by Chris Thrall
The young Moroccans stopped to collect their clothes and books from the locker at the ferry port before continuing on to the yacht. Ahmed pulled up at the harbor entrance.
“Are you happy with the plan?” He reached inside his shirt and retrieved the charcoal taken from the fireplace earlier.
“It’s good,” Mohamed replied, shoving out his chin.
Ahmed spat on one of the charred lumps and began rubbing it over his friend’s face and clothes until he truly did look like Rambo. Lighting a match, “Close your eyes,” he ordered, singeing Mohamed’s fringe and eyebrows.
“Achk! Smells awful!”
“That’s just what we want. Now do the same for me.”
A blackened and scorched Ahmed drove along the quayside.
“Okay, look frantic!”
They leapt out and slammed the truck’s doors, then scooted down the ladder to the exquisite wooden boat and jumped on deck making as much noise as possible. “Friend, friend!” Ahmed banged his fist on the cabin roof. “Wake up! Quick, quick!”
After a brief commotion, the young pirate appeared in the companionway, the fear of Shaitan evident in his rodent-like eyes.
“Mahour?”
“Come, come, come! There’s been a fire at the farm!’ Ahmed screamed. ‘Your friends are hurt!”
The boy didn’t argue, but climbing the ladder, he hesitated and looked back at the boat.
“Don’t worry. My brother will stay and keep guard,” said Ahmed.
They hopped into the truck, and Ahmed sped off down the dockside, continuing to spin the yarn as the terrified boy stared dead ahead.
Upon reaching the outskirts of the city, Ahmed turned into a deserted side street.
“Damn!”
A cluster of garbage cans blocked the route.
“Okay, we need to move them.”
The boy jumped at the task.
Ahmed leant over and pulled the passenger door shut, then shoved the gear stick into reverse.
“So long, sucker!” he hollered, backing out with tires screeching.
- 70 -
Upon waking, Hans knew something monumental took place the previous evening. In his groggy state it took a moment to piece together events, and then it all came flooding back . . .
The fish! The glorious fish!
He pushed up onto his haunches, half expecting the dorado to have disappeared during the night. But there it was, and unbelievably its majestic color had returned from the dead.
Hans wasted no time setting about the fish with the filleting knife. He cut out its eyeballs and popped one in his mouth, crushing the chewy orb and reveling as fluid ran down his parched throat. He held out the other one for Jessica, but she wasn’t keen to indulge. Hans downed it, figuring his daughter would fare better with the succulent fillets he intended to carve from this plentiful offering.
After rewinding the fishing line, Hans decapitated and gutted the dorado, delighted to find one of their lost hooks lodged in the fish’s mouth. He briefly contemplated whether he could put the head and innards to good use, then dumped the lot over the side. A pool of blood, scales and slime had accumulated in the depression made by his knees in the rubber floor, so he mopped up the mess with the sponge and rinsed it in the sea.
The chopping board was only long enough to support half of the fish’s body. Holding the fatter front end firmly against the wood, Hans was about to start cleaving meat from its bones when something struck the underside of the raft with a hefty whack.
He froze. What the hell was that? Dorado? Turtle? Dolphin?
The American placed the knife back in its scabbard, put on the diving mask and hung over the side. Nothing – only the wandering ecosystem of minnows, barnacles and weed growing ever bigger.
Hans was about to lift his head when a torpedo-shaped bulk glided past just feet away. He shot upright, his biggest fear confirmed.
Shark!
In that moment the minimal security the raft offered petered into insignificance. Hans suddenly felt utterly vulnerable. His hands trembled, and despite the morning warmth, a chill crept through him.
Sitting in silence, he contemplated the untold danger posed by the eleven-foot-long predator prowling below, knowing it be an oceanic whitetip, responsible for the most attacks on man, particularly shipwrecked sailors. Hans had read that, as a survival instinct, sharks initially bump potential prey to see if it puts up a defense. This was worrying enough . . .
But what if a great white appears?
At the top of the food chain, these impulsive brutes feared nothing, shooting up from the deep to attack without warning, even targeting small craft out of curiosity or anger. Just one brush of a man-eater’s teeth against the raft would signal game over, the two of them treading water until exhaustion took hold or the shark closed in for the kill.
I can’t let that happen.
Looking at Jessica and then at the filleting knife, Hans wondered if he had the courage to end it quickly for her if they ended up in the sea. He tried to put the thought out of his mind, but other dilemmas replaced it.
How will this affect the fishing?
He had strived so hard to set up the tackle and finally land a dorado. Would the shark’s presence scare them away? Would it rip every fish he caught from the hook?
Hans decided not to mention the sighting to Jessica and strapped the mask back on. Scanning beneath, he could not see the giant fish, and after minutes elapsed he made the decision that, shark or no shark, life had to continue and he must focus on the here and now.
As a precaution Hans retrieved the carbon dioxide inflation cylinder. Redundant, it hung in the water in a plastic canvas holder, its red-painted steel covered in algae. He worried the raft’s silhouette might be mistaken for a turtle from below, the cylinder and ballast pockets the creature’s finning limbs, proving too tempting for their sharp-toothed visitor. Nothing could be done about the ballast pockets, but he was able to lash the cylinder out of harm’s way using cord from the ditch kit.
Hans returned to filleting the dorado, wishing there was a way to get rid of the waste other than simply throwing it overboard. For the time being he sealed the fins and bones in the Poly Bottle, having placed the handheld flares and smoke flare in a ziplock bag. It was only to buy time while he mulled over how best to dispose of the fish’s waste parts.
Isn’t there a period when sharks don’t feed?
Despite having to eat the dorado’s flesh raw, Hans thought it was delicious. Moreover, as he crammed the juicy chunks into his mouth as fast as humanly possible, it satiated a hunger way past the point of starvation. Even when his shrunken stomach was full to the point of painful, Hans’ mind and body craved for more. A drizzle of lime juice would not have gone amiss, but as it was, neither of them complained. It was quite simply the best meal ever.
Hans made sure to keep some of the fish back to eat later and for use as bait. As a test he cut fine slithers from the remaining fillet and strung them across the canopy to see if they would dry cure. He figured if he could catch two dorados a week, preserve some and keep the solar still working, they might well hold out long enough to reach the shipping lanes.
To eke out their limited water supply, Hans began adding a quarter ratio of seawater, knowing from reading survival stories it would do them no harm. He ripped his T-shirt in two and dunked both halves in the sea, then wrung them out and wrapped one piece around Jessica’s head in a crude bandanna and the other around his own. He hoped that by keeping themselves cool, they wouldn’t need to drink as much.
Before the afternoon was out, Hans made sure to ditch the dorado’s inedible parts, believing sharks fed at dusk and dawn. To test the theory, he put on the mask and watched as the scraps sunk into the darkening blue. A couple of daring minnows ventured downwards to tug briefly at the unexpected feast before darting back to the security of the raft’s seaweed skirt. The dorados had vanished, as had the whitetip.
Hans spent the rest of the day making sure th
ere was slack in the solar still’s leash and encouraging Jessica to read passages from the survival manual. She never complained of boredom, but he felt it best to keep her occupied nonetheless.
His efforts proved futile, though. After significant prompting to read a line, she would let the book fall into her lap. Hans wondered if this was her way of dealing with the situation and worried inner turmoil might be wreaking havoc behind her passive façade.
That evening a two-foot-high dorsal fin with trademark white tip sliced through the water just feet from where Hans sat staring out to sea. Despite his previous resolution to ignore the shark’s presence, now darkness would soon reign the almighty fear returned. There was no telling how the creature could behave during the small hours.
Hans drifted off into a nightmare so vivid he began to wail aloud. Visions of the shark attacking the raft repeated in his mind, his efforts to fight it off with all manner of random objects failing each time. Every so often the shark did nudge the raft, waking Hans in fright. He would lie there in a cold sweat, his face ashen, taking an age to slip back into yet more tortured sleep.
As the sun began to rise, gruesome images continued to plague Hans’ mind. In a moment of sheer terror he pictured the shark closing in on Jessica. “Papa!” he heard her scream, the beast wrenching its ferocious jaws from side to side, shredding rubber and canvas and ripping her tiny body apart.
Hans opened his good eye.
“Noooo!”
Blood splattered the raft.
“No, no, no!”
The shark had indeed taken his darling baby girl while he lazed useless in his sleeping bag, her lurid red life force running down the canopy in horrifying globules.
In the half world between sleep and consciousness, Hans fought to make sense of it all, unable to believe he had lost the one thing he held dear, left alone on an ocean he despised. Yet as his mind caught up, it slowly dawned on him the raft was intact – no gallons of ocean pouring in where the shark had left its mark.
In fact, there was no mark.
Hans peeled back Jessica’s sleeping bag to find her lying there, eyes open but unhurt, the blood only rust-colored acid exploding from the strobe light’s batteries following their prolonged exposure to seawater.
- 71 -
Days turned into weeks. A benevolent monotony took hold of raft life as routine set in and daily events became ever more predictable. None more so than daybreak, when the violet veil of the retreating night sky merged with Ra’s ruddy halo, setting fire to the horizon as the sun god soared into the unfolding azure. The orange tent aglow, Hans paddled the raft round so the entrance faced east, remaining in his sleeping bag to rejoice in the spectacle and soak up the warmth tracking across the wave tops toward them.
What would I give for a coffee and a cigarette?
Hans had quit smoking years ago.
He unzipped his sleeping bag and began mopping up the water that somehow managed to find its way into their inflatable home. Having pumped up the tubes, noticing they needed more air each time, he streamed the solar still on its leash.
Most days the weather remained the same, the sun scorching down to bleach the raft’s fading orange canvas, a gentle breeze producing a slight swell under a rich-blue sky. When the wind did pick up, Hans brought the solar still on board and lashed it to the right of the doorway, where it worked almost as well. Besides, from his rough calculations Hans reckoned that Eurus, the East Wind, had blown them to within seventy-two hours of the shipping lanes.
Jessica always slept much longer. Hans woke his little girl gently, offering her an inch of water in the Disney mug before checking her over for sores. She continued to fare well, though increasingly withdrawn. He made a mental note to trim her nails as they now looked more like claws.
Hans’ own health was a constant worry. He must have lost four stone in weight, his ribs poking through the skin like a prisoner in a concentration camp. The gash in his temple was badly infected. For a while, after they had started to eat fish, the pain receded, and he hoped his body was healing itself. Only the agony now returned tenfold, searing through his entire right side, the open wound growing steadily bigger, along with a trench of putrid-smelling pus. Hans knew gangrene had set in.
More sharks arrived, the growing pack of dorados noticeably jittery and spending longer periods away from the raft. Catching them proved increasingly difficult. Several other species joined the roaming aquarium, including two pilot fish, who had switched allegiance from their white-tipped masters. Hans soon figured their place in the opera, for spectacular in shiny black-and-turquoise-striped costumes and unwavering in their attachment to the raft they were obviously talent scouts.
“There’s a good deal of it down there,” he cackled. “They’re putting on quite a show!”
In white-on-black polka dots, the hilariously ugly triggerfish were a delight to watch, so graceful in the water, flapping up to the doorway, pirouetting, looping and swanning around one another like an act in a ballet.
“Ha-ha! Swan Lake!” Hans appreciated the display’s hidden sentiment.
The frequent knocks against the raft were less delightful. At daybreak the dorados would begin butting the floor or swimming alongside and smashing their tails into the tubing in an attempt to dislodge the gooseneck barnacles. Hans soon learned to distinguish between these opportunistic forays and the solid punches of a shark. The latter started at dusk and continued throughout the night. At first the knocks terrified Hans. In pain and discomfort, he would lie awake for hours anticipating the next blow, convinced it would sink them, their bodies shredded in a feeding frenzy. But after a time he realized that anxiety was sapping his remaining energy, and as the worst had yet to happen, he made a firm decision to compartmentalize his fear.
After this, nighttime became something Hans looked forward to, a welcome escape from the constant attentions of raft survival and the sweltering heat and lethargy accompanying it. When the sun dropped through the horizon, sucking in tangerine, magenta, crimson and cobalt sprays, he sought solace in the stars and moon, reassured in the knowledge the silver-studded backdrop was the exact same one experienced by all the sailors that had ever been in this predicament.
For several nights Hans chuckled to himself as he pictured Valkyries carrying the souls of slain Vikings skyward to Valhalla. The Norsemen would slash away at the moon’s waning crescent with their battle-axes, only for “Máni” to retaliate, growing fatter in time-honored tradition, and all the while Wagner’s “Ride” would blare across the starlit stage.
Hans often thought about food . . . Herb-crusted filet mignon. New England lobster rolls. Chicken with lemon. Marmalade-glazed ham. Even dishes he never ate, like a crème brûlée dessert, always preferring the cheese board himself.
Reveling in unadulterated escapism, he ran through scenarios in his mind, such as trips to the store to buy ingredients for home-cooked treats . . .
Unhooking his car keys from the peg, rolling toward the mall, finding a parking space, strolling isle by isle with the shopping cart, selecting the necessary items – king prawns, coconut milk, coriander, cumin, ginger, lime leaves and a bottle of Cape red.
Each meal would be different, his imagination stretching to factor in every detail no matter how trivial, to make it even more real . . .
A bright summer’s day, the smell of newly mown grass, the price of gas on the station’s billboards, the food packaging, the store assistant’s name badge, perfume or aftershave, announcements over the public address system, the balance of his bank account as he pulled his plastic card from the neat leather wallet JJ gave him for Christmas.
It got to the point where Hans became concerned about the effect his visualizing might be having on his health. Was he expending energy or risking a stomach ulcer by lying there night after night, mouth salivating, fixating on unobtainable delicacies?
He tried to train his thought to other scenarios – playing softball with JJ in the park, teaching Jessica kickboxing,
“tiggling” Mommy’s ribs until she screamed aloud and punched him on the arm – but the joy of reliving these treasured memories was not enough to turn his attention from food.
On the rare occasion Hans caught a dorado, he exploited the offering for all it was worth, no longer indulging in only its delicious flesh and juicy eyeballs but devouring internal organs – brains, kidneys, liver – without reservation. He began to crave offal and intestine as his body cried out for variation in a quest to absorb vitamins. One female he landed burst with rich golden eggs. Hans scooped them into his mouth without reservation, but Jessica remained indifferent, glassy eyed and dour.
Adapting to life as an aquatic cave dweller, Hans began to reflect on the fastidious nature of Western society and the decadent lifestyle choices that had become the norm. People no longer wanted to know how their meat came to be vacuum packed and sitting on a supermarket shelf – indeed it was de rigueur to shun the mere consideration of such repugnant nonsense. Folks refused to watch interesting wildlife documentaries in case they had to witness an animal’s untimely but natural demise. Yet the exact same folks willingly shoved chicken burgers under the grill and watched mind-numbing game shows . . .
What has the world come to? Those indigenous communities – they had it all in perspective. Didn’t Native Americans use every part of a slain buffalo, including its teeth? The skull as an altar, horns to make cups and spoons, brains to tan hides for teepee covers, clothes, shoes, bags, belts. Oh yes! Those folks had life in order. No pink carpet slippers and a cupboard full of cleaning products for them.
Hans would pick half-digested flying fish and whitebait from the dorado’s gut, rinse them in the sea and wolf them down. He cut the top and bottom off an empty water can and secured a sock to one end using Penny’s wire. It was perfect for scooping krill and globules of plankton from the water, a ready-prepared seafood cocktail. When all other avenues were exhausted, Hans would pull in the man-overboard line and scrape off the gooseneck barnacles that had formed on it. He tried to tempt Jessica into eating one – to no avail.