Prepper Fiction Collection: Four Books in One

by Susan Gregersen

  The street swept in a loop and down to the dock level, and they stood for a moment looking out over the huge shipyard. There must have been hundreds of channels and docks and ships of all kinds and sizes! People were coming and going, and it seemed as though some ships were preparing to leave, and others were guarded by armed soldiers. Carl studied the scene until his eyes fixed on one in particular.

  “That one. It’s similar in proportion to the ones I’ve piloted, and I don’t see any armed guards. Just a few people on deck that look like sailors,” Carl said decisively. He started down the curving street, the others behind him.

  At the bottom a pedestrian tunnel came out onto the sidewalk. As the small group of people walked by, a shape hurled itself from the tunnel and bowled into them. Shoving Darlene into the rest of the group a hand shot out and yanked her backpack off. Dennis grabbed the other shoulder strap of the pack as Carl pulled the wrapped knife blade from a pocket of his own daypack and quickly shook it out of the cloth to expose most of the blade.

  Carl grabbed the person’s arm with one hand and yanked him into a choke hold with the knife blade against his neck. The man struggled, then relaxed. A second later he yanked free and the knife blade slid down and slashed the man’s arm. Blood began to trickle and drip on the sidewalk as he ran, howling and cursing as he went.

  Dennis herded the two couples into the street and away from the tunnel, looking carefully into it’s shadows. Normally it was lighted, but right now it was dark.

  “Jeez, Carl, I’m so glad you had that knife!” Darlene said in a shaky voice. Dennis handed her daypack to her.

  “Yeah, but it needs a handle!” he grimaced as he opened his hand to show the cut the blade had made on his palm when he gripped it to the neck of their attacker. He wiped off the blood and wrapped the knife back in the cloth, replacing it in the pocket of his pack. Keeping his hand curled shut he shoved it into his jacket pocket.

  Katy helped Darlene adjust the shoulder straps of her pack, which had been pulled uneven by the attacker yanking it off her back. They headed down the walkway that led along the river. It wasn’t a scenic stroll. Everything in sight was man-made and a ghostly feel of hustle and bustle and noise hung over the scene.

  They turned onto the pier where the ship they’d picked out was docked. They couldn’t read her name, since it was foreign and had strange shaped letters mixed in with familiar English letters. There was no one at the bottom of the gangplank so they walked on up.

  Just as Carl was about to step onto the deck of the ship a foot stepped out of a door and landed across from Carl’s. He came to a stop and looked up into the eyes of a tall man with bushy eyebrows. A scar ran from the end of one eyebrow almost to his ear.

  Carl froze, the others stopping behind him. Darlene’s heart was pounding so loud she was sure the whole ship was reverberating with it.

  “où allez-vous?” the bushy man asked firmly but not threateningly. Darlene jerked her head up. It was French! She recognized it! He was asking where they were going! She leaned around Carl.

  “Capitaine, S'il vous plait,” she spoke to him, trying to keep the trembling out of her voice. To the others she said quietly, “He’s speaking French.”

  “I can speak English as well, Madam,” he said. “I assumed you were French.”

  “What made you think that?” Carl asked, puzzled.

  “You look soft,” he snorted. “The captain isn’t available, but the owner is on board. You want to talk to him?”

  “Um, sure,” Carl said. He bristled inside. Soft, indeed. Not this Montana boy! He stood taller and tried to look tougher.

  “BOSS!” the man hollered over his shoulder. A man stepped out of the bridge and looked down at them. He looked to be all of 30 years old and wore blue jeans with a plaid flannel shirt tucked into them. Blue suspenders looped up from the pants and over his shoulders. He wore a camouflage baseball cap.

  “Yeah?’ he hollered down to them.

  “People here to see you!” the man tossed his head their direction. They saw agitation on the owner’s face.

  “We don’t take passengers.” the owner stated in a very American-sounding accent. He turned to go back into the bridge.

  “We’re applying for jobs. I’ve piloted a ship like this before.” Carl yelled after his retreating back. The owner hesitated, then stopped. He turned back and stared at Carl. Then he came down the steps and walked over and stared into Carl’s eyes.

  “How did you know we need a pilot?” he asked quietly. “How is it that in the middle of all of this chaos an American ship’s pilot would walk up to me?” This last sentence was said with an angry growl, but still quietly.

  Carl was taken back and didn’t know what to say. “Fate? Destiny? Luck? I don’t know, but here I am. You need a pilot, we need a ship.”

  The captain narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t asked our destination. Or when we set sail.”

  “Anywhere closer to the states is acceptable to us,” Carl answered.

  The captain moved his stare around the group of people, eyes boring into each of them, one at a time. “What about the rest of you?”

  “I can cook. Clean…” Darlene’s voice drifted off. Katy nodded her head and said, “me too.”

  “Oh great, a couple of ‘Suzy homemakers!’” the owner said. “You?” he scoffed at Dennis.

  “I’m afraid I’m not good for much. I’m an accountant!” Dennis said sheepishly.

  “Hmph. Well, don’t rule that out yet either,” he grumped. He turned to the bushy man. “Igor, take the other three to the lounge. This one,” he pointed at Carl, “I want to come with me.

  He turned abruptly and climbed the stairs, not looking back to see if Carl was following. Carl did follow, and the other three followed Igor.

  As they were entering the bridge a tremendous explosion shook the ship. They dropped to the floor and looked around. Smaller explosions followed and fireballs boiled into the sky with billows of smoke all around.

  “Holy Cow!” the owner shrieked. “The oil tanks have blown! That’s the fuel for all the ships. We need to get away from the dock. The fire could spread through the lines. “Loose the ropes! Away! Away! Let‘s get the heck out of here!” he shouted, followed by more commands. Then he grabbed Carl by the arms.

  “You damn well better be a ship’s pilot, and a good one too! Now get us out of here!” he ordered.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” Carl jogged over to the wheel and looked over the controls, glanced at the map boards, and exchanged a few comments with the others going about their jobs.

  Igor had pulled the group together on the deck against a bulkhead, sheltering them with his arms until he saw where and what the explosions were. When he saw that it wasn’t their ship blowing up, he pulled back and directed them into the lounge. It connected to the galley, which was quiet and dark.

  “We have no cook or kitchen staff either. Most fled the ship when the riots started. You are now in charge of that.” Igor said, then he vanished. The door swung closed.

  The ship vibrated and a dull roar came from beneath them, from the hull. They could feel motion as the ship pulled away. Darlene walked over and looked through the small round window in the door. A handful of crew was running back and forth taking care of the things necessary to put the ship at sea. The pier moved away from them, or so it seemed, as the ship moved out into the channel and started toward the ocean.

  When the boat swung around the end of the dock and made the turn into the channel they could see back toward Finkenwerder and Hamburg. Smoke was billowing from oil tanks and the buildings behind them. People were running onto the piers and guards were fighting people back. Several shoving matches started and a few punches were thrown. A guard fired a shot into the water to intimidate those who were mobbing him.

  The ship slid past a huge ship and now all they could see was gray metal, so Darlene turned from the door and walked over to the galley. She began opening cupboards and closets and taking a mental inv
entory. After a moment Katy followed. Dennis watched helplessly, then went over to frown at all the knobs and dials on the huge stove. He pulled down a clipboard that was hanging between the stove and the sink.

  “Well, this is stuff I understand. Numbers and lists. And at a glance, I’d say they hadn’t gotten all their deliveries before setting back to sea. I don’t know how many people are on board, but there could be slim pickins,” Dennis said.

  Darlene walked over and looked at the paper on the clipboard. The things that were check-marked seemed to match what she’d seen in the cupboards.

  “We’ll get by. We need to find Igor and ask him how many people we have.” She left the galley and headed for the door of the lounge. “It would help to know how many days this has to last, too.”

  Being a ‘prepper’ she had an idea how far food went, having made and studied spreadsheets for their home food storage. She also knew how to adjust rations to spread it farther, having allowed for that in case unexpected people showed up at their home after a SHTF event. It was a challenge she was up to. The difference here was that they couldn’t till up more ground to grow more food, to feed more people. The food and other items on board were all they had to work with here, unless fishing was an option.

  The ship straightened into the channel of the river and headed for the sea 60 miles away. The three people in the bridge did the jobs of twice that many, focused and alert.

  “Speed?” Carl demanded.

  “14 knots, sir!” said the man to his right as he watched and worked several different screens, knobs, and gauges.

  “Up it to 17,” Carl said.

  “Sir, we’re not allowed to go that fast while exiting the harbor!” he exclaimed.

  “Put another watchman out front, one on each side of the bow. We have good visibility up here and charts of the river bottom that indicate that it doesn’t vary much. We need to get away from the shipyard quickly!” Carl remained firm on increasing the speed, and the ship moved faster.

  “Sir, we have another problem. We had not refueled. We have, at most, enough fuel to go 200 miles.,” the other man in the bridge said. He had introduced himself as Asmus, and Carl wondered where he was from. He would have thought middle east or one of the Mediterranean countries with that name, but the man was blond and light-featured.

  “What’s within that range, where we can get fuel?” Carl asked.

  “Well….there’s Esbjerg, north up the coast, in Denmark. It’s about 170 miles nautical miles. It’s a large oil port.” Asmus pointed to it on the map.

  “Set your heading for Esbjerg, then, once we leave the river,” Carl said, then turned his focus back to watching the water ahead as he stood at the wheel. It was wonderful to be back at the helm of a ship. He loved everything about it, even the feel of the ship moving under his feet. The water was quiet here on the river, and he was eager to reach the open sea.

  Carl had resigned as tugboat captain to spend more time with his wife. She had spent most of her time alone at their small ranch in Montana while he was at sea. For a time they had owned a house on one of the Islands near Seattle, but economics had forced them to put the house on the market half a dozen years ago. When Carl came home he took the train from Seattle to Whitefish, Montana, and she met him there, and he returned to the coast the same way.

  It had become harder and harder to leave the ranch and his wife, and after the 2008 election he decided it was time to be at home. He’d quit his job and hadn’t been able to find another one for a couple years, earning money doing handiwork and carpentry for odd bits of cash. Then two years ago he’d landed a seasonal job doing maintenance for Glacier National Park. He loved the job and got to spend a lot of time in the back country, hiking in to do repairs on cabins and shelters. He had recovered a level of fitness he hadn’t had in many years. When the park closed for the winter, he caught up on the repairs and projects at home.

  Lately those projects had involved a move off the grid with the installation of solar panels, and into producing much of their own food. Like many of their neighbors, they wanted to be as independent and self-sustaining as possible. Prices never seemed to stop rising and income didn’t rise with it. Yet most people seemed to be fiddling while Rome burned, he often thought as he watched people shop.

  The door to the bridge opened and the owner stepped in, pushing the door shut against the wind. Carl wondered how such a young man came to own the ship.

  “Hendrik, we are low on fuel. With your permission, we thought it best to head to Esbjerg for fuel,” Asmus said.

  “That’s excellent,” the owner said. “I’ve been wondering what to do… We hadn’t unloaded the containers yet and we’re still carrying the cargo meant for Hamburg. I don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world, so I don’t know if it’s an option to return to China with it.”

  “I’d take it to America,” Carl said with a straight face and looked studiously forward down the river.

  Hendrik, the owner, walked over and leaned on the console. He actually grinned. “I can’t imagine why!”

  Carl was glad to see the owner had at least a bit of a sense of humor. “What are our options?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been at this long and depended on my pilot and others for helping me learn the business. Now they’ve left. I inherited the ship from my Grandfather. I used to visit him in Denmark when I was a child. My parents had immigrated to America and Grandfather never forgave them for leaving. He wanted Father to take over the ship, but Father wouldn’t even set foot on it.

  “I loved the ship and went wild with excitement when school vacation came and I could come to Denmark and sail with Grandfather! His house was sold to pay the taxes, but the house wasn’t important to me. My home is this ship.”

  “I can understand that!” said Carl, with a pang of envy. “I don’t know much about assigning ports and destinations. I just went up and down the coast with barges to the same destinations.”

  “I have been on the radio and most of the cities of Europe are in chaos. Airplanes and ships have been grounded. We are lucky to have gotten away, but if we don’t get to the sea quickly we may be stopped at the mouth of the river and forced to return!” said the third man, whose name, Carl learned later, was Mike.

  “Can we go faster?” asked Hendrik with a frown.

  “The channel is widening and getting deeper, and I don’t see any ship traffic or private boats-- wait, there’s a yacht over there,” he pointed to the far side of the river where a yacht was pulling ahead of them and heading for the sea. “I think if we keep careful watch we could speed it up a bit. Let’s try 20 knots.”

  Mike looked nervous but said, “Aye, aye, sir.”

  There was a tentative knock on the door. Hendrik opened it and nodded for Darlene to enter. Her eyes went to Carl, who turned to see who was there, then smiled at her.

  “I was looking for Igor. I need to find out how many we have on board. The galley wasn’t restocked and I need to do some figuring to make the food go around,” Darlene said.

  Hendrik looked uncomfortable for a minute. Then he said, “There are seven, plus the four of you.”

  “What? That’s all you have manning a ship this size?” Carl sputtered.

  “It’s not like we had time to hire on more!” Hendrik retorted. “We’ll make do. As will your wife with the food. However, I do believe that among the containers still on board, there is food. Find Igor and get the ship’s manifest, and see what our cargo is.”

  “I can call him and have him meet her in the galley,” Mike offered, and Hendrik nodded his affirmative response. Darlene left the bridge.

  The river had widened and become rougher, with swells lifting the ship and lowering it. Carl could see the grass and brush on the nearest bank bending in the strong wind. The opposite bank was too far away to distinguish plants. Before long Asmus and Mike both let out a cheer.

  “It’s not quite the sea but we’re out of the river! Head north along the bowl
and around that point.” Asmus said happily.

  As they headed north across the bay they saw a boat of the German Federal Coast Guard heading their way.

  “It’s too far away. It won’t catch us before we’re in international water. We could speed up though. We’re clear of obstacles and I don’t see any ships on the radar ahead of us.” Mike said.

  “24 knots,” Carl said. “Then we’ll up it to 28 once we’re around the point.”

  In the galley Darlene and Igor were pouring over the ship’s manifest, which listed everything in the cargo.

  “Here!” Darlene said triumphantly. “Cookie tins and candy tins!”