Sea (A Stranded Novel) (4 page)

The sun was slowly making its way to the horizon as they continued down Marine Drive. Lisa had stopped sobbing but she stayed pressed against Emily and she hadn’t spoken since the shooting. Even though they had never been friends, Emily was comforted by the girl’s closeness. Her mind couldn’t seem to settle down. Mason had left her exposed in the middle of the street and had driven away without a backwards glance. Everything she thought she knew about him was in doubt. How could he have done that to her and what did that mean for the rest of the journey home? She bit her lip to keep the sob back when she thought of choosing him over Alex and the rest of her friends. A sound from David brought her head up and she looked ahead down the street. She could see the top of masts in the distance as the marina got closer. Lowering her sight to the street
, she could see a bridge that led to the marina area and parked to one side of it was Mason in his golf cart. He was still behind the wheel but his head was in his hands.

As they got closer to him, he heard the engines and his head whipped up to stare at them. David stopped the cart half a block away and Mark zipped around them and drove straight to Mason, pulling up beside him. When Lisa realized they had stopped
, she sat up and looked around. When she saw Mason, she made a little whimper and scrambled over Emily and out of the cart, running the rest of the way to him.

David and Emily didn’t speak for a minute. They just sat and stared at the group ahead of them. Without looking at her, David reached over and took Emily’s hand, giving it a squeeze.

“We could just go. You and me, we could leave them here and find our own boat. Something small with a motor. We could stay close to shore and get past the city and then head overland. I would get you home, Emily. I would protect you.”

Emily studied Mason and his friends. “I don’t belong with them. David’s right,
we’d be better off without them. We can’t count on them at all,” she thought. Just as she was about to tell David yes, Mason broke away from the others and ran towards them.

“Emily, are you ok
ay?! I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened. I just froze. My mind was screaming go go go and I just panicked. Please believe me! I’m so sorry. Please forgive me!” he pleaded.

Emily could see tears in his eyes and his face was full of shame and guilt. She remembered how he had just sat there with bullets flying and realized that what he said was probably true but how could she ever trust him again? Once again she was going to tell David that they would go when Mason said something that changed her mind.

“Emily…I love you.”

David groaned and Mason shot him a dirty look before swinging his eyes back to Emily.

“Please. It won’t happen again. You can count on me.” His eyes were full of sincerity.

Emily found herself nodding and she looked to David. “We should stay together, right?” she asked him with confusion. David let out a long sigh.

“I’m with you, no matter what you decide,” he told her, looking miserable.

Hesitantly
, she nodded again. “Okay…we’ll just keep going together…Okay?”

“Yeah, alright, let’s go find a boat and get out of here
,” David replied, turning and looking straight ahead.

Mason leaned in and squeezed Emily’s arm and nodded. Then he turned and jogged back to the others. As David drove them over the bridge
, Emily thought about what Mason had said. She was still shaken and upset with what he had done, but she could understand why it had happened. None of them were mentally prepared for what had happened today and they were all going to make mistakes. She was shocked that he had said, “I love you”. They had been dating for a few months and she really liked him but love was the big scary. It was something she would have to think about.

David pulled up to the marina parking area and waited. His face was grim as he watched Mason and Mark drive farther into the lot. How could Emily be so blind? The guy was a selfish coward. He had left her on that street to die and then played the love card? And she fell for it? He was beginning to think he
should have just gone with the others. He wanted to help Emily but she had to start thinking or they would end up in serious trouble.

David drove the golf cart deeper into the marina to where the others had stopped. There was a clubhouse and restaurants with a parking lot ahead of them and then docks filled with all types of sailing craft. David was surprised to not see any people. He had figured there would be some people with the same idea as them about getting out of the city. As he scanned the boat slips
, he started to see that there were many open spaces. It was late in the day so David guessed that a lot of people had already made it to the marina and left by boat. He just hoped that they could find someone still here that would give them a ride. The thought of Mason in control of one of these huge boats filled him with fear. Panicking on the street was bad enough but if he froze out in the middle of the ocean, they would all die.

They pulled all three carts up to the walkway to the docks and shut the engines down. Mark ran over to the clubhouse and checked the doors but they were locked up tight. They all stood at the walkway scanning boats and then turned to look at Mason expectantly. When he just stood looking out at the boats, David shook his head impatiently.

“So what are we looking for Mason? Should we just start walking down docks looking for any one onboard?”

Mason didn’t look at him. Now that they had made it here
, he was intimidated by all the different sailing craft that he only had basic knowledge of. His confidence had been rocked by how he had reacted on the street and he was afraid of losing even more face by making another wrong decision. He glanced at Mark and Lisa and tried to catch Emily’s eye but she wouldn’t look at him. Swallowing past the knot of uncertainty in his throat, he turned to David.

“Yeah, let’s just walk up and down the docks and see if anyone is around.”
He started down the walkway when David spoke up.

“Someone has to stay with the carts. We can’t lose the supplies.”

“I’ll stay. I don’t know anything about boats anyway. Just hurry up and find us a ride. The sun’s going to be down soon and I don’t want to be here when the crazies come out to play,” Mark volunteered.

“Ok
ay, thanks, man,” David said and pushed past Mason onto the dock and jogged down to the end.

There were lots of huge cruising yachts but no sailboats. David guessed that the fancy yachts would be just as dead as all the cars on the road with all their electronics fried. He turned back and headed for the next dock. They continued down each dock this way with no luck until they had reached the twelfth one and David heard banging and a muffled curse. Halfway down the dock he came to a stop at a forty or fifty foot sailboat. It was in between two cruisers and David could see piles of supplies and bags sitting on its deck. All the other boats had empty decks so David was sure someone was onboard. When he heard the bang come again
, he closed his eyes in relief, finally, a chance to get help. He turned and waved Mason and the girls forward and pointed at the huge sail boat.

When they had all caught up to him
, he said, “I’m going to call out to whoever’s on it. I’m going to be very polite and respectful. We need to try and convince this person to help us so everyone needs to put their best face forward. No attitude and no eye rolling,” pointedly looking at Mason and Lisa.

For once Lisa parked her attitude and nodded solemnly. She still hadn’t recovered from the close call on the street and was willing to do anything to get out of the city and away to safety. Mason was a different story. He immediately scowled at David and took a step towards him.

“Who put you in charge, Boy Scout?” He almost spat.

David stared him down and through gritted teeth told him, “Someone’s got to get us out of here and we all learned that running away isn’t going to work so just shut up and lose the ego and work with me here.”

Mason took another menacing step forward but before he could cut into David, Emily put her hand on his chest and pushed him back.

“That’s enough
, Mason! I want out of here and David’s right. We have to sell this person on helping us so just be nice for once.” Mason looked at her with a hurt expression but finally stepped back and nodded at David.

David turned to the boat and called out, “Hello
, on the boat! Anyone aboard?” There were a few moments of silence before they heard the sound of a door shutting and steps on the stairs. A man’s head came into view as he came on deck and stared down at them. He was tall with a dark tan. He was wearing tan cargo shorts and a tee-shirt that showed strong arms and hands that were covered in grease. He took in the group of kids with a neutral expression on his face. When he didn’t say anything, David stepped forward.

“Hi, we heard you banging around and we just wondered if you had heard any news about what’s going on?” David didn’t want to just hit the guy with
, “Can you take us home?” He wanted to get him talking and build a rapport with him.

The man pulled a rag out of his back pocket and started to clean the grease off his hands before answering
, “Not really, but it’s bad, really bad. Nothing electronic is working and the city is breaking down fast. Fires and gunshots everywhere. It took me all day to get here on foot,” he replied with a grimace.

David nodded. “Yeah
, we saw some bad stuff too. We were at Disneyland on a class trip when everything stopped. Saw a plane drop out of the sky and on the way here, there were bodies all over the place. Our teacher thinks it was an EMP.”

“An EMP…that would explain a lot.”
The man looked around and back down the dock before focusing back on David. “Where’s your teacher?”

“Not with us. She told us to try and get out of the city. Some of the other kids headed inland but we wanted to try
taking a boat out. Mrs. Moore stayed back with the kids that wouldn’t leave. They think the government will come and rescue them so they’re headed to the consulate.”

The man scoffed, “They won’t make it. No one’s coming and if they did
, there are millions of people here to help. What consulate, where are you guys from?”

“Canada, Alberta. We’re going to try and get a boat working and head up the coast to B.C
. and head overland from there.”

“Man, I love Alberta. I’ve done a lot of skiing around Banff. I’m originally from the Seattle area so it’s a quick hop up there. At least it was.” He paused thoughtfully with a frown. “Do you guys even know how to sail? Nothing that’s engine
-powered will work, at least nothing newer. You might be able to find an old tub that you could get working but you’d never get enough fuel to get that far.”

Mason, who had been standing back stepped forward and tried to sound confident. “I’ve done some sailing on small boats but only on lakes, never in the ocean.  I thought we would stay close to shore and get as far north as we could.”

The man was shaking his head halfway through Mason’s plan. “That won’t work. If you don’t have experience with the tides and currents you would be wrecked in no time. That stretch is the last place you want to learn. It’s better to head out towards Hawaii and then turn northeast. Trust me, I’ve made the trip twice a year for the past 6 years. You guys would be better off finding something powered.”

Everyone visibly slumped in defeat. Everything in this marina looked newer which meant fried electronics. The man frowned again. “Do any of you guys know anything about engines?”

David’s head came up, “Yes, sir, I’ve been working on them for as long as I can remember.”

The man looked the kids over again
. “So you know about engines and you know a little about sailing.” He shook his head. “Just enough to get into trouble or get very lucky. What about supplies? You can’t just go to the store while you’re out on the water and it would be weeks to go that far.”

Emily decided to make their case. The sun was getting even lower and she wanted to move on if this guy wasn’t going to help them so she spoke up. “We have three golf carts over there filled with food and water. We have enough with rationing to last that long. Water will be the biggest worry but we can hope for rain.” She stopped and took a breath. “Sir, David is really amazing with engines and Mason has some sailing experience. We have a lot of supplies and can take care of ourselves. If we stay here
, we will die or worse. It’s too late for us to try and walk out of the city now. We have to go by boat as far as we can get. Will you help us? Will you take us with you?”

The man took a step back in surprise
as if he hadn’t even considered it. Before he could respond, she introduced everyone. “I’m Emily and this is Lisa. The boys are David and Mason. Our friend Mark is guarding the supplies over there. Twenty minutes ago we were shot at and almost killed. If Lisa and I are caught by the wrong people, we’ll be raped and then killed. I’m only sixteen. I don’t want to die. We have to get out of here and soon.” She looked at the man pleadingly.

“I…I don’t…Oh
, man!” he stuttered.

David jumped in again
. “We’d do anything you want. We can help in anyway and we’d stay out of your way. You can share all the supplies we brought and we can scavenge more from around here. We can get more gas from these boats and find more water. We’d do anything! Please, sir, help us get home.”