Flotilla Read online

  Flotilla

  By Daniel Haight

  Copyright © 2011 Daniel R. Haight

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  FLOTILLA

  ISBN-13: 978-0-615-56254-4

  Cover Image: © Jeff Dickerson – Dickerson Photography, Orangevale, CA

  For bulk order prices or any other inquiries, please contact [email protected]

  Dedications and Acknowledgements

  Dedications

  This book is dedicated to a group of very special people:

  To N.L and T.T.L. – This is for you.

  To the Lavender Hill Mob (R.H., J.A and P.T.) – Thank you for cheering me on.

  Acknowledgements

  I also want to take a moment to thank some people who were influential to taking Flotilla from project to product:

  Joe Quirk – From our first conversation two years ago until now, you’ve always been an unflagging supporter to a first-time novelist. Thank you for your kindness and your help.

  Allen Steele – I picked up Orbital Decay over twenty years ago when I was in junior high school. I never imagined that I would be approaching you for help in getting published or that you would be so helpful. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart and a little to the left … this is truly humbling and awesome.

  Amity Westcott – my un-official editor who did more than any official editor ever could.

  The Creative Convention forum at Somethingawful.com - Their advice and feedback were vital at different stages of this novel and always managed to tell me what I needed to hear – even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Thanks, guys.

  Contents

  Prologue – Is This Thing On? - 5

  Chapter One - Shipping Out - 7

  Chapter Two – Gardens and Guns - 18

  Chapter Three - Career Opportunities - 35

  Chapter Four - Main Street and The Big Fourth - 49

  Chapter Five – Steeplechase - 60

  Chapter Six - The Ensenada Run - 75

  Chapter Seven – The Boys of Summer - 84

  Chapter Eight – Intermezzo - 99

  Chapter Nine - The Welcome Mat - 110

  Chapter Ten - The Brief and Unsuccessful Voyage of the Cooger & Dark - 120

  Chapter Eleven - A Cane-Sugar Coke and the Trash Man - 127

  Chapter Twelve – T-Minus 30 - 140

  Chapter Thirteen - The Meltdown - 150

  Chapter Fourteen - The Draft - 160

  Chapter Fifteen – The Phoenix Patrol - 171

  Chapter Sixteen - “We Gotta Go” - 182

  Chapter Seventeen – Into the Storm - 196

  Prologue – Is This Thing On?

  I don’t know how much longer I have to live.

  This speech-to-text thing gives me something to talk to and I don’t feel like dictating a will. Can you do me a favor? If you happen to find this, will you please contact Rick Westfield or Theresa Bowman and tell them what’s happened to us? I have no idea where they are. Theresa is my mom and she lives in West Covina so I’m hoping that if there’s any central evacuation place for Los Angeles that you can find her there. Rick Westfield is my Dad, he was taken ashore and we’re trying to find him now.

  Me and my sister Madison are on board this old yacht. It’s called the Horner C. It’s my Dad’s boat and it’s a beast. I spent a lot of time swabbing decks but I’ve never driven (sailed?) it before. I’ve been at sea for over six months but I have almost zero experience at how things work when the boat is under power.

  My name is Jim, by the way.

  It’s about 2230 right now, 10:30 to everyone besides us. The weather is pretty bad but I’m not complaining – if it wasn’t for this storm Madison and I would have been grease spots on a deck somewhere. I’m hoping that the boat can handle it but we’re getting water under the door to the bridge and the wind is blowing us like a kite all over the place. I can’t hold my course to more than 2 or 3 degrees … that might be the wind or the fact that this old tub hasn’t moved in the last 10 years. I’m trying to watch our GPS, the black night outside our windshield and Madison all at once. She’s asleep at the map table next to me … I’m afraid she’ll slide off the chair and crack her forehead on something.

  I don’t know how else to say it so I’ll say it: the world has come to an end.

  At first we heard the news that it was a virus of some kind. That was bad enough. Then more news started rolling in … there were coordinated attacks in several major cities. It just kept getting worse and worse.

  We watched it all happen: riots in the Bay Area, Phoenix and St. Louis. There was a bug that was killing people in Baltimore and here in LA. Dirty bombs were set off in Reno, Plano and Vicksburg. Everyone on the Colony had family in one of those places and we were all riveted to the feed hoping to hear something, hoping they were okay. Hope started to dwindle when we caught the reports of the shootings. People outside the infected zones were killing people because they might have been sick. Nobody bothered to check first, though … they just started shooting.

  We personally were out of danger, as in ‘not about to die of the plague or nuclear contamination’, but we had other problems. The place where we lived until very recently, Pacific Fisheries Colony D, is … well … strange. Because it’s strange, the problems you experienced there were strange. It’s a long story but the only thing you need to know right now is that it is my home and it’s the most dangerous place on earth.

  Sorry, not ‘is’ … was. I have to get used to talking about Colony in the past tense now. Half an hour ago, the Navy came along and sunk it to the bottom of the ocean.

  Anyway, my dad got himself in the middle of something that I still don’t know the half of. They took him away. He went ashore with everyone else looking for ‘survivors’ but that’s a load of crap. It was pure suicide … they didn’t give him a choice. Dad gave us a hug and said: “If you don’t hear from me in a day, send a message to your mom. If you don’t hear from me in four, take the boat, the docks and anyone else you can and go north. Find a place called Puget Sound and look for a small island to hang out. You can stay for a while. I’ll find you there and we will be together again.”

  That was four days ago. Now he’s gone and some drug pirates tried to kill us. Like I said, it’s a long story.

  Two days later after Dad left, we were leaving messages for Mom that we never got a response to. We dodged the pirates and some really scummy people Dad screwed over. Two days after that, I cut the boat loose and we were headed out to sea – just ahead of the Navy. We got out of there just by the skin of our teeth and that’s no lie.

  I’m not saying things were great out on the Colony but at least nobody was trying to kill me. Not until four days ago. This app posts all my speech-to-text stuff to a blog page. Hopefully someone will find it. I’ll post our coordinates as we go and if you haven’t seen a post from us in more than 24 hours, will you call the Coast Guard, assuming we still have one?

  Our coordinates on the Colony were 33°24'9.37"N 120°13'2.10"W - if you are sending a rescue party, start looking for us here.

  Chapter One - Shipping Out

  “You’re really never going to give me an answer, are you?” she said. We were eating breakfast at a Denny’s off the 110 in San Pedro. The boat would meet us in the Port of Los Angeles on some dock that Pacific Fisheries used as a point of embarkation for Colony visit
s.

  So let's talk about how we get from there to here. When I first came to the Colony, it wasn’t under happy circumstances. Sure, I wanted to visit my Dad out on the Colony and see its weirdness for myself but not like this. I was forcibly admitted to a 21-day session at a drug and alcohol treatment center. I got there because it was the third time I had been arrested for underage drinking and the first time that I was violating the terms of my probation by getting drunk. I wasn’t even supposed to be out of the house – I was still grounded from getting probation two months ago.

  They had to admit me for borderline alcohol poisoning. I passed out at the party and woke up handcuffed to a gurney while some RN the size of a fullback rammed an IV into my veins. Not my proudest moment.

  Now she wants to shoehorn some therapy in as a going-away present.

  “You didn’t tell me that you were going to send me to Dad’s,” I replied.

  “If you want people to be honest with you,” she said, “you have to start with yourself. Why, Jim? Just tell me that much … why?”

  I was officially under arrest at the treatment center and about to do 6 months in YA, but Mom managed to convince the PO that she had an alternative option. She convinced my probation officer – this ugly white lady with dead eyes - to let me come out to be with Dad on the Colony. The PO said that coming to the Colony would be “part” of my community service and they’d discuss the remaining details when I returned. Dad was to give weekly reports on my “progress”.

  I’m reviewing all of this history because there’s no way I could tell her what I really thought. She’d blow up, I’d blow up … I don’t want to walk to the Port of Los Angeles. I was still trying to consider all my options when she pulled out of her parking slot at the rehab center and started heading toward the Denny’s. The Lexapro made it hard to think.

  I was feeling gross and I had a headache – this was definitely not the time to be doing an all-day boat trip. Mom had my stuff in the car and she gave me some clothes to wear for the ride. After two weeks of wearing sweat pants that kept falling off of my butt and hospital slides, it was weird to be dressed in jeans and sneakers.

  My doctor put me on Lexapro to ‘try it.’ If that didn’t work, he said, they’d give me Cymbalta. So many different medications for depression to choose from that it’s almost like going to the salad bar. Just find the right mix to balance out the bad stuff in your head, kid. “Teach you to live life without a chemical dependency,” he said, without a hint of irony.

  I’m such a mess right now that all I can do is sit there in the passenger seat like a sack of Jell-O. Please don’t ask me to do anything, please just put me in my bed and let me sleep. Please … please don’t ask me to go for a car ride and please, whatever you do, don’t ask me to get on a boat and go 120 miles out into the ocean. I am so not up for this today.

  But you aren’t really listening, are you, Mom?

  “It didn’t have to be this way,” she said.

  “Not that again,” I said, trying to sound like I wasn’t terrified. My mom was sending me away – is there anything that makes your 'nads shrink up more than that?

  “I hope you find an answer, Jim. You almost killed yourself. You’re becoming an alcoholic.”

  “Mom, I’m not an alcoholic…” I started but she cut me right off.

  “You’re binge drinking and you’re 14, Jim. Let’s not kid ourselves.” She looked away and I could see that she was about to cry. “I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I … I just feel like I’ve failed you, Jim and I need to know where I went wrong.”

  Nice one, Mom. I know you want me to break down and beg your forgiveness and admit that I’m the one who’s stupid. But you’re sending me away to live out on the ocean with my Dad and right now I’m not feeling that charitable.

  So I didn’t cry in front of Mom. I felt like it, but we’re past the point where tears would have made a difference. After a few minutes, I noticed that Mom was crying quietly but it didn’t really affect me. It should have made me feel something. I know people were watching and the waitress was giving me the stink eye. I felt some buzzing in my head, that’s all. I blame the meds … it’s as good an excuse as anything else. She got it together eventually and we finished breakfast in silence.

  It took a few minutes to find the dock in the Port of Los Angeles once we got there. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it but Pier F Avenue is really hard to find in that zoo. Close to half an hour tracking among the docks, Navy boats and container ships to find the squat building and docks that owned by the Pacific Fisheries’ business office.

  Mom pulled the car into the lot, popped the trunk and sat there. Maybe we were both waiting for the other person to say something. She silently handed me an envelope with some ‘walking-around money’ in it and I got out. I pulled my duffel bags that she had packed and closed the trunk. I walked around again to her side of the car, looking for a ‘good-bye’ or a kiss or both. She looked at me through the glass and took her foot off of the brake. She left me standing there in that parking lot without a word.

  I had that buzzy feeling again – like I wanted to cry – but then she was gone and that was that. Here I was about to leave to go to sea and do the first ‘adult’ thing I’d ever done in my life. You don’t cry at a moment like this. Even if you want to…you just don’t.

  “Help you?” a woman called from the door of the office. Maybe I'm not the first transportee that she's seen. I was processed through the office in about five minutes and then pushed out to the dock to wait for the ferry ride.

  I paced up and down the planks smelling salt, tar and diesel fumes. Something hot to drink would have been nice but I didn’t know where to get it and I wasn’t going to go back inside. The Pac Fish rep paid as little attention to me as possible when I was inside and hinted that she might drop-kick me into the water if I kept her from the mystery novel she was working on. I sat there, cold and numb, for half an hour waiting for that boat to arrive.

  When it did arrive, it was not impressive. The ferry boat itself was a small pilothouse that had a cabin for up to 10 people to sit in and it wasn’t here to take on passengers. Two silent Mexicans pulled stevedore duty and stuffed packages into the cabin until almost every cubic inch of space was filled. It took me a minute but it finally hit me: they were hauling groceries. Somehow I was supposed to find a place to sit in there.

  “All set?” a gravelly voice asked. The old Filipino pilot waved me onboard, helping me step onto the boat without dropping my duffel in the water. My first taste of colony hospitality was of him jerking his thumb to the top of the bundles that filled the cabin and saying “You can sit there”.

  He immediately cast off by waving to the guys on the dock and hitting the starter switch on the motor. It grumbled to life and in a couple of seconds we were on our way. I was suddenly reminded of a memory: waiting in line at Magic Mountain to board a rollercoaster I wasn’t thrilled about. There’s a small pit in your stomach where all of your fear and doubt lives and it steadily grows as you wait for the ride to start. You want to get off, maybe talk your way off of the ride without looking like a wuss but you know in your heart that there’s simply no escape. You stew in your own fear and doubt until it’s your turn to climb aboard.

  The cargo was mostly food and the air filled with the smell of coffee and oranges. It hit me that I was really doing this. If I wasn’t feeling so crummy, I would actually be excited. I tried shifting my weight during the loading only to hear corn chips or something crunch under my butt. The pilot yelped and made me get up while he checked the load. “I said don’t move!” He snarled while repositioning something under the bags. He stabbed the air with a crooked old finger. “Okay…now sit there and don’t move!” Meekly, I sat as ordered – the old fisherman spat some bitter words in Tagalog and refused to look at me for the rest of the trip. It was foggy and misty, with water streaming from the windows and a view that was only slightly less gray than the ocean. It w
as impossible to see where I was going to spend the next three months.

  The Pacific Fisheries terminal is pretty close to open water at the harbor. After a few minutes of threading between a sailing yacht and a container ship we were off and pointing toward the horizon. It would still be 10 or 12 hours before we reached the Colony itself. Most of a day with no one to talk to and express orders not to move – was I allowed to pee? I tried making conversation with my host but he was apparently deaf between radio checks with the Colony because he never acknowledged that he heard anything I said.

  The pilot was dressed in a green rain slicker and khaki trousers. He made adjustments to the console with hands that were like dark polished wood. The lack of any visual references outside the boat was disorienting to me but it didn’t seem to bother him. He kept his eyes fixed to the large flat compass in front of him as he sat at the helm while an LCD panel displayed GPS info about our trip. We were on a course south from the LA harbor and would turn west after skirting Santa Catalina Island. I toyed with the idea of being washed overboard near Avalon. They let you stow away home on the ferry, right?

  I knew roughly from Dad’s emails that the Colony was out in the open ocean south of the Channel Islands but this boat trip gave his description a much larger sense of scale. The ocean was rougher and the crack of waves against the hull started to sound like gunshots. We were going out there, way out there, and if I wasn’t convinced that I would be on my own before, I was now. The sinking feeling in my stomach, the rollercoaster feeling, was growing into a full-on panic attack. I was definitely off of the reservation this time and nobody was going to fix that.

  Sailing for ten or twelve hours on the ocean can be a rude awakening when all of your previous water experience comes from wakeboarding on a lake. I mean, I didn’t get seasick but there was nothing to recommend the journey. Halfway into the trip, the old guy let me get off the groceries and take a piss off of the rear of the boat when I thought I was going to explode. There I was hanging onto the railing on a pitching deck and trying not to fall overboard with my schlong out. If they ever make pissing an Olympic sport, this would be one of the events. He talked me through working the little galley stove and I heated up some ramen in cheap foam cups for the both of us. He threw in a Coke from stock he was hauling. The day felt two weeks long but finally the colony appeared before us, pitching in and out of the rain.