LeRoy Clary - Humanaty's Blight

“That’s why we’re sinking,” he said with a hollow laugh.

“How are we going to apply the patches?”

“We’re going swimming,” he said as if it was the funniest thing he’d heard in days—and perhaps it was.

When we reachedthe little sheltered jut of land, I went forward and set the anchor while Steve slipped over the side. I had my lifejacket on and ran back to follow him into the water. Sue was wearing one too, although we were only a few hundred feet from shore, and she was not going in with us to make repairs.

The water was cold. So cold my fingers refused to bend, and my legs had difficulty kicking. I held the packets of repair patches while Steve squeezed the material inside the tubes back and forth to mix them. This time, he wore rubber gloves and poured the thick, yellow concoction into his palm and his hand went underwater, where his other hand had located a bullet hole.

We moved forward a foot, and his probing hand found another. We repeated the procedure six times. Then, we both inspected the waterline and below, feeling the smooth hull while trying to find another hole. The accumulated growth on the hull was limited due to the reddish paint, Steve explained. In checking a second time, he was not satisfied with one patch we’d made and placed another over the top of it.

The cold water had numbed us. I shivered, and my fingers refused to grip the ladder built into the rear of the boat. Steve pushed my butt upward while Sue pulled me up. Then we both pulled Steve out of the water and into the cockpit., where we both lay like beached fish panting for breath.

Sue placed blankets over each of us, and we remained there in the late afternoon sun, trying to warm ourselves and take normal breaths.

Steve sat up slightly and tilted his head. “Hear that?”

“What?” I asked, listening carefully.

“Nothing.” He smiled. “No more water pumps.”

I looked over the side and he was right. The water that had been squirting out of each side of the boat was missing. The patches had worked, and the pumps had emptied the hull of water. He said, “It would be nice to take a nap here in the sun, but we haven’t got time.”

“What now?” I asked, feeling that if it had to do with entering the water again, I’d just shoot myself and get it over with.

He said, “We still have enough daylight to reach those houses I told you about. If we’re going to reach Deception Pass in two days, we better get on it, Cap.”

“How far to the houses?” Sue asked.

“I want to get there well before dark. I don’t think I can find them after dark,” Steve said. He ordered me to pull up the anchor while he started the engine and backed us out into deeper water before unfurling the jib. “An hour, maybe two.”

We’d have to talk about him calling me “Cap” and then ordering me around. That was backward. If I was the captain, I should have a say in things. I thought those thoughts while bringing the anchor on board as he told me to do.

Sue brought cups of hot coffee and we each took turns changing into dry clothing. Both he and I were tall, and the previous owner wasn’t. However, our waists were about the same, so we wore jeans that only reached down to our ankles, and warm jackets to hold off the misty rain that had started falling.

Steve looked silly. In contrast, I thought I might set a new fashion trend with my exposed ankles and part of my calves bare. I was at the helm and Sue was on the radio again, warning anybody that would listen to her about the blockade. She’d already managed to reach three other boats.

We didn’t know what plans the other boats were going to make, but we were going to sail the long way around Whidbey Island, through Deception Pass, out into the Salish Sea and then on to the San Juans where we would wait out all the bad that was coming to our people. The other boats Sue warned might band together and sail north as a fleet, fighting and sinking the blockade, at least that was my hope. If they did, the pirates up there would probably just hide and let them go on by, then sit in wait for the next boat sailing by itself.

By nature, pirates were opportunists, but nobody said they were stupid. Violent, yes. My feelings were that in one way or another, the blockade would end quickly. Word would spread.

In my mind, I pictured a hundred boats of all sorts sailing up there at once, everyone with a sidearm and anger in their eyes. It might even happen because of Sue. She returned to the radio time and again, often shouting and screaming exchanges with those at the barricade, laughing at their threats, and taunting them that the boats going north were going to set fire to every boat in the blockade, and I couldn’t help but think that with her urging, it might happen.

At first, that worried me. Her talking to the pirates, I mean. We didn’t need them sending more boats to attack us. Then I heard her tell them she was in a two-toned blue cabin-cruiser in Port Townsend Bay and that she had ten soldiers with her, and they were spoiling for a fight. She told them to come get her . Of course, we were in a sailboat and nowhere near Port Townsend Bay.

I hoped there were no blue cabin-cruisers in that bay. I laughed to myself and laced a pair of tennis shoes that were too small. I cut holes for my big toes. Sue switched on the marine radio, which I’m sure the pirates also listened to. This time, she called in an airstrike by navy jets from the nearby naval air station. She gave them the location of the blockade and directed them to approach from the south and sink anything floating. She acted as if she was talking to an admiral.

It didn’t fool me, but it may have made a few people wary and I hoped a jet flew by them just to make them sweat. That idea jarred me back to reality. I hadn’t seen an airplane in two weeks. No civilian or military. Not one plane, contrail, or helicopter.

Steve called down to me, “Get ready with that anchor, Cap.”

I went to the bow, to my usual station at the anchor, and determined again to tell him I was the captain and I should be telling him to take the helm while I set the anchor. The difference seemed vast.

The Truant was closer to shore than I would have liked, only a few hundred feet away. A small dirt bank rose to where five darkened blobs waited in the twilight, which were houses situated on a small, rocky shoreline. We’d arrived later than we wished but that couldn’t be helped.

Steve had reloaded his empty magazine with shells. I wore my holster, and Sue had her shotgun and her nine-millimeter in the cockpit where she would stay aboard and guard it. We were out of rifle shells.

We lowered the kayaks and paddled ashore in the last rays of sunlight. After we pulled the kayaks onto the rocky beach, Steve handed me a flashlight, one of those little LED ones that he had modified by putting black electrical tape over the lens. Only a sliver of a slit allowed light to spread out in front of us. Unless we pointed the flashlights directly at someone, I doubted if they could see the dim light the lens produced.

However, we’d need those slivers of light when we entered an unnaturally dark house. Wooden stairs that sagged under our weight carried us up to the first house. We tried the windows as we worked our way around to the side door. There, a glass panel occupied the top half of the door. Without hesitation, Steve scooped a brick from the walkway and used it to break the glass. He took the time to clear most of it away by running the brick along the inside edges before reaching inside and unlocking the door.