Sanjit put his hand on his shoulder. “Choo, my brother, there aren’t going to be a lot of times when I’m brave and self-sacrificing. Enjoy this one. It may be the last you ever see.”
To forestall further argument Sanjit climbed up onto the rock spur and made his way carefully, cautiously, to the end, sneakers slipping on rock coated with algae and salt spray. He leaned with one hand against the white hull. He was at eye level with the deck.
He grabbed the frail-looking stainless-steel rail with both hands and pulled himself up until his elbows were at ninety-degree angles. The danger zone was just below him and if he let go, he’d be lucky to survive with just a crushed foot.
His scramble aboard the boat wasn’t pretty, but he made it with only a scraped elbow and a bruised thigh. He lay panting, facedown on the teak deck for a few seconds.
“Do you see anything?” Virtue called up.
“I saw my life flashing before my eyes, does that count?”
Sanjit stood up, bending his knees to roll with the boat. No sound of human activity. No sign of anyone. Not exactly a surprise, but in some dark corner of his mind, Sanjit had almost expected to see bodies.
He placed his hands on the rails, looked down at Virtue’s anxious face, and said, “Ahoy there, matey.”
“Go look around,” Virtue said.
“That’s ‘Go look around, Captain,’ to you.”
Sanjit strolled with false nonchalance to the first door he found. He’d been on the yacht twice before, back when Todd and Jennifer were still around, so he knew the layout.
It was the same eerie feeling he’d had that first day of the big disappearance: he was going into places he didn’t belong, and there was no one to stop him.
Silence. Except for the groan of the hull.
Creepy. A ghost ship. Like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. But very posh. Very nice crystal glasses. Little statues stuck in alcoves. Framed movie posters. Photos of Todd and Jennifer with some kind of famous old actor.
“Hello?” he called, and instantly felt like an idiot.
He went back to the bow. “No one home, Choo.”
“It’s been months,” Virtue said. “What did you think? They were all down here playing cards and eating potato chips?”
Sanjit found a ladder and hung it over the side. “Come aboard,” he said.
Virtue climbed up carefully and instantly Sanjit felt a little better. Shielding his eyes he could see Peace up at the top of the cliff, looking down anxiously. He waved to show everything was okay.
“So, I don’t suppose you’ve found a manual for the helicopter lying around?”
“Helicopters for Dummies?” Sanjit joked. “No. Not exactly.”
“We should look.”
“Yeah. That would be great,” Sanjit said, momentarily losing his jaunty sense of humor as he looked up at Peace on the cliff. “Because just between you and me, Choo, the idea of trying to fly a helicopter up out of here scares the pee out of me.”
Six rowboats set out from the marina under bright stars. Three kids in each boat. Two pulling oars, one at the tiller. The oars stirred phosphorescence with each stroke.
Quinn’s fleet. Quinn’s armada. The Mighty Quinn Navy.
Quinn didn’t have to take a turn at the oars; after all, he was the boss of the whole fishing operation, but he found he kind of liked it.
They used to just motor out and drop their lines and trail their nets. But gasoline, like everything else in the FAYZ, was in short supply. They had a few hundred gallons of marine fuel left at the marina. That would have to be saved for emergencies, not for daily work like fishing.
So it was oars and sore backs. A long, long day that started long before dawn. It took an hour to get everything ready in the morning, the nets stowed after they’d been dried, the bait, hooks, lines, poles, the boats themselves, the day’s food supply, water, life jackets. Then it took another hour of working the oars to get out far enough.
Six boats, three armed with poles and lines, and three dragging nets. They took turns because everyone hated the nets. It was more rowing, dragging the nets back and forth slowly across the water. Then hauling the nets up into the boat and picking fish and crabs and assorted debris out of the cords. Hard work.
Later, in the afternoon, a second batch of boats would go out to fish mostly for the blue water bats. The water bats were a mutated species that lived in caves during the night and flew out into the water during daylight. The only use for the bats was to feed the zekes, the killer worms that lived in the vegetable fields. The bats were the tribute kids paid the zekes. The economy of Perdido Beach was doubly dependent on Quinn’s efforts.