Voyage After the Collapse (The Pulse Series Book 3)

by Scott B. Williams

  When he reached the island he was aiming for, he was relieved to find that much of the shoreline on the north side of it consisted of mangroves. This meant the high ground and consequently, the houses and roads of the interior were farther inland, beyond the dense fringe of greenery that extended out into the shallows like a buffer zone from the real land. He paddled until he was right at the edge of the dense trees, gliding over water so clear that he could see the white sand bottom five feet below even in the gloom of daybreak. When he came to a narrow mud beach in a gap between the trees, Scully eased the bow of the kayak onto it and got out. It was good to stand up but there was little room to walk around here or do much of anything else. But looking back through the foliage to the open water of the Gulf, he figured he was quite invisible from any passing boat. Unless it was one as small and with as shallow a draft as the kayak, it was unlikely any other boat would pass close enough here to see the little strip of mud. He pulled the kayak across it and slid it among the mangrove roots on the other side. It would be as good as anyplace he was likely to find to pass the daylight hours, but it was going to be a long day as he would be confined and unable to do much of anything but sleep and stay hidden.

  When he woke, it was because the midday sun had turned the green mangrove jungle around him into a sauna, and the interior of the kayak had warmed up to the point where it was no longer tolerable to stay in the hull. Scully had several more hours to wait, and that’s what he did, spending some of them sitting in the warm water in front of the mud beach, and the rest in an unsuccessful attempt to secure another fish with the machete. The fish here were not running in dense schools, and his first few attempts frightened away those he missed until he gave up. He opened more coconuts instead, and taking stock of his supply, noted that he still had enough for a few more days.

  He heard the distant sound of an outboard motor late in the afternoon, but the boat never passed within his narrow field of view from his hiding place. The sound convinced him he’d made the right choice to hole up during the day however. There was simply too much risk of being seen if he were out on the water. Even though the kayak was low to the surface, Scully knew the flashing of the dipping paddle blades could be spotted from a great distance in the right conditions. At night, on the other hand, it was nearly invisible beyond a few dozen yards, and if he were careful not to splash as he dipped the paddles, there would be no sound to give him away.

  The hours dragged by and he was impatient to get underway, but he forced himself to wait until dusk to emerge from the enclosing mangroves. As he suspected, this natural section of shoreline did not extend indefinitely. Within a half a mile the mangroves gave way to an area of waterfront homes and restaurants, forcing him to divert his course so that he was far enough out that anyone who happened to look out on the water would be unlikely to see him. He could only make out the shapes of the buildings in the dark, but from where he paddled by, it seemed they were all deserted. Some of them were in ruins, having apparently been burned down since the blackout. The smell of smoke drifted out on the breeze now too, and Scully figured it was coming from cooking fires somewhere in the interior of the small island. That confirmed there were people around, just not along the shore that he could see.

  He soon came to another gap between islands, as he knew he would from looking at Larry’s charts of the area after they anchored off Cape Sable. The Keys consisted of many islands connected by a series of bridges that stretched over a hundred miles. He set his course parallel to the bridge, taking care to stay a least a half a mile away from it as he crossed to the next island in the chain. Scully had not forgotten the rocks hurled from one of these bridges when he and Larry and Artie had sailed under it en route to New Orleans. He made sure he was not only out of range of thrown objects, but also far enough from the bridge to avoid being shot.

  At the other side of the open stretch of water, he came to more mangroves and then an apparent anchorage where a group of refugees were living on boats. Scully skirted wide around them, but he could see oil lamps burning aboard some of them and hear the sounds of conversation and laughter. These people could be harmless and simply minding their own business as they survived as best they could, but Scully was taking no chances of letting them know he was passing by. There was a marked navigation channel that wound through the mangroves west of the anchorage, and Scully followed it, though not in the middle where he would be noticed if he met another boat. Keeping close to the trees as he’d done whenever possible, he used the channel markers as a guide to keep him from wasting time going up a dead-end channel, as such places were common along mangrove coasts. He’d traveled almost a mile from the anchored boats when suddenly he heard screaming from somewhere around the next bend.

  Scully froze, holding his paddle above the cockpit coaming as he strained to listen. The screaming was the voice of a woman in terror. Then there were shouts from one or more men. The commotion was coming from somewhere up ahead, probably along the channel. To avoid it completely, he would have to backtrack all the way back to the anchorage where he’d seen the boats and then take the long way around the mangrove island to the south of him. That would involve miles of extra paddling and would kill half his progress for the night. Scully didn’t want to risk being seen, but he also knew he had to make time, because Larry and the others would only wait at the Dry Tortugas for so long before giving up on him. Considering all this, he made his decision.

  Using the quietest paddle strokes possible, Scully eased the boat forward, keeping in the shadows of the mangroves until he could determine where the voices were coming from. The channel here was maybe a 100 yards wide, and with any luck, he might be able to slip past whoever was making all the racket completely undetected. It sounded like a fight or a woman in distress, and the last thing Scully wanted to do was get involved in an altercation with strangers. He changed his mind about that though when he saw the true nature of the disturbance.

  A small sailboat that looked like a miniature version of a cruising boat was anchored just a few yards away from a small beach half hidden among the mangroves. A campfire was burning on the sand and next to it, a man with a pistol was pointing it at another man who was on his knees at the far edge of the beach, his back to the mangroves that surrounded it. Another man was wading back to the shore from the little boat, dragging the woman who was doing all the screaming by the hair. Scully saw that this man had a rifle slung across his back, but his other hand was occupied fending off the woman’s futile attempts to make him let go of her. The situation unfolding before him was pretty obvious. The man at gunpoint and the woman must have been camping there out of their little boat when these two attackers came from somewhere out of the mangroves. It was clear that what they wanted was the woman.

  Scully knew that with all four of these people completely preoccupied, he could paddle right past this scene and it would soon be a memory left astern. He had his own problems to worry about and violence like this was happening everywhere and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. But as he sat there in silence taking in what was about to happen, Scully realized that this young woman and the man who was either her boyfriend or husband were probably not much older than his friends, Casey and Grant and Jessica. The men would probably kill them both when they were done with her and then take whatever they could find on the little boat. They would then keep doing this until they ran into someone prepared and able to stop them. Considering this, Scully decided that he was that someone. There was really little risk to him because they didn’t have a clue that he was there, and they were only about fifty yards away. He quietly laid the kayak paddle across the coaming and reached for the AK-47 between his knees. There was no need to chamber a round, because the weapon was already locked and loaded. Scully eased the safety off slowly and carefully, so that there was no click as it locked into the detent in the ‘fire’ position. Then he raised the rifle to his shoulder. The water was dead calm in the protected channel so shooting from the kayak
would not present a problem.

  His first target was the man with the pistol, because if he didn’t take him out before the two thugs realized they were under fire, there was a good chance that one would kill the kneeling man. The other one could not react as fast with his hands tied up with the struggling woman. Scully aimed at the center of his target’s head, knowing he was close enough that he couldn’t miss and that a head shot would instantly remove the first one from the fight. He squeezed off a single round and saw the man drop; dead before he even hit the ground. The report of the 7.62 x 39mm rifle round fired as such close range shattered the night and the other attacker was completely baffled as he turned to look out into the darkness. In a panic, he pushed the woman away from him and reached for his slung weapon. He didn’t even have time to bring it to the front of his body before Scully dropped him where he stood with a quick double-tap; the two bullets tearing through the center of his upper torso.

  The woman was screaming again as the echo of the rifle shots faded away. She splashed her way out of the water as the man on the beach got to his feet and ran to meet her, his desperate gaze searching the dark water beyond their anchored boat for this new source of danger.

  “IT’S OKAY, MON! NOT GOING TO SHOOT! ONLY KILL DE BAD GUY TO HELP YOU, MON!”

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE WATER PUMP FAILURE was an aggravation to Larry but certainly nothing new. There wasn’t a whole lot that could go wrong with a small diesel like the one in the Sarah J., but without the pump to keep it cool, it couldn’t run for long. The most likely culprit would be the rubber impeller, which had to be replaced from time to time in normal use. Any knowledgeable yacht owner would carry spare impellers, and Larry had no doubt Tara’s father would have stored at least one or two on board with his spare parts and tools. Larry could have fixed it without heading for a harbor, and he would have if they were far offshore, but Green Cay was just too close by to ignore. It was a remote and seldom-visited island on the edge of the Tongue of the Ocean, and he seriously doubted anyone would be there now. He would scrap the idea and continue on if they saw a boat or any other signs of life there, but it was barely out of the way and getting the engine running again would make up for the lost time going in and out of the anchorage. He wasn’t thrilled about the idea of a long beat to the Jumentos without it, and that’s exactly what they were facing in these winds.

  Because it was upwind, reaching Green Cay took until daylight, with several tacks, but that was just as well because the reef-bound harbor could not be entered in darkness anyway. There were two or three anchorage areas with enough water at low tide for the Sarah J., but Larry planned to get in and get back out quickly, and that meant the harbor on the western side of the island. He waited until the sun was up enough to navigate by the color of the water, then steered as close to the shoreline of the shallow cove as he dared and dropped the anchor in six feet of transparent water. On the last tack before their approach, they had been far enough south to see that there were no masts sticking up from the other possible anchorages on the south side of the little island. It appeared they had Green Cay to themselves, which was exactly how Larry wanted it.

  “It’s not very big, is it?” Tara asked.

  “No, it’s only about a mile across and a mile long.”

  “You said you’ve been here before? How long ago was that?”

  “Years. Probably seven or eight. It was just one time, but we stayed long enough to know how good the fishing is on these reefs. There are wild goats on the island too.”

  “Goats? What are goats doing here?” Casey asked.

  “They’re on a lot of islands in the Bahamas. So are cattle and chickens. They’re wild descendants of the domestic stock left over from the days when all these islands were settled with farmers. You can find the ruins of old homesteads on most of the little cays if you look closely.”

  “What happened to the people who built them?” Rebecca asked.

  “They eventually gave up in most cases. Life on these little islands was hard. The biggest problem was the lack of water. You can find the cisterns they built, but rainfall can be scarce here. That’s why the vegetation is kind of semi-desert. But other than that, a lot of these islands could make a pretty secluded and peaceful hideaway.”

  “It’s beautiful here,” Casey said. “Like a South Seas dream.”

  “Yeah, that it is. There are some even more awesome spots in the Jumentos and Raggeds though.”

  The fact that they were apparently alone here made Larry stop and think for a minute. Green Cay could have been a good choice for a place to stop in the Bahamas and make a decision about going elsewhere. He’d kind of forgotten about it before though, when he was talking to Artie and Scully about possible destinations. The fishing was outstanding here, and there were some scattered coconut palms on the island. The goats were another possibility. With all the shotguns and rifles they had accumulated, they certainly had the means to harvest some. Meat would be a welcome change and addition to their diet and they could dry a surplus for provisions. But as tempting as it was, Larry knew the harbor here was probably even more minimal than the not-so-great harbors of the Jumentos. And besides, he had forgotten to mention it, so Scully likely hadn’t even noticed this obscure cay on the chart, other than as an area of dangerous reefs to avoid.

  It was just a passing thought anyway and Larry put it out of his mind. He had work to do so they could get going again. He went below and opened up the engine compartment. One good thing about the Tartan 37 was that engine access was good, unlike so many of the sailboats he’d worked on where the designer put the auxiliary in a space that required the mechanic to also be a contortionist. A quick inspection didn’t reveal anything else that could be a problem, so Larry shut off the cooling water intake seacock and then searched the locker where Tara said her father kept his tools. He then removed the cover from the water pump and verified what he’d suspected. The rubber impeller had several broken blades and needed replacing. Larry dug through the toolboxes and bags in the locker looking for the spares Tara was sure were there. He found extra oil filters, an alternator belt and even an entire spare starter motor, but only an empty package for the impeller, which had already been opened.

  “It looks like he already used the last one and didn’t get a chance to get another spare,” Larry said.

  “I’m surprised,” Tara said. “He usually keeps detailed notes on all the maintenance. He must have used that spare on the way back from their last cruise. I know he would have gotten another one before they took off again.”

  “What does it do?” Casey asked.

  “It pulls the water through the pump. Without it, the pump can’t work and with no cooling water coming in to circulate through and keep the engine at the right temperature, we can’t run it. That’s why there was no water coming out of the wet exhaust. If it’s not coming in, it can’t come out.”

  “So without a spare impeller, you can’t fix the engine?”

  “Not in the normal way, no. But there are a couple of things I could do to work around it. It just depends on whether I can scrape together everything I need from what’s on board. It’s going to take a while though, and I’m already exhausted from being up half the night. We all are, so we might as well get some sleep first. I guess another day is not going to make that much difference.”

  Larry didn’t realize just how tired he was until he woke up and discovered it was late afternoon. The combination of a peaceful, protected anchorage and just enough cooling breeze to keep the cabin pleasant had the same effect on the entire crew. Rebecca had actually been the first one to wake up, and she was sitting on the foredeck staring at the island when Larry climbed up from below.

  “Looks like I slept just about the whole day away,” he said, when Rebecca turned to see who it was.

  “I wish we didn’t have to leave. I like this island. There are no bad people here and I saw two of the goats by those bushes over there,” Rebecca said, pointing to
the low scrub a hundred yards away.

  “Yes, I agree that it’s nice not to have to worry about people, but the anchorage here is not safe if the wind changes much. It’s not really a harbor for bad weather.”

  “Does that mean we’re leaving today then?”

  “Probably some time tonight. I’ve still got some work to do on the engine.”

  “Do you think you can fix it?”

  “I can’t really fix it for good without the part I need, but I can rig up something that will work.”

  Larry’s plan was to simply devise a way to keep the engine running cool until they reached the Jumentos Cays. Without a spare impeller, the raw water pump couldn’t be fixed, but there was another alternative. After inspecting the installed emergency bilge pumps on board, he knew he could make do for such a short run that would entail less than 24 hours of motoring at the very most. There were two 12-volt electric bilge pumps below the floorboards: a large, high-volume unit that was mounted high and dry just under the access hatch, and a smaller one with a float switch in the deepest part of the sump. That one was there to keep the bilges relatively dry when the boat was docked, leaving the higher, big one for real emergencies. Larry knew he could safely remove the small one and hook it up in place of the engine intake pump to circulate water. It would burn out under constant use of course, but it should last long enough to get them where they were going. Thankfully, the Tartan 37 was old enough that its simple alternator was still charging the battery bank. The pump could run full time when it was needed while the engine was running. He had it ready to test before sunset and when he confirmed everything was working, he shut the engine down again until they were ready to leave.

  His plan was to leave shortly after dark, after they had eaten a good meal while still at anchor. Fast-moving clouds approaching from the southeast with a band of rainsqualls caused another delay though. Although he knew how to get back out through the reefs in the dark after picking his way in that very morning, he did not want to try it with the added complication of rain and gusting winds. They went below to wait it out, sitting in the cabin and talking since no one was sleepy after their long daytime nap.