Dan laughed, “”Do you even know how to swim Army? Maybe we could get you some of those inflatable armband floaty things.” He sped the Zodiac in a wide circle to the beach.
_________________
Hours later everyone returned to the ship. The day had been a tremendous success. They had found about ten sea turtle nests, a sure sign that they were thriving, even with the hungry birds overhead. Sarah had some wild theories about how the one could live in harmony with the other, but said, “These are all conjectures though, I’ll need to study this, really study it.” They had taken photographs, notes, and recordings, and with the specimens and samples would have more than enough to catalog and study. For months.
Rebecca said, “We have to celebrate before Sarah and I disappear to start our research, let’s meet in the galley at sunset so we can par-ty!”
Beckett and Jeffrey grabbed mops and began the work of scrubbing the decks while everyone else set about doing the sunset work of the ship.
_________________
After dinner, Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of shot glasses and poured drinks and passed them around, but Beckett shook his head. “Nah man, don’t drink.”
“Even to celebrate?”
Beckett said, “Nope.”
Dan paused for a second eyes squinted.
Beckett asked, “What?”
“Never met any army guy that didn’t drink, escapism is the entire point, or didn’t you know?”
“Just not my point.” Beckett looked away.
Dan said, “Sure, of course, no offense meant.” He continued handing drinks to everyone else.
Captain Aria asked, “Sarah, perhaps you’d like to say a few words?”
Sarah stood, raised her glass, and cleared her throat. “Mark your history books people. Rebecca and I have, on this day, found thriving turtle nests. We also spotted an endangered seabird that we thought was long gone. The water quality around the island was excellent. So much flora and fauna there. Fish. Crabs. Shells. It was amazing.”
Everyone cheered their glasses and Dan said, “To baby turtles, and their cute little legs!”
Rebecca said, “We’ll stay tomorrow and then we head back to port, this has been an excellent trip. Nothing but good news.”
Dan said, “Except of course Army’s hands.”
Beckett chuckled. “Hear hear.”
_________________
After dinner as the crew went singing to the upper decks, Beckett attempted to radio Luna.
“Hello Luna, are you there?”
— static —
“Luna?”
— static —
He fiddled the dial back and forth repeating her name. All he heard were the usual voices, conversations, and one faint voice, garbled and masculine. Finally he gave up.
_________________
Beckett leaned on his favorite portion of railing, looking over the darkened ocean. The ship was facing west. The island they were anchored beside was northwest. Beckett faced east, thinking about the distance between where he stood, Luna, and land.
Snippets of the crew’s revelry reached his ears. Jeffrey and Rebecca were singing a drunken song. “With a howeeeeee yo!”
Beckett chuckled, they were seriously out of tune.
Behind him Sarah, usually quiet and sensible, squealed and giggled, “Whoa, Tiger.”
Dan laughed merrily. “I can’t help myself you’re so hot, Baby.”
Rebecca yelled, “Get a room!” and everyone laughed.
The water below where he stood was deep and black as night. The sky above was cloudy and grey and low. Like the up and down were reversed. The sea seemed endless, the sky close. And it was really. They were all moving higher as the sea grew.
Sarah thought this island was nothing but good news. But she had been looking at it from the surface — the water’s edge was thriving. From Beckett’s perspective though, up above, from the boat deck — the same perspective he had from his Outpost, the same as from his mountain home, looking down at what was happening — it was clear.
The sea was rising. Pushing everything (and everybody) up and up to the last available spaces, where they were clawing and clamoring for purchase on the last remaining ground.
Maybe before there were twenty islands with three sea turtle nests on each one. Now there were three islands, with five sea turtle nests. He wanted to be happy, to celebrate with them, but he couldn’t. He could only mourn the loss of all that land.
He usually looked up at night, but tonight’s cloudy, starless sky gave him one less thing to worry about. If it had been a star-filled sky, Beckett would feel very small. He didn’t want to feel small. He wanted to feel in control, able to do this.
Instead he had that anxious, skin crawling, dread, like any news coming his way wasn’t going to be good.
He tried to tell himself that his worries were always wrong. He had worried that the Outpost would collapse below him. It didn’t. That Luna was dead. She wasn’t. That he wouldn’t find her. And guess what, in the entire ocean, he found her.
It would be impossible to lose her now. The fates didn’t have that kind of humor.
His luck would hold.
Or maybe it wouldn’t.
He gripped the railing, took a deep, head-down breath, blew it out and straightened.
He walked over to the others. Jeffrey and Dr Mags were lounging on deckchairs. Rebecca held a bottle, loosely, by its neck, and slurred, “In the expanthe of the univerth I saw a turtle nest and that was awesome,” before she lost track of what she wanted to say and giggled.
Dan’s face was buried in Sarah’s shoulder, whispering in her ear.
Beckett interrupted, “I’m headed to bed.” He tried for an upbeat, merry tone.
The others called, “G’night Beckett!”
And he headed to his bunk to sleep.
Chapter 5
Luna stared at the underside of her tent roof listening to the pounding rain. Or not really listening, more like living through. It was so brain-numbingly loud, terrifying, blood chilling, cry-inducingly loud, and it had been raining since yesterday. Hours. Hours and hours and hours.
So she tried to Go Bird. Like her mom had told her when she was little, Go bird little Luna.
Her mother had said that birds lived joyful lives, but they had to live through terrible weather sometimes — just like Waterfolk. To get through, birds folded their wings around like a hug and hunkered down. And they weren’t scared. Birds weren’t anything, because they turned off their ‘what ifs’ and went completely still and quiet. The whole time. Blank.
Then, after the storm had passed, those birds flew again, joyous and energetic. Because they could turn off their ‘what ifs.’ That was key.
So Luna tried to Go Bird, but the problem was, there weren’t any other birds on her branch. She couldn’t turn her brain off because she was in charge of her own survival. When she was little, she could Go Bird because her father and mother were in charge of her safety. Not now. Not anymore. And that sucked.
Crack!
Her heart raced. What the hell was that? Something above her tent (tree branch, tree, rock?) was cracking. It would crash down.
She curled up into a ball and huddled, hard.
Her breaths were ragged and gasping.
WHOOSH, a terrifying falling of something crashing close. A scraping on the fabric of her tent. The deafening rain.
She huddled harder. No pain though. No pain. No pain.
She opened her eyes. The tent roof was an inch away from her face. Outside roared.
She shoved up on the roof, crawled from under it, and unzipped the door. Water rushed all around, over, under, and through. A raging river had formed and she was in the middle of it. She checked the tent corners. Her tent stakes were barely holding on, pulling up from the mud, releasing their grasp.
“Shit shit shit.” She withdrew and held up the roof, while she frantically wadded up her bedding and stuffed it into a sack, counti
ng one, two, three, four — forcing herself — faster, faster.
Because her best guess was, three minutes.
She leapt from the tent into the muck and water — ankle deep. Below: the hill had rushed away in a slide. She yanked a front stake. The tent pulled furiously. She twisted up the other front stake, the tent slid to the right. She waded upstream through the rushing water to the back end of the tent, and dislodged another stake — the tent pitched and spun, fast, down and away fast. Luna dove after it frantically trying to grab the last corner of LITERALLY EVERYTHING she owned in the world. “Crapitycrapcrap.” She caught it.
She clutched the tent in her fist.
But it didn’t want to stay in her fist, stupid tent. It struggled with all the power of gravity, weight, force, and dramatic natural storm surge toward — Away. Like a jerk, a bona fide jerk. It wanted to leave her. Alone on this stupid island with rain pouring down. Alone without anything.
Luna dug her heels in, gathered the tent, hauled it up on her body, scream-begging the universe to help her keep her stuff, wondering — what kind of idiot takes the stakes out of a tent in a raging river with everything they owned inside? If her brothers had been here, they would have called her a Stink Crawler because that’s what they called everyone too asinine to know how to survive on water. Stink Crawler. She deserved the name. Her brothers wouldn’t have been surprised. This was exactly the kind of thing she did. Not thinking shit through.
She dug her heels in deeper and pulled and pulled, heaving with all her strength. Rain pouring down, visibility at — freaking zero. Maybe a foot if she wanted to open her eyes. She didn’t. Holding everything across her body, she reached over and twisted up the last stake in the final corner.
The tent yanked downward, causing her to lose her footing and slide for ten feet, like a boat, a slippery, sliding, perfectly dynamic, floating watercraft. Her tent wanted down in a torrential slip-slide river of mud and water. And it wanted out to sea.
Leaving her. Just. Like. Everyone. Else.
But Luna’s hand, without any conscious thought, scrambled and caught a branch. She strained, screaming from the effort, digging her feet under her, keeping the tent, she dragged and pulled, slipping and struggling, until finally, gratefully, her feet found firm ground on the river’s bank.
Luna dropped to her knees, let go of the branch, but then slid down the river bank, the weight of the tent dragging her down through brambles and branches. Did it enjoy her desperation? Was it mocking her?
Finally she slammed into a tree trunk and held on. She fought against the slippery downward pull of the torrential down rush, gathering, heaving, straining, until she had the bulk of the tent and LITERALLY EVERYTHING she owned safely on the fern-covered bank, not rushing away.
She dropped back in the pouring rain and muck and mud and yelled, “AAAARRRRGGGGGGH.”
And then only after the ordeal did she begin to sob. Tears rolled down her face mixing with the rain and matching the river rushing by her feet. She cried because that sucked, because she almost died, but also and mostly, because she wasn’t dead yet. It was going to happen. Death was just toying with her first.
She wiped her streaming eyes with her sodden wrist, sat up and clutched her knees, head down, and tried to calm herself.
She took stock: This area looked like it wouldn’t rush away, but the last place seemed safe three hours ago. She couldn’t trust these ferns and trees to protect her. And the rain was unrelenting. A rain like this would last for days.
She held onto a corner of the tent, refusing to let go, while she scanned the hillside. Visibility sucked. The only way to survive was up. She hoisted the tent’s corner to her shoulder and dragged it, and LITERALLY EVERYTHING she owned inside, through the underbrush. It caught on roots and twigs until she stumbled to a spot that would work for what she needed — collapse. Despair. Dramatic despondence and dismay.
She staked the bottom down, arranged the tent poles (one bent awkwardly, so the roof caved in) and attempted to stretch the loops and panels over the poles — the fucking last hook wouldn’t hook on the final — she dropped it, banged her feet up and down, and screamed at the sky. This was so freaking frustrating she needed to — she gulped a deep breath, picked up the hook, and forced it around the pole.
And dove into the tent.
She was sopping, drenched, wet to her core.
The tent was wrecked.
The roof bowed down filling with water. If a pool collected, it would begin to seep in. She knocked it upward and it immediately filled again. Great. There would be no sleeping tonight.
The rain was relentless, the sound terrifying. And that — that river, that catastrophe, that near death experience — had been really close. Too close.
She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around and cried. The rain didn’t let up for twenty more hours.
Chapter 6
Beckett slept soundly but woke with a start. He looked around at the hulking bodies asleep in all the other bunks.
What time was it? It was still very dark, but the bunk room had tiny round sand-blasted windows. He crept to the bathroom and checked the wall clock, thinking about his watch, on Luna’s arm — somewhere.
He hadn’t spoken to Luna in thirty-four hours.
It was early morning yet and everyone else had partied really hard last night.
He crept to the deck and entered the galley, unrolled the charts and got out the radio.
Turning the dial, he listened. Static, static, nothing but static. “Luna? Luna Saturniddae? Anna Barlow? Luna?” He repeated the questions at all the usual channels and then randomly, hand on his head, twisting the dial, going around again.
She wasn’t expecting to talk to him now. They had agreed to talk in the evening. Every night. But last night she hadn’t answered, and his anxious feeling was growing. And growing.
He hoped that waking early might mean magic would happen — he would say, “Luna,” into the radio, and she would be magically answer. Magic would be good right about now.
He sighed.
A hand clapped on his back. Dan said, “You’re up before me, Army?”
Beckett nodded. “Yeah, just—”
“When was the last time?” Dan slid into the booth.
“Night before last. She was in a storm.”
Dan exhaled. “Phew man, that sucks.”
“Yes. It does. I was checking to see if she—”
“Sure. That makes sense. I’m going to put the coffee on, the troops will be up in a minute, and they’ll need it after last night.”
He rose from his seat then paused. “She’s okay, she’ll answer tonight.”
Beckett nodded. Even though he wondered, would she?
Dan watched his face and repeated, “She will.” He left for the kitchen. Beckett turned the radio off and rolled up the charts.
Dan returned with a mug of coffee for Beckett, spinning it so the handle pointed away because Beckett’s bandaged hands would hold the cup easier without it. He said, “Also wondering why Army doesn’t drink.”
Beckett said, “My uncle drank enough for everyone.”
“Ah see, we’re starting to get to know each other,” Dan returned to the kitchen to begin cooking as Jeffrey entered the galley followed by everyone else.
Chapter 7
Beckett stood, not really thinking about what he would do next, grabbed the charts, and climbed to the bridge and knocked.
Lenny answered and gestured him through to Captain Aria.
“Yes, Beckett?” She jotted into a notebook then closed it and stashed it away on a shelf.
Beckett glanced around the bridge. this was his first time there. He was unsure whether the large amount of buttons and screens, flashing lights and beeping noises made him feel more comfortable or not. It was a little unnerving that so much information was necessary for this ship’s safe passage. I hope Captain Aria knows what she’s doing. He gulped and drew his attention back to Captain Aria who w
as waiting with her brows up, incredulous, like she knew what he was thinking.
“Yes, um Captain, can I speak with you?”
She said curtly, “You are.” Why was it that every interaction with her seemed to turn him into a complete ass? It would be better if he had a plan, but no, he jumped without thinking. Every conversation. And they mattered.
“I just got off the radio — Luna, um, the young woman?” He shifted his feet. “And thank you for the radio again.”
Captain Aria said, “Your point please?”
“Oh yes, um, she’s missing.”
Captain Aria squinted her eyes. “Missing for how long?”
Beckett drew air before saying, “Thirty-seven hours. She’s in a storm, by herself, the radio cut out, and now there’s been no contact.” He hoped she would consider that long enough to be concerned.
Captain Aria leveled her gaze and stared at him imperiously. “For thirty-seven hours.”
He met it. “Yes.” He tried for confident and worried, both, in turns.
“How often did you speak before?” Her hands went to her hips.
“Except for the first day, every twenty-four, without fail. Sometimes more often.”
Captain Aria nodded. “John, Lenny, will you please look over the charts with Beckett? You have her latest coordinates?”
“Yes,” Beckett unfurled the charts on the map table. He pointed to Luna’s final coordinates, circled, with dark pencil, around and around. That looked a little desperate. But he hadn’t thought to erase it — hadn’t thought. Why was he like this, acting without thinking? Like an animal. A cornered animal.
John and Lenny conferred. They agreed that she was probably near the outer edge of the Sierra Islands. They asked Captain Aria about the weather. She said, “That whole area is under Severe Weather Advisory Sierra Squall season. I can see the bank of clouds from here. It’s not particularly safe on a boat, but alone on a…” Her voice drifted off. She returned to sitting in her high seat, in front of the wheel, and looked out the bridge window at the horizon.
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