“Thank God we found you,” Neil said, grabbing Frank’s hand to pull him aboard.
“There’s a war on, did you know?” Frank shot back.
“Yes,” Neil answered.
“You got a towel for me? I’m freezing to death.”
Neil carried the two duffel bags into the wheelhouse and found a towel Jim had left on a settee. As Frank began undressing and vigorously drying his body Neil went back to speak to Jim.
“Come back aboard,” Neil shouted to him. “We’ll tow the dinghy and sail.” As Jim began to obey, Neil went back to the wheel to get Vagabond turned around and headed down the bay toward the Atlantic Ocean.
“Where the hell are you going?” Frank asked, pausing in drying his legs to look up at Neil as he was winching in the mainsail.
“We’ve got to escape this madness,” Neil said, taking Vagabond off the wind on a starboard tack. “The Chesapeake will soon be nothing but a saltwater burial ground. The whole East Coast is probably doomed.”
Frank stared at him.
“We’ve been at war less than an hour,” he snapped back. “Are you surrendering already?”
The question startled Neil. He was ready to surrender in some sense, not to an invading army—that he’d be willing to fight—but to the invisible, anonymous destruction that he knew had been unleashed.
Jim had made the dinghy fast and now appeared in the wheel-house, watching their confrontation uncertainly.
“You may want to run immediately,” Frank went on angrily, “but I’ve got a wife and daughter thirty miles outside of New York City who may still be alive. I’ve got Jeannie and Bob to pick up.”
“The Foresters can’t have survived what happened to Washington,” Neil said.
“They may have come down to Point Lookout earlier this evening,” Frank explained. “In any case it’s damn certain it’s our job to go over and see.”
“All right,” said Neil. “But then we’ve got to get out into the Atlantic—before we’re blown up or buried in radioactive ash.”
“Don’t give me any more crap about an ocean voyage,” Frank shot back. “We’re at war! We have to stay here!”
“There may not be a here much longer,” Neil insisted.
“Neil’s right, dad,” Jim broke in. “We’ve got to get out of the Chesapeake.”
“Shut up! Both of you!” Frank shouted. He paced past Jim out into a side cockpit and then, after staring at the eerie ballooning glow on the horizon, returned.
“Even if New York’s already been hit, no one can be certain how wide the radius of destruction is around the cities.” He paused. “I’m going to try to fly north. I’ve got to get to Norah and Susan.”
Neil stared at him in disbelief.
“I figure there’s a chance they’re still alive,” Frank continued huskily. “I can charter a plane in Salisbury to fly to Oyster Bay and bring her back.”
Neil searched Frank’s anguished face.
“It’s madness, Frank,” he said softly. “That whole area has probably been hit. If your wife did survive, she’s already fled farther out the island. There’s no way—”
“I’m going,” Frank interrupted sharply. “If there’s only one chance in ten, I’ve still got to try.”
“And what are Jim and I supposed to do?” Neil asked, brushing roughly past Frank to adjust the mainsheet. “Sit here for two or three days waiting for the fallout or the next explosion?”
“You try to get the Foresters over at Point Lookout.”
“All right, we’ll do that,” Neil said. “But then what?”
“You pick me up in Crisfield tomorrow night.”
Neil grimaced and turned away, shaking his head.
“We’ll sail to Crisfield now,” Frank went on, “and I can get to Salisbury by eight or nine in the morning.” Both he and Neil watched Vagabond sail past a red buoy, both instinctively noting the ship’s speed. “I should be able to get a plane by ten or eleven. New York by noon. If I give myself six hours to find her and Susan, that’ll get me back at Crisfield by… nine tomorrow.”
Neil stared at him for a moment.
“Look, Frank,” he began, glancing at Jim, who was listening with grim attentiveness. “Not many people are going to survive what’s happening. The ones who do are going to have to act fast and… ruthlessly. They’ll have to know enough to cut their losses and run. Don’t go. We can go over to Point Lookout to check for the Foresters now and then ride the tide down out the bay later tomorrow morning.”
Frank flushed.
“I’m going,” he said. “And you’re not using my boat to escape your responsibilities.”
“What responsibilities!” Neil exploded. “Tell me what in God’s name you think any of us can do now against incoming missiles except try to survive. Every second you delay us you’re risking my life and your son’s and the Foresters’.”
“I have to try to save my family,” Frank went on. “We can’t just run.”
“We can’t help anyone dead,” Jim blurted out.
“Jim’s right,” Neil said.
Frank leaned against the wheelhouse shelf, put his face in his hands, and rubbed his forehead. When he looked up, much of his color seemed to have drained away.
“I’m going to try,” he.said softly. “Get Vagabond turned around. If I’m not back by nine tomorrow night… by ten… that’s when the tide’s high… you can leave without me.”
As Neil stared forward past the mainmast and across the water he felt resentment at the way Frank had cast him in the villain’s role. During the last crisis, three months before, he’d considered what he would do if a nuclear war broke out and had decided he’d probably have it easy, because he’d be on a boat at sea or on the coast and thus could flee the explosions and fallout. But the holocaust had actually found him becalmed without an engine seventy-five miles up a bay in the middle of dozens of prime targets, with his passengers scattered to the winds. Frank’s insane scheme of searching for his family up north had complicated things further. Every moment they remained in the Chesapeake decreased their chances of survival.
“Don’t go, dad,” Jim said after a long silence. “Please don’t go. We can’t help mom now.”
“I’ve got to go,” Frank replied, turning to walk out into the port cockpit. “I could never forgive myself if… I didn’t try…”
Neil turned the wheel over to Jim, told him to bring Vagabond about, and walked after Frank.
“All right,” he said when he had caught up to him, looking into Frank’s frightened, determined face. “If you’ve got to go, so be it. We’ll take you to Crisfield and then go to Point Lookout to try to help the Foresters, then back into Crisfield tomorrow.”
“And you can leave without me at ten,” Frank concluded.
“I plan to sail south at no later than ten tomorrow night,” Neil agreed impassively.
Frank nodded gloomily. As Vagabond swung about to take Frank back to Crisfield they all stared forward at the terrifying glow on the horizon. On every other side the world was dark.
“Be back on time, you fool,” Neil said softly to Frank. “We need you.”
“Yeah,” said Frank huskily. “I can’t let you steal my boat.”
By the time Jeanne was within a few miles of Point Lookout she was out of her state of shock. Point Lookout, she knew, was a dead end: a small town at the end of the huge V-shaped peninsula bordered on one side by the wide Potomac River and on the other by the Chesapeake. The nearest bridges were almost fifty miles away and might have been destroyed by the airburst over Washington. She would meet Vagabond in Point Lookout or have to get herself and the children onto another boat. Hundreds, thousands of survivors from the destruction to the north would be tunneled south to this tiny town, and everyone would be looking for a boat.