“Get up!”
It was Harry Barnes. With his help I managed to get to my feet. I still couldn’t see anything clearly, but the next thing I knew we were both tumbled again and were splashing in the water—on the ceiling. I finally realized that the Big Bucks had been knocked first on her side and now had totally turned turtle. Those of us still in the bridge cabin were twenty feet beneath sea level, and in another couple of minutes would be ten thousand feet below sea level.
I was now scared shitless. Not literally—I still have good poop control—but my entire life flashed before me, which was actually a bit boring since without a remote I couldn’t slow it down—so it was just a blur of color and time.
When you get to my age and have to choose between taking things easy and dying, or doing something strenuous to survive, the first option has a lot of appeal. But suddenly I was gripped again by one shoulder and dragged toward the opening where the sea was surging in. I couldn’t tell who it was, but a moment later someone grabbed my other arm and we pressed forward against the rush of incoming sea, me taking a mouthful of salt water before I wised up and held my breath.
And then we were outside the boat and rising. In only a few more seconds we burst up out of the wonderful Atlantic Ocean. And I breathed again.
Neither my eyesight nor my brain was functioning very well, but I finally realized that one of my rescuers was Karen. She was still with me, kicking with her legs and swimming hard with one arm away from the sinking yacht, pulling me behind her. My other rescuer had disappeared. I finally unwoozied enough to remember that I could swim, and began kicking my legs and freeing my arms to do my version of the crawl, which in my case means a crawl.
I was following close to Karen and couldn’t see anything but the rise and fall of the swells that we were swimming through. If we were planning to swim back to New York City I doubted I’d make it. But after less than thirty seconds I saw Karen suddenly grasp the side of one of the fibreglass lifeboats, and a few seconds later we were both hauled up and into it. I would live to die another day.
It was LT who with Karen had gotten me out of that bridge coffin-in-the-making, and it was him or maybe another FF who’d gotten the lifeboat to come pick us up. The other lifeboat had capsized when thrown from the Big Bucks, but two crewmen were clinging to it and a third was swimming toward it. They all had lifejackets on, which made me wonder why none of the smart guys on the bridge had thought of putting one on. There were four of us in the lifeboat and we were motoring over to pick up the three men clinging to the overturned lifeboat.
I sat down in the bow of our boat holding firm to the port coaming, and wondering why my teeth were chattering and my whole body going into a long tremble. I guess the Atlantic water is cold. I looked to my right as we approached the capsized boat and then to the left. Then I suddenly saw Harry Barnes, waving a desperate arm at me from forty feet away. He was floundering.
“Get Harry first!” I shouted at the guy at the helm of our boat and pointed off to where Harry’s wave was becoming more of a flailing grope. The guy looked at his buddies clinging to the boat and then to Harry flailing and sinking, and swerved away and picked up speed to save Harry.
We got him into the boat and looked around for any others that were alone in the water but saw none. We did sight the rubber dinghy with several people aboard it, one of them Althea. We sped back to pick up the men at the capsized lifeboat.
Harry knelt in the bottom of our boat, Karen hitting him on the back as he spat up seawater.
For half a minute, he gasped and shuddered and stared at the swishing water in the bilge. Finally he looked up at me sort of blankly. Then a vague smile came over his face.
“I insured the damn boat for almost fifty percent more than it’s worth,” he said.
“Holy Christ!”
As one of our crewmen helped his buddies up into our boat, he was staring off to the east, so I looked too.
A mountain range had suddenly grown up in the middle of the ocean, and it seemed to be making its not so leisurely way toward us. Not a mountain maybe, but a long hill twenty times higher than any wave I’d ever seen in fifty years at sea. It didn’t really seem to be moving but rather simply growing taller and taller.
We were all of us mesmerized. We couldn’t figure exactly how we were going to die, but I doubt that any of us were making plans for the next day.
The mountain grew and grew, and suddenly it was here and we were climbing it. The guy at the helm must have really known his business because he’d turned our tail toward the mountain just before it arrived, so that though the mountain was moving at thirty knots, we were moving at twenty-five in the same direction when it hit, so the mountain’s impact was barely felt. And he slowed the boat as soon as we were in it, and we had the strange sensation of looking down the side of the mountain at the relatively calm ocean we’d just been on and feeling ourselves rising upwards at what seemed incredible speed. We kept rising and rising until the mountain peak suddenly passed under us and we saw it speeding away to the west, and we slowly began to descend its backside.
Holy Christ indeed. If someone could package what we’d just been through for a Coney Island ride, that someone would soon be richer than Harry. In less than a minute it seemed we were down in a valley and the helmsman had turned us back east and we were seeing a bunch of much smaller hills heading our way.
Not one of us had said a word during the entire experience.
“You all right?” Karen finally asked quietly.
I looked up at her in something of a daze and finally nodded.
“Sure,” says I. “It’ll take more than a nuclear bomb and a tsunami to do in old Billy Morton.”
She didn’t smile. Neither did I.
ITEM IN THE NEWS
(Being tweets from August 23rd)
@JLoBoy: I’m flying in from London and we just saw an incredible flash in the sky! Our plane went sideways!
@DumpyHumpy: Wow! Incredible flash above the water way off behind our boat! Big explosion? Big lightning storm?
@CannibusKim: Our plane is sinking! I think we’re going to die!
@JLoBoy: We’re still flying and no more flash in the sky. Scary.
@DumpyHumpy: We’ve been hit by a tidal wave! Our ship almost tipped over. Dining room a mess. Babs bloody nose.
@CannibusKim: We’re still alive. Don’t know how. Pilot says it was some sort of explosion but we’re okay.
@maXimumLucy: Tsunami! Houses gone people washed to sea. Can’t believe it!
@DumpyHumpy: Lot of people hurt. Big waves still coming but not like first. Babs very frightened.
@bermudacoastguard: Tsunami alert. Tsunami alert. Tsunami alert.
@maXimum Lucy: They’re dead, they’re all dead!
@uscoastguard: Possible tsunami approaching East Coast. All ships on high alert.
@maXimumLucy: Hundreds! No one to help. The whole North Point has disappeared under water.
@Peteyboy12: Just heard from @DumpyHumpy that his ship hit by big wave. May be on way here. Better check with weather bureau.
@GregsterEggster: Holy shit! The ocean is sinking. I can see beach now out half a mile. Sudden big leak?
@HappymanJunior: We’ve been hit by a monster wave! Half the village wiped out. Carry’s house hit!
@uscoastguard: Emergency. Emergency. Emergency. Tsunami hitting Long Island, Cape Cod, Jersey coast. Full alert.
@GregsterEggster: Get out! Get out! Get to higher ground!
@Peteyboy12: Hit by tidal wave. Damage to some homes. All right here except for garbage cans.
@maXimumLucy: Our whole village is gone! All of Bermuda must be lost!
@HappymanJunior: We’re still alive. House flooded to four feet but still standing. Carry’s house gone. But she can swim.
@uscoastguard: All citizens on East Coast should take precautions against large waves.
@GregsterEggster: Finally, think we’re safe. Jane and Kiki crying. Oh my God.
@Hap
pymanJunior: House going! Outta Here!!!
@uscoastguard: Tsunami warning for now and next hour. Move to higher ground.
@GregsterEggster: So many bodies. So many bodies.
FIFTY-NINE
(From LUKE’S TRUE UNBELIEVABLE REPORT OF THE INVASION OF THE FFS, pp. 278–282)
The nuclear explosion five hundred miles northeast of Bermuda resulted in tsunamis that caused much destruction and over two thousand deaths. More than a hundred human friends of the FFs who’d been on boats in the area were killed and more than fifteen hundred people on the island of Bermuda. There was also widespread property damage and more than thirty deaths on the US East Coast. If the death and destruction had been limited to Bermuda, our government would not have suffered much bad publicity. Our killing hundreds if not thousands of Protean terrorists would justify some suffering on the part of the population of Bermuda, which was more than two-thirds black and multiracial. However, the destruction or damage to thousands of homes along the East Coast, many owned by wealthy people with political power, was more difficult to justify.
Initially no official said a word about trying to destroy the aliens. The NSA had planned to release a story stating that there had been a tragic accident on a nuclear-powered submarine. A nuclear accident seemed the obvious best way to explain this tragic event, but before they released this explanation, an agent of the CIA suggested that they have an “anonymous source” release to a few key media sources a “reliable report” that the aliens had stolen a nuclear bomb and were transporting it to the United States when, either accidentally or on purpose, it exploded.
Wow! All the bureaucracies agreed that this CIA version was a masterstroke: it changed an accident on our part into a violent act of terrorism by our enemies. The Powers That Be pushed this version of events to every media outlet they had influence over, which was essentially all of them.
Unfortunately, enemies of the Powers That Be began to release their own version. Leftist blogs, news outlets, and social media sites all over the world reported that there was a giant gathering of aliens in the Atlantic, and that the American military had tried to wipe them out by dropping a nuclear bomb. Dozens of humans and FFs who had survived were interviewed and backed up this account.
At first, the Powers That Be had their media friends fight this version of events, pointing out that it had been created by the lying alien terrorists and by leftist intellectuals who were always seeing government conspiracies where there were none. Our leaders would never endanger American lives and property by such an act.
Unfortunately, the idea of an alien terrorist accident worked against the Powers That Be’s year-long campaign portraying all aliens as super-bright beings capable of incredible things. How could they be so stupid as to have a bomb accidentally explode in the middle of a big family reunion when less intelligent human beings over a period of eighty years had never had such an accident? This was a bit difficult for an intelligent human being to accept.
Fortunately for the Powers That Be, most human beings are not intelligent and are totally under the influence of the mass media. Thus, the Powers That Be version of an alien-caused explosion was winning out, at least in the United States. The rest of the world was much more suspicious, and most media outlets went with the alien version that the US military had dropped a bomb on them.
Only the US Navy was permitted to have access to the site of the explosion. The Powers That Be were unable, however, to come up with any fake evidence that would back up their version of events over the aliens’ version of events. The investigators found the remains of many porpoises and other sea-going creatures, along with the remains of Proteans and humans, but nothing to indicate who had dropped the bomb. The relatively few fragments of dead Protean terrorists made the authorities worry that they may not have killed as many of them as they’d hoped. Or had the surviving Proteans zapped the fragments back to their home universe for proper burial?
The experts aboard the Navy ships soon concluded that the nuclear explosion had occurred just above the water and not in it. They reported this to the Powers That Be, who requested that the Navy classify this information as Triple Top Secret, not to be opened until the year 4666. Unfortunately for the Powers That Be, many airline and ship passengers reported seeing a bright flash in the sky, a flash not normally seen with underwater blasts. Enemies of the Powers That Be also had experts who began to present arguments that the tsunamis created by the explosion were of a type that could only have been made by an explosion above the water rather than in it. If the explosion was above the water rather than in it, then how could it be from a bomb being transported through the sea by alien terrorists?
Facts are horrible things. At least to the Powers That Be, who immediately began working on an explanation for these inconvenient facts. They decided on a new story that they felt would be the ultimate winner: an admission of responsibility that got everyone who counted off the hook. The president of the United States was shocked to discover that rogue CIA agents, working outside the agency with a bomb the agency had control of to use in Iran or Russia, had tried to wipe out the alien terrorists by exploding it on their ocean conference. They lamented that they were unfortunate dupes of one bad apple who shouldn’t have damaged so many homes along the East Coast, even if they did kill hundreds of Protean terrorists.
“We Americans always do all we can to avoid collateral damage. These rogue agents broke that basic principle. They will be punished.” It is rumored that three of them had their annual vacation time reduced from four weeks to three.
In less than a week the Powers That Be had put out three different versions of how and why the explosion had occurred.
Most Americans didn’t notice. As soon as the Powers That Be began to push the president’s report that the explosion was the result of a patriotic rogue agent trying to save his country from the Protean terrorists, the Powers That Be were home free. Most Americans totally forgot the earlier versions.
However, the overall effect of the explosion, the tsunamis, and the public reactions afterwards, was negative. The Protean terrorists might be robbing our banks, spying on our spy agencies, and damaging our economy, but there was no proof that they’d ever used weapons to actually kill anyone. Actually, of course, many Americans believed the aliens had been killing people: tipping over ferries, yanking airplanes off into their own universe, and kidnapping and zapping off dozens of innocent Americans into a life of sex slavery to hairy balls.
But most Americans seemed to be concluding that the first nuclear explosion in more than seventy years that actually killed people (mostly Bermudans, fortunately), whether purposeful or by a rogue agent, just might be a bit of overkill.
SIXTY
(From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 404–407)
Things never stay the same. You can never step into the same river twice. I’m sure that’s a quote from some old Greek, but I’ve forgotten which one. Probably because I never knew. Or if I did know, I couldn’t pronounce it.
Karen, Althea, Harry and I all survived our trial at sea. Harry was even about to be a hundred thousand dollars richer from his insurance claim. When Lita and the boys first heard on TV about the nuclear explosion in the Atlantic they assumed the worst, and Lita cussed me out real good. But within less than six hours of the news, an FF showed up at her door to reassure her that I was alive and well and contrite.
I and the other survivors from the Big Bucks had been picked up by another FF-owned ship and taken back to New York. And LT was able to give us some bittersweet relief by telling us that his dad, Molière, Gibberish, and Baloney were all alive, but that almost a third of the FFs that had been gathering had been killed or badly damaged. “Seven hundred and sixty-two dead,” said LT, FFs always having exact figures. The last-minute warning that saved most of the FFs had come from Machiavelli who had broken the code with which the agencies were hiding their plans. Mac seemed to feel that wiping out most of the other team’s players was not in
the spirit of fair play. He changed sides.
Some of the FFs who were killed had stayed in the area trying to warn all the sea creatures to get away. Others had been killed hoping to try to stop the bomb from being dropped or from exploding.
* * *
When Louie and Molière showed up less than an hour after I’d returned to our farmhouse, I told them how mad I was at what the government had done in killing so many innocents.
“You ought to totally shut down all our American killing machines,” I say, looking fierce and feeling fierce. “Program every missile and bomb to explode on release. End this endless killing.”
“Not our way, Billy,” says Louie calmly. “It’s up to humans to stop their sick members from violence. If we did it, as soon as we disappear—as we will—things would go back to the way they are now.”
“They killed dozens of your personal friends. They killed one of Molière’s kids! Don’t you people care at all!?”
“We care,” says Molière. “Just not the way you humans do.”
“Death is just life in other forms,” says Louie. “Perhaps because we FFs live such brief lives—ten or twelve years—compared to many other creatures in various universes, death seems always to be just around the corner. So we find it easy to concentrate on living.”
“Death is everywhere every second,” says Molière. “It’s so common we’re seeing it all around us every day. If some all-powerful God were to give some creature eternal life, that creature would immediately become the most miserable being in the universes. Of all the silly things humans try to do, trying to extend their lives way beyond their natural limits is the silliest.”
“Well, we humans seem to think that every individual life is important,” says I.
“Certainly,” says Louie. “Every human being is important—as a flea on the behind of a baboon.”
“Not that important,” says Molière.