“Everybody wake up and listen.”

He only had to say it once, in his full stage voice, and wait a moment to know he had their attention.

“There’s not enough food on this ship for everyone. Some people are going to get food and live long enough to get rescued, some people are not and are going to get sick and die. That’s the fact. I sure didn’t like it that other groups were in charge of that decision. I don’t know what’s gone on over there, why it is, but they’re half-wild. It was those guys that ran off, those guys that stole the food, those guys that left us to die here. They’re animals. They’ve been dealing with rapes and suicides. Animals. We weren’t going to leave those people in charge of our fate anymore. We’ve brought the food back to our kitchen here.”

There was a lot of noise and many shouted all at once.

“Are we still going to share it?” someone asked.

There was angry discussion going on across the Theater, trying to make sense of this newest development.

“You’re not listening,” Rick said, walking up on the stage. “There isn’t enough food. We have the choice to live or die. Don’t you understand that we’ve been caught in the biggest disaster that’s ever hit America, or the world maybe? Do you think anyone is going to blame us that we took the food instead of waiting for them to cut us off? The only thing that matters is living and dying.”

“And anyone who disagrees,” Lee added, “can leave now, because you aren’t welcome, and you aren’t getting any food, and you can tell them down there that they’re not getting any food. This is war now. If you want to live, you fight for it.”

“I won’t,” Adam said.

He stood alone, near the top of the main seating, but all those who sat in the balcony or could not see him knew who it was.

“We are still men,” Adam said.

“Then you’ll die,” Rick said quickly.

“We will all die,” Adam said. “But you will die wrong. I won’t.”

Adam began walking down the aisle.

“Friend,” Lee said, “I’m saving the lives of everyone here.”

“No,” Adam said, “you’re destroying them. And I never was your friend.”

He turned. Now he could see the entire Theater, even if only the outlines of people in the dark. He did not need to stand on the stage; he was a stage.

“Look at you all,” Adam said to the rest. “You blind mob. You pack animals. You cast off your self into the mob, and think right and wrong can be cast off as well. This is your choice. If you think it’s worth killing hundreds of innocent people so you’ll have a better shot to live a few days longer, stay here with him. If you believe in God, if you believe in decency, and that there’s anything in the human heart more important than how many beats it has left, then come with me.”

Every little couple, family, or group seemed in intense deliberation.

“This is the time to decide,” Adam said, “What do you stand for?”

He slowly began walking down the aisle to the open door at the bottom. Others stood in their seats as if to follow, and then, here and there some did: individuals, couples, and families.

Of those that stayed, some watched the ones leaving, others turned away, or hid their families from watching.

A man yelled for his wife. She was in tears, walking awkwardly down the aisle, as others scrunched themselves up to let her pass. The man called for her, exasperated.

“You’re wrong!” she shouted back. “You were always wrong!”

In the hall in front of the Theater, Adam gathered over forty people. They spoke very little, each consumed with the events moving their lives.

“I know a place we’ll be far from here,” Adam said.

They followed him up the dark stairs, up, up, so many flights of stairs, to the Sky Deck, then along that open space to the structure at the very edge of the ship, the solarium tower adjoined to the blasted bridge. Up one more flight there, they found the glass-enclosed hall dark under the cloudy sky.

“We’ll stay here,” Adam said.

“But what will we eat?” someone said.

“We’ll talk with the group in the Atrium. They’ll get the food back. There are still much more of them in the Atrium.”

“But he’s got a gun!”

“There aren’t so many of them now, most of them left in the lifeboats!”

“I thought we left them so we wouldn’t be fighting over food. What did we leave for?”

“Go back then!” Adam snapped. “Do you think things will be easier with those scorpions? Golding was right- at least one of the groups will die. But who has any reason to guess which it will be? Or whether, in the end, they won’t all die? Who wants to stake their soul on it? Look out there!”

He pointed out the glass walls at the black sea and sky.

“This is what God has given us. Uncharted waters. We thought we understood the earth. Our own arrogance. We do not understand our own bodies, even. We think that, because such-and-such has never occurred before that it won’t occur. But the world can die in a day. Every day of existence is uncharted territory. Every civilization on earth has a flood story. None of them saw it coming- there is no special warning that you live in momentous times.”

He was so strong and full of energy, it seemed the fight with Lee Golding and the long walk up had only woken his full power. Then his voice dropped- the energy he projected was still there, but it was suddenly controlled very tightly.

“Let’s capture this moment. Let’s all remember how it feels to be this scared, this desperate, this far from human society.”

They slept there. In the morning, when the sky became a lighter grey, but still before the sun could be seen, Adam took two others and went down to the Atrium.

37

 

The next morning Corrina walked down to the Atrium for breakfast with Darren, Travis and Gerry.

It was early; many in the lounge were yet asleep. Corrina knew before she made it down the stairs that something was new and bad. Though more isolated than on previous occasions, there were again the sounds of wailing and crying on the floor, the unhappy sounds carrying over the general tumult of angry voices from the still sparse early morning crowd.

There were no breakfast tables.

She stood off by herself with just Darren, holding his hand. No one in the crowd knew anything. There was no point speaking with anyone. She waited, a few children and mothers cried, voices argued. Then there was a different noise level from one end of the Atrium, and the crowd parted, and Hesse came through the crowd and stood up on his dais. Behind him, standing on the floor but still standing out, was the giant of a man Corrina had seen before, the one who had accompanied the gunman from the Theater.

The big bearded man alone seemed the same after those weeks.

“I’ve been waiting for enough people to get here before announcing it,” Hesse began. “The galley was raided last night. The group from the Theater beat and tied up our guards and took most of the meats and breads...most everything. Lee Golding led them. The big guy with the gun. The same one that shot at some of you when you were trying to get out in the lifeboats. Now we still have some food! I’m sure that’s the first thing that’s on everyone’s minds. We won’t starve. We have food still, and we’re catching fish. But it’s going to be tough.

“The other thing,” he continued quickly. “We now have an antagonistic force on board with us. We’re going to have to deal with that.”

In the sliver of a pause between Hesse’s sentences, someone yelled out, “Who’s that guy? He was with Golding before.”

“This is Adam Melville. He wouldn’t go along with the raid. He and some others left the Theater. They thought they’d better not come down here, all of them, in the middle of the night, so they’re settled in another section, the solarium upstairs.”