Jack reached for her, but she batted his hand away and cried out, You did this to yourself! Jack answered slowly, No, Mom. This was a piece of metal. What I did was expose the truth about attacks on civilians. He knew that his parents assumed his injury, one that nearly cost his young life, would be a call for major change. They assumed wrong. Jack realized that he thought he had been running away from his parents, while he was really running from a sheltered life like theirs, spent at a desk or a country club. He was better built for the great wide open, fighting and dying for what mattered.
When Maya returned to her room, Jack was rubbing the scars on his neck. He pulled his hand away and reached for her, but Maya brushed by and squatted by the sink cabinet.
“I woke up and you weren’t there,” Jack said to her bent back.
It sounded needy and desperate to his own ears.
“Do you have any Dramamine?” Maya asked with her head still in the recess of the cabinet. “I’m out.”
He told her to look in the pouch of his Healy hoodie that was cast off somewhere on the floor. Maya and Jack were sick as dogs, but they weren’t the only ones. All passengers and inactive crew were advised to medicate and take to their beds. Even as Jack sat, seemingly stationary, his body orientation told him the truth: Healy was rolling along the Bering Sea with sixty-two-knot wind speeds and twenty-foot waves slamming into her red chest. The ship’s engines were running at full power just to maintain position.
Maya found the pill bottle in his hoodie. She took in water from the sink with cupped palms and swallowed, then smoothed down the crown of her tousled hair with wet palms.
“There’s gonna be a vote tonight,” she said to her reflection in the vanity.
Maya said she ran into a Coastie on her way back from the head. He informed her that there would be an announcement over the pipes for all to gather in the helicopter hangar at 2000 hours. Captain Weber wanted to put to vote whether to stay in the safety of the ship until supplies ran out, or to return to Seattle or even Joint Base Lewis-McChord if the city was too dangerous.
Jack reached out for Maya a second time. Not since he was a child holding the fabric of his mother’s clothes in tight fists did he feel such a hysterical need for another person. There were moments when they couldn’t bear to be on opposite sides of the same room. In bed, they held each other’s bodies so tightly their forearms trembled with fatigue, but no matter how close their embrace, it never felt close or comforting enough.
“I guess the others won’t get a vote,” Maya said. “You know, the ones who’ve…stopped talking.”
No one bothered with the Healy accountability form anymore, so it was hard to tell who had succumbed to the comatose state. Suicides were also harder to find ahead of the smell. By the time the crew disposed of the body overboard, the rest of the ship knew about it anyway.
When Maya ignored his hand the second time, Jack jolted with something of a laugh. He was too self-aware to miss the irony.
“What’s so funny?”
Maya sounded angry. Jack smiled at her, but it wasn’t the usual flashing of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. This was a lopsided smile that made him look young and exposed.
“I’ve always run away from the people who loved me. Who needed me,” he admitted. “I’ve put whole time zones and continents between me and mine. Now here I am, needing because I can’t handle UD3 alone.”
Jack lay back and wondered if every solitary consciousness eventually suspects that reality was created for them only. Healy’s cramped quarters, with nothing to do but fear loneliness and stew in guilt, were a personal hell that felt to Jack like proof of this far-fetched speculation.
Remember Germany?
“Oh God,” Jack whimpered. “My parents…”
His mother’s last email from back in late September couldn’t be tucked away and compartmentalized any longer. He had to face it, to face her.
I don’t know where you are, Jack. Just that you are not with us.
How carefully his mother worded that statement of fact, not wanting her last communication to serve as incrimination. Her care did nothing to erase his crime of absence.
We are running out of food. Your father wants to take the car and drive further from the city. We have a canister of gas that he hid in our bedroom closet so we could keep an eye on it at night. I left a key to the house under a rock by the birdbath. There are too many things to say. I don’t know where you are, Jack. Just that you are not with us. We love you and will pray for you. We will pray for us all.
Jack turned to the wall and started sobbing. Moments before, Maya didn’t want Jack to touch her, crowd her, further invade her personal space, but she immediately got back into bed and pressed against his long, curled shape until it stopped shuddering.
* * *
CAPTAIN WEBER SPENT too many sleepless nights combing the internet. Most familiar sites and search engines were down with a 503 service unavailable error. He tried to remember or even guess URLs to try. Satellites on the ship detected no new inbound email communications either. Healy’s ISP in Seattle was no longer functioning. The last communication from the Navy on November 26 reported that the overwhelmed Army and National Guard had pulled out of several West Coast cities and retreated to islands and peninsulas with natural barriers.
Weber had last heard from his brother with an email in late October, stating that Seattle was “a living nightmare.” Even the suburbs were “bad, very bad.” People carried weapons with them: guns, crowbars, lead pipes, and baseball bats. They didn’t say hello to one another, but they nodded to convey a message: I understand that we are both human beings doing what we can to survive, and I wish you all the luck, but if you threaten me or my family, I’ll bash your skull in. Bodies lay mangled in the streets.
Weber’s brother promised to take care of his wife, Karen, and their two children while he was still away at sea. Both families planned to pack up their campers and drive into Washington’s national parks, where they might find safety in the deep forest, for a short time at least. Karen left a warning in her heart-wrenching goodbye.
I love you, Martin, more than my life. The children love you just as much but don’t come home. It’s no one’s home anymore.
Weber was just over fifty but had two young children. It had been difficult for Karen to conceive with him gone for so many long voyages to the Arctic. They had given up hope by the time she got pregnant during a Christmas leave. A beautiful daughter and son were brought into the world three years apart on the same sunny day in September, never to be taken for granted. He swore to find the three of them in the chaos or most likely die trying.
Until Weber could reach dry land, he prayed. Hard. In between rote recitations, Weber questioned the purpose of the comet. Was UD3 God’s way of culling the unworthy, like the floods in Genesis? Did God wish to set back the clock of civilization to biblical times, when life was more righteous? But what if there were no survivors? UD3 was big. Too big. Why would God kill all His children? Were they only a failed experiment?
At 1945 hours, Weber made an announcement over the pipes that it was time to gather in the helicopter hangar. Healy’s second-in-command joined him on the walk over. They didn’t say much, but it was nice to have someone by his side as he entered the hangar and faced the crew and passengers. Weber walked to the center of the large space and cleared his throat.
“Thank you for gathering here tonight…” he began.
It sounded like the hollow introduction of a funeral. Weber was never ready with the right words while in the moment. They only came after draft upon draft of feeble attempts. He pulled a folded piece of notepaper out of his uniform pocket. One side was covered with the perfect, slanted script that nuns had beaten into him before computers made the craft obsolete.
“We have no communication with leadership. It is time to make our own decision,” he read aloud. “It may not be standard military practice to put decisions to vote. But rules were not written for
days like these.”
The captain looked at everyone, even the people standing in the back. Weber was a tall man (thank the Lord) and still wanted to be the sort of leader who looked into the eyes of others.
“If we remain at sea, as long as we can, we’ll continue to have the safety of this ship. We won’t suffer along with the rest of our families, friends, and neighbors. But that is a form of suffering unto itself. You will have to live with the choice of letting them go.”
An image of Karen came to mind unbidden. She wore her favorite sundress with the floral print at the hem. He could never remember the name of the flowers. She always laughed and rolled her eyes when he asked.
“If we return to mainland instead,” Weber said, swallowing emotion, “we will have to face what they have faced…”
Did he have to put such horrors into words? Did he have to say murder, rape, gang rule, death cults, and even rumored cannibalism out loud?
“You’ve all seen the last reports. You’ve heard the same stories. Seattle is a disaster zone. We could take the Puget Sound past Tacoma and anchor at Steilacoom. It’s a three-hour hike to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, if it’s still operating. That’s your safest bet but, honestly, I don’t know your chances…”
He had to stop there. The decision went to vote.
“All in favor of returning to mainland?”
Captain Weber immediately raised his hand and counted all the voters who followed suit.
“All opposed?”
The decision would be close, and a few voters were abstaining by looking at the floor, racked with indecision. Weber noted that most of the remaining scientists now raised their hands to stay at sea. They were either young and unmarried or lived outside of Washington State. Weber also noted, with a sinking stomach, that some crewmembers had hands raised—and all of them were women, who would be easier targets for violence.
His eyes caught two clasped hands raised in the air for a double vote. One belonged to a scientist and the other to a guest passenger, a photographer who always walked the deck with a camera. This couple was inexplicably, undoubtedly in love. Of course they would want to stay safe on the ship, Weber thought, as long as they had each other.
“Majority votes to return,” he announced.
And now they had only to wait and wonder what they would return to. Healy was sailing from the Arctic with its time frozen in the past; the ship was a capsule of a civilization that had taken millennia to build. Like a house of cards, it had all come fluttering down into the bloody anarchy of their new present.
* * *
EVERYONE ON HEALY did their best to provide privacy and protect Maya’s and Jack’s strange good fortune in finding love. In this spirit, Captain Weber approached them two days after the vote.
“There may be a way,” he whispered, “to keep what you have. While you can.”
They listened.
Healy was nearing the Aleutian Islands. Weber told the couple they could take a month’s worth of supplies onto one of the ship’s survey boats and disembark in the morning. If they followed the captain’s coordinates at a steady pace, they would reach a small island recently abandoned by its native Iñupiat population. Thawing permafrost had caused its buildings to tilt, buckle, and sometimes collapse. Rebuilding was pointless when rising sea levels were returning the island to the Bering Sea at the rate of three to nine feet a year. The captain told Jack and Maya that any homes still standing could make for a temporary shelter out of the wind and weather. Then, at daybreak the next morning, they could continue southeast and reach the chain of Aleutian Islands.
“Follow the islands east until you can find a settlement that will take you in,” Weber said. “You’ll need their help, because you’ll die out there on your own.”
Weber told himself this was the right move, despite the couple’s ashen faces. Even if they failed to find an accommodating settlement, at least they would have more time together in relative safety. It was all anyone could hope for this side of heaven. It was more than the captain could hope for.
* * *
WHEN JACK OPENED the door to his stateroom, Gustavo was seated at his desk studying an unfolded map. The smaller man’s chin and neck had stayed smooth throughout the entire voyage with no need of a razor. By comparison, Jack looked like a Viking with his full ginger-blond beard and shaggy hair that covered his ears and nape.
“Sloppy Joes tonight,” Jack said, pulling food wrapped in damp napkins out of the pouch of his sweatshirt and placing it on Gustavo’s desk. “Emphasis on sloppy.”
Instead of grabbing a change of clothes from his closet, Jack pulled out his two empty duffel bags.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked, without looking back.
Gustavo’s silence was answer enough.
“Maya and I are leaving in the morning,” Jack confided.
He grabbed an armful of clothes from the closet and stuffed them into one of the bags.
“We’re gonna try to find a village on one of the Aleutian Islands and wait this out with them. There’s no reason for the two of us to risk…what might happen to Maya on the mainland. She thinks her family is dead, and I don’t know where mine is ’cause I’m the world’s shittiest son.”
Jack grimaced and finished packing all his shoes and clothes in silence. When he saw a thick stack of printouts on the floor of the closet, he grabbed them and finally turned to his bunkmate.
“Ah! Every poem you’ve ever written,” Jack said, holding them up. “I printed them out in the science lounge.”
He tucked the stack of paper into a duffel bag carefully.
“Taking them with us is kinda like taking you with us, right?”
Gustavo returned Jack’s smile. Jack thought it such a beautiful expression that he reflexively snapped a picture with the camera around his neck.
“You still have film and batteries?” Gustavo asked.
“Three more batteries. And it’s all digital. Nothing’s analog anymore,” Jack admitted. “When the memory fills up, I’ll probably delete everything and start over. I can’t not take pictures.”
Somewhere in early adulthood, Jack had molded into his occupation. There was no way for him to purge photojournalism because it was at his core, despite being useless in current circumstances. Jack put the cap back on his lens and let the camera hang from its strap. It was a familiar weight. Without it, he felt a nagging worry of forgetting something.
“I’ll miss you,” Gustavo said honestly. “There is family and tribe. And there are those we chose.”
He won’t survive Seattle, Jack couldn’t help thinking. The whole trip, Gustavo had acted like death was right around the corner waiting for him. And now it was. But what about Gustavo’s people?
“How remote are your Wayãpi villages in the Amazon?” Jack asked. “Could they still be safe?”
Gustavo took a deep breath.
“Could,” he said softly.
The Wayãpi in the northern state of Amapá lived in the deepest part of Brazil’s remaining forest, Gustavo told Jack. Half of their designated lands fell in a large reserve and the other half fell in a national park. Much of the forest was impassable on foot. Aside from rivers and skies, the only way to access Brazilian Wayãpi lands was one long dirt road that connected to a small mining town.
“My people will fight for their lives,” Gustavo said. “They always have. And when they can’t fight, they will hide. Some say there are still places no white man has seen.”
“Do you know what all this means for them?” Jack asked. He tried to explain one of the many streams of thought that had run through his head when there was nothing for him to do on the ship but think. Gustavo’s poems spoke of the Great Hungry Machine that was modern civilization and the billions of humans who worked its cogs. Everything living was fed to the Machine: forests, animals, rivers, and fish. It consumed and poisoned, seemingly unstoppable until a dark comet rounded the sun.
“For the first time in hundreds of years, th
e Wayãpi will be left alone in the forest,” Jack told Gustavo. “At least until the comet hits or doesn’t. Promise me you’ll let that sink in. This is the very thing you’ve always wanted, right?”
Gustavo’s jaw hung speechless. The words were already sinking in.
Jack pulled the straps of his duffel bags over each shoulder.
“Bye,” he said.
This moved Gustavo to place a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
“There is no word for goodbye in my language,” he explained. “There is no translation, because my people don’t leave each other. Except for me.”
He held on to Jack’s shoulder, squeezed, and then let go.
In the morning, Jack was gone.
TWENTY-SIX
Gulp Island
Healy in the Bering Sea
December 12
T-minus 51 days to launch
AT A PUNCTUAL 0700 HOURS, Weber met Maya and Jack by the Arctic gear locker. Suitcases and duffel bags lined the corridor by their feet. Both were dressed in sensible civilian clothes: jeans over long underwear, ski parkas, and wool caps. They stood close to each other. Weber felt a glimmer of envy that he squashed immediately.
“I have a gift,” he announced, too upbeat to be believed.
He propped his new fishing rod against the wall and set down his heirloom tackle box.
“This was my grandfather’s,” the captain explained, with a hand lingering on its scarred leather.
Weber had planned to give the box to his son on his sixteenth birthday, but as they say, the best laid plans…Maya opened her mouth and started to protest, then stopped. These were times to swallow guilt and take what you were given.
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