The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid by Scott B. Williams

stuck here now with no way to get back to New Orleans or even to call Casey and check on her.”
    “His daughter,” Larry explained. “Artie was just with me for a few days of vacation.”
    “If you’re going to get back to the mainland, you’ll probably have to sail,” Pete told Artie.
    “ Sail? All the way back to America? How long would that take?”
    “Not as long as it took us to get down here, that’s for sure,” Pete said, adding that going back to the mainland was a downwind run with the help of the trade winds, while getting to the islands from Florida was a difficult, upwind bash.
    “He’s right about that,” Larry said. “I’ve done it both ways many times. It’s an easy run from here to Fort Lauderdale. If you don’t stop along the way, you can get there in a week or so, depending on the boat.”
    “And your daughter is in New Orleans,” Pete said. “At least that’s a port city and you can sail there. You’re lucky she’s not at Kansas State or something. It might take another week or two to get around the Keys and across the Gulf, depending on the weather, but it could be a lot worse if she were inland. My guess is that a lot of people will be walking if they got the same effects up there that we got here.”
    Artie was overwhelmed. He had never considered the possibility of having to sail all the way to New Orleans in order to get back to Casey. Despite what Larry and Pete said, a lot could happen in a matter of two weeks or longer. How could he live that long not knowing if she was okay? What would she do in the meantime? If her car wouldn’t start, she probably couldn’t leave, but what dangers would she face in a blacked-out New Orleans? Artie couldn’t believe the circumstances that could put him so out of touch with the person he loved most on this Earth. He knew Larry couldn’t fully understand, even if he thought he did, because he had never had children. Casey was the light of Artie’s life. He had to do whatever it took to get to her and protect her, even if it meant another voyage much longer than the one he’d just endured in miserable seasickness.
    “If it’s going to take that long, then we need to leave immediately,” Artie said to Larry, his entire attitude about ocean voyaging completely changed now that he accepted the reality that it was the only way home and the only way back to his daughter.
    “It’s not quite that simple, Doc. For one thing, we can’t take off on Ibis and leave the owner hanging, even if he is still in Tampa and has no way to get here. First, I have to make sure he’s not already here.”
    “If he’s not here, then it won’t do him any good. Couldn’t you drop the boat off in Tampa later, after we go to New Orleans?”
    “It’s a few hundred miles back to Tampa from New Orleans. I’ve done that crossing before. But no, I don’t want to risk his boat like that considering the conditions, and my contract was to deliver her here. I’ve met my obligation as far as that goes, but if he is here, I need to find out. Besides, my boat is better suited to the voyage.”
    “But it’s not even finished, you said. Aren’t you still building it?”
    “She’s built and could be launched as she is. The main thing I have left to do is step the mast and set up all the running rigging. She’s not painted yet, but that doesn’t matter, I’ve got a solid coat of gray primer on everything and we can slap a coat of bottom paint on right before we splash her.”
    “You’ve built your own boat?” Maryanne asked. “What kind of boat is it?”
    “A catamaran—a Wharram Tiki 36, to be exact.”
    “I’ve heard of Wharrams,” Pete said. “We saw an old dilapidated one in Key Largo. They sure are funky-looking boats. Aren’t they homemade out of plywood?”
    “A lot of them are homebuilt, and yeah, its plywood, but it’s a composite construction with everything laminated with epoxy resin and fiberglassed over. Some of them are built rough