Dead Sea

    "That this was the longest getaway I've ever seen."

    "Doesn't matter," Tasha said. "We're safe now. Like Malik said, they can't get us out here."

    The dead watched us leave. More of them tumbled into the water. Birds squawked above us. The sky was full of smoke, obscuring the moon and the stars. The ocean itself seemed lifeless. No fish leaping from the water or dolphins following the boat. Just the waves, and even those seemed small. The ship's engines throbbed as we picked up speed. The bay's surface was black, but the full moon lit a silvery path for us. The flames reflected off the waves. Then a cloud passed over the moon and the gradually lights vanished. Under the cover of darkness, we sailed out onto a dead sea.

Chapter Five

    I don't remember much about that first night onboard the Spratling. We were all dehydrated, exhausted, and stressed from our ordeal, and after a while, things just kind of blurred together. When the ship was safely away from the city, and far enough out into the Chesapeake Bay that the fires were just a dim glow on the horizon, everyone relaxed a little more. But there was still a lot to do. Mitch and I had to find sleeping quarters for the kids-the older man in the coast guard uniform called them "berthing areas"-and a place for ourselves as well. We ended up together in a room with six racks- bunk beds-three on each side. The mattress on each rack lifted up to reveal a small, narrow storage space. Each of us also had a small footlocker to store things in. We didn't have many belongings. I pulled out my wallet and my keys and put them inside a locker. It seemed weird. Might as well have tossed them over the side for all the good they'd do me now. The keys were all for a life I'd left behind, a life I'd never return to. And the wallet was empty- no pictures, no money. I'd never had much use for snapshots. And money? Well, I'd never had much of that, either. And now, I didn't need them. What good was money when there was nothing to buy? What good were photographs of friends and family when all of them were dead? I didn't have many people that I cared about, but those I did I could remember in my head. If I looked at their pictures now, I'd just see them as zombies.

    Mitch pulled a small rifle cleaning kit out of his backpack and went to work on the guns, using long cotton swabs to get the debris and residue out of the barrels, and then oiling them down. He explained each step to the three of us as he went along, so that we'd be able to do it, too. When he was finished, he stowed our weapons beneath his mattress and slid one pistol under his pillow. He didn't unload his backpack; instead, he stuffed it between his rack and the bulkhead. Then he took off his boots and lay down. We all did the same. Each bed had a tiny feather pillow, one sheet, and a thin gray blanket that felt like it was made out of horse hair-very rough and scratchy. They smelled musty and mildewed.

    "This pillow stinks," I complained.

    "Mine does, too." Tasha wrinkled her nose. "Smells like a zombie."

    "They should," Mitch said. "They've probably been sitting on this boat for the last twenty years."

    I propped myself up on one elbow. "What do you mean?"

    "This is a museum ship," he explained. "The Spratling is a piece of American history, so rather than sending it to the scrap yard to be cut up into razor blades, the maritime museum preserved it and turned it into a floating tourist trap, just like all the other ships at Inner Harbor."

    "Okay," I said, "but what's that got to do with why these pillows smell funky?"

    "Think about it, Lamar. This is a museum. A tourist attraction. How long have you lived in Baltimore?"

    I shrugged. "All my life."

    "And in all that time you never took a tour of the ships? Not even when the Taney was here?"

    "No. I mean, I knew about them. Knew a little of their history. But I never toured one."

    "Damn. Well, I guess I can't say anything. All the years I lived in Towson, I never came downtown and visited Edgar Allan Foe's grave."

    That told me something about him. Towson was the suburbs, way out on the edge of the city. I wondered what had brought Mitch down into Fells Point.

    "Were you a fan of Foe's?" I asked.

    "Sure. Read the shit out of him when I was in the ninth grade. My grandfather gave me a big collection of all his stories. My favorite was always "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.'" He chuckled. "It takes place on a boat, now that I think about it-a ship sailing to the South Pole."

    "So if you dug the man's work, why not visit his grave?"

    "Didn't feel like getting shot. That's a bad area of town, isn't it?"

    I shrugged again. "When you actually live down here in the city, all of it's a bad area, Mitch. That's just how things are. You get used to it."

    "Yeah," he said. "I guess I can see that."