Long Voyage Back

  The fallout still fell. With a sense of dread and impotent anger Neil noted that every half hour enough would accumulate in areas he hadn't brushed down to be visible. He and Frank alternated doing the cleaning work, both of them getting overheated and exhausted in their stilling foul-weather gear on the increasingly hot day. His face dripping with sweat, one of them would plod over the entire length and breadth of the boat with a big plastic bucket and the long-handled brush, dipping the bucket into the bay, pouring it across a deck area, then rapidly brushing, brushing, brushing to push everything back into the water, where it sank. When finished he would stumble back to the other man, at the helm, and, without a break, the other would take up the exhausting work. At eleven-thirty Frank collapsed on the foredeck. Neil rushed forward to him and dragged him back, loosening his foul-weather gear. He hoped it was only heat exhaustion and carried Frank below where he could be undressed and cooled off. 01ly took Frank's place, wearing his own foul-weather

  clothing. Macklin was ordered to take a turn next.

  Forty minutes later Frank reappeared on deck, dressed again in full gear and ordered Neil and Macklin to go below, saying that if they rotated four men none of them would get overheated again. Olly came up again to share the topside burden. Down in the main cabin Neil was struck by the stuffy, closed heat and by the silence. Wet towels lay draped over the galley shelves where they'd been used to cool down Frank. Lisa and Skippy were squeezed into the jury-rigged `doghouse' under the dinette table, Jim seated back against the galley cabinets with a styrofoam cooler and settee cushion on his lap, Jeanne huddled beside the daggerboard well with a settee cushion covering most of her. Their efforts at protection from radiation were pitiful. Neil stripped off his foul-weather stuff and wiped himself down with one of the wet towels. Macklin crawled forward into the forepeak cabin.

  `Mommy says the rain has radioactive germs in it,' Skippy said, breaking the silence and peeking his head out of his cave. `Did you see them?'

  Òne or two,' Neil answered. 'I kicked them overboard.' `Mommy says you're washing them overboard,' Skippy corrected.

  `She's right.'

  Lisa also peered out. 'Is it still falling?' she asked.

  À little bit probably,' Neil answered. Tut we're keeping the boat so clean you can't tell.'

  He knew better, of course. The stuff was still falling, although even Neil thought at a slightly slower rate, and though they were a lot better off here than on land, they were still being exposed, especially those who had to work on deck. Jeanne crawled out from her hideaway.

  `You should get under the crossbeam,' she said. 'You've been exposed already much more than we have.'

  He glanced at the space, then at her. He wanted to lie down and wanted to feel better protected.

  `Can we both squeeze in there?' he asked, frowning. `No,' she said. 'But you go ahead.'

  He hesitated, but the thought of being able to lie down won out over gallantry; he realized how exhausted he must be. He stepped over Jim's legs, held Jeanne briefly as he passed her and then crawled into her space. She covered him with her cushion and sat down beside Jim. Vagabond sailed on. Below, no one spoke.

  It was at about two o'clock, having sailed twenty-four miles down the Bay and to within forty miles of Norfolk that they came upon the floating hulk of a charter fishing vessel and its survivors. There had been no measurable fallout since Neil had gone below about an hour and a half before, so Frank had let 01ly remain on duty with him rather than bring Neil up again. But when he saw the derelict he called down for Neil. Frank had altered course when he saw the survivors waving -frantically at him and with a gloomy, doomed expression he now ordered Neil and Olly to prepare to pick them up. The hulk lay low in the water, its aft deck crowded with fifteen to twenty people - men, women, and children - a seemingly random collection of those who had escaped the disasters of somewhere to motor into the disaster of the explosion over Norfolk. A large man with a blond beard emerged from the crowd to stand on the cabin roof and shout that they'd been swamped by a tidal wave, and, with flooded batteries, were helpless. The two vessels rolled and pitched awkwardly in the swells, and when at last rafted side by side, their decks sometimes slammed together with a sickening crunch. Frank surveyed the packed near side of the-yacht, the dazed and anxious faces, all looking exhausted, many sick, some people with burned faces and singed hair, two or three women holding children, men elbowing their way in front of them, and he felt the same sense of despair he'd felt when Neil showed him the ash on the deck: he was trapped and being overwhelmed.

  `We're headed out into the Atlantic,' he shouted to those crowding together to board Vagabond. 'We can put you ashore at Cape Henry or take you to sea.'

  Frank saw that most of the fatigued and frightened faces looked at him without comprehension. A ship had come to rescue them; if he'd announced he was sailing to Hell they still would have boarded.

  `Bring all your food!' Neil shouted, but no one seemed to pay attention. The men began to clamber over Vagabond's coaming like pirates boarding a ship they planned to plunder. Jim and Neil alone tried to help the women and children and two elderly men dressed only in bathrobes; most of the young male refugees seemed more concerned with their suitcases or knapsacks.

  A scream broke from the confusion and a pale young blonde woman was soon led sobbing into the wheelhouse, her right hand bloody, apparently crushed between the two boats. Neil called down to Jeanne and told her to get Macklin and the ship's first aid kit, and he had the woman seated on a wheelhouse settee. Between sobs the woman kept calling for her cat and seemed as disturbed by its not being present as by her mangled fingers.

  The big man with the bushy beard was the only man helping people to escape from the foundering Fishkiller, and when Frank yelled again to bring all their food and water he ducked down into the ship's cabin and soon began passing cartons of food across to Jim. A strange dog snarled at Jeanne when she brought up the first aid kit and Neil had an impulse to throw the stupid beast into the sea. Macklin followed, wearing a raincoat. Neil could hear someone retching loudly off the aft deck and smelled vomit. As Macklin bent to examine the woman's hand, two men

  began scuffling behind him and one fell against Neil, knocking him into the seated woman, who screamed in pain. The two men, arms around each other in a violent wrestle for control of some object, reeled against a young couple and child seated on the opposite settee and then bounced off them on to the wheelhouse floor. Macklin jumped up quickly and grabbed them both by their hair, and, yanking, shouted at them to let go.

  In another half minute he and Neil had them separated and quiet. It took almost fifteen minutes before the sixteen survivors and skimpy food supplies of Fishkiller had been transferred to Vagabond. At last the two ships separated, Vagabond's genoa ballooning out to port with a flutter and a loud pop, and the derelict wallowing in the swells behind her.

  The new passengers were scattered in listless confusion over the two cockpits, wheelhouse and main cabin. Dressed in suits, slacks, jeans, bathrobes, and bathing suits were two elderly men, five women, three children, one of them an infant, and six ablebodied men. Neil was aware of at least one dog and cat aboard, but in the chaos it seemed like a dozen. Suitcases, knapsacks, and shopping bags were also scattered about. After Vagabond had been sailing on southwards towards the mouth of the Chesapeake for several minutes, the big man with the beard who seemed to have been their leader came up to Frank, who was at the helm. He had removed his foul-weather jacket and boots but still wore the red plastic trousers.

  `My name's Tony Mariano,' he announced loudly. 'Where the hell are you heading?' He was dressed in blue jeans and a silk shirt and fancy leather loafers. He was a powerfully built man in his late twenties and he loomed at least a couple of inches over Frank.

  `We're headed out to sea,' Frank replied.

  `You're not taking us past Norfolk, are you?' the man persisted. 'That's right into the fallout.'

  `That's our plan,' Frank repli
ed uncertainly.

  As he watched Macklin work on the woman's crushed fingers Neil was aware that two couples in the wheelhouse were listening intently to the conversation; even the woman he was treating seemed to forget her pain for the moment.

  `The law of the sea,' Frank went on in a tense voice to Tony, 'says that anyone rescuing shipwrecked survivors can either continue on to his scheduled next port, or land them at the nearest point they find convenient. We . .

  Ì don't give a fuck about the laws of the sea,' Tony broke in. 'We're not sailing into a rain of death.'

  `That's right,' another man said, coming up to the wheel. `Some of us are sick already. We can't take any more radioactivity.' A teenage boy, an older man and two women now gathered near Frank too. Neil moved towards Frank, feeling a rising anger.

  `What's going on?' another man asked, pushing his way past Neil.

  `This man is taking us south back into the fallout,' Tony answered loudly. Ìf you like . . .' Frank began.

  Ì thought we were going north,' the new man said.

  Ì did too,' the elderly man said. 'Away from the explosion.' Several additional voices made noises indicating that they

  agreed. Neil felt a wave of blind rage surge through him. Frank stood frowning.

  `But in the north too . . .' he began again.

  `Who owns this boat anyway?' Tony asked, looking around aggressively as if someone were trying to put something over on him.

  Ì do,' Frank replied. 'And I I. .

  `Well, get us turned around before it's too late.'

  A chorus of 'yeahs' resounded after Tony's remark.

  Neil slid away from the crowd and found 01ly organizing the suitcases and knapsacks in the port cockpit.

  `Go get the .38 hidden in my aft cabin,' he whispered to

  him, 'and be ready to back me up. Tell Jim to get the 22.'

  01ly nodded solemnly, and when he had left to-go aft Neil descended into the main cabin. Two strange women and three children were seated at the dinette and Jeanne and Lisa seemed to be waiting on them. Jeanne looked up intently at him as he entered. '

  What's happening now?' she asked anxiously.

  `Chaos,' Neil answered. He walked past her and took from its hiding place behind a short shelf of books Macklin's .45. After checking the chamber he returned up into 'the wheelhouse.

  Ì think we'd better head east, Neil,' Frank said to him nervously as he emerged and went to the entrance of the port cockpit. 'These people think that . . Neil's gun exploded once with a deafening bang. All conversation ceased. He shoved the person nearest him and the others backed away too. Everyone in the wheelhouse and cockpits stared at Neil, who stood for a moment in the centre of the crowd holding the . 45 with its barrel just a few inches below his chin - where everyone could see it He was feeling a strange mixture of desperation, fury, and determination. With his yellow foulweather gear he appeared, among the newcomers, strangely out of place. Àll right,' he began in a loud, tense voice. 'I want you all to listen and I want you to get it.

  `We're in a war and I'm your commanding officer. I expect everyone here to obey me as if I were God incarnate, without hesitation and without question. I've commanded regular Navy ships ten times this size and been sailing boats like this for ten years. If anyone else aboard feels he's better qualified he'd better speak now.'

  There was a silence, and when Neil felt some people begin to stir restlessly he plunged on.

  `Good,' he went on, still loudly. 'Frank Stoor, here beside me, who owns this boat, is First Mate. You treat him as you would me. Captain 01ly, the old fellow standing over there, is Second Mate. And Jim at the helm now, is Third Mate. They are the ship's officers and their word is law. If anyone wilfully disobeys any of our commands I will personally throw him overboard. Do YOU GET IT?'

  No one spoke. Most of them were falling back into that listlessness they'd had before Tony stirred them up.

  `Good,' said Neil after a pause, aware now of the sweat dripping down his face, of Frank staring at him uncertainly, of Tony looking at him with a mixture of fear and resentment. Às captain I'm announcing that our course is through the fallout area around Norfolk and out into the Atlantic.'

  A few groans greeted this statement but Neil cut them off immediately ,

  `SHUT UP!' he shouted. 'We're heading south until I feel it's safe to make a landfall. You may feel that we ought to have a democratic discussion of what we ought to do. I don't give a shit how you feel. If you don't like this policy I'll give you a life jacket and you can go in a different direction. You may decide later out in the Atlantic that you wish you'd never left land. Bitch among yourselves all you'd like, but obey.'

  `But what if . . .' someone began.

  Ànyone who wilfully disobeys one of my commands will be thrown overboard.'

  When Neil paused again no one spoke. 'You're beginning to understand,' Neil went on more quietly. 'Now for some commands. First of all I want all weapons - guns and knives with a blade longer than two inches - turned in to the ship's officers immediately. These weapons will be returned to you when we part company. Anyone found with a weapon on his person or in his luggage ten minutes from now . . . will be thrown overboard.'

  Silence.

  `Secondly, I want this area around the wheel and around the winches kept clear. When an officer orders you to go sit some place on the boat you go sit there and don't move without permission. Consider where he puts you to be your battle station.

  `Thirdly, anyone who.brought a stash of food aboard with them shall immediately contribute all of it to our ship's store. If you leave soon it will be returned to you. We are sharing our ship, our weapons, our water, our food and our skills with you, and we expect you to do the same with us. Anyone caught hoarding a private stash of food or eating or permitting his or her children to eat any of the ship's food not rationed out to them will be thrown overboard.'

  Again Neil paused, aware of Jim watching.

  `What if we have to go to the bathroom?' a woman asked in a frightened voice. Ìf a man has to piss he goes to the leeward side of the boat and pisses into the bay,' Neil replied with the same tense voice. 'If you don't know which side of the boat that is ask an officer. Knowing which side of a boat to piss off is what has made him an officer.' 01ly chuckled, but the others were too frightened or awed to respond.

  `Ladies will piss in buckets provided in the side cabins. A mate will see to it that the contents are tossed overboard.' Àren't there marine toilets?' someone asked.

  `Yes, there are. But the animal species capable of landing men on the moon and blowing the world apart has not yet developed a marine toilet that doesn't clog if you stare at it too long. While we're so crowded and while we have more important things on our minds, we won't use them.'

  This time when he hesitated Neil felt that he was being understood. Ì sound harsh,' he continued. 'I intend to be harsh. I intend this ship and those remaining aboard it to survive. My experience has been that in life and death situations the traditional Navy way of doing things is the only one that works. This policy is not open to discussion. Are there any questions?'

  The silence aboard Vagabond as she sailed serenely down the Chesapeake in the direction most people thought they

  didn't want to go was uncanny. NG one spoke. Most of those he looked at, Neil noted, looked simply numb.

  `What if we have to vomit?' an elderly man finally asked.

  Ìf you feel'seasick go to the leeward cockpit and lean over the coaming. Vomit to leeward.' Neil paused. 'Anyone caught vomiting to windward will be . . . thrown overboard. Anyone vomiting to windward will be so covered with vomit, he'll probably be happy to be thrown overboard.'

  A few nervous giggles.

  Àll right,' Neil concluded. 'All weapons and food to the ship's officers. Anyone attempting to resist these commands will be shot. 01ly, Frank, get the weapons first . .

  `Jesus, Neil,' Frank said a half hour later when Vagabond was as calm and orderly as a concentration
camp. 'Don't you think you were a little hard on them?'

  `No,' Neil replied. 'Absolutely not. We're all trying to survive. Everyone on this boat, everyone, will lie, steal, cheat, and kill in order to survive. That speech served one purpose: to let their survival instinct know that the first thing it has to consider is me, and what serves the survival of this ship.'

  Ìt was nice of you to let me be First Mate on my own boat.'

  Neil looked at Frank with total seriousness. 'It wasn't nice,' he said. 'You deserve it.'

  Frank stared at him. 'You bastard.'

  `You'd better believe it,' Neil said coldly. 'When I said everyone obeys my commands I meant everyone.'

  Ì see.'

  Ì hope so.'

  21

  At seven that evening Neil had them anchored off the coast near Cape Charles and began ferrying refugees into the beach with the inflatable. Neil had repeated to them his intention of continuing south, passing within fifteen miles of Norfolk before making it out into the Atlantic where they would remain until fallout conditions and radio reports indicated they dare return to the US coast. Three people asked to remain on Vagabond, one the man who had started all the fuss in the first place, Tony Mariano; the second a woman named Elaine with a small child; and the third a middle-aged college professor named Seth Sperling.

  Although Neil had the .45 tucked into his belt and had armed both Frank and Jim for the evacuation and the redistribution of food and weapons, the event proceeded more smoothly than had the boarding five hours earlier. Even Conrad Macklin went meekly when Neil, after consulting with Frank, ordered him off with the very first group. As he helped people down into the dinghy Frank became aware that some of those leaving were now fearful that they were choosing wrong and wanted to remain, but when an elderly man hesitated and was clearly intending to ask to come back aboard, Frank brusquely ordered Jim to take the last group ashore and cast off the dinghy's painter. The beach was only fifty feet away from the anchored Vagabond, and so ten minutes after the last trip ashore Vagabond's inflatable had been pulled back up on deck and stored and the ship was underway again.