Talked to Mr. Tyler today, tried to urge him into coming to stay on the boat with us until we are finished surveying the island, but he is adamant about providing the children with as normal a life as possible. He says huddling on a freighter is not his idea of normal. He also says the kids have come down with a case of the flu and he does not want to expose Dee and Jeanette's girl to it. It sounds just feasible enough but I still don't like it. Something is very wrong there.
We still have not checked the island out so we don't know how safe it is. All of the men, as well as Beverly and Stacy are out patrolling, looking for signs of the wraiths. Kyle is doing aerial surveys while those of us on the ground check out anything suspicious he finds. So far we have not seen anything to worry about, but it will be a week or two before we finish.
We now have all of the amenities on the freighter. While none of us know a thing about boats or life at sea, an engine is an engine and we got the big diesel generators fired up to run the on board systems. So we have power and running water. The ship is a freighter, but it does have some passenger rooms as well as crew quarters.
The ship has weathered well with only some minor cleanup needed, although there is a broken window on the bridge. I have been spending some time on the ship's rather sophisticated radio equipment. I would like to get communications with others set up and I think I could with this equipment.
Katherine has been working alone quite a bit lately. It makes me nervous when she isolates herself like that, but this morning she came to me with a bottle of something that will repel the wraith bugs. It smells like Windex, when I commented on that she said that was exactly what it was. Windex is apparently toxic to the bugs and they will not come near anything that smells like it. Avoiding the bugs will not give complete immunity from implantation, but increases the chances that the wraith embryos will not be able to survive in a human host.
We gathered up all the empty clothes and bundled them up. Tom said a prayer over them and we placed them in a metal box and dumped them overboard. It is easy sometimes to become desensitized to it. All those empty clothes are not just so much unwashed laundry. Each little pile is another life cut short by whatever caused this disaster.
© 2009 R. Keith McBride
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