The fire was spreading, they heard every day. It took out each barrier with time. Time was on the fire’s side.

On the eighth day of searching, they found each other by the fire: Hesse and Travis, Lee and Jessica, each out to learn how small their ship was becoming.

Travis fired first.

Lee was quickly in front of Jessica so that Travis saw only the single silhouette at the end of the corridor.

Lee fired back, single shots, one, two, three. Hesse and Travis backed into the same stairwell they had come out from.

The Mighty Lee Golding pressed the attack, firing through the wall he knew they cowered behind. Travis and Hesse escaped up the stairs. There was a moment’s respite, and they heard only their breath and heartbeats as they waited for Lee to come after them.

Two bullets left. But what chance would be better than this? Travis rolled over and sat up at the top of the stairs, completely exposed, for a clear shot when Lee opened that stairwell door.

The door never opened. Lee had retreated. By the time Travis went down the stairs and after him, they knew they wouldn’t find him.

Gerry Adamson sat on the promenade deck and looked out and finished his note.

The end of the world came

And we no longer asked, who by fire and who by sword

We all died by water

In a fragile craft on a disinterested sea

We dreamed, loved, bled and hungered

For more time, when great things would occur

And then the water rose

And went over us,

And our dreams did not float, nor loves, nor blood, nor hunger

 

61

“Don’t let them win,” Jessica said.

She lay across Lee’s legs, on the floor of a room they had sheltered and hidden their food stores in. She bled out her back onto his pants.  He had carried her back after Travis Cooke had shot her.

Now he could not speak. Tears streamed from his tired eyes and his great frame shook with the effort to hold in his cries.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally.

Her face was white, even the deep red of her lips faded.

“Don’t. Don’t regret,” she whispered.

Her eyes were still open and she looked up into his.

“You were my hero,” she said.

She died on his legs and he bent over. The tears flowed freely and he opened his mouth. For a moment nothing came, then an animal wail shook him and shook the room.

He allowed himself some minutes to cry. Then he knew he had to let her body go. He would not allow them any chance to defile her. He would not allow the indignity of them seeing her dead. He carried his broken love, he cradled her like a baby in his arms, the gun still held in his fist under her back. He was not cautious. He felt no danger, no fear this time, just a growing void, as though his universe was disappearing from inside him.

This cabin had no balcony, but a level up was the Resort Deck with its exterior promenade. He carried her up the dark stairway, then in the hallway felt his knees weaken and his shoulder bounced off the wall before he straightened himself. Tears came slowly in tracks down his cheeks, disappearing into his beard.

The air was calm, the sun bright but cool as he walked to stern with Jessica. At the rail, he looked down at her and kissed her pale lips. He kissed her eyes and forehead and her face was wet with his tears. He dropped her over the railing and there was no sound back to him as the body disappeared in a white puff far below.

Back in the room, he took out his cellphone. He had to see her again. He saw that he had four text messages, and his battery was almost dead.

The messages were from Rick. The dead man begged to be let out of the fire.

62

Travis woke late in the morning and Gerry and Darren were gone. He sat up on the couch. Corrina was up, and came over. She had a small bottle of water, and she gave him a drink and she had one. He got up from the couch and followed her out of the cabin.

They walked up the stairs to the open air of the Resort Deck and the sun. The sun, so rare they’d forgotten about it. It was warm. Travis took off his coat. They walked astern but still neither spoke. Travis took off his shirt. It clung to his skin so that he had to be slow to prevent it tearing. He wondered how he would get it back on, but he immediately felt cleaner and healthier with the warm sun and air on his skin.

There was a cushioned wood sun lounger. Corrina took Travis’s hand and pulled him down with her onto the bed. They kissed. His right and her left hand mixed finger after finger. It was time, because there was no more time. She wasn’t going to allow the rape to define her final days, the story of her and Travis. She could still make the choices while she breathed and moved.

He pulled her shirt up. She stopped him with her hand. He grasped her back under the shirt. Her flesh was thin and he could feel her bones. She gave him a kiss with three years in it.

Three years he’d wanted her touch, three years he’d been tortured by her presence and absence, three years he’d been in his personal hell hoping that he could have one day of life back in the paradise her love had been. He remembered the last time they’d made love. Two weeks before he’d gone to Sudan. They’d been fighting, and it was a passionate, desperate sex. They fought more afterwards, and when he left for Sudan two weeks later, that night remained the last. They were as passionate, as physically desperate, for each other now. It was the same stage play with an altogether different meaning.

They did not move a long time after. The sun made them so comfortable. Finally, she worried for Darren and stirred.

Travis sat up. The most important thing in his life had just gone right. If it meant nothing more than this moment, it was infinitely better.

“We’re going to get off this ship,” he said. “And you’ll go back to your life with Gerry, and Darren will grow up great. And I’ll be happy we had this talk.”

They both smiled. Still they did not move.

“If we get through this life,” Travis said, “and meet on the other side, can we be in love again?”

“Oh, Travis,” she said.

Days of quiet searching followed, each day a scorecard of survivors and dead.

Hesse seemed never to rest now, between searching with Travis and maintaining somehow the structure and organization their lives depended on.

The sun stayed out mostly. It was cool and pleasant. There was a basketball game occasionally, the oppressiveness of time called for it. Never did Lee Golding or Travis Cooke play. There were still some, like Travis and Hesse, that the flood had found in the fullest strength of their life. They could still function physically, though not well. The games were lethargic, the players weak and clumsy, but there was a joy in it, of life escaping death for the moment. Sometimes there was an audience of survivors drinking in the sun on deck, so that more and more of the sun loungers knocked over by the waterslide flood were over time set back upright.

In those days, they didn’t talk much at all. They were all thirsty, their mouths sticky and the more their mouths were open, the drier their tongues and lips became. They guarded every drop of moisture in them.

Days after the gunfight in the stairwell, Claude spoke quietly to Travis’s group in their new cabin.

“I found Golding’s food. Some canned stuff, crackers, nuts, water. There’s not much, but for us it’ll be enough.”

”Enough for what?” Corrina said. She sat on the couch with Darren sleeping against her shoulder.

The three men were quiet, shocked Corrina had spoken.

“To go,” Claude said.

“Where was Golding?” he said.