A houseboat. Finegan Fine

by Nancy Lieder

  the front door.

  Finegan and the traveler are shoulder to shoulder, with Joey facing

  backwards, at their back, his knife drawn and turned upward in front of

  his chest. They move as a tight group toward the front door.

  The zombies are gently knocked aside as Finegan and the traveler come

  out the front door, pushing steadily but gently. When the way seems

  clear, they pick up the pace, Finegan with his spare hand on the scuff

  of Joey’s neck, making sure he is not left behind. Joey is almost glued

  to their backs, walking backwards, his eyes moving from side to side,

  scanning for danger.

  When they seem clear by a couple feet, they all bolt in the direction

  of the canoe, running.

  OK. Run for it!

  The zombies are following them, staggering along wordlessly, too

  malnourished to break into a run but clearly intending to follow.

  ______________________________

  The threesome are running back to where the canoe is pulled ashore and

  clamor into it, the traveler pushing the canoe out into the water and

  stepping in at the last minute. He and Finegan push away from the

  shore, and paddle upstream energetically. The zombies are approaching

  the shore, still following them. The traveler says,

  Lord! No wonder my mother left. Were we

  supposed to be supper?

  Finegan replies,

  Not sure, but I think they were just curious. I

  think they eat rats, stuff like that. Mostly,

  they’ve just been starving. Waiting to be

  rescued. Probably near brain dead too, from

  starvation.

  Finegan and Joey have been glancing over their shoulder. Finegan says,

  I think we’re pulling away, but I want to put

  some miles between us. I’ll give you a good

  breakfast in the morning if you’ll help me get

  upstream tonight.

  The traveler says,

  Deal. I owe you that.

  ______________________________

  42

  The houseboat is moored at a small island in the center of the river,

  tied to a tree. Finegan has just finished tying the knots, and returns

  to pick up where he left off the day before – making a meal. He is

  pulling some potatoes from a bin, and taking some fish out of the

  wooden box he uses as a cooler. He sniffs the fish and determines they

  are not yet spoiled. Finegan fires the coals and puts a blackened pot

  of coffee on the grill, then pulls a pan out and slices potatoes and an

  onion into it.

  Joey and Barney were asleep on the deck, as usual, but stir due to all

  the commotion. The Traveler is asleep on the house roof, hat over his

  face, and snoring. Finegan glances at the traveler and says,

  We’ve been taking shifts all night. I recon

  he’s played out.

  Finegan scans the shore in the direction of Millstown, several miles

  downstream.

  I recon we shook the shufflers. Joey, after we

  eat, I’m crashing. You stand watch, eh?

  At the smell of frying fish and potatoes and onions in a pan, the

  traveler awakes, raising first one knee and then rolling over onto his

  side, hand under his chin and hat pushed back on his head.

  Boy that smells good . .

  Energized, he rolls onto his butt and scuffs on his butt over to the

  edge of the roof, climbing down using pile of boxes as stairs.

  I’m going upstream a’ways and then overland to

  Atlanta. . . Not sure what I’ll find.

  Finegan is dishing out the pan-fry onto three plates, and hands one to

  the traveler, then pours mugs of coffee. Finegan casts a glance at the

  traveler’s shoes, soft sole for comfort while canoeing.

  You’ll need some walking boots. What’er you

  goin to do with the canoe? Carry is overland? .

  . I’ve got some boots in a box. They might fit.

  Joey gets his clue and puts his plate down, wiping his mouth with the

  back of his hand. He goes into the house and starts searching for the

  box labeled “boots”. Finegan is also rummaging around in the laundry

  pile, and pulls out a red bandana. He holds it up.

  Tie this on a tree where you stash the canoe. .

  . Even trade. . . You goin to need some socks?

  43

  The Castle

  The houseboat is approaching a broken concrete dam, shattered by the

  earthquakes. The floodwaters have raised the water level to the top of

  the former dam, but there is not enough clearance to go over without

  scraping the bottom of the houseboat, potentially getting caught and

  stranded.

  There are flooded trees but mostly the banks are clear and steep.

  Finegan selects a sturdy tree as his anchor and ties up. The canoe is

  tied firmly to the side of the houseboat, the paddles laid in the

  bottom. Not a soul is in sight.

  Finegan is pulling a tub out from the clutter, and sorting laundry,

  preparing to finally have laundry day. Joey emerges from the house

  holding an old Tide box.

  This?

  Finegan glances up.

  No, that’s salt. It’s a brown box. Slivered bar

  soap.

  The camping grill is at the side, heating a pot of water, which can be

  seen steaming. Finegan takes a couple pails of river water, pouring it

  into the tub. He examines the box Joey brought from the house and

  shakes some of this into the tub, then immediately pours boiling water

  on top of the flakes. He then grabs a washing board nearby and starts

  scrubbing shirts, wringing them out, and throwing them to the side to

  be rinsed later.

  Finegan stands straight, sweating a bit, to catch his breath. Looking

  to the side, up along the shore, he sees a fisherman.

  Company . .

  The fisherman is quiet and dressed in earth tones, had been there all

  along, not noticed. He nods in Finegan’s direction and recasts his

  bamboo pole and line into the river. He does not have expensive fishing

  gear, but rather a pole with a line tied to the end, primitive.

  Finegan returns to scrubbing his laundry, seeing that his activity is

  downriver from the fisherman’s spot, and that they are not interfering

  with each other. Joey is picking up the washed items and rinsing them

  in the river.

  ______________________________

  44

  The houseboat is now covered with drying laundry. All lines from the

  corner posts are full, the laundry attached to the lines by anything

  but laundry pins. Some shirts are attached by the arms of the shirt

  knotted loosely around the line, as though the shirt itself were

  holding onto the line. Heavy pants such as jeans are attached with

  tools – clamps or pliers. The roof of the house is covered with small

  items such as underwear and t-shirts.

  The Fisherman is making his way down along the steep bank toward where

  the houseboat is moored, a string of fish in one hand, his pole in the

  other. He raises the hand that holds the string of fish.

  Howdy. Be happy to share the fish and some

  news.

  Finegan has been sipping a mug of coffee, the pot still on the grill,

  staying warm. He puts his mug down and rises to move toward the canoe,


  tied to the side of the houseboat.

  Let me bring you over . .

  ______________________________

  The houseboat crew and their guest are seated on the clutter at the

  front of the houseboat, framed by flapping laundry hung on the corner-

  post lines. The laundry tub has been emptied into the river and is

  turned upside down. Finegan is seated on this as a chair. They are all

  finishing fried fish and potatoes, putting their plates aside and

  sipping coffee. Time now to finish catching up on whatever news they

  have to share. The fisherman says, with a deep sigh,

  So the fire took it all . . gutted the place .

  . people keep showing up, looking for the

  stash, so we let the char heap say it all. . .

  No need to explain.

  Finegan asks,

  Those armed guards, they gone too?

  And the fisherman responds,

  Them that didn’t kill each other off during the

  shootout, yeah. They took their guns and went

  off to Atlanta.

  Finegan asks,

  Just you and your family here?

  And the fisherman relays,

  Those that come looking to loot, they don’t

  stay. They move on. . . We try to stay out of

  sight.

  45

  Finegan sets his mug down and rises to pick up a pumpkin and holds it

  high.

  For the fish. Would you mind taking me back to

  the castle? What looters want is not always

  what’s valuable. I’d like to sort through.

  Joey is watching Finegan’s face but they both are arriving at the same

  conclusion, having learned to almost read each other’s minds. Joey will

  bring the canoe back and stay with the boat, in case looters arrive.

  ______________________________

  Finegan and the Fisherman are walking up a barren hill, no trees or

  shrubbery on the hill. Near the top of the hill, not at the crest but

  to the side of the crest nestled against a rock outcropping, is the

  charred remains of a large house. The spiked metal fence that

  surrounded the house is still intact, though the gates are hanging

  open. Some sheep are seen on the hillside in the distance, grazing. The

  two are seen walking through the gate.

  The fisherman is pointing toward a corner pinnacle.

  There they had the lookout. Had one atop the

  hill too in a concrete bunker. Then the goods

  they had in a basement bunker, huge. The guards

  blasted that open to get at ‘em. Heard the

  blast from miles away. This was after they kilt

  Mr. Anderson. He’d hid the key and was holding

  out, ya’know. He was real tight fisted . .

  always was. Acted like he owned everybody. Got

  him kilt, I recon. We ain’t seed him since.

  The twosome continue walking toward what was the front door of the

  enclave. The monstrous double front doors are hanging open, still

  standing though one is hanging a bit off its hinges. The doors are

  charred but still entact, as they were solid wood on top of metal

  centers, designed to be impermeable. The twosome slide between the open

  doors, stepping gingerly through the trash. The main room of the house

  has been burned to the extent that there is no roof and the floorboards

  have been consumed. Only an occasional floor beam is in place. Finegan

  points to the side, where the fire was less intense in the wings of the

  house.

  Lets try that route.

  Finegan and the fisherman punch out the remains of a window glass, and

  climb through the open window frams. The room they are entering has a

  46

  solid floor, though the drapes and furniture have been consumed by the

  fire. The fire raged upward in the drafts, not downward.

  There is a bar on the far end of the room, farthest from the main room

  inferno. Finegan heads over there, poking around behind the bar, but

  nothing seems to have been left by the looters. He pulls at some

  plumbing used to pipe carbonated water, and detaches a carbonating

  device under the counter to take along.

  He is still looking around, determined to find some booze. He is

  pulling out half melted soda bottles, littering the floor with them.

  Toward the back of this stash he finds what he is looking for, a half-

  filled soda bottle that has a tape tag on it. The soda bottles toward

  the back had not melted as much as those exposed to the air of the

  room, and this bottle is intact.

  Aha!

  Finegan opens the cap and sniffs with satisfaction, taking a swing.

  As tight as he was, the help had to hide any

  booze they were stealing. . . Probably measured

  the bottles daily.

  Finegan holds the bottle high, sloshing it, smiling.

  This is how they got around him. The whole

  bottle went missing.

  Suddenly he realizes there may be more, and drops down to dig around in

  the soda bottle cabinet.

  ______________________________

  Finegan and the fisherman are going down some concrete stairs into the

  basement of the castle hulk – an external entry to the basement. The

  door to the basement has been blown open, the doors in fragments

  pointing inward. There is some standing water on one side of the

  basement floor, from rain and damaged drains and the fact that the

  cataclysms tilted the house on its foundation. The walls are severely

  cracked.

  To one side of the basement, in one wall, is the entry to the food

  stash, the entry now one big hole due to the explosion that set the

  house afire. Various pieces of cardboard are littered here and there,

  some floating in the flooded basement corner, as the supply depot has

  been sifted through repeatedly by looters. Finegan is going to have a

  look, and starts walking toward the blast hole.

  Maybe they left some soap.

  47

  The shelves in the center of the bunker are knocked over and somewhat

  charred. All the shelves of the bunker appear to be empty, though some

  items have been thrown to the floor, discarded. As Finegan suspected,

  these include boxes of soap powder and packages of bar soap. He goes

  over to start stacking them in a pile. A voice growls out of the

  corner.

  That’s mine.

  Finegan jerks his head up to look in one corner of the bunker, and sees

  a shell of an old man, huddled behind some broken and empty cardboard

  boxes. His clothing is matted with dirt, his hair long and stringy and

  also matted, his beard thin and long, and his face wrinkly and with a

  perpetual sneer plastered across his face. It is clear he has been

  using a spot nearby for a toilet, as a pile of dung and yellow pool of

  water attests. Finegan says,

  Make you a trade! How about some roasted

  pumpkin and pecans, eh? Something to eat.

  The owner was not expecting to be fed or treated fairly, and looks

  puzzled, unable to answer. Finegan takes the initiative. He pats the

  pile of powdered soapboxes and bar soap packages.

  I’ll leave these here, and be back in an hour

  or so.

  Finegan steps toward the exit, holding his soda bottle half full of

  boo
ze to his far side so the owner cannot see this. He moves lively,

  before the owner can speak, the astonished fisherman at his heels. When

  they are clear of the room and on their way up the concrete steps, the

  fisherman says in a loud whisper.

  I thought he was dead! . . Huh . . Maybe he had

  a bunker within the bunker. . . What’s he been

  eating?

  ______________________________

  Finegan and the curious fisherman are returning down the concrete

  steps, holding a couple plastic buckets. One is filled with roasted

  pumpkin pieces, skin still on and browned at the edges, and the other

  is partially filed with shelled pecans. They make their way into the

  bunker and look expectantly into the corner of the bunker where the

  snarling owner was last seen. There is no one there.

  Then they see the owner seated on the pile of powerdered soapboxes and

  bar soap packages, glowering and sneering.

  It’s mine!

  48

  Finegan calls the owner’s bluff, knowing he is not interested in soap

  and has probably run through any secret food cache he had hidden in a

  bunker within the bunker. Finegan turns to leave.

  Suit yourself.

  The owner snarls,

  Wait!

  Looking like a trapped, mean spirited animal, eyes shifting in every

  direction and the sneer ever returning to his, the owner motions to his

  side.

  Bring that stuff over here and set it down.

  Finegan sets his plastic buckets to the side of the soap pile, but far

  enough way that the owner must actually rise from the pile to reach the

  food. Finegan steps back. The owner lunges for the food, shuffling to

  his corner of the bunker with it, hugging the buckets to his chest. He

  starts stuffing the roasted pumpkin into his mouth like a famished