Tolak wouldn't let go of me all the way up the rope ladder, but insisted on climbing up the roped net half behind and over top of me, while unhindered Sheatera scampered on up the ladder to the top like a monkey. Did he really think I was in that much danger of falling? Even if I did fall I could swim.
I really couldn't fathom his elation at the sight of these antiquated warships. They weren't going to repel an invasion made up of the surface's current top notch military tech. One predator drone would carve up these rust buckets like so much fine dust swept under the carpet.
Glancing over my shoulder at him I said, "I can make it from here. Go on around if you want."
"I like it here." He said with a grin.
Then it occurred to me for the first time how much contact was taking place between us. I'd had no idea and now I couldn't help but blush as I realized just how much he wanted me.
Oh why did he have to do things like this in the full sight of everyone like he was? I sped my pace up intent on leaving him behind and he let me, but not before I felt him kiss the back of one bare thigh.
Reaching the deck I was pulled over the railing by willing hands to come face-to-face with several naval officers and of all things a black man. I'm not a racist person, but the oddities of this underworld place were adding up.
World War II ships and now a black man with the appearance about him of having been an uplander at one point in time. How on Earth had he gotten here?
Tolak was beside me then and smiling he reached forward to shake the black man's hand and then the hand of a Polynesian looking woman who stepped forward from behind yet another white man. To say it was getting diversified down here was to put it lightly.
Tolak introduced me, but then abruptly switched from smiling to saying, "We must go! The ceiling is becoming unstable. It's happened before in the past, but never so bad as this."
The black man named Eli nodded, but then asked, "I believe you, but have you got any idea as to where to go? We're all washed up on the West side too. The Chinese and the Russians are crawling all over the place back there."
Tolak glanced among the men and women before him uncertainly. It was clear that all present were at a wash as to what to do. Their world had been overrun and to their knowledge they had nowhere left to go.