She wasn’t sure what they were going to do with all of it, but she wasn’t going to leave them for anyone else to steal. Full, it was almost too heavy to carry, and she set it by the door.

  Thinking about their food situation, she realized more would be better. She still had some room in her freezer and she is sure the kitchen here would be fully stocked. On the run she found the kitchen. The freezer door was hard to miss and she pulled it open. Sure enough, metal shelving held wire baskets of individually packaged meat and vegetables. Everything was frozen solid. She dumped the vegetables on the floor and began throwing packages of chicken, steak and pork chops into it. She hadn’t thought about the weight and could barely pick it up.

  Another explosion rocked the dock again. She couldn’t imagine who was doing what, let alone why? It had only been one day and everything was falling apart. Then she remembered the protesters. Today was the day they were to gather across the bridge to protest a so called murder of a black teen by a police officer. But that was in Miami. Why they found it necessary to protest here was beyond her. She thought about Ferguson and the damage the protesters had done there and wondered if this was all part of whatever was going on.

  If shit had hit the fan, what happened in Ferguson would be small time compared to what was likely to happen here. All these extra people with no way to return to their homes, could raise all the hell they wanted with no one to stop them. They had no ties to the community, so anything was possible. Ellen felt the clock ticking, and knew they needed to get out of there.

  While her brain was working overtime, her hands continued stuffing frozen meat into another empty basket. She started to add the frozen fish and realized they would have a ready supply of fish in the ocean. She topped both baskets with the frozen veggies. They would help to keep the meat frozen until they were safely away.

  “Ellen come on. There’s a group of people heading this way and they’re trashing boats as they go. They have bottles on fire and are throwing them. We need to get out of here now!” Alan yelled. The panic in his voice, helped her decide she had enough.

  “Coming, grab the tote by the door. Just drop it in the cockpit and get back here. We need this stuff.” She set one full basket on top of the other and began the slow process of dragging them both to the door.

  “Stop!” Mike had been hiding behind the freezer door and jumped out at her. “You can’t take that stuff. It doesn’t belong to you.” He had the gun they had all forgot about. His hand was shaking so badly she was afraid it would go off by accident.

  “Mike, what are you doing? You need to put that gun away before you shoot someone.” Her mind was in overdrive trying to decide how to play this.

  “I said, you can’t take that stuff so put it back in the freezer.”

  “Ellen hurry, they are on C dock already!” Alan yelled, as he slammed through the swinging door. The swinging door knocked Mike to the floor the gun went off when Mike dropped it and it skittered under the grill.

  “What the heck? Mike what are you doing man?” he asked, seeing the gun.

  “Forget him!” She said in disgust. “Grab one of these and come on. We’re leaving right now.” Packages of frozen mixed vegetables slid off, but she didn’t stop to pick them up. Straining with the weight, she followed Alan out of the kitchen, through the bar, across the dining area and out on to the dock.

  They both heard the yelling and hollering as if the gang of people were having a great time. Acrid smoke filled the air. One glance down the dock propelled her faster. People were running their direction. Groaning loudly, she hoisted the basket to her hip and began to run.

  Alan beat her to the boat, heaved his basket into the cockpit and began dropping mooring lines. Ellen finally made it to the boat and with a mighty heave pushed the basket into the cockpit and jumped aboard.

  Knowing he was pulling dock lines, Ellen hoisted the main sail faster than ever before. “Push us away from the dock!” She screamed to Alan. He gave a push and jumped.

  Chapter six

  “Come one, come on,” she was begged while watching the mainsail. The sail hung momentarily limp. Alan’s push had sent them way from the dock as intended and the current was moving them, but with no wind, they weren’t going to make the turn. The sail began to flutter ineffectually. They were in irons, or unable to move forward but the tide momentum was slowly turning them at the same time they were drifting towards the opposing docks. They were going to hit another boat, probably putting an end their escape.

  “Thank you Jesus,” Ellen whispered, because Alan is already proving his worth. Boat bumper in one hand and boat hook in the other he was standing on the bow, prepared to push them off should they drift too close. The boat had almost completed the turn, when the wind freshened, filling the main. Alan used the pole to push them away from a piling. Not a moment too soon, they were finally sailing away from the marina.

  Glass breaking followed by a whoosh, made her look back. Someone had thrown one of their home made incendiary devices at the Annie-C. Fortunately, they missed but the piling was not so lucky. The creosote soaked wood was now on fire. However, it would not burn long. Years of sitting in saltwater had saturated the wood and it would be very hard to do much damage.

  As soon as they entered the channel, she had Alan take the helm. While she didn’t normally like to sail out the river, these were special circumstances. She only wanted to be away from land. She loosened the starboard sheet and wrapped the port line around the big winch. One hand on the furling line and the other on the winch handle Ellen pulled out the big jib sail.

  “Keep her in the channel. Some of this water is three foot or less, and I really don’t think we can call Sea Tow.” Without a depth sounder, she didn’t want to run aground. The Manatee River is shallow in places and remembering the fool at Emerson Park, Ellen didn’t want to find their boat sitting firmly on a sand bar.

  Finally, safely in the channel, it was time to take care of the food. They needed to keep the meat froze as long as they could or take the risk of poisoning themselves. She thought about using a spare halyard to lower the baskets of meat down to the salon, but decided Alan could handle them. They traded places and he soon had all three baskets down below. With Alan back at the helm, Ellen went below to put the meat away.

  She had the portable freezer strapped down in the aft cabin. She opened it and stared at the contents. She knew at the bottom were hotdogs and some chicken breasts, covered in a layer of vegetables. Sitting on top, the place of honor, were two half gallons of ice cream.

  “Well darn,” she muttered. Being able to keep ice cream was the only reason behind buying the portable Whytner in the first place. She wanted to always have ice cream when she wanted it, rather than always having to wait until she made port somewhere.

  “Good bye old friends,” she lamented, removing the containers of Waffle Cone and French vanilla. “Besides there is no food value in ice cream,” she reminded herself.

  Wasting no time, she began to layer the individual packs of meat into the freezer. The veggies she set aside. She was happy to have bought the largest size freezer, and the cost difference for the larger size was minimal. Space had been a problem, until she moved her sleeping quarters to the V-berth. The 72 quart Whytner was now strapped down in her food room. Which, on some boats is called the aft stateroom.

  The controls for her original ice box/refrigeration were mounted on the bulkhead below her portable so she down and turned the setting to colder. She had always had issues with it freezing everything turned this low, but this is exactly what they needed now. Soon, she had all of their meat either in the freezer or the icebox/refrigerator. She hoped for it all to freeze, but they would consume from the ice box first just to be sure.

  The two containers of ice cream were the only items she couldn’t fit in. “But,” she said smiling, “we can always eat them.”

  She grabbed two of her large mixing bowls and proceeded to divide the ice cream between them. One bowl in each hand, she carefully climbed the ladder.

  Back on deck, she saw that Alan has made excellent time out the river. They have reached the mouth of the Manatee and now they would have to make a decision.

  Seeing her in the companionway, Alan asked, “So now what?”

  “Truthfully, I haven’t gotten that far yet. The meat is in the freezer, but we have to eat this,” she said thrusting a mixing bowl with the French Vanilla and Waffle Cone combination towards him.

  His eyes grew round in surprise, “Ice cream?”

  “It’s eat it or let it melt and go to waste. That would be completely against my religion. So we eat it.” Head in to the wind, and we’ll backwind the jib. We’ll stop for a few minutes. It’s time to make a decision but first we eat.”

  “I agree, but how did you manage to have my favorite ice cream?”

  Ellen laughed, “You just got lucky, these are mine too.”

  They ate in companionable silence broke only by the clinking of their spoons on the sides of their bowls. The boat bobbed as if she were at anchor, the gentle current moved them slowly down the river out into the bay. She looked at Alan and wondered what he was thinking. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  “I can’t believe how it felt to come down the river with no boat traffic. Other than the Caroline, that old abandoned sailboat and a burnt out hulk of a powerboat right back there at Emerson, and two sailboats at anchor in De Soto Park, I didn’t see anyone else and no one moving.”

  She knew without even asking which power boat he had seen, but, couldn’t imagine why it was a burnt out hulk. Had something else happened while she was up the river? Maybe the idiot had set his own boat on fire. Ellen wondered about the woman. Hopefully she wasn’t dumb enough to return to the boat with him. It was apparent that it was he who had put the marks on her face. Ellen would never understand why women stayed with men who beat them.

  “I’m afraid it can only get worse with time. When people realize the water has stopped running and their local Wal-Mart has run out of food, things will get ugly fast. People will do anything to survive and if it means taking from others, they will.”

  “But, what about when the power comes back on?” he asked, setting his empty bowl on the cockpit table. “A whole lot of people will be in big trouble including me. I didn’t really mean to hit that guy so hard, I just wanted to stop him.”

  “You did good, no telling what that guy would have done if you hadn’t taken him out. Hell, you probably saved all of our lives. And Alan,” he seemed to know whatever she was going to say next was important. He turned to face her. “If what I think has happened, did, then there won’t be any power for a good long time. At the very least many months and more likely years. I believe the whole power grid has fried. If we don’t have power here, then it’s probably out everywhere…I think.”

  “So…” He seemed to be getting his thoughts together, “I guess, no one from the government will be coming to help.”

  “Nope. They are probably sitting in some nice secure bunker in the middle of a mountain right now. There is no way this happened without some kind of warning. If it was an EMP, (Electromagnetic Pulse) or solar flare, either way they had to know it was coming. Why, they didn’t give the people a warning, I have no idea. But, I suspect there is nothing anyone could have done to prepare for this. A few hours wouldn’t have made any difference in the outcome.”

  “Well shoot,” he was taking this far better than she would have, had their roles been reversed. “So what are we going to do now?”

  “Right now we are going to find a place to anchor for the night and tomorrow, we are going home.”

  Chapter seven

  Off the tip of Anna Maria Island, between it and the sixty-three channel marker looked as good a spot as any. The water was 30 feet and the wind was now minimal at best. Sails down, the sun was setting as they dropped the hook.

  “Good job,” she told Alan as he let the boat settle back down on the anchor.

  He just acknowledged her praise with a small grin and nodded in her direction.

  He obviously knew what he was doing, and Ellen was happy to have him on board. She had always thought that when, not if the shit hit the fan, she would be going it alone. She had friends, and plenty of them in the area but they more like acquaintances. She could think of no one, she would trust her life with. Her only lifelong, true friends lived back in Washington State. Them, she would give her life for and she was sure they would give theirs for her. She decided that having him on board was going to make life a little easier. She liked the person standing at the wheel, and thought highly of the person who could throw a glass like he had, to defend someone else. He obviously would put his life on the line to defend her. As she would now do the same for him.

  “I can bunk down out here in the cockpit,” Alan said, followed by a huge yawn. “This has been some kind of day.”

  “Yup, but you can sleep on the settee in the salon. There are two sleeping cabins, but one is the food storage locker right now. Speaking of that, somewhere in our travels we need to do some kind of a food inventory.”

  “Okay,” he said and yawned. “Can we do it tomorrow?”

  “We can or as soon as we get away from here works too. Now, I know you throw a mean fastball, but can you use a gun?”

  “A real gun, as in a bang, bang you’re dead, type gun?” He asked in disbelief.

  “Only kind there is and with any luck we’ll never have to find out, but you do need to know how. Our lives could very well depend on it.”

  “I can shoot a rifle. I used to go hunting up in Tennessee with a friend and his Dad, but not a hand gun.” He seemed disappointed in himself, “But I can learn,” he added quickly.

  “Tomorrow, you can learn. Tonight, we sleep. I’ll find you a pillow and blanket and you can sleep where ever you want.” He was right, it had been a long day, mentally as well as physically.

  She thought sleep would come quickly, but not so. She still wished she knew what it was that had happened. As soon as they were a safe distance from shore, or at least somewhere she felt more secure, she would get into the compartment under the V-berth.

  When she bought the Annie-C, she had planned to put her on a truck and send her to Washington State. It did not matter where she wrote from or which area she wrote about. From Seattle to Alaska there were countless places to gunk hole. Some were well-known, others just word of mouth places to visit. Some cruisers planted little gardens on the way up the inside passage and harvested whatever the wildlife had not eaten on the way back. There were little known hot springs just waiting to be discovered. Getting in and out of these little jewels is what she wrote about. She had travelled up the inside passage, twice before with friends. They had passed many places that would have been great places to explore, but time had always been an issue.

  After her purchase, she had spent the summer putting insulation in every cabinet, locker, under every settee, under the V-berth and lined the hull where ever she could get to it. The insulation she used was the foil R-21. Foil on both sides with what looked like bubble wrap between the layers of foil. Effectively, she hoped, she had created a giant faraday cage. If her Uncle Jerry was right the foil may have saved their butt. For under the V-berth, she had stored a hand crank radio, an extra alternator, fuel pump, starter and two AGM, (Absorbed Glass Mat) marine batteries. These were all spares. The little Universal 30 had no other electronic parts but these. With any luck they could change out the fuel pump the alternator, batteries and starter. She would start as soon as they were in a safe place.

  Ellen must have fallen asleep, because the rhythmic sound of oars in the water woke her. For just an instant, she didn’t remember where she was. Sound always carried well on the water and until she looked out, she couldn’t know how far away they were, just the stealthy sound of oars or paddles softly stirring the water.

  Ellen had no need of cabin lights she knew exactly where she was going. However, she forgot Alan was asleep on the settee which she needed under. To her surprise, he is not there. She pulled the cushion off and lifted out the cover. Resting in a special compartment that she installed, was a Mossberg 410 shotgun. With a quick check she made sure it is loaded. She hoped she wouldn’t need them, but grabbed a box of shotgun shells also.

  She thought to find Alan asleep in the cockpit and almost screamed when she found him looking down at her with his finger pressed to his lips. Gripped tightly in his other hand, was the club she used to kill fish. One end has a large hook for hauling in the bigger fish. In the right hands, it could be a gruesome weapon.

  “There’re people in a dinghy heading our way. I didn’t see how many but I heard more than one,” he whispered, “I was just coming to wake you.”

  Trying to stay low, she climbed into the cockpit. Thankfully Alan had folded down the table. There would not be room for two bodies with it set up.

  “She has to be asleep,” they heard someone say. “I don’t see anyone.

  “Just shut up will you. What the hell is wrong with you? You want to wake her up before we get there?” said another voice, much louder and gruffer than the first guy.

  “That’s far enough.” Ellen yelled in their direction. She wasn’t going to let them get close enough that they would have to worry about anyone boarding. “Any closer and I will blast you out of the water.”

  “That’s not very nice,” one of them said. “We’re just trying to see if you’re okay out here, being neighborly.”

  The third guy had stopped rowing. One oar still in the water, he was turning the boat in a slow circle. The other two squirmed around, trying to keep an eye on the boat. Alan started to rise up but pressure on his shoulder kept him down. No sense exposing their hand before they knew these guy’s intentions.