Don't Call Me Ishmael Read online

  I smiled beatifically. “See?” I asked. “It’s just—”

  This time the chief held up his whole hand to stop me. “That, however, doesn’t absolve you from being the proximate cause of the whole event.”

  “Proximate cause?”

  “Yeah, the one event without which none of the rest of the shit would have happened. If you hadn’t driven up and cut everyone else off—”

  “Someone siphoned my gas!”

  This time he just talked over me. Part of me recognized the fact that he was getting used to dealing with me. Damn it. “If you hadn’t cut everyone in line, none of this would have occurred. And, more troublesome to me, that seems to be the way you work. I’m worried that you’re a loose cannon—you always seem to solve things with violence.”

  “It’s something I’m good at.”

  “It is…which is also something that is troubling. How does a man with no past have your skills?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  He stared at me, and I stared right back.

  “You really have no idea?” he asked, when the silence began to get uncomfortable. For him; I could have stared all day.

  “Honestly, Chief, I have no idea who I am or how I got to be in New Orleans. I’m trying to figure it out, and I hope something will break lose in my head, but as of right now, nada.”

  He continued to look at me with his “Chief’s Glare.” It probably worked on criminals and got them to confess—it was a really good stare—but the fact of the matter was that I was telling the truth and couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know without completely fabricating it…which I didn’t particularly care to do.

  “So what’s the deal with this Wasserman guy, anyway?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “He’s the mayor’s kid.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, and the mayor isn’t happy that his kid’s car—that the mayor purchased for him, no less—is a flammable swimming pool.”

  I could see where this was going. The mayor, who was the chief’s boss, wanted a pound of flesh. It wasn’t going to come from the guy who had actually done it—he was untouchable due to his connections—which only left me to provide it. I didn’t know how he intended to extract it, but I doubted I’d be in the mood to give it. His expression told me that he was in a difficult position—he really didn’t want to have to try to do whatever the mayor had told him to do, because he recognized that I wouldn’t take it well. He knew that, regardless of whether he was ultimately successful in imposing the penalty, a lot of people were going to get hurt.

  But yet, it was his job, and he was still going to try.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Yup, pretty much,” he replied.

  “Guess I should be moving on.”

  He nodded. “The sooner, the better. I’m going to officially tell you to meet me at the police station in an hour to turn yourself in. It might take me 30 minutes after that to arrange a posse to come find you. When I come looking, I’ll be meaning to take you in, regardless of the force required to do so. ‘Dead or alive’ as they used to say. I’m sure it would be a lot easier on everyone concerned if we were to find out that you had already left.”

  I nodded. I didn’t particularly want to kill the chief or his men, who’d been pretty above board with me. There were two problems.

  “What happened to all the trade goods I had?” I asked. “In addition to having my tank siphoned, all the stuff I had was gone when I returned.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” the chief said. “George has it where he’s staying. We didn’t want it to walk away…like your gas did. Not everyone can be trusted these days.” He told me where George was staying. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll just need to check the ferry schedule—”

  “The next one leaves in 90 minutes,” the chief said. All of a sudden, his time frame made sense. He looked at his watch. “Eighty-eight minutes, now. You better get a move on. I put in a pass for you to use it about a month ago, and forgot to rescind it this morning when the mayor pulled me in. I was probably too distraught after the ass-chewing he gave me.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  The chief shrugged. “I’ve had worse from better. I was a Marine, back in the day.” He smiled. “Nothing like a drill instructor to really administer an ass chewing.” He looked at his watch again. “Eighty-seven minutes. You better hurry; there’ll probably be a line.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I really mean that. I wish—”

  “I know,” he said with a nod. “I have a lot of wishes, too. I’m sure there will come a time when we’ll wish you were here. That ain’t now, though.”

  “When it comes, call me,” I said. “I’ll come.” I turned and started off toward my truck at a jog.

  “Hey, Fred!” the chief yelled. “Don’t forget to meet me at the station in an hour!”

  All the men and women at the barricade turned and looked at me, and I turned back to the chief to see him smiling. Bastard. He now had five witnesses he could use when the mayor asked about me. I gave him a half salute, jumped in my truck, and drove off.

  * * *

  I grabbed George and the kids, and we headed for the ferry at the east end of the island that ran to the other side of Mobile Bay. While the 90-minute head start had seemed like plenty when I was talking to the chief, I didn’t realize that we’d have to pull the kids from the school George had signed them up for. We didn’t have a lot of things to pack, which helped; some of the trade goods had been used by George, either in trade for goods and services or—in the case of the toilet paper—they’d just been used.

  We pulled up to the ferry with 15 minutes to spare, but the chief had been right. There was a line leading up to the ferry service’s ramp.

  “Sorry,” the driver of the car in front of me said. “They just said that I’m the first to load on the next ferry.”

  It took a second to process what that meant, and George caught it before I did. What can I say? I’d been busy thinking about other things.

  “That’s not going to work,” George said. “We need to be on that ferry.”

  “Shit.” It was all I could come up with. I looked around. “Who told you that?”

  The other driver pointed to a man in a hat by the ramp. “Him.”

  “Be right back,” I said.

  I jogged over to the man as he started waving the vehicles onto the ferry.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m in that truck.” I pointed. “I need to get on this ferry.”

  “So does everyone else,” the man said. “I’ll take you on the next run.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said. “If you leave me here, you’ll probably return to find a gunfight going on.”

  “Well, if you want on that badly, you can get on. The truck, however, stays. We are strictly first-come, first-served.” He continued to wave cars aboard. There wasn’t much room left.

  “But I’ve got a pass from the chief of police!” I exclaimed.

  “I know you do,” the man said. “I’m aware of who you are. That’s why I’m going to let you on the ferry and not charge you to do so. If you want the truck, though, you have to wait until the next run.” His shoulders slumped. “Now what the fuck?” he asked.

  I turned toward where he was looking. The car two in front of ours hadn’t moved, and its driver was standing alongside it talking to George.

  “Let’s go!” the ferry service man yelled. “Get onboard now, or lose your spot!”

  “I’m going to let this gentleman have my spot,” the man yelled back, pointing at George.

  “Well, then he needs to get his ass onboard right now, or he’s going to be left behind!”

  I raced back to the truck as George climbed into the passenger seat. I threw it into gear and went around the two cars in front of ours. George handed a package of four rolls of toilet paper out the window to the man he’d been talking to as we went past. I rolled up onto Fort Morgan and parked
the truck, then looked back at the two vehicles that had been left behind in time to see the man George had talked to hand a roll to the driver of the car we’d pulled up behind. I shook my head.

  A roll of toilet paper can save a man’s life in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Well done,” I said to George as the ferry pulled away from the dock.

  “Thanks,” George said. “That was Plan B in case you weren’t able to talk your way aboard.”

  “Well, I could have gotten us aboard, but we’d have had to leave the truck behind.”

  “It’s a long walk from Fort Morgan to Perdido Key,” George said. “Especially carrying all our gear.”

  “Glad we didn’t have to do it, then,” I replied.

  “And I’m glad we didn’t have to stay on the island.” George nodded back to the pier, where a police cruiser had just pulled up, lights flashing. I held my breath, but the boat continued on its journey. After a couple of seconds to be sure were weren’t going to turn around, I began to breathe again.

  “Very well done,” I said.

  “Thanks,” George replied. He watched the pier a little longer then asked, “Did you know the guy I was talking to? He said you looked familiar.”

  I looked back toward the pier, but the features of the man were too indistinct to tell. “I don’t think so,” I replied, “but I don’t know; he could be from my missing memories.” All of a sudden, I wanted to go back and talk with the man. I couldn’t—not without having some issues with the police—but I surely wanted to. “Did he say where he knew me from?”

  “Nope. Just that you looked familiar.”

  I watched until the pier area went out of sight, but never received any additional insight into who the man was, or where I might have known him from. I shrugged and turned away from the railing. “We need to have a team meeting,” I said as I walked back toward our vehicle.

  “What’s up?” George asked as we reached the back of the truck where the kids were.

  “I wanted to have a word with John,” I replied, turning toward the boy.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “I know it’s been a while, but we’re headed back into the unknown again, and I wanted to talk with you about our trip to Dauphin Island. On our way there, I told you to look a certain way, and you didn’t. That’s a problem—a big problem. We’re a team, and we have to be able to count on each other to watch their assigned sectors. If bad guys get in close, we’re probably done for.”

  A tear went down his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Do you understand why this is important?” I asked. “Your brother and sister—hell, even your dad and I—could have been killed because you didn’t do what you were told.”

  The boy looked up and met my eyes. “I understand,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” I replied, nodding once. I looked at his siblings. “Do you two have any questions?”

  Eric looked at me with big eyes and shook his head, but Alice held up her hand.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “I need to learn how to shoot,” she said. I raised an eyebrow. “I heard you talking about trade goods. You may not see the way that some of the men look at me, but that’s exactly what I am to some of the men now—a trade good. If I don’t know how to defend myself, that’s all I’ll ever be.”

  I nodded once. Unfortunately, she made sense. There were plenty of bad men—and women, too—who would have liked to get their hands on a young, nubile woman before society broke down. Now? There were probably an exponentially larger number. She had every right to know how to use a gun, or knife, or whatever she wanted to learn about in order to defend herself. I looked inquisitively at George who—unlike his son—wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  Finally, his shoulders slumped, and he nodded once. “Go ahead and teach her,” he said, then he turned and walked off toward the boat’s stern railing.

  I looked back to the girl. “Okay, Alice, I’ll teach you.” She smiled. “You heard everything I told your brother, though, right? If I trust you with a gun, you have to do what you’re told, when you’re told. Can you do that?”

  She nodded.

  I spared a glance for her father, who was staring at the boat’s wake, and I was happy I didn’t have any children. That I knew of, anyway.

  Kids have to grow up fast in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty

  The rest of the trip between Dauphin Island and Fort Morgan went quickly; however, all the cars were stopped after debarking from the ferry. A checkpoint had been set up, and everyone had to pass through it. As the last one onto the ferry, we were also the last one off it, and we had plenty of time to watch the proceedings from the back of the line. After about fifteen minutes—the ferry had already loaded again and left—it was finally our turn.

  “Purpose of your visit today?” asked a large bearded man.

  “Passing through,” I replied. “We’re headed to Perdido Key.”

  “That your final destination?”

  “For them, yeah,” I said, nodding toward George and then the kids in the back. “They’re going to see his uncle.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” I replied. “I may stay; I may continue onward. Why?”

  “The islands—here in Alabama and Perdido Key—are fairly safe. As long as you’re contributing something useful, you’ll be welcome. The law still applies, and most crimes are still punished. I hear a lot of bad things about the mainland, though. The base at Pensacola ate a nuke, as did downtown Pensacola. I doubt you want to go much further that way. The rest of the mainland—that which doesn’t glow at night—is pretty lawless, from what we hear.”

  “The entire mainland?”

  The man shrugged. “Don’t know. There may be good places—better ones than the areas around us, anyway—but we haven’t heard about them. The people who try to cross the bridges onto the islands are pretty messed up…and they’re usually being chased. You can make up your own minds on what’s going on over the bridge, but I—” he leaned close to the window and his voice dropped, “—I wouldn’t take my kids across the bridges. I wouldn’t even go there myself. Right now, the bridges are one-way only—you can leave over them, but no one’s being allowed back across.”

  “No one?” I asked.

  “Not at the moment. We don’t want any infiltrators from the warlords up north.”

  I nodded once. “Makes sense.” I indicated the road in front of us with my chin. “We cleared to go?”

  “You are,” the man replied. “Just remember what I said about the laws still applying. The penalties for breaking them are harsh and pretty unforgiving. Even though we’re surrounded by some pretty lawless lands, we’re still trying to maintain a sense of civilization here. If you can’t contribute to that, you’re no good to us.”

  “Got it,” I said with a nod.

  The Guard motioned to another man at the barrier, and the second man lifted the arm blocking our passage. “Have a nice day,” the guard said.

  “You, too,” I replied.

  Civilities still apply in some parts of this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After all the issues we’d had so far, the trip to Perdido Key was almost surreal in how uneventful it was. There was traffic on the main roads. It was light, but it still existed, and I wondered where they were getting the gas for their cars. We took Highway 180 to Gulf Shores and then 182 on to Orange Beach. There weren’t any more barricades, although we heard they existed further to the north on the bridges when we asked about it during our stop for lunch.

  Although there was a very visible police presence, there were no checkpoints or other issues until we reached the bridge to Perdido Key, which had one at the center of the enormous structure. The checkpoint seemed to be a joint venture between the two islands, but the people sto
pping cars on our side kept looking askance at the people on the other side of the small median, and vice versa. While they didn’t appear overly jovial toward each other, at least they weren’t outright belligerent.

  “Interesting,” I said as we waited in line for our turn to go through the checkpoint.

  “What’s interesting?” George asked.

  “Look at the guys doing security.”

  “What about them?”

  “The continued existence of this checkpoint is a courtesy to the people of Alabama,” I replied. “The people stopping the cars going into Perdido Key are professionals—just watch the way they move; the way they back each other up at all times. Even the way they hold themselves shows they’ve had training.” I shrugged. “The guys watching traffic going to Alabama are just guys; the people from Perdido Key could kill them all before they even knew they were under attack.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged again. Maybe I’d had training at some time in my past if I could recognize theirs. One of the things I’d noticed about myself was an innate ability to calculate the odds of how a situation would go, and I didn’t like ours if we ended up facing off against the Perdido Key guys. The Alabama guys? No problem. The Perdido Key guys were another story. “But I’ll tell you one thing—if we try to mess with these guys, we’re going to end up dead.”

  George nodded. Maybe he was learning to trust my senses. “If that’s the case,” George said, “how about you try to not be a smartass to them?” I guess he’d come to know that side of me, too.

  “I’m certainly going to try.”

  I watched the men as we drew closer. While they didn’t scare me—exactly—they definitely set my senses tingling, and evoked a very strong “fight or flight” response. I worked hard to control it; despite knowing the odds, I felt the need to fight, just to test myself.