The Boat (16 page)

“Well, congratulations, man. Lucky you. Candy is hot, man, a hot little mama…maybe we should all have some candy, huh?” Adam’s gaze held a challenge that Sami couldn’t face…he dropped his eyes. “Hey, I’m just kidding. That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

Sami smiled, relieved but still uncertain.

“She’s down in the crew quarters, right?” Adam had an exaggerated ‘trying to recall’ look on his face. Sami nodded and unease snaked delicately into his stomach. “Well, it’s gonna be tight for you guys down there, but I’m sure you can work something out, right?” Adam’s grin stretched across his face like a cold meat zipper.

Sami opened his mouth to protest but Adam stood abruptly, cutting him off. “John, come with me, would you?”

John stood quickly, but then staggered, his hand going to his head.

Adam reached out to steady him and John gave Adam another look of grateful love. “Sorry, I guess I’m…still a little shaky. My head, you know?”

“I’m going to put you in Sami’s old room. He won’t need it and I’m sure you could use the space to recover. You don’t mind, do you, Sami? Now that you have Candy to bunk with.”

Adam helped John out and Sami stood for a second, shocked, then hurried after them.

They got to Sami’s room and Adam went in without knocking. Sami squeaked out a protest, but it was too late–Adam and John were in the room.

Sami closed his eyes and leaned against the wall in the tight corridor, waiting for Candy’s scream of outrage. But nothing came. He heard the whump as a body fell into the bed. Still nothing.

Sami put his head in the room. John was on the bed and Adam stood over him, his expression almost parental.

No Candy. Sami was confused. When he’d left her fifteen minutes before, she’d been sound asleep.

“Ssst.”

Sami jumped, startled, and looked at Adam in confusion, but Adam hadn’t made the noise.

“Ssssst!”

It was coming from back the way they’d just come, down the corridor. Candy. It had to be.

Sami and Adam exited the room, Adam heading further down the corridor to the last room, his…the biggest below-deck stateroom. Sami hurried back down the corridor in the other direction.

Candy was at the juncture where you could go up to the bridge, down to the crew’s quarters, or into the galley and from there into the salon. She smiled at him.

Sami didn’t know what to say. He was ashamed of himself and also confused as to her actions…her foresight.

“We’re out, right?” she asked.

Sami nodded, his face clouding but she smiled wider. “Why are you smiling? Now we won’t know where to go to be together. Candy, all the rooms are full.”

“I’m smiling because you’ve been kicked to the curb, Sami! I’m so happy!”

She threw her arms around him. He didn’t understand, not yet, but he would. He would see that it was better to be on your own and to fend for yourself. No amount of favor made up for allowing yourself to be treated like an unloved dog.

She took his hand. “Come on. Let’s go see what we can get worked out.”

On their way through the galley, they came across Carl sitting by himself. He had a gas lantern lit on the table in front of him and he was making notes in a tiny notebook. He glanced up as they entered. In a wink he had assessed their held hands and expressions.

“You guys going out?”

Candy laughed and Sami blushed.

“Hi, Carl, yeah, I guess you could say that,” Candy said and squeezed Sami’s hand. “Why are you here so late? Shouldn’t you be headed back to
Big Daddy
?”

“Yeah, I should have been, but I got carried away with my note-taking. I’m leaving in a few minutes.” He stretched, his hands at his lower back, then he rummaged through his beard, scratching reflexively. “What are you guys up to? Heading to bed?”

Candy shook her head. “We haven’t actually worked that out yet. My old room already had four in it and Sami’s room just got…taken over.” Carl noticed the hesitation, but let it pass. He was worn out and too tired to
look
for problems when there were enough obvious ones so readily available.

“You should go to ThreeBees. They have room over there,” Carl said. He stowed his notebook in an inside pocket of his light vest.

“You think they’d have us?” Candy asked.

“Sure. More the merrier. I guess you heard they’ve had a good deal of trouble over there in the last couple’a days.” Then he remembered Jade. And he remembered that it was…not a
secret
, exactly…but certainly private. But Sami and Candy struck him as good people, really good. He liked Candy, especially. In his professional opinion, she was very healthy. He glanced around the galley, making sure there was no one to overhear. “You might want to wait a few days, though…”

He told them about Singer being bit and getting the sickness and that now they thought Jade might have it, too, and that they were watching, waiting.

None of them saw the shadow that lurked in the back doorway.

John Smith listened to every word Carl said.

Chapter Ten

Steve watched as a jet ski whined its way from
Flyboy
to
Big Daddy
. It was late for someone to be out, but the moon was bright enough to navigate by. It was probably Carl. Steve wondered if he’d come up with anything on that John Smith guy.

He settled back in the chair, the gun across his lap. He was getting tired. He’d have to get Brian up soon to spell him. But he didn’t entirely trust that Brian would stay awake. That kid was almost as close to catatonic as Jade had been.

When they’d told him what had happened to Singer and why they’d had to put Jade back out on the boat, he had nodded in a resolute, almost unconcerned way. He’d sat with them for an hour but didn’t speak, other than to say he thought he needed a little more sleep before stumbling back into the salon.

Steve wonders how long it will be, if ever, before anyone feels ‘normal’. As long as you kept your head down and slogged through minute by minute, it seemed you could go on forever in this half-alive way. It was when you were brought up short by strong emotion–anger, fear, joy–that you had trouble reconciling the world as it is now.

Distantly, a dog barked. Steve reached down and grabbed binoculars. They have seen dogs at the shoreline on a few occasions, but once a dog starts barking…it didn’t usually end well for it.

He scanned the beach, left to right, looking for movement and then saw it–a big dog, lab or something like it, racing across the beach. It stopped and turned, barking, then turned again to flee. Five of the dead are following; an entire contingent can’t be far behind.

He wished they could do something to save the dog. Dogs were good animals to have, good companions, happy and uncomplicated. A dog in the post-apocalyptic world would be pretty much the same as a dog pre-apocalypse. Unless it had gone feral.

He lost sight of the running lab when it dodged inland and bolted for the woods. He lowered the binoculars.

“Were you looking at Jade?”

Maggie’s voice was edged with strain. Steve turned in the chair and was troubled by her pallor and thinness; she glowed like a ghost on the dark deck. She wasn’t doing enough to take care of herself. As much as she tried to act as though she could take or leave the people on ThreeBees, he knew that Maggie was damn close to saintly in how well she took care of them. She never put herself first. But you’d never get her to admit it.

“No,” he said. “There was another dog.”

Maggie’s eyes searched the shoreline as if she’d be able to see the dog from here. Her hands twisted together. “Did it get away?”

“As far as I could tell,” he said, erring on the side of kindness. “I didn’t see any of those…those things get him, anyway.”

She continued to stare into the dark distance, but her eyes had become unfocused. “I wish we had a dog,” she said and her voice was so wistfully sad, her wish so childlike, that Steve’s throat tightened.

He stood and drew her to him.

She remained rigid, her arms across her body between them. But Steve didn’t pull back and eventually she unclenched her hands and her arms dropped to her sides. Her body gave a violent shudder, then another…and she burst into tears.

He held her as she sobbed and her arms came up to his waist and she clung to him and turned her face into his chest. She shook against him, her grief almost violent.

He thought about Amelia as he stared at the dark shore. The woods beyond where he’d left her to rot. He felt his own tears, first hot and then cold, slide down his face. Guilt and shame ran through him like lava, heating him up and tearing down his defenses. His arms tightened on Maggie, startling her.

His tears stopped her own and she led him to the deck bench, clumsily stumbling in their embrace. His arms never left her as they sat, but now his head went to her shoulder. A hard twist of grief and guilt seemed to pull his stomach up to the base of his throat and he choked on his words. “I…I left her…I left her to…in the woods, and…she was so, she just…didn’t deserve it, and…”

“None of us deserved any of this…it’s okay, it’s going to be all right…”

“It’s not…not all right…I left her and she was still…she was moving and…oh god, Maggie, oh god help me, I left her there…and her head was…it was turned…around and…”

His words dissolved into shuddering tears.

She lifted his face to hers, his tears running hotly over her thumbs.

“You’re right, it’s not okay…none of this is okay. Amelia didn’t deserve what happened to her, you’re right. My husband, Joe…I don’t even
know
what happened to him. I
think
I know, but…” She shook her head. “But I do know. If he was on the train, then, I do know. He’s probably still on that train.” She sighed and dropped her hands into her lap. She looked past Steve, out over the water. It was moonlit and peaceful. She sighed again. “We don’t deserve this, but this is what we have. It’s better than the alternative…did you ever hear anyone say that? When they were talking about being in a bad situation? I think it’s truer now than ever before. Because the alternative is…” She trailed off.

Steve wiped his face on his sleeve and watched her, the way the light lined the bridge of her nose, and dropped a kiss onto her forehead. Her eyes were dark and inner-directed.

“Maggie,” he said and she looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what you went through.”

She shook her head, confused. “You don’t have to say that, we all–”

He leaned over and kissed the words away. Her mouth under his was at first startled and unresponsive. He persisted, drawing his hand up her arm and cupping her head gently at the base of her skull. He pressed his mouth to hers, parting her lips with his. The inside of her mouth was hot and then her lips softened, returned the kiss.

“Here?” he said and ran his hands through her hair, drawing her head back to kiss her throat. “Okay? Are you okay? Is this good?” He murmured and whispered his way down her throat, his hands undoing the buttons of her blouse as she drew his shirt up and over his head.

“Yes,” she said, her breath a drawn-out sigh. “Please…please. I want…”

They made love under the moon and the stars, the boat rocking gently. The sex was quiet, but desperately intense, and for a brief moment they forgot the circumstances that had brought them here.

Neither of them saw when Jade sat up in the rowboat.

~ ~ ~

“Maggie, this is Candy on
Flyboy
. You there? Over.”

Maggie looked at the walkie-talkie on the table in front of her. She had told Steve she was going in to get water, but then she’d lit a lantern and sat down in the galley to think. She was already feeling guilty over what she and Steve had done together.

A large part of the guilt came from the fact that she didn’t feel
bad
; she didn’t
regret
it. She should…but she just didn’t.

She reached for the walkie.

“Hi, Candy, this is Maggie. Over.” She remembered Candy…blonde, bimbette-type, but there had been something to her, Maggie had surmised. Something that most people would miss.

“I’m sorry it’s so late. I wanted to see if you had an extra bed over there on ThreeBees. An extra room, actually. Over.”

Maggie looked at the walkie in her hand, her face a study in confusion. No one had ever requested to change from the huge, gorgeous
Flyboy
to the dumpy by comparison
Barbra’s Bay Breeze
.

“Did I lose you, Maggie? Over.”

“No, sorry, I’m right here. Listen, Candy, I’m not sure if…if we have a room or not. It’s hard to explain. Over.” What she meant was that she didn’t want to explain, not on an open line. She hoped Candy understood the subtext. Then Candy confirmed Maggie’s suspicion of a brain hiding under that cotton candy exterior.

“Loud and clear. Can we drop by tomorrow? After it’s light out? We could talk. Over.”

“Yes, of course. We’ll see you tomorrow. Over and out.” Maggie set down the walkie-talkie wondering who Candy meant by ‘we’ and also why she wanted a whole room.
I guess she hooked up with someone
, Maggie thought.
Good for her
.

“Seems so late for a call. I guess you could call it a call, right?” Bonnie crossed to the small pantry and took out a bottle of water with her initials on it. Everything was divvied, although they hadn’t paid too much attention to the rationing. Not yet, anyway…not as much as they were going to have to.

“I guess you could,” Maggie said. “But it’s hardly late. What is it? Nine? Nine-thirty?”

“That feels about right,” Bonnie said and sat across from Maggie in the banquette. “Nine used to be my bedtime, so it does still seem late to me.” She smiled. “What time did you used to go to bed? Before?”

“All different times. It depended on the shifts I was working at the hospital.” Maggie smiled at her hands. “My husband always went to bed at ten o’clock on the nose. He said he wanted to make sure he missed the news.”

Bonnie smiled and then laughed. “‘Miss the news’. That’s a good one. He was funny, your husband?”