The New Madrid Run (22 page)

“If that was a compliment, I thank you,” he replied.

“I’m not sure it was,” Chistina said as she smiled from across the cockpit. She paused for a moment, looking at him. “I’m glad you’re safe, Travis.”

Later that night, after supper had been dispensed with and everyone prepared for bed, Travis and Christina slipped away to the cockpit. They sat together while watching the soft reflection of the stars on the water.

“Travis? When we get to Arkansas, will we be safe? Will you stop trying to get yourself killed then? Couldn’t we just raise some chickens, have a garden and wait out all this madness?”

Travis chuckled. “I bet the only chickens you’ve ever seen were Saran-wrapped and date-stamped. But, to answer your questions in order, yes, we’re going to be safe in Arkansas. As for me trying to get myself killed, I’m real tired of that sport. Dangerous living isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Gives me indigestion. I’d love to raise some chickens, bag a deer or a turkey every once in a while, do some fishing, and cultivate a garden full of Miracle Grow vegetables.” He turned to her. “What about you? A few weeks ago you were worth a fortune, a prominent member of the South Florida social register. Will you, the aspiring attorney, the Miami jet-setter, be content with life in the country, farm animals, first-hand fertilizer for your garden, a potbellied stove and a fireplace for heat when winter rolls in?”

She smiled, gazing at the water. “You have no idea how a part of me has always longed for a life like that. Past the dance lessons and debutante balls of my childhood, I remember more than anything else the summers I spent on my grandparents’ ranch in Mexico. The feel of a horse beneath me, the musky-sweet warmth of a hay barn in summer, new calves calling to their mothers at the end of the day.” She looked at him. “Don’t worry about me. You get us there and I’ll be just fine. She paused for a moment, still gazing at him, and drew a small breath. Now, Mr. Travis Christian, would you kiss me?”

For the next few days the sailboat and shrimper traveled the new coastline of Mississippi. They passed the inundated remains of Gulfport without bothering to stop. Their goal was still the mouth of the new inland waterway—the body of water they hoped would take them all the way to Arkansas. They were beginning to see a number of other boats—probably survivors from the Gulfport area. All seemed to be wary and stayed a good distance away, although now and then, a few of the occupants waved.

Early one morning, after a group breakfast on the shrimp boat, the preacher took a reading with the GPS, went topside, and looked at the coastline and the sun, then came down and checked the GPS and the charts again, a puzzled look on his face. Travis had been watching him.

“What’s up preacher?”

“Well, I’ve checked our position twice now, to be sure; then I checked the sun just to be double sure. What’s up is, we’re running out of coast or, that is to say, the coast is receding radically northward along the east side of the Mississippi Valley. We’re in the area of Biloxi, right now, but there don’t appear to be much Mississippi left to speak of. I think, gentlemen and lady, we are entering the inland sea of North America. If my fathometer is right, and I think it is, there must have been one hell of a wall of water come through here diggin’ a giant trench, or one monster fault ripped itself open here, ’cause we’re anchored over what was dry land before—and now we’re in fifty feet of water.” The preacher paused and looked around at everyone, “Lord have mercy on the souls of new adventurers.”

Before getting underway, the preacher, the sensei, and Travis did a little guesstimating on the width and depth of the inland waterway, trying to determine what course to plot. The consensus was to head west-northwest, into and across the sea, keeping them in what should be fairly deep water as they aimed diagonally for the coast on the other side.

The decision made, anchors were pulled and they set out. The wind was still crisp and favorable; the day was clear and the waves light. All the omens seemed good, so, like true adventurers, they faced the unknown with excitement rather than trepidation, and sailed undaunted into the morning mists of a new sea.

They journeyed for four days, seeing fewer and fewer boats as they entered the interior of the waterway. According to the GPS readings, they traveled through Mississippi, into Louisiana, and continued on a northwest course across that state. On the fifth day of their sail, they began to observe more traffic again. Trawlers and smaller fishing boats dotted the horizon periodically, as well as a couple of freighters. There appeared to be less tension in the air when the other craft passed, and it was apparent that commerce had begun again to some degree.

During that afternoon, they saw a fishing boat off the starboard beam about a quarter-mile out. A small man wearing a yellow slicker and a weathered ball cap waved frantically at them from the deck.

Travis radioed the preacher. “You see him out there?”

“Yeah, I see him, son. What do you think?”

“Looks like he has a problem. Let’s go over and check it out. But we go with weapons ready and you flank him in the shrimper. I’ll do the talking; you and Carlos keep him covered.”

“Got it,” the preacher said. “Let’s go.”

Alvin Plummer was having a bad day. He’d gone out to try to catch a few fish in a body of water that hadn’t decided if it wanted to be fresh or saltwater, and it was still throwing the fish off their feed. He had less than a hundred gallons of gas left in the boat. When that was gone, he’d have to barter part of his catch for incredibly expensive fuel. To top it off, fifteen miles from shore his fuel line ruptured and he had nothing with which to repair it.

When he saw two boats headed his way, he was both hopeful and apprehensive. He figured either they were coming to help him, which would be great, or they were pirates, in which case a ruptured fuel line would no longer be one of his major concerns.

Since the big shake there wasn’t any Coast Guard, and people in his position just had to rely on help from somebody else, but nearly everyone else was busy helping themselves. Somehow or another, he had to get back to Monroe. He had a wife and kids to feed.

It’s funny
how quickly we get over being thankful that we survived yesterday, when we have to worry about making it through tomorrow,
he thought, recalling the aggregation of challenges he and other survivors faced in the first month or so after the collapse.

At first, what with the looting and all, people were killing each other like flies, and a good portion of the population just upped and left. Somewhere along the line, between the fighting and the talking, there began to emerge a glimmer of organization. They started getting the dead buried and disease under control, and those strong enough to fight for what they had, sometimes got to keep it. Those folks ended up as the new commodity brokers; maybe they owned a gas station or a vegetable farm, a grain mill or a liquor store, something to barter with. There was no longer much stock put in paper money. It had worked at first, in a largely inflated sense. People paid hundreds of dollars for a few canned goods or a little gas. Then everyone wised up to the fact that the money wasn’t much good if there wasn’t any federal government to back it. Finally people began trading in gold and silver, jewelry, and services, as they had a couple hundred years ago.

As far as crimes and violence, there was still a lot of that going on, but it wasn’t as mindless and uncontrolled as it had been at first. In the beginning, justice was a rope or a bullet. But there were a few people picking up where the authorities had left off, and order was slowly but surely coming around. The whole thing reminded Alvin of the old west he used to read about as a kid.

A good portion of the towns and cities that ran their electric plants on natural gas or nuclear energy were still getting power— provided the local generating station hadn’t been damaged, the gas lines ruptured, or the transfer lines knocked down. Others, where the quakes had been the worst, or the storms had hit, might be years getting back on line. Everything was still hit or miss, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been in the terrifying, uncertain beginning.

The unique thing about his hometown of Monroe, located until recently in the center of Louisiana, was that it had become a seaport. The earth had trembled and shook. There had been a thundering sound like that of a million horses in stampede, and the survivors of the initial onslaught staggered to their feet to witness the changing of the earth’s surface as a wall of water, a hundred miles wide, roared through the Mississippi Valley. It ripped apart cities and towns in a single breath, and gouged out thousands of square miles of forests, rivers, and hills.

When it was all over, and the waters had stopped rising, a third of Monroe lay underwater, making it the newest city on the inland sea. Because its new topography gave Monroe a fairly deep harbor, it became a natural port. In the weeks that followed, people with boats from Louisiana to Eastern Texas began to congregate there. In less than two months, a small fishing industry had begun to form. The other, probably more important factor that had helped establish Monroe as a seaport, was the enterprises of three brothers named Lafont.

The brothers, Louisiana Cajuns, had owned part of a timber business at the time of the destruction. When everything stopped moving and the water quit rising, they saw the potential in the construction of a marina. They had been minor partners in their lumber business, but the scuttlebutt was, they felt it was just too good an opportunity to share. It seemed their partner, Jack Thompson, a well-respected citizen of Monroe, met with a hunting accident shortly after the idea was conceived. Most everyone was fairly certain what happened, but no one was going to call the Lafonts on it, especially when there were people still shooting each other for a gallon of gasoline or a case of beans.

The Lafonts trucked in hundreds of huge logs. Cut in twenty-foot lengths, they spiked and chained them together to make two docks, or walkways, and floated them out into the water about a hundred yards apart. At twenty-foot intervals, they interspersed sixty-foot logs on each of the walkways, to create forty-foot berths on the inside of the catwalk. The two catwalks were about a hundred yards long, running parallel to each other, creating a channel in the middle with berths along both sides. The whole affair was anchored to the bottom by heavy chains, fifty feet below. It was crude and temporary, but ingenious, and it worked to accommodate trawlers, salvers, and fishing boats. There were even a few small freighters and tankers anchored outside the marina, close enough to run a skiff to the docks and shore. The boats inside were protected from pirates at night by two large trawlers that were pulled across the entrance, bow to bow, blocking it off. Some people said it also kept the boats inside from leaving without paying the exorbitant docking fees that the Lafonts charged. But no one said it too loud.

It was obvious to all that the Lafonts had become the “Teamsters” of Monroe, and they didn’t mind conducting business with a gun or a baseball bat. In fact, that approach seemed to suit them well. Their new acquisitions in the town extended well past docking fees and marine supplies.

Alvin stood and watched the sailboat and the shrimper move in on him. When he saw the automatic weapons, a shiver ran down his back.

Travis stayed twenty yards off and yelled to him, “What’s the problem?”

“My fuel line’s gone and I’ve got no replacement.”

Travis looked across to Carlos and the preacher. “No
problemo
,” Carlos yelled, “we got plenty extra. I can fix.”

“All right, mister,” Travis said, “we can straighten that out for you, it seems. Stand by and we’ll tie off.”

Moments later they were alongside. Alvin introduced himself, and while Carlos repaired the fuel line, the others pumped the fisherman for information, which was how they learned a little of Monroe, its occupants, the docks, and the Lafonts.

In no time at all, the fuel line was fixed and Alvin was so grateful he was beside himself. Travis and Carlos virtually had to pull themselves away lest the little fellow pump their hands off shaking goodbye.

Intrigued by the thought of solid ground, they decided to pay a visit to the city of Monroe. After wishing Alvin luck, they took the bearings he gave them and set off. An hour later, the western coast of America’s inland waterway came into view.

The new seaport looked like a scene that might have been painted by an angry Dali—the town ran right into the water, or vice versa, giving it an amphibious feeling. Of the section that was above water, part had been collapsed by quakes and part had been consumed by fire—the place looked like Savannah after the siege.

Fortunately, repairs and recovery had begun in earnest for those who had decided to stay. In the salvageable sections of town, some electricity was being restored, the natural-gas lines to the city electric plant having been temporarily repaired. Badly damaged buildings were being torn down and their lumber used to restore more viable structures. People scurried everywhere, working, hustling, trying to find something valuable, then trying to sell or barter it for something they needed. The one notable difference between the people there, and those before the shake up, was that almost everyone carried a gun.

Of course, the newest and most outstanding addition to the town was the dock system at the eastern end, near the new bay. It extended into the water like parallel log runways. There were perhaps twenty boats tied to their individual berths inside the docks. The two large trawlers Alvin had mentioned sat at the mouth of the docks, prepared to close them off. Armed guards strolled the catwalks, looking bored but dangerous as they made their rounds. Three small freighters and a salvage boat lay at anchor just outside the marina.

Travis and the sensei dropped the sails and motored in, the shrimper following. At the land’s end of the docks, there was a small, newly constructed building above which hung a sign that said simply:

LAFONT BROTHERS
DOCKAGE, REPAIRS, SUPPLIES