Long Voyage Back by Luke Rhinehart Read Free Book Online Page A

That TV business is all a front.'
    But Jake returned almost immediately with a frown on his face. He went to the television set raised up behind the bar and turned it on. Neil and the others along the bar were all watching him. The screen remained dark for a few seconds, but the voice of the face that emerged on the screen began intoning immediately in a tense, hurried voice:
    . I repeat, this is not a test, this is not a test. The Emergency Broadcasting System announces a national war alert. All precautionary measures should be taken immediately to prepare for the possibility of an enemy attack. This is not a test. Civil Defence workers are to report immediately to their assigned posts. Police, Fire and Emergency Medical personnel on standby for national war alert should also report to their assigned posts. I repeat, this is not a test, this is not a test. The Emergency Broadcasting System announces a national war alert. All precautionary . .
    It was only when he became aware that the announcer was going to say nothing new that Neil became conscious of himself standing next to his table, still holding his beer bottle, his mouth open in stunned bewilderment. As the bartender lowered the volume and began switching channels and Neil could see that all the operating channels had the same announcer, he became aware of the total silence in the room. Finally someone at the bar spoke:
    Òh, good Jesus,' a tired voice said. Now, wha t the fuck are the silly bastards trying to prove?'
    Then the television picture disappeared, the lights in the bar went out, and the whole room was in total blackness.
    Frank flung his lanky body back and forth across the end of the ferry dock at Crisfield with an impatience unusual even for him. Everything was running late. Traffic had been so bad going out to La Guardia that afternoon that the twenty-five minute drive had taken over an hour, and he'd arrived ten minutes after his plane had supposedly left. But La Guardia was a madhouse and his plane had been delayed forty minutes so he'd made it. Then it was delayed another half-hour on the runway awaiting takeoff, the long line of taxiing planes reminding him of sailors outside a Bangkok whorehouse. So he'd arrived in Salisbury almost an hour late, taken an agonizing thirty minutes to rent a car and finally made it to Crisfield after nine o'clock in the evening. And no Vagabond. When he'd inquired at the marina it had taken Frank so long to find someone with a message from Neil that he figured he'd missed the last ferry to Tangier Island. The damn woman said only that Neil was becalmed at Tangier and to take the ferry. But there was now a light breeze blowing; would Neil try to sail on to Crisfield?
    Then it turned out he hadn't missed the last ferry because the last ferry hadn't even returned from Tangier. So he was pacing back and forth across the dock, a half-dozen locals sitting on the waiting benches staring at him as if he were a performing acrobat. He didn't care. He had the new propeller shaft; he had his fishing gear and swimsuits and scuba equipment; and he was impatient to be out on the bay. The smell of the salt water and of dead fish had even eased his annoyance at first, such a stab of joy did it give him after nothing but the smells of Manhattan for three months, and the insane hysteria of the streets and airports of civilization.
    Finally the lights of the tiny ferry appeared in the distance. Frank placed himself at the edge of the dock, leaning, -as if he were a magnet capable of drawing the stupid thing in faster. The local fishermen and their families simply sat there smoking and joking and generally behaving with a calm that drove Frank crazy - until he'd been aboard Vagabond for a few days and began to re-create it for himself. The ferry was a big launch with a long deckhouse roof and six or seven benches that would probably seat forty people during the height of the tourist season. There were only four people coming off the