Between Here and the Horizon

by Callie Hart

  “Okay. We will do something. Come inside.”

  Connor followed after me, helping me, leaning his body weight against the French door when I tried to close it. “Go to the cupboard in the hallway. Get all of the blankets you can find and take them downstairs to the front door. Can you do that, Connor?”

  He nodded, waited for a second, blinked, and then ran out of the room. I collected Amie, along with the duvet off my bed, and I raced down the hallway after him. A second later, I’d collected a warm sweater for Connor from the chest of drawers in his room, and I was barreling down the stairs after him. “Here, put this on. Find your shoes. Bring Amie’s too.”

  “Okay.”

  He charged off again to locate his shoes, and I ran to the kitchen, still holding onto Amie for dear life.

  Flashlight.

  First aid kit from the cabinet above the stove.

  Cereal bars.

  A bottle of whiskey.

  I stowed all of these items into a bag and slung it over my shoulder, then went and found Connor. Moments later, we were speeding out of the driveway in the Land Rover, Amie catatonic in the back seat, Connor with his binoculars pressed against the window up front. The sweater I’d found for him was far too big, like the person who’d bought it for him had accidentally purchased it three sizes too big. The cuffs were hanging down over his hands, and the hem was around his knees.

  “Can you see the coast guard?” I asked him.

  “No. The light’s gone out now.”

  That wasn’t a good sign. If the ship had indeed been on fire, the fire wouldn’t just have gone out of its own accord. It would only have gone out if the ship had sunk, which was the worst possible thing that could happen. There was drag to consider. Depending on the size of the boat, and how far the people had managed to swim away from it before it went down, it would pull whatever was floating on the surface down with it.

  The clock on the Land Rover’s dash read 2:48. Nearly three o’clock in the morning. The island should have been sleeping, but as I tore down the narrow, winding roads and raced toward the dock, lights were flickering on in the houses we passed one by one. Word was spreading. At the dock, a small crowd of people were already gathered, dressing gowns and slippers in some cases, while others had taken time to dress in jeans, shirts and coats before they dashed out of the door.

  An ambulance that looked like it had seen better days was parked out on the pier, sirens probing out red and blue into the night, and a guy I hadn’t seen before was pacing up and down beside it, head down against the wind, talking into a cell phone that was pressed against his ear. “Stay here for a second, please,” I told Connor.

  “But, Ophelia!” He looked dismayed.

  “I mean it. Stay in the car and make sure Amie doesn’t wake up. Can you do that for me, please? Can you look after your sister?”

  He was silent for a moment, mouth hanging open, but then he nodded slowly. “Will you come back right away?”

  He wasn’t upset about missing out on the action. He just didn’t want me to leave him on his own. “I will. I promise. I won’t be gone for more than five minutes, okay? You see the clock here? It says two fifty-eight? I’ll be back before it says three oh-three, I swear.”

  “All right, then.”

  I got out of the car and slammed the door shut, hitting the lock button behind me. Scanning the crowd, I saw Michael, the guy I’d met at Rose’s party, talking to another guy who looked like he could be his brother. When Michael saw me, he waved, gesturing me over.

  “It’s the Sea King,” he shouted. “Been floundering for the past hour. Storm rolled in from nowhere. A bunch of ships have been smashed against the coastline. Another ship further up the coast, a tanker, was crippled. Guard’s out there with them now, trying to prevent a spill.”

  “But what about these guys?”

  “They’re gonna get to ’em, they said. But pretty sure it’ll be too late by then.”

  I shook my head, trying to understand what he was saying. “So the tanker takes precedence? How many people are on the other ship?”

  Michael shrugged. The other man, about a foot taller than Michael with a gray speckled beard, pulled his jacket tighter around his body. “Usually tankers aren’t manned that heavily these days. Everything’s automated. Computers run the whole thing. Twenty. Maybe thirty max.”

  “And the Sea King?”

  “Even less. It’s just a fishing vessel. Fifteen guys?”

  “So the coast guard is dealing with the ship with more souls on board.” It made sense. And the fact that the tanker’s hold was likely full of oil, worth an unimaginable amount of money and liable to cause a natural disaster if not contained, made it a no brainer. Still, it was criminal that the men off shore from the Causeway were being left to drown. “What are we going to do?”

  “Nothing we can do from here. Jerry’s boat’s not built for weather like this. The only other boats on the island are even smaller than his. Tiny three-man fishing craft.”

  Michael was clenching a bunch of keys in his right hand; it looked like the teeth of the metal was cutting into his fingers. “Fuck.” He turned around, eyes roving over the faces of the other worried people out on the dock. “This is crazy. We know those men out there. There has to be a way we can get out there to them.” No solution seemed to come to him, or to his friend, though.

  “I have the kids in the car. Listen, can you let me know if there’s anything I can do to help?” I pointed back to the Land Rover, where I could see Connor’s pale, worried face over the dashboard.

  Michael sighed, frustrated. “Sure, of course. I think we’re all gonna be stuck here like idiots, our hands tied behind our backs, but I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  Back in the car, Amie was snoring and Connor was perched on the edge of his seat, knees up around his chin, sweater pulled down over his legs so they’d disappeared altogether. “What did they say? Is someone going to save them?” he asked.

  “Yeah, bud. The coast guard’s on their way now. They won’t be long at all.” The lie was difficult to tell, since it was so big. No one was coming for the poor guys out on the water. No one would be coming until it was far too late. At that point, they’d be retrieving bodies, not survivors, and the inhabitants of the Causeway would have had to watch their friends and loved ones die.

  ******

  Hours passed. Connor fell asleep against his will, binoculars still clasped loosely in his hand, and Amie continued to snore. I couldn’t have slept even if I’d wanted to. More men arrived carrying flashlights. Even more men arrived after that, carrying sea kayaks and what looked like wooden canoes. A couple of them tried to launch into the boiling ocean, but each time anyone tried they were cast back against the shore by the surging waves. At four, or maybe a little later than that, the sun began to rise, casting an eerie gray light across the beach. Even from the car, I could see how tired and hopeless everyone looked, faces pinched, foreheads creased into frowns so deep they looked now permanent.

  Connor was covered in one of the blankets he’d brought from the cupboard in the hallway; Amie was tucked up snugly underneath my duvet. Strangely, I wasn’t cold, even though clouds of fog billowed out of my mouth every time I exhaled, and my hands had turned blue.

  I was considering my options—to go home or to stay—when a rap on my window nearly startled the life out of me; Staring out of the window, straight ahead, out to sea, I hadn’t noticed Michael approaching the car, nor the large piping hot flask he was carry in his hands. I buzzed the window down, doing my best to find a smile for him.

  “Coffee,” he said, as if it were some sort of secret password. “I figured you might need some.”

  “Thank you.”

  He handed the flask to me through the window, sighing. “The other ship, the tanker? It went down an hour ago. They only managed to pull two guys out of the water.”

  “Oh god.”

  “Yeah.” We both remained silent for a
moment. And then he said, “It’s hard, y’know. It makes you angry. If they hadn’t gone to the tanker, if they’d come here instead…”

  “No point in ifs, Michael.” He was right, though. Maybe if the contents of the tanker hadn’t been so valuable, the coast guard would have come to the Sea King first. Big oil companies held so much sway with the government. Owned half of the government. One word in the right person’s ear and all available resources could easily have been diverted to a lost cause, instead of a viable one.

  “The sea’s calming a little. We’re hoping we might be able to get out there soon on some of the smaller boats. Until then, we’re just going to have to sit here and wait. Maybe it’d be better for you to get on home. Either way, whatever happens, people have died out there. With the current as strong as it is, the waves pounding the shore, bodies are gonna start washing up soon. The kids…” he said under his breath.

  “You’re right. I should get them home. I just feel so…useless.”

  Michael couldn’t quite look me in the eye. “You, me and everyone else standing on this dock, Ophelia. It means a lot that you came out, though. To the people of the island. Thank you.”

  “Of course. I haven’t been able to do—”

  A loud snarl of an engine cut me off, ripping through the air. Over the small rise behind the dock, a black truck appeared, charging toward the shoreline. I thought I recognized the vehicle, and Michael’s groan confirmed the identity of the driver.

  “Sully. Perfect.” He clapped his hand against the side of the Land Rover. “I’d better go try and stop him from doing anything stupid,” Michael said. He didn’t sound too convinced that he’d be successful in his task, though. “I’ll see you later, Ophelia.”

  From the sounds of it, he expected me to drive off and take the children home, but I didn’t. I watched as Sully’s truck careened down the slope and skidded to a halt, kicking a spray of sand and tiny pebbles into the air as the tires bit into the beach. He climbed out of the vehicle before it had fully stopped, hair wild, eyes wild, everything about him wild as he stalked toward the ambulance that was still parked on the pier. He broke into a run.

  “Oh, shit.” Michael took off after him, running flat out, trying to cut Sully off, but it didn’t look like he was going to make it. I got out of the car, closing and locking it up behind me, thankful both the children were out cold, and I followed suit, racing toward the pier. Sully reached the ambulance a clear eight seconds before Michael, and he ripped open the driver’s door and pulled the guy who had been on his phone earlier out onto the wooden decking in a heap. I could hear Sully yelling long before I reached them.

  “Fucking asshole! You’re meant to call me. You’re meant to fucking—” He stopped shouting to smash his fist into the guy’s face. The guy, crumpled in a heap on the floor, didn’t stand a chance. Sully landed three more catastrophic blows to his face with one hand, grasping hold of ambulance guy’s shirt in the other. The guy went limp, just as Michael barreled into Sully, taking him to the ground.

  “Get off me, Michael. Get. The. Fuck. Off. Me.” Sully rolled underneath him, wrapping an arm around Michael’s throat, wrapping his legs around his waist and locking them out at his ankles. He squeezed, and Michael, still doing his best to try and pin Sully down, began to turn purple.

  “Jesus, Sully. Let him go!” I didn’t expect my voice to make an ounce of difference to the ex-soldier trying to choke out Michael on the pier, but the moment I shouted his name, Sully froze, his hold falling slack. On his back, panting, he stared up at me like my presence was a complete surprise. Shock was written all over his face. Michael disentangled himself from Sully’s arms and staggered to his feet, growling under his breath.

  “You’re a fucking asshole, Fletcher,” he said, spitting onto the decking. “A real fucking asshole.”

  “Yeah,” Sully agreed, still out of breath and still staring at me. “I know.” He rose quickly, brushing himself off. The ambulance guy he’d just knocked out wasn’t even stirring.

  “Why the hell would you do that?” I snapped, pointing at him. “What do you mean, he was supposed to call you?”

  “I’m voluntary coast guard,” he snarled. “I’m supposed to be out there, saving them.”

  “You don’t have a boat, Sully. How can you be fucking voluntary coast guard without a goddamn boat?” Michael was still red in the face. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, scowling.

  Sully just shook his head, glaring at the other man. He started striding off back toward his truck.

  Michael seemed to take this as a bad sign. “You can’t be serious, Sully. You’re a fucking mad man. You cannot go out on that water with a goddamn Zodiac. It can’t handle the swell. You’ll drown right along with them if you try.”

  “Then I’ll die out on the water with them, won’t I? At least I can say I did try.”

  “You’re not in the army anymore, Fletcher. You don’t have a team of guys to pull this off. You heading out there isn’t noble or admirable. It’s reckless.”

  “Go home, Michael.”

  “Be reasonable, Sully.”

  The people gathered on the dock hadn’t chased after Michael and Sully like I had; they’d remained rooted to the spot, watching the scene unfold with a mix of horror and intrigue on their faces. Now, amongst them, I saw Robert Linneman, a head taller than anyone else, his arm around a much shorter, much plumper woman who was standing at his side—his wife, presumably. Linneman broke free and headed for Sully’s truck, meeting him there.

  “What do you intend to do, Mr. Fletcher?”

  “I intend to go out there and get those guys out of the water. If you don’t like it, I suggest you get out of the way and let me do what I have to do.”

  “On the contrary. I was wondering what I could do to help.”

  I must have heard him wrong. Linneman? Mr. Robert Linneman? The crane-like, stoic, dour man who handled Ronan’s affairs, offering to help Sully with what already sounded like a horrible plan that was unlikely to work. I had no idea what a Zodiac was, but it sure as hell hadn’t impressed Michael.

  Sully opened the back gate of his truck, working quickly, hauling a metal frame down out of the bed. “Best thing you can do to help, Mr. Linneman, is to help keep everybody calm and keep yourself safe on the beach.”

  “With all due respect, Sully, you’re one man, and this doesn’t appear to be a job for just one man. My brother-in-law, Ray, was on the Sea King, and I mean to do my best to make sure he finds himself back on dry land as soon as physically possible.”

  Sully stopped what he was doing and looked at Linneman finally, sizing him up. “All right. But if you go overboard, that’s on you. You copy?”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Then help me get this thing inflated and in the water.” He began unraveling a huge bundle of gray plastic, unrolling it onto the sand.

  I finally understood what he was doing, the kind of craft he was preparing to take out onto the choppy ocean, and my stomach rolled. “Sully? Sully, you’re not thinking straight.” It wasn’t my place to tell him what to do. I shouldn’t care at all, really, but I couldn’t hold my tongue. I’d do the same for anyone. If I thought someone was about to risk their life on a suicide run, then I had to say something. Sully dragged what looked like a small generator out of the back of his truck and put it down in the sand.

  “Sully, please, just stop for a second and think—”

  He took hold of a twine cord attached to the generator and pulled on it, arm raised high over his head, and the thing roared into life, growling, drowning out my words. Sully looked up at me, defiance and madness in his eyes, daring me to do something. It wasn’t like I could tackle him and put an end to his crazy plan; the guy was much taller than me, and his broad frame was packed with muscle. Michael was ripped, and even his attempt to ground him had been rather ridiculous—Sully had looked like he was swatting at a fly.

  “Mr. Linneman, please…” I turned to the other man,
hoping he’d see sense, but Linneman shrugged helplessly.

  “This is probably the most foolhardy thing I’ll ever do in my life, Ophelia, I know it, but sometimes you just have to risk all in the face of uncertain odds. People’s lives depend on us.”

  I could barely hear him over the roar of the wind, and the choking, coughing, rattle of the generator, but I could see that he’d made up his mind, and there was no point in trying to dissuade him. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his wife sniffling into a handkerchief, leaning against the shoulder of another middle aged woman in a house coat, who was trying to comfort her.

  “Look on the bright side, Lang. If this thing goes down and I die, Ronan’s kids will finally get the house. You can stay there and live in it with them forever. That’s something to be cheery about, right?” Sully said, grinning.

  “You’re right. Why don’t you do us all a favor and toss yourself overboard then,” I snapped. “See if I care. Or anyone else on this island for that matter.”

  Sully barked out laughter. “Atta girl.” He attached a hose from the gray rubber to a small black pump at his feet, and the rubber began to inflate rapidly, expanding and growing quicker and quicker until the items in front of him were no longer bizarre unfamiliar shapes in the darkness, but the counterparts of a small, inflatable boat that simply needed lashing together.

  “That’ll never hold,” I heard someone say behind me. “First wave he tries to bank in that will swallow them whole.”

  “Arrogant bastard. Why can’t he listen…?”

  “Someone should call the police.”

  “These Fletchers are all far too ready to die. It’s in their bones.”

  There was no way Sully could have heard them, standing so close to the generator. He didn’t even seem to know they were there. He worked quickly, hands lashing and tying, grabbing extra lines of rope from his truck. He pulled a large metal stand from the vehicle and attached it to the front of the boat he’d just put together in less than five minutes, securing a large, high beam lamp to the prow.