Barren Fields (18 page)

Chapter 15

Feeding the Sharks

Pacific Ocean.

The boat is skimming over the water with speed, and land is somewhere behind them. The coast disappeared beyond the horizon a while ago. After the attack at Acapulco the group looked at Carl and Ellen’s nautical map of Mexico’s west coast to discover what other hazards might lay ahead. The map is a portrait of a thieves’ and pirates’ paradise. Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, and Cabo San Lucas, all of those cities lie along the route back to the U.S. The fact that they were major tourist destinations and had homes of the wealthy means, like Acapulco, they will attract large criminal populations that would likely be stealing and killing as much as possible until they too are dead.

The destination they chose to try avoiding more criminal encounters is Isla Socorro, an island far to the west of the mainland, with a small Mexican naval station. It will take two days to zigzag their way across the ocean to reach the island. They hope to get any information they can about the situation around the world and in the U.S.

When they pick up someone that is still broadcasting on Carl’s world band radio, it sounds like panicked gibberish to them since they don’t understand Russian, German, or French. The little news they hear in English or Spanish is always bad and usually vague, speaking only about rioting and violence, but never with city names or locations.

*

“Should I bring us in?” Carl asks from the wheel.

“I wouldn’t recommend doing that, they’re all infected.”

The infection has reach Socorro Island. Several people are standing at the end of the concrete dock built into the small harbor next to the naval base. They are staring at the sailboat with anticipation as it sits in the mouth of the bay.

“We can’t land here, and there is no other port on the island according to the map.”

“We’re going to have to do something. Jack is getting worse, and we’re almost out of anti-diarrheal medicine.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?” George yells at Frank. “I’m sicker than you are and almost as sick as Jack. I know better than you what he is going through, but we can’t go on that island with the infected here.”

“But the base might not be infected yet, and they will have medicine.”

“Right,” he says with slow sarcasm. “And if the people on that base are alive, do you think they’ll let you walk through the gate and say hello, or shoot you on sight thinking you have the disease?”

Defeated, Frank sits back down.

“I don’t think we should land either,” Ellen says. “I’ve been trying to contact them on the radio ever since the island crested the horizon. If anyone was free of infection at the base, they would have responded either to ask our condition or warn us to stay away.”

“You’ve sailed this area. What’s our next option?” Keith asks Carl, who is looking at the map.

“Cedros or Guadalupe Islands. Guadalupe is farther away and has only a small population. If the infection is there it would be easier to make it onto the island and survive, but they may not have what we need.”

“Cedros Island is close to the Baja peninsula, maybe only sixty miles from it. It’s a nice place and has about a thousand people that live in the main town, so they will have some medicine. There is also a company town on the south end. It’s smaller, and I think they do salt mining or something. It will take another two or three days if we go straight there, or we could try going along the Baja coast and see if there is an unaffected town along the way.”

“But that will expose us to any pirates.”

“And it will add to the time, making the trip take a week to get to Cedros.”

“Have you been to the smaller town on the south of the island?”

“No.”

“What do you guys think?” Keith asks the others.

“Let’s go to Cedros. They respond.”

*

The sails are full and the mast is creaking as the ship cruises over the glass topped ocean. It is a carefree and beautiful day by anyone’s standards, so they insisted Jack should be brought outside so he can enjoy it as well. The five men, and Ellen, are sitting at the bow, letting the cool wind caress their faces and the sun tan their skin. Carl is at the wheel.

“You better not take any chances at Cedros on my account,” Jack tells the others. “You know it’s meaningless at this point.”

“You shouldn’t be saying that about yourself,” Ellen offers trying to end his self-defeating attitude. “Getting you better is worth any risk we can go through.”

“Thank you, Ellen. I appreciate that. It’s just that I won’t be getting better, I’m dying.”

She wants to protest but knows enough from his serious tone and the looks on his friends faces that Jack isn’t embellishing.

“Is it your cancer?” she asks. “We know four of you are sick, but you haven’t mentioned it so Carl and I didn’t want to pry. Jack, you’re starting to lose your hair, so I figured you were going through chemotherapy when you had to escape.”

“It wasn’t chemotherapy, Ellen. We were all exposed to radioactive fallout,” Keith explains. “The oil rig I told you about, we left it because the nuclear plant in New Orleans melted down. Strong winds blew the radiation to the rig and set off the alarm. Jack and George were outside before Frank, Maggie, and me and were probably exposed to more of it than we were.”

“Who is Maggie?”

“She is my wife...She was my wife. She was dying of cancer and didn’t survive the escape from the oil rig.”

“I’m so sorry Keith,” She offers.

“We scrubbed ourselves trying to decontaminate, but George and Jack were wearing necklaces and I had on a ring. The metal absorbed the radiation by the rig and kept exposing us while we wore it. We didn’t know to take them off until the military scanned is at Juchitán de Zaragoza and told us it was still radioactive. Even with the initial exposure there were significant health issues we would face, but we made it to the coast with the jewelry and continued exposing ourselves the whole time.”

“It might not be so bad for Keith, who only had a ring on,” Jack adds plainly. “But George and I were wearing death around our necks the whole time.”

Ellen looks at the men.

“So, it is with all of you?”

“Not Thomas,” George says. “We met him in Mexico. But Jack and I are dying. I have a few weeks or months at best, and Jack, he has...”

“Days,” Jack finishes.

“I’m sorry, I was sure you had gone through chemotherapy.”

“I wish it were something that was controlled.”

“Even with the hair loss and your exposure, what you’re feeling could just be a bug or seasickness,” she says in a motherly tone full of confidence but tinged with worry. “You know you shouldn’t drink the water when you travel. You could be all right, Jack! He could be all right.”

“I started bleeding today, Ellen. You were worried earlier that Carl’s wound opened up and he was losing more blood, it wasn’t him, it was me. Dr. Morales gave me some medicine that is helping with the pain. I hardly feel a thing and don’t get too loopy or confused, so it’s great. George has been injecting it in my back. That’s why I needed help getting out here. It isn’t only because I’m weak. I can barely feel anything.”

Ellen puts a comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder and sits there in silence. The sail is still full, the sun still warm, and the water as smooth as it ever was, but the day is no longer a carefree beautiful, now it is a beautiful sorrow.

*

“How could the reactor melt down?” Carl asks the group after dinner. “They have too many safety protocols for that to happen. I should know, one of our son-in-laws works at the Columbia Generating Station in Washington.”

“All of our children live in Washington, although most of them are around Seattle,” Ellen says with a smile. “That’s where we were from too until Carl retired, and we moved south for the warmth and sailing.”

“All I’m saying is,” Carl continues, “you might have been exposed to radiation, but I doubt it was from a reactor melting down. No one would let that happen.”

George looks at the couple and smiles. “You’re probably right Carl. New Orleans is a big city. It could have been something else.”

A short time later the men leave the cabin to sleep under the stars on deck.

“Are you turning into a softy?” Keith asks George.

“I’m just tired of making Ellen cry. If they have family that worked at the Washington station then they have good reasons for not wanting to accept the truth.”

*

The south end of Cedros Island looks abandoned. Carl sailed the boat back and forth twice to make sure. Right now he is motoring up to a large dock at the north end of the company town. They originally planned on heading to the town proper a few miles up the coast, but once they saw no one on the streets or along the shore, it was a quick and easy decision to stop here. This facility will have its own medical office, and they won’t have to risk running into thieves or the infected.

The pier extends several hundred yards into the ocean to make docking possible for the enormous salt tankers that this facility filled with salt. Carl brings the boat in and ties it as close to the island as possible, so Keith, Frank, and Thomas don’t have as far to walk.

George’s radiation sickness has returned, so he is staying on the boat. He is lying on the deck and trying to rest between bouts of nausea. Jack is below deck barely able to move. He is beginning to get disoriented, which is another sign of the worsening effects of his exposure. Carl and Ellen are staying on board as well and are prepared to get the boat moving as soon as their three scavengers return.

“The medical office should be in the largest building to the north of the salt fields,” Keith says. “Most accidents are going to occur during processing or getting the salt out to the ships on this dock, so the company that ran the place would have it easily accessible.”

“I would put it by the houses,” Ellen offers.

“I worked at shipping docks on the Mississippi. Trust me, it makes more sense to have it in that larger building. You keep these guns ready in case anyone approaches. We left guns by Jack and George as well, but they won’t be much help to you if you get in trouble. The safety is off on both guns, so don’t hit the switch again, or you’ll stop the gun from firing or make it go automatic, both of which would be bad.”

Carl was a city boy all his life, and he never liked guns. He places his down by the wheel carefully. The training he received out on the water was exhilarating and frightening. He knows he can make the gun work if he is asked to, he just isn’t sure if he can make himself function in a situation of desperation.

Ellen knows how to use a gun but has been fortunate that she’s never had to. While she was raised in cities all her life like Carl, she knew about the extra dangers being a woman in a city posed and learned to protect herself. Out of all the odd places to learn about guns, it was with her college theatre group that she had become exposed. They were performing a particularly devastating play about an abused woman, and the director of the play, Jennifer Lawton, took them all out to a shooting club throughout the rehearsal process.
You should never let yourself be overpowered by someone larger than you,
Jennifer had always told them.

*

The walk to the main building is dirt and salt, with the smell of rust and ocean in the air. There is no real point to paving the roadways because the salt or heavy equipment would break it down too quickly. The salt is thick and on everything. The first few unsteady steps the men took on the dust covered ground had it coating their lips.

“I can barely walk straight,” Thomas says. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on the water for that long.”

“Neither have I, if you don’t count the rig. It didn’t rock like the boat does. You worked at docks, Keith. How much salt do you think is here?”

He looks at the towering salt piles trying to calculate what he sees.

“Over a million tons, I would think. Enough to make anyone rich in future spice trading.”

The door to the large structure is standing open, and like Keith expected, the main room is an equipment repair facility. At the back wall there is a door with a large red cross over it and the word
clínica
written underneath.

“Simple enough,” Frank says and walks in.

“You don’t watch many horror movies, do you?” Thomas says filing in behind him.

“What don’t you like?” Frank says turning to walk backward and embellish his next words. “The ghostly abandoned town or the dark interior of the rusted and creepy warehouse?”

“All of the above, actually. Oh, and walking into this place like an idiot without looking to see if any infected people are inside.”

Reaching the clinic door, Frank opens it quickly and walks right in. This room doesn’t have the skylights that the main warehouse did, so it is dark until Keith hits the light switch on the wall just inside the door.

Keith opens a cabinet to look inside and turns to Thomas.

“I can’t read any of this. You’ll have to find what we need. Anything for diarrhea and maybe something for seasickness as well. It might help with the nausea they are having. Frank, I want to talk to you,” he says and pushes him out into the workshop, closing the door behind them. “What the hell was that all about?”