A burst of static exploded from the radio and Robby spit a piece of turkey on the floor.
He jumped up and ran over to the controls. He turned down the volume and swept up and down through the radio frequencies. He found nothing but static.
“I must have left it on when I was screwing with stuff?” he mumbled. “Oh!” he said.
He tried the engine. It cranked slow at first, then the starter seemed to warm up and the engine sputtered and coughed to life. Robby flipped on the navigation system and the heat while the engine idle evened out.
The GPS display flashed a message reading “Acquiring Satellites,” for several minutes and then settled down to a warning—“No Satellites Found. Check Antenna.”
Robby sighed. He turned on the electronic compass and the depth finder. The instruments declared the depth of the ocean beneath him was thirty-one meters. The compass numbers seemed to change randomly, never settling down to one figure. On the gimbaled compass, the old manual standby, the needle swung back and forth between forty and two-eighty.
Robby cranked the wheel to the right and gave the throttle a little nudge. The compass continued to fluctuate, but the average heading it reported moved counter-clockwise around the dial. Robby kept spinning the boat until the compass needle pointed towards the stern of the boat most of the time and then he tried to straighten it out. It turned out to be difficult to find “straight.” He adjusted the wheel for several minutes until he got the compass needle where he wanted it.
Now that he thought he was pointed roughly south, Robby turned his attention to the depth gauge. It climbed to the upper thirties. Robby steered the boat a little to the east and kept an eye on the depth, hoping to not get too close to shore unexpectedly.
Very slowly, the fog thinned. First, he could clearly see the bow, and then he caught a glimpse of the ocean in front of the boat. The compass began to even out as well. Robby dug through a pouch mounted behind him and found a chart. He didn’t have any way of knowing where he was on the map. Even the depth didn’t give him a clue—the depth soundings showed he could be twenty yards or two miles out to sea.
Robby smiled when the GPS flashed back to “Acquiring Satellites.” He held his breath until the device found the signals it needed to show him a map. The arrow showed the boat moving roughly south, about a mile east of a little island, still off the coast of Maine. He increased the speed a little and steered a little to the right—starboard, he corrected himself—so he could head in closer to shore. Even though his nausea passed, Robby didn’t want to get stuck out on the boat if the fog happened to come back. He figured his best bet was to head for shore.
He didn’t reach the shore before he spotted more fog rolling in from the north. The fog spilled over the snow-covered trees that lined the coast and then rolled out over the water in his direction. Robby turned the boat south and pointed it to the left of a small peninsula. The map showed a small town on the far side of the peninsula. Robby made up his mind to land there.
When he rounded the peninsula, Robby jerked the wheel to the left. The same dancing tornados landed on this town too—tearing up buildings and dropping debris into the ocean. Robby pressed his face to the glass to see the destruction while the boat carried him safely away. It looked like these tornados just started their work. He watched as the windows exploded out from a house about halfway up the hill. The shingles peeled away in patches before the building was obscured by the dark funnel cloud.
At the shore, a couple of piers had slips for medium-sized boats. They bobbed in the turbulence created by the trash dropped in the water by the tornados. Robby squinted at a shape on the pier. He reached down and dug through the pocket mounted to the wall, coming up with binoculars. It was tough to get them focused, and his stomach did a low, sick flop, but he managed to train the binoculars on the shape on the pier.
He reached down and killed the throttle, dropping the engine back to idle. The shape on the pier was a person—an adult—waving his or her arms. Robby turned the wheel and eased the throttle forward, bringing the boat around to face the town. The water between him and the pier was dotted with floating debris. Robby clenched his teeth and increased the throttle until the engine throbbed and the bow cut through the waves.
Swells rolled out from the shore. One of the tornados dropped a big load of bricks and rocks and the splash obscured Robby’s view of the person on the pier. He stared, unblinking, until he could see the person again. They backed up a little, away from the end of pier, and Robby could see why—something dropped on the end of the dock and knocked away a giant section.
A flurry of papers rained down, blown out by the wind, and landed on the boat. One document stuck to the windshield and Robby ducked to the right to see. A police car dropped into the ocean. The nose sank first, and the trunk stuck up out of the water like a big blue tombstone before it slipped out of site. Off to the right, a red pickup truck landed with a giant splash.
Back at the shore, the person still waved both arms overhead. It looked like a man, Robby decided.
“Why don’t you get out of there?” Robby whispered.
A giant log floated directly in Robby’s path. He pulled back on the throttle and maneuvered around it. He was immediately blocked by section of clapboarded wall. Robby put the boat in neutral and banged his way through the door to the deck. He climbed the ladder which ran up the back of the cabin. With a little elevation, he saw the extent of the problem. The ocean between him and the man on the shore was becoming a minefield of debris, and every second the tornados dropped off more pollution to block his course.
Robby climbed down and went back in the cabin. He couldn’t even see the man anymore, the air was thick with dust, and everything on the shore was a fuzzy blur. He tried to use the binoculars, but couldn’t find anything to focus on.
Robby stood there, trying to spot the man, while junk floated out to him and started to surround the boat. When another car splashed down a few dozen yards from the boat, he jumped and nearly screamed. He frowned and spun the wheel to the right. He brought the boat around so his back was to the pier before he gunned the throttle. The boat ground through the chop and the waves at its stern seemed to help push the boat along. Robby never looked back to try to spot the man again.
Down the coast he saw two more towns being dismantled; he gave them a wide berth. Robby lost track of time. He just steered the boat to the left of the next point or the next island and checked the charts to make sure he was staying out of shallow water. Eventually, the GPS told him he was entering Casco Bay, and then across the bay, the entrance to the city of Portland. Robby veered the boat to the left, dreading the destruction he would see to the small city.
Eventually, his curiosity won out and he let the wheel drift to the right a bit. He passed within a mile of the islands which protected the port, and saw glimpses of the city skyline. He expected destruction, but he couldn’t spot any, even with the binoculars.
The fuel gauge showed a little less than half a tank. Robby decided to keep heading south.
EVEN FROM OUT on the water, Robby could see the snow accumulations south of Portland didn’t nearly measure up. Some places looked like they’d only received a dusting, although the grey sky seemed to promise more was on its way. Robby spotted a private dock that looked like it had deepwater access, and he headed to shore.
His landing was tentative, but reasonable. He was so afraid of bringing the boat in too quickly, it took him forever to sidle the boat up to the dock. He reversed several times to account for lateral drift, but eventually he got the boat alongside the floating dock and jumped out with the stern rope. He tied it up the best he could and looked to the shore.