Wet - by Gemma Solomons (McCrimmon Award Honorable Mention)

Lindsay Wade wakes up and notices three things: one) that there is a large, thick sock lodged in her mouth, two) she is no longer moving, and three) someone nearby is butchering her favorite Simon and Garfunkel song.

She sits up, grimacing at the wood she leans on for balance. After nearly two years, the slick feeling of wet wood still unnerved her. It’s slimy. It reminds her, for some reason, of Disney World. Jungle Cruise. Somehow, that is her life.

Standing, she realizes that it is not a large, thick sock in her mouth like she previously thought, but is actually just her tongue. This does not explain the other two things that were occurring right then, but it is the moment Lindsay decides never to drink something an aged fisherman with hair growing only on the left side of his face – including beard and eyebrows– gave to her, especially when it is described as “homemade.”

Technically, if you want to be technical about these sorts of things, Lindsay was still moving. The gentle ocean waves beating against the side of the boxcar made for that slow rocking she could identify easier than she could identify herself in a prison lineup. But that curious feeling of being propelled in a certain direction, hopefully forward, when one’s body was really completely still was gone.

And the old man is still singing.

“I’m pretty sure,” says Lindsay, “the line doesn’t go ‘a pocket full of mumbles, such are prostitutes.’”

“I don’t care. You think I care? I don’t care. I ain’t even heard that song since the world ended. I don’t care.”

She walks over to the big door and slides it open. Nothing but water. Leaning out, she could see the long barge stretch out, but it curved, preventing her from seeing the front.

“Why have we stopped? Do you know?” she asks.

“Cows on the tracks,” is the only response.

She turns around to look at the old man. He is still slouched in the corner where he had been since Lindsay had boarded the barge two days ago, in a nest he made of fish-smelling tarp, hidden behind a pile of rotted crates. His face is hidden by a thick mass of hair from his head and beard, his thin, tanned chest bare except for the bright yellow waders and ratty red flannel jacket. He looks like the love child of Grizzly Adams and Aquaman.

“Cows, what are you talking about, cows? There are no cows anymore. Also, we’re in the middle of the United Sea of America.”

“Sea cows, girlie. Whole bunch now, since the Flood rolled in.”

Because that is just typical. More than half the world’s people population drowns, and the endangered species flourish.

“What’s your name, anyhow?”

This is the fourth time he’s asked her that. Obviously senile, they have had the same
conversation for two days straight and it always started the same way. After the third time it started, Lindsay had scared the man by telling him his entire life story. He had thought she was a
witch, and had threatened to throw her out of the boxcar. He had instead fallen asleep in a fit of blind rage.

“Lindsay,” says Lindsay. “Let me guess. Call you Ishmael?”

The old man bares his teeth at her in an attempt to be frightening. His teeth look like Stonehenge. “My name is Shaw, girlie. Best remember it.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says, scratching the strap of her eye-patch. The wet material chafes like a bitch.

“Where’d your eye go, then?”

This is new. In the past two days, he had not once asked her anything to do with her, or her life. Even if his question was tactless to the point of being an asshole. This is progress.

This is also not a subject Lindsay was comfortable talking about. Mention of her missing eye usually brought up feelings of terrible pain and misery and blood and infections. She is Pavlovian like that.

But. Conversation is good.

“Riot in a sporting goods store,” says Lindsay, sitting down at the edge of the boxcar. Her fingers graze lightly over the patch over where her left eye used to be. The patch is thick and rough and it hurts. But not at much as salt water on an open wound and raw nerves. “Let me tell you, never get between a desperate old woman and an Albright Tackle Explorer Spinning Rod.” She gestures emphatically to the fishing pole in her hand.

“Jesus. She took your eye out?” He sounds...God. He sounds impressed.

“Yeah, but I got at least four fingers. And my pole here. I believe I was victorious.”

A pause. Then, a great, hacking laugh that sounds like a car backfiring. The laughter turns into a bad coughing fit, and Lindsay contemplates whether or not she should go over and wack him on the back when the old man grits out, “What’s with that old gettup, girl? You look like a waiter from Hell.”

He is referring to the black tuxedo tailcoat Lindsay wore over her jeans and t-shirt. She had looted it from a wedding supply store in some abandoned mall. Her previous coat had felt permanently soggy and smelled strongly of fish – a condition in which this tailcoat will surely find itself subjected to within a few short weeks – and the tuxedo jacket had been nearby and easy. She likes it.

Before she could answer, the old man abandons his inquiry and struggles to light his cigarette. The wick on his old Zippo lighter is damp and refusing to light, and he mutters under his breath words that further cements his place in the “sailor” category in Lindsay’s mind.

“Would the sir care for a blowtorch?”

The old man looked up, eyes narrowed, thin lips wrapped around the hand-rolled cigarette tightly.
“Kids,” he snarls around the cigarette, his thumb still flicking the wheel of the lighter. “All they do is sass. Even after all this shit, what do they do? Sass.”

“That’s me,” Lindsay agrees agreeably. “Sassy.” She leans out of the boxcar again, the sole of her boot gripping easily on the side of the barge.

“Be careful, girl,” says the old man. He finally gets the cigarette lit. It smolders in front of his face. “All sorts of monsters and creepies crawling about these days. I even heard of a vampire in Harney Peak, even.”

“Vampires aren’t real.”

“People thought the end of the world ain’t real. Look what happened.”

Everyone thought the end of the world was real. They just thought it was something that happened to other people.

“‘sides, for all I know, you could be a vampire,” he says slyly, as if he is being cunning. She can’t help the sneer that spread across the face. Really. She can’t. “How could I be a vampire?”

“You’re trying to trick me, tell me there ain’t no vampires, and then you’ll kill me and make me a vampire, too.”

“Do you hear yourself? Even if I was a vampire – which I’m not – why would I pick you to bite? Waste my time draining, burying, and then sitting around, waiting for you to rise? To spend all of eternity...with you? Fun.”

He appears to be thinking about it. “You know, I know it’s traditional and all, but you wouldn’t have to bury me.”

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t just bury you for fun?”

He thinks about it some more. Than he snorts around his cigarette and leans back against his tarp. “Nothing but sass,” he mutters.

Lindsay leans further out of the boxcar, using a rusted metal handle on the side to keep her from falling in. The sun was nearly set, making the choppy ocean waves glow orange and red and purple. The sky was clear for once, but as she looks behind her, Lindsay sees giant gray storm clouds rolling forward. She closes her eye against the warm ocean breeze.

“Why you in such a damn rush, anyhow? Where you gettin’ off?”

“Denver,” she says, eye still closed. “Mile-high city. I figure it’s pretty dry.”

“Dry ‘cept for the rains and the whiskey, I suppose. What you got for you in Denver?”

She turns to look at him. He was a crotchety old man for most of the journey so far, lecturing her about all the old school students he taught and how they were all smarter than her somehow for hours on end, and how this Great Flood was divine will or whatever nearly every old person who had survived that Doomsday rambled on about.

But now, in this rickety box, floating a few hundred feet above Colorado, swallowed in the reddish gold of sunset, he is just another survivor. A vaguely interested, incredibly bored and rude survivor who will most likely forget everything they’re talking about, but she gets it now.

A human being. The world had so little left.

She smiles. “You mean, besides the rains and the whiskey?”

He nods once, one beady eye closed and the other squinting in the light.

She shrugs, reaching over for her tackle box. “A job, hopefully. I hear they were looking for people who were good with computers, trying to get the systems running again, and that’s me. I hope. Also, well. My family.”

“You got family in Denver, then?”

“No. Well, maybe. They were...in south Florida. When it started raining.”

The old man whistles lowly under his breath. Everyone knew the stories of what happened in Florida, how it was below sea level to begin with. How it was under water faster than the Titanic.

“Yeah, well. I was living upstate at the time. I spoke to them before...Before the cell phone towers went under. They were boarding a boat of a friend’s, so they said. On a whim, I said to make it for Denver. I figure it’d take a while for that to go under. That’s the last I heard from them.”

“So you don’t even–”

“No,” she says. “No. But you know. Got a plan. Might as well stick to it. So few people have plans now anyway. I’m the man with the plan. So to speak.” She baits the hook of her fishing rod with a little red rubber fish. They remind her of a friend who used to turn these into earrings.

She stretches over to where she had been sleeping, and drags her small suitcase out from under her own tarp. She opens it and fishes out from beneath dry-ish clothes and towels and books and photos and enough painkillers to sedate a blue whale for her flashlight.

“You know,” she says conversationally, “I only ever went fishing once before the Flood rolled in. The only thing I caught was the tree above me.”

She casts her line. Holding the rod tightly between her thighs, she positions the flashlight next to her so it shines in the water, but doesn’t turn it on yet.

“Anyway, I figure if I don’t find them after a while, I could at least save up to buy my own boat and set out. Find my friends again, search for my family elsewhere. And stuff.”

He does not point out that she looks like she knows shit about boating, and for this, Lindsay is grateful, because she knows shit about boating, and is afraid this fact was painfully obvious.

The old man is silent for a while. So are the fishes. Nothing bites. The only sound is the dripping of water from the top of the cabin, the pounding of waves against the wood. She ignores it. If she listens too closely, her skin will begin to itch, and she’ll have to restrain herself from pulling out her hair.

Over the past year or so, Lindsay had been able to fully grasp the idea of Chinese Water Torture.

She hears a sharp scrape behind her, and turns to see the old man rifling through his large suitcase. From here, all she could see was a massive amount of CD cases, batteries, and cigarette cartons. Once the Flood had receded, the first thing people did was replant the tobacco plants and vineyards.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the old man says, not looking at her. “But I’m tired as all hell, and my music usually knocks me right out. ‘Course, it doesn’t matter much if you do mind,” he looks up at her now, grinning those rotten teeth of his, “but you know. Just because there is an Apocalypse does not mean one can’t be polite.”

She thinks about telling him he’s been playing his music on and off for two days, but instead just says, “No, I’d like to hear it.”

His grin widens. “Thank you kindly.” He finds what he is looking for. “Ah, Doris Day! All you young girls like Doris Day, right?”

“Er,” says Lindsay. “Sure.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine.” He pulls the boom box from where he had been using it as a pillow. He puts the CD in and presses play.

“I love this one,” he says as soft jazz begins to play. “My mother used to listen to it ever Sunday morning, she did.” And, like the turn of a page, he’s asleep.

Lindsay turns back to the water. Nothing is biting, and she hasn’t had fish to eat in a while. Living off junk food and soda for the past few days is not nearly as appetizing as it was when she was in high school.

Gonna take a sentimental journey, sings Doris. Gonna set my heart at ease. Gonna take a sentimental journey to renew old memories.

The sky was now that steely purple of storm clouds at night, making it almost light out. The last few rays of sun were just dipping beyond the horizon, almost clawing at the ripples of the water. Almost like the sun was drowning. The air stuck to her skin, damp from sweat and rain and the constant humidity in the air and chilled by the slight breeze. Her toes wiggle in her red rain boots, her socks squishing unpleasantly. The smell of salt water and smoke from the old man’s cigarette clung to the boxcar. The glow from the passenger cars up ahead seems to taunt her. The illusion of warmth.

Like a child in wild anticipation, long to hear that “All Aboard!”

There was no one waiting for her in Denver.

She turns on the flashlight and looks down into the clouded water, vaguely catching the shadow of eels and fish in the beam of light, too smart to take a bite of her line. Thinking over the faces of her family, her friends, her cats, god dammit. Of the lost, confused, terrifying people she has met this year traveling, hunting for answers or out for blood, all so frighteningly familiar to herself. Of the drowned bodies of lions and elephants from a nearby zoo. Of her pathetic attempts to fish, to fight, to survive for no good reason at all.

Counting every mile of railroad track that takes me back.

She looks down into the clouded water, and thinks of the solution many people took when the world was over.

Never thought my heart could be so yearny. Why did I decide to roam?

Why, yes, why? She had made it out with her friends, and like a fool, she ran off. Following her stupid plan, running out to meet. Nothing.

She feels her feet slip on the wet side of the barge. She wonders what the old man, Shaw, would feel if he woke up and saw her gone.

Abruptly, she feels the barge jerk forward. She grabs hold of the metal handle to stop herself from falling in, and then leans out. She could just make out the shadows of mountains, the dull light of the port city glimmering like stars.

Gonna take a sentimental journey...sentimental journey home. Sentimental journey!

She reels her empty line back in quickly, pulling herself back into the boxcar and slamming the sliding door shut. She is technically not supposed to be hiding out in this boxcar, and she guesses neither is the old man. Getting thrown out on her ass this close to Denver was not part of her plan. By the light of her flashlight, she sees the old man twitch, but not wake up.

Her heart beats heavily in her chest, inexplicably, feeling primitive and wild. Lindsay stops herself from putting her hand over it, as if that would stop it. She feels that particular twist of nervousness and excitement writhing about in her stomach, all notions of badness and certainties and other depressing things gone. Replaced by anxiousness and fear, sure. But still. It’s change.

So. This is Denver. Or will be, as soon as they make port.

If nothing else – if nothing else – if all else fails and she is stuck in a strange city in a strange time, all alone and desperate and lost, utterly lost.

She could just hang out. Hang out, and wait for the world to start back up again.

 

Wet - Zero Draft

Title - “Wet”

CHARACTERS:
Lindsay Wade, young girl of about 22.
– Hair cut short and sloppily, as if done herself. Wears a black eyepatch, tells those brave or tactless enough to ask that she lost her eye in a “riot at a sporting goods store”. Also wears a black tuxedo tailcoat over her clothes that she looted from a wedding store, sleeves rolled up, and a pair of thick black rain boots.
– Went to a certain unnamed University in upper Florida, parents lived in south Florida. Was just about to graduate when the Flood rolled in.
– Carries around an Albright Tackle Explorer Spinning Rod, a very fancy fishing pole, as well as a small suitcase filled with the usual: socks, change of underwear, books, photos, maybe a dry shirt, towel.

Shaw, an old, old man.
– Grizzly, painfully thin, wearing bright yellow waders that reached up to his chest, red plaid flannel over, yellow fishing cap, teeth like Stonehenge.
– Suffers from short-term memory loss.. Remembers his entire life story, but can’t remember if he told you it five minutes ago. So he’ll tell you again. Was once a school teacher.
– Carries a battery-operated boom box, suitcase full of CDs and batteries and cigars. The essentials.
– Though Lindsay knows it by heart by the opening, his back-story is never really told. Just a drifter.

BACKGROUND:
At some point around (circa) 2010, two years before the Mayan prophesy of doom and destruction, something happened to the earth. It started raining, raining hard. The water levels rose, the ice caps began to melt. The story takes place a year after this happens. Because many major level governments have all been disbanded or destroyed, and people’s main focus is staying alive rather than spreading information, our heroes don’t know what happened. Not exactly. They know the weather turned against humankind, they know more than half the human population and animal population is dead. They know many countries are completely gone, the rest turned into various islands spread throughout the Earth. They don’t know if it is science to blame, or if God is to blame, but they do know that many blame both. They aren’t out to save the world, to wash away the water. They are just here to stay alive.

PLOT:
Lindsay and Shaw don’t know each other. They met by both hopping the same boxcar headed to Denver. They are riding a large, long barge, now resembling a train, except without the tracks. Up ahead are the passenger sections, where people have bartered their way on board, selling cigarettes, alcohol, books, food, or clothes (the essentials, really, since much technology is gone, and monetary systems now useless). Denver, one mile above sea-level and still functioning, for the most part, is a city with many job opportunities, with people trying to get computers and electricity functioning again. Lindsay, an semi-expert with computers, is hoping to find work, and also her family. Just as things started turning dangerous (when people realized that it was not only raining where they were, but everywhere else in the world) Lindsay had spoken to her parents in the rapidly sinking south Florida. They told her they were boarding the boat that belonged to their friend, and would hopefully stay safe on it. On a whim, figuring it wouldn’t go under right away, she told them to make their way to Denver. She hasn’t heard any word since (most phone towers were under water by now), but the only thing she can do is follow her plan. Shaw, however, has no plan whatsoever. He’s just traveling, making his way around this new world.

They spend the journey talking, Shaw telling his life story a good three times before finally asking Lindsay hers, when the barge has stopped for no reason.

Haven’t actually figured out how it’s going to end. Sorry! Should end somewhere in Denver, though.

 

Wet - Draft 1

Lindsay Wade wakes up and notices three things: one) that there was a large, thick sock lodged in her mouth, two) she is no longer moving, and three) someone nearby was butchering her favorite Simon and Garfunkel song.

Sitting up, she realizes that it is not a large, thick sock in her mouth like she previously assumed, but was actually just her tongue. This does not explain the other two things that were occurring right then, but it is the moment Lindsay decides never to drink something an aged fisherman with hair growing only on the left side of his face – including beard and eyebrows– gave to her, especially when it is described as “homemade.”

Technically, if you want to be technical about these sorts of things, Lindsay was still moving. The gentle ocean waves beating against the side of the boxcar made for that slow rocking she could identify easier than she could identify herself in a prison lineup. But that curious feeling of being propelled in a certain direction, hopefully forward, when one’s body was really completely still was gone.

And the old man is still singing.

“I’m pretty sure,” says Lindsay, “the line doesn’t go ‘a pocket full of mumbles, such a prostitutes.’”

“I don’t care. You think I care? I don’t care. I ain’t even heard that song since the world
ended. I don’t care.”

She stands up, grimacing at the wood she leans on for balance. After nearly two years, the feeling of wet wood still unnerved her. It feels slimy. It reminds her, for some reason, of Disney World. Jungle Cruise. Somehow, that was her life.

She walks over to the big door and slides it open. Nothing but water. Leaning out, she could see the long barge stretch out, but it curved, preventing her from seeing the front.

“Why have we stopped? Do you know?” she asks.

“Cows on the tracks,” is the only response.

She turns around to look at the old man. He was still slouched in the corner where he had been since Lindsay had boarded the barge two days ago, in a nest he made of fish-smelling tarp, hidden behind a pile of rotted crates. His face is hidden by a thick mass of hair from his head and beard, his thin, tanned chest bare except for the bright yellow waders and ratty red flannel jacket. He looked like the love child of Grizzly Adams and Aquaman.

“Cows, what are you talking about, cows? There are no cows anymore. Also, we’re in the middle of the United Sea of America.”

“Sea cows, girlie. Whole bunch now, since the Flood rolled in.”

Because that was just typical. More than half the world’s people population drowns, and the endangered species flourish.

“What’s your name, anyhow?”

This was the fourth time he’s asked her that. Obviously senile, they have had the same
conversation for two days straight, and it always started the same way. After the third time it started, Lindsay had scared the man by telling him his entire life story. He had thought she was a witch, and had threatened to throw her out of the boxcar. He had instead fallen asleep in a fit of blind rage.

“Lindsay,” says Lindsay. “Let me guess. Call you Ishmael?”

The old man bares his teeth at her in an attempt to be frightening. His teeth look like Stonehenge. “My name is Shaw, girlie. Best remember it.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says, scratching the strap of her eye-patch. The wet material chafes like a bitch.

“Where’d your eye go, then?”

This was new. In the past two days, he had not once asked her anything to do with her, or her life. Even if his question was tactless to the point of being an asshole. This was progress.

This was also not a subject Lindsay was comfortable talking about. Mention of her missing eye usually brought up feelings of terrible pain and misery and blood and infections. She was Pavlovian like that.

But. Conversation was good.

“Riot in a sporting goods store,” says Lindsay, moving to the edge of the boxcar, feet dangling on the side of the barge, a few inches above the water. “Let me tell you, never get between a desperate old woman and an Albright Tackle Explorer Spinning Rod.” She gestures emphatically to the fishing pole in her hand.

“Jesus. She took your eye out?” He sounds...God. He sounds impressed.

“Yeah, but I got at least four fingers. And my pole here. I believe I was victorious.” A pause. Then, a great, hacking laugh that sounds like a car backfiring. The laughter turns into a bad coughing fit, and Lindsay contemplates whether or not she should go over and wack him on the back when the old man coughs, “What’s with that old gettup, girl? You look like a waiter from Hell.”

He was referring to the black tuxedo tailcoat Lindsay wore over her jeans and t-shirt. She had looted it from a wedding supply store in some abandoned mall. Her previous coat had felt permanently soggy and smelled strongly of fish – a condition in which this tailcoat while surely find itself subjected to within a few short weeks – and the tuxedo jacket was nearby and easy. She liked it.

Before she could answer, the old man abandoned his inquiry and struggles to light his cigarette. The wick on his old Zippo lighter was damp and refusing to light, and he was muttering under his breath words that further cemented his place in the Sailor category in Lindsay’s mind.

“Would the sir care for a blowtorch?”

The old man looked up, eyes narrowed, thin lips wrapped around the hand-rolled cigarette tightly.
“Kids,” he snarls around the cigarette, his thumb still flicking the wheel of the lighter. “All they do is sass. Even after all this shit, what do they do? Sass.”

“That’s me,” Lindsay agrees agreeably. “Sassy.” She leans out of the boxcar again, the sole of her boot gripping easily on the side of the barge.

“Be careful, girl,” says the old man. He finally gets the cigarette lit. It smolders in front of his face. “All sorts of monsters and creepies crawling about these days. I even heard of a vampire in Harney Peak, even.”

“Vampires aren’t real.”

“People thought the end of the world ain’t real. Look what happened.”

Everyone thought the end of the world was real. They just thought it was something that happened to other people.

“‘sides, for all I know, you could be a vampire.”

She can’t help the sneer that spread across the face. Really. She can’t. “Why could I be a vampire?”

“You’re trying to trick me, tell me there are no vampires, and then you’ll kill me and make me a vampire, too.”

“Do you hear yourself? Even if I was a vampire – which I’m not – why would I pick you to bite? Waste my time draining, burying, and then sitting around, waiting for you to rise? To spend all of eternity...with you? Fun.”

He appears to be thinking about it.. “You know, I know it’s traditional, but you wouldn’t have to bury me.”

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t just bury you for fun?”

He thinks about it some more. Than he snorts around his cigarette and leans back against his tarp. “Nothing but sass,” he mutters.

Lindsay leans further out of the boxcar, using a rusted metal handle on the side to keep her from falling in. The sun was nearly set, making the choppy ocean waves glow orange and red and purple. The sky was clear for once, but as she looks behind her, Lindsay could see giant gray storm clouds rolling forward. She closes her eyes against the warm ocean breeze.

“Why you in such a damn rush, anyhow? Where you gettin’ off?”

“Denver,” she says, eyes still closed. “Mile-high city. I figure it’s pretty dry.”

“Dry ‘cept for the rains and the whiskey, I suppose. What you got for you in Denver?”

She turns to look at him. He was a crotchety old man for most of the journey so far, lecturing her about all the old school students he taught and how they were all smarter than her somehow for hours on end, and how this Great Flood was divine will or whatever nearly ever old person who had survived that Doomsday rambled on about.

But now, in this rickety box, floating a few hundred feet above Colorado, swallowed in the reddish gold of sunset, he was just another survivor.

She smiles. “You mean, besides the rains and the whiskey?”

He nods once, one beady eye closed and the other squinting in the light.

She shrugs, reaching over for her tackle box. “A job, hopefully. I hear they were looking for people who were good with computers, trying to get the systems running again, and that’s me. I hope. Also, well. My family.”

“You got family in Denver, then?”

“No. Well, maybe. They were...in south Florida. When it started raining.”

The old man whistles lowly under his breath. Everyone knew the stories of what happened in Florida, how it was below sea level to begin with. How it was under water faster than the Titanic.

“Yeah, well. I was living upstate at the time. I spoke to them before...Before the cell phone towers went under. They were boarding a boat of a friends, so they said. On a whim, I said to make it for Denver. I figure it’d take a while for that to go under. That’s the last I heard from them.”

“So you don’t even– ”

“No,” she says. “No. But you know. Got a plan. Might as well stick to it. So few people have plans now anyway. I’m the man with the plan. So to speak.” She baits the hook of her fishing rod with a little red rubber fish. They remind her of a friend who used to turn these into earrings.

She stretches over to where she had been sleeping, and drags her small suitcase out from under her own tarp. She opens it and fishes out from beneath dry-ish clothes and towels and books and photos for her flashlight.

“You know,” she says conversationally, “I only ever went fishing once before the Flood rolled in. The only thing I caught was the tree above me.”

She casts her line. Holding the rod tightly between her thighs, she positions the flashlight next to her so it shines in the water, but doesn’t turn it on yet.

“Anyway, I figure if I don’t find them after a while, I could at least save up to buy my own boat and set out. Find my friends and family and stuff.”

The old man is silent for a while. So are the fishes. Nothing bites. The only sound is the dripping of water from the top of the cabin, the pounding of waves against the wood.

Over the past year or so, Lindsay has been able to fully grasp the idea of Chinese Water Torture.

She hears a sharp scrape behind her, and turns to see the old man rifling through his large suitcase. From here, all she could see was a massive amount of CD cases, batteries, and cigarette cartons. Once the Flood had receded, the first thing people did was replant the tobacco plants and vineyards.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the old man says, not looking at her. “But I’m tired as all hell, and my music usually knocks me right out. ‘Course, it doesn’t matter much if you do mind,” he looks up at her know, grinning those rotten teeth of his, “but you know. Just because there is an Apocalypse does not mean one can’t be pleasant.”

She thinks about telling him he’s been playing his music on and off for two days, but instead just says, “No, I’d like to hear it.”

His grin widens. “Thank you kindly.” He finds what he is looking for. “Ah, Doris Day! All you young girls like Doris Day, right?”

“Er,” says Lindsay. “Sure.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine.” He pulls the boom box from where he had been using it as a pillow. He puts the CD in and presses play.

“I love this one,” he says as soft jazz begins to play. “My mother used to listen to it ever Sunday morning, she did.” And, like the turn of a page, he’s asleep.

Lindsay turns back to the water. Nothing is biting, and she hasn’t had fish in a while. Living off junk food and soda for the past few days is not nearly as appetizing as it was when she was in high school.

Gonna take a sentimental journey, sings Doris. Gonna set my heart at ease. Gonna take a sentimental journey to renew old memories.

The sky was now that steely purple of storm clouds at night, making it almost light out. The last few rays of sun were just dipping beyond the horizon, almost clawing at the ripples of the water. Almost like the sun was drowning. The air stuck to her skin, damp from sweat and rain and the constant humidity in the air and chilled by the slight breeze. Her toes wiggle in her rain boots, her socks squishing unpleasantly. The smell of salt water and smoke from the old man’s cigarette clung to the boxcar. The glow from the passenger cars up ahead seems to taunt her. The illusion of warmth.

Like a child in wild anticipation, long to hear that “All Aboard!” Seven! That’s the time we leave, at seven.

Suddenly, overwhelming fear fills every part of her body, like a flash flood. That sickening sense of certainty. That naive, desperate hope.

There was no one waiting for her in Denver.

Counting every mile of railroad track that takes me back.

She hasn’t really panicked since this whole thing started. Not really, not that quiet, panic that feels like something itching your heart. She thinks she should be proud she held out for this long.

She looks down into the clouded water, vaguely catching the shadow of eels and fish in the beam of flashlight, too smart to take a bite of her line. Thinking over the faces of her family, her friends, her cats, god dammit. Of the lost, confused, terrifying people she has met this year traveling, hunting for answers or out for blood, all so frighteningly familiar to herself. Of the
drowned bodies of lions and elephants from a nearby zoo. Of her job as a body burner the few months after the water stopped flowing, carting the dead onto large barges in order to get the money to leave Tennessee, or the floating remains of Tennessee. Of her pathetic attempts to fish, to fight, to survive for no good reason at all.

She look down into the clouded water, and thinks of the solution many people took when the world was over.

Never thought my heart could be so yearny. Why did I decide to roam?

Why, yes, why? She had made it out with her friends, and like a fool, she ran off. Following her stupid plan, running out to meet. Nothing.

She feels her feet slip on the wet side of the barge. She wonders what the old man, Shaw, would feel if he woke up and saw her gone.

Abruptly, she feels the barge jerk forward. She grabs hold of the metal handle to stop herself from falling in, and then leans out. She could just make out the shadows of mountains, the dull light of the port city glimmering like stars.

Gonna take a sentimental journey...sentimental journey home. Sentimental journey!

She reels her empty line back in quickly, pulling herself back into the boxcar and slamming the sliding door shut. She is technically not supposed to be hiding out in this boxcar, and she guesses neither is the old man. Getting thrown out on her ass this close to Denver was not part of her plan. By the light of her flashlight, she could see the old man had not moved.

Her heart beats heavily in her chest, inexplicably, feeling primitive and wild. Lindsay nearly puts her hand over it, as if that would stop it. She feels that particular twist of nervousness and excitement writhing about in her stomach, all notions of badness and certainties and other depressing things gone. Replaced by anxiousness and fear, sure. But still. It’s change.

So. This was Denver. Or will be, as soon as they make port.

If nothing else – if nothing else – if all else fails and she is stuck in a strange city in a strange time, all alone and desperate and lost, utterly lost.

She could just hang out. Hang out, and wait for the world to start back up again.

 

Wet - Draft 2

Lindsay Wade wakes up and notices three things: one) that there is a large, thick sock lodged in her mouth, two) she is no longer moving, and three) someone nearby is butchering her favorite Simon and Garfunkel song.

She sits up, grimacing at the wood she leans on for balance. After nearly two years, the slick feeling of wet wood still unnerved her. It’s slimy. It reminds her, for some reason, of Disney World. Jungle Cruise. Somehow, that is her life.

Standing, she realizes that it is not a large, thick sock in her mouth like she previously thought, but is actually just her tongue. This does not explain the other two things that were occurring right then, but it is the moment Lindsay decides never to drink something an aged fisherman with hair growing only on the left side of his face – including beard and eyebrows– gave to her, especially when it is described as “homemade.”

Technically, if you want to be technical about these sorts of things, Lindsay was still moving. The gentle ocean waves beating against the side of the boxcar made for that slow rocking she could identify easier than she could identify herself in a prison lineup. But that curious feeling of being propelled in a certain direction, hopefully forward, when one’s body was really completely still was gone.

And the old man is still singing.

“I’m pretty sure,” says Lindsay, “the line doesn’t go ‘a pocket full of mumbles, such a prostitutes.’”

“I don’t care. You think I care? I don’t care. I ain’t even heard that song since the world
ended. I don’t care.”

She walks over to the big door and slides it open. Nothing but water. Leaning out, she could see the long barge stretch out, but it curved, preventing her from seeing the front.

“Why have we stopped? Do you know?” she asks.

“Cows on the tracks,” is the only response.

She turns around to look at the old man. He was still slouched in the corner where he had been since Lindsay had boarded the barge two days ago, in a nest he made of fish-smelling tarp, hidden behind a pile of rotted crates. His face is hidden by a thick mass of hair from his head and beard, his thin, tanned chest bare except for the bright yellow waders and ratty red flannel jacket. He looked like the love child of Grizzly Adams and Aquaman.

“Cows, what are you talking about, cows? There are no cows anymore. Also, we’re in the middle of the United Sea of America.”

“Sea cows, girlie. Whole bunch now, since the Flood rolled in.”
Because that was just typical. More than half the world’s people population drowns, and the endangered species flourish.

“What’s your name, anyhow?”

This was the fourth time he’s asked her that. Obviously senile, they have had the same
conversation for two days straight, and it always started the same way. After the third time it started, Lindsay had scared the man by telling him his entire life story. He had thought she was a witch, and had threatened to throw her out of the boxcar. He had instead fallen asleep in a fit of blind rage.

“Lindsay,” says Lindsay. “Let me guess. Call you Ishmael?”

The old man bares his teeth at her in an attempt to be frightening. His teeth look like Stonehenge. “My name is Shaw, girlie. Best remember it.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says, scratching the strap of her eye-patch. The wet material chafes like a bitch.

“Where’d your eye go, then?”

This was new. In the past two days, he had not once asked her anything to do with her, or her life. Even if his question was tactless to the point of being an asshole. This was progress.

This was also not a subject Lindsay was comfortable talking about. Mention of her missing eye usually brought up feelings of terrible pain and misery and blood and infections. She was Pavlovian like that.

But. Conversation was good.

“Riot in a sporting goods store,” says Lindsay, sitting down at the edge of the boxcar. He fingers graze lightly over the patch over where her left eye used to be. The patch is thick and rough and it hurts. But not at much as salt water on an open wound and raw nerves. “Let me tell you, never get between a desperate old woman and an Albright Tackle Explorer Spinning Rod.” She gestures emphatically to the fishing pole in her hand.

“Jesus. She took your eye out?” He sounds...God. He sounds impressed.

“Yeah, but I got at least four fingers. And my pole here. I believe I was victorious.”

A pause. Then, a great, hacking laugh that sounds like a car backfiring. The laughter turns into a bad coughing fit, and Lindsay contemplates whether or not she should go over and
wack him on the back when the old man grits out, “What’s with that old gettup, girl? You look like a waiter from Hell.”

He was referring to the black tuxedo tailcoat Lindsay wore over her jeans and t-shirt. She had looted it from a wedding supply store in some abandoned mall. Her previous coat had felt permanently soggy and smelled strongly of fish – a condition in which this tailcoat will surely find itself subjected to within a few short weeks – and the tuxedo jacket was nearby and easy. She liked it.

Before she could answer, the old man abandoned his inquiry and struggles to light his cigarette. The wick on his old Zippo lighter was damp and refusing to light, and he was muttering under his breath words that further cemented his place in the Sailor category in Lindsay’s mind.

“Would the sir care for a blowtorch?”

The old man looked up, eyes narrowed, thin lips wrapped around the hand-rolled cigarette tightly.
“Kids,” he snarls around the cigarette, his thumb still flicking the wheel of the lighter. “All they do is sass. Even after all this shit, what do they do? Sass.”

“That’s me,” Lindsay agrees agreeably. “Sassy.” She leans out of the boxcar again, the sole of her boot gripping easily on the side of the barge.

“Be careful, girl,” says the old man. He finally gets the cigarette lit. It smolders in front of his face. “All sorts of monsters and creepies crawling about these days. I even heard of a vampire in Harney Peak, even.”

“Vampires aren’t real.”

“People thought the end of the world ain’t real. Look what happened.”

Everyone thought the end of the world was real. They just thought it was something that happened to other people.

“‘sides, for all I know, you could be a vampire,” he says slyly, as if he were making a cunning attempt to trick her.

She can’t help the sneer that spread across the face. Really. She can’t. “Why could I be a vampire?”

“You’re trying to trick me, tell me there are no vampires, and then you’ll kill me and make me a vampire, too.”

“Do you hear yourself? Even if I was a vampire – which I’m not – why would I pick you to bite? Waste my time draining, burying, and then sitting around, waiting for you to rise? To spend all of eternity...with you? Fun.”

He appears to be thinking about it.. “You know, I know it’s traditional and all, but you wouldn’t have to bury me.”

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t just bury you for fun?”

He thinks about it some more. Than he snorts around his cigarette and leans back against his tarp. “Nothing but sass,” he mutters.

Lindsay leans further out of the boxcar, using a rusted metal handle on the side to keep her from falling in. The sun was nearly set, making the choppy ocean waves glow orange and red and purple. The sky was clear for once, but as she looks behind her, Lindsay sees giant gray storm clouds rolling forward. She closes her eye against the warm ocean breeze.

“Why you in such a damn rush, anyhow? Where you gettin’ off?”

“Denver,” she says, eye still closed. “Mile-high city. I figure it’s pretty dry.”

“Dry ‘cept for the rains and the whiskey, I suppose. What you got for you in Denver?”

She turns to look at him. He was a crotchety old man for most of the journey so far, lecturing her about all the old school students he taught and how they were all smarter than her somehow for hours on end, and how this Great Flood was divine will or whatever nearly every old person who had survived that Doomsday rambled on about.

But now, in this rickety box, floating a few hundred feet above Colorado, swallowed in the reddish gold of sunset, he was just another survivor.

She smiles. “You mean, besides the rains and the whiskey?”

He nods once, one beady eye closed and the other squinting in the light.

She shrugs, reaching over for her tackle box. “A job, hopefully. I hear they were looking for people who were good with computers, trying to get the systems running again, and that’s me. I hope. Also, well. My family.”

“You got family in Denver, then?”

“No. Well, maybe. They were...in south Florida. When it started raining.”

The old man whistles lowly under his breath. Everyone knew the stories of what happened in Florida, how it was below sea level to begin with. How it was under water faster than the Titanic.

“Yeah, well. I was living upstate at the time. I spoke to them before...Before the cell phone towers went under. They were boarding a boat of a friends, so they said. On a whim, I said to make it for Denver. I figure it’d take a while for that to go under. That’s the last I heard from them.”

“So you don’t even– ”

“No,” she says. “No. But you know. Got a plan. Might as well stick to it. So few people have plans now anyway. I’m the man with the plan. So to speak.” She baits the hook of her fishing rod with a little red rubber fish. They remind her of a friend who used to turn these into earrings.

She stretches over to where she had been sleeping, and drags her small suitcase out from under her own tarp. She opens it and fishes out from beneath dry-ish clothes and towels and books and photos and enough painkillers to sedate a blue whale for her flashlight.

“You know,” she says conversationally, “I only ever went fishing once before the Flood rolled in. The only thing I caught was the tree above me.”

She casts her line. Holding the rod tightly between her thighs, she positions the flashlight next to her so it shines in the water, but doesn’t turn it on yet.

“Anyway, I figure if I don’t find them after a while, I could at least save up to buy my own boat and set out. Find my friends and family and stuff.”

The old man is silent for a while. So are the fishes. Nothing bites. The only sound is the dripping of water from the top of the cabin, the pounding of waves against the wood.

Over the past year or so, Lindsay had been able to fully grasp the idea of Chinese Water Torture.
She hears a sharp scrape behind her, and turns to see the old man rifling through his large suitcase. From here, all she could see was a massive amount of CD cases, batteries, and cigarette cartons. Once the Flood had receded, the first thing people did was replant the tobacco plants and vineyards.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the old man says, not looking at her. “But I’m tired as all hell, and my music usually knocks me right out. ‘Course, it doesn’t matter much if you do mind,” he looks up at her know, grinning those rotten teeth of his, “but you know. Just because there is an Apocalypse does not mean one can’t be polite.”

She thinks about telling him he’s been playing his music on and off for two days, but instead just says, “No, I’d like to hear it.”

His grin widens. “Thank you kindly.” He finds what he is looking for. “Ah, Doris Day! All you young girls like Doris Day, right?”

“Er,” says Lindsay. “Sure.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine.” He pulls the boom box from where he had been using it as a pillow. He puts the CD in and presses play.

“I love this one,” he says as soft jazz begins to play. “My mother used to listen to it ever Sunday morning, she did.” And, like the turn of a page, he’s asleep.

Lindsay turns back to the water. Nothing is biting, and she hasn’t had fish in a while. Living off junk food and soda for the past few days is not nearly as appetizing as it was when she was in high school.

Gonna take a sentimental journey, sings Doris. Gonna set my heart at ease. Gonna take a sentimental journey to renew old memories.

The sky was now that steely purple of storm clouds at night, making it almost light out. The last few rays of sun were just dipping beyond the horizon, almost clawing at the ripples of the water. Almost like the sun was drowning. The air stuck to her skin, damp from sweat and rain and the constant humidity in the air and chilled by the slight breeze. Her toes wiggle in her
rain boots, her socks squishing unpleasantly. The smell of salt water and smoke from the old man’s cigarette clung to the boxcar. The glow from the passenger cars up ahead seems to taunt her. The illusion of warmth.

Like a child in wild anticipation, long to hear that “All Aboard!”

There was no one waiting for her in Denver.

Counting every mile of railroad track that takes me back.

She looks down into the clouded water, vaguely catching the shadow of eels and fish in the beam of flashlight, too smart to take a bite of her line. Thinking over the faces of her family, her friends, her cats, god dammit. Of the lost, confused, terrifying people she has met this year traveling, hunting for answers or out for blood, all so frighteningly familiar to herself. Of the drowned bodies of lions and elephants from a nearby zoo.. Of her pathetic attempts to fish, to fight, to survive for no good reason at all.

She look down into the clouded water, and thinks of the solution many people took when the world was over.

Never thought my heart could be so yearny. Why did I decide to roam?

Why, yes, why? She had made it out with her friends, and like a fool, she ran off. Following her stupid plan, running out to meet. Nothing.

She feels her feet slip on the wet side of the barge. She wonders what the old man, Shaw, would feel if he woke up and saw her gone.

Abruptly, she feels the barge jerk forward. She grabs hold of the metal handle to stop herself from falling in, and then leans out. She could just make out the shadows of mountains, the dull light of the port city glimmering like stars.

Gonna take a sentimental journey...sentimental journey home. Sentimental journey!

She reels her empty line back in quickly, pulling herself back into the boxcar and slamming the sliding door shut. She is technically not supposed to be hiding out in this boxcar, and she guesses neither is the old man. Getting thrown out on her ass this close to Denver was not part of her plan. By the light of her flashlight, she sees the old man twitch, but not wake up.

Her heart beats heavily in her chest, inexplicably, feeling primitive and wild. Lindsay nearly puts her hand over it, as if that would stop it. She feels that particular twist of nervousness and excitement writhing about in her stomach, all notions of badness and certainties and other depressing things gone. Replaced by anxiousness and fear, sure. But still. It’s change.

So. This is Denver. Or will be, as soon as they make port.

If nothing else – if nothing else – if all else fails and she is stuck in a strange city in a strange time, all alone and desperate and lost, utterly lost.

She could just hang out. Hang out, and wait for the world to start back up again.