It was at about two o’clock, after they had 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 passengers. There had no been no measurable fallout since Neil had gone below about an hour and a half before, so Frank had let Olly 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 afterdeck crowded with fifteen to twenty people—men, women, and children—a seemingly random collection of those who had escaped the disasters of somewhere to blunder 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 they were rafted together at last, 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 about to be overwhelmed.
“We’re headed out into the Atlantic,” he shouted over to the other boat. “We can put you ashore at Cape Henry or take you out 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 come aboard.
“Bring all your food!” Neil shouted, but no one seemed to pay attention. The men began to clamber over Vagabond’s combing like pirates boarding a ship they planned to plunder. Only Jim and Neil tried to help the weak and injured aboard.
A scream broke from the confusion, and a pale young blond woman was soon led sobbing into the wheelhouse, her right hand bloody; apparently it had been 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 sit down 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 one 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 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 afterdeck 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 locked around each other in a violent wrestling match, reeled against a young couple and child on the opposite settee and then bounced off them onto the wheelhouse floor.
Macklin jumped up and grabbed them both by their hair, yanked hard, and shouted at them to let go. In another half-minute he and Neil had separated them.
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 throughout 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 able-bodied 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 strewn around underfoot.
After Vagabond had been sailing on southward toward 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 was wearing the red plastic pants.
“My name’s Tony Mariano,” the man 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 replied 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 put them ashore at the nearest point they find convenient. We—”
“I 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. As Neil watched he could feel his anger rising.
“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.
“If you like—” Frank began.
“I thought we were going north,” the second man said.
“I did too,” the elderly man said. “Away from the explosion.”
Several additional voices made noises indicating that they agreed. Frank stood frowning.
“But in the north—” he began again.
“Who owns this boat anyway?” Tony asked, looking around aggressively as if someone were trying to put something over on him.
“I do,” Frank replied. “And 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 Olly organizing the suitcases and knapsacks in the port cockpit.
“Go get the .38 that’s hidden in my aft cabin,” he whispered to him, “and be ready to back me up. Tell Jim to get the .22.”
Olly nodded solemnly, and when he had gone, 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 Macklin’s .45 from its hiding place behind a short shelf of books. After checking the chamber he returned to the wheelhouse.
“I think we’d better head east, Neil,” Frank said to him nervously as he came up the steps. “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 center of the crowd holding his .45 with the barrel just a few inches below his chin—where everyone could see it. He was feeling a strange mixture of desperation, fury, and determination. In his yellow foul-weather gear he looked strangely out of place among the crowd of refugees.