He kept his expression serious for a moment, and then a toothy, mischievous grin slowly took its place.
Gail laughed. “Yeah, me too.”
“So what were you, before all of this?”
“Divorced,” Gail said. “No kids. I was a social worker. At night, I came home to my dog, a little Yorkie named Terrance.”
“And what happened to him?”
“We’re here,” Gail said, side-stepping the question.
They knelt by Hansen’s rack and opened his footlocker. They went through the items cautiously, double-checking for any sign of white fungus, but found none. There wasn’t much inside the footlocker. Some spare but damp clothes. A cell phone with a dead battery. Half a bottle of flax-seed oil capsules. A key ring in the shape of an apple which said ‘I ♥ NY’ with car and house keys dangling from it. And a black leather wallet. While McCann sorted through the items, Gail opened the wallet. It too was damp, and a faint musty smell rose from inside. She found a few mildewed snapshots—Hansen with two smiling children, obviously his, and a wedding photo of a much younger version of Hansen posing with his wife. Gail frowned, trying to remember if the man had ever mentioned his family, or what had happened to them.
“Did Hansen have a wedding ring?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I never noticed. To be honest, I didn’t like him very much. Why?”
“No reason. Just curious as to who he was.”
“Why? He’s gone, now. It’s not like we can carve this stuff on his tombstone.”
“Maybe not, but all the more reason we should know about each other, don’t you think? Somebody should remember us after we’re gone, don’t you think? A part of us should live on, even if it’s just somebody honoring the little things in our lives.”
“What about the soul?”
“Do you believe in a soul, McCann?”
“No. I mean, not anymore. I used to believe in God and Heaven and the immortality of the human soul, but I pretty much stopped believing around the time it started raining.”
Gail stared at the picture of Hansen and his kids and whispered, “Who were you, Hansen? What was the story of your life?”
“Does it matter?” McCann asked.
She closed the wallet and tossed it back into the footlocker. “No, I guess it doesn’t. Not anymore. Nothing really matters anymore.”
“Thirsty,” Mark’s voice echoed through the static. “Think I’ll lie down for a bit. I’m exhausted, and this cot is so… soft…”
CHAPTER 33
Gail slept through the night, lulled by the rocking of the boat. She did not dream. She hadn’t dreamed in weeks, or if she had, she didn’t remember them. Given their close quarters, she assumed that Caterina, Paris, Lynn or Tatiana would have told her if she’d cried out in the night or talked in her sleep, but they’d never mentioned it.
When she woke the next morning, Gail sat up and stretched, slowly working out the aches and kinks that the thin mattress had given her. She longed for her bed back home, now underwater, and then her thoughts turned to other things from her past that were now submerged. Determined not to fall into a mood, she climbed out of her rack and got dressed.
Breakfast was a multivitamin, crackers, canned pears and sardines in olive oil. She’d hated sardines before the rain, and still did, but she ate them anyway, using the crackers to mop up the oily bits left on her plate. She sat in the galley with McCann, Ben, Caterina and Warren, all of whom, like her, were eating their meager breakfast before beginning their turn at watch. None of them spoke much, other than sporadic small talk. Ben read his newspaper, as he did every day. It was mildewed and wrinkled and torn, and much of the ink had smudged from the constant humidity. The headlines spoke of things that no longer mattered—wars and the economy and which Hollywood starlet was entering rehab. Gail had often considered asking Ben why he re-read it every day, but she suspected that she already knew the answer. It was a ritual; it provided him with a sense of normalcy in an otherwise fucked up world.
One-by-one, they finished eating and headed topside, stopping only long enough to put on their rain gear. Gail pulled a heavy, bright-yellow rubber slicker over her head and then grabbed a matching rubber rain hat. She wished the boat had some boots or waders that would fit her. Her feet invariably ended up getting wet on each shift. Each of them also selected a weapon for the day. Warren and Ben had handguns. Caterina was armed with a long spear fashioned from a tent pole. Gail had a machete. They also had two pair of binoculars. Gail took one pair. Ben took the other.
Gail followed the others up the ladder and walked through the hatch. The mist immediately hit her face. It was windy this morning, and the rain whipped across the deck. She glanced out over the rails and saw that much of the ocean was hidden beneath deep, swirling fog. Lynn, Paris, Morgan and Mylon filed past them, nodding in greeting before heading below deck to dry off and sleep.
Gail, Caterina, Warren and Ben each took a position along the rails. Gail and Warren went forward. Ben and Caterina went aft. McCann headed up to the bridge to relieve Riffle, who had been on duty all night. Once they were in position, they began another long, weary, miserable day of scanning the water, looking for any salvage, survivors or threats.
Gail stared out into the haze and shivered.
They were three hours into their shift, and the fog had mostly burned off, when Warren shouted a warning. He hadn’t been talkative this morning, and had brooded silently on his side of the vessel, leaving Gail to her own thoughts. She’d been staring up at the muted silver sun and trying to remember what its rays had felt like on her skin before the rain started, when he yelled. She turned toward him, instantly alert.
“Give me the binoculars!”
She crossed the slippery deck and handed them to him. Warren brought them to his eyes, looked starboard, and then handed them to her.
“There,” he said, pointing. “Do you see it?”
Gail squinted, adjusting the binoculars until the object became clear. On the horizon was a massive, grayish-black shape. From this distance, she couldn’t tell for sure what it was—perhaps a hillside or a mountaintop? The formation was roughly half the length of a football field in size, and utterly devoid of buildings, trees or grass. The surface looked firm and smooth. It was also slightly bulbous and had what appeared to be a small dome in its center.
“What is it?” Gail asked.
“An island?” Warren took the binoculars back from her. “Or maybe the top of a water tower or a grain silo or something. I’m not sure. Looks pretty sturdy. The waves aren’t topping it. Maybe we should check it out.”
They hollered for the others and all four of them regrouped on the bridge, and Warren and Gail reported what they’d seen. Novak was present, as well. He’d brought a thermos of instant coffee for those on watch.
“Was just getting ready to hand it out,” he said, yawning. “But screw it. Go ahead and help yourselves now, while I take a look.”
Using the bridge’s binoculars, he peered out over the ocean, studying the land mass. He was quiet for a long time. Gail and the others sipped the hot coffee and waited in silence. After a few minutes, Novak lowered the binoculars and turned to McCann.
“Take us in,” he ordered, “but go slow. Can’t tell if there’s any debris around it or not, but I don’t want to take any chances. If we bottom out on something, that little island is gonna be our final resting place.”
“We’re going to land?” Ben asked.
“Sure,” Novak answered. “Might as well investigate. Can’t tell much from here, but there could be useful stuff we can scavenge. And I think we could all do with standing on dry land, even if only for a little while.”