Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 44

I glanced in the direction toward New York City, saw the thick billows of smoke rising from the horizon. I realized now why they decided to bomb the city. My hunch was correct. They were losing control fast.

"Should we bring him on board?" Miguel asked, shooting a deathly glare at the kayaker.

"I don't have it, sir! Whatever it is! I think I'm sinking! Bethany got a gun, but she accidentally shot through the kayak when those things got her."

"What's your name?" I asked as I waved for Luke and Yousef to help me down on the swim platform.

"Alfred Fitzgibbon," he said. "But my friends call me Alfie."

He seemed like a nice guy. A bit shook and roughed-up, but he's polite and friendly. I glanced at his kayak, saw that it was slowly taking in water, his khakis soaked already. I then looked at his two weapons, paying close attention to the blood, recognized he had that fighting spine in him.

I stepped closer to the edge of the platform, said, "Look, Alfie, my friends and I are going to ask you to strip down completely, okay? And we'll do this privately, of course. They'll look you over for any rashes or bite marks, understand?"

Alfie nodded without hesitation. "Thank you, officer! I'll do anything. I don't want to drown!"

Luke and I grabbed the bow of the kayak and pulled it up to the swim platform. Yousef reached out and pulled Alfie onto the boat. The man knelt and kissed the wooden platform, smiling; a wash of relief crossed his face. "Thank God. Thank God," he mumbled.

"You're okay now," I said to him.

"Officer, there are also people trapped on a capsized boat. I had been asking many of these boats to let them on board, but they didn't want to do it, and some even tried to shoot me on the head like you were doing a while ago. Can you please help them?"

"A capsized boat?"

"Yes, sir. Where the bridge used to be, they're the Katingers, see. All good people like you, sir, Old Man Steve, and his two grandchildren. When those jets blew up the bridge, they were underneath it, and then a large wake capsized their boat. They can't swim back to shore, and they're clinging on the boat as we speak."

"Okay. Thank you, Alfie. We'll take a look at them."

I asked Alfie to go with Miguel and Margot down to the lower deck, and he complied quickly, still shaken by what happened; his lips quivered, and he was on the verge of tears. Felipe threw a thick blanket around him. Margot turned back to me and gave me a warm smile, nodding.

I recognized the look in Alfie's eyes. The shock of seeing people you knew dying all around you. I experienced it back in New York when it started, and I still couldn't get over it now. If the disease was beginning to spread out here, who knew how far it already expanded. I shivered to think that my home was already affected. The city of Portland received hundreds of thousands of visitors per day, and the international airport was just next door.

I told Logan about the boat Alfie mentioned. We found it floating near one of the fallen bearings through the binoculars where two men clung to the bottom hull of their capsized boat. One was older, Steve, who well past his late sixties, while the other one looked to be in his early thirties, whom Alfie mentioned was Steve's grandson. The last one was a woman close to our age, maybe even in her early twenties, another grandchild of Steve. She looked worse than the other two men, shivering against the cold breeze coming from upriver.

"Damn. They look rough," Logan said.

"Get those people on board. Have Margot checked them up for bites as well," I said.