by Perrin Briar
Stacey whimpered and cowered behind Mary’s patch-worked skirts.
“Joel, you’re scaring them,” Mary said.
“They should be scared. I’m scared. No food. No water. Stuck out here in the middle of the ocean in a rusting tin bucket with those things on the land. What’s not to be scared of?”
Mary put her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off.
“I’ll go turn the engine on,” Joel said. “See if we can find a better fishing spot.” He stomped down the stairs into the belly of the ship. Anne dodged out of his way as he passed her.
Silence followed him. No one made eye contact.
“He does have a point,” Mary said. “A little aggressively put, perhaps, but without food and water we’ve got no chance.”
“We’ve got food,” Anne said feebly. She washed Stan’s face and applied a plaster.
“But for how long? We can’t keep living like this.”
“But at least we are living. We’re not one of those things on the land. We are alive.”
“Not for much longer if we don’t get more food and water.”
Haven shivered as the engine chugged. It spluttered like a man on his last legs, and then cut out. No one took any notice. It was a common occurrence.
Anne looked into Stan and Mary’s eyes. “Maybe we should go onto the land.”
“We can’t go back on the land,” Stan said. “You remember what it was like.”
“Maybe it’s better now.”
“It’ll never be better.”
“We could do a quick hit and run. Be in and out before they know we were there.”
“They wouldn’t know anyway.” Stan shook his head. “It’s not worth the risk.”
Anne gritted her teeth. “Isn’t what we’re doing a risk? We can’t live on the land because it’s too dangerous, and we can’t live at sea because there’s no food or water. What would you have us do?”
“It gets worse,” a voice behind them said.
Joel was black up to the elbows with smudges of oil on his face. He had a lump of metal in his hands. “The alternator’s dead.”
7.
The engine was a twisted mound of metal, plastic and rubber. Cloth rags, saturated with oil, dirt and fuel, had been wrapped and tightened around various joints in a patchwork attempt to hold it together. Baked bean tins and what looked suspiciously like a Smarties tube made up the components.
Stan, Anne and Jordan squeezed into the small space just inside the door while Joel mounted the engine with well-practiced grace and descended on the other side. “I’ve managed to piece her back together again for now,” he said, “but she won’t last long.”
“What’ll we do?” Anne said.
Joel stood up, wiping his hands on an old piece of dirty cloth. He tossed it aside. “We have to find a replacement part.”
“Where?” Stan said. “We’ve salvaged every boat we’ve come across.”
“We’ll have to find the parts elsewhere.”
“Where?” Stan asked.
Joel looked at Stan. A conversation passed between them that Jordan could not understand.
“No,” Stan said, shaking his head. “No way.”
“What other choice do we have? What happens when the alternator packs up altogether? I’ll never be able to patch it up forever. One day it’ll break. What’ll we do then? You said yourself we’ve had no luck with salvaging.”
“I won’t go to Terry,” Stan said, shaking his head. “I won’t.”
“Terry?” Jordan said. “Who’s Terry?”
“A megalomaniac,” Stan said. “A pirate. An extortionist. A gangster. We’re not going to him. Not until we’ve exhausted every other option.”
Joel scratched his chin with his thumb. “We’re getting that way now, Stan.”
“No. We still have options.”
“What options? There are fewer boats to salvage every day. We’re running low on food. If Mary’s soup doesn’t get any weaker, it never will.” He fixed Stan with a hard stare. “We’ve got no other choice.”
Stan shook his head.
Joel turned to Anne. “Anne, help me out here.”
Anne took a moment before answering. “I’m with Stan on this one.”
“Anne!”
“We’ve got a little food left,” she said. “When we’re out, or almost out… then we can consider Terry.”
“Until then we just wait?”
“We fish. We hope for rain.”
“Hope! That’s all we ever do. At some point we’ve got to make a stand. We have got to be proactive.” Without the support of the others, Joel turned to Jordan. “What do you think?”
“He hasn’t been here long enough to know what we’re up against,” Anne said.
“He’s been here long enough to know we’re in trouble. And it’s his life on the line too. Jordan?”
Jordan let out a sigh. “If this Terry is as bad as you say he is we’d better stay away from him. At least until we have no other choice.”
Joel shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “And if the engine gives up the ghost on our way to see Terry?”
No one had an answer for him.
“Great,” Joel said flatly.
“We keep salvaging,” Stan said. “Sooner or later something will come up.”
8.
Stan pulled in the net. His heart sank. He felt the lack of weight and knew they hadn’t caught anything of value. He shook the net. A crushed Coke can, plastic supermarket bags and frayed shoelace tumbled onto the deck. Stan turned to the others who sat on the floor in the shade of the tarpaulin. Stan shook his head and tossed the net back over the side.
Mary upended the flask, letting the last few drops of water fall into Stacey’s mouth. She ran her finger around the lip of the bottle and ran it over Jessie’s chapped lips.
Jessie took Stacey by the hand. “Come on, let’s go play.”
“That’s the last of the water,” Mary said after the girls had left.
Joel looked at the others, his eyes meeting theirs one by one. Each gave a curt nod. Stan hesitated only a moment before he too nodded. Joel got up and headed down the stairs.
There was a moment of silence before Stan said, “At least we tried. We can’t do more than that.”
Jessie came running from the prow. “There’s a boat,” she said.
They were all too forlorn or dozy to have heard her.
“There’s a boat,” she repeated.
Anne blinked, waking up to what Jessie was saying. “A what?”
“A boat.”
“Where?”
Jessie pointed. Sunlight bounced off a stainless steel railing and cast spots in their vision.
“Go tell Joel not to start the engine,” Stan said to Anne. He smiled. “Hope has arrived.”
9.
It might have been adrift on the sea forever. It was dirty brown from rust, covering it like an inelegant tattoo hull to stern. The tatters of a forgotten flag flapped from the bridge’s peak. Cars sat bumper to bumper on the main deck, each covered with a thick layer of bird excrement. Its name, half blacked-out due to some kind of fire incident, was Light. Haven completed a turn about Light. The water was still, no sign the engines were on. The boat was adrift, guided only by the ocean’s current.
Joel shook his head. “Why a ferry? I hate ferries.”
Anne peered at the ferry through binoculars. “Can’t see anyone on board, can you?”
“No,” Joel said. “Her arse looks a little heavy though.”
The stern appeared to be several feet lower than the hull, the waterline hanging loose like a builder’s cleavage. “Taking on water, you reckon?”
“Might be.”
“Too risky to go on board?” Anne asked.
“Riskier not to. We need that engine part, never mind the food.”
Anne shook her head. “Pity Kwit-Fit never opened a branch in the English Channel.”
10.
; “Why does Joel hate ferries so much?” Jordan asked Stan as he helped strap on thick foam-like pads that clamped around his forearms and calves.
“We all hate ferries,” Stan said.
“Why?”
“Let me do what all the best academics of the world do, and answer a question with a question: What’s a ferry’s main cargo?”
Jordan thrust his feet into the loose-fitting steel toe-cap boots. “People.”
“Right. And wherever there are people there are…”
“Lurchers.”
“Added to that fact, they’re massive places with dark corners and too many hiding places. That’s why we hate ferries.”
Jordan pulled on the thick gloves and fingered crescent-shaped indentations along the fleshy part of the hand. “Why do we need all this protection? I thought they were slow and lumbering?”
“They are. But nothing seems slow or lumbering when it comes at you from nowhere. Walk around. See how it feels.”
Jordan paced up and down the narrow space in the main living area. The armour creaked, but it hardly restricted his movement. “It pinches a little in the crotch.”
“Nothing’s perfect.” Stan turned to a pile of wood that Jordan had previously taken for firewood. “Pick your weapon of choice.”
Jordan ran his fingers over them. There were chair legs, baseball bats, even a rolling pin. “You don’t have anything a bit more… sophisticated?”
“Guns jam and require ammunition. Swords can snap or become dull.” Stan picked up a chair leg from the pile and held it to Jordan’s head. “A solid blow to the back of the head and… lights out.” He spun the leg around in the air in an impressive display of dexterity. “This is cutting-edge technology in the fight against the undead.” He shrugged. “Pots and pans work equally well.”
Jordan gave the lump of wood a few practice swings. It whumped through the air. He fingered the detailed engravings of vine leaves that snaked over its surface.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Stan asked. “No one would blame you for not going through with it.”
“I’m fine. I’ll have to take the plunge some time, come face to face with these Lurchers.” His mouth was still awkward around the new word. Jordan grinned. “Maybe I can help ferry a few of them to the great beyond. Huh? Huh?”
Stan groaned.
11.
Joel stood on deck in his body armour looking at the ferry through the binoculars. The ferry’s white hull caught the sunlight and reflected it back in a blinding display like it were the boat of God. Despite its damaged exterior it still managed to look regal. Perched atop the ferry’s main body was a small box, a tiny head on the trunk of this massive beast. Its walls were made of reinforced glass. He could make out the shadows of the computer terminals inside. “What am I looking for again?”
“The bridge windows,” Anne said.
“Yes, but what specifically?” Then he saw them. “Never mind.” Giant letters had been written on the glass. He could make out an S and a couple of Ys but the glare from the sun made the words impossible to decipher. “I can’t read it. What does it say?”
“I’m not sure,” Anne said. “A warning, maybe?”
“Wouldn’t be the first. I suppose we’d best take a closer look to be sure.”
“Plan of action?”
“Standard sweep. We’ll work from the top down. If we find anything of value we’ll tag it and bring it on our way back. Stan and Mary will keep watch from here.”
Anne nodded. She looked up at Joel, who was still peering through the binoculars. “Are you sure about taking Jordan?”
“Every spare pair of eyes will be useful.”
“I know, but he’s still not one hundred percent yet.”
“None of us are.”
Jordan and Stan joined them on the deck. Jordan’s movements were a little awkward in his armour.
“All set?” Joel asked.
“As set as I’ll ever be,” Jordan said.
“Don’t worry about today. Just follow our lead, and you’ll be fine.” Joel turned to Stan. “We’d best get this show started.”
Stan moved to a crank built into the side of Haven’s bridge. It made a rattling, clacking sound as he turned it, causing a gangplank to ever-so-slowly slide out from Haven’s side, like a splinter being rejected by its host. Stan made minute alterations to the complicated apparatus, shifting the gangplank upward several degrees.
“Any time this year, Stan,” Joel said, rolling his eyes.
Stan worked the crank faster. The gangplank dropped onto the ferry’s deck, the hooks digging deep furrows into the ferry’s damp, soft boards.
Stan wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “She’s ready.”
Joel walked across the plank in three easy strides and hopped over the guardrail. Now on Light, he stood facing away from the gangplank with his knives in his hands, eyes scanning for an attack.
“The trick to crossing is to not look down,” Anne told Jordan as she hopped across the gangplank in four easy strides.
Jordan stepped up to the plank. It suddenly seemed a mile long and only two inches wide. The wind blew, and he could have sworn the plank wobbled a metre in either direction. “Don’t look down,” he murmured to himself. He stepped up to the gangplank. One of the harnessing straps on his forearm protectors flapped in the wind. A breeze gripped it and pulled it loose. Jordan reached for it, but it snapped out of his reach, slithered into the wind and fell between the two hulls to the depths below. He looked down.
The water smashed against the twin hulls with a thunderous crash, sending a fine spray up into Jordan’s face. The sea roared amidst a foam of white wash. He felt the blood drain from his face.
“It’s just one foot in front of the other,” Stan said helpfully.
Jordan couldn’t even manage a sarcastic “Thanks,” his throat was too tight and dry.
Jordan stepped out onto the plank. He took tiny steps, nothing like the confident strides of Joel and Anne, and shuffled along the gangplank with his arms out to either side. The wind picked up, howling across the board. He was only halfway across. The armour suddenly felt heavy as concrete. The sleeves of his T-shirt flapped against his body. Jordan sucked deep breaths into his lungs.
“Come on!” Joel said. “Hurry up!”
Jordan started. His body swayed. He lost his balance. He twisted to maintain it, but felt his centre of balance falter. He threw himself toward the ferry. His body smacked into the ferry’s hull. He reached out to grab the railing, but his gloves were thick and cumbersome and couldn’t find a grip. He slipped off the edge. He began to fall.
He stopped short, his body smacking into the hull, barking his shins. He hung in mid-air. He looked up and saw Joel had hold of him with his thick arms.
“Upsie daisy,” Joel said, pulling him up onto the deck.
Jordan’s body shook, his insides twisting with writhing snakes.
Joel crouched down beside him. “You should head back. It only gets worse from here.”
Jordan’s shins throbbed as he got to his feet. “I’m fine.”
“You’ll get in the way,” Joel said with a growl.
Jordan glared at Joel. “I just got here. If you think I’m going back across that death-plank again now, you’ve got another thing coming. Now, where are we going?”
They stared into one another’s face, neither one backing down. Joel turned his head to the side as if seeing something in Jordan’s expression. He cracked into a smile. “You’ll do. We’d best get going then, hadn’t we?” Joel turned to Stan and waved a hand.
There was a rattling sound as Stan worked the crank, pulling the plank back.
“What’s he doing?” Jordan said. “We’ll need the plank to get back.”
“Safety measure,” Joel said. “We don’t want any Lurchers to get on board Haven now, do we?”
12.
A breeze followed them into the room, fluttering the papers that lay s
cattered over the floor and table tops like the feathers of a bird. They were stuck fast by crusted blood. The air was thick and heavy with the stench of death, their masks doing little to prevent it clinging to their lungs like dry concrete. The navigation table had been knocked askance to a forty-five degree angle. Anne moved to it and began searching amongst the documents.
Joel looked up at the large red letters written backward across the windows. The author had used blood. It had run an inch or so down the glass before becoming frozen in droplets of red. Joel smiled as he read the message. “ ‘Stay away’. Not too hospitable, is it?”
Jordan moved to the main computer terminal. A few small photos remained tucked behind the engine, bow thruster and navigational aid monitors which stared blankly back at him.
“I’ve got it,” Anne said, pulling a document out from the pile. She laid it out flat on the table. It curled up at the edges. She held down each corner with items lying about the room: two half empty coffee cups with ‘I’m a sailor, and I’m okay’ written on them, a navigation protractor and an empty notebook. The document was a blueprint of Light. There was a large lounge directly below them, then one huge room for the temporary storage of vehicles. At the bottom level were a series of maintenance compartments. The largest of which was labelled ‘Engine Bay’.
Joel shook his head and sighed. “I hate ferries.”
“How do you want to do this?” Anne asked.
Joel gestured to the lounge area. “We’ll make our way gradually room to room, working our way front to back, then back to front, and so on until we get to the engine bay.”
“How long do you think it will take?” Jordan asked.
“Depends on how much there is to search,” Joel said. “Maybe nine or ten hours.”
“And whether or not we run into much unexpected company,” Anne added.
“Do you think we will?” Jordan asked.