| General Fiction posted January 22, 2018 |
  |
sea story 4000 words see notes
Rat Busters
by LIJ Red
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.
IN THE DAYS OF WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON MEN
The first mate,Hawkins, woke up with a aching erection, and made a very bad decision. He was going to have the cute little yellowhaired cutpurse. The bitch for the shipload of convicts Lord Oglethorpe was shipping to Georgia. Hawkins got the key by crossing the palm of the Royal Marine guard with silver, and drove the other hardcases off the slim white figure. He led the boy to a cargo hold and lowered his britches.
The catamite went to his knees. He came up with the first mate's forgotten bootdirk and opened Hawkins' juglar. Then he slipped up behind the guard and did the same for him. He took the guard's keys and released the convicts. The Royal Marines and ship's crew died in the best tradition of their service--and rather quickly.
The biggest meanest convict naturally took over as captain. When he asked who knew anything about saiing a ship, he got a round of blank looks. They were beginning to figure it out, after many days, when they sighted a tiny scrap of island, flat and nearly barren, shaped a bit like a question mark's hook. They were going to see if fresh water was available there, but as they neared the island the ship ran hard aground with a jarring crunch, and the holds began filling with water.
The island had a trickle of water and some weeds. They lowered a longboat, stocked it, and abandoned ship. They were picked up by a vessel with no colors, a ship of The Brethren Of The Coast, which suited them exactly. They joined the buccaneers, and cold steel, hemp and rum did for the lot in the end.
The years and a hurricane dismasted the ship and her hull wallowed lower into the sand, and put on a cloak of bladderweed.
AND IN THE BATISTA DAYS
Loyd Kinnon was grinnon as his rumrunner once again showed the US Coast Guard how to cover some ocean. He had managed to purchase a Packard version of the Rolls Merlin V12 after the end of the Hitler affair, and his bootlegger speedboat was nearly as fast as a Supermarine Spitfire. He watched the stack gas of the laboring cutter sink below the horizon astern and laughed out loud. Rum sold well in the USA in 1947.
Loyd saw the uncharted island and steered around it. He saw the lump of green crud too late. The aviation gas, a few hand grenades, and lots of rum made a spectacular blast, but it didn't last long, and the cutter, with better charts and watchful crew, gave the island a wide berth, and kept up their hot pursuit of Loyd Kinnon. They never caught him.
A leg and corner of the sleeper couch from Loyd's boat washed up on the little question mark island. A soaked, battered, hungry mom crawled out of the couch springs, looking for something to eat, so she could make milk for her babies.
AND LAST WEEK IN DOWNTOWN SAVANNAH AT THE REGIONAL HSA HEADQUARTERS
Regional HSA supervisor Winslow Crown was on the telephone, making excuses to the Director of the NSA. "Yes, sir, It was larger than April 2001. Larger than the Carrington Event in 1859. If it had been a less glancing hit, we'd be out of business for months. I have almost all units reporting now. Who? Your cousin-oh, the head of the Noah's Ark project. No, his communications are down, but the satellites say his vessel is in place, and intact, and one human figure is moving around on it. I'll send someone to check on him, with the latest in satphone and radio devices, sir."
A bit later he hung up the phone and slumped, and exhaled.
Then he yelled loud enough to be heard down the hall, "Stella! Or should I say Stay-la?"
BACK IN THE WILDS OF BLEAKER COUNTY, GA THE DAY BEFORE THE FLARE
One of the few people who knew about her lost baby, Pork Chop, was Leda Peale's nephew, Bummer Dempert. Bummer watched Leda's daughters play volleyball at the Lachey Municipal Park, one summer day, and said, "You got Lex from Jurassic Park and Goonie Stef. Ah Reckon the Man knows what he's doing, Leeder."
"If I didn't believe that, I'd be lost in the Sargasso Sea today, Dempert." Leda laughed.
"Or living in your grandad's little old house, with Lex and Stef, but their hair would be brown instead of blonde." Bummer said.
"Oh, catch a trolley into the sea. You always thought that shiftless Whack was some sort of cool dude."
"He took us kids swimmin' and fishin' an' taught me how to shoot. Cool dude, Ah reckin, " Bummer said. "Hey, we got a campaign going. Trying to find a home for Bertie's cats."
"Oh, my. Is Bertie worse?"
"The doc says she could go any time. Hospice calls on her every day. COPD and diabetic and ninety don't mix well."
"Well, the cats are all spayed females, coming up on ten years old. Shouldn't be too hard to find a place."
"Bertie wants them to stay together. They always have."
"That makes it tougher. Plus they are skinny old feral-looking things. I'll ask around, Bummer."
"Heard from Whack lately?"
"Why would I hear from him?"
"Oh, The Lord multitasks."
Leda felt a kinship to her great aunt, Emmaline, long dead now, as far as "witchy crap", as Bummer called it, was concerned. She would intuitively know undertakings with disasterous results, and could tell a liar before he opened his mouth. She denied that growing up in a large household and having a high IQ had anything to do with her "powers."
She yielded to a nagging urge and dialed a number after she finally got the two wildcats to the kitchen sink, washing and drying dishes.
"The Jones home. Aurora here." the voice at the other end said.
"Hello, Rory. This is Leda Peale."
"I know your voice, nemesis mine. He is sailing around the Bermuda Triangle with that despicable troll, Stella Renata, on some idiotic mission for that Fed, that Winslow Crown."
"Thanks, Rory. My witch bone is tingling. I had an urge to make this call."
"A moment sooner and you'd have gotten a busy signal. My pop just hung up after a solid hour of nattering with an old colleague while his supper clotted. Hey, got any extra cats out there on the truck farm?"
Leda stared at the phone as if she held a snake.
"Leda? Are you still there?"
"That gave me cold chills. I am looking for a home for four old cats that belong to a widow woman who is terminally ill."
"Well, an aging doctor retired on some sort of floating sea colony needs them, or so he told my dad. Ratty was been whining to blow the soot out of her restored 240Z with another run through the Smokies. Can we pick the cats up tomorrow?"
"Meet me at the Pool Room at high noon. I'll buy you a chili dog and give you directions."
"You're on, Wicked Witch of The Wilderness."
Jessica(Stef) popped the dishtowel at her mother. "What, what? You're pale, mom. Bad news?"
"No." Leda said. "Good news, in a scary kind of way."
Leda forgot to tell Rory that a driveway that branched off the county blacktop road a hundred yards from Bertie's mailbox wound up the side of the long hill and into Bertie's back yard. Rory and Lovelace Marie Rathbone, Ratty, parked at the mailbox and climbed the eighty stone steps up the almost vertical bluff to Bertie's small front yard. Each carried a plastic and steel pet transporter cage.
Rory knocked on the front door. She was poised to knock again when it opened.
She studied the small, auburn-haired female. "Good morning, deputy."
"Just Tommi. Laid off this week. Giving Bertie's care-giver niece time off to shop. Leda said to expect a broad-bottomed harlot looking for cats," the part-time deputy said with a mischievous grin.
"I'll bet. And no, I don't star in stage shows in Tiajuana, either." Rory smiled. "Can you help us get the pusses into our carriers, Tommi?"
"No way. Bertie can do it. Get ready for a lot of questions and a lot of tears."
An hour later, Lovelace made the tires yelp and the six-cylinder engine rip into the mountain afternoon silence. The cats were all meowing discordantly in the carriers wedged behind the seats. Ratty's nose was still plugged with tears. "What a bad dream. Goodbyes really suck, Jones."
"Her cats were her companions. Closer than kids," Rory said. "We are rotten bastards, taking her darlings away."
"You lied to her. You don't know that old doctor."
"My pop thinks highly of him. Bertie can't take care of the cats anymore. I don't think she'll live much longer. We are the good guys, Ratty."
"And heartbreaking scenes like that don't help old folks hang on." Ratty dove deep into a curve, braked for an instant, downshifted and torqued her way out of the drift at full throttle in fourth gear.
The next morning the twenty-meter ketch Ironman stood out to sea, running before the land breeze. She had a charter of four for Bermuda, and a cargo for someplace called Question Island. A meowing cargo.
DOWN BY THE MOUTH OF THE JIMPSON RIVER, ON THE GA COAST
"Who do you think you are, Costner?" a small nasal voice piped up, and startled Tim Wacker.
"Steller Renatter. Go ahead and sneak up on me. I'll treat you like a soccer ball, " Tim replied. "Kick you skyhigh and headbutt you to Bermoody."Tim, AKA Whack, was finishing the installation of a spiral-type omnidirectional windmill on the foredeck of his felucca. The sky was cloudless, and the interval between land and sea breezes had grown very long. The bay was empty of boats. Charlie Wilson's Boat Shop stood open and empty. Crossing the midpoint of summer had brought a graveyard peace to the Georgia coast. Charlie and his wife were summering in Maine, of course, and Whack was borrowing his shop.
He grinned at Stella Renata. "Wanta play Tripplehorn? Hop up here and beg."
"Getting whopped on the head with an oar ain't my bag. If that's all you have to do, you're chartered by the NSA. Prepare to get underway, CTM3/USNR Wacker."
"I wish I had some excuse to give you a hard time. As 'tis, grab your bags, popcorn fart."
Stella, 25, all thirty inches and thirty pounds of her, threw her miniature duffle onto the Stay-La's deck and helped him slide the seven-meter replica of an archaic felucca into the Jimpson River. Charlie's boat shop squatted at the top of the riverbank. This launching involved backing the truck and trailer down the cracked concrete ramp and winching the craft into the water.
"What supplies do we need?" the midget asked as they cordeled the boat to the battered wood pier down stream from the ramp.
"I got one bar of soap," Whack said.
"Sorpresa, sorpresa. Let's go shopping. Carry your supervising agent."
Whack put the probie HSA agent into the shopping cart like a baby. The cashier blinked when the infant whipped out her credit card. Whack was destitute, as usual, and the groaning cart held several hundred dollars of basic supplies.
"Now we need to swing by the office. I got some high dollar communicating gear to pick up."
"And suck face with yer Winslow, no doubt."
The sun finally warmed the land a bit more than the water and slightly cooler air rolled in from the sea. The lateen sail played airfoil and pulled them at an almost beam reach down the river shore, helped by a sluggish current. The helical windmill was turning steadily, as if pulling a load.
"Knowing you, there's a motor hidden someplace," Stella said. "Where?"
"Sort of. A twelve volt DC pump and jetski nozzle mounted on the keel. No drag at all with the inlet capped," Whack said. "When the windmill and the solar panel on the masthead have the two big marine batteries fully charged, we can run about twenty miles at five knots. In other words--whistle for a wind, ye of no altitude. Of course, the lights and fridge work off the twelve volts."
"How fast is Stay-La with a good wind?"
"She's got ratios like a giant Sunfish. I averaged eleven knots on a run up the coast one time."
"Geez, Winslow Crown is going to impale me on his golf trophy." Stella laughed. "We will be a solid month on this mission."
"I am sure Crown thinks a lot about impaling you." Whack laughed. "We have about six knots of wind, so we be reaching at about four. Sailing right along."
"Just set us a course about a hundred degrees, and start talking. Testify."
"What should I say?"
"Tell me a sea story. About shooting Lupo at a range of a half mile, and sodomizing Rory Jones."
"Once upon a time, on a nasty little island, far, far, away--"
OFF QUESTION ISLAND
Love that GPS stuff, Whack thought. Brought us straight to our target. But what the dickens is it? He spilled the wind and pulled the cable to uncap the pump inlet. Stella worked the tiller and the switch and potentiometer for the pump. The electric jet pump was as silent as the sail. As he furled the large triangular sail, she placed the Stay-La alongside the peculiar apparatus anchored on the lee side of the scruffy little island, which was roughly the shape of the hook of a question mark. Whack tied the felucca to a brace of cleats on the floating garden. He could see the bottom clearly. Low tide would practically set the vessel on the sand. The island sloped up very gradually from the depths of the Sargasso Sea. The land itself was two hundred yards south of this floating truck farm. One could wade ashore. He looked around. The farm had begun life as a 140X40-foot ocean barge. Now its flat deck was a mass of blossoming garden veggies with a wooden outhouse in the center.
The white-haired old man, short and stooped, came stomping down the narrow walkway between wooden planters full of growing corn and beans. "Who are you? This is the property of the United States of America. My safety is monitored. What is your business here?"
"You safety being monitored is why we are here," Whack replied.
"Get your obnoxious brat out of my tomatoes."
Stella munched on the stolen ripe tomato as she strode over and gently kicked the old man's shin. "I'm Stella Renata, Agent of the HSA. You clammed up and here we are. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Now this is a new dimension in undercover. A two year old with knockers, " the man said "I was sure my message was lost in the solar storm's electromagnetic Hell. Then my power system got fried. I'm semi-retired and this is an experiment on being a Robinson Crusoe. On surviving nuclear war or the collapse of civilization from supervolcanoe, asteroid, whatever. How much of what does it take to survive and play Noah. I test various fertilizers and seedable crops. Plus I monitor certain environmental sensing devices. I am funded by the CIA."
"I know. Crown sent me. I chose to charter this particular boat, instead of diverting a Coast Guard cutter to see if you were okay. Then the solar flare died down and the satellites saw you carrying on as usual. We were just a couple of days over the horizon by then, so we dropped by to chat."
"I am not carrying on as usual! My existence is in dire peril. Let me get my binoculars. You should see this, agent Renata."
Moments later, Whack stood on the outer walkway nearest the island. Stella Renata sat astride the back of his neck, resting her elbows on his head. She was studying the island through a small pair of folding binoculars.
"Hey, is that something moving under the bushes and weeds, or just shadows?" Whack said.
The midget shivered. "Rats. Millions and millons of snake-tailed Norway rats."
"Yes. And they have eaten every bug and tuber. Now they live off clams and fish and turtles and sea birds and each other. My last cat died, and my terrier. At low tide, I run up and down the side of my barge, chopping them with my hoe. Some get aboard, and I trap and poison them, but it's a losing battle. And the problem grows swiftly,as an established rat population seeks to double every month.Tonight may be the moment of truth. The tide will be at its lowest, in the dark of the moon. I'm tempted to board your ship and sail away and let the poor starving things inherit the Ark."
"Holy shit, look at them, Whack. Like a gray flood." Stella said. "They know what's coming. They are gathering to start the swim."
"They snap at me when they get aboard when I chop them. I shouldn't be surprised if the great mob of them is not absolutely dangerous," the doc said.
"Leiningrin and the rats?" Whack asked, not exactly facetiously.
The sun was a red ball on the skyline far too soon. The midget spent a half hour yelling at Winslow Crown on the new generation satphone she had brought to the Ark on Stay-la.
The dusk deepened, the stars came out and watched interestedly.
AND ABOARD THE SUPERCARRIER
The Captain called Pappy Goins to the bridge. He ordered the last Tomcat brought to the flight deck.
Symbolically, the sun was an overripe orange on the western skyline. Its long rays showed the fine wrinkles on the rugged face of the oldest pilot on the supercarrier Teflon Willie.
"Want to volunteer for one last mission, Commander?" the captain asked after saluting. "I hear you're packing your bags and going home to momma."
"Yes, sir. And yes, sir."
"And I suppose you'd rather fly the last F14 we have that's serviceable."
"Hell, yes, sir."
"The mission is a night air strike requiring surgical precision. It has been requested by DIRNSA and approved by the CNO. Commander, suit up and report for briefing. Good hunting."
"Aye, aye, sir."
The ship's course was into the wind. The sun was gone as the 'Cat lifted off and climbed away to the west.
ON NOAH'S ARK
The keel of the barge scrubbed the sand. This was the ebb. The two hundred yards of water was down to a hundred and twenty or so.
The rats knew it. A wedge of deeper darkness crossed the pale strip of sandy beach, like a polluted river oozing into the sea.
Stella had a trowel, Whack had an iron rake, and the good doctor his trusty hoe.
The doctor cranked the Whack-repaired generator and turned on floodlights as the darkness rolled in from the east.
The reflected specks looked like the milky way through red cellophane, a vast cloud of eyes. They filled the sea and closed on the barge, inexorably.
"Can I panic and squeal and climb up your pants' leg and hide?" Stella asked Whack.
"You can get in my pants any time, Twerpy." Rory Jones or Leda Peale might have detected the tension in him.
"Ha! That's not what you say when I come after you. Weh. Weh. Wea'me 'wone."
"I'm scared shitless of Crown. I can't believe Winslow isn't already here to save his favorite little morsel.
Steller and Winslow went fer uh ride,
Steller fell out and Winslow cried." Whack said, and sang quite badly.
"If yo momma paid for singing lessons, she got ripped off," Stella declared.
"I can't believe systems fall apart so easily. I am suppose to be in the middle of things," the doctor said. "Oh, shit. Here they come."
"A few 870 pump twelves with open choke and number eight shot sure would be nice." Whack said. "Couple of hundred, maybe."
"I don't believe in weapons," the doctor said. "Well, I didn't until now."
"All right, director. Cut! Time for a rousing Hollywood rescue," Stella said. Her small voice was squeakier than usual.
Right on cue, the antique F14 shot across the sky, lights flashing, twin pipes hinting a blue fire. She was traveling at near mach 1, and was gone before the sound arrived.
"Well. At least someone will know what happened," the doctor said. "Such a wonderful retirement. Eaten by ratti norvegici."
As the first wave of rats began to claw at the metal freeboard of the barge, Stella said, "Here he comes again."
Pappy nailed his target precisely, circled once, and flew away into pensioner's oblivion,with no medals for his last mission.
The heat was incredible, and the air was no good. The three staggered back and leaned on their tools, gasping for oxygen and getting only that smell, like victory. The ocean itself was a wall of fire, a nightmare boiling at its base as blazing rodent bodies thrashed and died.
"My God, man's inhumanity!" the doctor cried. "All that money, all that science--just to kill things."
"At least I knew enough to have Stella in my pocket. Crown won't let any rats bite her tubby little butt," Whack said.
"Oh, you bite it. I had always heard of napalm. But Lord!" Stella said. "The reality sucks."
At first light, a Navy chopper made a low, slow pass. The scorched islands of dead rats were drifting away. The hordes on the island looked as numerous as ever, but were uneasy and not aggressive.
A bullhorn bellowed "Do you require assistance?"
The doctor waved the chopper on.
The next day, Ironman came strolling out of the northwest.
The doctor was overjoyed to see the four nervous old cats, and began to feed and pet them.
"Can four skinny little pusses make a difference?" Stella asked Whack. "I watched those rats bring down a pelican."
"The smell and the presence do more than the slaughter. Surely the island's population pressure is eased a little, by that one old Tomcat," Whack said.
"Let's hope. There were truckloads of roast rats floating away. I think the benzene and polystyrene ruin the flavor," Stella said.
"I think the rats ate all the gulls and fish. I have watched them diving for seafood," the doctor said. "They have owned that island for a long time."
The Noah project continued, an old woman died peacefully in her sleep, and the worst probie agent in the NSA returned to her delighted boss, sailing to CONUS aboard the Ironman with the all girl crew of Captain Rory Jones, by the orders of that same boss.
"Back under the desk, NOW, two-stone terror." Whack teased Stella as Ironman prepared to lift her hook.
"I guess it's best. Did Jones wear you out?"
"Uh-huh."
"I think you two use each other. You'll never tell her to sell the damn boat and come to bed."
"Huh-uh."
"You think the prophecy still applies."
Whack looked down at the midget. Then he picked her up and burped her and set her on the barge rail. She beat his chest with tiny fists, very gently.
"Beware the land, thou son o'sea
there'll be no child to follow thee
and aye the sword above your head
until the sea give up her dead."
Stella sounded close to tears.
"That's what Emmaline said."
"I've been thinking about the rats. There's nothing to be done that is humane. If the doc sails away, we leave them to endless generations of hunger and cannibalism. If we drop grain, or garbage, their population explodes until it's hunger and cannibalism. If we slaughter millions, then their population can really explode. Then an ice cold thought hit me-they are out of their natural environment. They should be on a steppe somewhere, with foxes and weasels and hawks and eagles swarming to the bounty. Nature's controls are upset, here, where they are kings of all they survey."
"Uh-huh."
"Just like homo sapiens."
"Uh-huh."
"And the only way to let the seabirds and things come home would be to exterminate the rats to the last one." Stella hushed. Her train of thought went into a tunnel.
Ironman caught the outer edges of a feeble tropical storm and made like an albatross for the US of A.
Whack Wacker and Stay-La vanished into the rising sun, not telling anyone what he was up to.
As usual.
IN THE DAYS OF WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON MEN
The first mate,Hawkins, woke up with a aching erection, and made a very bad decision. He was going to have the cute little yellowhaired cutpurse. The bitch for the shipload of convicts Lord Oglethorpe was shipping to Georgia. Hawkins got the key by crossing the palm of the Royal Marine guard with silver, and drove the other hardcases off the slim white figure. He led the boy to a cargo hold and lowered his britches.
The catamite went to his knees. He came up with the first mate's forgotten bootdirk and opened Hawkins' juglar. Then he slipped up behind the guard and did the same for him. He took the guard's keys and released the convicts. The Royal Marines and ship's crew died in the best tradition of their service--and rather quickly.
The biggest meanest convict naturally took over as captain. When he asked who knew anything about saiing a ship, he got a round of blank looks. They were beginning to figure it out, after many days, when they sighted a tiny scrap of island, flat and nearly barren, shaped a bit like a question mark's hook. They were going to see if fresh water was available there, but as they neared the island the ship ran hard aground with a jarring crunch, and the holds began filling with water.
The island had a trickle of water and some weeds. They lowered a longboat, stocked it, and abandoned ship. They were picked up by a vessel with no colors, a ship of The Brethren Of The Coast, which suited them exactly. They joined the buccaneers, and cold steel, hemp and rum did for the lot in the end.
The years and a hurricane dismasted the ship and her hull wallowed lower into the sand, and put on a cloak of bladderweed.
AND IN THE BATISTA DAYS
Loyd Kinnon was grinnon as his rumrunner once again showed the US Coast Guard how to cover some ocean. He had managed to purchase a Packard version of the Rolls Merlin V12 after the end of the Hitler affair, and his bootlegger speedboat was nearly as fast as a Supermarine Spitfire. He watched the stack gas of the laboring cutter sink below the horizon astern and laughed out loud. Rum sold well in the USA in 1947.
Loyd saw the uncharted island and steered around it. He saw the lump of green crud too late. The aviation gas, a few hand grenades, and lots of rum made a spectacular blast, but it didn't last long, and the cutter, with better charts and watchful crew, gave the island a wide berth, and kept up their hot pursuit of Loyd Kinnon. They never caught him.
A leg and corner of the sleeper couch from Loyd's boat washed up on the little question mark island. A soaked, battered, hungry mom crawled out of the couch springs, looking for something to eat, so she could make milk for her babies.
AND LAST WEEK IN DOWNTOWN SAVANNAH AT THE REGIONAL HSA HEADQUARTERS
Regional HSA supervisor Winslow Crown was on the telephone, making excuses to the Director of the NSA. "Yes, sir, It was larger than April 2001. Larger than the Carrington Event in 1859. If it had been a less glancing hit, we'd be out of business for months. I have almost all units reporting now. Who? Your cousin-oh, the head of the Noah's Ark project. No, his communications are down, but the satellites say his vessel is in place, and intact, and one human figure is moving around on it. I'll send someone to check on him, with the latest in satphone and radio devices, sir."
A bit later he hung up the phone and slumped, and exhaled.
Then he yelled loud enough to be heard down the hall, "Stella! Or should I say Stay-la?"
BACK IN THE WILDS OF BLEAKER COUNTY, GA THE DAY BEFORE THE FLARE
One of the few people who knew about her lost baby, Pork Chop, was Leda Peale's nephew, Bummer Dempert. Bummer watched Leda's daughters play volleyball at the Lachey Municipal Park, one summer day, and said, "You got Lex from Jurassic Park and Goonie Stef. Ah Reckon the Man knows what he's doing, Leeder."
"If I didn't believe that, I'd be lost in the Sargasso Sea today, Dempert." Leda laughed.
"Or living in your grandad's little old house, with Lex and Stef, but their hair would be brown instead of blonde." Bummer said.
"Oh, catch a trolley into the sea. You always thought that shiftless Whack was some sort of cool dude."
"He took us kids swimmin' and fishin' an' taught me how to shoot. Cool dude, Ah reckin, " Bummer said. "Hey, we got a campaign going. Trying to find a home for Bertie's cats."
"Oh, my. Is Bertie worse?"
"The doc says she could go any time. Hospice calls on her every day. COPD and diabetic and ninety don't mix well."
"Well, the cats are all spayed females, coming up on ten years old. Shouldn't be too hard to find a place."
"Bertie wants them to stay together. They always have."
"That makes it tougher. Plus they are skinny old feral-looking things. I'll ask around, Bummer."
"Heard from Whack lately?"
"Why would I hear from him?"
"Oh, The Lord multitasks."
Leda felt a kinship to her great aunt, Emmaline, long dead now, as far as "witchy crap", as Bummer called it, was concerned. She would intuitively know undertakings with disasterous results, and could tell a liar before he opened his mouth. She denied that growing up in a large household and having a high IQ had anything to do with her "powers."
She yielded to a nagging urge and dialed a number after she finally got the two wildcats to the kitchen sink, washing and drying dishes.
"The Jones home. Aurora here." the voice at the other end said.
"Hello, Rory. This is Leda Peale."
"I know your voice, nemesis mine. He is sailing around the Bermuda Triangle with that despicable troll, Stella Renata, on some idiotic mission for that Fed, that Winslow Crown."
"Thanks, Rory. My witch bone is tingling. I had an urge to make this call."
"A moment sooner and you'd have gotten a busy signal. My pop just hung up after a solid hour of nattering with an old colleague while his supper clotted. Hey, got any extra cats out there on the truck farm?"
Leda stared at the phone as if she held a snake.
"Leda? Are you still there?"
"That gave me cold chills. I am looking for a home for four old cats that belong to a widow woman who is terminally ill."
"Well, an aging doctor retired on some sort of floating sea colony needs them, or so he told my dad. Ratty was been whining to blow the soot out of her restored 240Z with another run through the Smokies. Can we pick the cats up tomorrow?"
"Meet me at the Pool Room at high noon. I'll buy you a chili dog and give you directions."
"You're on, Wicked Witch of The Wilderness."
Jessica(Stef) popped the dishtowel at her mother. "What, what? You're pale, mom. Bad news?"
"No." Leda said. "Good news, in a scary kind of way."
Leda forgot to tell Rory that a driveway that branched off the county blacktop road a hundred yards from Bertie's mailbox wound up the side of the long hill and into Bertie's back yard. Rory and Lovelace Marie Rathbone, Ratty, parked at the mailbox and climbed the eighty stone steps up the almost vertical bluff to Bertie's small front yard. Each carried a plastic and steel pet transporter cage.
Rory knocked on the front door. She was poised to knock again when it opened.
She studied the small, auburn-haired female. "Good morning, deputy."
"Just Tommi. Laid off this week. Giving Bertie's care-giver niece time off to shop. Leda said to expect a broad-bottomed harlot looking for cats," the part-time deputy said with a mischievous grin.
"I'll bet. And no, I don't star in stage shows in Tiajuana, either." Rory smiled. "Can you help us get the pusses into our carriers, Tommi?"
"No way. Bertie can do it. Get ready for a lot of questions and a lot of tears."
An hour later, Lovelace made the tires yelp and the six-cylinder engine rip into the mountain afternoon silence. The cats were all meowing discordantly in the carriers wedged behind the seats. Ratty's nose was still plugged with tears. "What a bad dream. Goodbyes really suck, Jones."
"Her cats were her companions. Closer than kids," Rory said. "We are rotten bastards, taking her darlings away."
"You lied to her. You don't know that old doctor."
"My pop thinks highly of him. Bertie can't take care of the cats anymore. I don't think she'll live much longer. We are the good guys, Ratty."
"And heartbreaking scenes like that don't help old folks hang on." Ratty dove deep into a curve, braked for an instant, downshifted and torqued her way out of the drift at full throttle in fourth gear.
The next morning the twenty-meter ketch Ironman stood out to sea, running before the land breeze. She had a charter of four for Bermuda, and a cargo for someplace called Question Island. A meowing cargo.
DOWN BY THE MOUTH OF THE JIMPSON RIVER, ON THE GA COAST
"Who do you think you are, Costner?" a small nasal voice piped up, and startled Tim Wacker.
"Steller Renatter. Go ahead and sneak up on me. I'll treat you like a soccer ball, " Tim replied. "Kick you skyhigh and headbutt you to Bermoody."Tim, AKA Whack, was finishing the installation of a spiral-type omnidirectional windmill on the foredeck of his felucca. The sky was cloudless, and the interval between land and sea breezes had grown very long. The bay was empty of boats. Charlie Wilson's Boat Shop stood open and empty. Crossing the midpoint of summer had brought a graveyard peace to the Georgia coast. Charlie and his wife were summering in Maine, of course, and Whack was borrowing his shop.
He grinned at Stella Renata. "Wanta play Tripplehorn? Hop up here and beg."
"Getting whopped on the head with an oar ain't my bag. If that's all you have to do, you're chartered by the NSA. Prepare to get underway, CTM3/USNR Wacker."
"I wish I had some excuse to give you a hard time. As 'tis, grab your bags, popcorn fart."
Stella, 25, all thirty inches and thirty pounds of her, threw her miniature duffle onto the Stay-La's deck and helped him slide the seven-meter replica of an archaic felucca into the Jimpson River. Charlie's boat shop squatted at the top of the riverbank. This launching involved backing the truck and trailer down the cracked concrete ramp and winching the craft into the water.
"What supplies do we need?" the midget asked as they cordeled the boat to the battered wood pier down stream from the ramp.
"I got one bar of soap," Whack said.
"Sorpresa, sorpresa. Let's go shopping. Carry your supervising agent."
Whack put the probie HSA agent into the shopping cart like a baby. The cashier blinked when the infant whipped out her credit card. Whack was destitute, as usual, and the groaning cart held several hundred dollars of basic supplies.
"Now we need to swing by the office. I got some high dollar communicating gear to pick up."
"And suck face with yer Winslow, no doubt."
The sun finally warmed the land a bit more than the water and slightly cooler air rolled in from the sea. The lateen sail played airfoil and pulled them at an almost beam reach down the river shore, helped by a sluggish current. The helical windmill was turning steadily, as if pulling a load.
"Knowing you, there's a motor hidden someplace," Stella said. "Where?"
"Sort of. A twelve volt DC pump and jetski nozzle mounted on the keel. No drag at all with the inlet capped," Whack said. "When the windmill and the solar panel on the masthead have the two big marine batteries fully charged, we can run about twenty miles at five knots. In other words--whistle for a wind, ye of no altitude. Of course, the lights and fridge work off the twelve volts."
"How fast is Stay-La with a good wind?"
"She's got ratios like a giant Sunfish. I averaged eleven knots on a run up the coast one time."
"Geez, Winslow Crown is going to impale me on his golf trophy." Stella laughed. "We will be a solid month on this mission."
"I am sure Crown thinks a lot about impaling you." Whack laughed. "We have about six knots of wind, so we be reaching at about four. Sailing right along."
"Just set us a course about a hundred degrees, and start talking. Testify."
"What should I say?"
"Tell me a sea story. About shooting Lupo at a range of a half mile, and sodomizing Rory Jones."
"Once upon a time, on a nasty little island, far, far, away--"
OFF QUESTION ISLAND
Love that GPS stuff, Whack thought. Brought us straight to our target. But what the dickens is it? He spilled the wind and pulled the cable to uncap the pump inlet. Stella worked the tiller and the switch and potentiometer for the pump. The electric jet pump was as silent as the sail. As he furled the large triangular sail, she placed the Stay-La alongside the peculiar apparatus anchored on the lee side of the scruffy little island, which was roughly the shape of the hook of a question mark. Whack tied the felucca to a brace of cleats on the floating garden. He could see the bottom clearly. Low tide would practically set the vessel on the sand. The island sloped up very gradually from the depths of the Sargasso Sea. The land itself was two hundred yards south of this floating truck farm. One could wade ashore. He looked around. The farm had begun life as a 140X40-foot ocean barge. Now its flat deck was a mass of blossoming garden veggies with a wooden outhouse in the center.
The white-haired old man, short and stooped, came stomping down the narrow walkway between wooden planters full of growing corn and beans. "Who are you? This is the property of the United States of America. My safety is monitored. What is your business here?"
"You safety being monitored is why we are here," Whack replied.
"Get your obnoxious brat out of my tomatoes."
Stella munched on the stolen ripe tomato as she strode over and gently kicked the old man's shin. "I'm Stella Renata, Agent of the HSA. You clammed up and here we are. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Now this is a new dimension in undercover. A two year old with knockers, " the man said "I was sure my message was lost in the solar storm's electromagnetic Hell. Then my power system got fried. I'm semi-retired and this is an experiment on being a Robinson Crusoe. On surviving nuclear war or the collapse of civilization from supervolcanoe, asteroid, whatever. How much of what does it take to survive and play Noah. I test various fertilizers and seedable crops. Plus I monitor certain environmental sensing devices. I am funded by the CIA."
"I know. Crown sent me. I chose to charter this particular boat, instead of diverting a Coast Guard cutter to see if you were okay. Then the solar flare died down and the satellites saw you carrying on as usual. We were just a couple of days over the horizon by then, so we dropped by to chat."
"I am not carrying on as usual! My existence is in dire peril. Let me get my binoculars. You should see this, agent Renata."
Moments later, Whack stood on the outer walkway nearest the island. Stella Renata sat astride the back of his neck, resting her elbows on his head. She was studying the island through a small pair of folding binoculars.
"Hey, is that something moving under the bushes and weeds, or just shadows?" Whack said.
The midget shivered. "Rats. Millions and millons of snake-tailed Norway rats."
"Yes. And they have eaten every bug and tuber. Now they live off clams and fish and turtles and sea birds and each other. My last cat died, and my terrier. At low tide, I run up and down the side of my barge, chopping them with my hoe. Some get aboard, and I trap and poison them, but it's a losing battle. And the problem grows swiftly,as an established rat population seeks to double every month.Tonight may be the moment of truth. The tide will be at its lowest, in the dark of the moon. I'm tempted to board your ship and sail away and let the poor starving things inherit the Ark."
"Holy shit, look at them, Whack. Like a gray flood." Stella said. "They know what's coming. They are gathering to start the swim."
"They snap at me when they get aboard when I chop them. I shouldn't be surprised if the great mob of them is not absolutely dangerous," the doc said.
"Leiningrin and the rats?" Whack asked, not exactly facetiously.
The sun was a red ball on the skyline far too soon. The midget spent a half hour yelling at Winslow Crown on the new generation satphone she had brought to the Ark on Stay-la.
The dusk deepened, the stars came out and watched interestedly.
AND ABOARD THE SUPERCARRIER
The Captain called Pappy Goins to the bridge. He ordered the last Tomcat brought to the flight deck.
Symbolically, the sun was an overripe orange on the western skyline. Its long rays showed the fine wrinkles on the rugged face of the oldest pilot on the supercarrier Teflon Willie.
"Want to volunteer for one last mission, Commander?" the captain asked after saluting. "I hear you're packing your bags and going home to momma."
"Yes, sir. And yes, sir."
"And I suppose you'd rather fly the last F14 we have that's serviceable."
"Hell, yes, sir."
"The mission is a night air strike requiring surgical precision. It has been requested by DIRNSA and approved by the CNO. Commander, suit up and report for briefing. Good hunting."
"Aye, aye, sir."
The ship's course was into the wind. The sun was gone as the 'Cat lifted off and climbed away to the west.
ON NOAH'S ARK
The keel of the barge scrubbed the sand. This was the ebb. The two hundred yards of water was down to a hundred and twenty or so.
The rats knew it. A wedge of deeper darkness crossed the pale strip of sandy beach, like a polluted river oozing into the sea.
Stella had a trowel, Whack had an iron rake, and the good doctor his trusty hoe.
The doctor cranked the Whack-repaired generator and turned on floodlights as the darkness rolled in from the east.
The reflected specks looked like the milky way through red cellophane, a vast cloud of eyes. They filled the sea and closed on the barge, inexorably.
"Can I panic and squeal and climb up your pants' leg and hide?" Stella asked Whack.
"You can get in my pants any time, Twerpy." Rory Jones or Leda Peale might have detected the tension in him.
"Ha! That's not what you say when I come after you. Weh. Weh. Wea'me 'wone."
"I'm scared shitless of Crown. I can't believe Winslow isn't already here to save his favorite little morsel.
Steller and Winslow went fer uh ride,
Steller fell out and Winslow cried." Whack said, and sang quite badly.
"If yo momma paid for singing lessons, she got ripped off," Stella declared.
"I can't believe systems fall apart so easily. I am suppose to be in the middle of things," the doctor said. "Oh, shit. Here they come."
"A few 870 pump twelves with open choke and number eight shot sure would be nice." Whack said. "Couple of hundred, maybe."
"I don't believe in weapons," the doctor said. "Well, I didn't until now."
"All right, director. Cut! Time for a rousing Hollywood rescue," Stella said. Her small voice was squeakier than usual.
Right on cue, the antique F14 shot across the sky, lights flashing, twin pipes hinting a blue fire. She was traveling at near mach 1, and was gone before the sound arrived.
"Well. At least someone will know what happened," the doctor said. "Such a wonderful retirement. Eaten by ratti norvegici."
As the first wave of rats began to claw at the metal freeboard of the barge, Stella said, "Here he comes again."
Pappy nailed his target precisely, circled once, and flew away into pensioner's oblivion,with no medals for his last mission.
The heat was incredible, and the air was no good. The three staggered back and leaned on their tools, gasping for oxygen and getting only that smell, like victory. The ocean itself was a wall of fire, a nightmare boiling at its base as blazing rodent bodies thrashed and died.
"My God, man's inhumanity!" the doctor cried. "All that money, all that science--just to kill things."
"At least I knew enough to have Stella in my pocket. Crown won't let any rats bite her tubby little butt," Whack said.
"Oh, you bite it. I had always heard of napalm. But Lord!" Stella said. "The reality sucks."
At first light, a Navy chopper made a low, slow pass. The scorched islands of dead rats were drifting away. The hordes on the island looked as numerous as ever, but were uneasy and not aggressive.
A bullhorn bellowed "Do you require assistance?"
The doctor waved the chopper on.
The next day, Ironman came strolling out of the northwest.
The doctor was overjoyed to see the four nervous old cats, and began to feed and pet them.
"Can four skinny little pusses make a difference?" Stella asked Whack. "I watched those rats bring down a pelican."
"The smell and the presence do more than the slaughter. Surely the island's population pressure is eased a little, by that one old Tomcat," Whack said.
"Let's hope. There were truckloads of roast rats floating away. I think the benzene and polystyrene ruin the flavor," Stella said.
"I think the rats ate all the gulls and fish. I have watched them diving for seafood," the doctor said. "They have owned that island for a long time."
The Noah project continued, an old woman died peacefully in her sleep, and the worst probie agent in the NSA returned to her delighted boss, sailing to CONUS aboard the Ironman with the all girl crew of Captain Rory Jones, by the orders of that same boss.
"Back under the desk, NOW, two-stone terror." Whack teased Stella as Ironman prepared to lift her hook.
"I guess it's best. Did Jones wear you out?"
"Uh-huh."
"I think you two use each other. You'll never tell her to sell the damn boat and come to bed."
"Huh-uh."
"You think the prophecy still applies."
Whack looked down at the midget. Then he picked her up and burped her and set her on the barge rail. She beat his chest with tiny fists, very gently.
"Beware the land, thou son o'sea
there'll be no child to follow thee
and aye the sword above your head
until the sea give up her dead."
Stella sounded close to tears.
"That's what Emmaline said."
"I've been thinking about the rats. There's nothing to be done that is humane. If the doc sails away, we leave them to endless generations of hunger and cannibalism. If we drop grain, or garbage, their population explodes until it's hunger and cannibalism. If we slaughter millions, then their population can really explode. Then an ice cold thought hit me-they are out of their natural environment. They should be on a steppe somewhere, with foxes and weasels and hawks and eagles swarming to the bounty. Nature's controls are upset, here, where they are kings of all they survey."
"Uh-huh."
"Just like homo sapiens."
"Uh-huh."
"And the only way to let the seabirds and things come home would be to exterminate the rats to the last one." Stella hushed. Her train of thought went into a tunnel.
Ironman caught the outer edges of a feeble tropical storm and made like an albatross for the US of A.
Whack Wacker and Stay-La vanished into the rising sun, not telling anyone what he was up to.
As usual.
The first mate,Hawkins, woke up with a aching erection, and made a very bad decision. He was going to have the cute little yellowhaired cutpurse. The bitch for the shipload of convicts Lord Oglethorpe was shipping to Georgia. Hawkins got the key by crossing the palm of the Royal Marine guard with silver, and drove the other hardcases off the slim white figure. He led the boy to a cargo hold and lowered his britches.
The catamite went to his knees. He came up with the first mate's forgotten bootdirk and opened Hawkins' juglar. Then he slipped up behind the guard and did the same for him. He took the guard's keys and released the convicts. The Royal Marines and ship's crew died in the best tradition of their service--and rather quickly.
The biggest meanest convict naturally took over as captain. When he asked who knew anything about saiing a ship, he got a round of blank looks. They were beginning to figure it out, after many days, when they sighted a tiny scrap of island, flat and nearly barren, shaped a bit like a question mark's hook. They were going to see if fresh water was available there, but as they neared the island the ship ran hard aground with a jarring crunch, and the holds began filling with water.
The island had a trickle of water and some weeds. They lowered a longboat, stocked it, and abandoned ship. They were picked up by a vessel with no colors, a ship of The Brethren Of The Coast, which suited them exactly. They joined the buccaneers, and cold steel, hemp and rum did for the lot in the end.
The years and a hurricane dismasted the ship and her hull wallowed lower into the sand, and put on a cloak of bladderweed.
AND IN THE BATISTA DAYS
Loyd Kinnon was grinnon as his rumrunner once again showed the US Coast Guard how to cover some ocean. He had managed to purchase a Packard version of the Rolls Merlin V12 after the end of the Hitler affair, and his bootlegger speedboat was nearly as fast as a Supermarine Spitfire. He watched the stack gas of the laboring cutter sink below the horizon astern and laughed out loud. Rum sold well in the USA in 1947.
Loyd saw the uncharted island and steered around it. He saw the lump of green crud too late. The aviation gas, a few hand grenades, and lots of rum made a spectacular blast, but it didn't last long, and the cutter, with better charts and watchful crew, gave the island a wide berth, and kept up their hot pursuit of Loyd Kinnon. They never caught him.
A leg and corner of the sleeper couch from Loyd's boat washed up on the little question mark island. A soaked, battered, hungry mom crawled out of the couch springs, looking for something to eat, so she could make milk for her babies.
AND LAST WEEK IN DOWNTOWN SAVANNAH AT THE REGIONAL HSA HEADQUARTERS
Regional HSA supervisor Winslow Crown was on the telephone, making excuses to the Director of the NSA. "Yes, sir, It was larger than April 2001. Larger than the Carrington Event in 1859. If it had been a less glancing hit, we'd be out of business for months. I have almost all units reporting now. Who? Your cousin-oh, the head of the Noah's Ark project. No, his communications are down, but the satellites say his vessel is in place, and intact, and one human figure is moving around on it. I'll send someone to check on him, with the latest in satphone and radio devices, sir."
A bit later he hung up the phone and slumped, and exhaled.
Then he yelled loud enough to be heard down the hall, "Stella! Or should I say Stay-la?"
BACK IN THE WILDS OF BLEAKER COUNTY, GA THE DAY BEFORE THE FLARE
One of the few people who knew about her lost baby, Pork Chop, was Leda Peale's nephew, Bummer Dempert. Bummer watched Leda's daughters play volleyball at the Lachey Municipal Park, one summer day, and said, "You got Lex from Jurassic Park and Goonie Stef. Ah Reckon the Man knows what he's doing, Leeder."
"If I didn't believe that, I'd be lost in the Sargasso Sea today, Dempert." Leda laughed.
"Or living in your grandad's little old house, with Lex and Stef, but their hair would be brown instead of blonde." Bummer said.
"Oh, catch a trolley into the sea. You always thought that shiftless Whack was some sort of cool dude."
"He took us kids swimmin' and fishin' an' taught me how to shoot. Cool dude, Ah reckin, " Bummer said. "Hey, we got a campaign going. Trying to find a home for Bertie's cats."
"Oh, my. Is Bertie worse?"
"The doc says she could go any time. Hospice calls on her every day. COPD and diabetic and ninety don't mix well."
"Well, the cats are all spayed females, coming up on ten years old. Shouldn't be too hard to find a place."
"Bertie wants them to stay together. They always have."
"That makes it tougher. Plus they are skinny old feral-looking things. I'll ask around, Bummer."
"Heard from Whack lately?"
"Why would I hear from him?"
"Oh, The Lord multitasks."
Leda felt a kinship to her great aunt, Emmaline, long dead now, as far as "witchy crap", as Bummer called it, was concerned. She would intuitively know undertakings with disasterous results, and could tell a liar before he opened his mouth. She denied that growing up in a large household and having a high IQ had anything to do with her "powers."
She yielded to a nagging urge and dialed a number after she finally got the two wildcats to the kitchen sink, washing and drying dishes.
"The Jones home. Aurora here." the voice at the other end said.
"Hello, Rory. This is Leda Peale."
"I know your voice, nemesis mine. He is sailing around the Bermuda Triangle with that despicable troll, Stella Renata, on some idiotic mission for that Fed, that Winslow Crown."
"Thanks, Rory. My witch bone is tingling. I had an urge to make this call."
"A moment sooner and you'd have gotten a busy signal. My pop just hung up after a solid hour of nattering with an old colleague while his supper clotted. Hey, got any extra cats out there on the truck farm?"
Leda stared at the phone as if she held a snake.
"Leda? Are you still there?"
"That gave me cold chills. I am looking for a home for four old cats that belong to a widow woman who is terminally ill."
"Well, an aging doctor retired on some sort of floating sea colony needs them, or so he told my dad. Ratty was been whining to blow the soot out of her restored 240Z with another run through the Smokies. Can we pick the cats up tomorrow?"
"Meet me at the Pool Room at high noon. I'll buy you a chili dog and give you directions."
"You're on, Wicked Witch of The Wilderness."
Jessica(Stef) popped the dishtowel at her mother. "What, what? You're pale, mom. Bad news?"
"No." Leda said. "Good news, in a scary kind of way."
Leda forgot to tell Rory that a driveway that branched off the county blacktop road a hundred yards from Bertie's mailbox wound up the side of the long hill and into Bertie's back yard. Rory and Lovelace Marie Rathbone, Ratty, parked at the mailbox and climbed the eighty stone steps up the almost vertical bluff to Bertie's small front yard. Each carried a plastic and steel pet transporter cage.
Rory knocked on the front door. She was poised to knock again when it opened.
She studied the small, auburn-haired female. "Good morning, deputy."
"Just Tommi. Laid off this week. Giving Bertie's care-giver niece time off to shop. Leda said to expect a broad-bottomed harlot looking for cats," the part-time deputy said with a mischievous grin.
"I'll bet. And no, I don't star in stage shows in Tiajuana, either." Rory smiled. "Can you help us get the pusses into our carriers, Tommi?"
"No way. Bertie can do it. Get ready for a lot of questions and a lot of tears."
An hour later, Lovelace made the tires yelp and the six-cylinder engine rip into the mountain afternoon silence. The cats were all meowing discordantly in the carriers wedged behind the seats. Ratty's nose was still plugged with tears. "What a bad dream. Goodbyes really suck, Jones."
"Her cats were her companions. Closer than kids," Rory said. "We are rotten bastards, taking her darlings away."
"You lied to her. You don't know that old doctor."
"My pop thinks highly of him. Bertie can't take care of the cats anymore. I don't think she'll live much longer. We are the good guys, Ratty."
"And heartbreaking scenes like that don't help old folks hang on." Ratty dove deep into a curve, braked for an instant, downshifted and torqued her way out of the drift at full throttle in fourth gear.
The next morning the twenty-meter ketch Ironman stood out to sea, running before the land breeze. She had a charter of four for Bermuda, and a cargo for someplace called Question Island. A meowing cargo.
DOWN BY THE MOUTH OF THE JIMPSON RIVER, ON THE GA COAST
"Who do you think you are, Costner?" a small nasal voice piped up, and startled Tim Wacker.
"Steller Renatter. Go ahead and sneak up on me. I'll treat you like a soccer ball, " Tim replied. "Kick you skyhigh and headbutt you to Bermoody."Tim, AKA Whack, was finishing the installation of a spiral-type omnidirectional windmill on the foredeck of his felucca. The sky was cloudless, and the interval between land and sea breezes had grown very long. The bay was empty of boats. Charlie Wilson's Boat Shop stood open and empty. Crossing the midpoint of summer had brought a graveyard peace to the Georgia coast. Charlie and his wife were summering in Maine, of course, and Whack was borrowing his shop.
He grinned at Stella Renata. "Wanta play Tripplehorn? Hop up here and beg."
"Getting whopped on the head with an oar ain't my bag. If that's all you have to do, you're chartered by the NSA. Prepare to get underway, CTM3/USNR Wacker."
"I wish I had some excuse to give you a hard time. As 'tis, grab your bags, popcorn fart."
Stella, 25, all thirty inches and thirty pounds of her, threw her miniature duffle onto the Stay-La's deck and helped him slide the seven-meter replica of an archaic felucca into the Jimpson River. Charlie's boat shop squatted at the top of the riverbank. This launching involved backing the truck and trailer down the cracked concrete ramp and winching the craft into the water.
"What supplies do we need?" the midget asked as they cordeled the boat to the battered wood pier down stream from the ramp.
"I got one bar of soap," Whack said.
"Sorpresa, sorpresa. Let's go shopping. Carry your supervising agent."
Whack put the probie HSA agent into the shopping cart like a baby. The cashier blinked when the infant whipped out her credit card. Whack was destitute, as usual, and the groaning cart held several hundred dollars of basic supplies.
"Now we need to swing by the office. I got some high dollar communicating gear to pick up."
"And suck face with yer Winslow, no doubt."
The sun finally warmed the land a bit more than the water and slightly cooler air rolled in from the sea. The lateen sail played airfoil and pulled them at an almost beam reach down the river shore, helped by a sluggish current. The helical windmill was turning steadily, as if pulling a load.
"Knowing you, there's a motor hidden someplace," Stella said. "Where?"
"Sort of. A twelve volt DC pump and jetski nozzle mounted on the keel. No drag at all with the inlet capped," Whack said. "When the windmill and the solar panel on the masthead have the two big marine batteries fully charged, we can run about twenty miles at five knots. In other words--whistle for a wind, ye of no altitude. Of course, the lights and fridge work off the twelve volts."
"How fast is Stay-La with a good wind?"
"She's got ratios like a giant Sunfish. I averaged eleven knots on a run up the coast one time."
"Geez, Winslow Crown is going to impale me on his golf trophy." Stella laughed. "We will be a solid month on this mission."
"I am sure Crown thinks a lot about impaling you." Whack laughed. "We have about six knots of wind, so we be reaching at about four. Sailing right along."
"Just set us a course about a hundred degrees, and start talking. Testify."
"What should I say?"
"Tell me a sea story. About shooting Lupo at a range of a half mile, and sodomizing Rory Jones."
"Once upon a time, on a nasty little island, far, far, away--"
OFF QUESTION ISLAND
Love that GPS stuff, Whack thought. Brought us straight to our target. But what the dickens is it? He spilled the wind and pulled the cable to uncap the pump inlet. Stella worked the tiller and the switch and potentiometer for the pump. The electric jet pump was as silent as the sail. As he furled the large triangular sail, she placed the Stay-La alongside the peculiar apparatus anchored on the lee side of the scruffy little island, which was roughly the shape of the hook of a question mark. Whack tied the felucca to a brace of cleats on the floating garden. He could see the bottom clearly. Low tide would practically set the vessel on the sand. The island sloped up very gradually from the depths of the Sargasso Sea. The land itself was two hundred yards south of this floating truck farm. One could wade ashore. He looked around. The farm had begun life as a 140X40-foot ocean barge. Now its flat deck was a mass of blossoming garden veggies with a wooden outhouse in the center.
The white-haired old man, short and stooped, came stomping down the narrow walkway between wooden planters full of growing corn and beans. "Who are you? This is the property of the United States of America. My safety is monitored. What is your business here?"
"You safety being monitored is why we are here," Whack replied.
"Get your obnoxious brat out of my tomatoes."
Stella munched on the stolen ripe tomato as she strode over and gently kicked the old man's shin. "I'm Stella Renata, Agent of the HSA. You clammed up and here we are. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Now this is a new dimension in undercover. A two year old with knockers, " the man said "I was sure my message was lost in the solar storm's electromagnetic Hell. Then my power system got fried. I'm semi-retired and this is an experiment on being a Robinson Crusoe. On surviving nuclear war or the collapse of civilization from supervolcanoe, asteroid, whatever. How much of what does it take to survive and play Noah. I test various fertilizers and seedable crops. Plus I monitor certain environmental sensing devices. I am funded by the CIA."
"I know. Crown sent me. I chose to charter this particular boat, instead of diverting a Coast Guard cutter to see if you were okay. Then the solar flare died down and the satellites saw you carrying on as usual. We were just a couple of days over the horizon by then, so we dropped by to chat."
"I am not carrying on as usual! My existence is in dire peril. Let me get my binoculars. You should see this, agent Renata."
Moments later, Whack stood on the outer walkway nearest the island. Stella Renata sat astride the back of his neck, resting her elbows on his head. She was studying the island through a small pair of folding binoculars.
"Hey, is that something moving under the bushes and weeds, or just shadows?" Whack said.
The midget shivered. "Rats. Millions and millons of snake-tailed Norway rats."
"Yes. And they have eaten every bug and tuber. Now they live off clams and fish and turtles and sea birds and each other. My last cat died, and my terrier. At low tide, I run up and down the side of my barge, chopping them with my hoe. Some get aboard, and I trap and poison them, but it's a losing battle. And the problem grows swiftly,as an established rat population seeks to double every month.Tonight may be the moment of truth. The tide will be at its lowest, in the dark of the moon. I'm tempted to board your ship and sail away and let the poor starving things inherit the Ark."
"Holy shit, look at them, Whack. Like a gray flood." Stella said. "They know what's coming. They are gathering to start the swim."
"They snap at me when they get aboard when I chop them. I shouldn't be surprised if the great mob of them is not absolutely dangerous," the doc said.
"Leiningrin and the rats?" Whack asked, not exactly facetiously.
The sun was a red ball on the skyline far too soon. The midget spent a half hour yelling at Winslow Crown on the new generation satphone she had brought to the Ark on Stay-la.
The dusk deepened, the stars came out and watched interestedly.
AND ABOARD THE SUPERCARRIER
The Captain called Pappy Goins to the bridge. He ordered the last Tomcat brought to the flight deck.
Symbolically, the sun was an overripe orange on the western skyline. Its long rays showed the fine wrinkles on the rugged face of the oldest pilot on the supercarrier Teflon Willie.
"Want to volunteer for one last mission, Commander?" the captain asked after saluting. "I hear you're packing your bags and going home to momma."
"Yes, sir. And yes, sir."
"And I suppose you'd rather fly the last F14 we have that's serviceable."
"Hell, yes, sir."
"The mission is a night air strike requiring surgical precision. It has been requested by DIRNSA and approved by the CNO. Commander, suit up and report for briefing. Good hunting."
"Aye, aye, sir."
The ship's course was into the wind. The sun was gone as the 'Cat lifted off and climbed away to the west.
ON NOAH'S ARK
The keel of the barge scrubbed the sand. This was the ebb. The two hundred yards of water was down to a hundred and twenty or so.
The rats knew it. A wedge of deeper darkness crossed the pale strip of sandy beach, like a polluted river oozing into the sea.
Stella had a trowel, Whack had an iron rake, and the good doctor his trusty hoe.
The doctor cranked the Whack-repaired generator and turned on floodlights as the darkness rolled in from the east.
The reflected specks looked like the milky way through red cellophane, a vast cloud of eyes. They filled the sea and closed on the barge, inexorably.
"Can I panic and squeal and climb up your pants' leg and hide?" Stella asked Whack.
"You can get in my pants any time, Twerpy." Rory Jones or Leda Peale might have detected the tension in him.
"Ha! That's not what you say when I come after you. Weh. Weh. Wea'me 'wone."
"I'm scared shitless of Crown. I can't believe Winslow isn't already here to save his favorite little morsel.
Steller and Winslow went fer uh ride,
Steller fell out and Winslow cried." Whack said, and sang quite badly.
"If yo momma paid for singing lessons, she got ripped off," Stella declared.
"I can't believe systems fall apart so easily. I am suppose to be in the middle of things," the doctor said. "Oh, shit. Here they come."
"A few 870 pump twelves with open choke and number eight shot sure would be nice." Whack said. "Couple of hundred, maybe."
"I don't believe in weapons," the doctor said. "Well, I didn't until now."
"All right, director. Cut! Time for a rousing Hollywood rescue," Stella said. Her small voice was squeakier than usual.
Right on cue, the antique F14 shot across the sky, lights flashing, twin pipes hinting a blue fire. She was traveling at near mach 1, and was gone before the sound arrived.
"Well. At least someone will know what happened," the doctor said. "Such a wonderful retirement. Eaten by ratti norvegici."
As the first wave of rats began to claw at the metal freeboard of the barge, Stella said, "Here he comes again."
Pappy nailed his target precisely, circled once, and flew away into pensioner's oblivion,with no medals for his last mission.
The heat was incredible, and the air was no good. The three staggered back and leaned on their tools, gasping for oxygen and getting only that smell, like victory. The ocean itself was a wall of fire, a nightmare boiling at its base as blazing rodent bodies thrashed and died.
"My God, man's inhumanity!" the doctor cried. "All that money, all that science--just to kill things."
"At least I knew enough to have Stella in my pocket. Crown won't let any rats bite her tubby little butt," Whack said.
"Oh, you bite it. I had always heard of napalm. But Lord!" Stella said. "The reality sucks."
At first light, a Navy chopper made a low, slow pass. The scorched islands of dead rats were drifting away. The hordes on the island looked as numerous as ever, but were uneasy and not aggressive.
A bullhorn bellowed "Do you require assistance?"
The doctor waved the chopper on.
The next day, Ironman came strolling out of the northwest.
The doctor was overjoyed to see the four nervous old cats, and began to feed and pet them.
"Can four skinny little pusses make a difference?" Stella asked Whack. "I watched those rats bring down a pelican."
"The smell and the presence do more than the slaughter. Surely the island's population pressure is eased a little, by that one old Tomcat," Whack said.
"Let's hope. There were truckloads of roast rats floating away. I think the benzene and polystyrene ruin the flavor," Stella said.
"I think the rats ate all the gulls and fish. I have watched them diving for seafood," the doctor said. "They have owned that island for a long time."
The Noah project continued, an old woman died peacefully in her sleep, and the worst probie agent in the NSA returned to her delighted boss, sailing to CONUS aboard the Ironman with the all girl crew of Captain Rory Jones, by the orders of that same boss.
"Back under the desk, NOW, two-stone terror." Whack teased Stella as Ironman prepared to lift her hook.
"I guess it's best. Did Jones wear you out?"
"Uh-huh."
"I think you two use each other. You'll never tell her to sell the damn boat and come to bed."
"Huh-uh."
"You think the prophecy still applies."
Whack looked down at the midget. Then he picked her up and burped her and set her on the barge rail. She beat his chest with tiny fists, very gently.
"Beware the land, thou son o'sea
there'll be no child to follow thee
and aye the sword above your head
until the sea give up her dead."
Stella sounded close to tears.
"That's what Emmaline said."
"I've been thinking about the rats. There's nothing to be done that is humane. If the doc sails away, we leave them to endless generations of hunger and cannibalism. If we drop grain, or garbage, their population explodes until it's hunger and cannibalism. If we slaughter millions, then their population can really explode. Then an ice cold thought hit me-they are out of their natural environment. They should be on a steppe somewhere, with foxes and weasels and hawks and eagles swarming to the bounty. Nature's controls are upset, here, where they are kings of all they survey."
"Uh-huh."
"Just like homo sapiens."
"Uh-huh."
"And the only way to let the seabirds and things come home would be to exterminate the rats to the last one." Stella hushed. Her train of thought went into a tunnel.
Ironman caught the outer edges of a feeble tropical storm and made like an albatross for the US of A.
Whack Wacker and Stay-La vanished into the rising sun, not telling anyone what he was up to.
As usual.
This is part umpty of the story of female windjammer captain Rory Jones.
Lupo was a drug dealer, a minor capo shot by Whack in an earlier part of this tale.
Pork Chop was Whack and Leda's stillborn baby, who seems to still be around in fevers and dreams, a kind of ugly guardian angel.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Lupo was a drug dealer, a minor capo shot by Whack in an earlier part of this tale.
Pork Chop was Whack and Leda's stillborn baby, who seems to still be around in fevers and dreams, a kind of ugly guardian angel.
You need to login or register to write reviews. It's quick! We only ask four questions to new members.
© Copyright 2024. LIJ Red All rights reserved. Registered copyright with FanStory.
LIJ Red has granted FanStory.com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
