Chapter 4

The woman driving the fishing boat pulled up to our houseboat because it was the largest. Sue grabbed the rope the woman threw to her and tied her boat to ours. She turned to the man lying in the bottom of the boat and was gushing tears as she spotted the amount of blood on the boat's bottom.

Bill dropped into the boat and looked at the wound. It was a bullet hole in the man's back, and there was no exit wound. Bill called for help and we hauled the man into Bill and June's bedroom. June laid down a couple of towels to catch the blood and Bill cut away the man's shirt.

Bill whistled in relief when he saw the details of the wound. The bullet must have struck at extreme range. It was barely under the skin and wedged against a rib. Had it entered his back, the man would have a serious lung wound that Bill could not do anything about, but this was a minor wound that had just bled a lot.

We how had plenty of medical supplies, so Bill chased everybody but June out of the room while he worked on the wound. It was a simple matter to remove the bullet and clean the wound. The man was treated and finished in about an hour and left to sleep in the bed. His girlfriend went in the room to stay with him until he woke up.

Bill and June came out to the deck where we were drinking coffee and joined us there. I told him the woman's story. They were heading north on the river when they were spotted by the pirates. The woman was driving the boat, and she spun around when the pirates started shooting at them. The man reached down to pick up a gun that was lying on the bottom of the boat, and he straightened up just as he was hit by the bullet.

As is common when a person is shot, he collapsed from a nervous reaction and not because he was seriously wounded. As anyone would expect, the woman panicked, but she did the only thing that she could do. She tried to outrun the speedboats, even though that was impossible. After all, what else could she do?

Fortunately for her, she spotted us and ran toward us at the full speed of the little motor. We knew the rest of the story. Her name was Vivian Waters and the man was John French. Well, things were kind of crowded, but we had to make room for them.

We discussed the problem for a few minutes and Hank suggested that we stop at the next marina and construct a small barge that one of the houseboats could tow. Vivian and John could live on the barge until we could find a houseboat for them. None of us could come up with a better idea, so that was what we decided to do. Our houseboat had by far the largest motor of the three, so it looked like we would do the towing. Besides, it would be convenient for Bill, since he was the attending physician.

We found a marina that afternoon, and all three houseboats pulled in. Immediately, Bill, Jess, Hank, and I started hunting for the makings for a barge. As expected, there was no houseboat that we could appropriate at that marina, but we were sure that we could come up with something.

There were two long and narrow fishing boats at the marina, and they were virtually identical, so we appropriated them for the pontoons. We covered the open boats with tightly stretched plastic tarps and wrapped the whole mass in duck tape. As hard as we tried, we could not sink the pontoons, so we were ready for the next stage in construction.

Over a period of five days, we built a platform and fastened the pontoons to it. On this, we erected a large tent and we put in two cots with air mattresses. Hank ran an electric line to the tent from our boat so that they could have electric lights. By this time, John was getting around on his own two feet with assistance from Vivian. Vivian fixed food for them in our galley, and they were able to get by.

Our houseboat was able to pull the freshly constructed barge, but our speed was significantly reduced. We were also burning fuel at a ridiculous rate. We were going to have to find another houseboat as soon as possible.

Thank God! At last, we finally found another houseboat. It was not as fancy as the original three, but it was usable. We spent a week refurbishing it, and the women finally pronounced that it was acceptable. By this time, John was getting around fine and only feeling a painful tinge in his back if he moved too fast the wrong way. We were as happy at being able to move again as we would have been a year ago if we had won the lottery. Circumstances do cause us to change our priorities, don't they?

None of us were nostalgic for the loss of the abandoned barge, and we were glad to be able to move at a reasonable speed again without rapidly draining our fuel tank. We made sure that John and Vivian were as well armed as the rest of us, but I could tell that Vivian was too frightened by her guns to be of much help with them to the rest of us. Oh, well, we would survive now that we had several people who knew how to use guns and were not afraid of them.

We passed St. Louis with only the usual trouble of getting past the sunken vessels. The bridges had all fallen into the river such that they were no hindrance to us since we floated so high in the water. The situation at St. Louis had returned to the status of no one could cross the river now without a boat. That may or may not be good, I guess it depends on your personal point of view.

We still had to be very careful getting past the wrecks because the river was not as deep as it had been and there were a lot of pieces of junk sticking out of the water. At least, they marked the places to avoid, so we didn't curse them too much. It took us so long to get all four houseboats past the junk in the river that it was pretty late by the time we passed St. Louis. We needed to find a place to tie up before it got too dark, and Sue suggested that we head for her old home. She knew the waters around there very well, so she could steer us safely to a mooring point. That was a good idea, so we all bought it.

We tied up, and I went with Sue to look at her mother's grave. The marker was gone, but we had no trouble in finding the grave. The dirt had sunk back into the ground so that there was a definite trench where the grave was, but Bill and I had apparently made it deep enough so that no animals had dug down to her body. We left it at that, not even putting up another marker. Sue said that her mother would certainly not care, and she didn't either.

The next day, we headed north and came to the confluence with the Missouri River. There was nothing special to see there, and we kept going up the Mississippi River. We were headed for Hannibal of Mark Twain fame. My folks lived on a farm just northwest of the city limits and Bill's parents were on the next farm after ours. Both were on a major highway, so there should be no problem getting to the farms once we made it to Hannibal.

We had still been listening to our shortwave radio in hopes of hearing some news of what had happened to the rest of the country, but there was still nothing there. There were even fewer hams on than we had previously heard, and that did not bode well for anybody. We even tried the CB (Citizen's Band), but there was nothing there either.

We were about 30 miles north of St. Louis when we were suddenly stopped by something in the water. It was a heavy chain stretching all the way from river bank to river bank. Well, our pontoons drew so little water that all we had to do was to cross the chain at the middle.

Hardly had all four of our houseboats crossed the chain than a bullhorn roared at us to stop. We were under arrest by the border guards of the Barony of Illimo. We figured out later that stood for Illinois and Missouri. Jess happened to be the closest to the guy with the bullhorn and shouted back, "GO FUCK YOURSELF! THIS IS A PUBLIC RIVER AND YOU CAN'T STOP US!"