Warren Murphy - Waste Not, Want Not

The first officer had raised Mayana.

"They want to know if this is some kind of joke," he said, holding out the microphone.

"Give it here," Lenn commanded. He took a step. But only one.

The scow lurched suddenly. Lenn had to grab the navigation station to keep from being hurled to the deck.

"Dammit!"

He scrambled to his feet and ran to the bridge window. The sea was still calm. Not a cloud in the sky. They hadn't been hit by a sudden squall. Lenn's stomach sank, growing cold as the ocean deep.

"Captain?" the first officer asked. He was steadying himself on the back of a chair.

Lenn's voice was flat. He had known it as soon as he'd seen the other scow's damage. Hoped to hell he was wrong.

"Torpedo," Captain Frederick Lenn replied, voice hollow.

The instant he spoke, a second explosion rocked the scow. Lenn felt the rolling impact through the metal deck.

The men were thrown from their stations.

As Frederick Lenn watched, the rear of his boat split apart. The bridge twisted as the massive weight of garbage shifted and began vomiting into the sea. "Abandon ship!" Lenn shouted.

The bridge was angling into the water. As the ship listed, the men stumbled and crawled across the slanted floor and out the door.

The deck was slick. Greasy water attacked their ankles. When his helmsman slipped and fell against the rail, Captain Lenn dragged the kid back to his feet by his shirt collar.

A lifeboat hung behind the bridge. Holding on to chain railings, the men scurried back to it. As they reached for the metal hooks, there came a sudden painful groan.

Captain Lenn stopped dead. "My God," he whispered.

And the ship bucked beneath his feet and split cleanly into two halves.

The bulk of the cargo dumped into the sea, the bridge pitched forward and a pile of front-loaded garbage came toward them in an avalanche.

Eighty thousand pounds of trash barreled across the cabin and slammed full force into the struggling crew. Captain Lenn caught a mouthful of rotting garbage before he and his panicked crew were swept into the churning sea.

With more groaning and spilling greasy mounds of trash, the little scow from New York joined its proud captain and crew in a watery grave.

Seagulls pecked away at the lazily scattering trash. And far off, the single eye of a periscope watched in silent satisfaction. Sun glinted off glass as it dipped below the waves. And was gone.

Chapter 4

It was awful. Just so sad and scary at the same time. And they didn't really care. They were doing it just to shock. It was like all those TV programs now. Those ones where men would jump out of airplanes with rubber bands around their legs or practically set themselves on fire for money. Or worse, the ones where women with tattoos and no self-respect cavorted around like little tramps with men to whom they weren't even engaged, let alone lawfully married.

One thing was certain-years ago they never would have allowed such things on television. This was just the latest example of the sorry state of the media. In fact, this was worse than all those other shows combined.

All these thoughts passed through the empathetic brain of Eileen Mikulka as she sipped fretfully at her morning coffee in front of the fifteen-year-old TV in the warm and tidy living room of her small home in Rye, New York.

"How long has it been going on?" the matronly woman asked, her sympathetic eyes glued to the screen.

The steam from her World's Greatest Grandma mug curled up around her blue-tinted perm. "About one last night. I can't believe they're wasting all this time on it. They should just let them drown."

It was just like Kieran Mikulka to say something horrible like that. Eileen's youngest seemed fond of shocking his mother with such thoughtless statements.

The boy was in his mid-thirties and without a job. He did little but sit around and watch television all day. They said that TV viewing desensitized the young to violence. If Kieran Mikulka was any example, that was certainly true.

"Kieran, that's a terrible thing to say," Mrs. Mikulka scolded as she put down her mug. She was careful to use one of the cute little froggy coasters she'd picked up twenty-seven years ago on a Jersey shore vacation with her late husband, God rest his soul. The frog was mostly worn-out now, but you could still see his faded green eyes.

Of course it was terrible. That should have gone without saying. Anyone with an ounce of heart would think the same thing. On the screen the image played again.

Fire and rescue personnel stood on the street. Beyond them a crowd of onlookers-some still in pajamas and nightgowns-stood anxiously. All around, raging water from a fierce overnight rainstorm rolled furiously down the gutter, cascading into a culvert at the end of the road. The water crashed white around the boots of the burly men.

The storm drain was barely visible, so deep was the river. The men stooped and dug with their gloved hands. Tree branches and clumps of wet leaves were pulled out. Once they were removed, some of the raging water rolled into the drain. With shouts from the men, a tiny camera no bigger than a wire was slipped down through the metal grate.

Eileen Mikulka had seen the footage three times. She held her breath as she watched the tiny camera snake its way through the water and into the dark cavern below the street.

She didn't know how far down it went. It seemed to go on a very long time. At the last moment, it twisted....

And there they were. All wet and frightened. The three kittens sat meowing on a slippery ledge. Mrs. Mikulka's heart broke when she saw them. "No one knows how they got here or what happened to their mother," a reporter said, voice as serious as if she were reporting on an attempted presidential assassination. "But the three kittens-dubbed Muffy; Tuffy and Sam by the children who first heard their pitiful cries-have so far evaded all attempts by rescue workers to save their lives."

"It's terrible,'" Mrs. Mikulka said, eyes sad as she watched the drama on the flickering TV screen.

"It's ridiculous, Ma," Kieran insisted. "Lookit." With the remote, he flipped from channel to channel. All the networks were carrying the same story. "It's been going on like this all night. Three mangy cats were stupid enough to fall in a hole and they're treating it like a dead Lady Di, for Christ's sake. Who the hell cares?"

"Language," Mrs. Mikulka scolded. "And I care. You should, too. Remember Mr. Tiddles?"

Mr. Tiddles had been the Mikulka family cat until an unfortunate encounter with Mr. Phillips's Oldsmobile had sent him prematurely to kitty Heaven. His earthly remains were buried in an old Buster Brown box out behind the toolshed.

When she thought of her beloved cat gone ten years come June-Eileen Mikulka made a mental note to do a little weeding when the ground dried out later that spring.

"They're just strays. Ma," Kieran insisted morosely. "Who'd notice if they all died?"

Eileen Mikulka stood. She fixed her son with a hard look. "God would notice," she said firmly. "He has a place for all his creatures, whether they know it or not."

She had been saying that a lot lately. Eileen was a Presbyterian with a churchgoing record that could charitably be described as spotty. But the more it became evident that Kieran intended to waste his life on the couch, the more she had been speaking about God's great plan for everyone. She had said it so much Kieran didn't even roll his eyes anymore. With a grunt, he flipped over to Barney on PBS.

Frowning, Mrs. Mikulka glanced at her watch. "Oh, dear," she clucked.

She didn't have more time to lecture her son or to fret about those poor, poor kittens on television. Gathering up her coffee cup, she hurried into the kitchen. It was immaculate, just as she liked it. It was getting harder and harder to keep it that way. By the time she came home in the evening there would be dirty dishes, crumbs and empty cracker boxes all over.