The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide to New New England & Beyond by Jim Infantino

Author:Jim Infantino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indies United Publishing House (Jim Infantino)
Published: 2021-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEENThe Lovely Charlotte

The Sound was sparkling and calm. Helen looked out over the front of a ferry named “The Lovely Charlotte” from the small cabin built for a single passenger. Thanks to the tutelage of her new friends in Cos, she had pinpointed Marto in a town called Yale Havens. She hoped he would linger there long enough for her to meet him, give him the packet of data his mother had given her and be done with it. She was tired and confused. If not for her conversation with Reyleena, the head of security in Reverside, and the kindness of Tash, head of security in Cos, she would have given up by now. That said, the sky was bright, the water rose and fell gently, and the long gray-green ferry was almost completely silent as it carried its two dozen automated caravans, one passenger, and a bicycle east along the coast.

On the horizon to the South was Long Island, a divided and disputed land. Three of the great families had compounds to the extreme east and southwest, trying to hold on to past glory. Helen could see how pointless it was. The Tide had come in, the world had changed. It was only a matter of time now before everyone was either like the Raiders or the Interconnected. The families thought they kept control over the Raiders, using them for skirmishes and reclamation raids, but Helen had seen the way those biker beasts looked at her mother behind her back. They hated the families. It was only a matter of time.

Would the Interconnected prevail in an all-out war with the Raiders? Doubtless. For all their fierceness, the Raiders lacked strategy and relied on xombie slaves or implanted members of their own gangs for new tech, which was limited. The brutality of their way of life prevented them from ingenuity. They held fast to the survivalist’s code. Only the strong. ‘Only the stupid,’ thought Helen. The future looked like Marto and Tash and whatever Reyleena was.

[“How goes the journey?”] the cheerful voice of Nandy, the ferry’s pilot broke into her mind. Helen’s interface was translating it into speech, which she knew was a habit of noobs. New tribal members eventually stopped sounding them out, just as someone learning a new language eventually stopped translating mentally.

[“All good,”] Helen thexted back. [“Peaceful. Lovely, really.”] She had forgotten to give ratings for the journey, and rather than wait until the end, she decided to give them immediately.

Nandy was piloting the Charlotte remotely from Bronxing-Poetic, a tribe near what was left of Manhattan Island. He was one of a few pilots for this boat, guiding it up and down the Long Island Sound. She was told by Tash there were several groups of pilots who offered guidance for these self-powered gray-green flat barges. The calm waters of the Sound offered steady movement of food and goods to the tribes. On arrival in Yale Havens, some of these caravans would offload their ‘tainers,’ the smaller box like bots intended for a specific location, or slowly crawl onto roads north.

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