Frank must have saw Alan tense up because he immediately turned to face the same direction. “They could be going to Garden Key or they may have seen our profile. Hard to say, but we need to do something.”

  “Aw shit. Would you look at that? That can’t be good.” Alan thoughts were running amuck as he tried to decide where to start. Tell Ellen and see what she wanted to do, look to Frank for guidance or use his own intuition and run.

  “When the devil comes a knocking, you prepare to defend or run first and defend if we have to.” Frank said without preamble. I laid the guns out with the magazines designed for them. You got lucky with the first one, but maybe not twice.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Hannah? Is it bad?” Ellen croaked out. Her head felt as if someone had taken a baseball bat to it. The act of opening her eyes was almost more than she was able. She knew by the boat action they were out in the water, but she didn’t know for sure why they had left. After she was shot, everything became a blur. She remembered someone holding her down while Hannah worked on her head, and it wasn’t Alan. A deep melodious voice had offered reassurances and comfort while Hannah worked her magic.

  Hannah sat on the edge of the settee, and placed her palm gently on Ellen’s forehead. Satisfied Ellen had no temperature, she sat back and studied Ellen’s eyes. They both looked equal sized and focused on her. “You are so lucky it hit the way it did. You must have turned as he fired because the bullet went under the skin here,” she said and pointed at her own forehead at the hairline, “travelled just under the skin and came out by your cowlick back here,” she pointed at the top of her own head. “We had to open it to clean it and I had to trim some of your hair away, but it will grow back. Frank held you down while I put in some stitches. And let me tell you, you put up quite the fight until he began talking to you. Of course not that I blame you, but it was like he hypnotized you into silence.”

  “Frank?” Ellen questioned, frown lines showing she was puzzled by the name.

  Before Hannah could answer, Ellen’s eyes drifted closed and she slept. Hannah had given her some of the over the counter sleep aid that Alan had given to her when she first came aboard. She knew sleep would help her more than anything at that point. From experience she also knew you kept a person awake if they had a concussion, but if Ellen was awake, Hannah knew there would be no keeping her down. Ellen needed time to heal before turning into Rambo. She was pretty sure Ellen would do anything to keep them all safe, including putting herself in harm’s way to protect them.

  Alan stuck his head in the companionway and whispered, “How is she?”

  Alan whispering made her think something else was up. “She’s asleep and will be for a while. “Why are you whispering?” Under the navigation station, which was useless now, she pulled out a bottle of water. It would be warm but she didn’t care. She needed the re-hydration.

  “Who’s at the helm?”

  “Frank is for now. The wheel is locked down and we are headed away from the island.”

  He slid by Hannah, close enough he could smell the ivory soap she had washed with. “We need put the lamps out. They probably won’t hear us over their motor noise, but they could see our lights if they’re looking. There’s another boat headed this way and we need to make ourselves invisible.”

  “Invisible? With the sails up? Those big white sails will glow in the dark. Wouldn’t we be less likely to be seen if we just sit here?”

  “Frank says we are barely out of the only channel on this side to get through the shallow water. We don’t have those big white sails anymore. However, we do have a navy blue cruising spinnaker and a tan-bark jib sail. Frank is figuring how to hang them now. Once the sun finishes setting we may go un-noticed. The winds are picking up so maybe we will be fine…”

  “And what if we’re not fine? What’s going to happen then?” Hannah sat on the settee, her eyes on Ellen. “We can’t really move her. She may have suffered a concussion.”

  “Hannah, we may all have to help defend her. Frank thinks maybe the other boat is intent on getting to the island. They may not be after us at all, but just in case we need to be ready. Grab your hand gun and pick out one of the long guns. Frank is going to give us quick lessons on whatever we pick out.”

  Hannah watched Alan pick out the same gun he had used before. She saw by his smile he may have liked his previous choice even if he had no idea how to use it. She stepped past him and picked one up and lay it back down. She didn’t think she could hold it up long enough to shoot it. It was too heavy. The next one she thought she was prepared for and almost threw it over her shoulder it was so light. “Perfect,” she said, “strange looking but perfect.” She checked Ellen one last time and was concerned when she felt a little warm, but she was still sleeping so Hannah left her be.

  The gun she carried to the cockpit felt like a toy gun and she wondered if they were playing a joke on her. It hardly weighed anything and felt as if it were made out of plastic.

  “Good choice Miss Hannah. I couldn’t have picked a better weapon for you myself. Did you grab the magazine for it?”

  She had not and wasn’t even sure which magazine went with it. “No, I didn’t think of bullets…sorry.”

  “No worries little girl. Alan can grab yours when he goes back down for his.” He looked at Alan pointedly, “Hers has the three really long ones and yours are lying right where you picked that up.” He nodded at the gun in Alan’s hands. “I think there are four for yours and some loose shells too.”

  Alan mentally thanked Frank for not making a big deal out of them forgetting to grab the magazines, especially the way he had handled Hannah. He had noticed that Hannah had no fear of Frank and wondered if she had buried what had happened to her. “Or maybe she can just tell the good guys from the bad guys.” He mumbled as he went back to the V-berth.

  He was amazed by the magazine that went in the gun that Hannah chose. They were twice as long as his were. He was surprised Frank would let her shoot it after the way he ran through the one when he got the guy on the beach. He knew he had been firing from shock. At the time he had barely registered the shots. It was almost as if it had fired itself.

  He handed the magazines for Hannah’s rifle. “What is that? It almost looks like a toy gun,” he said stepping back.

  “This little baby is an AR15. And these are thirty round magazines holding 5.56 mm. NATO rounds. The perfect gun for Hannah.”

  Frank showed Hannah how to insert the magazine, eject it and the basics of cleaning it.

  “Sure wish there was a chance of you firing this before we really need it, but in the name of silence, we will have to forego that. Just remember, keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire it and please point it only at what you are ready to kill. Aim for body mass not the head. If you see you are hitting them but not drawing blood hit them below the belt. They probably have body armor on.”

  He looked at the gun Alan was holding, “You need to find something different to shoot. That thing may look all pretty and all, but basically it’s junk. It is famous for jamming when you need it the most. This should hold a 20 or 30 round magazine, but it looks like you got the twenty. It fires every time you pull the trigger…if it doesn’t jam. And for pity sake don’t hold it in front of yourself to fire, and keep it off your shoulder.”

  “What happened to that big gun that Ellen found on the trawler? I didn’t see it down there?” Alan was looking at Hannah as he asked this.

  She thought about it for a second, “Whoops, I bet it’s still behind the food baskets. She said to leave it there because it was too big to shoot. Plus, there were only a few shells for it.”

  This seemed to catch Frank’s interest. “How big?”

  “Really big and it has a tripod on the bottom of it too. Ellen called it an elephant gun, but she was only teasing…I think.” Hannah answered. She was staring off behind them.

  “Well we will check it out after we get someplace safe. Put your guns in a safe easy to reach place and give me a hand. Right now we need to get these sails up and get out of here. This isn’t really the set up for them but we can make do I think.”

  Frank laid the spinnaker out the length on the deck and with Alan holding the spinnaker foot, pulled the chute to the head of the sail. “We don’t have a halyard to pull the sock up so we will have to heave it up to start. We’ll just tie it up,” he decided as he poked a hole in the material, pulled a short piece of line through the hole and wrapped it around the hoop, the material from the chute caught up in the line. It was bulky and awkward, but it would hold the chute out of the way.

  “Hannah? Can you look in the lazarette and find me two lines? Hopefully Ellen has spare sheet lines, those would work nicely.” Frank said as he rigged a shackle to the head of the spinnaker and attached it to the halyard swivel from the roller furling. “Okay, it won’t be pretty but it should work.”

  “Hannah look under the settee by the table. There’s a lot of extra line in there.” Alan was trying to keep the wind from blowing the spinnaker open before they needed it. He began to roll the foot forward to help keep control of it and not have it twist all up.

  Hannah returned with two neat coils of line. “These have tags on them that say sheet lines. There is another set also but they look old.”

  “Perfect. Alan you know how to tie those on?” At a disgruntled look from Alan, he added, “Of course you do.”

  Alan unrolled the sail enough to tie the lines to the corners of the spinnaker using a bowline knot.” Okay Hannah, if you can, without pulling on it too much can you take this line to the starboard side and run it through the cheat block we use for the jenny and around the winch. Make sure to go around the mast.”

  She rolled her eyes at him and gently pulled the sheet line around the mast. It was only long enough to barely wrap around the winch twice with a short piece left over, but she figured once they got the sail up there would be more.

  “Hannah, loosen the wheel brake and grab the wheel for me. Turn us to face the wind until I have this thing up please. Alan put some tension on the sail while I pull it up and keep a hold of the port sheet line. We don’t want this to get away and flap in the wind. They wouldn’t be able to miss seeing us with this flapping all over.”

  Frank hurried to the mast where the halyard for the roller furling was cleated off and began to pull. Alan eased his hold of the sheet as the sail rose. For a few minutes it looked as if the sail was going to wrap around itself and around the mast until Alan wrapped his sheet line around the portside winch.

  With the spinnaker up and the furling halyard cleated off, Frank hurried to the wheel and relieved Hannah. “Grab that sheet and tighten it until I say stop,” he said.

  She pulled on the line until he told her to stop. She hadn’t realized how tiring it was to put sails up or how strong the sail could be when it was filled with the wind.

  “Now push the engine kill switch and turn the key off.”

  The sail billowed out dragging them away from the channel. The spinnaker wasn’t solid blue after all. There was a teal blue chevron across the bottom. Frank hoped that whoever was in the power boat was too occupied with the shallow water to notice them.

  “What about this other sail?” Alan asked as he began to extract it from the bag.

  “That one will be easy. Shackle the tack to the eye right there on the mast. Shackle the clew to the clew outhaul and the head to the main halyard and pull it up. It won’t be pretty, but it should work.”

  Frank was right, it wasn’t pretty but it worked. The Annie-C was now sailing along at a good clip. Unfortunately, so was the power boat. There was no question that the boat was now coming to them. As it drew closer there was no mistaking it for a civilian vessel.

  “Well would you looky here,” Frank murmured. “That’s a Coast Guard cutter.” In the growing dusk, with the aid of Ellen’s binoculars the infamous diagonal orange stripe stood out against the white hull. “I wonder what they are up to.”

  “Are they still headed for us?” Alan asked.

  “Hard to say right now. They are either going to break away or they aren’t. They should just about be to the channel.”

  Both men let out held breathes as the cutter turned to go into the channel. Either they hadn’t seen them or they didn’t care. Eyes meeting, they grinned.

  “Well, where to?” Alan asked.

  Hannah feeling the release of tension went below, after carefully laying her gun on the top of the cabin between the winch and the hatch combing.

  “I sure do wish I had brought my charts. However, we should ask the captain when she wakes. After all this is her boat and I bet she has charts and a plan.”

  Alan laughed softly and rolled his eyes, “A plan she has and just wait until you hear it. She thinks she’s going to take this boat home and us with her.”

  “Sound logical to me. I don’t have any place special to be in the near future.”

  Alan laughed softly and said, “Oh, did I forget to say that her home is in Washington State?”

  Frank didn’t blink an eye. His face took on a thoughtful expression as if he were seriously contemplating what Alan had said. Finally, his eyes met Alan’s, “Well if that’s what she wants, then we better get this bitch headed in the right direction.”

  Journal Day……Not Sure!

  I am laying here feeling very sorry for myself. My head feels like the worst hangover ever. Not that I have much experience with hangovers but I have a great imagination.

  So much has happened I don’t know where to start. Alan and Hannah are doing far more than should be expected of people their age. Hell, someone my age shouldn’t have to do this either.

  I thought going to the Dry Tortugas would be the answer; a safe place to regroup. Logically it should have been, with no electric on the mainland it should have been a protected haven, accessible only to those people already there or those like me, who have the power of wind propulsion.

  Instead of a sanctuary we found the island has been invaded. Okay, okay don’t start with my conspiracy theory, but you have to admit it does hold some merit.

  The lights go out but before the first day has passed people are killing and forcing other people to fight back just to survive. You have to admit that it reads like another “After the shit hits the fan book.”

  Who would have thought the art of holding a pen is making my head pound? My instincts tell me to get up and get moving, but my head is begging me to close my eyes and sleep. Like that’s going to happen.

  Did I mention we have another crew member? Hannah said his name is Frank and he was hiding out on the sunken Choy Lee. Apparently he has already seen some of what happened before we got here, and just maybe he has some answers, because I sure have questions.

  Hannah says I am going to live and only need to rest, but you know me. According to you my friends, I am hard headed and I guess being able to even write in this journal proves that.

  I think it’s about time to figure out what to do and where we are going. Are we going as a group? How are we going to get there and most important of all, can I trust taking them home with me?

  I guess time will tell and I think I hear someone coming to take me topside. I’ll tell you it really sucks to need help…For now, I guess I will have get used to it. But not for long though. They underestimate me!

  THE END

  Thank you for reading Dangerous Shores; The Journey Home. Book Two of the series will be released December 24th with Book Three Dangerous Shores; The Homecoming will release in February 2016. The Homecoming will be the longest of the series and bring an end to the Adventure of Ellen and the crew of the Annie-C.

  Come and see who survives the journey as crew is gained and lost during the final leg of their journey.

 

 

  Christine Conaway, Dangerous Shores: The Journey Home

 

 

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