by Watt Key
On the dock again, I grabbed the winch hook and fastened it around Shane’s mooring rope. Then I untied the mooring rope from the cleat.
“Hold on if you can, Shane!” I shouted below. “I’m going to try to pull you up!”
I hurried back up to the winch and began cranking the handle by pressing against it with the undersides of my wrists. Eighty feet below, the mooring rope arced out and I saw the dark speck at the end of it slowly moving toward the rig. I tried to recall exactly where I’d tied the line to him. I didn’t want him getting pulled up by an arm or, even worse, his neck.
His BCD. It’s tied to the straps of his BCD. That’s good. As good as it can be.
I kept cranking. The angle of the mooring rope straightened. I could no longer see Shane, but I knew by the angle and the tension that he was about to be lifted from the water. I pinched the winch rope with an outstretched arm and counted the clicks of the cog. Three clicks reeled about a foot of rope.
Three clicks per foot. Twenty feet. Three times twenty is sixty, less the three clicks I just did. So … fifty-seven.
I began cranking again and counting cog clicks. When I got to fifty I saw Shane below, dangling by his BCD. I hurried off seven more clicks and dashed back down to the dock.
When I arrived I found him swinging outside and above the railing. I grabbed one of the short pieces of line lying on the grate, climbed onto the railing, and tied it to the winch rope over his head. Then I climbed down again and pulled on the line until he swung over the dock. I tied it off to leave him suspended before me at eye level. I was so happy I felt like crying.
“Hey, there,” I said.
“Hey,” he muttered.
I was reminded that he was in no condition to celebrate or even know what was happening.
“Hold on,” I said. “This might hurt.”
I pulled my dive knife, got under him, and cut the winch rope from his waist. Shane came falling on top of me, and both of us went down to the deck in a heap.
I lay there for a moment, allowing myself a small rest while my hands throbbed in pain. But it wasn’t long before I knew I needed to keep moving. We needed water and warmth while I still had the strength to get it for us.
* * *
The first thing I had to do was stabilize Shane. Concerned that he might roll overboard in his delirium, I retied the line on his BCD to the steel grate so that he could move only a foot in either direction. Then I stood to go.
“I’ll be back,” I told him.
I returned to the staging area near the winch and looked over the piles of equipment. Seeing nothing I could use, I tried the knob on a steel door to my left. The knob turned, and the door swung inward on creaky hinges, releasing a breath of hot musty air. I only stared into the dark interior for a moment before I realized it was useless trying to find anything in there without a light. Then I backed away and looked farther along the outside of the rig. Down from me were two lifeboats. They were the enclosed models, bulbous pods with windows down the side and a hatch on the top. I knew they usually carried survival supplies.
27
I made my way to the first boat and after a few minutes, with limited use of my hands, I was able to figure out how to get the entry door open. I dropped inside and there was just enough light coming through the hatch and windows to see rows of benches and a tiny control room forward to drive and steer the vessel. It looked like it would hold about twenty people. In the aisle between the benches was a long storage box. I lifted the lid and searched inside. It was too dark to see everything, but one by one I felt things and lifted them up to the light and examined them. It wasn’t long before I’d collected a pack of emergency thermal blankets, six bottled waters, and a first aid kit. I shoved these items out of the hatch and climbed up after them.
Back on the deck, I opened one of the waters and took a small swallow and felt the liquid soak into my tongue and roll down my throat like rivulets through a desert. I took another swallow and savored it for a moment before reminding myself that Shane was waiting. I gathered two more bottles and the blankets, then hurried back to the stairs.
I untied Shane from the mooring line and sat him up. I took his mask from around his neck and poured water into his mouth, most of it running down the side of his face. Then he tasted it, and I poured again and he swallowed. I removed his BCD and—through much effort and pain—tugged off his fins, booties, wetsuit, and skinsuit until he was wearing nothing but his swim trunks. After a short rest I spread his wetsuit behind him like a mat, rolled him onto it, and shoved the BCD under his head for a pillow. I tore open the pack of emergency blankets and found six of them inside. They looked like nothing more than thin reflective plastic, but I knew they would help preserve Shane’s body heat. I pulled him up again and got one of the blankets behind him and let him back down. Finally I wrapped him and put another one over the top and tucked the edges under the wetsuit mat.
“That’ll help until the sun comes up,” I said. “Here’s more water.”
I poured another swallow into his mouth. He tasted it and gulped and brought his hands up to clutch the bottle. I let him have it and watched for a moment as he shivered and took a drink and breathed and took another drink.
“I’m going back up,” I said. “To find more supplies. You okay?”
He lowered the bottle and nodded.
I started up the stairs again, slowly this time, finally able to relax and focus on myself. I drank more of my water, feeling the inside of me slowly coming back to life while the outside of me still shivered and throbbed and burned from the sea lice and saltwater cuts.
I need to clean the cuts. I need to get warm. I need to drink more water.
Back near the lifeboats I sat on the steel floor with the first aid kit. I began peeling the bloody rags from my hands. Some of the cloth tears were punched into the cuts and pasted with blood into the open wounds. When they popped free the pain made me gasp and stop and take deep breaths. When I was done, my hands were dripping with blood, but I managed to tear open a package of gauze and used it to stanch the bleeding. After a couple of minutes I let go of the gauze and pulled off my booties and struggled out of my wetsuit until I was completely naked. Then I pushed myself up and got a bottle of alcohol from the first aid kit.
I opened the bottle and poured it on my legs. I clenched my teeth and gasped as the chemical worked into the wounds like liquid fire. Once the pain subsided I took a few deep breaths and steeled myself for the worst of it. I put the bottle under my chin and tilted it over both my hands at once. The pain was almost more than I could take. I dropped the bottle and screamed and lay back with my hands out at my sides. It felt like I was holding my fists in pots of boiling water. Teetering on the verge of blacking out, I stayed paralyzed, taking deep breaths, and waiting for the agony to end.
After a few minutes the alcohol had done its work. I forced myself up again and tore open several bandages, pressed them over the wounds, and wrapped them with more gauze. I was racing against my body, trying to patch it up before I passed out. Finally, I rolled over and grabbed another one of the survival blankets, ripped it open with my teeth, and gathered it around me. Then I balled up like a baby and sobbed.
28
I opened my eyes to stare out over the blue expanse of the Gulf. The sun was just above the horizon. It was strange not to hear the cries of seagulls feeding in the dawn light, but I knew we were too far from land to see birds. All I heard was the slurping of the swells rising and falling through the understructure of the rig, the breeze whistling around the steel, and thunder rumbling in the distance.
I rolled out of the blanket and onto my back to feel the breeze over my naked body. It felt so good to be dry again. The air over my skin killed the sea lice and brought instant relief to the sores and sunburn. I lay there for a moment, thankful for every second I wasn’t back in the cold grips of the Gulf water below. But it was only a moment before I felt my legs and palms throbbing again.
I broug
ht my hands before my face and studied them. The rough bandaging job I’d done had held, but the gauze was already bloody and needed changing. I crawled on my forearms to the railing and looked down. Shane had rolled onto his side and appeared to be sleeping. I backed away, got to my feet, and clutched the emergency blanket about myself. I sensed there was no one but the two of us for a hundred miles, but I still couldn’t bring myself to stand completely exposed on a high platform.
I looked around. All about me was the massive rig in its state of eerie abandonment. The door I’d peered into earlier was still open, and I approached it and looked inside. In the faint light I saw shelves of valves and rubber hoses and racks of iron pipe. Boxes of nuts and bolts and other spare parts. To my left was a long counter with wrenches, screwdrivers, and other tools scattered across it like someone had been working there and hurried away before cleaning up.
I flipped a light switch and nothing happened. I opened the door wider and saw a stack of shelves to my right. On one shelf was a box that read JUMPSUITS and another not far from it that said SAFETY GLASSES and HARD HATS and GLOVES. The gloves would enable me to better use my hands while they healed, and the jumpsuit was something to cover up with. I grabbed two pairs of gloves and the two smallest jumpsuits I could find and left the room.
I sat down beside the lifeboats and got into my new outfit. It was a little big, but once I tucked the pant legs into my booties it worked fine. Then I pulled on the gloves, happy they were big enough to fit over my bandaged hands. Finally I grabbed the other jumpsuit, along with two more bottles of water I’d pulled from the lifeboat, and left to check on Shane.
As I descended the stairs I saw him roll over and look up at me. His face was like cracked shoe leather, while his skin from the neck down was fish-meat white and dotted with hundreds of red sores. As bad as he appeared, I knew I probably looked worse.
“Why are you dressed like that?” he said.
I sat down beside him.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Drink some more water.”
“How’d we get up here?” he said.
“I pulled you up,” I said, “with a winch.”
I helped him sit, and we both opened the bottles and began drinking.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“I think we’re it,” I said. “I think it’s abandoned.”
“How can this thing be abandoned?”
“I don’t know, but I haven’t heard any engines running and I haven’t seen anyone. I did find a storage room full of equipment. It wasn’t even locked.”
“Equipment like that jumpsuit?”
“Yeah. And I brought one for you, too.”
“What’s with the gloves?”
“I hurt my hands. They’re fine.”
After we’d each finished our water I unfolded the jumpsuit and passed it to him. “Try it on,” I said. “There’s more if it doesn’t fit.”
“I’m fine like I am,” he replied. “It feels good being out of that wetsuit.”
“Well, you better put on your booties if you want to walk on these steel grates.”
After Shane pulled on his booties I helped him stand. He steadied himself against the railing and looked down at the swells below.
“Think you can walk upstairs?” I asked him.
“Yeah, but I might need some help. My legs are kind of shaky.”
I helped him up the stairs, and by the time we were at the top he was mostly walking on his own. I led him over near the lifeboats.
“I got the water and stuff out of one of those boats last night,” I said. “There’s more survival gear in there if we need it.”
“Food?”
“Probably. Let’s sit here and rest for a few minutes,” I said. “And drink some more water. We need to hydrate.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Then we’ll go exploring and see what we can find.”
29
We lay in the shade outside the storage room, resting and drinking water. After a while Shane said he was feeling better and he wanted to check out the lifeboats.
I waited while he climbed into the first one. I heard him bumping around inside for a few minutes before he poked his head out of the hatch.
“It’s got like a throttle and steering wheel and everything, but nothing works. The batteries must be dead.”
“Did you see more bottled water?”
“Yeah. Like three or four cases.”
“Good. Look for an EPIRB.”
“What’s that?”
“Like a satellite signaling device. It’s about the size of a handheld radio.”
Shane ducked into the boat again. He reappeared a moment later and held up an EPIRB for me to see.
“Like this?” he said.
I felt my spirits soar. “Yes!” I said. “That’s it!”
Shane shook his head. “Battery’s dead,” he said.
“What’s the date on it? It should have an expiration date.”
Shane studied it. “Says 2014.”
I sighed. “That’s three years ago. Yeah, it’s dead. Check the other boat.”
Shane crawled into the second lifeboat. It wasn’t long before he reappeared, shaking his head. “Expired,” he said.
“See if there’s a flashlight that works,” I said, “and get the rest of the water.”
Shane found a battery-powered lantern that still held a charge. He passed it to me, along with a few more bottles of water.
“There’s some chocolate bars and blocks of energy food,” he said. “And some flares. There’s a bunch more survival stuff we can use.”
I waited for Shane to climb down from the lifeboat.
“Let’s go look inside,” I said.
“How about the other lantern out of that first lifeboat?”
I really didn’t want to have to carry anything with my hands like they were. “No,” I said. “Let’s save it. I’ll just follow you.”
Shane turned on the light and we entered the storage room.
“Smells like a wet dog in here,” he said.
“I guess it’s been shut up for a while.”
He passed the light across the floor and on the shelves. “This is crazy,” he said. “There must be thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff in here.”
At the back of the room was a door.
“Let’s see what’s through there,” Shane said. He pulled the door to him and passed the light over a hall. “I hope there’s no dead people in here.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Reminds me of zombie movies.”
“If you want me to come with you, then stop talking about dead people and zombies.”
“I love scary movies,” he said.
“You like watching them, not being in them.”
We moved slowly down the hall. It was even more hot and musty than the storage room. We came to an open door on our left and I watched as Shane moved the light over its interior.
“Like an office or something,” he said. “Look, there’s still a computer on the desk.”
I peered over his shoulder and saw a desk with a computer monitor and keyboard surrounded by papers and a few fallen ceiling tiles.
“What’s the date on the papers?” I asked.
Shane looked at them. “2012,” he said.
“Surely this rig hasn’t been abandoned for five years.”
Shane didn’t answer me. He tried the computer’s power button, but nothing happened. He shone his light up where the tiles were missing. Others sagged in their tracks, brown and water-stained.
“Let’s keep going,” I said.
“This must be the work floor,” he said. “How many levels are there?”
“It looked like three from the outside.”
Shane continued down the hall. “The stairs should be around here somewhere,” he said.
We passed three more doors, and Shane paused briefly to inspect the rooms. They were all similar to the first, offices that looked li
ke they’d been left in the middle of a workday. Then we came to a stairwell on our left and the hall continued on in darkness ahead.
“Upstairs?” Shane asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Upstairs.”
30
I got behind Shane and followed as he started up the stairs. The treads were carpeted and our footfalls landed soft and quiet. When we arrived in another hallway I could no longer hear the sound of the water through the understructure. It was so quiet that my ears hummed. Shane turned right and aimed the light into the first doorway.
“Looks like a lounge,” he said.
There were two sofas, a coffee table with magazines scattered over it, and a big-screen television. A bookcase full of paperback books was against the far wall. On the opposite wall was a refrigerator, a sink, and a countertop with shelves over it. Shane stepped through the doorway and approached one of the coffee tables. He picked up a copy of Sports Illustrated and studied it.
“Five years old,” he said.
“Check the refrigerator,” I said.
He walked over to the refrigerator and opened it and an awful stench fell over us.
Shane coughed and backed away. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed.
“What is it?”
Shane shined his light inside. “Oh my God,” he said. “It’s just one piece of bologna. And it’s got so much stuff growing on it that it’s like a fungus pizza.”
“Ugh,” I said.
“How can just one piece of forgotten bologna do that?”
“Close it,” I said. “Come on.”
Shane coughed again and shut the refrigerator door.
The next room we came to was the galley. It was more like a small cafeteria, looking like it could feed a hundred people. There were about ten tables, all of them with napkin dispensers, and salt and pepper shakers still on them. The air was so thick in the room that the lantern seemed to have a hard time cutting through it.