Long Voyage Back

  When she entered the village of Point Lookout it too was dark. By the time she arrived at the waterfront it was a little after eleven. The only lights were from the cars and the glow to the northwest. She drove past a place called 'Kelly's Marina', but turned in when she saw a sign saying `Municipal Marina'.

  The parking lot was not crowded, and she chose a spot at the end next to a small saltwater creek and parked. For a moment she sat there staring down at the barely visible black flowing waters of the creek and ignoring Lisa's question of 'What are we going to do now?' Then, after watching someone running through the yard carrying a kerosene lantern, she turned to her daughter.

  Ì want you to stay here with Skippy,' she said quietly. `Lock the car doors. Don't let anyone in. I'm going to see if Frank is here yet.'

  `Yes, Mother.'

  Ìf he's not here,' she went on, 'we'll have to wait. Maybe

  we'll go to the motel or perhaps we'll stay here. But you stay here no matter how long it takes me to get back.' 'I will, Mother,' Lisa answered. 'You be careful.' When Jeanne leaned over to give Lisa a kiss she found herself being hugged strongly by Lisa's long arms.

  Ìt's going to be all right, honey,' she said softly as she

  loosened herself from the embrace. 'The bastards haven't killed us yet.'

  After getting out of the car Jeanne waited until Lisa had locked the doors and then hurried through the parking lot towards the docks. In the darkness she noticed clusters of people gathered quietly in the parking lot and along the dock. She felt alone and vulnerable, then frightened as some car's headlights would suddenly sweep over her like some new nuclear blast. She knew what a trimaran looked like -thank God Frank had such a strange-looking boat - but in the darkness it was difficult to tell if three boats together were three boats or one large trimaran. Several boats were lit up and most people hurrying along the waterfront had flashlights.

  How she wished she could talk to someone. There was a .war, a war, and everyone just hurried past, ignoring her.

  The dock was a giant 'T', but after searching along both its arms she had not found Vagabond. Finally she stopped someone hurrying towards her to land. Èxcuse me, do you know if there's a trimaran . . `Can't help you, lady,' the man replied, not even slowing his pace.

  Closing her eyes Jeanne moved over to a piling and held on to it to steady herself. She noticed several boats dimly visible anchored out and wondered if Vagabond were among them. She could feel her arms trembling again and thought of Skippy and Lisa in the car, depending on her.

  Okay. Eleven-twenty and the trimaran's not at the municipal dock. It might not get here until dawn. She'd check with the dockmaster and motel for messages; she'd take a look at any other marinas here in the heart of town; and then all she could do was wait. There was no dockmaster on duty and when Jeanne finally got a man to listen to her question about Frank's boat he said he knew nothing about any trimaran. She returned wearily to the car.

  Lisa, wide-eyed, lowered the window on the passenger's side.

  `Frank's not here yet,' Jeanne said with exaggerated nonchalance. 'He may not arrive until dawn. I'm going to check the motel down the street to see if maybe he got a message through to us before the . . . I'll be gone another half hour,' she concluded. 'Why don't you climb in back beside Skippy and try to get some sleep.'

  Ì'm not sleepy.'

  `You need some rest.'

  Ì've been keeping an eye out for Frank.'

  Jeanne examined her frightened, eager-eyed daughter. be back,' she said, and walked away.

  In the darkness the motel was difficult to locate. Lit only by the glow from the northwest the place seemed like a ghost town in some horror film, the main street like a path through a dark canyon.

  There was no message at the motel and they had no room for her, having given it to some 'personal friends'. Sorry.

  She searched Porter's and Kelly's and then the municipal docks again but there was no trimaran. As she returned to her car she realized that in an hour and a half she hadn't heard a friendly word.

  Lisa was still in the front seat, slumped sideways asleep. When Jeanne unlocked the driver's door she stirred but slept on. Jeanne decided that she herself should sleep. If Frank arrived now he'd certainly wait until morning before leaving again. She relocked the driver's door and climbed over the seat to arrange herself on the sleeping bag beside Skippy. After pulling the light blanket up over herself and Skip, she stared up at the dark ceiling of her stationwagon. A strange sense of unreality flowed through her. Was she really lying here in her car three hours after the start of a nuclear war? The warm softness of Skippy's body beside her seemed so human, so nice, so reassuring. She lifted her head to look out the window: figures with lanterns and flashlights moved in the darkness along the. dock. Someone shouted. The war was real. After a while Jeanne slept. She was awakened once in the night by a scream but when she sat up saw nothing. There was then only one light moving in the darkness. Near dawn she was awakened again by someone shaking her foot and then pulling her whole body out of the back of the stationwagon. When she sat up she banged her head on the car roof and, awake, saw two men, one of whom had hold of her feet and was dragging her out the back of her own car. Banjo was growling.

  'Stop it!' she shouted, but the man dragged her to the edge of the stationwagon's rear and then took hold of her arm and pulled her roughly out.

  `Give us the car keys,' he said, his fingers digging into her upper arm, his face, tensely expressionless in the early light of pre-dawn, only a foot away from hers. Fully awake, but still groping for reality, she looked speechlessly back at him.

  `Yes ... yes, of course,' she finally said. 'But let us get our stuff out.'

  When she tried to turn back to the car the man held her fast. Ì found them,' she heard the other man say, and saw he had her handbag and now the keys.

  The man holding her then flung her off to the side, sending her stumbling over the small embankment and down on to her face, rolling towards the shallow creek. The cold water struck her legs like a slap.

  `Let's go,' she heard a voice say.

  1 1

  Vagabond was moving towards Point Lookout with agonizing slowness. The nightmare of the war was compounded for Neil by the more personal and immediate nightmare of running in place, being unable to move forward no matter how hard he tried. It had seemed an endless crawling toward Crisfield with Frank in the wee hours of the morning, and since leaving him off just before dawn, an endless crawling in light winds to try to cross the bay.

  And as they struggled, the horror of the unfolding nuclear destruction was becoming more real. At the dock in Crisfield Frank had tried to telephone his wife and reported back dully to Neil and Jim: 'The operator didn't even try. She said - the operator said . . .

  "I'm sorry, Sir, New York State is disconnected." ' He'd laughed joylessly. They had all listened in the darkness to the transistor radio and on the entire A.M. dial they were able to bring in only five stations where normally there would have been forty or so. Dribs and drabs of hurried, sometimes barely coherent news drifted out. It often took the reporters several repetitions of each frightened report before a piece of grim news could be accepted as confirmed and indisputable. The idea that Washington and New York and apparently fifty to a hundred other places had been destroyed and that twenty to eighty million people had already been killed; that almost all major radio and television stations were not operating; and that the war was continuing: all this was almost beyond their ability to handle. It seemed beyond some of the announcers' abilities to handle. A few read the news items as if they were reading a weather report and made it seem so

  absurd that at one point Frank giggled. Others would become emotional and be replaced by a more controlled voice.

  One commentator pointed out that there was no way of knowing how many nuclear warheads had hit a given target, whether the target had been struck directly or peripherally, and whether the explosion had occurred on the ground or in the ai
r. Knowledge that a place had been hit at all usually came only from that place's total silence. There were few eyewitness reports.

  All United States military personnel had been ordered to report for duty. Where the home base was 'no longer a viable alternative' they were ordered to report to the nearest military base of their service.

  The President issued a statement at 4.30 A.M. indicating that he and all cabinet members were safe, but that dozens, perhaps hundreds of US Congressmen had been killed in the blasts over Washington and other major cities. Offensive action had been commenced against the Soviet Union; nuclear war was occurring in Europe and Asia too. Although at least twenty major American cities had already been reported hit and twice that many missile and other military sites, the implication was that for some unstated reason the Russians hadn't unleashed as devastating an attack as might have been expected. To Neil it meant only that worse might yet come. One exchange between two announcers on the Norfolk radio station particularly depressed and frightened him. Ìs there anything new from the national news wire, Herb?' a man's tense, hurried voice asked.

  `There's still no contact with NBC news in New York, John. All we've got, actually, are the items we're picking up from WTUV in Richmond, but they seem to have a direct connection with the Federal government.'

  `What about WBZE here in Norfolk? Do they have access to the ABC news wire?'

  `No. All three network news services are out.' `What about the west coast centres?'

  `Los Angeles and San Francisco were both hit, John. There's just no contact . .

  `What about military targets here in the Norfolk area?'

  `The mayor has ordered the evacuation of all non, essential personnel,' the other voice replied. 'I'm afraid that with the US Naval base here and the shipyards in Portsmouth, this would appear to be a prime target area . .

  Neil knew that if Norfolk, at the mouth of the Chesapeake, were hit, they might never escape to sea.

  By the time they were away from Crisfield and on their way to Point Lookout the net effect on Neil of listening to the frenzied preliminary reports of destruction was to produce a strange and unexpected emotion which, he realized after a moment, was shame. He felt like a child whose classmates have run amok: although he wasn't personally involved, the destruction was somehow his responsibility. Yet the dawn and early morning hours almost belied the reports they were hearing. A third of the way across the bay the day was clear; the sun shone brightly on the still water. A mile away Smith and Tangier Islands lay lush and green and silent like some bucolic utopia. Land and houses on the now receding eastern shore lay gleaming with postcard-like clarity. There even seemed to be an oysterman up and working the oysterbeds to the southeast. It was as if the radio reports were an Orson Welles prank. But to the northwest the nightmare of the new life was clear: a huge grey cloud spread over half the northwest horizon, quite dark low in the sky, but the greyness reaching quite high up. The mass had no shape but was diffuse. A second area of cloudiness to the northeast was merging with it. Philadelphia? Only from the east through south to due west was the sky still clear. Norfolk still lived.

  By 8 A.M. the breeze began to pick up and Neil felt that if it held or freshened further they would make Point Lookout by ten-thirty. As their progress became routine and they ceased listening to the radio Neil was saddened that he felt no desire to try to rush northward to anyone's rescue. When he imagined his parents struggling to survive after an explosion over Boston and great damage to their town of Ocean Bluff he felt depressed and vaguely ashamed, but the idea that he could get there and become a rescuer simply had no reality. Frank's plan seemed insane. For Neil it was as if the war had created a new world, one which ended all previous relationships. One's family would now be defined by those one found oneself with. And the new world, for Neil, would survive only if they could make it out to sea.

  `What do you know about nuclear fallout?' Jim asked from beside him, interrupting his thoughts.

  Ènough,' Neil replied.

  `That stuff we see ahead of us is radioactive fallout,' Jim said. He looked at Neil as if searching to see how horrible this fact was. The grey cloud cover to the northwest was more pronounced now that the sun was higher in the sky. It also seemed to be spreading slightly towards them.

  `Yes,' said Neil. 'I expect it is.'

  Ìt will spread,' Jim said.

  `Yes,' Neil replied quietly. 'But we're almost a hundred miles away.'

  `We won't be at Point Lookout,' Jim replied. 'And even so I think it's got closer since dawn.'

  Neil squinted at it as if noting the fact for the first time. `Maybe,' he said. 'But this northeast wind is helping us. It's moving the stuff away at right angles.'

  `You told me earlier you think the wind will be shifting to the north,' Jim persisted. Neil went out into the port cockpit to adjust the genny sheet, and then returned to the wheel.

  `We do what we must do, Jim,' he said. 'Right now we're

  sailing Vagabond to Point Lookout.'

  Ànd when that stuff starts falling on deck?' Jim asked, still searching Neil's face for Neil's fear.

  Neil hid it and looked back at him neutrally.

  `Then we sweep it off,' he replied.

  12

  Jeanne and Lisa, with Skippy and the dog huddled around them, blinked in bewilderment at the chaos that was now the waterfront of Point Lookout. Two hours after they'd been thrown out of the stationwagon by the two men, there were several hundred people where the night before there had been perhaps two dozen. In places along the docks and on wooden picnic tables a thin layer of ash had been discovered at dawn, a discovery that had increased the panic. Jeanne had already seen people siphoning gasoline from automibiles for boat engines or for another car; seen men rush past with guns stuffed in their belts, rifles in their hands. Along the dock milled people pleading with those on boats to take them aboard, the women sometimes weeping, the children silent. She had seen five or six people with burned faces and arms and two people being carried on makeshift stretchers. One of the cars that had driven into the parking lot had most of its red paint blistered.

  One by one over the two hours since she'd been up searching for Vagabond, vessels had motored away from the dock area, a few completely packed and low in the water, others with only two or three people aboard. Some were motor yachts, some sailing boats; most were open boats with inboard and outboard engines. All wanted to get away from Washington and the fallout.

  Although many ships had already left, the waterfront was still crowded. Several boats that had been anchored, were now coming in to get fuel or to pick up passengers. Others were arriving from down the Potomac.

  Jeanne had recovered from the shock of being thrown out

  of her car. The men had let Lisa and Skippy leave and had tossed out the children's dufflebags, her larger suitcase and a sleeping bag, but had driven off with her smaller suitcase, her handbag, and a lot of little stuff in the car, including snack food she'd tossed together. She had no money or credit cards and they hadn't eaten breakfast. When she'd rolled into the creek she'd wet her jeans through so had changed into white shorts and tee-shirt; her wet boat shoes she'd had to leave on since her other footwear was in the missing smaller suitcase.

  As she stood with one arm around Lisa's waist and the other holding Skippy's hand, she was tremblingly considering other options. With every minute that passed the chances of the trimaran's arriving at Point Lookout grew smaller. She could conceive of no reason for Frank not to have arrived by now. He'd said he hoped to come at ten last night, early morning at the latest. What could possibly stop him from motoring across the bay? Her only conclusion was that Frank had decided that she and her family were dead. He wasn't

  ,coming.

  So what could she do? She had no husband, no home, no car, no money, no friends, and no place to stay. Her isolation and powerlessness saddened and angered her. The burned faces, sightless eyes and the shuffling, numb way so many people moved frightened her. She
had to focus on her alternatives but when she did she could see only one: she should try to get across the bay to Crisfield. Frank would probably not be there, but it seemed her only, hope. At least it was movement. She should try to hitch a ride on some other boat.

  Even as she decided, she could feel herself absorbing the alternating numbness and hysteria she saw all around her. The people were becoming more numerous and the remaining boats fewer. Two fistfights had broken out at the gas dock and just after ten a man there was shot. The absence of electric power had forced the marina to develop some sort of mechanical, siphoning system and the dock-master's effort to ration the amount of fuel he pumped seemed to have initiated the shooting. Within two minutes of the gunshot everyone seemed to have forgotten about it. The wounded man, had staggered off alone. There were no policemen.

  When she went in search of a boatowner willing to take her and her family across the bay, she left Lisa next to the marina office to take care of Skippy and their two bags and went out on the docks alone. Each remaining boat was bounded along the dock by men and women either dully or passionately begging for a chance to board. Around the first boat were two families, two stony-faced mothers, their children cowering big-eyed around their legs, the husbands, angry, holding out money. She didn't see any sense in competing, so she moved on.

  The second boat was a twenty-five-foot motor yacht with two men working on its engine. One of them looked up at the group accosting him from the dock. She saw the man stare appraisingly at an attractive blonde woman who was pleading with him to take her and her child, and then his gaze shifted to Jeanne herself, first her bare legs, then her breasts, and finally her eyes. She felt a sensual shock: from fifteen feet away and without uttering a word, the man seemed to have propositioned her.

  She hurried on. The third boat was filled to overflowing, but as she passed it she had the feeling that people had boarded an empty boat and that no one really knew what was going on. Most of those looking for a vessel were women, children and older men. She was walking back from the end of one of the arms of the 'T' when a slender young man about thirty came up and stopped her.