“How about seventy miles?” Patty asked.
Suzy scowled and nobody spoke for the next ten minutes.
Suzy broke the silence. “How many minutes are there in a day?”
Immediately Carey responded, “One thousand four hundred and forty.”
Silence fell again.
At nine o’clock, in desperation, Annie promised a water ration to those who were still awake at midnight. Everyone immediately grew more alert.
Annie urged, “We must keep talking! Think of all those hours we slept this morning, think of the sun we missed!”
Nobody spoke.
Annie said, “We should be thinking positively, and you all know it. Please don’t lie there like lumps. Don’t give up. We must keep talking, we mustn’t go to sleep! Let’s … let’s decide what we’re going to do when we get home.”
Carey immediately stirred. She said, “I’ll never be a Mies van der Rohe, but I’m an architect like a gardener is a gardener.” She had always been secretly amazed that she got paid for doing something that she loved. “I just want to get back to my job.” And family, she added silently, for family talk was forbidden.
Suzy said, “If I can persuade Brett to try …” It was a slip of the tongue, and they all winced. She continued hurriedly, “I thought maybe I’d start a fashion-sportswear boutique. How about you, Annie?”
“You’ll laugh when I tell you,” Annie said. “I’d like to study nutrition…. There, I knew you’d laugh. Seriously, I’ve seen what mileage we got out of our bodies once we no longer took them for granted. Until three days ago we were all in better shape than we’d been for years.”
“Speak for yourself,” Patty said.
“You’ve always been fit,” Annie agreed. “But that’s what interests me now. Looking after the body.”
Patty said, “I’d like to use my sports ability.” She had thought of starting a small athletics school for handicapped children. If Silvana could open a hospital in Fiji, why couldn’t Patty do something equally useful, but closer to home.
Silvana said, “If we get out of this alive, I swear I’ll never let anyone else make me miserable. Arthur used to say that dependency destroys you, and now I see what he meant. You can’t have your own identity if you’re dependent, if you’re part of someone else’s identity.”
Carey sat up. “We’ve all got a new identity. Whether we like it or not, nothing’s going to be the same when they find out, back in Pittsburgh, that we’re killers. Can you imagine how they’ll behave to us at parties? At charity committee meetings? Church gatherings?”
Annie said, “No one back home will ever know. We’ll never tell. It’ll be like Alcoholics Anonymous. We all have everything to lose if anyone tells.”
Patty said, “Suzy didn’t kill anyone, so she won’t have anything to lose. But the rest of us will always be frightened that someone will tell. We’ll always live with that anxiety! We’ll never be able to escape from it, not for the whole of our lives. We’ll always have it around our necks!”
“It’s bound to get out,” Carey agreed wearily. She was staring up to the sky, where huge, tropical stars were scattered like daisies on a black field. She added, “For a start, how do we explain these uniforms? The Waterfall Bay Army Surplus Store?”
“We couldn’t avoid doing what we did,” Annie reminded them.
“Carey’s right,” Silvana sobbed. “They’ll hate us.”
“Only because we’re a female gang of killers,” Annie said bitterly. “Men kill people all the time.”
Patty sat up. “Okay, so we killed some people who were trying to kill us. In self-defense! What we should be worrying about is how we’re going to survive, not what they’re going to say about us at the coffee klatches back in Pittsburgh.”
“It’s not up to us anymore,” Suzy said. “What else can we do? We can’t produce food or water out of thin air.”
“What do sailors do if their ship sinks?” Carey asked.
“At least we’re in a boat, not hanging on to a plank in the water,” Annie said.
“Sometimes sailors survive in lifeboats for weeks,” Patty said.
“Well, how do they do it?” Carey asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Patty said.
“Don’t be stupid, of course we do.”
“Cannibalism,” Patty said.
“For God’s sake, be serious,” Carey said irritably.
Patty spoke faster than usual. “Sailors have always done it. It’s still legal at sea. Apparently, you get used to the idea very fast. The little cabin boy always gets eaten first—even if they have to kill him—and the huge, beefy first mate survives to the last.”
“You’re not serious?” Carey asked, though she did not believe for one moment that Patty was.
“How come you know all that stuff?” Suzy asked.
“Charley told me,” Patty said. “Nexus had a problem, a few years back, with a prospecting team in some Australian desert … Gibson, I think. Seven Nexus guys got lost in the desert and only two came out.”
“I remember that,” Carey said.
Patty said, “What you don’t know is that a rescue team found five bodies buried in the sand; they still had their heads, hands and feet—all the skinny parts.” In spite of the steaming heat, Patty shivered in the dark. “Charley had to hush it up. He had a lot of legal stuff to read up on, over one weekend. There was a book on some British sailors who survived by cannibalism. That fascinated Charley. He read some of it out loud to me. I thought it sounded pretty repulsive at the time.”
“I find it pretty repulsive now,” Carey said. “And I don’t believe it’s legal. You misunderstood what Charley said.”
“Cannibalism certainly is legal,” Patty insisted. “And not only at sea, Charley said.”
“Yes,” Silvana agreed. “Napoleon’s soldiers ate each other in the retreat from Moscow in 1812, and there have always been rumors about Stalingrad in 1940.”
“And starvation situations on polar expeditions,” Patty added.
“Prospectors did it in the West,” Carey said. “During the gold rush, some guy called the Colorado Man Eater ate five of his friends in a blizzard.”
Suzy yawned. “I hope he had indigestion afterward.”
“That’s right!” Annie said. “Remember those early settlers going West who were snowed in at the Donner Pass and had to eat their dead to live through the winter?”
“Suzy, sit up!” Carey said. “Keep awake or I’ll pinch you. We must sleep in the daytime or that heat will drive us crazy.”
Silvana said, “Remember when that plane carrying a South American soccer team crashed in the Andes? To save their lives, the survivors ate the corpses of their friends.”
Annie nodded. “They were given Communion as soon as they were rescued.”
“What’s so terrible about being eaten, once you’re dead?” Patty asked quietly.
“But none of us is dead,” Suzy said. “So why are we talking about cannibalism?” She yawned again.
SATURDAY, MARCH 16
The sun peered above the black horizon, casting a faint light on the white shell floating on the dark water, still encircled by twenty-foot sharks.
Cautiously, Annie sat up, very stiff after a third restless night at sea. Suzy was talking loudly in her sleep, barking disjointed words. The women had taken off their hoods to sleep, but maybe they should have left them on, Annie thought, maybe then they wouldn’t wake at sunrise.
Annie stared out at the glittering water. They had two pint containers of water and a bit of dried fish. They had no idea of their position. They were lost at sea. She thought of the interminable hours that lay ahead, of the suffocating heat, of the enervating humidity so high that it was like trying to breathe in a steam-filled bathroom.
All day, they suffered under that inexorable glare.
* * *
At sundown, the suffering merely changed.
The yellow moon illuminated water that shone lik
e black oil, endless to the horizon whichever way they looked. The only sound was the soft murmur of the water under the keel and an occasional soft splash as one of the sharks rolled.
“I can’t stand much more of this,” gasped Silvana.
“Just a little longer,” Annie urged. “By now we must be clear of the southern tip of Paui. We must have covered, say, thirty miles in three days.”
Lethargically steering with the oar, Patty said, “We’ve got to keep ourselves occupied or we’ll just pass out. We should be thinking what we’ll do if … Okay, Annie, when we get back.”
Huddled in the bottom of the boat, Carey said, “We’re going to get revenge. We’re going to see that that bastard Raki is punished for what he’s done.”
“But we have no proof,” Silvana said. “It will be our word against his.”
“They’ll have to listen to the wives of five Nexus executives—all with the same story,” Patty said.
Suzy said, “The media will do all the work for us. Just wait till I get in front of all those mikes—ABC, CBS, NBC …”
Silvana wasn’t convinced. “Even if the whole world knows, it won’t make any difference. There’ll perhaps be some political argument, but nothing will alter on Paui—not where business is concerned. We’ll just be an embarrassment to Nexus. Nexus won’t be able to do business on Paui anymore.”
“To hell with Nexus,” Carey said.
“Maybe Nexus already knows what happened,” Suzy said optimistically. In her heart, she knew Brett had escaped, but she didn’t like to mention this to the other women, who had all seen their men brutally killed. Suzy nursed her hope to her heart. She was going to make it up to Brett. She’d even give him kids. Maybe the steady, reliable, boring sort made the best fathers …
“If Nexus knew what happened, they would have found us by now,” Patty said.
They all fell silent, each remembering the reality of their position. They had no food left and only one pint of water. That would only last them one more day.
Patty croaked, “We’re going to die tonight. All of us. I can feel it. The boat will overturn while we’re asleep.”
Suzy started to cry. “I don’t care,” she whimpered. “I want to die. I can’t stand this thirst any longer. We’re going to die of thirst before morning.”
Carey was too exhausted to cry, but she was thinking she couldn’t stand the pain in her legs much longer. Her deep jungle ulcers now smelled offensive as well as being painful.
Silvana said, “Nothing seems real anymore. The night isn’t real and the sun isn’t real. It’s like a nightmare. None of you seem real. How do I know those sharks are real?” She, too, started to sob.
In spite of all their efforts, shortly after midnight all the women were asleep except for Annie, who was on watch and steering. But was there any point to being on watch? As Annie pinched her arms to keep awake, she felt the same desperate despair as the other women. Suddenly, she knew that they wouldn’t survive.
In the dim starshine, Annie could just see the darker outline of somebody moving in the boat, but even though the boat was so small she couldn’t see who it was.
Annie heard the unmistakable sound of somebody drinking, somebody lapping water like a dog.
Someone was stealing the last container of water.
Annie yelled, “Stop that!” She prodded Patty, asleep at her feet.
Patty sat up.
“Go check the water container in the locker, Patty, and bring it to me,” Annie said.
Without a word, Patty crawled forward.
Annie thought, She’s taking a long time to grab it. Why?
Again, Annie heard the sound of someone lapping water.
“Patty!” she yelled.
Patty crawled back over the sleeping bodies and handed Annie the container. She said, “For God’s sake, hang on to that thing, Annie. I don’t trust myself with it.”
“I heard you drink!” Annie said sharply, shaking the container. It seemed to feel a little lighter than it should.
“Well, I didn’t!” snapped Patty. “But may I ask why you want it?”
“I’m responsible for the water,” Annie snapped back. Two weeks of responsibility suddenly seemed enough. She said, “Look, I’m fed up with being leader. Why don’t you take a turn? See what it feels like.”
“Oh, shut up. Don’t wake me up again.” Patty settled down, licking her dry, cracked lips with her dry tongue. Her throat felt like sandpaper; her last sip of water had been at sundown.
Annie felt her resolution sway slightly. Would it matter? Who would know? She deserved it, didn’t she? She was on watch, while they were sleeping. Inside Annie’s head, a friendly, comforting voice agreed with her. Annie felt reassured, she felt a little light-headed, as if an invisible power were gently soothing her conscience, absolving her.
Annie shipped the oar with care. With both hands, she clutched the bamboo container to her breast. Stealthily, she prized off the top of the container and tilted it to her lips. Just one sip …
She couldn’t stop. Panting for breath, she realized what she had done.
Again, she lifted the container to her burning mouth. She’d say that it had only been half-full.
Sharply, Annie lifted her head.
Someone else was awake.
Someone was moving.
That someone might see Annie, silhouetted against the sky, drinking from the container.
Annie waited. Again, she heard the lapping sound of someone drinking.
But Annie had the only container of water … so someone must be drinking seawater from the bailer!
“Wake up, everyone!” Annie slammed the top back on the water container and kicked Patty, hard.
A groan was followed by a sleepy “Wassa matter?”
“Get forward and check, Patty! Someone’s drinking seawater!” Annie croaked. “Stop her! Quickly!”
Patty moved to the next figure curled in the bottom of the dinghy. The head turned away as Patty’s fingers touched her cheek, but not before Patty had felt wet lips.
Quickly, Patty shook the shoulder. She yelled, “Suzy! Sit up! Stop that!”
Huddled in the fetal position, Suzy refused to budge. She pretended to be asleep even when Patty kicked her.
Patty crawled back to Annie. “It was Suzy.”
Annie was astonished. “But she knows how dangerous it is to drink seawater!”
Patty shrugged her shoulders.
Both women again heard the lapping noise.
Patty yelled, “Put that bailer down, Suzy.”
A small voice wailed, “I couldn’t help it, you guys.”
In the dark, Patty crawled forward and tried to wrench the bailer from Suzy’s hands. Suzy put up a struggle.
Patty yelled, “Carey! Suzy’s drinking seawater. And I think Annie’s stealing our water ration. Wake up!”
Carey quickly woke.
The boat was rocking. Annie and Suzy were both crying.
Carey yelled, “Give it to me, Annie! Or I’ll shove you overboard!”
Whimpering, guilty, as obedient as a child who’s caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Annie handed over the water container.
Carey groped for some rattan; she bound it round and round the container, then knotted it tightly. She said, “Nobody will be able to open this without our being able to see it. Annie, you bitch, you’ll get no water tomorrow.”
Annie wept with mortification. She thought of middle-aged shoplifters saying in court, “I don’t know what came over me.” Annie knew how they felt.
She was bitterly ashamed of herself.
SUNDAY, MARCH 17
At the end of their fourth night in the dinghy, the blood-red sun slowly crept over the edge of the black sea.
Everyone in the little boat was already awake. Nobody was speaking to Annie. Carey was still trying to find out how much seawater Suzy had drunk, but Suzy only whimpered incoherently.
Tolerance and friendship had vanished overnight, with th
e water drunk by Annie. Now distrust was clearly visible in their weary, sunken eyes.
Tormented by thirst and raw, open sores, crammed into a tiny space, unable to move without rocking the boat, adrift on the empty sea under the searing sun, the women faced a slow, agonizing death from thirst and exposure, or a relatively quick but revolting death if a shark overturned the boat.
They sat in silence, listening to the faint sounds of the glassy water.
Patty gasped, “For God’s sake, Carey, don’t tap on the side of the boat, it’s driving me crazy.”
Carey took no notice; dull-eyed, she was watching Suzy, who lay moaning in the bottom of the boat. They were all condemned to listen to Suzy’s monotonous babble.
“… She must have been asking for it. No, no, no! … If she doesn’t like it, she can always leave … No, no, no! … They all like a little rough stuff … What’s sexy about … Ruptured liver … Broken nose …”
Patty rasped, “Carey, stop her or I’ll gag her.”
Carey turned to look with hatred at Patty. “I’ll kick you out of this boat, if you try.”
They glared at each other, then Patty backed down. “Sorry,” she muttered.
Annie caught Patty’s eye and realized that Patty also knew that the exhausted, half-dead women in the boat now had very little chance.
Patty looked away from Annie. Every woman in the boat was deliberately ignoring Annie.
Another day of unendurable heat and thirst.
After the midday sip of water, Patty looked at Suzy, curled up in the bow babbling.
Patty croaked to Annie, “Those boys in the Andes. How did they justify it?”
“They felt they had a moral duty to stay alive, by any means at their disposal,” Annie said. “They argued that once one of them was dead the soul had left his body and was in heaven with God. The body, which the soul had discarded, was consequently just a carcass—just meat, like steak in a supermarket.”
“So that was their moral let-out.” Patty nodded wearily.
Annie added, “They believed God wanted them to live or they would have been killed in the accident. They believed that God had provided them with means to stay alive—the bodies of their friends.”
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