Hell's Encore: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (This Dark Age Book 2)

by John L. Monk

  “Okay, the motor,” Greg said, staring at it dubiously. He didn’t know what to make of it. Electricity was easy. Mechanical things, not so much, unless it was a ten speed.

  “Pull the string?” Sarah said, pointing at the little plastic handle.

  He pulled it and nothing happened. He pulled some more and got the same results.

  “It’s clearly broken,” Greg declared.

  Andrew shoved forward. “Let me look at it.” He then set to work doing all the things Greg had done. Two minutes later, he looked up and smiled. “Think I got it …” He popped a little knob out and tried again, but nothing happened. “Hmm. Just a minute.”

  He pulled a lever on the side and tried the cord again. The motor started, and everyone cheered … but then it died a minute later. More tinkering after that, then Andrew discovered a little knob on top of the gas cap that, when released, issued a long hissing sound as air got sucked in. He left it open like that and started the motor again. This time, it stayed on for good.

  “Holy cow, Andrew,” Greg said. “You may be a dirty liar, but you’re not a worthless dirty liar.”

  Andrew smiled modestly. “See this handle? You twist it to go forward and backward.”

  Just barely, Greg kept from rolling his eyes at the obvious. “Uh huh. I think you’re right.”

  After everyone was aboard, Greg untied the boat and Andrew pushed them out of the slip.

  “Woooo!” the crew said in unison as they gently floated out.

  Greg felt like saying woooo, too, but held back. Captains never said woooo in front of landlubbers, not if they could help it. But he did grin at how smoothly they were going.

  Tony tried to stand up.

  “Don’t stand yet,” Greg said. “Wait till we’re past the docks.”

  For the first time ever, Tony obeyed immediately and without question.

  If Jack could see me now …

  Before they smashed into the huge powerboat they were drifting steadily towards, Greg twisted the handle to the right and reversed the direction of the propeller.

  “Turn it more,” Tony said.

  “Shush,” Greg said and turned the tiller steadily to the right, marveling at how easily the boat responded.

  When they had a clear path out, he twisted the stick to Forward and took the Kahlua into the channel. The green and red markers were his guides between the rocky shallows visible beneath the crystal-clear water. Though the steering was easy, he had a tendency to overcompensate, pushing the tiller too far this way or that as he tried to straighten her out.

  They passed the wreck on the rocks and shared troubled glances. Greg worried someone would chicken out and demand they turn around, but no one did. He added more throttle and they moved quickly past.

  Way overhead, I-95 crossed on a massive span of concrete. Beyond it was another bridge, and Greg wondered what it was for. A separate lane? When he got dizzy, he turned his gaze to the widening river and the island of dangerous rocks and dead trees in the middle of it. The crew of the Kahlua whooped and hollered as he guided them around it. They tried splashing each other with the freezing water, and Greg yelled at them to calm down. Couldn’t they see he had to concentrate?

  They passed the cliff wall and more dangerous rocks on their left—port—and soon came to an endlessly wide area on the map named Occoquan Bay. With the cliffs and protective trees now receding behind them, the wind picked up. Greg looked for a wind meter—standard gear, according to the books—but the tiny craft didn’t have one. It did have a marine radio, but he felt no reason to turn it on.

  Despite being in the company of friends, he felt terribly alone in the world. As if Jack and Lisa and everyone at the cabins had been a fantasy and he were about to be swallowed alive. If they sank and drowned out here, who would know?

  “You guys feel weird?” Sarah said.

  “Yeah,” Tony said. “Maybe we should put up the sail or something.”

  “Let’s get farther out,” Greg said.

  If he put the sail up and couldn’t figure it out or got flustered, they could ram into the shore or get stuck in shallow water. If that happened, it’d be a long, cold trek back to Andrew and the warmth of the car—if they even made it out of the water. The air was cold, but the water was death.

  Ten minutes later, when he felt reasonably safe, Greg cut the engine.

  “Okay,” he said, clambering to the mast. “I’m gonna need help.”

  “I got you,” Tony said and hopped up, rocking the small craft, though not significantly.

  Desperately, they clung to the mast as the light wind and short, choppy waves rocked them. He felt momentarily sick, then stared at the horizon the way the books suggested, and not at the boat. He felt better almost immediately. Way better than that fishing charter where he kept puking even though he had nothing left.

  “It hooks underneath,” Greg said, indicating the row of hooks beneath the boom. “See?”

  “I ain’t dumb.”

  Greg rolled his eyes and started unhooking. After the cover was off, he fumbled with the rigging a bit and eventually got the sail head hooked to the halyard.

  “Hold on everyone!” he shouted. He only got it halfway up before it bit into the wind with a snapping sound. In response, the boat leaned heavily to starboard, and both boys had to hold on tightly to keep from falling over. So heavy was the pressure on the sail that Greg couldn’t pull it up any farther.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Greg shouted. “Help!”

  Tony grabbed the halyard and together they pulled. The sail rose higher, and the boat leaned over even more.

  “Into the wind!” Greg shouted down at the girls.

  “What?” Chelsea screamed, her expression terrified.

  “The tiller! The stick thing!”

  Sarah figured it out first and grabbed for it. She brought it nose-first into the wind and the sails fluttered loudly. The boat drifted slower and slower and eventually halted what momentum it had gained. Greg used the momentary lull to pull the sail the rest of the way up and tie it off, then he and Tony rejoined the girls.

  “I got it from here,” he said, taking Sarah’s spot.

  The wind picked up and the boat leaned over heavily again. Everyone howled in fear except Greg, who tensed up in terror. Unlike them, he’d run through this scenario repeatedly in his mind, having seen hundreds of photos of boats under sail. He held the boat steady with the wind coming behind at forty-five degrees … and sailed.

  When it was clear nobody was going to die, Greg explained how sailboats were designed—that the more they leaned, the harder it was for them to tip over.

  “There’s a weight on the bottom called a keel,” he said. “It works like a lever, keeping us upright. And when the sail flattens to the side, it catches less wind, and we start to spring back up.”

  It was clear from their expressions that they weren’t quite getting it. Which was fine. They seemed calmer, and that’s all that mattered.

  A while later, after several successful tacks and even a jibe, Tony stood up to look over the side. He wanted to see the keel for himself—and that’s when the wind shifted. The boom came around hard and cracked him in the back of the head, sending him straight into the water.

  “Life ring!” Greg yelled as he worked to maneuver the boat around. “Quick!”

  “Where?” Chelsea shouted.

  “Down below! With the life preservers!”

  Chelsea shot down to look while Greg struggled with the tiller. He brought the boat around too far, and again the boom cracked past overhead. Sarah started to stand and he shouted at her to stay down.

  “Got it!” Chelsea yelled from below and tossed it up.

  Greg gazed back to where he thought Tony had gone in. He had to jibe again, and they lost a lot of momentum. The boat inched along at a slight angle to where he wanted with the wind coming almost head-on. Overhead, the sail made a terrible racket, which added to the confusion.

  “Sarah, hold the
stick,” he said and ran up top. Quickly, he unwound the halyard. The sail fell, the noise stopped, and the boat drifted even slower.

  “There he is!” Sarah shouted, pointing off in a direction Greg could have sworn was nowhere close to where they’d lost him.

  He climbed down and started the engine. A minute later and they’d reached Tony—treading water and screaming and waving his arms around. Chelsea threw him the life ring and he grabbed it.

  After much struggling and false starts, they managed to haul Tony over the side. It took a while because he was chubby, and because he kept flailing and generally not helping. Once in, they trundled him below and wrapped him in their winter jackets while he sat shivering uncontrollably.

  They didn’t bother with sails after that. They motored straight back. Docking the boat was a lot harder than getting out. Greg cut the power and handed the tiller to Sarah so he could fend off pilings.

  And that’s when Andrew appeared.

  “Hey guys!” he said. “Guess what? I caught a fish! A big one, too.”

  “Later,” Greg said and threw him a line. “Make yourself useful and tie us up.”

  Tony chose that moment to poke his head up from the hatch. His lips were blue and his teeth chattered uncontrollably as his eyes adjusted to the afternoon glare.

  The girls looked at each other and laughed.

  “We caught a fish, too,” Chelsea said.

  20

  Greg and his crew slept in a nice house up the hill. No stinkies, but it did have a fireplace, and they broke apart a lovely antique dining set to feed it.

  Tony’s head had a bump from where the boom had cracked him, and he had a terrible headache, which they treated with ibuprofen scavenged from a neighboring house.

  The next morning, Greg said, “You sure you want to come out again? You can stay if you want. We’ll leave you with stuff.”

  He worried Tony would spend the whole time groaning and ruin the expedition.

  “I’ll be fine,” Tony said in a quavering voice. “Maybe if you give me something stronger I could …”

  “If I had something, I would.”

  The wind was a little less intense than the day before, and he hoped to haul up the jib and practice tacking. Greg also wanted to practice man-overboard procedures in case someone else fell in. One of the books detailed how it was done, but of course he had glossed over that as being too boring. He should have known better. Everything safe was boring. Not for the first time, he wished Jack was here. Then Greg could focus on what he was best at: inspiring people to do great things.

  He looked up briefly when Andrew and the girls came in. They’d been out scrounging for food. The tiny town had intact roadblocks at each entrance, so there was a good chance it hadn’t been raided.

  “So, how much I gotta suffer before I can have something stronger?” Tony said, clearly unhappy with Greg’s previous answer.

  “If you lose a finger or something,” Greg said, “we’ll get something. I had to take a bunch when I got shot. They work, all right. But trust me, all you want is more and get addicted. Then you’ll be even more useless.”

  The others laughed, and Tony’s face grew stormy. He was notoriously touchy sometimes. Which was why Greg had prodded him—his way of draining the kid’s batteries.

  “How useful am I gonna be if my head hurts all the time?” Tony said.

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “I’m coming.”

  Greg joined Sarah and the others. “What’d you find?”

  “Water,” she said, holding up a big bottle. “Store bought. I forget what it tastes like without the stuff you put in it.”

  Purification tablets—scrounged from every camping store from Front Royal to Warrenton.

  Greg smiled sadly. “What’s it taste like?”

  She didn’t smile back. She shrugged and turned away. “Nothing.”

  It was strange what could set people off, make them think of loved ones lost to the Sickness. For Greg, it was whenever he walked in and saw Olivia or Molly reading stories to the children. He’d think of his mom and dad and Lisa together at home, arguing or getting along, but always as a family. At those times, he felt like crying. He never did, though. Because then Lisa couldn’t, and she needed to the most. He wanted his bratty sister back. It had to wear off, this funk she was in. But what if it didn’t? At some point, the person she pretended to be could turn permanent. Stick that way. Kind of like how …

  “What the heck are you doing?” Tony said, peering at him suspiciously.

  “Crossing my eyes,” Greg said.

  “What for?”

  “To see if they stick that way.”

  Tony shook his head.

  “It’s for science,” Greg explained.

  Later that morning, a trip to the marine store yielded flotation cushions to sit on that could be thrown out quickly if someone fell in the water. They also got less-bulky life preservers, and everyone promised to wear them. Andrew joined them on the boat this time. All of them brought their fishing poles and stored them down below, along with bags of preserved beef and water.

  The jib was positioned at the bow for easy deployment. Sarah and Chelsea sat up front, backs to the mast, to ensure it didn’t fall over. They huddled with a blanket wrapped around them against the light breeze.

  A whiff of something rotten and they shouted, “Eeew!”

  The boys looked over the side and saw an enormous bloated catfish float past. Had to be four feet long. Greg worried there might be some sort of contamination that had gotten into the water, but it looked clean, and it was only one fish. Andrew’s catch from yesterday had seemed healthy and tasted great.

  Considering the smashed boat on the rocks, Greg figured there’d be a certain amount of oil and other leakage when metal containers became corroded and rain washed their contents into the rivers. He hoped this would be offset by the general lack of pollution from a world with no people.

  “Now what?” Tony said when they arrived in the area they’d been yesterday.

  “We sail,” Greg said.

  For the rest of the morning and into the warming afternoon, they practiced jibes and tacks, man-overboard procedures, reefing drills, and navigation basics like identifying and avoiding shallows. Using the shape of the land as a guide, they tracked their location on a nautical map scrounged from the marine supply store. They raised the jib and whooped with joy when the boat responded beautifully, seeming to fly through the water.

  Out of nowhere, Greg experienced a feeling so old and unfamiliar that he barely recognized it: he was having fun. Not faking it like he always did back at Big Timber to cheer up Lisa, or when he was joking around with the guys to stave off the general awfulness of the world. Sailing was fun, pure and simple.

  They left Occoquan Bay late that afternoon and steered into the Potomac. Greg wasn’t worried about the time. They had emergency food, water, guns, and fishing poles. They’d scheduled a month of sailing and eating nothing but fish, and he secretly hoped never to eat another piece of beef for the rest of his life.

  For the next two weeks, Greg and his crew sailed the Chesapeake. They fished for their food and raided houses for pre-Sickness delights: tartar sauce for him … and ketchup for the others. Because they were barbarians.

  When it was windy, they sailed. When it wasn’t, they used the motor. Gasoline was as easy to get at sea as on land, available from cars and other boats. And boats got great mileage, so they rarely had to fill up.

  On an expedition to Tangiers Island, they switched out the Kahlua for a Catalina 30 called “The Banshee.” It had a lot more room down below than their previous boat—enough for all five of them to sleep more comfortably. It also had a roll-up jib they could adjust according to weather conditions.

  When Tony suggested they head back to the Potomac, Greg didn’t think anything of it.

  “Now what?” Greg said when they crossed the invisible line between bay and river. He was starting to think the
expedition was a success and they could finally go home.

  “Why don’t you find somewhere to stay,” Tony said, “and I’ll tell you the real reason I’m here.”

  The marina they chose had a higher number of sailboats than the one they’d started from. This was on the Maryland side of the Potomac near the mouth of the Chesapeake.

  There was a special treat that night when they tried the water in the marina restrooms—it actually flowed. Dirty at first, but a minute later it ran clean. It was also cold as heck, but that didn’t bother anyone.

  Fishing off the docks that evening yielded a big, fat bass, which they fried over an open fire built in the gravely parking lot. The others remarked how they never liked fish before the Sickness, but now looked forward to it. Greg liked fish, but he’d eaten it since he was little—a necessary survival tactic, in his house. His dad said the alternative was slurping down spoonfuls of fish oil from a bottle.

  After dinner, they gathered together in the marina’s abandoned restaurant under the white glow of an LED camping lantern—one of five they’d fully charged back at the cabins.

  “So, we going there or what?” Tony said for like the tenth time.

  “What are we gonna do with gold?” Greg replied.

  “Nothing right now,” Tony admitted. “But later on, lots. That’s why I’ve been saving all the gold I find. Chains, coins, diamonds—everything. In my trunk.”

  Tony’s famous trunk was currently sitting back in Occoquan, hidden in a closet under a pile of blankets. He’d wanted to bring it on the boat—had insisted—only to get shut down by Greg. Too much weight, and it would shift around and bang into people’s legs. Now Greg knew why he’d wanted it: to raid the Smithsonian Institution.

  “Nobody cares about gold anymore,” Chelsea said, “and I’m fine with that. How do you think wars got started?”