“Hate to lose the wag,” Krysty commented as she changed her pants.
“No choice. It’s deadweight,” Ryan stated. “And with any luck, if some blues find the wag, they’ll think we all died the explosion.”
“Can’t hurt.”
When Dean was on board, Ryan looked around the beach and ordered a last check of the supplies. It would take the grease fuse hours to reach the APC, but time was still against them. The blues could arrive at any moment, and if they left something important behind there would be no easy way to get it back.
“We have canned food, MRE packs, seven ammo boxes, a case of grens, bedrolls, blankets,” Doc called out from the cargo raft. “Extra rope—”
“All of the rope,” J.B. interrupted.
“Fuel, fresh water, pots and pans.”
“Med kit,” Mildred added, patting the bag at her side.
“Same,” Jak announced, squatting by the mound, looking under the canvas. “Ready go.”
The sun broke the horizon at that moment, flooding the world with its dim light. “All right, then,” Ryan decided. “Cast off!”
At the helm, Krysty snapped the mooring line like a whip, and the knot around the tree stump came undone. Urged on by the gentle currents, the rafts began to leisurely float away from the Carolina shoreline.
Using the poles, the companions guided the rafts into the deep water where the saplings couldn’t touch bottom. Drifting freely, Doc and Jak worked the tillers, steering them farther out until land was no longer in sight.
Behind them, a faint trail of smoke was discernible, rising above the horizon from the smoldering remains of the cornfield.
Shifting his weight from boot to boot, Dean tried to gain his balance on the moving raft. “I thought having the tires under the logs would make these things steady,” he said, swallowing hard.
“It does,” J.B. replied, spooning cold soup from a U.S. Army tin can. “Dark night, you should been with us a few years back when we took a raft trip down the Hudson in Newyork. Now, that was a rough ride.”
Slightly green, the boy nodded assent and sat on the deck, waiting for his stomach to catch up with them from the beach.
Hours passed. The companions took turns at the helm and catching up on the sleep lost during the frenzied building of the raft during the night. The gentle current was getting stronger, urging them on a more southerly course, but they angled the rudder against the easy pull and maintained a steady course to the north and Tennessee.
“I make our speed at three knots,” J.B. announced, studying the sun overhead. “Not bad.”
“Wind is with us,” Ryan said, testing the breeze with a damp finger. “That helps.”
A bug buzzed near the raft, and a fish leaped from the basin and back into the water. The insect disappeared.
“I’ll catch us dinner,” Dean said, and unscrewed the handle of his bowie knife, withdrawing line and hooks.
“You’ll need bait,” Krysty commented, and reached inside a box to retrieve a wad of grease-soaked paper. “Try some of the fatback. It’s getting old, and we can’t risk eating it anymore.”
“Fish love bacon,” Jak added, whittling on a sliver of wood from the end of a log. “Rancid, the best.”
Cutting off a tiny cube, Dean baited a hook and cast it overboard, raising and lowering the line to suggest life in the bait.
“How odd,” Mildred said, kneeling on the raft and almost sticking her face into the water. “Those are barracuda. Saltwater fish.”
“Must be muties,” J.B. stated, as if that settled the matter.
She stood. “Could be. But they seem to be dying.”
“Should they not?” Doc asked, amused.
The physician waved that aside. “That isn’t the point. How did ocean fish get this far into a freshwater basin?”
“Mebbe caught by the tide or something.”
“Perhaps,” she relented. “I only hope that—”
The raft shook hard as it struck something underwater. J.B. shifted the helm, and Ryan did the same.
“Sandbar?” Krysty asked, looking overboard, one hand gripping the ropes tight. “No, look!”
Just below the surface of the water was the wreck of a sailing ship. The hull was smashed inward near the bow, schools of fish darting about the rigging and cabin.