The Island
Part 2
by
Michael R. Stark
The Island - Part 2
Copyright © 2012 by Michael R. Stark
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the author’s written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Chapter VI - Stranded
I brought Angel in and tied her alongside the dock. Fears of clashes with tour boats had faded with news of the ban. Any craft within miles would be headed to a real port: Ocracoke, Hatteras, or south to Wilmington. With fenders in place to keep her from rubbing against the heavy wooden pilings, I set about getting ready for nightfall.
Elsie and Daniel could use the bunks aboard the boat. “Bunk” might have been an exaggerated term for what amounted to four inches of foam rubber laid over plywood. Still, I doubted either would be complaining by morning. I knew what it felt like to sleep aboard with water lapping at the sides and Angel rocking gently. The effect went beyond soothing and ventured into the land of the comatose. I’d probably have to drag them both out of bed come daylight.
I stretched a tarp across the back, using the boom to make a tent over the exposed cockpit. The skies looked clear enough. The wind had picked up a bit too, meaning no dew-covered seats to dry with the backside of my pants. Not that I made a habit of drying seats that way. It’s just the way life worked. No matter how much I dried them with something else, my rear ended up cold and wet. The tarp would rectify that problem. The makeshift shelter would also act as a wind-break and keep the cabin a bit warmer.
Once I had the boat secure, I dug the tent from a locker and headed for the shore. A quick search along the undergrowth at the edge of the beach revealed the small opening that Joshua and the girl had used earlier. I eyed the break suspiciously and poked around the twisted mass of dead wood and weeds. The entire shoreline looked like a perfect haven for rattlesnakes and copperheads. I might have come to the island expecting to die, but I didn’t want to do it with a pair of holes gouged into my leg and my skin rotting off.
Inside, the path led through a thicket of brush and pine, rising gently for about twenty yards. Thick, hairy vines wrapped around many of the trees. The same plant, poison ivy, also grew as a shrub underfoot. I gritted my teeth and stepped inside, edging along a tiny walkway that looked more game-trail than footpath.
I emerged into a long, wide clearing, ringed by trees and carpeted with grass that looked more like a lawn than a field. Here and there, aggressive and fast-growing weeds popped up thin, reedy heads, but for the most part, the grass rose only a few inches high. Had anyone asked me to describe the place with one word, I’d have chosen glade. Most of the clearing lay in cool shade with the dying sun dappling the far end in wide swaths of golden light. Trees loomed again in the distance, but spaced far apart and devoid of the tangled growth along the beach. Nestled in a little green nook on the left side, gravestones cast long thin shadows across the grass. Unlike modern cemeteries where the tombstones stood in perfectly aligned rows, these jutted from the ground like old and crooked teeth. A few had surrendered to time and wind and collapsed. Others leaned at crazy angles as if threatening to join their fallen brothers.
Like the town, the graveyard had been abandoned, and it showed.
Wonderful.
Not only did I get to sleep on the ground, I’d also have the pleasure of sleeping next to the dead.
The thought of eating dinner near the old cemetery carried even less appeal. I had no idea where the center of the old town might be, but given the size of the island, it couldn’t be far.
I made short work of the tent, placing it at the edge of the sandy soil between grass and trees and set about gathering firewood. The task proved easy enough. A past storm or series of them had washed tons of debris and deadwood up into the twisted tangle of trees and vines just up from the shore. I dragged in large branches, even parts of trees snapped in half by wind or water.
By the time I’d finished, the sun had drifted low on the western horizon. Cool air settled in as the shadows grew. The bite in the wind carried the promise of a chilly, if not cold night to come. Elsie and Daniel passed by at one point, on their way across the opening to the graveyard. I let them go and worked on clearing debris away from a sandy spot I intended to use for the fire. Half an hour later when they came strolling back, I had a small but warm blaze crackling and popping. Both looked cold. I waved an invitation toward the fire, but the old woman declined with a shake of her head.
When the flames died down, I scooped sand over the coals to keep them from blowing sparks into the nearby brush. After the meeting, I figured I could rake the sand away, toss on a new batch of firewood and have a roaring fire going in a fraction of the time it would take to build a new one from scratch. Satisfied that the camp was as secure and comfortable as I could make it, I headed back to the dock to both hunt out a jacket and gather up Elsie and Daniel.
To my surprise, the old woman had put together a veritable feast, with the left-over ham from lunch serving as the main course. She’d stirred up a huge bowl of potato salad to go with it. A pot full of green beans sat next to it. Behind the ham lay a plastic grocery bag half full of freshly baked bread.
I looked at the pile of food sitting in the cockpit and grinned.
“I had more down there than you thought, didn’t I?”
She snorted.
“You got a mess down there. That’s what you have. I’ve never seen stuff thrown around with such carelessness. One thing you are not, Hill William, is organized.”
I ignored the comment and pointed to the bread.
“Never mind where you found the stuff to make that. How did you make it? The whole cooking arrangement on this boat is a two-burner stove.”
She rolled her eyes.
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Do you even know what a Dutch oven is?”
“A big pot with three legs,” I countered.
“Do you know how to use one?”
I scratched my head. She had me there, even though I didn’t want to admit it.
The grin of triumph on her face didn’t last long. A scowl slid in to replace it. She wagged a bony finger at me.
“You need to do something about your bathroom facilities.”
The last word came out in exaggerated syllables like fa-cil-i-ties, all of them delivered with Elsie’s gray eyes glaring at me over the edge of her spectacles.
“I quit squattin’ a long time ago, Mr. Hill.”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone on this trip to be squatting anywhere,” I shot back.
“That’s ‘cause you’re a man,” she said smugly. “Men never think of anyone but themselves—like this ham. You might be fine sitting around a fire gorging on a piece of meat, but most people want a bit of fixins. And most of them don’t want to crawl in a little corner to do their business either.”
I opened my mouth and then promptly closed it. I’d seen how Elsie stood up to Dwight Little, using nothing more than that little finger and sharp tongue to turn a monster of a man shaking with anger into one chastised and sulking. I had no desire to end up feeling like a schoolboy again.
Daniel stood behind her. He actually looked like he might grin. I wrinkled my nose at him and gathered up as much of the food as I could carry. Ham in one hand, potato salad and bread in the other, I glanced at the boy and motioned toward the seat locker next to me.
“Grab a flashli
ght out of there. We’ll need it coming back.”
I led them up the path, through the thicket, and past my camp. Elsie noted the huge pile of wood I’d dragged in next to the tent. A thin wisp of smoke drifted up from the sand.
“It sure looks like someone is planning on staying warm tonight,” she said and shot me another glaring look.
I took a deep breath, glanced up at a star forming in the darkening sky, and wondered what I’d done to get on her bad side.
Finding the others proved easy. A huge fire blazed in the middle of what turned out to be little more than a loose collection of buildings. Calling the place a town implied streets, sidewalks, signs—at least in my mind it did. Calling it a ghost town drew those same thoughts into images straight out of TV westerns. I half-expected to see hitching rails, a saloon with a weather-beaten sign creaking in the wind, even sage brush rolling down a dusty road.
In that manner, Portsmouth came off a bit disappointing. The buildings were spaced a good distance from each other. Hard-packed, sandy lanes ran between them. Too narrow to call streets, too wide to call paths, they stood out like white veins against a wide open expanse of carefully clipped grass and perfectly pruned trees. The entire village carried the same landscaped feel to it with white picket fences sectioning off yards and massive oaks dripping Spanish moss. Even with architecture a century old, the structures stood straighter and probably cleaner than the days when Portsmouth actually had residents.
The place looked like a museum, which it was. The Park Service and local historic groups not only kept up with the maintenance, but also watched over the old village during the summer months. The town carried what had to be the only ban on the entire island. Campers could set up a tent virtually anywhere on Portsmouth except here, among houses built in an era when people lived simply and the ocean both gave and took life.
I winced when I saw the fire. Any other time, any other night, the meeting might conjure up a park ranger with a scowl on his face and a ticket book in hand. Hell, he might have even brought handcuffs.
Nine figures moved behind the dancing flames. In the dwindling light, it took a bit to find the familiar faces of the two who’d greeted me at the beach. Joshua and the girl stood on the opposite side of the fire. Both had donned heavier, warmer clothing.
Although the meeting had evidently been planned as a social gathering, the people attending still segregated themselves into two distinct groups. Two other couples lingered near Joshua and the girl. Several feet away, two men and a woman sat in camp chairs pulled up close together. Looking at them, I felt old. While forty-two wasn’t exactly over the hill, the rest looked closer to mid-twenties at best. I glanced at Elsie, wondering if she felt like a school teacher greeting her new kindergarten class.
Joshua waved. He seemed big on waving. I decided to humor him and waved back. He detached himself from his group and came around the fire. I introduced him to Elsie and Daniel.
She took one look at him and put her hands on her hips. “Joshua, now that’s a fine Bible name. But I have to say, you look more like Moses to me.”
He laughed and began his own introductions.
The girl who accompanied him at the beach still wore her ponytail. She was pretty in a hard kind of way. I don’t mean that as jaded. The woman carried virtually no extra weight on her, leaving her face angular instead of rounded. She reminded me of a workout and diet guru, the kind of person who always fussed over extra calories and wanted to lose another ten pounds. Her name turned out to be Denise Marten.
The two men with them came across as different as two people could be. One was short, thin enough to be counted among the anorexic, and sported the kind of features a graphic artist would love—high cheekbones and a nose carved so sharp that half his face glowed in the firelight while the other half dwelt in the land of shadows. Joshua called him Devon.
The other man stood half a foot taller and weighed at least a hundred pounds more. Joshua introduced him as Keith. He looked soft and out of shape. Where Devon came across as brooding and jittery, Keith could have doubled as Santa at Christmas. All he needed was a big white beard. He already had the belly and the kind smile.
He introduced the other two women as Kate and Jessie. Kate stood taller, had shoulder-length blonde hair and calculating eyes. She offered a trite smile when I nodded. Jessie’s hair draped down across her shoulders, longer and darker, and kept straying across her face in a wild, windblown tangle. She didn’t smile. She grinned at me, and then hugged both Elsie and Daniel. The gesture looked genuine, not plastic or faked. Somewhere in the middle of mentally sorting her between the touchy-feely category and its flipside, people who spread hugs and smiles from an internal need to be accepted, Elsie settled the dilemma for me.
She turned and breathed a soft whisper.
“That’s a good girl right there.”
The final three sat in folding camp chairs eight or ten feet away. They neither rose nor stopped working at the edges of pouches I assumed contained dinner. A woman sat in the middle. She wore her dark hair short, squared off above her eyes in a style that reminded me of pageboys. She looked up, big eyes brightening. A wide smile slid across her face as she waved a plastic knife.
“I’m Kelly,” she said and pointed left then right. “That’s Zack, this is Tyler.”
Tyler looked up through a mop of dark hair. Describing his position as sitting stretched the term considerably. He looked more like he was trying to lie in the chair, with his ass perched so far forward it nearly hung off the front. Six inches of underwear lay bare above the top of his jeans.
“S'up?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” I replied.
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I sighed, not wanting to start off on the wrong foot with anyone. Tyler, though, invited the worst in me.
“To sup is to eat,” I told him. “Like I said, go ahead.”
I turned to Elsie before he could say anything else.
“Want to spread out here? I didn’t think to bring a tarp so I guess we’ll be sitting on the grass.”
Given her earlier mood, I expected a sharp retort, something reminding me again that I was male and rarely thought of others. Instead, she smiled sweetly, her eyes full of humor.
“Yes, this will do,” she said and glanced toward Tyler. “I wouldn’t mind getting about the business of supping myself.”
Elsie’s dinner drew appraising looks from around the fire. I could understand why. The kayakers looked to be dining on military-surplus MREs—Meal’s Ready to Eat. The spread in front of Joshua’s crowd appeared equally skimpy and ill-tasting with the bulk of it consisting of packets of dried noodles and soup.
“She cooked enough for everyone,” I said. “Save your packages. This stuff will go to waste if it’s not eaten tonight.
I didn’t have to offer twice. Faced with sterile, freeze-dried food that would take rehydrating to be edible and a cast-iron stomach to be palatable, it didn’t take long for the line to form. I handed out thick slices of ham. Elsie scooped out large portions of beans and potato salad. Daniel even chipped in, handing out chunks of fresh bread.
I could have just as easily passed out magic beans, with Friendly Potion Number 9 stamped on the side. Elsie accomplished something that evening much stronger and longer lasting than filling empty bellies with good food. She single-handedly tore down the walls that exist between strangers and erased the strain of meeting people for the first time. She did it, not with her wit, nor her sharp tongue, but with an afternoon of cooking and baking that provided the first common ground between us. Even the sudden tension I’d managed to build between myself, Tyler, and his drooping pants vanished quickly.
What began as three well-defined groups occupying their own space, rapidly devolved into something more akin to a welcoming dinner. Conversation ebbed and flowed, becoming as infectious as the disease we feared. Laughter punctuated the deepening night like exclamation points scattered across a
written page. Personalities emerged as tensions faded. Devon who’d seemed gloomy and withdrawn earlier, turned out to be the comic of the group, rising at one point to dance a jig around the remains of the ham before falling to his knees to worship the gods of Pork and Salt.
Joshua, who surprised me on the beach earlier, increasingly came across as quiet and introspective. Kelly, the lone girl in the group of kayakers, proved adept at extracting details out of people without coming across as prying. Once they discovered that Elsie had grown up on the island, she swiftly became the focal point of dozens of questions, and kept the group enthralled with tales that stirred life into a museum constructed of houses too clean, too pretty, and too empty.
Colder air settled in as the evening progressed. Light winds dominated most of the trip across the sound, but by the time plates were empty and bellies were full, the breeze had freshened, coming stronger out of the north. The fire danced and billowed, casting wavering shadows across a nearby cottage. As the wind grew, people shifted closer to the blaze, seeking warmth and reassurance from the flickering flames.
At a lull in the conversation, Joshua stood up and stretched. He looked like a caveman in the firelight with his long, tangled hair and dark beard.. He and the ponytail girl didn’t fit as a couple. He seemed like he could be happy with a club and a couple of furs for clothes. She looked as if tolerating the situation was the best she could manage.
The two who appeared most at odds were Devon and Kate. She stood two inches taller than him and sat slightly apart from the rest as if creating space between herself and the commoners. She rarely spoke. When she did, her sentences came across as aloof and detached. Devon on the other hand, bounced back and forth between party animal and brooding loner. Try as I might, I couldn’t piece together the spark that brought them together, much less held them together.
“We’re staying here tomorrow. None of us live close enough to get home before the ban hits,” Joshua said. Firelight played across his features carving out impressions in light and shadow. “We talked it over earlier and think we’ll be evacuated at some point. They can’t leave us here.”
I poked at the fire with a stick.
“Elsie and Daniel live just across the sound. I’m taking them home in the morning. I should be back by tomorrow afternoon.”
I looked up and waved the glowing end of the stick. “I doubt I will come back here though. I’ll probably poke around the back side of the island and find a place to hunker down for a while.”
No one said anything. Denise shot a questioning look at Joshua.
I sighed and tossed the bit of wood into the fire.
“I’d planned on coming here, and staying here. I’m not stuck. In fact, I’m pretty much where I want to be,” I said in a flat voice. “I’m not a doctor, but I lived with a nurse for a long time. This disease is spreading fast and killing as it goes. I didn’t come here to escape. I came here to spend what might be my last days doing something I enjoy.”
I leaned back.
“I had asthma as a kid. I’m a sucker for any type of respiratory infection.”
The sudden silence that followed grew uncomfortably long.
“We’re leaving in the morning too,” Kelly said finally. “All three of us are from Virginia. We left our truck parked on Hatteras. We’re hoping we can make it to the Cape by eight o’clock. Even if the cops shut down travel exactly at noon, we’ll be close to home.”
She glanced from face to face.
“Has anyone heard the latest news?”
Elsie cleared her throat.
“I had the radio on while I was cooking.”
She hesitated and looked at the boy beside her.
The sudden thought struck me that she didn’t want him to hear what she was about to say. I rose and motioned toward him.
“Come on Daniel. Let’s go check out some of these old houses.”
The old woman reached out and pulled him close.
“It’s okay, Hill William. He was there. He’s heard it already. It’s just sad.”
She put her arms around his thin shoulders.
“I turned it on for the music. I couldn’t find any. Every station had nothing but news. They’re saying that The Fever is spreading too fast to contain. It’s in every state now, even Alaska and Hawaii. The announcer said that new estimates put the death toll by morning between five and ten thousand.”
Her voice trailed off into stunned silence. I sat down as abruptly as I’d risen. Everyone, including me, had thought it would take weeks for the disease to migrate that far.
“The hospitals are in trouble. The infection control procedures aren’t working. Doctors and nurses are coming down with it faster than the general public,” she continued. “Not everyone is dying from it. About 40 percent survive if they get good care. That’s the problem though. There are too many sick people.”
“This morning we heard a thousand dead by nightfall, not five to ten thousand,” Denise blurted out. “Where are they coming up with these numbers?”
Elsie lifted weary shoulders.
“I don’t know. The announcer said we were playing catch-up.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Devon said in a sharp voice. I glanced over at him and stifled the sudden urge to step between them. He could question the reports all he wanted, but he was not going to curse her in the process.
“It means two things,” I said and ticked them off on my fingers. “One, the reports are an estimate. No one knows how many are actually dying.”
I let that sink in before I stuck up finger number two. “Second, people have been ill and didn’t know it. You don’t catch a bug in the morning and end up sick by afternoon with most diseases. There’s an incubation period where it multiplies. By the time you start feeling bad, your body is swarming with the infection.”
Elsie looked old in the firelight. The flames highlighted the deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and cast her face in shadows that left her looking gaunt and tired.
“They revised that today,” she said quietly.
I shot her a surprised look.
“They said it could manifest symptoms in three to four days. That’s down from a week to ten days. They said the Fever is evolving.”
She looked at Joshua. “I don’t think you’ll be evacuated, at least not for a while. Police, fire and rescue, they’re expected to be swamped trying to enforce the ban. They’re not talking detention. They’re saying that anyone violating the travel ban could be treated as a mass murderer.”
I gave the old woman a sideways glance. She caught my eye and looked puzzled. I shook my head and turned back to the fire, mentally chalking up another note about Elsie Morgan. Most of the day she’d talked like a grandma who’d never made it out of the flatlands. The words she had just spoken could have come from an English professor.
“What does that mean?” Kelly broke in.
Elsie turned her attention to the younger woman. “It means if you can’t get home by tomorrow noon, you might get shot for trying.”
Tyler wiped hair from his eyes.
“You can’t be serious.”
Elsie nodded. “I am. It’s not official policy and groups are already threatening lawsuits, but the announcer said noon tomorrow, people better stop wherever they are until they see how the ban is going to be enforced.”
She glanced around the fire. “At minimum, you’re looking at jail time.”
Jessie, the girl who’d brimmed with hugs and smiles earlier, shuddered and burrowed deeper in her jacket. Her voice sounded small and scared when she spoke.
“Well, they can’t just leave us here, can they?”
Elsie shrugged. “I don’t think they know you’re out here. If they do, I think they have bigger things to worry about than a few people stuck on an island.”
Wind tugged at the tight bun behind the old woman’s head as if trying to force the gray locks to come out and play. Firelight danced across her face.
> “It’s not just here either. Countries across the world are reporting cases. Riots broke out in France and Greece today with people fighting over food at grocery stores. The world is going to be a different place tomorrow. We’ll just have to see how different.”
Voices rose around the campfire, some in fear, and others in protest. I listened, but said nothing. I had little to add. The social structures that Dad hated appeared to be on the edge of collapse. The disease seemed poised on the verge of dismantling the protections and comforts most treated as a fact of life rather than a privilege of the society we had created. Like most facades, what lay behind them looked significantly less inviting.
The speed of the collapse bordered on stunning and squatted firmly in the realm of terrifying. Fear stained the faces around the campfire. Voices, when they rose, came filled with alarm and disbelief. A good many of them sat like me, though, quiet, mind engrossed in the enormity of the news, and trying to figure out what the days ahead might hold.
When the protests finally subsided, Elsie looked at me.
“Will you see us back to the boat, Hill William? We have an early start in the morning.”
I nodded, and went about gathering up the leftovers from dinner. There wasn’t much. A dozen hungry mouths had reduced the ham to little more than bone. I stuck it in the plastic bag Elsie had used for the bread, thinking I would use it as seasoning for soup or beans. The rest amounted to a few spoonfuls of green beans and a sliver of the bread she had baked earlier.
Tyler nodded when I held up the bowl so I scraped the last few bits into his plate.
“You get that flashlight out of the boat?” I asked Daniel when we were loaded up.
He fished it out of a pocket and held it out.
“Good,” I said, “why don’t you take point and lead us back.”
We left them huddled around the dying fire, wind buffeting faces still slack with shock. If not for the houses looming in the background and the colorful jackets so common among campers, the scene could’ve come straight out of a movie that targeted early man, circa about 10,000 B.C. The thought added another depressing note on an already dismal day when I realized that man’s future might hold a lot more campfires and dark nights.
Daniel raced ahead. Elsie let him go, keeping track of him by the flashlight bobbing in the distance. Her gait, though still spry, had lost its earlier enthusiasm.
“I’m not liking this wind, Hill William. A north wind in these parts can turn ugly.”
I kept walking. Northeasters possessed a long and well-documented reputation along the Outer Banks, but it seemed too early in the season to me. Then again, my knowledge of weather stemmed mostly from mountains, not coastlines. She grew up here. Arguing with her sat along the same lines as discussing monetary policy with an economist. I had no ground to stand on in either debate.
“They had a man on the radio. He almost sounded loony,” she said suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“He said the Fever is intelligent, that it’s fighting back and picking some of its victims.”
I rolled my eyes, the motion completely lost on her in the darkness.
“And they gave this guy airtime?”
“I said he almost sounded loony. If what he’s saying is true, we don’t stand a chance. No one does.”
“Come on, Elsie. A disease is nothing more than a collection of organisms that your body doesn’t like. I’m sure that twenty years from now, doctors will talk about evolutionary pressures and all, but intelligent thought?”
I stopped and turned toward her. “Be serious. It would have to be a collective intelligence, a thought process shared by trillions of tiny little bugs. That’s not possible.”
She kept walking. I sighed and picked up my pace to try and catch her. Ahead, the bobbing light marking Daniel’s progress had come to a standstill. The meeting with the others took place no more than a quarter of a mile from my camp. I’d expected the boy to stop at my tent on the way back, but the light looked wrong. It stood off to the right and closer.
“It is evolving. You heard that today when they talked about having to strap people in their beds,” she said stubbornly when she heard me closing in beside her. “It’s gotten worse. The news this evening was full of doctors and nurses being attacked and in some cases, killed by their patients. It’s like the Fever is trying to wipe out the people who can fight it.”
She looked sideways at me. “And the incubation period dropped. I’m telling you, this isn’t like any sickness we have ever seen.”
“What it sounds like, is armchair science. I wouldn’t put too much faith in it,” I told her. “More than likely people see it that way because doctors and nurses are on the front line. It’s like a war. Casualty counts come from the front, not the rear.”
She acted like she wanted to say more, but she’d seen the light grow still as well. She quickened her pace. I stretched out mine to keep up. We found Daniel standing near the old graveyard. The beam of the flashlight shot through the tombstones, highlighting some, leaving others standing in eerie silhouettes.
The boy stood as still as the slabs of rock reaching up from the ground. I pulled up short and settled deeper in my jacket to ward off the cold. Elsie hurried over to him.
“What are you doing, Daniel?”
His head came up suddenly as if the sound of her voice startled him.
“I’m looking at the new graves.”
I followed the beam of light to a bare stretch of ground. Chills climbed up my back.
The old woman pulled him to her and led him away from the cemetery, angling off toward my campsite. I followed along behind them, past the tent, through the twisted maze of wood and weeds, and out onto the little beach. We walked up to the dock silently.
I made sure both were settled in and took the flashlight before I headed back to the tent. The sight of the massive pile of firewood I’d pulled in earlier played under the tight beam as I approached. Despite the growing cold, I had no desire to build another fire. More than anything, I simply wanted sleep. Whether I would get any, I didn’t know. Every episode with Daniel seemed creepier than the last. The tent beckoned with thoughts of a warm sleeping bag. At the same time, the graveyard loomed across the way, hidden by the darkness, but too close for comfort. I finally gave into the weariness and ducked inside.
Warmth came quickly inside the sleeping bag. I fell asleep with wind tugging at the tent, pondering over gloomy images of scrounging for water and food in a diseased and dying landscape. Fortunately, no dreams came.
Unfortunately, the wind did. I woke at some point with the tent flapping in earnest. Nearby, trees swayed and shivered, the leaves rustling against each other in a long, hissing sigh. Two hours later, the rustling had turned to a roar. The tent, battered by the rising wind, shuddered and lurched. The corners where the stakes were driven had pulled drum tight. I slid over to put my body against the side straining to stay in the ground. The new position exposed me to air streaming in around the zippered window. Icy drafts slipped in around my neck and sent cold fingers creeping down my back. I burrowed deeper into the material and pulled the top around my head to ward off the sudden chill.
I woke again near dawn to a different world. The booming crash of surf pounding the beach rode high atop the moan of wind snarling through the treetops. I rose and headed down the little path, emerging on the strip of shoreline that seemed so placid the day before. Night still clung to the sky, but not for long. Off to the east, gray crept up from the horizon. I couldn’t make out the point or any details past lines of white surging across black as whitecaps crested and broke across the strip of sand sheltering the bay. High clouds scudded across the sky, obliterating stars only to release them seconds later. Off to the left, Angel bobbed at the dock, her shape an indistinct white blob.
The wind had switched directions, veering off to the northeast. I cursed under my breath. How air moved could offer as much insight into the coming weath
er as looking at a satellite image. We had a low pressure bearing down on us. The abrupt change in speed overnight indicated a strong difference in the pressure gradients. In simple terms, that meant rain and lots of wind.
Depending on what lay farther out at sea, the storm could last days or could pass within a few hours. One certainty stood out amid all the unknowns. Angel would not leave the dock under cover of darkness. I needed to see what we were facing. That meant waiting for sunrise another hour away.
The deteriorating weather also meant that even if we could leave, I’d miss the deadline for travel. I couldn’t take the same route back on the open ocean and that meant adding hours to the transit time. The thought of going to Atlantic didn’t bother me as much as the idea that I might not be able to leave it again. I couldn’t dock with Little anywhere in sight. If I did, he’d have all the reason and authority he needed to cart my rear off to jail. Given his mood the last time I’d seen him, detention might turn out to be the best of my options.
I looked again toward Angel. No lights glowed in the cabin windows that stretched down her side. The sight twisted my lips into a grimace. I needed a toothbrush and wanted coffee. Dark portals and sleeping bodies prevented access to both.
A gust of wind, maybe fifty knots strong, buffeted the cove. I had no reason to wake them until I could see the ocean and the inlet. I also saw no reason to sit outside until the sun came up. Had I been alone, coffee would already be perking on the stove. With nothing to do but wait, I headed back to the tent.
Nearly two hours later, I crawled outside for the last time to a gray and ugly sky. Back down on the shoreline, the water carried its own nasty scene. Plumes of white froth shot up across the thin finger of island at the point. Across the inlet, swells running four to five feet raced across the sound. The wind tore white caps from the tops of the waves and pushed them into curlers when they closed in on shallower water. I wasted no time cutting across the point to look at the ocean. I’d heard an old sailor refer to the sound as a washing machine once years before. I didn’t understand the comparison until that morning. Swells six to eight feet high marched in from a steel-colored ocean on my right. To my left, confused currents combined with the waves racing in from the opposite direction turned the inlet into a mess of choppy, frothing water.
My heart sank when I thought about the trip back to the mainland. The only route for a boat like Angel in that scene lay in running down the length of the island and crossing at the shortest point. Even then, we’d end up navigating sandbars in wild water until we found the channel.
We could do it. I stood a better chance of being struck by lightning than I did finding a spot on the odds meter that didn’t point directly between shitty and stupid, though.
Metal clanging against metal came from the direction of the boat. I’d heard that particular sound dozens of times on the trip with my father. Elsie or Daniel had just set a pot or pan atop the stove inside the boat. Craving coffee, warmth, and needing to talk to them both, I took off for the dock.
I called out as I approached. With the tarp stretched out over the cockpit, neither could see me coming. I had no desire to either startle them or walk in on Elsie still in her nightgown.
Her voice sounded muffled and distant when she answered.
“Come on in, Hill William.”
I climbed aboard at the point where the cabin joined cockpit, easing aside the tarp and stepping down into the cockpit floor. Elsie sat on the starboard bunk, wearing sweat pants, sweatshirt, and sneakers. She sipped from a steaming cup. The smell of fresh brewed coffee filled the cabin. Daniel still lay burrowed inside his sleeping bag on the port bunk.
She pointed to the stove. A frying pan sat on one burner. Dad’s old coffee pot occupied the other with a tiny yellow flame licking around the base. The heat felt good after a cold, windy night under the stars. Even turned down to the lowest setting, the ancient kerosene stove had raised the temperature inside the cabin at least twenty degrees over the air outside.
“I hadn’t got around to starting breakfast yet. The coffee’s ready though. Pour yourself a cup. See how you like it. This is from my store.”
To the left of the stove, my father had installed two sections of galley rail. One ran down the sink top, forming a shelf on the side. Above it he’d fashioned another shelf, again using galley rail around the edge as a lip to keep the items stored there from sliding off when the boat heeled. I’d filled the upper shelf with coffee cups. The bottom one held salt, pepper, and creamer, along with a dozen other small containers.
Most of the cups sported company logos from my corporate days as a traveling consultant. I’d learned early on to generate goodwill by buying up small items from clients. Another nod to that concept sat in my closet back in Tennessee. Boxes of company T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts sat just inside the door. I rarely wore any of them and most of the items still carried price tags.
I poured a cup of coffee from the pot and made as if to sit back in the entrance way using the cockpit floor as a seat. Elsie, however, motioned for me to move farther back. She followed me outside, carrying the blanket from the bunk. She shivered and pulled it around her shoulders as she sat. I started to ask why she wanted to sit out under the tarp, but that question vanished the instant she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She held it up in her wrinkled old hands and pulled one free.
“I think you lied to me,” she said.
I frowned. “About what?”
She waved toward the cabin.
“I asked if you smoked and drank. You said you did. There’s liquor down there, cigarettes down there, but nary a one has been opened and I ain’t seen you partake in either since we left.”
I sipped at my coffee, enjoying the rich taste and noting her slip back to the country-girl language.
“This stuff is good.”
She nodded.
“That it is. I have that coffee imported from Hawaii. It’s one of my few indulgences. A pound of that runs about sixty dollars. Enjoy it.”
She scrunched up her face at me. “What gets me is why a man would carry tobacco and alcohol and not use either.”
I lifted my shoulders in a slight shrug.
“It wasn’t a lie. I used to smoke a long time ago. A lot of ex-smokers will tell you that the urge never really goes away. Even now, after fifteen years, I still have times when I find myself reaching for one.”
I offered her a wry smile. “It’s just not often. I figured if I wanted one while I was out here, I’d go for it. Right now, the Surgeon General is probably more worried about the Fever than whether or not someone smokes a couple before he dies.”
I watched as she lit the cigarette she’d pulled from the pack.
“As for the alcohol, I like a shot now and then.”
She blew smoke into the cockpit. Although the tarp shielded the back of the boat from most of the wind, enough slipped through the edges to whip the plume away.
“The trick to enjoying things like this, Hill William, is to control them and use them when you want. Addiction is all about letting stuff pick for you. Pleasure is about choosing when to indulge—like first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee. You want a smoke now.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I do?”
She nodded and shook another from the pack. I stared it at for a long moment. Quitting the first time sucked. I can’t remember a more difficult or long-lasting battle. The thought of lighting up again crapped all over the years of fighting against the urge. As nice and neat as that logic sounded, it came across rather pedantic and silly given the fact that I expected this trip to be my last.
I sighed and took the cigarette. You’d think that a decade and a half of staying away from them would’ve left me hacking and coughing on the first pull. You’d think that if you’d never smoked. Two puffs in, the stuff went down as smooth as the last one had fifteen years earlier. That fact highlighted one of the more insidious aspects of tobacco. It’
s sort of like riding a bike. You don’t have to learn how the second time. Two more puffs and the nicotine high hit. I sat still, waiting for it to pass, afraid to move for fear of falling flat on my face.
Elsie laughed.
“God you are a bad influence.” I said hoarsely. “How the hell am I supposed to drive the boat out of here when I can’t even stand up?”
The laughter died away.
“We ain’t going anywhere. That water ain’t going to get better for a while. We’d probably make it okay, but not by the deadline and honestly, I don’t like the word probably. I’d just as soon not take the chance. Besides, I’ll call the Judge once the weather dies down.”
It took a minute to get my wits back.
“Who’s the Judge?”
She sipped at her coffee.
“The Judge is Dwight’s daddy. He’s been sweet on me since my husband died twenty years ago. The feelin’ is not mutual, but as long as a man ain’t weird, it don’t hurt to be nice to him.”
She looked up over the edge of her cup and grinned. “He’s the real law in this part of the state. That’s why Dwight backed up so quick at the store. Five minutes after he drove away with you, the phone woulda been ringing and his poppa on the other end.”
I sipped at the coffee and took another experimental hit off the cigarette. I’d forgotten how deliciously well those two went together.
She pointed inside the cabin.
“I turned on the radio a few minutes ago. There’s a warm front heading up coast that’s going to smack right into this cold air. We’re sitting at ground zero for that collision. That means big storms, maybe even a tornado,” she said and paused long enough to puff at her cigarette. “That’s another reason not to go traipsing off across the water. That mast up there reminds me of a big lightning rod. I’ve seen what that does to a boat. If you make it past the strike, you got to deal with floating around in the water on your own. I’m too old for that.”
“Me too,” I agreed. “That means I need to find a place we can hole up.”
She waved dismissively.
“There’s nothing to find. We’ll go up to the old life-saving station. It’s big enough to hold us and the rest of them people. If I remember right, there’s a woodstove inside so we can warm it up some. It’s up near the point. Remember that thing that looked like a big house?”
I nodded. After miles of uninhabited coast line, seeing what looked like a large Cape Cod with a covered front porch had left me staring.
Something she said tingled at the back of my mind. It took a minute to put my finger on it.
“I wonder how many people are still here. The kayakers were planning on leaving this morning too.”
She snorted. “They’re fools if they did. That’s bad water out there. You get wind blowing from different directions in a short period of time, water currents start switching back and forth and the whole mess gets to boiling like soup in a pot. There’s as many ships and boats sunk around here as anywhere in the world and most of them because of the weather.”
She canted her head toward the bow.
“That dune buggy thing of your dad’s really work?”
“It really does,” I said. “It won’t go much more than seven or eight miles an hour, but even that beats walking.”
She took a last puff off her cigarette and snuffed it out in an empty soda can.
“Then I say get the thing down. Run around, let the others know what’s coming, and then come pick up me and Daniel. We can use it to ferry enough supplies up to the station to eat for a couple of days. How heavy is that thing anyway?”
“I don’t know for sure, maybe 150 pounds or so.”
Elsie blinked. “How you going to get it off then?”
“The same way I put it there,” I answered. “I’ll pick it up and set it off.”
She brightened. “And it’s got a real bathroom!”
I looked at her, confused.
“I’m talking about the station. It has a toilet and one of those big old iron bathtubs.”
I laughed at her. “So where do we get the water to fill it?”
“The same place we always did,” she retorted. “There’s no drinkable water on this island. Everyone had a rainwater cistern. I don’t know about the other ones here, but I do know the one at the station is still working. The Park Service oversees this place and shares maintenance with a historical society up on the Cape. They come down once or twice a year and do a week of restoration.”
She sipped at her coffee. “One of the workers told me they fixed up the cistern to use for cleanup. I think he said it was three hundred gallons. I wouldn’t go around drinking the stuff, but take a bath and flush the toilet? You’re dang right I would.”
A gust of wind shook the boat. The edges of the tarp flapped wildly.
“Go on now. See about them kayakers.”
I drained the last of the coffee and headed back out into the wind. Angel bobbed at the dock like a cork on the water. Getting the buggy off her cabin roof encompassed a lot of grunting and groaning when the boat sat still. I could feel the grimace slide across my face at the idea of wrestling with the bulky contraption on a heaving deck. Elsie had a point, though. The life-saving station stood a good half-mile from where we’d tied up. The buggy would make transporting her, Daniel, and food a lot easier.
Moving the extra gas and kerosene came first. I unlashed them from the top of the box and set them across on the dock. The wind howled while I worked, roaring through the nearby trees like a lion. Every step from boat to dock generated a fine image in my mind of me and my load ending up in the bay.
The batteries went next since half the buggy’s weight came from the interconnected bank of cells that powered the thing. Dad had used a steel frame, but everything else he had crafted out of aluminum tubing or aluminum supports made of thick L-shaped pieces. I reached down to give it an experimental tug and ended up jerking the entire vehicle out of the box. Rather than stop and try to balance on the wobbly deck, I kept the motion going, moving sideways and plopping it down on the nearby dock. From crate to dock took less than two seconds.
I scrambled over and started putting it back together. The upright pieces folded up straight and locked into place. The seat was little more than a bench made of plywood, bolted down to the frame, and covered with foam rubber. Six batteries powered the electric motor, turning out somewhere around eight miles an hour at top speed. The overhead—I couldn’t call it a roof—had been constructed to hold the solar cells mounted on Angel’s cabin top. The rear support on the driver’s side held a socket the same size as one mounted on Angel’s stern. Both were designed to hold a windmill tucked away in one of her many lockers.
Dad had told me that he ran the buggy for five days on his last trip with nothing but sun and wind power. Given that 90 percent of his time revolved around fishing, not driving, I didn’t doubt those numbers. At the same time, I didn’t expect them on a continuous run either.
The entire vehicle stretched almost five feet long, ran nearly three feet wide, and sported over-sized balloon tires. I couldn’t imagine it getting stuck in sand, mud, or anywhere else for that matter.
Once I had the pieces together, I hooked up the air pump stored behind the seat to a 12-volt outlet on Angel. Twenty minutes later, the ugly little vehicle looked like it was ready for a Baja run.
Elsie stuck her head out when she heard the air pump shut off.
“That is the strangest contraption I’ve ever run across. I’d be embarrassed to be seen on it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really? You planning on walking up to the station?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“I guess not.”
I climbed in and flipped the switch that sent power to the engine. The controls embraced simplicity. The transmission came from a riding lawn mower, leaving only two options, forward and reverse. The switch fed power to the engine at one notch and turned on the lights at another. A b
rake pedal existed in the floorboard, but in my tests, simply letting off the accelerator achieved much the same result. Dad left the seats bereft of belts. Then again I’m not sure how much purpose they’d serve at eight miles an hour.
I pressed down on the accelerator. The buggy lurched forward silently with the faint hiss of tires rolling across the wooden dock and slight whine from the transmission nearly lost in the rising wind. I hit the sand at the landing and climbed through it easily. Just beyond the slight rise, the ATV path led off to the right in a long loop around the town. I ignored the cut-off that led up through the old village and headed for the swamps at the far end.
The wind had grown stronger while I worked. By the time Angel slid out of sight, the gale blowing in from the northeast raged hard enough to whip a fine stream of sand across the path. Out on the sound, the water looked choppy as hell, with short, steep waves and boiling whitecaps.
I found their camp about fifteen minutes later. Kelly and Tyler stood near the shoreline, looking out over the sound. Neither of them heard me coming. I pulled to within ten feet of them before the boy turned around.
The look on his face went from anxious to startled amazement.
“What’s that?”
The girl turned when he spoke, worry strong on her face.
“This weather is going to turn ugly soon. There’s a warm front pushing in. The weatherman said big storms this afternoon, a lot of lightning, and maybe even some super cell formations,” I said, ignoring his question. “I’m taking Elsie and Daniel to the old life-saving station. She says there’s plenty of room. You’re welcome to join us.”
Kelly bit at her lip.
“Zach left. We’re not sure when. He was adamant this morning about heading for home. I thought I’d talked him out of it and went back to sleep. When I got up, he was gone.”
I looked out over the water. The sound stretched off to the horizon, all of it painted on a storm-tossed canvas of gray, choppy water and gloomy skies.
“How long does it take to get to your car?”
The wind whipped her hair away from her face.
“I don’t know, maybe three or four hours.”
“How far are we talking?” I asked.
She nodded toward the inlet.
“We logged six miles across to Ocracoke. We put in about a mile and a half above the village. All together, we paddled a little over three hours. But we spent another two hours waiting near Silver Lake for the tide to change.”
“When did he leave?”
She threw her hands up. “I don’t know.”
I felt the irritation rising and fought it back down.
“Give me an estimate. What time did you go back to bed?”
“About five o’clock. Somewhere around there, I’m not sure.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. The kid had been in the water for three hours. The timeframe complicated the decision in front of me. For all I knew, he could be sitting in Ocracoke, hunkered down in one of the half-dozen waterside bars, sipping on something warm, and waiting for the rest of us.
I didn’t think so, though, not in a kayak and not in weather that whipped the inlet into a frenzy.
The rest of the alternatives put him in the water somewhere between the two islands. To make matters worse, I didn’t know if he’d left on an incoming or outgoing tide. He could’ve been swept out to sea or pushed deeper and deeper into the sound. Both options had a sense of finality written all over them.
I sighed and turned back to the problem at hand. The buggy could hold two people, barely.
“Get in,” I told her and then looked at Tyler.
“Pack up your stuff. I’m going to run her to my boat. We’ll try raising Ocracoke on the radio. Either way, one of us will be back soon to pick you up.”
I wheeled the buggy into a tight turn and left him standing there. We rode in silence most of the way. The windshield on the buggy amounted to little more than a thin sheet of Plexiglas fitted into grooves on the uprights. I had no idea if the slots would hold it in place or if the thing would tear loose in the wind and come flying back on us.
“When we get back, I want you to start ferrying Elsie and Daniel to the station. It’s that big building up on the point. You know the one I’m talking about?”
She nodded, her face white.
“I’ll start hitting the radio and throwing supplies together. I’m thinking two or three runs to get the gear and people moved. After that, go get Tyler. When you have everyone at the station, send him out to get Joshua’s crowd.”
She opened her mouth as if to speak. I cut her off.
“If there’s time, you can come back for me then. If not, get the buggy out of the rain. I’ll walk up.”
I rounded the turn just before the dock and slid the little dune buggy to a stop at the edge of the wooden planks. Kelly followed me out. A strong gust swept across the bay just as we made it to Angel. The boat shuddered and slammed against the two-by-eight stretched along the side of the pier as a rub rail. The wind hit me hard and sent me stumbling toward the edge of the dock and the dark water beyond. I caught myself and looked back to see Kelly on her knees. For the first time in my life, I heard wind whistling through the shrouds. The shrill whine jerked my head up even as another gust blasted across the water.
“Elsie!”
She pulled back the edge of the tarp.
“Come on. She’s going to ride you up to the station. Show her where it is. She’ll come back for Daniel. I’ll watch over him until she gets back and we’ll pack up some food for tonight.”
“Don’t bother. I been busy. It’s all packed, out here in the cockpit.”
I looked past her. She’d piled two large duffel bags and a Hefty Cinch Sack in the cockpit floor.
“Then come on,” I said raising my voice and waving her on. “The sooner you get out of here, the sooner we get everyone safe.”
Daniel stared up at me from the cabin. He looked terrified.
“I’m not leaving him here,” Elsie said stubbornly. “If he don’t go, I don’t go.”
I cursed under my breath. “Then both of you get up here. He can sit on your lap.”
Relief washed across his face.
I reached down and pulled Elsie out, literally lifting her clear of the boat by a foot. Daniel scampered up behind her. The instant his feet hit the dock, he wrapped his arms around her in a vise.
Another gale-force blast of air hit the boat.
“Let’s go,” I shouted and began herding them toward the shore. The old woman couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. I wanted her and the boy off the dock before both ended up in the bay.
The wind had to be blowing forty knots or better. At that speed, air starts to become a physical force, an invisible wall that either tries to shove you out of the way or drag you along with it. The most terrifying aspects revolved around sensory input no longer available. My eyes burned from the spray whipped off the booming surf and torn from the tops of the waves. The wind roared in my ears, making anything but shouted voices impossible to hear. I herded the old woman and the boy through the maelstrom, feeling as if I was groping along a topsy-turvy world, deafened and partially blind.
Kelly had retreated to the buggy. She waited anxiously while we made our way across the wooden causeway. Elsie slid into the passenger’s seat first. I lifted Daniel into her lap seconds later.
He looked up at me, his eyes dark and unreadable. Suddenly, he reached up and tugged at my sleeve. I leaned in, wondering what the boy wanted.
“That man, he makes me think of bats.”
I stared at him.
“What man?”
He squinted into the wind and looked toward the water.
“The man they can’t find.”
Elsie hugged him tight.
“Let Hill William go, Daniel. We don’t have time for nonsense.”
His odd choice of words left me confused. I had no idea what he meant.
/>
Another gust slammed into the buggy, carrying fine particles of sand and debris that felt like tiny needles punching into my face.
“Go!” I yelled at the girl in the driver’s seat. She needed no urging. The buggy leapt forward, spun for a moment in the loose sand, and lurched toward the little road that led up through the village.
I waited until the buggy slipped out of sight before I raced back to Angel. Elsie’s bags still lay in the cockpit floor. All three looked stuffed full and heavy. I stifled a groan and snatched the first off the cockpit seat. A second later, I hefted another. Two trips down the dock transferred the pile. I didn’t bother stacking or arranging, but simply dumped them on the sand at the edge of the island.
Back in the cabin, the physical assault lessened enough to catch my breath. Out of the wind, the noise dropped measurably. The boat, however, pitched and rocked, alternately pulling away from the dock until her mooring lines grew tight, then throwing herself back. Fenders took up most of the impact, but the sound of her sides scraping along the wooden rail made me wince.
The radio hung from the cabin roof on the port side. I flicked the on-switch, waited until the numbers settled on the display, and switched to Channel 16. Taking a deep breath, I thumbed the send button on the microphone.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the sailing vessel Angel, Angel, Angel. My position is the old village of Portsmouth on the North Core Banks. My vessel is sound and in no immediate danger. We have a man lost in transit to Ocracoke.”
I released the send button. Static poured from the radio’s speakers. Thirty seconds later, I repeated the call, following procedure my father had grilled into me on a trip twenty years earlier. I had no idea how correct or official I sounded.
A woman answered on the fourth call. The words that erupted from the speakers boomed loud and crackled with electricity.
“Angel, this is Silver Lake Harbor. You have a man overboard, is that correct? Over.”
I sighed and hit the send button again.
“Silver Lake, we do not have a man overboard. A camper disappeared from the island this morning with the stated intention of crossing to Ocracoke in a kayak, over.”
For a long moment, the only sound in the cabin came from static pouring from the radio and wind whistling through Angel’s rigging.
“Angel, would you repeat your last, over.”
Even through the background hiss, I could hear the incredulous tones in her voice.
“Silver Lake, we’re missing a camper. He left early this morning in a kayak with the intention of crossing to Ocracoke.”
Her voice came back moments later.
“Angel, Standby while I make a couple of calls to see if he’s arrived.”
At least five minutes passed before the radio blared to life again. I used it to gather up a few more items. I had no doubt that Elsie had taken care of the food. What I wanted were things that would help me survive once the food disappeared. Somewhere in the middle of stuffing a bag full, the absurdity of that urge struck me hard. I’d come here to die, and yet was fighting to survive.
“Angel, this is Silver Lake.”
The squawk from the radio startled me when it came. I dropped the bag I had been packing on the port bunk and grabbed the microphone.
“Go ahead Silver Lake.”
“Angel, be advised that the Coast Guard has been notified. A search vessel will be dispatched as soon as possible. However, you should be aware that several calls have come in this morning.”
I didn’t need an interpreter. That officially worded response basically meant, get in line, buddy. Every boat on the water is trying to make port ahead of the travel ban and they’re all running into the same weather.
“Angel, did you copy my last?”
I hit the send button. “I did, Silver Lake.”
A fresh blast of wind hit the boat hard. Off in the distance, thunder growled.
I looked up.
“What? It isn’t enough that we’ll probably die in a week or two anyway? You have to send this crap too?”
When I finally dropped my gaze, I looked around the cabin. Clothes, foam plates, packages of food, all manner of items lay scattered across the bunks. Even more littered the deck, most of the mess complements of the quick scramble for supplies. The lesson staring me in the face, however, centered on the one element completely missing from the interior – water. The boat was bone dry.
The rain might come. The seas might thunder. As long as I took care of Angel, though, she would take care of me.
I shot another look toward the overhead.
“Alright, this is about the point in the movies where the hero does something brave and strong and stands against all the odds. That ain’t me,” I said in a wry tone. “Just so you know, I had no intention of pissing you off. I was just blowing off a little steam. So when I get out there, don’t hold it against me. Okay?”
If God answered, I didn’t hear him.
A few minutes later, I eased the boat away from the dock with the throttle at one-third and her nose bearing into both wind and waves. She took the chop on the bay easy enough. The real test lay ahead. Just how much of a test, I wouldn’t know until she hit the current and the rollers racing in from the ocean. Nor could I tell which way the tide was running. The confused waters outside the bay swelled into geysers when cross seas rammed into each other, and settled into a throbbing, heaving gray beast the rest of the time. Rain had started to fall as well, splattering across the cockpit in cold wet drops.
The waves grew higher and stronger the farther out we went. Where she once bobbed, Angel now hit with a solid thud, sending spray scattering across the bow. The instant her nose plowed into the current, I knew the tide was coming in, and fast. The boat lurched sideways, nearly exposing her beam to an incoming swell that carried short, steep sides and looked as if it were about to break. I pushed hard on the tiller to bring her back around enough to quarter the wave. A white sheen of spray exploded across her bow.
She clawed her way into deeper water, smacking against steep waves that pounded rather than lifted. Angel rode over nothing. Everything we hit slammed as if we had struck rock. Twice her bow disappeared, digging in the face of the next wave while still riding down the back of the last one.
Every trough reminded me of sitting at the bottom of a canyon and looking up at the peaks. Every crest flipped the experience end-over-end to a point that felt like clinging to the edge of a cliff, trying to scramble back up and knowing you wouldn’t make it. Worse, every time I looked behind me, another huge swell loomed like a giant gray hand rising up to smack me into oblivion.
I beat into the waves for half a mile or better before I realized that the battle had become surviving the sea rather than finding Zachary. I’d spent so much time just trying to keep Angel from turning broadside to the raging waters that I could’ve passed within five feet of his kayak and never seen him.
What I couldn’t understand was: Why hadn’t he turned around? Halfway down the back of a huge swell, the answer hit me.
He had.
The next wave struck a massive blow, jerking the tiller out of my hands and shooting a fountain of water high across the bow. Salt water rained down in the cockpit.
I lurched feverishly for the wooden bar swinging wildly out in front of me and pulled hard to push her nose into the mountain of water already forming ahead. The jarring collision shook the boat from stem to stern. I held on and guided her through the next. Again and again the stern felt out from under me while massive seas rose beside me.
Hope blossomed in the midst of the terrifying ride. Every fifth wave brought a swell gentler than the others. In the confusing cauldron where wind and water clashed, salvation had a home and it lay in that fifth swell. I waited, counting to make sure, letting half a dozen cycles pass under her before making my move. The instant Angel smacked through the crest of the fourth wave, I gunned the engine and cut her deep to port.
She came
around quickly, but not quick enough. The next wave hit dead on her beam. She heeled as if struck a mortal blow. For what seemed an eternity, Angel hung precariously between that precious moment of righting herself and giving up the battle. Every second hinged on the terrifying fear that she’d roll over and the desperate hope that she would find her footing again. The engine screamed, clawing at the water, forcing her to turn. I saw the swell rising off to the right and hung on with every ounce of strength I had. The right blow could not only send her to the bottom, but just as easily catapult me across the gunwale and into the sea.
It struck on her rear quarter, sending a wall of water cascading into the cockpit, but shoving her forward more than sideways. Inch by inch, she pulled herself up straight. As soon as the stern came about, she leapt forward, propelled by the engine, by gravity pulling her down the face of the wave that had nearly swamped her.
I kept the throttle shoved forward as far as it would go out of fear of a brutal smack-down from behind. With the current under her keel, Angel raced along shoreline half a mile distant, catching up and sliding over waves rather than trying to bull her way through them. The sudden lull in violence would’ve felt almost pleasurable if not for the storm gathering to the south. Rain already lashed the boat. Lightning wouldn’t be far behind.
Angel slid around the back of the island in what seemed only minutes, passing behind a sandy spit and into the edge of a channel that, according to the charts, stretched almost a mile wide. The line of dunes facing the ocean marked the highest ground on the island, topping out at maybe 15 feet – not enough to cut much of the wind. The forested interior proved my saving grace. The water smoothed out immediately and the wind dropped noticeably once the boat passed the old village and slid into the lee of tall pines and oaks. After the monstrous ride through the inlet, the chop on the sound proved little more than an annoyance. Water splashed across the gunwales now and then. Spray swept through the cockpit on occasion, but the real dangers lay behind, not ahead.
Zachary had been in the water for nearly three hours before they realized he was missing. The combination of wind and water could’ve easily dragged him well past his base camp. The current in the channel looked to be running four to five miles an hour, strong enough to carry a kayak miles down the coast. I kept the engine at half throttle and used binoculars pulled from the rear locker to scan the shoreline, expecting to see him trudging along at any moment.
Miles slid by under the keel as the minutes ticked away. With the adrenaline and fear gone, the cold took over. Every inch of my body dripped water. My tennis shoes felt sodden. Every time I stood, water squished out around my ankles and bled down on the cockpit floor.
The farther south I went, the darker the clouds grew. Electricity seared through the skies, adding another dangerous situation to my list of worries. Each time I glanced up at the top of the mast rising twenty-five feet above me, the end seemed buried in the clouds. No matter how I looked at the situation, Angel essentially held a giant metal rod up to the sky as if daring the gods to strike her.
Four miles below Portsmouth, a long, low strip of orange sliced across a stand of reeds. I angled the boat toward the shoreline, knowing without raising the binoculars that I was looking at the bottom of a fiberglass boat. I cut the engine to an idle twenty yards out and let the boat coast toward the kayak. About fifteen feet out, I switched to reverse and backed her down until she floated at rest.
I didn’t bother with the anchor, but grabbed the rear dock line instead and jumped over the side into waist deep water. Soaked from the ride across the inlet, I saw no reason not to. Even then, I discovered I still had a few dry spots and stood with gritted teeth while cold water worked its way into every nook and cranny.
The hope in your mind is that you’ll get to the boat, find it empty, and see a trail leading off through the reeds. I found the boy, underwater, his arms splayed wide and his mouth open. Where he died, when he died, I don’t know. He was too young to end up face down in a marsh, though. That I knew for certain.
I pulled him out and struggled to get him into the cockpit. It took forever, with rain washing down from an angry sky and lightning tossing bright blue-white shards of light across the heavens. I finally gave up trying to be graceful about it. The dull thud when gravity eventually came to my aid nearly turned my stomach. I joined him a few seconds later, and stood in the cockpit, letting the rain pour down my face while I caught my breath.
I couldn’t bring myself to leave him lying in the floor, but shoving him up onto the port seat proved no easy feat. Every time I tried to move him, the dead weight of arms, legs and body felt like I was trying to lift a monstrous balloon filled with Jello. With the task finally accomplished, I fired up the engine and pointed Angel’s bow north toward the inlet again. Once I had her back out at the edge of the channel, I took a line and lashed the tiller as dead in the middle as I could. I let her run that way for a few moments, adjusting the knots until she kept a fairly straight course. She’d eventually veer off to one side or the other, limiting the amount of time I could leave her that way. But I didn’t need much. A few minutes would suffice.
I stepped into the cockpit and turned on the radio. Three calls later, the woman from Silver Lake answered.
“You can call off the search,” I told her. “I’ve located our missing camper.”
Static followed that announcement. When she finally came back, her voice carried the same official tones it had earlier.
“I read you, Angel. I’ll notify the Coast Guard. I also have some news to pass on.”
I took a deep breath and flicked the send switch.
“Go ahead, Silver Lake.”
“As of one hour ago, the President of the United States, citing an imminent danger to public health, and invoking authority granted by The National Defense Authorization Act, declared a state of martial law to exist in all US territories, effective noon today. National Guard units, along with specialized components of the United States military, have been mobilized and will assist local authorities in enforcing the travel ban issued yesterday. Do you copy Angel?”
I stared at the microphone.
“You’re telling me no one can leave?”
“That is affirmative, Angel. This order carries the full authority of the Office of the President. Violators will be detained, and if they resist, shot. You might want to impress that last fact on your camper. When the weather clears, he is not to attempt a crossing until it has been authorized by the appropriate authorities.”
So many emotions boiled up inside me that defining them all took more words than I could muster at that point. Anger rode high on the list, however. I wanted to tell her that the wretched old windbags in Washington could go fuck themselves. I wanted to tell her we would cross the damned water any time we wanted.
Instead, I did what every good hive citizen would do.
I told her I understood. I turned the radio off at that point and stepped back into the gathering storm. Rain pelted the fiberglass. Already, I could feel the temperatures rising as the warm front approaching from the south ran headlong into the cold air that had settled in the day before.
Massive black clouds boiled in the sky behind me. Lightning spat in thin electric fingers from the belly of the beast and arced toward the island in bright, jagged streaks. A few seconds later, thunder rolled across the heavens, deep and booming.
Zachary lay face up on the port side, his eyes open and mouth stretched unnaturally wide. I fished the tarp I’d used earlier to make a tent over the cockpit from one of the lockers and covered him with it, tucking the edges in around his body to keep the wind from blowing it away.
I worked quickly, feeling the weather pushing Angel into a westerly tack that drove her farther out into the channel. Once I had the boy covered, I took the tiller and pulled her back toward Portsmouth. With no desire to run the gauntlet of waves and current again in the inlet, I steered her close to shore, looking for the little opening w
here the three of them had set up camp and where he’d launched his ill-fated voyage only hours before.
I figured I could take the boat back up to the dock when the weather cleared. At that moment, with lightning scoring bright lines across the clouds behind me, I needed to find shelter and find it quick.
As fast as the trip down had gone by, making my way back to the campsite seemed to take forever. When the tiny point that marked the entrance finally swam into view, I let out a long sigh of relief. That emotion quickly evaporated when I rounded the break in the trees.
The buggy sat in the clearing, with a figure huddled inside. Surprised, I turned the boat toward an opening in the reeds that led to the tiny stretch of sand beyond.
Angel grounded only a few feet from shore. I flung the duffel bag I’d packed earlier high up on the island where it tumbled through the grass before rolling to a stop. Snatching up the bow line, I jumped off the front and secured the boat to a gnarled pine near the water’s edge. When I turned, Kelly stood on the bank, shivering in the driving rain, eyes wide.
“Did you find him?”
Lightning flashed behind me.
“I did,” I said and left it there. “Let’s get out of here. That storm is going to break at any minute and life will not be good if we’re caught out in it.”
“Where is he?” she demanded.
“He’s dead,” I told her. “And we stand a good chance of joining him if we don’t get under cover. Let’s go. I’ll tell you what happened when we get to the station.”
She stared at the boat for a long time. When she turned, she pulled a strand of sodden hair away from her face. Rain dripped from the ends. I couldn’t tell if the water running down her cheeks came from tears or from drops leaked from the dismal sky.
“You two close?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not really. He’s Tyler’s friend.”
I nodded, still unsure of the relationships. The woman studied my face for a moment and explained.
“Tyler is my brother. The two of them planned this trip for a year, waiting for Zachary to turn eighteen. I guess you could call me the chaperone, though I was just as excited about it as either one of them.”
She looked back at the boat. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell his mother.”
I motioned toward the buggy. “Why don’t we work that out somewhere drier and safer? There’s nothing you can do for him now. “
Electricity crackled in the forest to my right, close. I heard the sizzle before the thunder boomed. A great rush of wind sliced through the trees, pushing the tops into a tight arc.
She jumped, startled by the sound.
I looked up. Clouds boiled in the sky.
“Like now! Let’s go.”
The uncertainty in her face vanished. She raced toward the buggy and climbed in the driver’s seat. I snatched up the duffel bag I’d tossed out of the boat and followed her. The trip back took all of ten minutes, ten minutes with wind and rain lashing the Plexiglas windshield, blowing in through the open sides, and generally adding more misery to bodies already drenched and cold.
Describing the station in terms of a Cape Cod style house misses the mark somewhat, but not by much. Add covered porches front and back, a tiny cupola at the top where spotters could scour the seas for ships in trouble, and big windows facing the ocean, then you pretty much know what it looked like rising up from a flat patch of ground just off the point.
A ramp led down off to one side of the steps. A blue sign with a white legend depicting a figure in a wheelchair sat beside it. I motioned for her to take the buggy up under the covered porch. I didn’t know if Dad had waterproofed the electric motor. Aside from the potential of killing the blasted thing outright, I had no desire to plop down in a wet seat later.
She parked near a big window. We both climbed out and raced for the door.
Inside, a fire crackled in a cast-iron wood heater situated on the right side of the room. Warmth flooded over me. Sleeping bags and people sprawled out across the floor. Elsie sat in a rocking chair near the stove, a blanket across her lap. A teapot steamed on top of the heater. Behind it sat a coffee pot made for camping. I recognized both from Angel.
Everyone looked up expectantly when we burst in. I stood framed in the doorway, glancing from face to face, seeing anxiety in some, questions in others. I had a lot to tell them.
None of it would ease the worry. Nothing I had to say would generate happy thoughts either.