ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES

by Callahan, K. W.

  After I’d taken some time to further secure and store a few more of our supplies, as I had noticed several boxes tipping and rocking as we rode the gentle waves, and after I’d had a peek inside the engine room to ensure everything was working as it should – not that I’d know if it wasn’t – it was approaching ten o’clock. Emily had taken Jason downstairs for a morning nap. Dad was perched happily in one of the captain’s chairs up on the bridge where he was reading a copy of Kon Tiki and ensuring that everything remained shipshape on our voyage.

  With dad keeping track of things, I decided to take a break from work and join the rest of the family on the bow of the ship. Will was there with Sharron, Claire, Paul, and Sarah. They were all decked out in bathing suites, sunbathing, and the parents were enjoying champagne cocktails while the kids were sipping sodas.

  “Time for a break, workaholic?” Will asked as I sat down on the deck beside him and shed my shirt.

  “You said it,” I agreed as I picked up a half-full champagne bottle from a nearby bucket of ice and chugged from it freely. “I’ll just be glad when we find a spot and get all settled in,” I said after swallowing my coolly refreshing mouthful of bubbly.

  “Dude,” he gave me a sidelong glance, “you need to relax a little bit and learn to live in the moment. You’re going to have a heart attack by the time you’re forty if you keep this up.”

  “What?” I said, taking another long drink. “I just want to make sure we’re safe is all. There’s a lot of stuff to plan for, and we still have tons of work ahead of us.”

  He looked at me and snorted, “There ever been a time when there hasn’t been a lot of stuff to plan for and a ton of work ahead of you?” he asked. “Welcome to life. That’s just the way it is. But look around. You’re on a beautiful yacht that you’d never have been able to afford in a million years back when you were working as a writer. You’ve got your family with you. You’re headed for what we all hope to be a tropical paradise, in which, again, you’d never have had the chance to live had you still been working back in Chicago. I mean, shit, really? All things considered, I know we’ve taken some hard knocks over the last year, and we’ve traveled an exceptionally difficult path; but overall I think things are looking pretty damn good at the moment. Sure, could the boat engine blow up and sink us? Yeah. Could we be raided by pirates and forced to walk the plank? Maybe. Will we meet up with an island of the walking dead when we arrive? Shit, these days, it frankly wouldn’t surprise me. But what are you going to do about it right now?”

  I kept sipping on my champagne bottle, absorbing what he was saying.

  “I mean, look at this,” he gestured around him over the beautiful deep blue waters in which we sailed. Then he nodded over to the women, who I had to admit were looking rather good themselves in their bikinis. “We have beautiful woman on a beautiful yacht, plenty of good food and booze, our kids are safe, and we’re headed for an island paradise. I don’t think it could get much better. So just chill, bro. Keep on drinking that champagne. There are enough of us here, and we’ve been through so much that we can handle pretty much whatever gets thrown our way. You’ve done enough. You deserve a break.”

  He held out his glass to toast.

  “To taking a break,” he smiled at me.

  “Here, here,” I nodded, clinking my bottle up against his glass.

  We drank and talked and relaxed for the next several hours, lazily lounging away the late-morning and early-afternoon hours.

  At around one o’clock, Jason finally awoke from his nap, and Emily brought him topside. We really didn’t want him playing on the ship’s bow as he hadn’t quite got his sea legs yet and we didn’t want him toppling overboard. Therefore, we retired indoors to prepare lunch, which was sorely needed to counteract the effects of the champagne.

  We then sat outside on the aft deck, eating, enjoying our cruise, and letting the wind blow soothingly through our hair while the sun baked our well-lotioned skin.

  Our lunch consisted of sour cream and onion potato chips, pretzels, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which may not sound like much, but it tasted absolutely incredible. The salty snacks with the sweet creamy sandwiches balanced one another perfectly. The adults had beer to wash down our meals and the kids had powdered milk, which they had now become accustomed to drinking due to the absence of the real stuff for so long.

  We sat talking for about half an hour after eating and then dad killed the ship’s engines. We were all hot and sweaty, and we took turns jumping off the side of the yacht to rinse and cool ourselves. We dangled Jason by his arms and dipped him repeatedly as he laughed, and squealed, and kicked his feet in delight. None of us dared stay in the water more than a minute or so without hopping back out and nervously searching the waters below, frightened by the prospect of sharks.

  Thankfully, we saw none.

  After our baths, most of the adults headed below for naps. Dad restarted the engines, which was pleasure to my ears since the whole time we were swimming, I was worried that we wouldn’t get them re-fired and that we’d be stranded at sea.

  Emily took Jason, Paul, and Sarah up to man the ships controls, which really just entailed making sure that our yacht remained running, stayed on our set course, that no alarms went off, and that we didn’t encounter any other vessels. Sarah sat behind the wheel. We gave Paul a set of binoculars so he could play lookout, which he loved. He would dart outside regularly to investigate things he saw – or thought he saw – on the horizon and that consisted entirely of birds, cresting waves or some occasional floating garbage. Jason was content to play with several plastic toy boats we’d brought along for him, puttering them about on the floor.

  As evening approached, dad was so excited to take over as captain again, he volunteered for the first night watch. Will was only too happy to let him have it. I relieved dad at just past midnight and stayed on until sunrise when dad was back up, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to go. It was nice to see him so excited about something. I hadn’t seen him like this since he first opened his antique business back when I was still in high school. It felt good to sit together, sipping coffee and talking while we watched the sun rise over the horizon.

  Just to our south, we could see the large black mass of North Andros Island, which was a welcome sign and further indication that we were on course. As it slipped away behind us, we altered our course to the southwest and headed into the Blackpoint waters.

  * * *

  By early afternoon we were seeing land to our left. We spent the next several days carefully creeping our way through the often quite shallow waters that flowed between and along the string of deserted cays as we looked for a good place to settle.

  Several times, we thought we’d found the perfect spot only to discover, for one reason or another, it was ill-suited to our needs after taking our little skiff in to explore. At one promising looking location, there turned out to be no good place to safely anchor the yacht. Another cluster of little cays had our hopes up, but we determined there were just too few resources to make our existence sustainable over any lengthy timeframe. A larger island we stopped at appeared better suited to our needs, but we found it inaccessible even in our small skiff due to a maze of shallow rocks and reefs that surrounded it and created dangerous waves and currents.

  But even though it took us a bit longer than we’d planned, as afternoon settled on the fourth day of our slow but steady search, we finally found the perfect spot.

  We named our new home “Resurrection Cay” with hopes that this tiny plot of sand in what was once known as the central Bahamas would provide us with the opportunity to begin rebuilding our once happy lives.

  The colony we came to know and love as the Resurrection Isles was actually a tiny cluster of four small islands that formed a sort of triangle through the center of which ran a navigable channel. The three smaller islands sat on the eastern side of the channel, and the chosen island for our settlement formed the point on the western side. The gap
between them was maybe a half a mile or so across at its widest point.

  Upon our arrival, we navigated our way slowly into the center of the channel and dropped anchor. Will and I took the skiff out and investigated for about an hour, making our way between and around the three smaller islands before attempting to land at the fourth larger one.

  The first of the three islands was maybe 200 yards long by only about 100 yards wide. It looked largely to be filled with a mix-mash of scrubby bushes that from the ocean appeared nearly impenetrable. Its west end was almost completely formed from stone, and large rocks jutted their way out into the water where the ocean crashed upon them. The eastern side of the island was comprised largely of a rocky beach.

  About 50 yards across the water from this, was another small island – if you could call it that – that might have reached 15 yards across at its widest point and was composed almost entirely of sand and shells. One lonely palm tree sat growing askew at its center, leaning so perilously to one side that it looked as though it might topple to the ground at any moment.

  Maybe another 50 yards beyond this tiny sand spit was another island, comparable in size to the first, but longer and skinnier. It was a nice looking island, but there wasn’t much there. The western facing side had two sandy beaches that jutted outward in a crab claw sort of shape, leaving a small, rather calm pool of water between them. In the center of the island was a large grove of coconut palms surrounded by sand and more beaches facing the north and south. The eastern side of the island was almost entirely rock with native vegetation forming a sort of hedge wall that ringed its perimeter.

  Across from these three islands was the larger island which was formed into a sort of horseshoe shape, the center of which was filled with a fairly large, pure-white sand-ringed lagoon. Beaches on either side of the island stuck out creating the ends of the horseshoe. Just past the tips of these points began a coral reef, the center of which was low enough for us to easily pass between in the skiff and move on into the lagoon. I wasn’t so sure about attempting the maneuver with the yacht though. However, I realized as we continued on into the lagoon, that if we could get the yacht past the reef, we could anchor it in the safety of the lagoon’s calm waters, not just out of sight of any potential outsiders, but where it would better sheltered from storms and the elements.

  Will and I killed the skiff’s engine so that the boat coasted slowly up onto the lagoon’s smooth, soft, white-sand beach that ringed its edges but that was just several feet across at its widest point before it met with a sparse smattering of vegetation. I estimated the island’s size at about a half mile wide on either end where the ends of the horseshoe extended. But it narrowed where the lagoon penetrated its center to maybe 80 sandy yards or so across. The far side of this portion was largely rocks where the island’s butt met with the ocean.

  As we walked the island’s length, I estimated it at about three-quarters of a mile long. There was a small coconut grove on the south end of the island, and a similar, but larger grove to the north end, which I thought an ideal spot for us to settle. There appeared to be plenty of driftwood collected on the beaches, and there were tons of coconuts scattered in amongst the trees.

  Will and I walked back to the lagoon, which at its widest point was probably 80 yards across. We stood for a moment on its small beach and stared out across the water.

  “Come on,” I finally said to Will, climbing back into the boat. “I want to check something.”

  We shoved off from the beach, but I didn’t start the motor. Instead, we paddled out to the center of the lagoon. “Okay,” I said. “Stop paddling and let’s just sit a minute.”

  Will and I both stopped paddling and drifted for a moment before stopping completely. We sat listening. In the distance, we could hear the sound of the surf pounding against the reef. We could hear the soft breeze rustling through the palm tops around us. I stuck my head out over the edge of the boat and stared down into the crystal clear waters. Below me I could see a variety of fish swimming.

  I nodded at Will to look down. “Good fishing,” I said.

  “Wow,” he breathed in amazement. “Beautiful.”

  An octopus slid along beneath us. We watched as it passed from its hiding spot under one rock to disappear from view as it hid beneath another.

  “Make for good Sushi,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Will nodded.

  “This home?” I asked, still watching the array of sea life below us.

  “Think so,” he said, doing the same.

  “Good,” I nodded. “I think it’s perfect.”

  “Me too,” he agreed.

  Back aboard the yacht, we gave the others our report. They were all exited to get ashore and explore the island, but we had some things to take care of first.

  I wasn’t comfortable leaving the yacht exposed out in the main channel. I wanted to get it into the safety of the lagoon; but that was easier said than done. The first area of concern was our ability, as relatively inexperience sailors, to navigate the large vessel through the reef and into the shallow waters of the lagoon. The second area of concern was whether the channel leading into the lagoon was deep enough to allow us clearance.

  I gathered the group together on the ship’s bow to discuss the plan. We all looked over the railings down into the waters below. It was almost like looking through liquid air the water was so clear. This was a great advantage in some ways since we could see exactly what was below us as we navigated the ship, but it also made it extremely difficult to gauge the depth of the water. We could easily see the bottom, but what we couldn’t tell was whether that bottom was eight feet below us or eighteen.

  “What’s the draft on this boat?” dad asked.

  “Uh,” I shrugged, “I don’t know. “Five…six feet…seven maybe? I really have know clue.”

  “Great,” dad frowned.

  “I’m sure we’re not making it any shallower with nine people and literally tons of supplies aboard,” Sharron offered.

  “True,” I nodded.

  I stripped off my shirt. “I’m going to jump in and find out how deep it is here and what our clearance is,” I said.

  “Is that a shark?” Paul suddenly shouted, pointing excitedly off our starboard bow about 30 yards out.

  “Oh my god,” Claire said looking. “I think it is!”

  We watched as a black dorsal fin cut slowly through the water. A few seconds later a tail thrashed wildly and the head of a shark raking its razor-sharp teeth back and forth over the midsection of a large fish jutted from the water. A second later, we saw several more such fins make their appearance, going after the same wounded fish.

  “Oooookay,” I drawled, slipping my shirt back on. “Maybe I won’t be jumping in the water.”

  While the others watched the feeding frenzy taking place before them, I quietly slipped away, making my way downstairs to the office that was now crammed full of extra supplies. There, I rummaged in one of the cabinets above the tiny workstation until I found what I wanted.

  I stopped at the back of the yacht on my way to grab a coil of rope.

  Along the way back to the ship’s bow, I tied the rope onto the paperweight I’d stolen from the ship’s office.

  “Here’s a better idea,” I said, holding our new depth finder up in front of me to show the group. “Will, let’s get the skiff and we’ll map a course out using this as our depth finder. We’ll just take it slow. While we’re gone, the rest of you get as many supplies out and ready as you can. We’ll start ferrying in people and supplies so that we reduce the weight of the load we’re carrying and hedge our bets; that way, if something goes wrong, all our supplies won’t go down with the ship. We’re going to have to move the stuff to land anyway, so we might as well get started.

  But for the first time in a long time, nothing did go wrong. We spent the rest of the day ferrying materials to shore. Getting the skiff loaded and making the brief trip to the island and back took about half an hour per trip with
everyone pitching in. Emily watched Jason. Sharron, Will and Sarah stayed on shore to help offload the skiff and move supplies to a safe location on the island. Claire, dad, and Paul helped load the supplies from the yacht to the skiff. And I cautiously captained the heavily loaded little boat back and forth between the yacht and the island.

  By the end of the day, we had a large amount of our supplies ashore.

  We decided to call it a day at around seven that night. We were all tired, so we decided to take a leisurely dip in the lagoon to clean off, and then we ate a quick dinner onboard the yacht and hit the sack, exhausted.

  The next day, we ferried the remainder of our necessary supplies – including our animals – onto Resurrection Cay. With a good 80 percent or so of our supplies safely on shore, we tenuously navigated the yacht slowly but safely into our lagoon harbor. The big vessel looked funny sitting there in the center of the scenic spot, but it was a relief seeing it safely secured. We not only dropped its anchor into the soft sands of the lagoon bottom, but we tethered the ship to several palms with heavy ropes we found onboard just to be on the safe side. The last thing I wanted was for our main transportation back to the mainland to go drifting off one night while we were asleep only to be dashed to pieces upon the reef and sink.

  The thought of trying to make it back to the mainland in our little skiff was not something I liked to contemplate, but we ensured that we had it fueled up and had enough reserve fuel and supplies aboard it to make the attempt should we ever need to. We tethered it in the lagoon to a separate palm.

  With the yacht safely anchored, we began further exploration of our new island surroundings later that afternoon. We strolled to the south end of the island, the kids slowing our progress as they stopped to pick up and inspect coconuts, chase crabs, poke sticks into crab holes, dig in the sand, and otherwise enjoy all the trappings and interesting activities a kid might find fun or intriguing on an island paradise.