She was out of time. She was being pulled toward the center of the vortex. She tried to swim back toward the edges, but the water was too strong, and her body was too weak. Even if she managed to reach the side, the ledge above was far out of her reach, and there was no way to climb the sheer wall of rock. Exhausted, she had reached her limit. She stopped paddling and floated in the water. She was no more than a cork bobbing in the ocean.
At that moment, Abby gave up.
Despite the violence of the water surging around her, a feeling of complete freedom and liberation washed over her. She didn’t know why she was here on this island. There was nothing she could do about her present circumstances. There was nothing left to do but accept it. Abby found herself at peace more easily than she would have imagined. Somehow, she felt as though she had accomplished what she had set out to do—whatever that was.
Lying on her stomach in the water, she thought back to when she was a little girl. “Dead man’s float” was what they used to call it when she was a kid playing in her grandmother’s pool. Thinking about her childhood, she remembered the time the whole family was in that old, circular pool. There had to be at least twenty-five of them. That had been a fun day, laughing and playing with her family. Abby held onto that memory. She would meet the end like this; completely at peace and without struggle.
Abby smiled and relaxed for the first time in a long time. It was over.
Yet, the end simply wouldn’t be that easy. Something heavy came up through the water under her and crashed into her chest, causing her to gasp and suck in a mouthful of water. Lifting her head out of the water, her arms kicked into gear to bring her floating upright. Hacking up the salty seawater, she glanced around, trying to figure out what had just happened.
Looking around, she saw nothing. Was it a fish? A shark? Whatever it was, it was bigger than her. Her eyes scanned the water until they came to rest on the figure of a man, floating on his stomach a few yards away. The sandy hair gave him away. It was Eric.
He was in front of her, so she easily swam to catch up with him and latched onto him, pulling him tight. Pulling his face out of the water, she realized he was unconscious. He probably wasn’t breathing, either, but that was impossible to tell in their current predicament. She slapped him in the face, trying to wake him up. There was no response.
She held onto him, trying to determine her next move. He had come after her, but he was not as lucky as she had been, and now, he was dead. Her screams echoed off the gigantic walls. It took her a moment to realize she had actually heard her own scream. The deafening sound of the water had died down. They were still swirling around the giant pool, but there was no longer the funnel in the center, pulling the water and everything else down into it. The water was slowing down.
The emergency switch must have shut down the whirlpool. Why there was a whirlpool in the first place was a question for another time. Right now, her only thought was how to get them out of the water and get Eric breathing again. Hooking her arms under his, she swam with him toward the ladder that led up to the ledge. She realized about halfway there that trying to swim in a straight line towards it was completely exhausting. Instead, she aimed for the wall to the right of it. As she got closer, she allowed the slowing current to carry her close enough to the ladder so that she could grab onto the bottom rung and hold on.
Looking up, Abby saw it was about a ten-foot climb to the top. Up there, she could lay him down on the ledge and get him breathing again. In the water, she could maneuver him around just fine, but outside the water was another story altogether. Eric was about a foot taller and probably eighty pounds heavier than she was. She pushed his back against the ladder so that they were facing each other. Getting as close to him as she could, she put her ear to his lips to listen for any indication he was breathing. She heard nothing.
She had to act quickly. In the same position, she tried to give him mouth-to-mouth. She found she couldn’t force much—if any—air into his waterlogged lungs. She had to get him to the top. Putting her arms under his shoulders, she tried to climb to the top while supporting his weight. She made it up two rungs before his body was mostly out of the water, and he became too heavy to support. He slid down. Abby kicked her knee forward to stop him before he went back into the water. Her knee caught him in the stomach.
Shimmying down the ladder, she tried mouth-to-mouth again. Still, she got no response. She couldn’t remember where she had learned CPR, but she knew she had to compress his chest. Struck by an idea, she put her arms under his again and climbed the rungs of the ladder until they were out of the water. Her biceps burned from supporting them both. She kissed him, blew into his mouth again several times, and said, “I’m sorry.”
With that, she purposely let him fall toward the water, while she brought her knee up, slamming it into his diaphragm. She braced herself, holding him in place with the first knee, and did it again with her other knee. Repeating this again and again, she screamed in frustration, desperate for it to work. Just as she was about to give up, he coughed and choked. Water came spewing from his mouth. Gagging and gasping for air, he opened his eyes and saw Abby.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. She held onto him and the ladder, keeping them both out of the water. Her muscles shook with fatigue as she buried her face into his neck. “Let’s never let go.”
Getting his bearings, he reached back and held onto the ladder with one arm, the other still wrapped around Abby’s waist. Looking around, he said, “Where the hell are we?”
She laughed. “Let’s climb this ladder first. I’ll tell you all about it.”
23
OLIVIA PACED back and forth in front of the giant screen on her office wall. “Well, what in the world do we do now?”
“You’re the producer,” Robert shot from the other side of the world, via teleconference. “This scenario never crossed your mind before?”
“What never crossed my mind? That you would fail so miserably, every contestant on the show winds up dead? I’ve been telling you, Robert; I’ve been telling you for years, we need more boots on the ground out there. We need more control over the show.”
“That defeats the whole point, Olivia. This show is a social experiment. You plant a half-dozen fake contestants out here, and we completely lose all integrity.”
“Damn you and your integrity, Robert! How is that worse than having to flush half a season because the entire cast is dead?” She wasn’t concerned on a personal level that they had died, but the fact that she suddenly found herself with no show felt like a kick in the stomach.
“We recovered when Tom showed up and killed the rest of them. We will recover again.”
“I told you then, we needed more control, damn it. We recovered then because we still had a show. Sure, it was just Tom and Emily, but we still had a show. We had a jumping-off point to build from. We had people on the damned island. This is a total disaster. We have nothing. The next group is only two weeks into their training. We couldn’t possibly be ready to start filming for another six weeks at best. In the absolute, best-case scenario, we’re looking at being off-the-air for two months.”
“I never intended for this to happen.”
“Of course you didn’t, but it did. I hate to say I told you so, but I knew this was coming eventually. We are at the ten-year mark. This is a critical point, and you know that. As smart as you are and as much as you care about this, you should have listened to me. I just wanted to protect your assets.”
“You’re right, all right, Olivia? You’re right. Is that want you want to hear? You’re right, and I was wrong, and now, some really exceptional people are dead because of that. Now, could we move on and figure out a solution?”
She was still pacing through her large office. “Maybe they survived? How long until we can get in there?”
Robert shook is head. “Impossible. This is the biggest private water-pumping system in the world. Six-hundred-thousand liters of water are sucked down that funnel e
very minute. The water shoots through the tunnel four-hundred yards out to sea, where it pushes the current around that side of the island. There are smaller jets all around the island to keep the current going and keep the contestants on—or at least, around—the island. But, this is the main one, and it is a violent, turbulent trip through the system. A trained diver in full scuba gear couldn’t survive a trip through this thing.”
“But, you dock the boats in there when you need to get people on and off the island. It can’t be a total death trap.”
“We do it in the middle of the night, when we can shut the current down. It is perfectly safe when it isn’t running. Even though there is about a twenty-minute delay after it starts back up again, and it takes close to an hour to operate at full power, we make sure everyone and everything is clear of the island before we turn it on again. It is a hell of a thing when it gets going.”
“So, there’s no chance?”
“Olivia, I’m looking out to sea at Emily’s body, floating four-hundred yards offshore. She went in first. There is a crew coming over from across the way to pick her up. Abby will be next, and I figure Eric should be surfacing by the time they make it over here.”
“Why didn’t you just shut it down before they went in?”
“That goes against everything the show is about. If I truly intervened, they would know the secret. At the very least, they would know events and circumstances were being controlled. After that, how long before they put two and two together and figure out what is happening? The show would be over either way.”
“We don’t have any cameras in there? Just on the off-chance they made it?”
“It’s pitch-black in there, Olivia. Even if we did have cameras, they wouldn’t pick up anything. After the crew comes to pick up the bodies, I’m going to have them pick me up to bring me back across the way to my house. No sense in staying if I’m the only one on the island. I will be going into the access tunnel to shut it down, so they can come in. But trust me; I will not be finding anyone waiting in there to be saved.”
“What’s done is done,” she said. “We have no choice. We go to air in two days. I just can’t believe we’re going to air an episode where everyone on the island winds up dead. Well, except you, of course, but that won’t be a surprise to anyone.”
“They were all such wonderful people. Especially Abby. Her story was remarkably touching. That is the saddest part of this whole thing. She was a true redemption story. Seems like such a waste. I know you will put together a spectacular tribute.”
“It will have to be spectacular, Robert. This might be our last show ever.”
* * *
“What is this place?” Eric wondered out loud, climbing down from the ladder leading up to the second ledge. They had gone up there to try to find a way out but didn’t have any luck. The ledge was identical to the one below; the only difference was a giant, steel door at the far side. They spent ten minutes pushing, pulling, and doing anything they could think of to open the door. Yet, it didn’t budge an inch. After determining it must be locked from the other side, they decided they were going to have to leave the cavern the same way they had come in: Underwater.
Standing on the lower ledge along the water, he looked around the huge space they were in. He took in the high walls and the enormous pool of water below. It appeared as though it was carved right out of the rock.
“You’ve got me,” Abby said.
She showed him the switch she had thrown and explained it appeared to have shutdown the whirlpool, though she had no idea what purpose the whirlpool itself might serve. “Where do you think the water goes?”
“I might have an idea.” Eric explained how he’d seen Emily’s body floating out at sea. “There was no mistaking it was her; the way the sun was gleaming off that red hair of hers.”
“This whole thing doesn’t make any sense. What purpose would it serve?”
“I have no idea. You’re lucky you didn’t wind up in here when you floated in on the raft.”
“True. Robert plucked me out of the water. Do you think he knows what’s in here?”
“He did everything he could to keep me out. I’m willing to bet he has some idea.”
Abby had a thought. “Do you remember I told you that when I was going out on the raft, I was fighting a current and couldn’t get back in? I hadn’t thought about it before, but the current was going sideways. It carried me in a circle around the island and was bringing me right back to this spot.”
“You think this whirlpool has something to do with that?”
“I think it does. What if this is part of some giant, manmade current that goes around the island?”
“Why would an island need a manmade current?”
“I don’t know. If we knew why we were here in the first place, we might be able to figure that out. Maybe its purpose is to keep people from leaving.”
“Who would try to keep us here?”
“Probably whoever put us here in the first place.” She laughed at a private thought. “Does this seem like something your buddies would do?”
Eric laughed, too. “Nope. We’ve been way beyond that theory for a long time.”
“I’m willing to bet Robert knows more than he let on.”
“I left him laid out on the ground up top. Should we go find him?”
Abby thought about that. If the current had been made to keep them on the island, and it was shut down at the moment, what was to keep them here? Now might be their only chance to escape. Not only that, but as nice as Robert was, she was beginning to suspect he might have something to do with why they were trapped on the island in the first place. At the very least, he’d made it clear he did not want them to go.
“No,” she said. “With this thing shut down, we can leave the island. I say, we make a break for it now.”
“How? We don’t have any way to leave.”
“The raft. It was on the beach outside the entrance. We grab a couple branches for paddles and get as far away from here as we can. They won’t be as good as the oars we made, but they will have to do.”
“Now that we know how to shut it down, why not get all our ducks in a row, come back, and shut it down later? Then, make for the other island.”
“No. It was total dumb luck that I was able to do it the first time. There is no way we can count on repeating that. Besides, whoever put this thing here—and put us here—if they haven’t noticed already that it’s shut down, they are going to soon. Once they know that... things could get complicated.”
“The other island has to be ten miles out. How long will that take? Will we even make it that far without water?”
“I spent a day-and-a-half circling this island. Admittedly, I was worse for wear afterwards, but I survived. I know we can do it, Eric. If we don’t go for it now, we may never get another chance.”
Eric thought about it and ultimately agreed.
“This is a huge current,” Abby said. “If it really goes around the entire island, it must take a while to really get going. I say, we start it up again and pretend we were never in here. Hopefully, we’ll have time to swim out, grab the raft, and reach the open ocean before it really gets going.”
Eric had an idea. “You said it was really hard for you to throw the switch, right?”
“Yes but there are two of us now, and you’re a big guy. I don’t think we will have a problem with that.”
“No, I don’t think so. Actually, I think I should be able to do it on my own. You swim out first. Get the raft ready and some branches to paddle with. I’ll hang back here for ten minutes or so, throw the switch, then come meet you.”
“What if you get stuck in here?”
“I won’t. I’ll be in the water two seconds after I throw the switch. I figure if we can have everything ready to go before we start it up again, we will have a better chance of getting out of here. Think about it. We get this thing going, and then we waste twenty minutes swimming out of here and getting the
raft and paddles together? What sense does that make?”
Abby looked toward the giant rock wall on the opposite side of the room. Presumably, that wall extended only partway down into the water, and the water came into the interior cavern under that wall. She asked, “How long do you think it will take to swim out?”
“I don’t know. Coming in didn’t take that long. I couldn’t have been in for more than a few minutes before I went under and blacked out.”
“But coming in, the current was basically sucking us in. It will probably take about ten minutes to go out. How will you know how long it’s been?”
“I’ll do a slow count to six-hundred. That should be about right.”
Abby smiled at him and tussled his hair. “You’re a smart one, aren’t ya?” She kissed him. “I’ll be ready when you come out. No hero stuff, understand? Don’t think if something goes wrong, you’re going to sacrifice yourself to save my ass.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She stared him straight in the eyes as they held each other. “I’m not kidding, Eric. I’m not leaving this island without you. If you don’t come out of here, I’m coming back in for you. Got it?”
He kissed her softly on the lips. “Got it,” he said, smiling. “Now, go.”
Abby jumped into the water and swam across the pool up to the giant wall. Taking a deep breath, she plunged headfirst and straight down the wall. A few feet down, she found the wall did end, and there was an opening that led out to the cove. It ran the length of the room, and there was a faint bit of light coming from underneath it.
As she swam under the wall, she saw it was very thick. It was probably eight feet of solid rock from one side to the other. When she finally got to the other side, her lungs began to burn a bit. Fortunately, it was a quick ascent to the surface, where she quickly sucked in several large lungfuls of air before heading toward the opening and daylight.
Once at the beach, she immediately went to the raft and gave it a shake. The vines holding it together were looser than they had been when they launched it the first time, but it would have to do. The tree line came almost right up to the water, and she quickly found several large branches that appeared mostly hollow. Abby figured she had plenty of time. She had made it out of the water faster than they had figured; plus, Eric still had to swim out.
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