“I know you are here, little ones,” a Spanish-accented voice said lightly. “I ca’ smell joo.” He spoke into the silence of the room and his feet weren’t eighteen inches from my head. I closed my eyes – if we made a sound, any sound, the game was up.
I don’t know why I knew this guy was bad news. I just knew it, right? Like when you’re watching a horror movie and there’s that innocent-looking white guy. You just know he will be hacking people up later. I had no idea who this dude was but if he found us … there was no telling what he would do.
Wait a minute…this was so weird. How did we know this guy was bad news, worse than the pirates outside? Maybe it was Riley pulling a prank – ready to pull the box back and film our reaction with his camera phone. He was clearly not above it. I really wanted this to be one of his pranks but I knew in my heart that it just wasn’t. This was bad, the real deal … trouble with a capital T. I would never question that instinct again.
The three of us were like that in the junk room for what seemed like an eternity. Madison’s breathing was sharp but mercifully silent. I held my hand clamped down brutally over her mouth, to keep her from making a sound. Afterward, neither of us could say how long we lay there like that. It was only a matter of time until we made a noise and then this scumbag would be on us. I prayed … Dear God I prayed like I never had in my life before. I didn’t pray for my Dad to come home or my Mom to be okay – I just prayed for this guy to leave.
I don’t think God uses an A4 carbine, though. Fortunately, Miguel’s wife does. Apparently, she had woken from her buzz to hear the sirens and, taking up her little piece o’ nasty, started looking for someone to shoot.
The burst of machine gun fire made us jump. Loud, almost like it was inside the Horner. I heard a burst of lurid swearing in Spanish and the guy’s footfalls as he made for the back porch. “I got you, wetback!” she screamed through the cheap paneling. The guy was screaming as he dove for the boat and I heard her run through the boat toward the back deck. More shots as the boat grumbled away staying close to the other boats for cover.
The whole thing happened so quickly that I didn’t know what was going on until she was saying “Jim? Jim!” in the darkness. In hindsight it made perfect sense: she was protecting us. At the same time, like everyone else in the Colony, she was looking for someone to take her fear and anger out on. “Well, thank God she’s on our side,” I heard one of the Security guys say later.
Speaking of which, the Security team finally started doing their job instead of harassing us. I could hear them as they shouted threats in Spanish and tried to run the pirates off. Later on, I would hear that they fired into the air to make noise, not wanting to shoot into a boat and risk hitting a civilian. Someone onboard the Phoenix decided to give them a display of firepower and we heard that CIWS gun go off. The sound was between a fog horn and a massive fan … the heavy, groaning sound of the space invaders when they arrive to destroy the humans … zzzzzhhhhBbrrrraaaaAAAPP!
Well, that did it … they didn’t wait to hear anything else. The pirates broke and made for their boats. In seconds I heard the various groans and buzzes from broken-down outboard motors. They were out of earshot in a minute or less. I’m surprised that the Phoenix didn’t wait until they were away from the rings and then turn them to chum but I guess they didn’t want to worry about reprisals. The Colony Patrol, such as it was, had some fun taking pot shots at the retreating boats and I found myself hoping at least some of those shots landed.
I’ve never been in the position of deliberately wanting to see someone die. I guess the terror I felt from a few minutes before made it inevitable. I didn’t want to think about what might have happened if Miguel’s wife hadn’t shown up when she did. I had nightmares of her going the other way and this guy grinning as he slapped the boxes away from our hiding place to find us.
We stayed in that little hiding place for another hour after the sirens stopped. Miguel’s wife came stumbling through there again, calling for me. Still drunk, she was bouncing off of the walls like she was avoiding incoming artillery and while holding onto that gun. I could hear the metal clank against the walls, door knobs and anything else in her way.
“Jim! Jiiiim!” No way was I coming out, now. If I popped my head up she might blow a hole in it thinking I was a Mexican pirate. Laying there, I thought about how this place has taught me to always assume the worst case or the weirdest-case scenario. ‘Crazy begets crazy,’ is a saying among the Colony folks. I smiled slightly … it was something I was going to have to explain to Madison in the morning.
We lay there for so long that Madison’s breathing became deep and regular – she fell asleep among the moldy boxes and mildewed trash, the poor kid. She was sleepy and a bit grouchy when I got her out of there and I think she was sleep-walking when I led her way back to the stateroom. It took a long time for me to fall asleep.
Our current position is: 35°25'48.39"N 120°57'0.54"W
Chapter Sixteen - “We Gotta Go”
Dawn broke gray on a heaving sea. It was quiet after the attack and still we were still asleep at 10 in the morning. A knock on the back door woke me up. Not an old crazy coot who was looking for the Dixie Star or a sketch-head looking for Dad … It was Ralph, the security goon. Last time we saw him; he was snooping around and looking for people to draft. Why was he here now?
Ralph carried an old M-16 slung over his shoulder. After last night, everyone was in an ‘enhanced security posture.’ Well, good for them, I guess. “What’s up,” I asked.
“We need you to come up to the Phoenix,” he said. “We need to talk about last night.”
I was suspicious. “And then what?”
“We’ll see,” he said. “Don’t worry – nobody’s drafting you.” He waited while I got cleaned up and dressed. Madison insisted on going even though I wanted her to stay with Stacy.
“Don’t worry, they’re up on the boat with us now,” Ralph said.
So that’s where they ended up. We were silent on our journey to the ship, passing boats with kicked-in windows and trash all over the place. I saw clothes and paper floating in the water inside a pen and it made me sad about our own fish. Nobody had been taking care of them and I was starting to see a few Tilapias floating to the top. Would we ever get back to them?
Onboard the Phoenix, Ralph steered us toward the administration offices. We passed groups of families huddled together in random places on the deck. Riley was morosely working the counter of the Grill, turning out sandwiches and hamburgers and apparently not taking a dime for any of them. If Jeb saw this, he’d hit the roof… if he was still alive to care, that is.
As we passed the families, we saw people stopping whatever it was they were doing to look at us. I thought they were staring because they were concerned but there was more to it. The one crazy lady slobbering about Branson I met yesterday, she was glaring at me with eyes like needles. I kept hearing a muttered comment, over and over, as we passed. “Rick’s kids.”
Yeah, we were ‘Rick’s kids’…so what? Did that matter, all of a sudden? Aren’t we survivors like everyone else? Trash Man’s visit yesterday confirmed that Dad was into some bad stuff. How was that our fault?
I didn’t like that Dad was involved but seriously … drugs were everywhere in the Colony. The kids of Burning Man started tweaking at earlier and earlier ages. You’d see the men of different boats smoking pot on their back decks – it was the worst-kept secret here. Random kids getting high and too many infirmary visits listed as ‘allergic reactions to cold medication’. None of this was a surprise … drugs were just part of the life here.
There was no better anti-drug commercial than seeing people slowly turning into human garbage. You could watch it happening to them from one summer to the next. The light in their eyes died. Everything about them seemed to fall apart. I’m not trying to sound like a DARE program or something … they became a mess. I knew that I didn’t want to go down that road. But why would Dad?
&nb
sp; See…this is why we need to talk! I mentally screamed in his general direction. After all of his lectures about booze and drugs – Dad was part of a drug ring right here on the Colony. Everything he said to me was so much crap. I just … I don’t even know what to say.
Everything about Dad was a waste. He couldn’t be content to just build his catch and make it work. He had to scam somebody … He was always trying to cut corners. He had more energy to make excuses than to just do the job right. Did he understand what it was like to want to look up to someone and realize you couldn’t? What are you supposed to do with that?
I guess I wasn’t the only person who was disappointed in Rick Westfield. Ralph steered us around makeshift areas of people living on blankets and ratty-looking lawn chairs. People continued to look up as we passed. The whisper grew in volume and bitterness as we drew closer to the ship’s office. Rick’s kids … those are the ones … right there.
We were almost there when a raucous shout came from behind us. An old Chinese lady was standing in the aisles of families and pointing us accusingly. “You no good! You Daddy bad man!” she shrieked. “Go ‘way … you no stay here!” We were stunned by her outburst but what followed was worse. The old lady was standing there, still pointing when the people on both sides of the aisles came to their feet cheering. They were leaning against bulkheads or lying on the deck but they all got up together to give her an old-fashioned standing ovation … it was quite impressive.
It was not impressive to Madison, she burst into tears. It was too loud for me to hear it but I could still feel her shaking with sobs next to me. Ralph tightened his grip on our shoulders and used his big, fat body as kind of a shield to get us away from there and out of sight. He sat us down in at a desk in the Admin Center and then disappeared.
The Admin Center was next door to the Colony Operations office I was trying to make a phone call from. It had the same old blue carpet, smelled of burnt coffee and the décor was straight out of Old Gross Office Monthly. No one went to any trouble to make it look nice, just more cheap wood paneling. Where was everybody? Normally this place was jammed with office people but for right now it was deserted. The door opened and Trash Man walked in.
I didn’t recognize him at first without that nasty coat he always wore. His beard was trimmed back and it was the first time I’d seen him with combed hair. His usual fuzzy and bloodshot eyes were sharp and pointed. He was wearing blue jeans, a polo shirt and in a waistband holster he carried a pistol. He dropped a thick manila folder full of all kinds of paper and then sat at the desk in front of us.
“You’re in a lot of trouble here, Jim,” he said. “You could help your sister here and tell us where your Dad’s been hiding his stashes.”
“I don’t know…” I began but Trash cut me short.
“Spare me,” he said bluntly. “Spare me, okay?” He was trying hard to hold his temper … why was he so mad at me? “Your Dad is on shore and I’m having a hard time holding these people back. Maybe you saw what’s waiting for you out there?” He paused while I tried to make sense of all of this.
What was Dad really into? Did he leave us to fend for ourselves knowing these freaks were going to come after us? What kind of parent would do that? Trash wasn’t going to let me take much time to think … he already had it all figured out.
“Your only chance at this point,” Trash continued, “is to give it up and let us take you into ‘protective custody’. That way, they’ll see what we have you and that we have the drugs. After that … you’ll probably just end up losing the Horner.”
“Lose the Horner?”
“Yeah, Jim,” he explained wearily. “These people gotta take their rage out somewhere … I’d much rather it be on some crummy boat than on you and your sister.”
“But…wha…?”
“Jim!” he slapped the table and thundered at me. “Wake up! Those animals are getting ready to rip you apart. Now where are they?”
“I don’t know!” I said, feeling myself start to cry. Dad really had abandoned us, hadn’t he? He left us to this and never even bothered to warn me. I didn’t know what I was going to do at this point. I guess I still love him but at that point I wasn’t worried if I ever saw him again.
“Think, kid,” Trash said. “Think hard. Did you ever see him with bags or boxes?”
“Of course … he always has something. He’s scamming with different people all the time.”
“Who?”
“Everyone,” I answered. “He’s always trying to do something with somebody.” I wasn’t lying: that was the truth. Dad’s ‘pickle test’ philosophy means that he is constantly throwing pickles at the wall and looking for one of them to stick.
“Anyone in particular?”
“Miguel,” I said, feeling like the world’s worst traitor. I knew that giving Trash Man the names of anyone on the Colony meant they would become targets. I hated myself for doing it but I didn’t know what other choice I had.
Trash surprised me. “Nope … Miguel’s not involved,” he replied. “Who else?”
“I dunno…The Burning Man people?”
“Big guy named Mongo?” he asked in reply.
“Yeah. Dad and Mongo are tight.” Trash grunted thoughtfully and it made me think I’d just confirmed something he already knew.
He kept at us for another hour or so until he was convinced we had told him everything we knew. Meanwhile, Trash Man told us how he had been working as an undercover DEA agent on the Colony to put a stop to the drugs and his real name was also Rick. I had to tell him the same story, over and over again. He’d ask the same questions in different ways to see what I would do. It was exhausting.
After he was done, Trash Man assigned a Security detail to walk us back to the Horner and keep an eye on us. “For our safety,” he said. I think it was more like they wanted to use us as bait. Madison was still crying. She had heard everything we said and it was way too much for her to absorb. After we went inside and the security goon was gone, I grabbed her and pulled her close.
She cried for a few more minutes, sobbing into my shoulder but stopped when I said, “Maddy. Mad, listen to me!” She choked back a sob and started breathing heavily. “Listen to me,” I said again, grabbing her by the shoulders and looking right into her eyes. “We gotta go.”
“What?”
“We have to leave here.”
“On the boat?”
“Yes. I have to take the boat and you and get us out of here.”
“But why can’t we stay here?”
“You heard ‘em from before?” She nodded. “They’re talking about letting people take this boat and it’s all we have right now. Do you want people to sink our boat?” She shook her head vigorously. “Well if we stay here, they will. That’s why we gotta go.”
“But can you drive this thing?” she asked. Dang … Why are little sisters so good at that? That was the question I was hoping she’d overlook. I wanted to say something like “I don’t know but I’ll try” but it sounded so phony. When I looked into her eyes I saw something like hope and trust. There was no way I was giving that up.
“Yes,” I lied. “Yes, I can. It’s easy. I’ll even show you how.” Good answer, I told myself when I saw her shaky smile. We quickly hashed out a plan for escape.
“We need food and we need fuel,” I said. “You’re in charge of getting the food together. Find out what we have and then check the boats next door for whatever is left.” She nodded and went to the kitchen to get started. I would work on getting the fuel and this was going to be a lot more difficult.
The Horner did have some fuel but I had no idea how much. Assuming that Dad never took it anywhere, I thought the tanks might be empty. The fuel gauge showed that we were about half-full … how much was that? I knew that the boat ran on diesel and that the engines should run okay. Ever since I got here, Dad had me start the engines every week and run them for 10 minutes to keep the batteries charged. It was a boring chore but now it might be the t
hing that saves our lives.
I found a binder under the console on the bridge that gave me some basic numbers about the Horner. Forty-six-foot pilothouse, built in the nineties … blah, blah, blah. Fuel capacity … it was a thousand-gallon tank. Half-full meant five hundred gallons of fuel. How far would that take us?
I checked that map again – from here to Puget Sound was over 1200 miles. Cruising range of the boat is 2000 miles. That’s how far it can travel, right? I was going to need some more diesel. So where was I going to get fuel? And how would I do it with the Security goons breathing down our necks?
Pacific Fisheries made a tidy profit hauling diesel out from Los Angeles in rusty green Castrol drums. Then they bring the drums out to your boat on a dolly to be siphoned into your gas tanks. Getting gas for the boat is miserable work and you wouldn’t believe what they charge for it. One of the good things was that Dad had an electric pump system that allowed him to run a hose out to the dock and pump the gas directly into the tank. It used to be somebody’s bilge pump but he figured out a way to re-purpose it for fuel. It wasn’t a bad system and it saved hours of back-breaking labor when you were miles from the nearest gas station.
The security detail, whoever they were, weren’t close enough to see me slip out the door to the bow, over the rail and onto the fishing porch. Madison ran the hose over to me and I was able to stretch it over as far as the gas tank on the ship next door to us. I gave her a little wave and she hit the switch to start the pump. Gas was sucked up through the hose – it was old surgical tubing, I think – and into our fuel tank.
From the bow, I noticed that we were totally exposed if someone wanted to swim around and get to us that way. The goon squad wasn’t watching the back side of the Colony. They certainly missed the one pirate who almost found us. I shivered just thinking about it. The guy next door didn’t have much and he ran dry in only a few minutes. Madison heard the air bubbling into the tank, hit the OFF switch and then we went through the process again of moving the hose to another nearby boat and emptying their tank.
Flotilla Page 24