Under Vanishing Skies (2 page)

“
But I wasn’t tired.”

“
Don’t give me any of that crap. Your mom’s probably been up all night worrying about you.” Rick glowered at him. “Come on William, you know how sick she is. What if she needed help in the middle of the night and you weren’t there for her?”

William looked up and glared back.

“
Take it easy on the kid,” I said. “He’s here now, so put him to work.”

Rick’s face softened and he said, “It’s just that hanging out on the dock all night by yourself is dangerous and...look at you.” He pointed at William’s legs. “You’re covered in mosquito bites.”

William shrugged and studied his dirty bare feet.

I’ll be goddammed if William didn’t look just like his old man. They both had that stupid cowlick that stuck straight up and bounced around like a spring. Even the scowls on their faces were identical. I chuckled.

Rick looked at me and asked, “What’s so funny?”

“
The two of you. You’re like different versions of the same software.”

Rick smiled and then looked over at William. “Alright, you heard your uncle.” He pointed to a stack of plastic buckets next to the old bait shack at the foot of the pier. “Go bring a couple of those buckets over so we can unload the fish.”

William ran over and returned a few seconds later with the buckets.

We worked as a team. Rick and I tossed him the fish and he dropped them in the buckets. His face lit up when he spotted the stingray in the bottom of my kayak.

“
Wow!” he said. “Everyone said they were gone, everyone except Mr. Thompkins. He said the stingrays and some of the other fish would return once the weather got better. Do you think he’s right? Are they coming back?”

“
I’m sure they are,” Rick said, giving me a cautionary glance.

He must have sensed that I wanted to tell William that Mr. Thompkins was a dumbass. And like the other dumbasses who thought things would get better, he handed out false hope with a stupid smile. Instead, I tossed William a fish. He caught it, but he paused to study my face before dropping it into the bucket.

“
What the hell do I know?” I said. “I’m just a dumb computer geek. You should listen to your dad. He’s the college professor.”

When we finished unloading the fish, I picked the stingray up by the tail and said, “Let’s get these fish to Helen before she comes out here after us.”

We walked in single file up the hard-packed sand through the dense jungle foliage. Rick led the way, followed by William. They each carried a bucket of fish. I brought up the rear holding the stingray.

I watched William stagger up the trail, bending from side to side as he tried to counter-balance the weight of the bucket. He looked like an omnidirectional antenna: tall, lanky, and wobbly. Despite his wiry build, he managed to lug the heavy bucket without stopping.

“
Doing okay?” I asked.

“
Uh huh,” he grunted.

I smiled.

The path soon opened up and the dining hut came into view. Six thick wooden poles held up the thatched roof like some kind of Tiki circus tent. The sides were open, allowing the breeze to pass through. A dozen years ago, this place had fed up to three hundred hungry tourists who’d wander in from the beach to graze on the gourmet buffet. Now there were under two hundred people left on the island and no one ate in the main dining room anymore. People only came here to pick up food from Helen and then take it back to their huts to eat.

We worked our way through the empty, large, round tables and headed for the door on the back wall. Light peeked through the cracks and I could hear the clanging of pots and pans, along with the unmistakable sound of Helen humming some Australian folk melody. Rick pushed the door open and the familiar sweet smell of fresh baked plantain bread filled my nostrils.

Helen turned from the sink and wiped her hands on her apron. She gave us a warm smile and said, “G’day boys. What have you got there? No wait...let me guess. Is it fish?”

A smile spread across William’s face. Helen had a way with William. Hell, with all the kids. She was their surrogate grandmother and she took the role seriously. Most of them were born after the storm and she knew they would never meet their real grandparents.

William set his bucket down, ran over to me, and snatched the stingray out of my hand. “Guess what Helen?” Without giving her time to respond, he held it up. “Look!”

She put her hands on top of her overripe breasts, which sat on her barrel shaped belly. “That will make a marvelous brekkie! It should keep everyone’s mind off of today’s small catch.” She glanced at me over her bent, wire-framed glasses.

After twelve years on the island, I still couldn’t understand all of her Aussie lingo, but I sure as hell understood that look.

“
Don’t blame me,” I said, pointing at Rick. “The honorable Council member over there wouldn’t shut up and kept scaring away all the fish.”

“
You’re not pinning this on me,” Rick said, “You were the one who was splashing around.”

Helen shook her head and said, “My old Bob used to say that fishermen were born honest, but somewhere out on the water they learned to get over it.” Helen and her husband had come to the island to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. After Bob died from a heart attack a year after the storm, Helen had busied herself by becoming the island cook.

She barked out some orders and we followed her directions. After setting the buckets down by the sink, Rick and William put on an apron. They each grabbed a knife and started filleting the fish on the stainless steel counter next to Helen. I dropped the stingray on the wooden butcher block that sat in the middle of the kitchen and I prepared to cut up the prize catch.

“
So Rick, why were you out fishing this morning?” she asked. “Don’t you have to head back to Male for the Council meeting?”

“
Nope. It’s postponed for a week while they find a replacement for Hans Garrettson,” Rick replied.

“
Oh my, another one quit?” she asked.

“
That’s what they told me,” Rick said.

From the tone of his voice I knew that he didn’t believe it. There was obviously something behind the recent string of Council members quitting. Rick had tried to talk about it a couple times, but I had managed to change the subject. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Council of Thirteen.

I mean, what was the point? Even if the ship managed to make it to Earth, pick up the people who were selected by the Council to go to the colony, and then somehow make it back to Mars, their chance of survival was no better than if they stayed here. I didn’t care how much the Mars colony had expanded over the last decade or how much the terraforming had progressed. I knew deep down in my soul that, like all dominant species before us, it was mankind’s turn to disappear. That’s why I told Rick to scratch my name from the list. I planned to die right here, drinking and fishing.

Helen looked over at Rick and said, “Well, I guess you can spend some quality time with your family then.”

“
Unfortunately, I agreed to go out to Makunudhoo and make some repairs on the communications tower. I have to leave right after breakfast.”

“
What?” William threw his knife on the counter and it hit with a loud metallic clang

“
I’m sorry,” Rick said. “I was going to tell you after we brought breakfast to mom.”

“
Why can’t Uncle Aron go?”

“
Because it wouldn’t be fair,” Rick said. “Your uncle has been doing most of the repair jobs since I’ve been on the Council.”

I made the mistake of looking over at William. Tears fell down his freckled face.

“
I don’t care!” William cried out.

Helen draped her flabby arm around his shoulder, but he shirked it off.

“
Mom’s sick and can’t do nothing and you’re always at that stupid Council thing. It’s not fair.” He ran out of the kitchen.

Rick took off his apron and said, “I’m sorry Helen.” She nodded, and he took off after William.

I looked over at Helen and was momentarily trapped by her gaze, but I managed to break free. I focused my attention on the stingray that I had butchered. Now she had two reasons to be pissed off at me.

I felt the guilt rising up within me, but I shoved it back down into its place. Just because I didn’t have a family, everyone seemed to think that it was okay for me to travel around from island to island and fix the goddammed communications equipment. Well, they were wrong. I’d done my share of work and I deserved some rest and relaxation. Rick was the only one who understood. I’m sure that’s why he took the job before it came my way.

I put the knife down, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths. When I opened them, I found my thumb absently tracing the thick scar across my wrist.

If Rick had really wanted to do me a favor, he should’ve walked away and let me finish what I had started twelve years ago on the end of that pier.

***

I skipped breakfast and lunch, partly to avoid a lecture from Helen, but mostly because I didn’t want to run into Rick. I knew that if I saw him, I’d probably change my mind and take his place. But he left a couple hours ago, so I decided to go on a run. Running, like kayaking, helped me shake off funky moods like this.

I searched for my shorts and then remembered that they were still in my backpack. I’d taken them along with me on the last repair trip, but never got a chance to run.

Kneeling on the floor, I blindly hunted for the bag under the bed. My hand brushed against the thread-

worn shoulder strap and I yanked it out. I stood up and gave it a good shake before throwing it on the bed to dislodge any insects that had made my bag their home. The musty smell brought back a flood of memories.

The pack had been my constant companion after the storm. Rick, Jin and I had hopped across the islands in search of electronic parts that hadn’t been completely fried by the electromagnetic pulse that preceded the solar storm.

When we showed up on the island, everyone used to say the same thing. They said we looked like the start of a bad joke, “A Harvard professor, a Chinese officer, and a drunken computer geek walked into a bar.”

Despite the odd composition of our team, we had managed to cobble together a crude VHF radio network thanks to Rick’s electrical engineering background, Jin’s military experience with radio systems, and my lackluster programming skills. It took four years before we finally set up the first of over two hundred relay towers across the islands. Finally, a year ago, we completed the Intra Island Communications Network, or IICN as everyone called it.

I couldn’t understand why people felt compelled to create acronyms with the end of humanity looming in front of them, but they did. I had tried to discourage it with my own acronym. I wanted to call it the Communications Unified Network Trunk, but I got overruled.

The IICN wasn’t much of a network, but it provided everyone who had a data mat with the ability to send and receive text messages. There was also just enough bandwidth to provide a rudimentary voice and video communications channel. However, because of that limitation, the Maldivian Defense Force controlled all video and voice communications. Only MDF personnel and a few others were authorized to use it.

Even though the IICN only provided text message service, people went nuts when it was completed. But I didn’t help build it to make people happy. I built it to keep my mind off Kelly and the girls.

I had become obsessed with finding out what had happened to my family after the storm, but with no communication to the outside world, I didn’t know whether they were dead or alive. I never did find out, but I didn’t need to.

Six months after the storm, refugees began to trickle in and the stories they told crushed any hope I had of my family’s survival. The stories painted a picture of hell.

The atmosphere somewhere north of Spain and south of Bolivia was gone. This was the area we called the black zone. In my opinion, the people who were in the black zone when the storm hit had been the lucky ones. They had suffocated to death when the air bled off into space. Not a great way to die, but at least it was quick. Those between the black zones and here had it worse. We called that area the middle zone. Not very creative, but I guess there were only so many ways to describe hell.

The middle zone extended from about the tip of Mexico up to the northern black zone and from the top of Australia down to the southern black zone. There was just enough atmosphere in the middle zone to breathe, but not enough to block the x-ray radiation emitted from the sun. Most of the people in that zone either died from radiation burns or from the extreme change in weather caused by a sudden decrease in atmospheric pressure.

The refugees who made it to the Maldives described brutal massacres, rapes, and cannibalism as civilization crumbled. I tried my best to avoid listening to their stories. Kelly and the girls had been in that zone. If I let my mind go there, I’d probably go completely insane.