“Don’t forget his crotch, check it.”

Lee patted down Adam’s crotch, the insides of his thighs. His huge paws with the class ring and wedding ring went up patting Adam 's chest, and under his armpits which were wet, and the shirt dark, with sweat.

“He’s clean,” Lee said. He looked at Adam with a little nervous laugh.

“Next.”

Lee took money, jewelry and credit cards up the line. There were hundreds of refugees to rob, and they passed their things quickly through Lee Golding’s hands.

Two thirds of the way up the first aisle, Lee saw the muzzle of the gun close by his head, moving loosely. He turned and grabbed the gunman’s arm. The two crashed into the wall. The second of the pair was a few steps below on the aisle, and was immediately up the stairs onto Lee’s back. Lee had an iron grip on the wrist below which the gun was held, and he cracked it against the wall while pressing his weight right into the man. He scarcely noticed the second on his back, before Adam tore the gunman from Lee with one hand, pulling the gun away from him with the other. The Mighty Lee Golding, the Alabama Assassin, shook his man like a rag doll, cracking the gunless man’s back on the railing along the wall. The other swung away from Adam and began to run towards the door he’d come through. Adam lifted the gun with both hands and fired several rounds in one quick squeeze. The sound shocked his ears. The man in the orange jumpsuit fell to the floor.

Lee had his man on the floor and was throwing his enormous fist into the gunman’s face until the gunman was no threat. Lee caught his breath and came to his feet.

Adam stood before him in the aisle, staring at the dead man, the arm with the gun limp by his side. Lee came to him and took the gun, and Adam didn’t respond. Lee pointed it at the groaning, broken man on the floor and fired.

The echo dissipated from the air, and the quiet now in the Theater, whose acoustics were renowned, was such that the panting of Lee and Adam could be heard across the room. Lee put his hand on Adam’s shoulder. Adam walked away from him, past the dead man, and collapsed in a seat.

Lee held the gun in the air. The rush, the adrenaline, heartbeat, serotonin, and all the eyes on him, were something he’d not felt in so many years since he’d left the ring. He was high with the rush. He leaned back and laughed his stage laugh. He made a V with his fingers and wagged his tongue through it.

“Golding gonna getcha!” he yelled.

The crowd roared in a cheer. He looked at Jessica and winked.

Lee left the handbag he’d used on the floor for those robbed to reclaim their things. Only Adam stayed in his seat.

Lee was down on the dead man, checking his tactical vest.

“Motherload from the mothership,” he said.

The whole Theater must be able to hear his heart beat, he thought. Let ‘em.

The pockets were full, all of them, with ammo clips. Eight 30-round magazines in all. Lee unclipped the vest from the dead man, blood and all, and threw it on over one shoulder. For a moment he tried getting the other arm through, but it needed adjusting to fit so he left it hanging from the one shoulder and returned to the front, to Jessica.

Adam tried to keep himself from vomiting. The sudden threat taken suddenly away, he felt disgust from the sick opportunism of the prisoners, the fear, the roar of the gunfire, the bloody death. He killed a man.

The main lights went out. The alarm stopped. Only the emergency lights along the floor were visible, twinkling like stars below them, and they were above heaven.

15

Some length of time after the lights went out, the ship moved. It began as a shudder, then the floors shifted beneath them in Vera and Norman’s luxury berth, and they felt the ship tilt to one side. The floor came up at a tremendous angle, and they all tumbled off their chairs, rolling over each other into the wall.

“The Navy ship’s separating,” Gerry said.

They stayed pressed against the wall, and then felt the room begin to spin slowly, as the Navy ship tried to reverse away, and the Festival clung to it.

“Momma?” Darren called in the dark.

“I’m here,” she said.

With a shudder, it stopped. There was an echo of metal tearing, and the ship began to right herself. It stopped short of coming back to level, but straightened enough that they could stand.

“They’re gone,” Gerry said. “They must be gone.”

“Will the lights come back?” Darren asked.

“I’m sure they have a back-up system,” Travis said. “They’ll fix it. And we’ll be off this ship soon anyways, li’l bud, we’ll be off soon.”

Travis went out on the balcony and verified that the Navy ship had separated, still visible but moving away. He could now hardly make out the dark stern of the Festival, but he could see that its lines were bent and broken.

“I’ll take a look down the hall,” Gerry said, “and see if there’re lights anywhere.”

Gerry walked towards the cabin foyer, bouncing off the wall, and then tripping over a chair. Finally, the group heard the door as Gerry exited. They felt, each of them, that there were no guarantees of return when someone left a room.

The hallway was dark except for a dim track of emergency lighting along the wall, an inch above the floor. Gerry heard crying from many places. He began to walk forward. He didn’t know what he was hoping to find, other than light.

Gerry Adamson was a strong man with a soft personality. He’d grown up poor in New York, his mom a single mother in and out of jobs, in and out of drunken uselessness. Gerry had raised himself. He’d raised himself to be mean, until a teacher took the time to explain where his road was leading.

Young Gerry was smart and mature out of necessity, so he listened. It was a surprise to those who knew him back then that he went on to become a teacher; a surprise that he’d had the inclination and a surprise that he’d had the discipline and ability. At the same time, those who knew him as an adult, as a lover of poetry and a gentle man, good with kids, would not have guessed at his rough boyhood.

He was soft spoken, although not quiet – he loved to talk, about art and ideas.

Poetry was one of the links between the two Gerry Adamsons – it was poetry that had allowed him to escape meanness and find meaning. His own first book of poetry had sold well in New York. But it could never make a career for him.

As it was a teacher who had brought the idea to him, it had been natural for him to become a teacher himself, to inspire kids to look beyond where they were.

His whole life, it seemed, he’d been trying to find a light in the darkness.

Travis took the others out onto the balcony to wait. The deck chairs had toppled against the railings, but they straightened them out and could make out each other’s faces in the cloud-dimmed starlight. It was cold, but being able to see each other seemed a greater comfort than the warmth of the cabin.

Vera lay in one chair silently. Corrina sat in the other, holding Darren. Travis sat on the floor, his back against the railing. There was only blackness filling the space he had earlier been able to make out the Navy ship in.

Gerry felt like a space walker moving through darkness, following the thin glittering line on the wall. The sound of crying around him, and nothing else, scared him.

“Is there anybody there?” he said.

There was no answer. He imagined others as terrified as his family behind each door.

His hand was along the railing, and he passed an obstruction so that the cavity of the Atrium opened to his left. There were two emergency lights on the walls and he could make out movement down below him. Darkness moving inside darkness, and still the only sound he heard was crying. He looked down at what he guessed were scores of people below him, whimpering. He went back to the room.