take both my shotgun and your pistol for your trip to Tulane. You’re going to need every advantage you can get.”

  * * *

  Grant glanced over his shoulder one last time before they reached the canebrake where they’d left Casey with the hidden bikes. The solitary canoeist was disappearing from sight far down the river, carried swiftly by the current and his steady, practiced paddle stroke. Grant was envious that his destination lay downstream, while theirs entailed nothing but a struggle to go upstream. He steered the bow into the mud at the best landing spot and held the canoe against the bank by jamming his paddle into the bottom.

  “Okay, you can step out now, then I’ll get out and pull it up on the bank.”

  Jessica stepped ashore and immediately called out to announce their success: “Hey Casey! Guess what? We got a canoe!”

  “Hey! Keep it down!” Grant whispered. “We don’t want anyone who might be crossing the bridge to know we’re down here.”

  “Oh, sorry!” Jessica whispered back. She called Casey’s name again, this time in a quieter voice. When there was no answer, she turned back to Grant. “Where is she?”

  Grant got out of the canoe and pulled the bow up far enough to tie it off to a small riverside bush. He pushed past Jessica into the dense cane to find the bikes just as they’d left them. “She probably walked over in the woods nearby to use the bathroom or something,” Grant said, then he called out to her too, in a loud whisper: “Casey! We’re back.”

  Jessica joined him and looked at the bikes. “Hey, look, Grant. Her backpack is gone.”

  “She must have taken it with her, then. I told her to keep the gun handy. She shouldn’t be far, though, because I told her we’d be back in about an hour, and we were. Let’s take a look around, but no more yelling, okay?”

  “All right. She can’t be far. I know I wouldn’t wander off far into these woods alone, and I can’t imagine that Casey would either.”

  Grant grabbed his machete and led the way out of the canebrake and back to the open area under the bridge. Casey was nowhere in sight. When they reached the sandy area at the end of the dirt access road that led up to the highway, he examined the ground and pointed out the footprints the three of them had made coming down the hill, as well as the tracks made by the bicycle tires as they had pushed them along. He walked closer to the river and then waved Jessica over to look at something else.

  “She went this way,” he said, pointing at a separate set of tracks leading under the bridge along the sandbar that made up the riverbank here. The tracks were so obvious in the rain-swept sand that Jessica probably would have seen them too, if it had occurred to her to look for footprints at all. Grant said he’d learned a bit about tracking from the hunters he’d spent time with in Guyana, so it was second nature to him to try to figure out where Casey had gone by the trail she would have had to leave, especially in all this open sand, which he said was the easiest kind of terrain for finding and following footprints.

  As they walked the route she’d taken upriver, Grant called Casey’s name several times in a slightly louder voice than he’d warned Jessica about before. After they passed under the bridge, it was obvious that no one else had come down to the river from the road, as there were no new tracks other than their own. But the farther Casey’s trail led upstream, the more surprised Grant was that she would walk so far alone when she was supposed to be watching the bikes. Once the bend in the river took them beyond sight of the bridge, he suddenly saw the reason she had come here. Hanging on a branch at the edge of the woods was a pair of black panties and a white sports bra. Casey’s New Balance walking shoes were sitting side by side on a log near the branch, her socks spread out next to them, along with her open backpack and a bottle of shampoo.

  Grant suddenly stopped, not wanting to walk up on her if s
he were undressed. “Casey! Where are you?” When there was no answer, Jessica called loudly too, and still there was nothing but the sound of the river gurgling by. It was impossible that she would not have heard them by now if she was anywhere in the vicinity of her stuff. Grant rushed ahead to the log where her shoes were and looked around carefully at the sand. Casey’s bare footprints clearly led into the water at the edge of the river, and another set showed she had walked back to where her clothes were, but there were no other clothes in sight but the underwear, shoes and socks. There were many other prints circling around and covering up the first ones she’d made, indicating to Grant that she had probably been moving around while she dripped dry from her bath before putting at least some of her clothes back on. He saw other footprints as well, some of them covered up by hers, and figured someone had been here before the rain. The other footprints looked older, because they did not have a clearly defined shape or tread definition.

  Looking beyond the immediate area, he then spotted another line of Casey’s barefoot tracks leading off up the sandbar, even farther upriver, but as soon as he started following them, a chill ran up his spine and he grabbed Jessica’s hand while motioning her to silence with a finger over his lips. Superimposed over some of the prints made by Casey’s bare feet were more of the larger, smooth tracks that he had mistakenly thought were old. The fact that some of them were on top of Casey’s tracks made his previous conclusion impossible, and upon closer examination, he determined that the shapeless, smooth footprints could have been made by a person wearing moccasins or some similar footwear. One thing was for certain: the tracks were made by a man. Grant could judge by their size compared with Casey’s tracks and his own that the person who made the prints had to be a man, as they were slightly bigger than the impressions left by his own size 11 hiking shoes.