First Monday Free Fiction: Picnic at Seashell Beach

[image error]Welcome to the August 2020 edition of First Monday Free Fiction. To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on every first Monday of the month. It will remain free to read on this blog for one month, then I’ll take it down and post another story.

You may have noticed that there was no First Monday Free Fiction in July, because with the July Short Story Challenge and everything else going on, I just plain forgot.

This month’s free story is called “Picnic at Seashell Beach” and  may be found in the collection After the End – Stories of Life After the Apocalypse.

So join Pete and Marcie for a post-apocalyptic daytrip and a…

Picnic at Seashell Beach

“Okay, so what are we doing here again?”

Marcie jumped out of the solar car. She put on her shades and adjusted her shawl, even though the sun was already dipping towards the horizon, hanging like an overripe Satsuma in the late afternoon sky.

“It’s an outing.” Pete got out of the car and activated the lock. He opened the tiny trunk and picked up a cool box. “We’re going to have a romantic picnic on the beach.”

“A picnic? Outside? Really?” Marcie applied sunscreen stick to her exposed cheeks and nose. “That’s an… interesting idea.”

“It was my Grandma’s idea, really.” Pete gave Marcie a sheepish look and pulled his cap deeper into his face. “She told me when she and Grandpa were dating, Grandpa didn’t have any money to take her for dinner, so they had a picnic at Seashell Beach instead.”

“And when was that?” Marcie wanted to know. Cause Seashell Beach — which had neither seashells nor a beach these days — was about the least romantic place she could imagine.

Pete shrugged. “I dunno. Sixty, maybe sixty-five years ago. Granny’s getting on in years and Grandpa — well, he’s been dead for almost twenty years now.”

Noticing Marcie’s questioning glance, Pete added, “He died when I was seven. Melanoma got him. He refused to wear sunscreen, you know. Said he never needed any when he was young.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Pete shrugged again. “There’s no need, really. I barely remember him and what I remember is hospital beds and mottled skin. But Granny, she remembers. They’d been married for almost forty years, you know.”

Marcie nodded, trying and failing to imagine being married for so many years, longer than she and Pete had even been alive. Pete and Marcie had been together for five months now, which made this officially the longest relationship Marcie had ever had, Even the idea that a relationship could last five months and still show no sign of going stale scared her a little, because Marcie had never considered herself the monogamous type. But imagining a relationship lasting for almost forty years — well, that was fucking scary.

“She’s been talking a lot about Grandpa lately and what it was like back when they were dating,” Pete continued, “Her mind’s fading, I think, and the past is a lot clearer to her than the present. Sometimes, she doesn’t even remember that Grandpa’s dead.”

“Dementia?”

“Well, there’s no official diagnosis, but…” Pete turned to Marcie, his eyes meeting hers behind the shades. “…yeah, I think it is. We’ve been pushing for the doctors to do some tests, but you know what they’re like.”

Marcie nodded. She knew.

“So, well, I told Granny about you, since I’ve heard that it’s important to keep talking to them, even if they’ll forget, and suddenly she started telling me all about that picnic that she and Grandpa had at Seashell Beach and what food they had and how romantic it all was. And then she insisted I should take you to Seashell Beach for a picnic. She even helped me with the food and…” Pete shrugged helplessly. “…she seemed so alive, so there, more present than I’d seen her in a long time. And…”

“…you didn’t want to disappoint her?” Marcie supplied.

Pete shook his head. “Planning the picnic made her so happy, so I thought, ‘Why the hell not?’ Though…” He lowered his eyes to study his feet and the heat-cracked concrete underneath. “…we can take the cool box and go somewhere else, if you want.”

“No, it’s okay,” Marcie assured him, “I mean, since we’re here anyway, we might as well have a look at Seashell Beach.”

She set off, along the cracked concrete walkway that led to the beach, rusted and faded signs pointing the way. Pete followed, lugging the cool box.

“Have you ever been here before?” he asked.

Marcie shook her head. “There wasn’t really a point.”

Both sides of the walkway were lined by decaying structures that had once been motels, trailers, diners and ice cream stands, but now were just ruins slowing dissolving into the sand.

“What about you?”

“Once, back when I was a little kid. It was already fading by then and you had to go to the far end of the pier to finally have some water underneath your feet, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it would get…”

Pete smiled, lost in a private memory.

“There were still seagulls and ice cream stands and motels in those days. I remember the ice cream most of all. And I remember toddling through the sand, every exposed bit of skin smeared with that really nasty, oily sunscreen they had in those days…”

Marcie laughed. “Oh God, yes, I remember that stuff. I hated it, hated having it smeared onto my body.”

“Me, too,” Pete said, “I always cried and complained when Mom tried to apply it. And then Grandma and Grandpa — he was still alive back then, though you could already see the melanoma on his skin — said they shouldn’t force me, that kids never needed sunscreen in the old days. Thankfully, Mom was smart enough not to listen to them…”

“Old people really have a hard time grasping how dangerous the sun is. When I was a kid, I remember my Mom smearing sunscreen first on my grandparents and then on me. Our protests were equally loud. Still, I’m glad that she did it, cause if she hadn’t…” Marcie shuddered. “I mean, can you imagine that people used to voluntarily lie in the sun and tan?”

“I’ve seen photos of Grandma as a young woman in a bikini — yes, they really wore those outside in the sun — and she’s… like… crispy sunburnt brown.”

“She’s lucky she didn’t get melanoma like your Grandpa,” Marcie said.

On the other hand, was dementia really better? Marcie had no idea. Especially since treatment for melanoma was getting steadily better. Dementia, on the other hand, was still incurable.

They passed a lopsided sign. The sign was pockmarked with rust spots, the writing long faded, but you could still make out a laundry list of rules and regulations for behaviour on the beach. “No dogs, no alcohol, no surfing, no diving, no fires, no camping.”

Marcie squinted at the sign. “I wonder if picnics are allowed.”

“Well, they must have been allowed at some point,” Pete remarked, “Unless Grandma made up the whole story about that picnic on the beach.”

More signs followed, just as rusty and eroded as the first. “Warning. No lifeguard on duty. Swim at your own risk.” And finally, a foreboding “Beware of sharks.”

Marcie and Pete posed with the fading signs and snapped pics, just to highlight the absurdity of it all.

“Do you think I should show ‘em to Grandma?” Pete asked, “Or would the shock of what has become of Seashell Beach be too much for her?”

“I don’t know.” Marcie squinted at a bird flying past overhead. “Maybe show her some harmless photos first — say, you and me sitting in the sand, having our picnic — and see how she reacts.”

The bird returned, circling overhead, and emitted a shrill shriek.

“Fuck, that’s a seagull.” Marcie pointed up at the sky. “A bona fide seagull.”

“I’ve heard they can come pretty far inland, fifty, seventy, sometimes even a hundred miles.” Pete flashed Marcie a quick grin. “Still, if there’s a seagull, it means the beach can’t be far.”

The path ended abruptly at a massive dune. Somewhere beyond, a plume of smoke was rising up into the early evening sky. Steps led up to the crest of the dune, half buried. The rusty remnants of a handrail poked out of the sand. There was another sign, too, a lopsided arrow of bleached wood that said “Beach” in faded letters.

“Looks like we’re supposed to go that way,” Marcie said, while Pete snapped another pic.

The dune wasn’t really all that high, but nonetheless trudging up the half buried steps in the residual heat of the evening was more laborious than Marcie would have thought. And unlike Pete, she wasn’t even lugging the cool box.

Then finally, they reached the top and looked out across the world beyond.

There was no sea, of course. Here at Seashell Beach, the ocean had dried up twenty years ago and the real shoreline was a good forty miles further out. And so all that could be seen from the top of the dune were the sand and the mud flats that had once formed the ocean floor.

Pete set down the cool box, spread out the picnic blanket he’d brought and snapped another pic, while Marcie just looked around, marvelling at the view.

Like the path there, the actual beach was littered with the rusty remnants of long gone structures. There were the struts that had once held up the pier, now rotted beyond recognition. And just beside the spot where Pete and Marcie had climbed the top of the dune, the rusty end of a giant waste water pipe stuck randomly out of the sand.

There were other structures, too, their once and current purpose less obvious than the pier struts and the waste water pipe. For the former sea floor was dotted with monstrous assemblies of rusty pipes and tanks that belched clouds of dark smoke into the atmosphere. Marcie briefly regarded the belching monstrosities, wondered how on Earth that sort of thing could be legal, before something far more interesting arrested her attention.

The sea might be long gone, but the ships were not. They were still sitting where they’d run aground when the sea had receded, gigantic rusting reminders of a world long gone. There was one sitting not far from the beach, in full view. A freighter named — so the faded letters on its side said — the Caribbean Princess, registered at Kingston, Jamaica.

“Such a romantic name…” Marcie said, “…for what is just a huge chunk of rusty steel now.”

Though to be honest, the wreck did look rather romantic, as the light of the setting sun painted its rusty hull a coppery gold.

The Caribbean Princess might have been abandoned by her crew, but she was far from deserted. For like most of the beached wrecks that dotted what had once been the Jersey shore, the rusty carcass of the Caribbean Princess had been taken over by scavengers. They’d erected a small cluster of tents and lean-tos in the shadow of the hulking vessel. They’d also bored holes into the hull itself and studded the wreck with wind turbines and solar panels assembled from bits of scrap metal.

As Marcie and Pete watched, they spotted two figures emerging from one of the holes drilled into the hull of the Caribbean Princess. The figures seemed to scan the surroundings — though it was difficult to tell, since they were wearing goggles and thick, protective clothes. And so it was only when one of the figures started towards them, while the other vanished inside the wreck again, that Marcie and Pete realised they had been spotted.

“Uhm, maybe we should leave,” Pete whispered, “Cause some of those scavengers can be… well, rather aggressive.”

Marcie had heard all sorts of rumours and stories about scavengers, too. How they committed crimes, slaughtered men, raped and killed women and kidnapped and ate little children and did all sorts of other unsavoury things.

All her life, she’d been told, “Beware of those scavengers. They’re dangerous and probably not even quite human anymore.”

However, Marcie had never been one to listen to scare stories by older folk. Especially since history had shown that most “Beware of group X” scare stories were just that. Stories without any basis in reality.

So she reached out and put a calming hand on Pete’s knee and shook her head. “I don’t think they’re dangerous. They probably just want to say hallo or make sure that we don’t steal their stuff.”

“They live in a rusty shipwreck,” Pete countered, “What the hell should we steal from them?”

Marcie shrugged. “I don’t know. That ship was a freighter once, wasn’t it? Maybe it was carrying something useful.”

“I doubt it,” Pete said, “And besides, why would we try to steal a twenty-year-old ship’s cargo? That not exactly… — Oh shit, is that a gun?”

Shielding her eyes against the glare of the sinking sun, Marcie peered at the approaching figure, who was indeed carrying a rather suspicious looking oblong object in one hand.

“It’s probably just a very big stick,” she said with more confidence than she really felt.

The figure came ever closer. By now, Marcie could make out more details such as that the stick the figure was carrying really was suspiciously shaped like a gun. What was more, the figure was holding it differently now, with one end pressed against the shoulder and the other pointed right at Marcie and Pete.

“Okay, so it is a gun,” she whispered.

“Fuck! What do we do now?”

Marcie had been asking herself the very same question these past five seconds or so. At first, she considered running away. But it was a long way back to the car and besides, she had no way of knowing if a person paranoid enough to carry a gun in the first place had any qualms about shooting people in the back.

Wordlessly, she raised her hands. Pete did the same.

Still the figure came closer. Like everybody who worked outside during the day, the figure was bundled up from head to toe — Wellington boots, jeans, a long coat — but undeniably male. A cotton scarf was wrapped around his head, tinted goggles shielded his eyes and a bushy black beard covered the rest of his face. But the most notable thing about him was his gun, an ugly pump-action shotgun, which was aimed right at Marcie and Pete.

“Are you cops?” the man demanded in a low grumbling voice.

“We’re not cops,” Marcie replied, staring into the barrel of the shotgun like the proverbial deer in the headlights (never mind that deer were as extinct as gasoline powered cars these days), “Uhm, could you put that away, please? We mean you no harm.”

However, the man did not put the gun away.

“What d’you want then?” he demanded, “If you’re looking for a place, we have no room. If you’re looking for work, we have none. And if you want to steal something…” He waved his gun about.

“We don’t want to steal anything,” Marcie said quickly, “Like I said, we mean you no harm.”

“Well, what do you want then?” the man repeated, “Cause no one ever comes here without wanting something.”

“We… we just wanted to have a picnic…” Pete stammered and nodded at the cool box beside him, “…a picnic on the beach.”

“A picnic?” The man emitted a bitter laugh. “You’re twenty years too late then. Cause there’s no more picnics here in Seashell Beach and there sure as hell ain’t no more beach either.”

“I know,” Pete exclaimed, clearly exasperated, “But my grandparents had a picnic here when they were young some sixty or sixty-five years ago and…” He shrugged helplessly. “…well, I just thought it would be romantic.”

“So you take your girl here to Seashell Beach, a place where no one in their right mind wants to be?” the man demanded, “Don’t ye know this place can be dangerous? Scavengers — well, not us, but the other scavengers, the bad ones — they rape and kill and murder people all the time.”

The man continued muttering something about “stupid privileged middle class kids” under his breath.

Marcie flashed him a broad smile. “Well, we’re lucky we found the good scavengers then.” She nodded at the cool box. “Do you want some… well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what Pete has packed in that cool box, but I’m sure it’s tasty.”

“Coke…” Pete stammered, “S…sandwiches, potato salad, cupcakes. I tried to re… recreate the original picnic as much as possible.”

“That’s very sweet,” Marcie said.

“O…okay, we don’t have any tuna sandwiches, cause tuna is… like… extinct. But we have mock duck, which is almost as good.”

The man, however, was not interested in debating the relative merits of tuna versus mock duck sandwiches.

“Coke?” he repeated, “Like… real Coke, not that off-brand dimestore stuff?”

Pete nodded. “Real Coke,” he confirmed, “Even got the really good stuff made with crystal sugar rather than corn syrup.”

“Gimme a Coke!”

With shaking hands, Pete opened the cool box, withdrew a bottle of Coke and handed it to the man.

The man accepted the Coke, though he still managed to keep the gun trained on Pete and Marcie with his free hand.

Pete reached into the cool box again. “Do… do you want a…?”

The man snapped the cap of the bottle with a calloused thumb.

“…a bottle opener?” Pete returned the opener to the box with a sigh.

The man, meanwhile, raised the bottle to his mouth and downed the half the cola in a single fizzy gulp. Silhouetted against the sinking sun, he looked almost like a Coke commercial, if not for the shotgun he still held in his free hand.

“Could… could you put that away?” Marcie tried again, “We mean you no harm…”

“I even gave you a Coke,” Pete added.

“…and besides, it’s really uncomfortable talking to the barrel of a gun.”

The man regarded the gun in his hand, as if he only now remembered it was there. “Oh, sorry,” he grunted and finally lowered the gun, so that the barrel pointed at the sand. “Can’t be too careful these days. Times are hard and lots of people are struggling. Thanks for the Coke, by the way.” He lifted the bottle and took another gulp.

“You’re welcome. I’m Marcie, by the way, and this is Pete. And you are…?”

“Sam,” the man grunted and took yet another gulp.

“And you live here, Sam?” Marcie asked, because it only felt polite to make conversation, “Inside the ship?”

Sam shook his head. “Not inside the ship. Too hot. We live in them tents and huts next to the ship.” He pointed at the jumble of shelters leaning against the ship.

“So you’re from Seashell Beach then?” Marcie asked. She’d heard of people like these, too nostalgic or too stubborn to leave when their communities died.

“Nope,” Sam grunted, “I’m from Pennsylvania originally. Bethlehem.”

Which was just as dead as Seashell Beach now, poisoned and ruined by centuries of mining and smelting. There were a lot of places like that in the US these days, towns and cities where people had once lived, but no longer could. Most of them had long since moved on to better places, but there were always a few who were left behind. Or others like Sam who’d managed to move to a place that was even worse.

“So why here of all places?” Marcie wanted to know.

Sam shrugged. “Ain’t nowhere else I can go.”

“But if you’ve lost your home, there are resettlement camps…”

Marcie seen a documentary about that on TV a few weeks ago and those camps weren’t nearly as bad as they were often made out to be. Everything was clean and really quite civilised and besides, it was certainly better than living in a lean-to in the shadow of a rusty wreck.

But Sam’s eyes narrowed and his grip tightened on his shotgun once more. “Ain’t nowhere else I can go,” he repeated and Marcie thought it wiser not to argue.

“So what do you do here all day?” Pete asked instead, “You just hang out or…?”

Sam shook his head. “Oh no, we work,” he said, something akin to pride in his voice.

“Work?” Pete repeated, “But I thought there was no work left here on the Jersey Shore, now the tourists have all gone.”

“There’s always work,” Sam countered, “You just have to know how to look for it.”

Pete and Marcie exchanged a glance, since they could see nothing that looked even remotely like a place to work anywhere around.

“So what do you work?” Marcie finally asked.

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You sure ask a lot of questions. You sure you ain’t cops?”

Pete shook his head. “Oh no, we’re just students enjoying our spring break.”

“College, eh? Must be nice to have the money and time to go, especially these days. Me, I never got to go, not even back in the day. Went to work at the mill soon as I finished high school.”

“I’m sorry,” Marcie said, if only because she didn’t know what else to say. Curse Pete for flaunting their privilege quite so openly.

At least, Pete seemed to have recognised his misstep. “Do you want a sandwich?” he asked, “We’ve got egg salad mayo, cheese and soy ham and fake mock duck tuna.”

San cast a longing look at the cool box. “A sandwich would be nice,” he finally said, “Ain’t always easy getting food round here.”

“I can imagine,” Marcie said, slathering her voice with sympathy, “Just help yourself to a sandwich…”

Sam reached into the box and grabbed two sandwiches — egg salad mayo and mock duck pretending to be tuna.

“…or two.”

Marcie and Pete exchanged a glance, while Sam dug in, swallowing half a sandwich in a single bite. Crumbles of egg salad got stuck in his beard.

“That’s a good sandwich,” he said. Or at least, Marcie thought that was what he said, cause the words were rather hard to make out among all the chewing.

They waited for Sam to devour the second sandwich, privately wondering whether there’d be anything left of their picnic at all by the time Sam was finally done.

Maybe, Marcie thought, they’d finally hit upon the kernel of truth inside all of those stories about the murdering and plundering and raping scavengers. They won’t murder or rape you, but they’ll eat all your food. Because apparently, they have none of their own.

“That was good,” Sam said, once he had demolished the mock duck tuna sandwich. He turned to Marcie. “You made them?”

“I made them,” Pete said, “Me and my Grandma.”

“Your Grandma’s a good cook,” Sam said.

He eyed the cool box longingly, so Marcie quickly handed him another sandwich, soy ham and cheese this time.

“Here. You haven’t tried one of those.”

Sam accepted the sandwich and gobbled it up, while Pete looked first at their dwindling food supply inside the cool box and then at Marcie.

“I guess we can always make more,” he whispered.

“These are good”, Sam repeated, still chewing, “Your Grandma’s a really good cook.”

“I’ll tell her, thanks,” Pete said.

“My Grandma, she was a good cook, too,” Sam said, “Always made dinner for me and my sisters, while Dad was out working at the mill and Mom was out working at the diner. Course, she had nothing else to do with my Grandpa gone…” He paused, his eyes taking on a haunted look. “She got widowed young, my Grandma. Vietnam.”

Marcie briefly wondered what one of South East Asia’s boom countries could possibly have done to kill Sam’s grandfather, until she remembered that the US had been at war with Vietnam once, seventy or eighty years ago. Marcie didn’t quite remember the reason — freshman history seemed very distant by now.

“My Grandma is also a widow,” Pete said, “Melanoma.”

Sam nodded knowingly. “Nasty stuff, that. Took one of our people last year, even though we’re always careful to bundle up.”

“How many of you are there anyway?” Pete wanted to know.

“Twenty-seven right now,” Sam said, “Normally, we’re thirty-two, but a few of us are off trading.”

“So what is it you people do here?” Marcie asked, her curiosity getting the better of her once again.

“Work,” Sam grunted. He furtively looked around, but there was no one on the beach except the three of them. “We take rusty steel from the ship and the pipes and the other trash here and smelt it into steel in the furnace back there.” He pointed at one of the smoke belching structures.

“And that’s legal?” Pete asked, while Marcie groaned internally, because the answer was — like — totally bleeding obvious.

“Well…” Sam suddenly became very interested in the sand underneath his Wellington boots. “…not really. But the economy needs steel and it ain’t easy to get anymore, so the authorities turn a blind eye, as long as we’re not too obvious about it.”

“What do you use for fuel?” Marcie asked, morbid curiosity getting the better of her once more.

“Coke,” Sam replied, “Not the drinking kind, the burning kind.”

Marcie had seen the word in that context before, in an industrial history textbook. “Where do you get it? I thought that sort of thing was banned.”

“Well, it is, technically. But there’s still people mining coal and making coke here in Jersey and over in Pennsylvania and that’s where we get it from.”

“And the authorities turn a blind eye?” Pete hazarded a guess.

“Mostly. Sometimes we get cops and environmental types here. Sometimes, they close down a furnace or a colliery or a coking plant. But they always move on somewhere else. People got to live, you know?”

Both Marcie and Pete nodded in agreement.

“So that’s why I was wary of you two at first,” Sam continued, “Cause you’re strangers and college types and I wasn’t sure if you were cops come to close us down…”

“We’re not,” Pete and Marcie said as one.

“But you brought Coke and sandwiches, so I guess you’re okay.” Sam cast another longing look at the cool box. “Talking of which, you got some more of those? Food ain’t always easy to get here and the little ones haven’t had anything good in days.”

“Little ones?” Marcie and Pete exchanged an alarmed look. “You’ve got kids here?”

Sam nodded. “We’re thirty-two altogether, twenty adults and twelve kids. Two of ‘em are mine, Sarah and Sam Junior. Sarah’s nine and Little Sammy is six.”

“And they haven’t eaten yet?” Marcie asked, even more alarmed.

“Sure, they’ve eaten. It’s just…” Sam pretended to study his boots again. “…we don’t get the good stuff all that often out here. And seagull stew gets boring, if you have it all the time…”

Marcie gagged and fought down the impulse to throw up the meal she hadn’t actually had yet. She took another look at Sam — bundled up, bedraggled Sam trying to stay one step ahead of the law — and imagined him sharing a pot of seagull stew — for fuck’s sake, seagull stew — with two equally bedraggled kids. And all of a sudden, she knew what to do.

She picked up the cool box and all but shoved it at Sam. “Here, take it. For the children.”

Pete opened his mouth to protest, but a glare from Marcie silenced him.

“But… that’s your picnic,” Sam stammered, “What… what will you have now?”

“We’ll just sit here and watch the sun set”, Marcie declared, “We can have dinner at home. And you can have dinner with your kids.”

Sam hesitated, so Marcie added. “There’s cupcakes in the box, too. Cupcakes with chocolate and sprinkles. Your kids like cupcakes, don’t they?”

Sam nodded. “Sure they do. They like all sweet things.”

“Then take it. Dinner and cupcakes for your kids.”

“You mean, I can really have the food?” Sam repeated, “All of it? And the box, too?”

Pete opened his mouth to protest, but Marcie overrode him. “Sure,” she said with a sunny smile that was even mostly real.

Sam’s mouth widened into a gap-toothed grin. “Th…thanks. That’s great of you. I’m sorry I thought you was cops at first. Cause you’re cool people, you are. And thank you so very much.”

Sam waved at them and took off towards the rusty wreck, bearing the box like a treasure brought home from a long and hard quest.

“That was our picnic…” Pete grumbled, once Sam was out of earshot, “…and my cool box.”

Marcie looked after Sam, shielding her eyes against the setting sun. “Oh please. He and his family clearly need the food more than we do.”

“But Granny and I — well, mostly Granny — made the sandwiches and the other stuff for you and me. Not for some scavenger who recklessly endangers what’s left of our environment.”

“He has kids,” Marcie pointed out, “They eat stew made out of seagulls.” She turned to Pete, righteous anger flaring in her eyes. “Seagulls.”

“We don’t know if he really has kids…” Pete said, “…or if he’ll really share the food with them. He might’ve been making up shit to gain our pity.”

“They eat seagulls,” Marcie repeated.

Sam had almost reached the jumble of tents and lean-tos huddling in the shadow of the wreck. Up to now, the camp had seemed deserted, but upon Sam’s return, two small figures tumbled out of one of the tents to greet him.

Marcie pointed at the scene. “Look.”

“Okay, so he really does have kids…” Pete admitted.

They watched as Sam opened the cool box and handed something to each kid, probably a sandwich or maybe a cupcake. But whatever it was, it made the kids bounce up and down with excitement.

“…and he really does share the food with them. But it was still our picnic.”

“Oh, come on.” Marcie pointed at Sam and his bouncing kids. “Doesn’t that make you at least a little misty-eyed?”

“Well, I guess it does,” Pete admitted. He pressed a hand to his stomach. “But it also makes me hungry.”

“We can stop for a soy burger on the way home,” Marcie suggested, “I’ll even pay, if it makes you stop grumbling.”

“This was supposed to be a date,” Pete said, “I’ll pay.”

“Let’s say we split, okay?” Marcie settled down on the blanket they had spread out — all that was left of their picnic now — and beckoned to Pete. “But now sit down. The sun is about to set.”

So they sat next to each other on the blanket and watched the sun — bloated and orange now like a gigantic grapefruit — sink beneath the horizon, turning the wreck and the broken pipes and the smoke belching furnace into silhouettes outlined sharply against the raspberry sky.

It was still warm, but nonetheless Pete put his arm around Marcie, who snuggled against him in turn.

She held out her phone and snapped a pic. The two of them sitting on the beach, the setting sun on their faces, as if it was still twenty years ago and Seashell Beach was still a thriving resort and not a ghost town.

“So what do we do about this?” Pete nodded at the plumes of smoke spiralling upwards from the furnace until they met the encroaching night high above. “Shouldn’t we report them?”

“And what will that accomplish?”

“Make someone do something about this,” Pete replied, “I mean, it’s not okay that people live like this, especially not children. And besides, burning coal is forbidden. I think the authorities should know about this.”

“The authorities already know about this and turn a blind eye,” Marcie pointed out, “But if we report these people and someone feels compelled to do something about them, now the public has taken notice, all that will happen is that Sam and his family are driven away from the only home they have. And the rogue wreckers will start over somewhere else.”

“So we do nothing? We just pretend we never saw all this?”

Marcie shook her head. “No, I think we should do something. We should come back here. And bring more food.”

“Another picnic? This time with enough food that there’s something left for us as well?”

“Actually, I was thinking about something a bit bigger,” Marcie said, “We could ask for food donations, maybe rope in a few other people from college and come back here to drop off food.”

Marcie turned to Pete, the idea beginning to take form even as she spoke. “Maybe we could even involve your Grandma. You said she likes to cook and being around people will do her good.”

“And what do I tell her is happening here? After all, she thinks it’s still sixty years ago”

“Tell her these people are refugees who need help,” Marcie said, “It’s not even a lie, is it?”

“And what if she asks what happened to Seashell Beach or where the ocean has gone?”

“Uhm, it’s low tide?” Marcie sighed. “Look, if you don’t like my idea and don’t want to help, that’s okay. But I want to do something for these people.”

Pete shook his head. “No, actually I think your idea is great. And Granny will probably love it. When she was younger, she used to volunteer at a homeless shelter. And she likes kids a lot, so…”

Marcie flashed him a big smile. “So you’re in?”

“Yes, I guess I’m in.”

“Then we should start brainstorming ideas as soon as we get home. Or maybe even over those soy burgers we’ll be having on the way there?”

“When we stop for soy burgers, I won’t brainstorm,” Pete said, “I’ll be wolfing them down, because my stomach is grumbling like crazy.”

“Then afterwards, okay? And Pete…” Marcie leant forward to plant a quick kiss on his lips. “…this picnic was a great idea.”

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new story will be posted.

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