She smiled and helped him to stand and they leaned on the handrail of the bridge looking down into the canal when they saw the alligator tear a chunk from the body of the sergeant. Without speaking, they crossed to the other side of the street, and looked along the canal in the other direction. The sun sparkled off the water and had a soothing, hypnotic effect on Luke and he found himself calming and restoring faith in his own abilities. The leafy mangrove trees overhung the canal making a telescopic effect like looking up a tunnel.
“I’ve got one,” said Sophie.
“Got one what?” Luke asked confused.
“Another mode of transport we haven’t tried.” She smiled and pointed down the river. He turned and saw a dray horse towing a brightly painted, dilapidated old barge. “I’m not travelling by horse if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said dismissively.
“Not on the horse, you idiot — on the barge, its perfect.”
“Come again?”
“You said yourself that the canals and the Intracoastal Waterway river network stretched all the way to Canada.”
“How does that help?” he asked still confused.
“We stay below deck, if anyone should do a cursory aerial view all they would see is a dumb old horse haplessly towing his dead master’s barge.”
“I’ve got a better idea, we’ll hide on the barge until we’ve cleared the exclusion zone then get help,” he smiled. “It’d be slow but we could sneak right out of the zone.” He made his way down from the bridge onto the canal bank.
“That’s what I just said,” she said defensively as she followed him.
“You said, ‘Canada,’” he reminded her, teasing.
“I didn’t mean go all the way to Canada. I merely mentioned the river went to Canada,” she said in her defense.
“You said, ‘Canada’.”
19:45 PM
“Have you ever heard so much crap in all your life?” Captain Phillips growled from the huddled confines of the brig he shared with the officers who had stayed loyal to him. They looked an odd sight still wearing their biohazards suits like spacemen in the cramped cell. He rocked his head in dismay. “Names spoken with awe?! Who’s swallowing this shit?”
The captain banged on the jail-bars attracting the attention of his armed guard, “Are you swallowing this baloney? He wants you to sacrifice your life; meanwhile he’s wearing a goddamned hazmat suit, so he’s not dying any time soon. He’s not making the ultimate sacrifice for his country.”
The guard ignored him, shifted his feet uncomfortably and thought there might be an element of truth in what the captain said. if Commander Roscoe wanted them all to die without attempting to make it to the mainland, then surely he too, should be making the same sacrifice and not wear his life-saving suit. He looked on the monitor screen at the commander and wondered for the first time if he had backed the right horse.
The captain knew people, that was his talent, not only could he lead men, but he could also read them and he was convinced that he had sowed the seeds of doubt in the young guards mind. “You owe it to yourself to at least try to live. Make it to the shore. Let us go and we’ll take you with us. Take a hazmat suit off one of them at gunpoint. And who knows the virus might not have made it down to this deck yet?”
“You’re wasting your time,” the guard said unconvincingly. “I’m not listening to you.” He stood upright and stared at a spot on the wall in front of him.
The captain grinned and made a ‘got him’, gesture to his friends miming catching a fish and reeling it in on a line.
“Don’t take too long thinking about it, sailor. The sooner you’re in one of these life-saving suits the better,” the captain said, watching the guard’s face screw up in doubt.
20:05 PM
The row upon row of corpses littering the main deck shocked Commander Roscoe. He sucked in his breath then led his men in their hazmat suits down the rows of bodies covered in white shrouds. He approached the doctor and returned his salute. “How many, Doctor?” he asked.
The doctor shook his head wearily. “Over three hundred and—”
“Already?” cut in the commander. “How many were A.S.?”
“Assisted suicides?” the doctor said giving it its proper titled, not watering it down to abbreviations. “Probably half.”
The commander nodded, and felt encouraged. He turned and gave instructions to one of his subordinates. “OK we need to organize work parties to dispose of the bodies over the side.”
“We have another problem, Commander,” the doctor said.
“Go on?”
“We have more volunteers for the assisted suicide pills than I have doses of the medicine.”
The commander gritted his teeth and swore under his breath. “OK, leave that with me.” He saluted and turned, the group of men followed, when they were back on the bridge the Commander said. “We’re going to have to scuttle the ship,” he told them with a bleak look on his face.
He watched them take in this information; they looked as if they’d been hit by a knockout punch, he saw the shock etched on their faces by this announcement. The cost implication alone of scuttling an aircraft carrier would be almost incalculable. The USS Thomas Jefferson was one of the most recent additions to the Atlantic fleet and no one knew the exact cost, somewhere between three and three and a half billion dollars.
The commander held up a placating hand. “I know what you are going to say, but I’ve thought this through and it’s the only way. We haven’t the time or expertise to decommission the missiles, we’re not going to even have a skeleton force to maintain the ship, or protect us from foreign powers and believe me they are gloating at our predicament right now and are jostling in line to take over this ship. I cannot, correction, will not, allow that. This ship must never fall into enemy hands. Therefore, there is no other option I can see. Gentlemen, we’re going to sink the ship.”
CHAPTER 39
20:15 PM
On the colorfully painted barge, Luke struggled while he man-handled the rotting corpses of the disease-ridden hippies — the previous occupants of the narrow-boat — up onto the deck and laid them in what he thought looked like death poses. Covered in sweat from the exertion and caked in pus and excrement from the two putrid carcasses, he thought about washing it off. He stood on the edge of the barge and went to jump into the canal for a quick dip and to wash the filth from his body, when Sophie shouted; “Stop!” her yell startled him and he almost toppled into the filthy water. “Have you forgotten what’s in there?”
Luke visibly paled when he remembered the alligator and more importantly the vicious snapping jaws. “Oh, maaan…”
Later below deck in the hippy decorated lounge-cum-den-cum-kitchenette area of the barge Luke tried to adjust his eyes to the psychedelic decorations and chose to look out the porthole instead, watching the horse towing them northwards to safety. “This is the life. Can you imagine it, cut off from the outside world, no electricity, no TV, no phones, no emails, twitters or what-have-you bombarding you fifty times a day? This is so peaceful, I could get used to this.”
Sophie smiled and prepared some food realizing that they had not eaten in some time. “They grow all their own vegetables and herbs. There’s a small garden at the stern.”
“Stern?”
“The rear of the barge, they also make their own wine, want to fetch some?”
“Sure, where is it?”
“It is in a storage hutch in the bow."
“Bow? Is that the pointy end,” he asked and scooted away.