by Lopez, Rob
“See?” said Manny. “Ain’t nobody else you can ask to do that.”
Darla rolled her eyes and went back into the galley.
“I gotta go ashore,” she told Jacques. “Give me something to go.”
“Good food deserves to be eaten properly,” said Jacques archly.
“Just put me some in a sandwich.”
Jacques looked as if he’d just been asked to spit on a crucifix.
“Come on, come on,” pressed Darla. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be out there and I need to eat.”
Reluctantly, Jacques placed shrimp onto a slice of bread and sandwiched it.
Darla took a bite and closed her eyes in ecstasy. “This is good.”
Jacques sneered a little. “The lobster will be better.”
“Lobster? Definitely coming back for that.”
“In a smoked tomato and buttermilk sauce.”
“Of course. Why keep it simple?”
Darla sauntered onto the dock, enjoying her sandwich. Passing the casino boats, she shook her head at such a willful waste of heritage. Back in the day they would have teemed with deckhands unloading bales and barrels. They were working boats, not frivolous set-pieces in some western-themed attraction.
That put her in mind of the problems of her own small crew, freaky personalities notwithstanding. Manny was right about being overworked. If the Mississippi Rose was to do more than give two-hour tours, she needed enough crew to rotate watches. Cautious as she was about having more strangers on her boat, she needed to give it some thought.
She just wasn’t going to admit it to Manny.
The MV Choctaw certainly had its full complement of crew. They were busy filing in and out of the engine room, dumping charred cables and fried equipment onto the deck. The Army Corps of Engineers were a curious blend of military and civilian, as often seen in tees and jeans as in camo, with ball caps or hard hats. Darla halted respectfully before the gangway.
“Permission to come aboard?” she called.
“If you want,” said a crewman. “Who are you and how can we help?”
“Captain Griffiths of the Mississippi Rose. Is your boss around?”
“She’s in the engine room.”
There was only one she in the engine room, in overalls and pulling the cowl off a giant starter motor and examining the fused-together bundles of a wiring loom by candle light.
“I see you got the same problems we got,” said Darla.
The captain of the Choctaw squinted up at her. She looked a little older than Darla.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Captain Griffiths of the Mississippi Rose. Just came up from New Orleans.”
“You got a working engine?”
“Steam engine,” said Darla, trying not to look too smug.
“That’ll work,” said the captain. She got up and offered Darla her hand. “I’m Rosemary Aguilar, captain of the Choctaw. Is this just a social visit?”
“I brought the FEMA Inspector General from New Orleans and we stopped off at the Waterford Nuclear plant on the way. Their systems are down and they need more pumps to keep the reactors from melting down. I was told you might have some.”
“The Waterford plant’s in danger of meltdown?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Let’s take this outside.”
The deck of the barge was packed with equipment, cranes and buoys. Captain Aguilar was plump and she had to sit down on a winch to pull her overalls off. “Where’s the FEMA guy now?” she asked.
“FEMA woman. She’s downtown looking for the governor.”
“He’s here. Moved his office to the Art and Science Museum on the dock where he’s holding emergency meetings. So you need pumps? Got one here but without a generator to power it. Usually we run it from the engine but I don’t know when we’re going to get it going again. There’s a lot of damage.”
“Any idea when the grid will be back on line?”
“Not my area of expertise so I can’t say. Is the grid down in New Orleans?”
“Totally.”
Aguilar pulled a face. “Levee pumps will be down. Going to need to get them working before the storm arrives.”
“Solar storm? Again?”
“No, real one this time. Coast Guard’s been tracking a tropical storm out in the Atlantic. Might not land, but if it does we’ll have problems.”
“When could it land?”
“Without tracking it, I can’t say. A week or two? I don’t know. Let’s go talk to the Coast Guard about a generator. One problem at a time.”
The Coast Guard boat had almost been pulled in, the crew fighting against the current to ground the vessel just short of the sloping flood wall. An officer climbed the wall to get a better view of the shallows and shouted to his crew to pull the boat in a little more. By the time Darla and Aguilar got there, they were almost done.
“Hey, Carl,” called Aguilar.
The officer turned and Darla thought he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life. He looked like he’d stepped off the cover of a magazine.
“Carl, this is Captain Griffiths,” said Aguilar.
“Darla,” gushed Darla. “If we’re on first name terms, call me Darla. Or Darla Jean. My friends call me DJ. Or they used to. But my crew call me Captain and, uh, you can call me Captain too. I’m okay with either.”
She clamped her lips together, conscious that her mouth was running away with itself.
“Uh, well,” said Aguilar, giving Darla an awkward look. “Captain Griffiths, this is Lieutenant Carl Fisher.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Carl, extending his hand.
Darla nearly melted.
“Me too,” murmured Darla huskily. “I mean, I’m pleased to meet you, not myself.” She winced and made a vain attempt to laugh.
“What’s your ship?”
“Oh, the, uh, Mississippi Rose. The little old paddle steamer. Over there. The white one. The real one, not the, uh, fake casino one.”
“Mississippi Rose,” pondered Carl, creasing his face and looking cuter than ever. “Didn’t I inspect your boat last year?”
“Pretty sure not,” breathed Darla. “I’d have remembered you.”
She bit her lip.
Aguilar said, “The captain here brings news about the Waterford nuclear reactor. Says it’s close to meltdown and they need pumps. We have a pump but we need a generator.”
“The reactor,” said Carl. “Forgot about that. The problems just keep coming, don’t they?” He thought about it for a moment. “Got a portable generator in our stores up at Memphis, but that’s too far.” He thought some more. “National Guard armory down at Point Clair. They’ll have some. What’s the situation down in New Orleans? Are they thinking of evacuation?”
Darla was twirling her hair and she stopped, trying to look serious. “Uh … I’m sure they’ve taken it under consideration.”
“FEMA Inspector General’s in town,” said Aguilar. “Trying to get a meeting with the governor.”
Carl nodded his approval. “Good. We could do with coordinating our efforts. Let’s see if we can have a word with him.”
“It’s a her,” interjected Darla.
“I meant the governor.”
“Oh, right. Of course you did. I knew that.”
Aguilar gave her a look, like Darla was becoming an annoyance. Darla hooked her thumbs into her belt loops and pushed out her chest, giving Aguilar a look back. When the two set off for the Art and Science museum, Darla followed them, determined to cement her place among the serious folk. And because she didn’t want to take her eyes off Carl for longer than she had to.
The museum had a pillared facade, with The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad Co. etched across its sandstone facing. Of course, it wasn’t a real railroad station anymore, just as the castle structure of the old capitol building across the street wasn’t a real castle. To Darla, the whole city smacked of fakeness, and she didn’t think it dese
rved to be the capital of Louisiana. In the past, New Orleans had been the capital, and over a hundred years later, that still burned with Darla. It didn’t seem right.
Inside the museum was a large, naturally lit hall with dinosaur bones she wasn’t interested in and paintings she didn’t particularly admire. Governor Richard Loving held court before a crowd of officials, cops, the sheriff, fire chief and a bunch of other people vying for his attention. Among them Darla noticed the redoubtable Ms. Roberts. Waving her credentials, the FEMA representative said the magic word. Suddenly the talk was all about the nuclear reactor. How far away was it from the city? When was it going to blow? Who authorized the building of it right there?
Darla hung back from the melee, alienated by some of the more unseemly histrionics. Carl and Aguilar got right in and made contact with Ms. Roberts and in the next moment were talking with the governor himself. Loving decided he needed a meeting with the newcomers and directed them to the ticket office. Seeing they were leaving her behind, Darla pushed through and almost made it in, but Ms. Roberts stopped and raised her hand.
“This is a closed door meeting,” she said. And she closed the door.
Darla sulked for a second then left the museum. If they didn’t want to include her, to hell with them.
She had lobster waiting.
Back at the boat she took her seat at the dining table in the saloon. Jacques, Manny and Zack were already eating, cracking open their shells. The cop was outside having a cigarette.
“That Coast Guard captain’s really something,” said Darla, wrenching off a claw.
The others didn’t react.
“You should see him. He’s smoking hot.”
The others gazed blankly at her.
“Well, I don’t expect you guys to understand,” she continued, “probably only got one hormone left among you.”
Jacques took no notice of the jibe. “How long will this emergency last?” he said.
Darla tore into her meat. “Weeks probably. Lotta stuff to fix.”
“Weeks?” laughed Manny. “Try years. That’s how long it took them to put NOLA back together and it still ain’t done.”
“Don’t go exaggerating,” said Darla.
“I ain’t exaggerating nothing. These are the end times.”
Darla rolled her eyes.
Manny leaned forward. “I mean it. What are people going to do when the food and water runs out? Who’s going to be fixing stuff then? It’ll be dog eat dog.”
“You got a conspiracy theory for everything,” said Darla.
“Ain’t no conspiracy. Just cold hard facts.”
“Water,” said Zack suddenly, staring into space. “People can only live two days without water.”
“Yeah, so?” said Darla.
“So where’s it going to come from? If the filtration plants are down, there’s no way to get clean water. This area’s a swamp.”
Darla threw down her half-eaten claw. “Okay, okay. So what’s your solution?”
Zack just stared at her.
“Exactly,” said Darla, “so quit with all the negative crap. You do your job on the boat and that’s that. I don’t want to hear anymore about it.”
9
Darla gnawed her thumbnail as crew from the Choctaw loaded a pump and tubing onto her boat. A light aircraft buzzed overhead, circling around the city. Darla took that to mean things weren’t quite as bad as Manny was claiming. Some stuff still worked and people were getting organized. With the right attitude, things could be straightened out, even if it took a while. There was no need for drama or hysterics. The engineers coming aboard looked calm enough and Darla had faith in their abilities. Anybody who used tools for a living had her vote and she was more than happy to use her boat to help them out. This was what the Mississippi Rose had originally been built for: real work.
Ms. Roberts was back on board the boat. Darla had hoped she’d stay in Baton Rouge but she seemed determined to return to New Orleans. Clearly she wanted to be a pain in the ass there too. Lieutenant Carl Fisher was also aboard, however, and his presence brought butterflies to Darla’s stomach. She was falling in love with him and he was proving quite the distraction.
He came up to the pilothouse and Darla smoothed her hair out fast.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he replied, looking at the burned out radar unit. “You didn’t escape completely unscathed then.”
“Oh, that. Wasn’t important really.”
Carl examined the wood and brass fittings. “This all original?” he asked.
“Completely,” gushed Darla. “Restored it myself.”
Carl nodded in approval. “Good job,” he said, and Darla beamed.
“Look,” he murmured. “I hope you don’t mind us commandeering your vessel. My own boat’s out of action at the moment and we need something flexible to coordinate operations.”
“Not at all. It’s a pleasure to serve.”
“It’s just that some people can get kind of possessive about this kind of thing.”
“Oh I know,” she said, ignoring her own recent protestations. “But there’s no call for it.”
“Well, there might be,” admitted Carl, “but we’ll try not to be too in-your-face about it. A couple of my guys will be aboard and we’ll help out in any way we can and try not to get in your way. It’ll only be until my boat gets running again.”
Darla was twirling her hair again and she had to make a conscious effort to stop. “So what happened to your boat?” she said airily.
“We got the emergency call about an hour before it all happened. We were downriver from Natchez when the storm hit us and our engines blew. Drifted it down to Baton Rouge.”
“But you’ve got twin outboards. How come they both went? Saw an outboard working fine earlier.”
“Modern outboards,” said Carl. “Electronic ignition. We were told they wouldn’t be affected by a geomagnetic storm, but, well, seems to be a lot of predictions that didn’t turn out right.”
“So you didn’t think it would be this bad?”
“No. At least not until we got the emergency message late last night. We knew the grid could go down, shutting down the beacon and navigation network on the river, and I figured that would be bad enough. Never dreamed that a geomagnetic storm would be severe enough to burn out even analogue equipment. This is way more powerful than the Carrington Event ever was.”
“Carrington Event?”
“The same thing that happened back in the 1800s or thereabouts. It was a big enough deal back then when they only had telegraph cables. But now? I’m still struggling to get my head around it.”
“But it’s nothing we can’t fix, right?”
“Well,” said Carl with a grimace. “We can hope.”
***
It was early evening when the Mississippi Rose left Baton Rouge, sounding a prolonged hoot on the steam whistle. For the journey downriver, Darla steered her into the central channel, letting the river’s current take them while the paddle wheels turned at half speed, still managing a respectable 9 knots. By the time they reached Point Clair, the sun was setting, bathing the river in a golden light.
Point Clair was a wooded bend near the small town of Carville and the 415th National Guard armory. Docking at the single jetty, Carl and Ms. Roberts went ashore.
They were still some hours away from the Waterford nuclear plant and Darla felt the strain of being at the helm all day. She also felt hyped. Whether it was due to her hormones or her playing a significant role with her boat was hard to tell, but she was undeniably proud of her vessel. Going down below she found most of the engineers and Coast Guard in the salon, taking advantage of the downtime to nap. In the boiler room they’d already taken the ornamental candles from the salon tables to light the dark space, and Aguilar was in there talking tech with Manny while Zack sat cross legged, listening like a child.
“Where’s Jacques?” asked Darla.
“He turned in,” said Manny.
“What time are we leaving in the morning?” said Aguilar.
“We’re not. We’ll carry on through the night,” said Darla.
“Without lights or radar?”
“I know the river. Won’t be any traffic coming up.”
“Whoa,” exclaimed Manny. “Might be okay for you to stay up all night but I’m too old for that. I need my sleep.”
“Alternate watches with Zack. Show him how to keep an eye on the steam gage and stop the engines. Anything more complicated than that and he can wake you.”
Zack raised his eyebrows at the sudden escalation of his duties.
“I can help too, if you want,” said Aguilar. “He can teach me the same.”
“Okay,” said Darla. “We can do this.”
“And you?” said Manny. “Don’t know if I feel comfortable with the thought of you falling asleep at the wheel.”
“I’ll be fine. Wake Jacques up later and get him to bring me up some coffee.”
“Maybe Carl can help you at the helm,” said Aguilar.
“Oh, Carl,” said Manny, a light bulb pinging on in his head. “That’s what this is about. Impressing your new boyfriend.”
Darla blushed. “It’s not that.”
Aguilar looked at her with renewed interest. “Oh my God, really? So that’s what that weirdness back there was about. You got a crush on him?”
“No,” said Darla unconvincingly. “It’s about getting to that reactor in time.”
Aguilar laughed. “Girl, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Darla archly.
Turning on her heel she marched to her cabin. Apart from a barren guest suite, hers was the only single cabin on the boat. The rest of the crew had to share a cabin with multiple bunks. Rummaging through the closets she only found two sets of underwear, a ragged shirt and some deodorant. There wasn’t even a hairbrush. She vaguely remembered clearing some stuff out recently after she swore not to go out drinking again and using the boat to dry out. Looking in the mirror, she combed her hair with her fingers, trying to see if it looked better tied up or loose. She opted to tie it up as an alternative to looking like she’d been living in a wind tunnel. She needed to get to her apartment at the first opportunity to get more stuff, and at least something a little more flattering than baggy work jeans.