by JE Gurley
The wave reached the resort, slamming into the structure with the force of a thousand sledgehammers swung by a thousand John Henrys impacting simultaneously. Thin wooden walls exploded inward, becoming kindling. The veranda collapsed into the raging surf. The beach side of the building dropped several feet, as the sand washed away beneath it. The roof cracked; then split apart a few feet from Josh’s legs. The section to which Josh clung fell away. The sudden lurch as the roof slewed sideways caught Josh unaware. His pittance of a meal, chips and fruit, exploded from his mouth. The vile taste of bile mixed with dirty salt water as his mouth filled with ocean and sand. The roof crashed into the surf. The rest of the resort became a disjointed raft of planks and wooden furniture, which was quickly swept beneath the water. His small piece of roof became a raft, swept inland by the crest of the wave.
He had surfed Galveston’s beaches a few times and considered himself a decent novice, but nothing had prepared him for the wildest ride of his life. In a dizzying, water-borne journey across the island, he witnessed buildings being smashed, power poles snap, and trees uprooted like plucked daisies. He caught the occasional glimpse of horrified people run down by the powerful wave and tossed aside like litter. The wave carried him westward along the length of the island. Through the wall of rain, he glimpsed an island reduced in width by half and by two-thirds in length. Blossom Village, the airport, and the entire eastern end of the island were gone, submerged beneath the waves.
His tiny raft rolled in the waves, dunking him repeatedly beneath the water, but releasing himself from the net would mean his death. He held his breath as long as he could and came up sputtering each time the raft righted. The wave reduced in height and gradually lost strength as it moved inland. Josh waited for the inevitable crash. His heart raced as he glimpsed a tree rushing toward him. In a brief flash of lightning, the tree moved, revealing a large eye that blinked twice. He braced himself as best he could, but the impact with the creature tore him loose from the net and the roof. He rolled beneath the waves and struck something solid. The impact crushed his chest and forced the air from his lungs. He fought for the surface, but in the dark, beneath the roiling water, he couldn’t distinguish up from down. A strange calm came over him as his body settled beneath the waves. He had heard drowning was almost as good a way to die as freezing. In the cold water, he was doing both at the same time. He closed his eyes and embraced the inevitable.
5
Oct. 24, Grand Cayman Island, Caribbean –
Hurricane Clive struck Grand Cayman a glancing blow at two forty-five on the morning of the 24th. Even so, the devastation was enormous. Wind-driven waves surged inland, swamping houses and piling boats into piles of stacked driftwood. George Town suffered eighty deaths with over two hundred reported injuries. More would surely follow as the day progressed. The monetary damage would eventually reach seven-hundred-million dollars, but when balanced against the cost in lives lost and disruption, it paled in comparison.
Ron Germaine’s schooner, the Miss Lucy, had ridden out the storm anchored in deep water on the leeward side of the island. It had suffered damage both from the hard voyage and during the storm. A cracked jib spar, a lost sail, some loose planking along the bow, and damaged rails would be costly to repair, but he had been very lucky. He chuckled as he considered his luck. His ship had survived and his crew were safe, but his passengers, all three of them, were gone, devoured by sea monsters. He hadn’t reported their deaths to the authorities yet. He hadn’t drunk enough scotch for that, but he knew he would eventually have to. He briefly considered reporting them as simply missing during the storm, but lying usually brought more problems than the truth, even one as unbelievable as sea monsters.
Bodden, his mate, sat on the hatch cover staring into the water. He had said very little since returning to port. Though this wasn’t unusual for the taciturn Bodden, Germaine sensed some deeper reason for his silence.
“What do you think of all this, Chance?” he asked.
Bodden lifted his head and glared at Germaine from beneath the brim of his battered cap. His dark eyes bore the same haunted look Germaine had once observed in a man picked up after twenty days at sea alone on a raft.
“That storm was evil.”
“Evil?” Germaine stared at his mate, but the look of fear on Bodden’s face indicated he was dead serious.
Bodden nodded. “She was no simple blow. She brought devils up from the Deep. Bad luck will follow us.”
“Bad luck?” Germaine waved his hands around. “What do you call this? Three passengers dead, my ship damaged, and the whole damn island almost wiped out.”
“No, I mean bad luck for us. We escaped death last night, but it will not stop. It will come for us. We will all die.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Germaine yelled, fed up with his mate’s melancholy. “You want to jinx us?” Predictions of doom didn’t sit well with him. It was like calling down the wrath of God.
Germaine glanced at the video disc he had taken from McCoy’s monitor. The quality was poor, but with it, he might manage to keep the authorities from arresting him and impounding his boat. It probably didn’t matter. Once the story of the deaths circulated, he would be out of business anyway. No one would ever charter a death ship.
“Gather up McCoy’s and the other passengers’ belongings. If I report it now with all the commotion, the authorities might not investigate too thoroughly.” He didn’t really believe that, but he needed to snap Bodden out of his funk.
Bodden rose from his seat and went below. Germaine stared at the island. Most of the trees were now broken stubs sticking up from a land scoured by waves. Once pristine Seven Mile Beach was littered with debris, and the houses nearest the shore were gone, swept from their foundations and carried inland by the water. He hadn’t seen his home yet. It was on the east side of George Town on a low rise. Hopefully, it had survived the worst of the devastation.
He glanced down at the disc in his hand, sighed, and dropped it over the side. It didn’t sink, but it would float ashore and become just one more piece of flotsam no one would notice. No one would believe his story, even with a barely viewable video. It would be better to take his chances.
After Bodden had gathered the dead men’s things, they lowered the launch. He left the other two crewmen aboard to tidy up. Germaine had Bodden land the small craft in George Town Harbour near the town. The masts of sunken sailing yachts protruded from the water like a drowned forest. Buoys torn from nets, bits of flotsam and jetsam from sunken or beached boats, broken boards, and bags of trash littered the surface. The Port Facility building was gone. Only a scar of rubble remained. The Bayshore Mall and the Pier Market, where tourists had once sought bargains, were piles of shattered brick and twisted steel. Germaine shook his head in disgust, as he watched one young man grab an armload of blue jeans from one of the few standing shelves and run off. Even in a calamity, looters profited.
“I need to check on me mum,” Bodden said.
Germaine, too wrenched by the scene of destruction, nodded. He watched Bodden make his way through the piles of debris until he disappeared, and then began walking up Harbour Street. Parts of the road were missing, crumbled into the sea. Of Elmslie United Church, all that remained was a steeple lying on its side. Germaine thought it a profane desecration of the holy. He resisted the impulse to ring the church bell to toll the dead. Fort George, a small colonial-era fort constructed of native coral and limestone in 1790, was an historical ruin, partially demolished by a developer a few years earlier, but the fort had weathered the storm better than most modern buildings. It still stood sentinel on the shore guarding the remnants of George Town as it had for two-and-a quarter centuries.
The streets of George Town were clogged with rescue vehicles and hastily erected first aid stations. Survivors sat on the curb waiting their turn to see the deluged medical personnel. On the way to his home, Germaine passed men, women, and children with broken bones, open wounds, and battered bodies. Al
l had the hollow-eyed lost look most survivors of a catastrophe exhibited. There was amazingly very little talking. Aside from some low moans from the injured, a few children crying, and the soft scuffle of feet shuffling on the sidewalks, the city was eerily silent.
He also passed sad rows of bodies covered with sheets. Grieving families huddled around the bodies of lost loved ones. Even their sobbing was soft, as if in deference to others’ grief. Some lifted sheet after sheet to find their missing among the dead. It was a heart-rending sight, made even more horrible by the fact that he recognized some of the families of the dead and many of the injured. A few glanced up at him, but said nothing. What could they say? How could he reply? He was alive. Their loved ones weren’t. Red Cross workers drew blood from donors for the injured in alleys beneath tarpaulins slung between shattered buildings.
He spotted Orlando Mason, the island’s Royal Cayman Island Police Chief Inspector, wearing his uniform jacket over his pajamas. He was barefoot. The Chief Inspector stood in front of the courthouse directing the rescue crews to several of the numerous collapsed buildings. Every now and then, a shout rang out as a survivor was pulled from the wreckage, but such joyous shouts were few and far between.
From his boat, at first glance, the town had been spared the worst of the storm, but looks were deceiving. Buildings that appeared untouched from a distance revealed empty interiors upon closer inspection, their contents, even entire upper floors, ripped from them by the powerful surge and deposited hundreds of yards away like garbage on a heap. He held out little hope for his house.
He stumbled past families dragging waterlogged furniture from flooded homes and past automobiles overturned by the storm, slowly growing numb to the enormity of the desolation. The Annex Field was now a small pond. He had watched many soccer matches there on warm Sunday afternoons. It would be some time before such an event happened again. The Butterfield Roundabout on Sound Road was clogged with stalled vehicles. Two policemen directed a bulldozer as it shoved automobiles aside to clear a path for emergency vehicles. He winced as the dozer rolled a new Mercedes onto its side and ground it along the pavement.
Sound Road seemed to be the boundary for the storm surge. Beyond it, most of the damage came from high winds rather than water. He was surprised to see his home still standing. The rise upon which he had built it was just high enough to avoid the worst of the storm surge. Some roof tiles were missing, and two shutters had been ripped off by the winds. His satellite dish antenna was folded like a taco. The plywood he had secured over the front window before leaving was gone. A broken limb from the sixty-year-old Poinciana tree that he had nurtured for twenty-five years had smashed the front window. A carpet of its red-orange blossoms and leaves littered the walk.
Inside, only the front room had suffered damage from wind-driven rain through the broken window. Water dripped into the sink from a leak in the roof. He had worked up a sweat on the long walk. He took a Kalik beer from the refrigerator and twisted off the top. The electricity was off and the beer was warm, but it quenched his thirst. He sat in his favorite leather chair in the front room, staring out the broken window. Eventually, he would have to spread a tarp over the roof and put up more plywood over the window, but for now, he just relaxed. Slowly, his lids slid over his eyes. The beer slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. The tensions of the last twenty-four hours had drained him, emotionally and physically. Sleep wouldn’t solve his problems, but his body needed it. After a few minutes, he snored softly.
* * * *
He awoke just before sunset. Refreshed from his long nap, he set about making his house weather tight. He secured a fresh plywood board from the garage over the front window with screws. Next, he dragged out his ladder, scaled the roof, and draped a plastic tarp over the hole above the kitchen, securing its edges with boards and nails. He mopped the water from the front room’s wooden floor and hauled the soaked throw rug to the rubbish bin. His couch and one of the chairs were soaked, but he hoped they might dry out before they mildewed. Afterwards, he opened a can of stew and warmed it over the gas burner. The stew, a beer, and a piece of bread became his supper.
His repairs done and his belly full, Germaine summoned up the courage to report the missing divers. He retraced his steps through the rubble to the courthouse, but the police were all busy in the town and around the island, helping search for missing people. He could wait. He was in no hurry to end his career. The long lines of injured had disappeared, either sent home or transferred to a hangar at Owen Roberts International Airport converted into a makeshift infirmary. Island power was still out. Portable generators supplied power for light stands to aid the workers in the darkness. Outside help hadn’t yet arrived, held up by the hurricane. He joined a work crew digging into the rubble of a collapsed two-story apartment building. After two hours of backbreaking labor, they discovered two bodies and a lone survivor nestled amid the debris in a corner of a stairwell. Around nine o’clock, he took a cigarette break and walked down to the harbor. He sat on an overturned crate, enjoying a smoke, and watched the waves roll in.
George Town was his home. He and it had weathered many storms and a few hurricanes over the years. Clive had been a bad one, but the island would recover. Islanders were a hardy bunch, self-reliant and industrious. It might be days before substantial aid arrived from other countries, but no one sat on their haunches waiting. The priority was to get the island back in shape for tourists. Tourists meant dollars, yen, and euros, the lifeblood of the local economy. His own livelihood was dependent on tourists. Once word circulated about the deaths on his boat, he might have to look for another job. At fifty-one, he was young to retire and too old to start over. He might make a living fishing, but it was a hard, hand-to-mouth livelihood and one he hoped to avoid.
A scratching noise drew his attention to the water. At first, he thought the small dark objects climbing the sea wall were red crabs, but they had already made their yearly migration to the sea. As he watched, hundred of the strange creatures came ashore. Remembering the giant Viperfish, he approached them cautiously. It was dark, but they reminded him of some type of insect, and bore a passing resemblance to horseshoe crabs. They varied in size from a few inches to almost a foot in length. When several of the creatures zeroed in on him, he became alarmed and began backing away. He flicked his cigarette at them. They swarmed it. He removed the letter from the bank he had picked up in his house and shoved in his pocket. He rolled it up, lit it on fire with his cigarette lighter, and tossed it at the creatures. They rushed it, but quickly retreated from the heat. By the flame’s light, he swore the creatures were giant sea lice.
Sea lice, common in Caribbean waters, infesting fish and even hapless swimmers, were tiny creatures, plankton, eating flesh and drinking blood through siphon mouths. By this time, thousands of the sea lice had crowded onto the beach and road. Germaine decided discretion was the better part of valor. He ran to the center of town where the rescue crews were still working, yelling a warning as he went. People stopped and stared at him as if he were drunk, but otherwise ignored him. He continued running, but smoking, a sedate lifestyle, and lack of exercise had weakened his constitution. His lungs ached and his legs became leaden, but he knew that if he stopped, the sea lice would catch up. He didn’t know how they could survive out of water, but they were doing a good job at it.
He heard the first screams behind him a few minutes later. He stopped long enough to glance back toward the town. Illuminated by the work lights, he witnessed a scene of absolute horror. The lice leaped on people from piles of debris or scurried up their legs, completely covering their bodies. Some beat at the lice with their hands and fists; others simply ran screaming in panic. One man, inundated by the creatures, stumbled into one of the light racks, knocking it to the ground, extinguishing it. In the darkness, the screams continued. Germaine crossed himself and just kept running. He didn’t stop until he reached his house. He slammed the door behind him and locked it, though he knew it would d
o little good against the creatures. He needed a weapon.
He went to the garage where he kept his five-year-old Mini Cooper. It needed a valve job and hadn’t run in weeks. He didn’t have the money to repair it. He couldn’t escape in it. Handsaws, battery powered drills, hammers – none would be effective as weapons. Finally, his eyes settled on the small acetylene torch he had used to make repairs on his rudder. He grabbed it, checked the tank – half full – and went back outside. Picking an area barren of grass, he made several trips and piled scraps of dry wood from his garage in a circle around him, doused it with petrol, and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. A few people ran past him trying to escape, but from the sounds of horror coming from the eastern end of the island, the creatures were also coming ashore from North Sound. The island was less than a mile wide at George Town. There was nowhere to run. A woman rushed toward him, her back and legs swarming with sea lice the size of Palmetto bugs. Her face was a mask of terror. Suddenly, she stopped running. A strange gurgling sound came from her throat, and she collapsed with white foam dripping from her mouth. The creatures’ stings were poisonous, something else he had to avoid.