The Boat (29 page)

“Want help carrying them below?” Maggie asked as Candy tucked everything into the basket.

“No, I’ve got it. Besides, I guess you and Steve better get going. There are only a few things left to see to over here and I can take care of them. Then we can head south.” She put her hand on her hips. “I guess that raft is long gone.”

“Brian and I couldn’t find a trace of it anywhere,” Steve said, slightly irritated. He didn’t know why Candy couldn’t get off the topic of the raft. It’s not as though they’d need it, they still had the rowboat if there was trouble. “Storm took it away would be my guess. It was pretty light, you know. Just a rubber life raft.”

“How is Brian doing?” Maggie asked, remembering that Steve had talked to him earlier today.

“He’s good; he likes being on
Big Daddy
. Although he did say he hopes we run across some girls his age at some point.”

“I think he’ll get his wish as we move south. We’ve seen a few boats heading that direction.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, he’ll find a girlfriend. Get a boat of his own, someday.” He was staring moodily at
Flyboy
and Maggie wondered if a goose had run over his grave. He seemed a little down all of a sudden.

She also wondered at ‘a boat of his own, someday’. Is that the way it was going to be? Had it become a seafaring world? What about food? Crops? Things like that? Canned goods wouldn’t last forever and forays onto land would only get more dangerous as they cleared the shorelines and had to travel further in.

She shook her head. She wouldn’t think about it, now. Wouldn’t worry about it. She sloshed a gas can, listening to the contents. It was wasteful, what they were about to do. But it needed to be done.

It was the only decent thing to do.

Just like when they’d wrapped Bonnie and Randy in clean white sheets before sliding them into the water of the bay from the big rowboat. Steve had said a few words, officiating because Maggie had been too close to tears. Candy and Dr. Rafiq had not come along, electing instead to stay on ThreeBees. They hadn’t known Bonnie and Randy, really.

Maggie followed Steve’s gaze to
Flyboy
. Even thought the day was clear and bright, a pall seemed to hang over the formerly beautiful super yacht. She knew it was a figment of her own mind brought on by knowing the contents of the boat, but still…she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was haunted.

Maybe it is though, in a way, she thought. The ghosts on
Flyboy
are just slightly more substantial than the accepted definition of a spirit…in body, anyway. In mind, the sinkers are even
less
substantial than their ethereal counterparts. The walking dead seemed to have very little thinking brain and possibly nothing left in the way of souls. Maybe that soulessness contributed to the sinking.

Maggie hated the idea of someone coming across
Flyboy
, maybe at night when she was shrouded in fog, beckoning with her long, elegant white body.  They would go aboard and step into a nightmare they most likely hadn’t experienced since their own tragic story occurred back in June; back when everyone’s story had suddenly turned tragic.

And Carl, most of all. That hurt Maggie to think about. For she knew he must still be tethered on that deck, being slowly picked apart by seagulls. Straining against his chain as he struggled to catch one of the coldly intelligent birds.

Fire. Fire would put an end to all of it: the enticement to go aboard, and all the sinkers…Jade, Carl, even Adam…no one deserved that soulless life of hungry shuffling. No one deserved that as their ongoing epitaph.

There were only two jet skis tied up at the back of ThreeBees now that they were getting ready to move. They were the big ones, though. Candy was also teaching Samantha how to drive one.

Steve and Maggie got on one together.

“Big waste of diesel. We might end up regretting it,” Steve said and Maggie grabbed him around the middle and rested her face on his back.

“We’ll get a boat with sails, how’s that sound to you?” she said and squeezed again.

He marveled that she was still one step ahead of him. Then he became distracted by her arms, by the hug. It felt so good to be hugged by someone so warm.

He turned in the seat and she sat up, looking at him expectantly. She was smiling, but it was tinged with sadness for what they were about to do. He planted a kiss on her forehead and one on her nose.

“Ready?” he asked and she nodded.

He keyed the jet ski to life and they drove toward
Flyboy
, gas cans tied to either side of the jet. It was enough to get the boat started.

Then she’d burn.

All on her own.

Epilogue

A beautiful sailboat called
SillySally
sat idly at anchor, four people playing cards on her deck as twilight set in. They were on their way south from Maine and had been going slowly, trying as much as possible to enjoy the trip.

The days before had been hard ones. For everyone. Now they were trying to heal as much as they could.

Adelaide Wilds put down her cards with a sigh. “I fold. You guys are too sharp for me.” She smiled. She was pretty with long brown hair and dark brown eyes to match. She had a wholesome, girl-next-door look and a down-to-earth personality to match it.

“It’s not your turn. Can’t you just wait till your turn?” her sister, Camille, said with irritation. At twenty four, Camille was older than Adelaide by three years.

Adelaide stuck her tongue out at Camille and she rolled her eyes.

“Ladies,” Tuck said, mildly, looking over his bifocals. At sixty seven, he was the patriarch of their group. He enjoyed the sisters’ shenanigans more than he let on. They reminded him of his own sprawling clan of six kids. All of whom he missed every second of every day.

“Tuck, can I quit, too? This game is so
boring
.” Johnny rolled his eyes and slumped his shoulders as though the game were, quite literally, killing him. The cards had magically become grubby in his twelve-year-old’s hands. Tuck took a second to marvel at a male child’s ability to soil anything he touched.

Tuck sighed heavily and shook his head. “No. You’ll have to see it through. You have to finish what you start.”

Johnny rolled his eyes again, but settled more solidly in his chair. He loved Tuck, would do anything Tuck said to do. Being around him helped him feel like he didn’t miss his parents as bad. Although he still dreamt about them, sometimes it seemed like every night. A lot of the dreams were good, but even the good ones were still bad to wake up from…because it was like he had to remember over and over that they were…that they’d been…

He shook his head and sat straighter, focusing on the cards in his hand. He sniffed, trying to do it quietly. Adelaide gave his shin a light kick under the table and he looked up, smiling. She winked. He liked Adelaide a lot, too. She was really pretty. She was too old to be his girlfriend, he’d decided a month ago. But he did still really like her, anyway.

Adelaide went to the rail to look at the sunset. She thought she could see a big ship, south of them, way down the coast. But it looked odd, almost skeletal. She shivered. Maybe she’d go below and grab a sweater. Tonight, you could almost feel that September was already more than half over. She turned, going to the deck stairs that would take her below when movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned to look.

A yellow life raft floated peacefully, a hundred feet or so from the back of
SillySally
. In the fading light, she saw that a young man lay in it.

His leg moved.

“Oh my gosh!” she said, her hands flying up in alarm. She turned back to the card players. “You guys! There’s someone out there!”

Lying on his back in the bottom of the life raft, John Smith heard the girl’s alarmed cry.

He opened his eyes.

The End

The following is the beginning of
Born Lucky, The JD Chronicles, Adventures of a Reluctant Psychic

Available now.

Born Lucky

The JD Chronicles

By Christine Dougherty

www.christinedoughertybooks.com

Copyright © 2011 by Christine Dougherty

All Rights Reserved

Prologue

July 2010, The Pine Barrens, South Jersey

Gater Aronson brought the Ford pick-up to a rocking stop, tires sliding in the sand. The twin cones of the headlights picked out the twisted, light gray branches of wild blueberry bushes and the brown-black patched bark on the pines. Everything looked flat in the glare, like stage scenery. Just beyond where the headlights reached, shadows jumped in time with the lightly bouncing truck. A smoky cloud curled up before the headlights like gritty fog.

Gater was used to the dark woods at night, but he had an uneasy thought: why had he driven them
so
far back? They could have stopped a mile out from the main road just as easily as…what? four or five miles? more? How long had he been driving before he came across this little clearing? He found he couldn’t really judge the distance; hadn’t been paying enough attention. The seatbelt cutting across Mindy’s boobs–making them look enormous–had distracted him.

Now he dialed up 93.3 on the radio, trying to chase out the willies. Blondie was singing about how the tide was high but she was holdin’ on; wanting to be his number one. WMMR broadcast out of Philly so it was faint, fading in and out with an occasional burst of static as the radio waves traversed the twenty or so miles of pines between here and the city, but it was passable as long as he kept the volume turned low.

Mindy Gerber slipped out of her seatbelt and scooted down till her tailbone rested at the edge of the seat. She popped her flip-flopped feet up on the glove box. Then she crossed her arms.

“I’m not makin’ out with you, Gater. You can just forget about that,” she said. Her voice was tight, just shy of anger. Gater noted the ripple of unease that shook the last word, making it higher-pitched than the rest.

“Aw, come on, what are you scared of? Ain’t nothin’ out here gonna get you. I’ll leave the headlights on, how ’bout that?” He stretched his arm out across the back of the bench seat, his hand just brushing Mindy’s fluffy blonde hair where it had rucked up behind her head. He took in her pink-painted toenails, round calves, and smooth, suntanned thighs. Her jean shorts were short-short and her pink cotton underwear were peeking out under the curve of her buttocks. Her white blouse was a sleeveless middy, with a wide band of elastic tight to her trim little waist and the first three buttons unbuttoned, giving him an enticing view of the tops of her breasts.

Gater studied her like an engineer eyeballing a complicated run of pipes over a header. He can’t figure how to get his arm around her. Her shoulders are too far down. Frustrating.

“Come on now, Mindy, take a look around. It’s just the woods. Nobody here but us,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her comically.

Mindy sat up, bouncing on the seat, her mouth a tight pout. “It’s super trashy to make out in the woods. And in a pick-up truck! That’s even trashier, Gater. You think I’m a hick, is that it?”

Gater moaned and tilted his head back against the seat. “Jesus jumped up, Mindy, you know I don’t think you’re a hick. Where do you want to make out, huh? At DeAngelo’s like the eighth graders? We’re in high school. We’re seniors, just about; we can’t be sitting there in a booth with slices in front of us swappin’ spit while Tony pulls his pud behind the counter.”

“Gater!” she said, bouncing again and reaching across to slap his arm. “That is disgusting!” But she is on the verge of laughing, too; he sees it and his grin widens. Everyone knows old Anthony DeAngelo is a pervert. And his pizza sucks, to boot, but there isn’t a lot to choose from out in the boonies.

“You know what Mary told me?” Mindy said, “She heard he sneaks up into the drop ceiling and stares down the girls’ blouses!”

“Which Mary? Grungo or Russo? ’Cause I can’t see anyone going to any special effort to see down Mary’s shirt.”

Mindy slapped Gater’s arm again, and he was gratified to see her breasts jiggle in the opening of her blouse.

“You stop that, she’s my friend!” Mindy said. Then she leaned toward him, her hands on the seat in front of her. A slow smile was sliding across her glittery pink lips as her breasts were pushed together in the tight V of her arms. Gater was mesmerized. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Know what else she said? She said that he–”

The truck bounced roughly, the cab tilting back and up. As though someone had decided to jump on the back bumper.

Mindy let out a breathy little scream and Gater was glad she did because he figured (hoped) it covered the yelp that had jumped unbidden from his own throat.

“Oh, my Jesus, Gater,” Mindy said, her voice a babble of rambling syllables. “I told you I hate these damn woods at night, what was that, is someone–”

Gater got himself together and put his hand over Mindy’s mouth while flicking the radio knob down and dousing his headlights. “Shhh,” he said, leaning low and pulling her down with him. Her lips were still moving under his hand, hot and sticky, and he felt himself getting hard, but he willed it away.
Don’t want to get boner if we’re about to get shot by some dipshit cranberry farmer
, he thought, and laughed nervously.

“What the hell is so funny?” Mindy asked in a furious whisper, pulling his hand away from her mouth.

“Aw, nothin’. Now just be quiet a sec and let me listen.”

They both listened.

Gater heard nothing but the wind in the very tops of the pines, sighing. No crickets, no spring frogs, no cicadas. Weird. He opened his mouth to tell Mindy that everything was fine when the truck bounced again. Violently. The springs screeched and whoinged with the up and down movement. Gater reached to steady himself, his hand hitting the radio knob, and a burst of static blared through the cab of the truck. He hurriedly cranked the knob to off.