O’Toole charged the circle of quasis with his arms up by his head, and cackled and whimpered like a chimpanzee. The quasis looked at him and vanished one by one, like a thin patch of fog you’ve gotten too close to, as he ran through where they’d been standing. He made what sounded like imitations of speech as he zigzagged all over the stern. Once the last quasi-child was gone, I ordered Sam to round up O’Toole, then told the rest of my crew to prepare push off. They slowly got back into motion, then we all went below deck to shake off the chill left behind by those creepy kids.
Chapter 2
Special Cargo
My crew sat with me in the galley, nursing their wounds while Mido brewed some coffee. Hazelnut filled the air but we all sat or stood uneasily, still chilled by the quasi-children’s most recent visit. Nobody but Scully and O’Toole were left uninjured. Scully was still at the Harpy, and O’Toole was gibbering away as he watched Mido make coffee. I had a sore sternum, but that was it. The rest bore cuts, bruises and gashes. Two of my cargo pushers were self-administering sutures, their gruff features wincing with each needle jab. My other two cargo pushers watched with morbid fascination, while my last surviving techie rolled fresh gauze over a forearm.
The total death count was two, Jersey and Mike, both of them engine room technicians. It was always the techies that bit it in fights. They knew the most about steam engines and the least about sword fighting. They’d have to wait until Virginia to get cremated for a modest sailor’s funeral. Their deaths subdued us, but for the most part we tried not to think about the two body bags currently in use.
Mido brought over a tray of steaming mugs, a collection of clay, porcelain and tin cups that were perpetually stained with coffee, and dirt, oil and grease that’d rubbed off our hands. Everyone except O’Toole accepted a mug, but no one took a sip, not even me. Mido took his own cup, sat at the edge of the table and held his drink as if he were trying to warm his hands, then inhaled its aromatic steam.
Jacobi, a bronzed Hawaiian and my biggest crew member, tied off his sutures, then bit off the excess black thread. Rammus, the other guy stitching himself up, pushed over the bottle of rubbing alcohol with his bandaid-covered hand, and Jacobi use an alcohol-soaked cotton ball to sterilize the needle.
“Rammus,” I said, “how many more days do I have?”
His slate eyes studied an upper corner of his black-haired cranium. “Three more until lockdown, sir.” He looked like a typical short old Polish guy: strong and stocky.
“Good enough.” I took a sip of coffee. Boy did it feel good going down. “Sam, did we complete our resupply?”
“I have to check.”
“Go do it quick. The sooner we see Tethys off, the better. Be safe.”
“Yes, sir.” Sam’s short, husky frame squeezed past Mido, then disappeared down the hall.
Jacobi pushed the first aid tin over to Mido, who took Sam’s seat, then Jacobi looked at me with flat, cold eyes. “Captain, we need to talk about your gun.”
I sat up straight so the gun’s handle stopped digging into the side of my ribs. “Why?” Of course someone wanted to talk about my gun. This had happened every time I’d drawn it.
“It would be best for both you and all of us if you’d get rid of it.”
“Mido, get a towel.” My cook dutifully retrieved a green hand towel from off the oven handle and tossed it onto the lacquered table. I used the towel to touch the grip, then draped it over the holster so not one bit of the weapon would be exposed to the naked eye. I wrapped the towel around it without removing it from my coat, and set the poorly mummified thing on the table. It looked like a giant, forest green scone without the sugar crystals on top. Everyone sat up straight, leaning as far back into their seats as they could. Coffee cups sat abandoned on the table. Heck, even I tensed up. I couldn’t help it. Handling a gun the wrong way, even with a towel, would make the quasis return. I’d learned that the hard way.
Back then, I hadn’t known that planting a naked gun on a table would make the quasi-children return, that all they needed was for some small portion of the gun to be out in the open, and poof. There they’d be. Those kids had followed me for days. My crew all quit before the quasis left. Losing so many friends like that hurt, but I didn’t hold it against any of them. They’d probably been better off…
O’Toole let out a monkey-like yell and lunged for the gun. Everyone let out a cry of dismay and surged to their feet. Mido and Sauna pinned O’Toole to the table with a fleshy thud. If it hadn’t been bolted to the floor, our concerted surging to our feet would have sent the table flying across galley. It was big enough to accommodate ten at a time in a semi-circle. O’Toole squirmed with one side of his face pinned to the table, his hand within inches of the towel. Sauna wrapped a lean arm around the Irishman’s neck and pulled him upright. The rest of us commenced breathing and cautiously sat back down.
“Sauna, put him in the cargo hold, please.” Everyone looked at me funny at my sudden use of manners. I never said “please” or the likes, unless something was really bothering me. O’Toole lunging for my gun like that was enough to reduce me to using etiquette.
Sauna, a Dominican kid, dragged a struggling O’Toole in the opposite direction Sam had left. Once the whimpering fell silent, Jacobi downed his coffee like a shot of vodka, and even sighed and smacked his lips.
Mido, if you ever die in a sword fight, so help my cursed soul I’ll… I’ll never be able to replace your stupid hide. Somehow Mido could make something as simple as coffee so enjoyable to drink. I took another sip and the rest of my crew finally warmed up to their own mugs. The tension diffused, but our hearts remained heavy. Jacobi regarded me with his hard stare.
Twenty years after the Purge, women began reporting giving birth to babies that were cold to the touch. Other than that, their newborns were perfectly healthy and grew up without any unusual health problems. They were just quiet kids that didn’t start talking until around age seven. It was strange but no one thought too much of it.
After forty years, the “cold kids” stayed mute and all had black eyes, and some stayed bald as chemotherapy patients. Confusion and some disorganized research ensued. It wasn’t until around the fifty-year mark that scientists realized some humans were either evolving to compensate for the decimated environment, or it was a genetic mutation thanks to all the radiation. At that point I was on the mutation boat, since I didn’t see the point in being mute. Religions took their typical stance and labelled these oddly bald and silent people another punishment from the invisible man. I stayed quiet and let the rest of the world speculate. The truth didn’t matter much to me. I had rougher things than post-apocalypse problems to deal with.
Seventy years after the purge (two hundred years ago), things began to get real clear as videos on the news showed gun users dying to bald ten year olds. Every time a gunner died, another gun vanished to I have no clue where. It didn’t take more than a few months for people to catch on to that using guns meant those strange kids would appear, and that people would die just for holding a gun out in the open. Crowds began to gather at factories to melt hundreds or thousands of guns at a time. Of course stupid people lived in denial and became unfailing demonstrations of the power quasi-children, as the kids eventually became known as. The stupid died while wielding guns over their heads and laughing at people “foolish enough to rid the world of guns.” They died with shock on their faces. Guns became an object of fear and nothing more.