“What was it?” I hissed, my eyes wide, my ears perked.
“Just a bad dream. Sorry.”
She had two more nightmares before dawn. I asked her what was the problem since she hadn’t been having them, and she answered angrily, “Really? What a stupid friggin question. A wolf came in here last night and tried to eat us. Then, three men came along with guns and wanted to shoot us, and then they were shot dead by bikers. All in one day and you’re asking me, what is the problem?”
I said nothing out loud but silently determined to find a way to obtain a sailboat as soon as possible. Not because of her nightmares; I had them too. It was because she was right again. We were rabbits afraid to venture out for fear of a hawk swooping down on us.
CHAPTER FIVE
We both sat in embarrassed silence as we ate a can of peas for breakfast. Sue seemed sheepish at speaking so harshly about her nightmares during the night. I was crabby from lack of sleep. We were facing the tedium of another day where we couldn’t leave the mine without leaving tracks in the snow anyone could follow. The warmer days had melted more of the snow. Bare patches appeared where the sunshine struck the ground between the trees. We might or might not have seen the last snow of the season.
We felt safe enough in the tunnel but living below ground and being restricted from leaving because of telltale tracks in the snow was already getting old. We were not the sort of people to bury ourselves in a dark and damp hole for the rest of our lives, even if we could locate the required food to survive.
Well, that was not entirely true. In fact, it was a total lie about me. I was exactly the sort to live in a dark basement or cave and ignore the rest of the world. I’d already done it for two years—however, my perceptions of the world had changed since the flu struck and even more dramatically once I’d met Sue. Or maybe it was the influence of Sue. If nothing else, I had a live person to talk to.
Staying another week in the tunnel would be hard to take, now that we had a goal. A month seemed impossible. A year unthinkable. Logic said that the number of people we’d encounter would increase—including those who would want to do us harm when we left the tunnels and moved closer to population centers. We had to prepare ourselves to kill or be killed, an idea that turned my stomach sour and threatened to bring the canned peas back up.
There were also the rats, feral dogs, and insects that fed on the dead, along with a certainty of other diseases that could kill us as easily as a bullet. Sicknesses other than the flu that had killed so many were a dire warning on the Internet. Towards the end, before the Internet died, more were referring to it as the “blight” instead of the flu.
All bloggers and chat rooms were certain there would be a resurfacing of diseases from long ago, especially ones transmitted in the air and foul water. I suspected that more than just the new flu was killing people by now. Especially in populated areas. My mind spun in circles. No matter how much I tried to improve with my ideas, the single item of truth that stood out was that we could not remain where we were.
The following thought was that a sailboat was the perfect solution and our lack of experience with them be damned. If we were only trying to live for another month, we could remain in the tunnel. If we intended to live another year, or ten more, the boat was our best chance.
The third thought was the possibility that we couldn’t get from our present location to a sailboat.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Sue muttered as if she thought I was upset with her.
“Just thinking.”
She tossed the empty tin can into the growing pile behind me. I’d have to get rid of them daily when the weather warmed or live with insects crawling and breeding in the stink. For now, they could remain. Mentally, I shook myself to focus my thinking on the newest reality. It was a small incident. We wouldn’t be here when the weather warmed so the cans didn’t matter. How we would accomplish that, I didn’t know, but I firmly believed it. I raised my eyes and found Sue’s locked onto me.
She said in barely a whimper, “I stayed awake thinking about the sailboat last night.”
“Me too.”
“Don’t you know anything about them?”
“I’ve only been on a powerboat a few times, twice with my uncle in a little aluminum rowboat with an electric motor. A long time ago. Sorry.”
“That’s more than me. So, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but my sleepless night told me one thing. As good as we have it now, that will quickly change in the next few weeks and then get worse as more people arrive from the cities. Then it will get ugly and it may be impossible to leave as more survivors are about and looking for their next meal or a place to stay. In my opinion, no matter what we do, we will not be alive long if we try to remain here until next winter. Someone will kill us, or an animal will, or we’ll get sick, or break a leg, or starve.”
Spreading my hands in surrender, I told her, “I’m an orderly sort of person. Most programmers and computer geeks are like me. We like things that way. With computers, you can’t skip steps or eliminate them, and usually, you cannot write a script or program that is out of sequence, even one line.”
“I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
“Like now, we’re sitting. If our goal is to run in a race, we have to tense the muscles in our legs, balance, stand and turn to face the direction we want to go. Then we can begin to run by lifting one foot and using the other to brace our start.”
“What’s that got to do with a sailboat?” Her brows furrowed as she waited with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I’m trying to explain how my mind works. Before we go, I need to know the sequence of events. If we don’t stand up, we can’t run. In our case, if we leave here but don’t reach the city, we fail. If we get there and can’t travel through the maze of rats, dogs, and gangs of crazed people, we fail. If we can’t figure out how to sail, we fail.”
“That’s a lot of failing and we still haven’t gotten anywhere.”
“I’m sorry, but sailing the boat away to a better life where the sun shines daily, and unicorns visit every evening is way down on that list of things to come first.”
I expected an angry retort. It didn’t happen. She turned inward and avoided looking my way for maybe ten minutes before saying, “Makes sense. If we just take off, we’ll never make it. Got any good ideas?”
“Not good, necessarily, but some eliminations, which are ultimately good. They will keep us from making certain mistakes.”
“Anyone ever say you talk in circles?”
She had me there. Many had said that in one way or another. I ignored her comment and continued, allowing my mind to prioritize in its own fashion, “First, there are boats tied up to buoys all along the coast near Everett. Most are open boats or fishing boats. Not what we want and not worth our effort to investigate, from what I remember. There is a sailing club in the Everett harbor that has hundreds of sailboats of every kind. Small one-person boats right up to small ships. So, we eliminate the chance of maybe locating one somewhere else. And of running into trouble while searching, and we go for the place where most are located. That’s our best chance of finding a good boat. In short, a place where we can select what we want and are most likely to succeed.”
“Any sailboat will do, as far as I’m concerned.” She snapped, ignoring my effusive explanation as if she didn’t understand a word.