Voyage After the Collapse (The Pulse Series Book 3)

by Scott B. Williams

  He was a captain now, whether he wanted to be or not, and with a crew of just Grant and Jessica, keeping the boat moving around the clock as they stayed well clear of the near coastal waters of Florida was going to be a challenge. Already they were in a sleep deficit, since their planned night at anchor was so rudely interrupted. It was essential that someone get some sleep in order to be rested for another long day at sea tomorrow. After he and Grant worked out what they thought was the right course to take them to the waters north of the Dry Tortugas, Artie practically ordered him and Jessica to go below and get some sleep. Grant protested at first, saying he was fine, but Artie wasn’t having it.

  “I’m going to be exhausted myself come sunrise, so please, try to sleep at least a couple of hours so I can get mine then. We’ve got to establish a tighter watch routine with just three of us on board. That’s what Larry and Scully and I had to do on our long trip from Culebra to New Orleans. It works, as long as everyone makes an effort to really get their rest when they’re off watch.”

  Grant gave in and followed Jessica below. She’d begged him to let her sleep in the starboard hull too, saying she was too freaked out to be alone after the patrol boat fired on them. Grant didn’t really argue and Artie thought nothing of it. Everyone aboard was too exhausted to do anything but sleep, but for the next three hours, he had to keep steering west regardless.

  TWENTY-NINE

  SCULLY KEPT HIS FOCUS on forward progress as he settled into a steady paddling routine that he knew he could maintain for hours. The 19-foot, two-seater kayak was an incredibly efficient vessel, even with just one paddler for propulsion. With a beam of only 28 inches, its slender hull was designed to cut through the water with little fuss and for Scully, maintaining an average speed of four knots was as effortless as walking. Scully, of course, had never even seen a sea kayak until a few years after he met Larry. The boats were rare in the Caribbean until quite recently, but now they could be found as rentals at just about any beach resort on any of the islands. The rental boats were much different from Larry’s though. Most of those were the cheap, plastic sit-on-tops like the little red one Grant had been paddling when Scully picked him up on the way to Cat Island.

  The touring double that Larry had bought when he went to Maine to pick up a luxury catamaran for delivery to St. Thomas was a completely different vessel in every way. This boat was a true expedition sea kayak, meant to take adventurous paddlers on long journeys to remote places: like coastal Alaska, Labrador or Greenland. Scully had fallen in love with it the first time he got in it and paddled away from the beach. The only paddle craft he knew previously were the heavy dugout canoes that could still be found along the shores of Dominica when he was growing up. But they were nothing like this sleek Kevlar rocket with its watertight hatches and bulkheads. Scully knew instantly when he took it through a surf break that it was a real sea boat that could really go places, despite that it’s only propulsion was human power.

  Sitting in it now, with Cape Sable out of sight on the dark horizon behind him and the scattered islands of the Keys an unknown distance somewhere ahead in the dark, Scully felt confident and at ease. He may have been left behind and separated from his friends, but he was far from helpless and far from stranded so long as he had a boat with such capabilities. In fact, Scully felt quite fortunate indeed. Not only did he have the kayak, he also had his favorite and most useful everyday tool, his razor sharp machete. And as an added bonus, under the deck between his feet was the Russian-made Saiga AK-47 with a full 30-round magazine. With a good boat, a versatile blade that could be used to make other tools he might need, and a reliable semi-automatic rifle, Scully knew he was better off than many.

  Things could certainly be worse, just as they could be better if he were still with his friends; but Scully didn’t dwell on any of that during the long crossing. Instead, he focused on his paddling, pausing only on occasion when something unusually large leapt out of the water nearby and splashed back down. Scully was happy to see that these south Florida waters were teeming with life. There were dolphins, rays and innumerable varieties of fish. The weather was perfect as well, with an easy 10-knot breeze coming from the east off his port beam as he paddled south. The waves this light wind generated were barely one-to-two feet and not even breaking, so they did nothing to impede his progress or threaten his stability.

  The sky remained cloudless as night transitioned into dawn, and though he kept an eye on the horizon as he paddled, Scully had not seen or heard any signs of other boats, or more gunfire since leaving Cape Sable. Daylight revealed that he was traveling over shallow, transparent waters with a dense mat of waving green sea grass covering the bottom some five to ten feet below. It was a strange sensation seeing the bottom with no land in sight. When the wind died to less than five knots after sunrise, Scully could see even more detail beneath his hull, and the occasional big grouper he spotted made him long for a mask and spear. As it was, fishing would have to wait until he found a place to stop.

  A few hours later, sometime after noon, Scully spotted a green hump on the horizon that materialized into a mangrove island as he drew near enough to make out the details. The waters surrounding the island were even thinner than the expanse of Florida Bay he’d crossed; shallow enough that in places, he had to get out of the kayak and drag it through the mud and sand. There was no sign of human presence on the little island, or even a hint of a beach, as he soon discovered when he drew nearer. Flocks of brown pelicans and cormorants protested his arrival with loud squawks and beating of wings as they took flight, indignant at this unwelcome intrusion into their isolated haven.

  When he neared the mangroves, Scully discovered there was a deeper channel just outside the fringe of branches that hung low to the water, and he used it to circle the island to reconnoiter. Satisfied that it was indeed unoccupied, probably because of the complete lack of dry land around the perimeter, he paddled into a gap in the mangroves, pulling the kayak forward by grabbing at the root systems around him. The mangrove maze was just passable in the narrow kayak, but would have been an impenetrable obstacle for almost any other kind of boat.

  By this time, Scully had been awake for more than 30 hours and he was ready for some rest. This remote island seemed the ideal spot, even if it lacked solid ground to get out and stretch or sleep ashore. After poking around in the mangroves for half an hour, he decided that his best bet for sleeping here was in the kayak itself. At least within the protection of the mangrove maze it would not capsize or drift, and enough of a breeze had returned to keep the mosquitoes to a minimum. After opening two more of the green coconuts he was carrying and slaking his thirst with the sweet water inside, Scully slid down into the bottom of the narrow hull and soon fell asleep.

  When he awoke again it was well after dark. He sat up in the kayak and listened carefully for any sounds that were not to be expected on an isolated mangrove island, but there was nothing. He heard only the rustle of the wind and the small splashes of fish feeding among the mangrove roots all around him. Holding onto a branch to keep his stability, he stood in the narrow boat and stretched. He needed to move around more, so he pulled himself up and into the branches, finding it easy to clamber about among the interlocking roots and limbs. The movement felt good, and the deep sleep left him feeling rested and refreshed. The only thing he needed now was something more substantial to eat than coconuts. With fish as thick as the schools working through the mangrove maze around him, Scully knew it was not impossible, even without a spear. Even in the middle of the night there was enough ambient light from the stars to see quite well, especially at the edge of the open water at the mangrove fringe.

  Scully climbed back down and retrieved his machete from the kayak, then waded out there, his feet sinking past his ankles in the mud with each step. Just walking that short distance he felt small fish bumping into his calves almost constantly as they darted about in their feeding frenzy. He picked a spot in the knee deep water where there were no obstructi
ons in front of him and the bottom was sandy, its reflective white visible even at night through the transparent water. The schools swept back and forth around him in coordinated formation, cutting one way, then the other, disappearing completely, and then returning just as fast.

  Scully crouched low, the machete poised close in front of his face, both arms bent and ready for explosive action. He froze in this position like a hunting heron, watching the movement beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to strike. The school swept by in front of him again and Scully brought the blade straight down, cutting through the water clear to the bottom. It connected with nothing but sand the first time, and he shrugged it off and got ready again. It had been a long time since he’d fished this way, but he knew it worked. He’d done it many times in the clear jungle streams of Dominica.

  The fish came and went and Scully struck again and again. Finally, after nearly a dozen attempts, he was rewarded by two halves floating to the surface as the rest of the school scattered. The fish he’d severed was some kind of small snapper, barely more than a pound overall. But it was enough. It was fresh protein straight from the sea. Scully carried the two pieces back to the kayak and used the sharp machete blade to split them down the middle. Then he enjoyed his fresh sashimi using the deck of the kayak as his plate, while he stood in the knee-deep water beside it, more fish like the one he was eating still bumping into his bare legs.

  The thought of crocodiles crossed his mind, and he kept a watchful eye, though he wasn’t really that concerned about them. Grant had said the Everglades and parts of the Keys were inhabited by them, but that the American variety found in saltwater here did not have the reputation of the man-eaters of places like Australia and Indonesia. Scully had not seen any around Cape Sable, but he knew that the mangroves like this were a favorite place for them to hang out. There were still a few in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, and he had seen them in those places, but had never heard of anyone being attacked. Sharks were a more likely danger, and some of the splashes he’d heard while paddling the night before were big enough to make him look over his shoulder. But Scully was used to close encounters with sharks too, and he’d never had a problem while spearfishing, even though he’d seen many. Compared to the threats he’d faced recently from his fellow man, there was nothing in nature that really worried him. He was simply aware that in this environment, there were dangers in other forms that he had to stay watchful for as well.

  He resumed his crossing to the south as soon as he’d eaten. He didn’t know how much farther he had to go to reach the Keys, but the more of the open water in between he could cover in the darkness, the better. If there were more police boats or boats of any kind running about, Scully figured they would likely be found nearer the chain of inhabited islands, and he knew that he was going to have to take great care to keep a low profile once there. As soon as he knew he had reached them, he would turn west toward his destination. If people were indeed about, Scully would do all his paddling at night, sleeping among the mangroves by day as he’d done on the little island. It would take longer, but his goal was getting there without running into more trouble.

  THIRTY

  CASEY WAS RELIEVED AND anxious at the same time as she helped Tara lower the Sarah J.’s anchor just as the sun was setting. Once the boat was secure, she stood there on the bow for a minute watching the colors change in the western sky as the sun sank into the sea in the direction from which they’d sailed to arrive there. It felt great to finally stop after nearly a week of constant motion since leaving Cat Island. Casey never felt the symptoms of seasickness on Tara’s boat, despite her dad’s warnings about the motion of monohulls, but feeling the deck level and stable beneath her feet was a nice change. It was going to be nice to sleep on a bunk that wasn’t trying to pitch her off if she wasn’t wedged against a bulkhead or secured by the lee cloth. The other great relief in being here was that it meant they were far from the terrors they’d faced back on the mainland—from New Orleans to the backwoods and swamps and even the barrier islands. No one from back there in those desperate places could find them now or cause them harm, and knowing that was a great feeling. They were literally in the middle of nowhere now, anchored over the Great Bahama Bank west of Andros in just 20 feet of water. The island was close enough to windward to provide protection from the ocean swell, but still over five miles away, far enough for the boat to be unnoticed by any inhabitants looking that way from shore, if anyone was even there. Larry said large areas of the island were uninhabited, though things could be different now. At any rate, there were no signs of humanity visible in the direction of the island or elsewhere—no boats, no channel markers and no lights.

  All of this was a relief, but the anxiety she also felt came from not knowing what was next. What would they find in the Bahamas? They were in a foreign country now, and illegally at that. What were the conditions like among these islands? Would the remote islands Larry spoke of offer a safe refuge or even greater terrors they could not yet imagine? And what of her dad and the others? Were they already here? And if they were, how long would it take to find them? These were the many questions that troubled Casey as she watched the last sliver of sun sink from sight before making her way back aft to the cockpit.

  Casey’s optimism returned with the dawning of a new day, and everyone aboard was feeling much better after a solid night of sleep at the anchor in light winds and relatively smooth water. They sailed north off the coast of Andros until they reached the north end of the island later in the day. The route Larry steered took them quite close to land as they threaded between areas of shoals and reefs separating Andros from several detached cays to the north. Larry said he had stopped in the area before and the fishing among the cays was good, but since he was sure they were already way behind the Casey Nicole, he elected to push on to make time.

  It would be a long, non-stop passage to sail directly to the Jumentos Cays and Ragged Islands, but that route was much quicker than making numerous short hops down the closely spaced Exuma Islands farther east. Well-known to boaters who frequented the Bahamas, Larry also felt the Exumas could be more dangerous, as there would surely be many boats there from the U.S. and no telling where else. The route they would take instead would involve a close reach to the southeast through the deep waters east of Andros known as the Tongue of the Ocean. Larry said the prevailing winds would likely make it a beat all the way, unless they made several long tacks that would increase their passage time. He explained this to Tara, since it was after all, her boat, even if he was the temporary skipper until they found the Casey Nicole.

  “We haven’t had to use the engine since we left Cat Island, but your tank was nearly full already and we still have all the extra fuel from the Miss Lucy. I didn’t want to burn through it trying to bash a direct route to the Raggeds from the Keys, but on this course, if we motorsail we can likely make landfall without tacking. It’s a little over 200 miles—doable with less than what’s in the tank. With the extra fuel in the jerry cans, we’ll still have another 200 miles or so of motoring range for emergencies if we need it later. I think we ought to use some of it and make time getting there. I know Artie is worried sick, and they were so far ahead of us they’ve probably already been there a couple of days, even without the ability to motorsail like we can.”

  “It makes sense to me,” Tara said. “I know my parents used the engine all the time. They liked to sail when it was easy, but like most of the other cruisers they met in the islands, they said they seemed to motor more often than not. They said it was almost impossible to get to Georgetown from Florida without a good engine.”

  “Well, it’s certainly not impossible to cruise without one, but it’s not for the impatient. Or for people delivering boats, like I did in my other life. But anyway, we’ve got a Yanmar and plenty of fuel so we might as well use it.”

  This sounded great to Casey. Anything that would reunite her with her dad and the others sooner had her vote. If there was
anyone on either boat enjoying the prolonged separation, it was Jessica. But then again, if Grant wasn’t seeing things her way by now, she might be glad to see Larry show up. Casey tried not to think so badly of her friend, but the truth was what it was and those thoughts kept gnawing at the back of her mind, especially when she was on watch alone with little to do.

  The noise of the engine rumbling below decks took some getting used to after all that time under sail with nothing but the sound of the wind and waves. Casey found comfort in it though, as it was a sound from the world as it was before, when the constant humming of manmade machinery was always there in the background. Like everyone else who had survived so far, Casey had never thought she would miss the noises of the city—the incessant traffic, the airplanes overhead, the hum of power lines—the ever-present grind of modern industry. The silence following the blackout was profound, and more complete than any she or most people she knew had ever experienced. Larry, of course, had spent weeks at sea away the noises of land, and Grant had a taste of it in the South American jungles, but for Casey, it was all new.

  As they motored south into the indigo blue waters of the Tongue of the Ocean, Rebecca was on the foredeck, watching schools of flying fish that took off out of the water in front of them and skimmed over the waves like small birds before finally disappearing beneath the surface again. Rebecca seemed to be doing a lot better now, and the new sights and marine life in the Bahamas brought out an excitement in her that Casey and Larry had not seen since they met her and her mom.

  “I never thought I’d see anything like this anywhere but on TV,” she said, when she finally came back to the cockpit after the flying fish were gone for good. “I’ve seen four sharks, about a million flying fish, a whole bunch of dolphins, and that huge stingray we saw yesterday just since we got to the Bahamas!”