I wanted him to do something to make up for it. The sad part was that I knew that he never would. He’d never admit he was wrong and an apology from him was something I’d never get. Because I would never get it there was going to be a wedge between us for the rest of our lives.
We weren’t going to solve any of this right now. Dad looked back to the map, clearing his throat. “The worst part is getting away,” he said. “You can probably cut loose but they’ll be expecting that. If there’s a storm or something, that’ll keep them indoors. It’s your best option to get clear.”
Madison and I were doing our best not to burst into tears. Mom in terrible danger, Dad off to who knows where. I wanted very much to be back home so that I could find my bed and go hide under it. I’m almost a man here and I want to go hide under the bed. I would never admit that to anyone else but that’s exactly how I felt. Dad pulled us close and hugged us fiercely. Then, he let go.
“Take care of each other,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.” With that, Dad was walking through the salon door and down to the dock, joining the other men walking in that direction. We got more of a goodbye from Stacy.
He waved once, then turned his back and walked toward the launches. We watched from the front porch door along with a lot of other people. The energy of all of these frightened people was so sharp that you could almost hear it buzzing like an old fluorescent light. Madison felt for me and I put my arm around her – right now, we needed to count on each other. As the launches left, people from the colony lined the docks to watch them go off. It’s been happening in the same sick way since humankind began. The men go off to uncertain fortunes while the wives and children watch helplessly from behind. I can see that now … I just didn’t know how it felt.
Madison began to cry as Dad disappeared from sight. The last I saw of him, he was walking stiffly toward the embarkation dock and then he was out of sight among dozens of other men. They all had the same walk almost as if they were all carrying a heavy load, and in a way, they were. It was the burden of the job that fell to them because they were here and because they were men. We were all safely left behind.
Tears began to roll down my cheeks, too – that whole end scene in Empire Strikes Back totally made sense to me at that moment. It’s stupid how your mind works, sometimes.
The boats left harbor and disappeared into the horizon. Everyone was trying to find a way to get up onto the Phoenix, the Dixie or any other flying bridge to see our departing loved ones as long as possible. Madison and I climbed to the second deck of the Horner, looking for Dad. I looked for him but I didn’t see him; the boats themselves looked like those troop carriers that have everyone all bunched up…you couldn’t pick one person out if you tried. The sound of sobbing children and wives floated above everything else. I’ve never heard anything so depressing in my life.
Madison wouldn’t stop crying and refused to let me get more than an arm’s length away. I finally had to twist my shirt out of her fist just so I could use the bathroom.
Night fell cold and nasty that first night. We took all the blankets from the bed, twisted them up into a nest and slept in the lounge. The pilot for the gas went out sometime in the night and Dad never showed me how to relight it. It was dank and cold – the vague vibration of the motors keeping the colony in motion gave me some comfort but it did absolutely nothing to calm the raw pit in the middle of my stomach.
The next day, we made a half-hearted attempt at pen patrol. I swam the length of pens one and two but it became too exhausting to continue. I hauled myself out of the water repeatedly, gasping. Madison said nothing and helped me put my mask and hookah back on several times. After I caught my breath, I went back to it. I hated those fish and I hated pen patrol and I hated the colony but it was the only thing we could really do. Right then I felt like I had been cut loose from the planet to live out the rest of my life on a floating garbage dump. However alone or vulnerable I felt when I first arrived, it wasn’t half of what I was feeling right now.
Stacy showed up around lunchtime. Her dad had left on the launch. Over cold sandwiches and warm soda, she told me that he didn’t intend to stay with the organized group. She explained that if he could help, he would, but if it was obvious that he couldn’t do anything then he would ditch the group and start finding his way north to Santa Barbara.
I listened to her story, thinking of my Dad. “If he leaves, will he take my Dad with him?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Stacy said. “We didn’t even talk about it.” I thought my Dad a little bit more streetwise and smart than Stacy’s dad. The problem was that, deep down, he was trying to be a decent guy. That might make him do something stupid to prove a point and that rarely worked out well for Dad. I was afraid he’d end up just another casualty of this holocaust in progress. Stacy left after turning on the sat-feed for us again and promising to come back later. She said her mom was really freaking out and needed to keep Stacy in sight at all times. Sure enough, as she left our boat to walk back to hers, we saw her mom standing with her arms crossed tight across her chest and pacing a tight little circle on the dock.
The news wasn’t getting any better…we could see that. They weren’t even trying to get live reports from the downtown area – the closest they would get were endless reports from high above the ground in choppers. Madison kept watching for any news about Mom, any news about people we knew or about our town. I tried to ignore it and get back to the business of the boat. It kept me calm to stay busy.
Pen Patrol took ten times as long as usual – I’m glad Dad wasn’t here or he would be going insane with how long everything was taking me. Not like any of it matters now, I thought. I kept rerunning the argument we had before he left, thinking about how what I might have said different. It sounds weird but having arguments in my head with Dad was vaguely comforting. I thought that if I found the right way to say something that he might listen to me and agree with me once in a while.
I had just come inside from Pen Patrol to make myself some coffee when Madison came running down from the top deck.
“The Security guys are going go door to door on every boat in the Colony,” she said quickly.
I snuck a peek out of the side window to see guys in their official yellow windbreakers with SECURITY stenciled across their back. “That’s never a good sign,” I muttered. When was the last time we’d seen them around here … Steeplechase? If you saw them, it only meant Pacific Fisheries business. But what did they want? It took me only seconds to figure it out. They were checking for stragglers. They might take me if they found out how old I was.
What should I do? Slip overboard and hide among the fish? This wouldn’t be the only time they would check. I would be discovered eventually. But still … I need to hide, right? I couldn’t ignore that there was something very basic about not wanting to be found.
I grabbed Madison and slapped the OFF switch on the flatscreen. She screeched a protest but I clamped my hand firmly over her mouth and marched her to her room. I slammed the door and we huddled inside while I kept listening for the team to knock on the door. They had to be less than two or three boats away.
“What do we-“ she asked and I shushed her violently. All of a sudden, we could hear the screams and the crying. The Security team was shoving an old Asian guy - an illegal probably - in the direction of the Phoenix. I’m pretty sure they weren’t inviting him back to the ship for the hamburgers and crappy second-run movies.
It was terrifying. I peeked out of the small porthole in Madison’s stateroom to see the team holding a group of women and kids back while they hustled off dad, uncle or grandpa. If a group of people couldn’t stop them … a pipsqueak like me didn’t stand a chance.
While all of this was happening, a loud knock made us both jump. I told Madison, “Go answer it – don’t tell them you’re alone or they’ll make you go up to the Phoenix. Tell them you’re staying with Stacy and her mom.” She nodded shakily and disappeared out to the salon to del
iver the message. I slipped out of her room and went over to the Junk Room to find a place to hide.
The Junk Room was full of the stuff Dad inherited when he bought the boat from the old coot who lived there before. Old boat parts, books, and crap … Dad had been trying to sell it or dump it ever since he moved in. The old parts and books had some value but at least half the room was pure trash. I found an open spot to lie in and pulled a heap of old moldy clothes down over myself. Big mistake.
This stuff was old in the last century, doused with either mothballs or old lady perfume and then left in wet cardboard boxes for a decade or two. It was making me gag and choke back some puke while I strained to listen to whatever was happening outside to Madison. I could hear Madison’s muffled voice and one of the goons. I think his name was Ralph or something. Seconds turned into minutes and eventually I heard her slide the glass door shut. Was Ralph still here? Did he come inside for a peek around? I wanted desperately to look but I didn’t dare … I didn’t have a chance to guess wrong.
All at once, I heard Madison’s voice in the Junk Room with me. “Jim?” she called. I jumped out of my hiding place, making the clothes to kind of geyser up and freaking Madison out. I didn’t want to scare her but the disgusting smell of putrid clothing was making me retch. I gagged and gasped for air for a few seconds before she could say anything.
“They were looking for you,” she said when my stomach finally settled down.
“What?”
“Looking. For you.”
“Looking for me? Why?” I asked.
She gave me a withering Little Sister look, the one that said: you’re the big brother, how can you be so stupid? “I don’t know but I’m sure you don’t want to find out,” was what she finally said.
“They got that old guy on the other boat,” I said glumly, knowing full well what would have happened to me if Madison hadn’t been up there to see them. Why were these guys looking for me? Dad told me that they would give me a pass! As per usual, Dad thought he had things covered but overlooked one or four major pieces. I was too scared to be angry, though. How were we going to get out of this?
We spent the rest of day watching the deck outside the Horner. I fixed up a nice little hidey-hole in the Junk Room and I hoped that it would be enough. Since I shut off the TV, we lost access to the satellite feed and Nancy would have to check in with the boats next door to see if they had heard anything.
We couldn’t use the Internet because Pacific Fisheries was monitoring network traffic. Stacy was trying to watch all the major social networking sites at once for news and information. We couldn’t post our contact information like they did – it was driving me nuts. I doubt Mom and Dad would even begin to know how to find us again, much less get in contact without getting us into more trouble. Trying to pay attention to site is exhausting, though. Everyone has their own version of the story and you have to go to two or three places to get a complete picture. After a while the data starts to blend together and nothing makes sense.
We fell asleep again in the lounge that night. This time I was exhausted but I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that was happening. My mind kept grinding over and over different problems. Eventually I dozed off, only to wake myself up from a dream I was having. In it, Dad and I were arguing about him leaving us on the boat. We kept going back and forth on why we needed him here and why he needed to go ashore. Madison finally started screaming at me to shut up and the last part of my dream I was saying in a weird groggy voice, “Let me just make one last point…”
I woke up on the floor of the lounge and Madison was awake, too. She was still on the couch but up on one arm looking at me. I took a moment while I sorted myself out of the dream – it was so real I wasn’t sure exactly when I woke up.
“You were talking in your sleep,” she said. “You said something about a final point.”
I grunted wearily. “I’m sorry – I was arguing with Dad in my sleep.”
I could see her grin in the darkness. “At least if you argue in your dreams you have a chance of winning,” she said. I just smiled … we both were too tired to laugh, or even chuckle. Siblings can make the funniest jokes to each other. Somehow, they’re never quite as funny if you repeat them to other people. “Did you win the argument?”
“No,” I replied. “At best it was a draw…you were telling me to shut up.”
“Wow,” she said. “Realistic.”
We went back to sleep again – I woke up several times but managed to go back to sleep again. When I woke the last time, the sky was that grey color that comes in the predawn. We alternated between watching the TV, trying to sleep more and scarfing down any junk food we could find.
Madison and I were both dreading the phone call we had to make – Dad had told us to try calling on the second day. How was I supposed to get over there without getting snatched up? I found ways to avoid doing it until the afternoon. It must have taken me an hour to make my up there, watching every direction at once for problems.
That turned out to be a waste of time … most the Security guys were gone. The ones that were left were guarding the ship and they ignored me. The Phoenix was a madhouse of activity: people were camped out on the deck of the ship or in the theatre where they were broadcasting news reports. The grocery store on the Phoenix was a complete shambles and some people were arguing violently over what was left. I had brought some money to snap up some chips or cookies but there was no hope of that. They were down to dented cans of olives by the time I arrived.
It took me a while to find the Colony Operations Office – I had never had a reason to visit before. It was a crummy room the size of a closet with stained blue carpet and ancient wood paneling. Inside, I found a very stressed-out lady screaming into the ship-to-shore radio phones. They were going back and forth about supplies and information. I guess the offices in Long Beach were being abandoned while the shore-based employees were being evacuated. What were we supposed to do? I hung around until a lull in the conversation appeared and then I waved to get her attention.
“Can I make a phone call?” I asked.
“Honey, I can’t make a phone call,” she replied. “Which boat are you with?”
“The Horner C,” I said. “My dad – “
“I know, honey, I know,” she said quickly, before I could cry or something. “The boat lift made it to shore and I’m sure your dad will be back with you before you know it.”
“I just need to call my mom,” I said. “My sister is worried-”
“All civilian traffic has been suspended,” she cut me off again. “Don’t you have a cell phone?”
“My dad did, but he left with it,” I said. “He told us to see you.”
“I don’t know why he would have done that, we don’t have public phone facilities.”
“Well…I guess he thought it was an emergency.”
“He left you with no one to take care of you?” she said incredulously, like she suddenly realized that a fifteen-year-old kid was asking for his father and mother. I hated the adults who didn’t keep up with what I was saying.
“They had a draft,” I said.
“He should have gotten out of it,” she said, “or gotten someone to watch you.” That made me think: could Dad have stayed and took this as a chance to jump ship on us? That made sense, especially after our fight. I started feeling angry toward him again but I put it aside to see about the phone call.
No dice. She blew off my argument quickly and mechanically like she had practiced it. I’m sure she’d already had enough people in there for her to practice on. I’m sure she could patch a call through for us but she wasn’t having it. Maybe I could try again later. I spent a few more minutes, arguing with her and hoping she wouldn’t find a way to have me drafted. Then I left to go back to the Horner.
Our current position is: 35°20'10.25"N 120°53'31.64"W
Chapter Fifteen – The Phoenix Patrol
Miguel was gone but somebody needed to run the Gun
Range. This was the worst crisis any of us had ever experienced but people still wanted the Gun Range for the TV and cold beer. Priorities, I guess. I had just reached the Horner after my trip the Phoenix and here was some middle-aged white lady on our back deck waiting for me. She stood up from the chair she was sitting on and tossed me a ring of keys.
I caught them and looked at her. What was this about? “We need to open up,” she said, turning to leave.
“What?” I asked. She turned and looked at me with withering contempt, like I was a bug or something.
“The Barco de Arma…the Gun Range, you idiot,” she snapped. “Get it open. We got customers.”
Pause with me for a moment here: we had guys from Pac Fish occasionally sweeping the docks looking for people to draft. We had a national, maybe worldwide crisis that was killing people not 120 miles away. My Dad was gone, my mom and grandparents were dead … maybe. Before he left, Dad was using me as his favorite verbal (and occasionally physical) punching bag. All that was going on, but now it didn’t matter because this crazy lady showed up and I’m still an employee of the Gun Range.
It turns out that she was Miguel’s wife. Where had she been all this time? She didn’t think I was worth telling, apparently. Normally, I’d lose the keys and ignore her but Miguel was a friend and plus, he had Internet and a phone. Madison and I would start hanging out there and only going home to change clothes or sleep.
Even with the Gun Range being reopened, people were becoming increasingly ugly. Random guys would show up at the counter asking when the Dixie Star was going to be start again. I had to confess, I had no idea but nobody wanted to hear that. Pac Fish had used this emergency as an excuse to kill all access. Maybe they would have anyway … the more conservative members of the colony were getting vocal about the Dixie being a ‘den of vice’.
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