Red Lightning (23 page)

"Good," Travis said. "We'll have a cool place to go to, maybe something cold to drink, while we wait for Jim and Evangeline."

We had made radio contact with them on the first two days at noon, and they'd had no news. On the third day they hadn't answered our calls, and we hadn't heard from them since. But Travis had promised them that we'd be here at noon one day, and it was about 2 P.M. now, so we were facing a twenty-two-hour wait.

They were probably okay. At least that's what I kept telling myself.

As Travis pulled into the lot, looking for a place to park, we drew a lot of stares. It's not every day you see a World War II amphibious DUKW on the streets, even in watery Florida. Maybe we were a comical sight. A lot of people smiled and whistled, gave us the thumbs-up.
Scrooge
, long, low, and waddling, was a vehicle you just sort of liked the minute you saw it.

I was the first one to notice a small boy running behind us. He put on a burst of speed and came alongside.

"Hey, mister, are you Travis Broussard?"

I whistled for Travis, told him to stop. He did, and the kid stopped and looked up at us, breathing hard. He was wearing a ragged Disney World T-shirt and new-looking sneakers. Just a tousle-headed Florida boy in the ruins.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"This guy gave me some money and told me to look out for a bunch of people in a duck. Is this piece-of-crap ride a duck?"

"It sure is," Travis said. "
Scrooge McDuck
, by name, even if it don't quack. Where is this guy?"

"Got any money?"

Travis cocked an eye at him, but Dak reached into his pocket and tossed a shiny gold ten-euro piece into the air. The kid snagged it.

"Highway robbery, dude. Now, you gonna tell us where they are, or do I have to come down there and lay one upside your head?"

"They in the hospital. C'mon, I'll show y'all."

Naturally we were worried, but it wasn't bad. Jim Redmond had cut his hand pulling apart pieces of his uncle's house, looking for bodies. It had become infected and was swollen, but the doctors had it under control.

There were hugs all around. Evangeline's hug lasted longer than her dad's, and I didn't mind. Not at all.

We were introduced to Mr. Redmond's father, who was in a hospital bed with a broken leg and arm and various deep cuts. He was pretty deeply drugged, but managed a smile. We met a cousin, Frank, and an aunt, Billie Mae, who had a five-year-old with her. The child wasn't her own, just a stray she had picked up cowering in an overturned car beside the corpse of his mother. Now he wouldn't leave her.

I never did get all the names and relationships straight, we weren't there long enough to really talk to them all. The Redmond clan was large and complicated, and the news was not all good, not by any means. Of the nine people Jim and Evangeline knew to have been in the wave zone, these were the only ones he'd found, and counted himself lucky to have done so well... if you can call three out of nine good news. Of the others, four were on the confirmed dead list, and two were still missing.

What do you do? Rejoice over the living? Weep for the dead? You do both, and it isn't easy, it tears you apart. They all kept breaking down, thinking of those four bodies in reefer trucks somewhere. Then they'd embrace, happy to be alive and happy that not everyone had died. We were all included, we were all family now.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, broke away from the group, and wandered out of the hospital tent. The little guy who'd led us to the hospital was hanging around outside, playing with a yo-yo. I reached into my pocket and grabbed all the change I had in there and dumped it into his hand.

"Thanks, mister."

"What can you buy with that around here?"

"Not much," he conceded. "But I'm saving up, for later."

"How old are you?"

"Ten. Are you really a Marsman?"

"We prefer to call ourselves Martians, Earthling."

He laughed. "Cool. I've never met a Martian before."

"Where is... I mean, who's taking care of you?"

"They got me in the orphan cage until my mama shows up. But I busted out."

I wasn't going to touch that. The kid, whose name turned out to be Dustin, took me to the "orphan cage." It was a large area of the lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. Inside was a lot of brightly colored plastic play equipment, castles and playhouses and the like, and the fence had been painted gay colors with childish artwork pinned to it; but it still looked like what it was: a cage for children. A few children were on swings, and some others sat around a teacher who was reading them a story, but there was not the activity you expect from kids who ranged from toddlers to a bit older than Dustin. Mostly they sat listlessly or stood at the fence watching for their parents.

"You're leaving here soon, aren't you, Mr. Martian?"

"I'm Ray. Yeah, I'll be going soon."

"You see my mama, tell her I'm here, okay'?"

"You got it." We exchanged numbers, he writing my info on a forearm already covered with notes like that. Then I shook his hand and got out of there before I lost it.

Evangeline and her father joined us at
Scrooge
as we prepared to shove off again. They were going back with us. Jim Redmond had a job, and Evangeline had school. The rest of his family were taken care of now, and would be staying to see to the remains of dead family members and await news on the missing. Jim's cousin Frank tried to prevail on him to stick around for the funerals, but Jim shook his head.

"I don't do funerals," he said. "Stopped going when I was in the Army. We'll remember them in our own way, Frank." That seemed to end it, and they all embraced, and we got on board. Travis livened it up a little by playing a tune on
Scrooge's
horn, which, believe it or not, sounded a lot like what I imagined a duck's fart would sound. Everybody laughed through the tears. Mourning would go on, but recovery had begun.

As we waddled slowly down the road nobody was talking very much, and I had a lot of time to think about what we'd just done. One thing came to mind immediately. What good had we done? Did we really have to come here?

The short answer: Yes, we did.

Not for any practical, justifiable reason. It was easy to prove that we hadn't made much of a difference to anybody.

A month ago, I would have asked Dad to explain it to me, why I felt so good having done so little, when you got right down to it. We'd risked our lives, after all, the whole family. Was that
smart
?

Maybe it wasn't smart, but that's what human beings
do
. If there's a chance, ever so small, that you can do some good for your family, you
do
it. If there's even the smallest chance that, by
not
doing something, your family will suffer, then you don't allow that chance to pass.

It may be bad logic; but if you aren't prepared to drop everything and charge into danger when your loved ones are threatened, there's something missing in you. If you don't have anybody you'd do that for, or who would do that for you, I feel sorry for you and advise you to find more friends.

It was only a short trip down the road before we saw the tiger.

He was strapped to the hood of somebody's pickup truck with a lot of bullet holes in him, his rough pink tongue lolling out of his huge mouth. Flies were swarming around his eyes. Half a dozen people were gathered around him, laughing and talking. Two children were rubbing his orange-and-black fur.

"Sucker just came walking by, calm as you please," one of the men was saying to the others. "Hardly even looked at me. Scared the hell out of me, though, I don't mind telling you."

Travis had pulled over, and I jumped down from the hood. I wasn't really aware of what I was doing. My feet seemed to be leading a life of their own.

"No zoos around here I know of," another man said. "Probably somebody's pet. You ask me, people shouldn't be allowed to keep animals like that."

I was at the tiger now. I touched its head. The men fell silent.

I have no idea where it came from, or why there or why then, but I felt it rising up in me and it was unstoppable. Everything, just everything. I began to cry.

No, let's be honest here. This wasn't just a tight throat and a few tears leaking from my eyes. This was just short of bawling out loud like a baby. It was on me in an instant, and before I knew it I was sitting on the ground. It was a sobbing, wrenching, snotty-nosed cry, more appropriate to a two-year-old than a high school senior. And I couldn't seem to stop.

Humiliating? You bet. Soon I felt a pair of arms go around me and I looked up, unable to catch my breath, expecting to see Mom. But it was Evangeline, and soon Elizabeth was on my other side. They held me until I could breathe normally, and Evangeline used her sleeve, all she had available, to wipe my face before helping me to my feet. How wonderful. No better way into a girl's affections than to snivel and whine over a dead tiger, right? I wondered if I'd ever be able to look her in the eye again.

Nobody said anything. The guys around the truck were all doing other things, careful not to look my way. It wasn't the first time they'd witnessed a meltdown like that recently, and it wouldn't be the last. Maybe some of them had even had a moment like that themselves.

I got back on the hood with my back to the rest of my family, my legs hanging over the side.

"Ready to go, Ray?" Travis asked. I nodded without turning around, Travis gave a tiny beep of the horn, and we were on our way again.

We were about five miles away from Rancho Broussard when we finally ran out of gas. Travis nursed
Scrooge
along another quarter mile, sputtering, then pulled to the side of the road and called ahead.

In a few minutes three heavy vehicles pulled up beside us and six heavily armed men got out and held the doors for us and loaded Grandma's stuff into the cargo spaces, and a few minutes after that we were driving through the gates and into a world of peace and quiet that hadn't been touched by the destroying waters.

A huge meal had been prepared, and we all sat down at the table. Some of my family dug in heartily, but I didn't have much appetite. Evangeline sat beside me, Mom on the other side, and I kept getting appraising glances from Mom when she thought I wasn't looking.

I'm okay, Mom, honest I am.

Then there was a long, hot shower, soaping and shampooing myself three times and still not feeling totally clean.

Then there was a big bed in the guest room, with clean satin sheets.

Home. Or close enough.

The next day we checked into the Swan and Dolphin at Disney Universe. The Redmond family was reunited, and of course the stories of what the brats had been doing had to be gotten out of the way before we could fill Mrs. Redmond in on
our
boring adventures. They had managed to destroy only a few odd corners of the resort, apparently. The fire crews had things in hand, the injured had been taken to hospitals, and early reports said the park might be open again in a few days.

We intended to stay there only a night or two until we could arrange a flight to the Falkland Islands to see Uncle Jubal. Usually, it's just a matter of calling him and telling him we're on the way. But for sonic reason, Jubal was not answering his phone.

The first day Travis kept getting excuses that had to do with the disaster. Distribution nodes down, lines too busy, not enough bandwidth with all the emergency channels operating. Bullshit like that. It sounded fishy to all of us, but there wasn't much we could do.

The second day I went with Elizabeth and Evangeline and the brats to a big water park and we rode the slides and surfed the waves all day. We'd explained over and over to the brats that you had to wear a bathing suit on Earth, but they kept forgetting. I spent half my time trying to locate their discarded duds.

The other half I spent admiring how good Evangeline looked in a bikini made of three scraps of orange cloth, none of which would have covered my palm. They had a great deal of trouble covering Evangeline, too, especially the top two, which had a lot to cover. The girls had bought them from a dispenser outside the changing rooms. When they came out they were giggling. I asked them what the joke was.

"Lots of flesh," Elizabeth said. "Earth girls are
fat
!"

"And I never saw so much pubic hair," Evangeline said. "Honest, three-quarters of them were bushy as..."

"Beavers?" Elizabeth said, and they collapsed laughing.

Martian girls depilate everything below the neck. The legs and underarms because that's just what girls do, and the rest because it provides a tighter seal for the sticky device that is needed for urination in a pressure suit. And it doesn't hurt so much when you rip it free.

Evangeline let me put suntan lotion on her back. I did it for Elizabeth, too, but it somehow wasn't the same. At six-two and six-one respectively, Elizabeth and Evangeline turned a lot of heads at the water park when they walked by. I tried to tell myself that I did, too, but the fact is my strength is a wiry strength, and many of the Earth boys bulged with muscles.

Okay, I'm skinny. The only interested glance I noticed was from a guy.

But it was a great day. All the blue, chlorinated water and blazing sunshine seemed to wash and burn away a lot of the memories of filth and decay and wretchedness of the last days, and the sight of all the people splashing around and having fun reminded me again that life goes on.

At times, it struck me as just plain
wrong
. But why shouldn't these people have fun? There just wasn't room for everybody in the United States to go to the Red Zone and help out. In fact, they were asking people to stay away. These people had probably planned their vacations months ago, put down deposits. The people who worked here, and in the other parks, had to make a living – and attendance was down, way down. The park wasn't crowded at all.