The voice over the shortwave radio was that of the ham radio operator from east Tennessee who Neil had last listened to the evening the war started.
“Henry Tickney says his geiger counter shows it’s up to three roentgens in his soybean fields, which isn’t healthy for either him or his beans, but supposedly it’ll drop off every day unless we get more. Like most of us, Henry says he only goes out for a half-hour a day.
“Three new shelters were started yesterday and one’s already finished. Eight people moved in with enough food for two weeks. We put in Jesse and Marge Williams and their two kids, Gor and Hilda Lafson and their son Leo, and the Barletts’ sick girl, Tina. The Williams run the Exxon station east of town and are sick and don’t have anything they can do, and the Lafsons paid for all the material and labor on the shelter. Like I said, the Williams and Tina Barlett are pretty sick from the radiation, and we figure they need the protection. Course I guess we all do.
“Martha Peterson died yesterday. After her sons went away, we couldn’t get her to stay in the cellar.
“The Linkletters and Potts moved south today, using the Linkletter’s team of workhorses and a wagon Tim built out of an old truck flatbed. They’re the sixth and seventh families to leave. Most all of the young people are gone of course. Most of the old people have chosen to stay. We don’t know whether we’ll make it or not, but most of us decided it’d be. better to die here than live in those camps they’ve set up in northern Louisiana and Arkansas. I suppose if we had kids, it might be different. That’s why we help those who feel they have to go.
“It’s kind of sad though. You know you’ll never see each other again. The people leaving feel kind of like traitors, and the people staying feel kind of like fools… Still, we do what we got to do…”
After the frequency went dead, Neil turned off the set and continued to sit in the darkness of his cabin. He became aware of the faint glow of his wristwatch lying at the base of the radio. It was almost midnight. They were dying in east Tennessee, what?—perhaps six or seven hundred miles away. Not even that far.
Sighing, he turned the set back on, adjusted the earphones, and began a slow sweep of the ham frequencies. The first voice he brought in reported increased radioactive fallout and radiation sickness in southern Mississippi, with thousands fleeing out into the Gulf of Mexico. Military authority had ceased to exist; soldiers as well as civilians were stealing boats, commandeering barges and helicopters to get away. The voice speculated that to the west, toward New Orleans and Galveston, there were few survivors. Those fleeing east across the Florida panhandle would probably be overtaken by the lethal fallout. He mentioned some towns whose names Neil didn’t recognize, but when he checked his small atlas he concluded the broadcast had come from somewhere less than a hundred miles east of Pensacola.
Neil moved the dial, bringing in a ship, the Athena, three hundred miles out of Boston, asking for medical advice on the treatment of radiation sickness.
He brought in a station in Bermuda warning of starvation facing the islanders there.
Then his ear caught “Raleigh, North Carolina” on a frequency filled with static, and he tried to tune it in more clearly. Raleigh was about two hundred miles west of Morehead City. The voice, clearer now, a woman’s with a strong southern accent, was announcing that she was taking over for her husband, who was sick but who wanted her to keep up his daily reports. The radioactive fallout in the last day had increased tenfold, and now everyone was trying to stay belowground. Those who ventured out for more than a half-hour took sick quickly. Those who stayed in cellars or shelters did better. The ground was covered with ash, thick, black, ugly. They were drinking only bottled water, but most had only a limited supply. Electric pumps could no longer be used. They couldn’t figure why there was so much fallout, where it was coming from, and it was scary. They hoped it would stop raining soon.
When Neil switched off the radio this time, he was trembling with a great, deep dread, almost desperation. They were all doomed. Shelters, putting out to sea, joining the Army, the Navy, all seemed equally futile.
No, that was a lie. He knew it was a lie. Safety lay far to the south and out to sea. He knew that, could see that for a certainty now. Morehead City, bucolic, innocent, unimportant Morehead City was doomed. In a few days it would be overtaken by the fallout. So too would the rest of the East Coast. But the ocean and a run to the south represented hope and life, for him, for Jeanne, for Frank, for Olly, for all of his remaining friends. Only out there, where the fallout would be swallowed up by the insatiable sea, was there hope for survival, and he knew it was up to him to get them all to act, and to act now. The Army was lying. There was no safety left on land.
Having made his decision, he stood up, carefully turned off the radio, disconnected the batteries, and went up on deck. Captain Olly was sitting in the darkness of the wheelhouse talking in a lively monologue to silent Conrad Macklin. Olly stopped talking when Neil appeared.
“I’m taking Vagabond back out to sea,” he announced quietly after sitting down opposite the old man.
“Good,” Captain Olly replied. “Been wonderin’ how long it would take you.”
Neil turned to Macklin.
“To get out the inlet we’ll need another boat to act as decoy,” he said. “A boat with just enough fuel to get to the inlet and create a diversion. I want you to find one, devise a plan for stealing it, and when the time comes, steal it.”
Macklin stared back at Neil.
“You want me to be on one boat while you and the rest are sailing out the inlet on this?” he asked, scowling.
“One of us will be with.you,” Neil answered. “And, if possible, think of a plan that won’t mean your hitting or killing anyone.”
“If possible?” Macklin said with a sneer.
“Olly, about how many gallons of diesel fuel do you figure we’ll need to get two boats out into the ocean?”
“It’s three miles from here?” Olly asked.
“Yes,” Neil answered.
“Six or seven.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Neil went on. “Since they took all but five gallons this afternoon, we’ll need more. Macklin, keep an eye open for another three gallons of fuel. Or more.”
“Like everyone else in the world,” Macklin commented.
Neil, staring past Captain Olly with his eyes half-closed in concentration, ignored the comment.
“We leave tomorrow night at ten,” he finally said.
“Who’s coming with us?” Macklin asked.
“We’ll see,” said Neil, and he got up to return to his cabin to sleep.
Neil arrived at the refugee center and located Frank at four o’clock the next afternoon. As he moved through the halls he became distressingly aware that he was entering a little world that, no matter how dislocated, was permitting people to assume that they and this little world could continue to exist. This was a center where people came to be safe and to be taken care of, and the men and women in the halls had the look of those who saw danger as something they had survived in the past rather than something that might still be looming over them.
Neil himself was anxious and tense. He strode down the hall with the feeling that every moment they delayed might be fatal, that even now lethal clouds of radioactivity might be only hours away.
Frank was in what used to be the principal’s office supervising the relocation of some of the refugees. A harried-looking Army lieutenant was standing behind Frank, looking alternately commanding and bewildered. As Neil paused in the doorway he watched people come up to Frank for instructions, saw him consult the chart on the desk in front of him and then send the person running off on some errand or another while Frank carefully made a chalk mark on the chart.