The ship shuddered again, engine sputtering through loud and angry death throes.

  “Get it started already!” one of the men below shouted between bites and howls of laughter.

  The Horde had made it onto the ship. Their intention was to take it to feed the crazed masses in Seattle. I needed no playbook to make their plan apparent to me.

  Again the engine rumbled, then stopped with a jolt that shook the ship.

  “Can’t he do any—”

  The man below never finished his damning question, his gaze catching sight of something in the light spread by the fire.

  Us.

  The yeller was the first to reach for his weapon. Neil made sure he never got a finger on it, firing three times from his Benelli, the buckshot shredding the man, half his face turning to mist.

  The other two went for their own rifles. I dropped the first with a half dozen quick shots, his comrade getting to his AK and bringing it to bear without aiming, finger mashed on the trigger, rounds spraying upward toward us.

  Sparks danced off the metalwork around us as we ducked. Neil rolled to the left, tumbling onto the stairs. I moved right, too quickly, my foot catching, tripping me up as bullets ticked off the bulkhead above.

  Below, the man was shifting his fire left and right. Neil squeezed off two shots, both wide, shotgun pellets tearing into a pallet of MRE cases. I tried to bring my weapon to bear, but the suppressor slammed against the railing support as I swung it toward the shooter. We were pinned down. Vulnerable. Sitting ducks.

  More fire came. But it sounded different. Then a scream. A man screaming. The man below, firing at us. Who had been firing at us. His weapon was now silent, laying across the bonfire.

  “Fletch!”

  Neil was calling out to me from across the hold.

  “Neil, are you okay?”

  “Yeah! Did you take him out?”

  “I did,” the answer came, the voice familiar and welcome.

  Elaine stepped from the shadows beyond the pallets at the far side of the hold, MP5 in hand, trained on the downed shooters as she advanced toward them, limping.

  I got to my feet and made my way quickly down the stairs on the right side of the hold as Neil did the same on the left. Elaine half fell against a pallet of cased food, but never let her weapon come off of the shooters.

  “What happened?” I asked, getting an arm under her so she wouldn’t fall.

  “There’s one more,” she said, looking past Neil, to another door up the stairs. “In the engine room.”

  Neil covered that door while I lowered Elaine until she was sitting on a small stack of cases. A dark spot had spread upon her jeans just above the knee, hole in the denim on the outside of her thigh.

  “I caught a ricochet,” she said. “I fell back to here to guard the food. They got Mikey.”

  “And Ross,” I said.

  Her face sagged. She hadn’t known. She kicked one of the pans of water with her good leg, dousing the cooking fire.

  “How’d they get aboard?” I asked, pulling a bandage from my vest for her leg.

  “The radios went out, and it was foggy. Mikey said the skiff was coming up. They looked like people from town.”

  Another piece began to fall into place.

  “The guy who grabbed Krista,” I said. “He was describing us to his pals so they could disguise themselves.”

  Elaine nodded and winced silently as I tied a dressing over her wound.

  “Their hair was died, they padded their clothing to not look thin. When the first one came up the ladder he shot Mikey. I fired, then a bunch of them fired. It was chaos.”

  “Drugs didn’t kill all their brain cells,” Neil said, almost admiring the operation they’d nearly pulled off.

  “How many were there?” I asked.

  “These three and three more,” Elaine answered.

  “We got two up top,” I told her. “That just leaves your engine room guy.”

  She nodded, then tried to stand. I put a hand on her shoulder and guided her back down with some force.

  “You stay here,” I told her, gesturing to the balcony above. “Shoot anyone who comes through either of those doors.”

  “Even you?” she joked through a building wave of pain.

  “No, just Neil.”

  My friend tossed me a look and a smile.

  “Let’s go hunting,” he said.

  We started toward the stairs.

  “This prey shoots back,” Elaine said from behind, reminding us just what we were about to face.

  * * *

  The engine room was one floor below the level of the balcony, in the belly of the ship. No sound of the engine throttling futilely had been heard since our shootout in the cargo hold, the sound of that exchange certainly alerting the last member of the Horde to our presence.

  The door to the compartment was almost closed, an inch of space between it and the steel frame. We listened, a soft jostling sounding in the distance beyond the door.

  “We can’t wait him out,” I said.

  “Okay,” Neil said, bringing the muzzle of his Benelli to the edge of the door and pushing it inward.

  A volley of automatic fire rained through the open portal immediately. I ducked left, and Neil right, the fire from within stopping after a few seconds, the sound of a magazine dropping coming next.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  We took the opportunity to rush through the door, a distant flashlight resting on the floor giving the space some shadowy definition. I found cover behind a lacework of thick pipes. Across from me, Neil was crouch-walking behind what appeared to be some sort of tank.

  A click signaled that the man had reloaded, and the fire began again, wild shots spraying, ricocheting off metal, slicing into ductwork. Dust and sparks flew, and once more the fire ebbed, another magazine dropping.

  I moved again, along the outside wall of the space, huge diesel engines to my left, a smoky stench hanging over them. The pistons had seized, burning through whatever inadequate lubricant remained after more than a year of non-use.

  Click.

  Another magazine was ready. But no fire came this time. The man was holding back. Lying in wait.

  “You don’t get to live!”

  It was the voice of a young man. A crazy man.

  “I get to live!”

  To the left of me. That’s where I tagged the origin of the shouting. On the far side of the engines.

  “I will kill you and then I get to live!”

  Clang!

  The sound was sharp and reverberated across the compartment, something heavy and metal striking something heavier and metal. A diversion, I knew, Neil taking some initiative to draw the man’s attention. It worked. Gunfire erupted again, the crazy man firing, his lone mode of fire seeming to be holding the trigger down until his weapon ran dry.

  His weapon went silent, but no magazine dropped. Instead, a solid thud echoed, his empty rifle hitting the floor this time, all his rounds and spares expended. For that weapon.

  I came around the far end of the diesel and heard another sound. A click, though not like before, then a fast, sizzling hiss, like a fuse being lit.

  No...

  I sprinted toward the sound, clearing a bank of electrical vaults just as the crazy man drew his arm back in the open space beyond, fragmentation grenade smoking in it. His aim was directed toward the sound that had drawn his fire just a moment ago. A sound that I knew Neil had made.

  “Neil!”

  The man looked my way even as his arm began its forward arc, grenade launching from it as I fired, a half dozen shots finding their target and an equal number flying wide. The man fell sideways, the grenade’s trajectory wobbled by the hits he’d absorbed. It flew low and banked off a pipe tracking across the ceiling, then dropped to the floor and rolled right at me.

  I was about to duck behind the engine I’d just passed, but across the space, between a wall of rising pipes, Neil appeared, the grenade between us.

  “Get to cover!” I screamed.

  Neil spun away as I did, my body making it around the corner to the cover of the massive engine when the device detonated. A flash filled the compartment, shrapnel peppering every exposed surface as choking smoke swirled. I was on the floor, I realized, not remembering diving or falling, my back stinging. I reached back and felt a piece of my vest ripped away, torn by shrapnel. But there was nothing wet. No sticky blood oozing. I’d gotten a very lucky kick in the side and no more.

  But I had no idea if Neil had been so lucky.

  “Neil!”

  I scrambled up, steadying myself, shaking off the effects of the concussive blast wave as I caromed off the engine, the electrical vaults, pipes and fittings, mostly stumbling toward my friend. I took my flashlight out and turned it on, the one that had been lit obliterated by the detonation. A wide scorch mark blackened the area where it had gone off.

  “Neil!”

  “Eric!”

  I looked left and saw Elaine hobbling into the compartment.

  “I can’t find Neil!” I told her.

  She cut through the warren of equipment with me, rounding a corner where pipes dove through the floor. That was where we found him.

  “I don’t think that guy liked us,” Neil said, looking up from where he’d been knocked to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him, the question urgent, almost a demand.

  He coughed through the smoke and nodded. I reached down and helped him up.

  “Let’s get back to dry land,” he said.

  “Seconded,” Elaine agreed.

  We moved to the door, then out of the engine room. A few minutes later we were on deck, the stars bright above.

  “God, it’s beautiful,” Elaine said, looking skyward, her voice cracking just a bit. “How can it be so beautiful after all that?”

  I knew what she meant. And why it troubled her.

  “Because we want it to,” I said, and she collapsed, sobbing, against me.

  Forty Three

  A full week it took, running the skiff and two other boats back and forth to the freighter, night and day, burning through a full three-quarters of the fuel the town had stored. But by the end of the effort, every single box, can, and package of food left on the Groton Star was on land, secured in multiple locations around town.

  The day after the final trip was made, a few minutes after noon, timed charges planted strategically on the freighter detonated. From shore there was nothing to see, but a sound did reach land, roaring low after a series of sharp cracks. Without seeing it we knew that the ship was at the bottom of the Pacific.

  That night a meeting convened, as many of the residents who could make it jammed into the Meeting Hall. It was standing room only. I arrived to see Neil, Grace, and Krista in the front row, listening to Martin talk about measures to ensure the security of the food supply. From my place at the back of the hall, I took in the sight, some form of democracy in action, with a mix of martial law expectedly flavoring the results. To a person everyone seemed satisfied. Everyone was onboard. A consensus had been unanimously reached.

  And I was sickened by it.

  I left the hall with the meeting still in session, wandering away, no destination in mind. The world felt airy and empty, like the town was already gone and I was the last man standing.

  But I wasn’t.

  “Too officious for you?” Elaine asked.

  I turned toward her. She sat on a bench across the street. Behind her was an empty storefront, faded lettering announcing that it had once been a candy store. How many times had children come to the place and slapped their money down, then hurried out to savor sweet treats on the very bench where she now sat? The thought of those anonymous children wasn’t even a memory. It was an echo of a time that would never be again. Not with what was being discussed inside the Meeting Hall.

  “I don’t understand them,” I said. “I don’t understand this.”

  Elaine absorbed what I said, seeming to contemplate it for a moment, deeply and fully.

  “You’re leaving, aren’t you,” she said, no question in her tone.

  I could have answered in the affirmative, but something kept me from being honest. From being forthright with her. A something that was no mystery to me.

  I didn’t want to leave her.

  “This can’t go on,” I said. “Everything here has an expiration date that comes when the last MRE is eaten.”

  “You’re not wrong,” she said. “But does leaving change that? For you or for anyone left here?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  She stood, teetering for a moment on her bad leg. I reached out and she grabbed my arm for support. Her hand remained there for a moment after she’d already steadied herself. She looked to me, just looked, saying nothing for a moment.

  Then she eased her hand from my arm.

  “If you have no destination, no prize to put your eye on, isn’t that just running away?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her. And she didn’t wait for one. She smiled softly and turned away, walking up the street. I could have followed. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t.

  Forty Four

  “What now?”

  Neil didn’t answer me right away. Instead he stared at the street from where we sat on his porch. Behind, in the house, Krista and Grace were doing some crafty thing with paper and colored markers they’d gotten from the supply center. Later they were planning to go for a walk on the beach to collect rocks. An impossibly normal day.

  Except it wasn’t.

  “Why does there have to be some decision?” he asked me. “Can’t we just live?”

  “Live?” I parroted. “This is the life you want?”

  “Fletch, what the hell do you want? This is the world we live in. What else is there? Do you think there’s something better out there?”

  There might be. I didn’t know. But I was aiming at a more concrete point.

  “This can’t go on,” I said. “You know that.”

  Neil didn’t offer any comment to my statement. Not right away. He lifted his glass of water and sipped. In a month, spring would be half over, summer on the horizon of seasons. Martin had said there would be power available to run a communal ice maker. Someone, Burke maybe, would break out a hoarded bottle of liquor and there would be drinks on the rocks. But that, too, would end.

  “Everything here is going to run out,” I reminded my friend.

  “Then it runs out,” he said, an edge to the statement. “I have a life here, Fletch. I know that sounds impossible, but Grace, and Krista, without the blight I would never have found them. I would have never found this kind of love and acceptance.”

  “Neil...”

  “No,” he said, stopping me. “Maybe, just maybe, it was all meant to end. Maybe this is the last flourish of humanity. If that’s the case, I don’t want to spend it looking for something better that might not even exist. I can live, really live, right here, with the two most precious people in the world to me. Why would I want to jeopardize that?”

  There was no point in trying to convince my friend. My best friend. Our paths had diverged. This was his be all, end all moment and place in time.

  The front door burst open and Krista came out, a brightly colored and sweetly crafted paper flower in hand. Its petals were yellow, stem and leaves below a lush green.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, showing her creation to Neil as Grace came out, witness to the warm moment.

  My friend took it and examined it, turning it slowly in his hand before giving Krista a satisfied nod and a smile. He brought it to his nose and sniffed playfully.

  “Can’t tell it from the real thing,” Neil said.

  Krista beamed at him, then at me.

  “I’m going to give it to Micah,” she said, then spun toward the steps and bounded down to the walkway, nearly sprinting up the street.

  “I guess we’re delivering it now,” Grace said, and followed her daughter.

  But as she turned from walkway to sidewalk, she glanced back toward the house. Directly at me. It was as if she sensed something. In me. My unease with the town’s placid march toward oblivion, maybe.

  “They’re happy here, Fletch,” Neil said once Grace and Krista had disappeared up the block.

  “This place is a death sentence, Neil. For you. For them.”

  He didn’t respond to my words. My implied plea.

  “You’re killing them by staying.”

  “And what about out there?” he challenged me. “After what Krista went through, a gun to her head, what do you think we’d face out there? I can’t chance anything happening to them. I couldn’t live with that.”

  “There’s no future here, Neil.”

  “Stop it, Fletch.”

  I leaned toward my friend, wanting desperately for him to accept what I was saying. To understand. To agree.

  “They’re your family, Neil, for God’s sake!”

  “I know what they are!” he shouted, standing too fast, the chair he’d been sitting in toppling.

  Silence raged between us for a moment. He reached down and righted the chair, glancing up and down the neighborhood to see if anyone had witnessed the outburst.

  “I’m right,” I told my friend.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Neil...”

  “Leave,” he said, uttering a word I’d never heard him say to me. “Now.”

  I hesitated, stunned and stung by the moment.

  “Now, Fletch,” he repeated, emphasizing his desire to be done with me.

  I stood, slowly, wanting to say something, anything, to fix what had just transpired. But I couldn’t. The only way to do so would be to deny the truth and accept the fading fantasy my friend had embraced.

  Forty Five

  He wants to see you...

  There was no need to ask who the ‘he’ was. Burke had simply knocked on the door of my house and said those words as I opened it. I followed him down the front walk and up the street, keeping pace a few feet behind. As much as I had been accepted by the Bandon community, there was still a separation. They felt it, and I hadn’t done much to conceal my feelings since the Groton Star went to the bottom of the sea.

 

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