by Watt Key
“Thanks,” I said. “I won’t be able to carry much, but I can put a few things under my arms.”
It wasn’t long before we were standing before the lifeboats again. Shane climbed inside the closest one and returned with a bag of chocolate and energy bars. We sat on the deck and ate small portions of each. The chocolate tasted fine, but the energy bars tasted like bland oatmeal.
“Hopefully there’s something else in the galley that we can eat,” I said. “That’s not spoiled.”
“Got to be,” Shane said, chewing slowly.
“It’s going to be tough eating this stuff every day.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s pretty bad.”
After our small meal we decided to explore more of the rig. We continued past the stairwell to a solid steel door. Shane pulled on the handle, but it didn’t give.
He passed the lantern to me, gripped the handle with both hands, and jerked. The door popped loose and creaked open. The smell of oil and rust and wetness floated over us. He reached back for the light and I pressed it into his hand. Then he shone it over the room and revealed a massive network of pipes and control panels and gauges. Much of it was rusty and glistening with oil and condensation.
“You first,” he whispered over his shoulder.
I elbowed him in the back. “Shut up,” I hissed. “You’ve got the light.”
“I’m glad your fists don’t work,” he said.
“You’re never going to stop talking about that, are you?”
“Well, you did punch me in the face. Hard.”
I shoved him again. “Go. I can still save up until my fists feel better again.”
He started forward and I lightly pinched the back of his shirt and held on to him. We made our way across the slippery floor. Shane passed the light over pipes and computer screens and discarded tools and workbenches with open notebooks on them. The room seemed to go on in all directions with no clear exit.
“You going to remember how to get out of here?” I whispered.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“There’s got to be a working flashlight somewhere.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. This lantern had a tab I had to pull to activate the batteries. It probably kept them fresh.”
Rising out of the darkness was an enormous piece of machinery.
“There’s the generator,” I said. “Probably powers this whole rig.”
We walked close and stopped and studied it.
“Think we can start it?” Shane asked.
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” I said. “Something this big. And I’m sure it needs some oil or something after five years.”
“I was just kidding,” Shane said.
“Let’s go back to the second floor,” I said. “It seems like that’s where most of the people lived. This is just a lot of tools and machinery down here.”
35
We investigated more of the second deck and found an entire hallway of bedrooms along the west side that had windows overlooking the water. Some of the mattresses had sheets and pillows. A few of the bedside tables had family pictures still on them, and closets had clothes on hangers. We found books and stationery and medicine cabinets full of things like half-empty toothpaste tubes and razors.
“This is so weird,” Shane said.
It was weird. And spooky. It felt like we were the last survivors on earth, picking through people’s lost personal effects. It didn’t appear they’d hurried out and left everything behind, but more like they’d packed just what they needed and didn’t return.
We chose a bunk room to move into and opened the windows to let it air out. The top bunk had a ladder that was easy to step up and I requested to sleep there. Shane said he was fine with the bottom. Then we walked down the hall, opening all the bedroom doors and windows to get as much fresh air and light as we could.
“Hey,” Shane called to me.
I found him looking into a door we hadn’t explored. There was a Ping-Pong table and a pool table and a soda machine. I crossed the floor and opened the windows while Shane tried to stick his hand up inside the drink machine.
“No way,” I said.
He gave up and kicked it. “Even a hot Coke would be good,” he said.
We couldn’t get our hands on any soft drinks, but we found some Gatorade powder in the galley and combined it in a jug with bottled water. We sat on the floor and passed it back and forth, spilling it over our mouths and savoring the sugary sweetness. We drank the entire jug, mixed more, and took it back to the makeshift pantry in our bedroom.
That evening we watched the sun set from the helicopter pad while eating chocolate bars and drinking Gatorade. A cool, salty breeze swept across our faces and played with our hair. Miles away, a dark cloud prowled over the gulf, dragging its veil of rain.
“It just doesn’t make sense to go through what we did only to get stuck here like this,” Shane said.
“How long do you think the lifeboat rations will last?” I asked.
“A couple of weeks, maybe.”
“We’ll need to make an SOS signal,” I said. “Up on the helipad.”
“You think anybody ever flies this way?”
“We’ve got to do something,” I said.
Shane nodded.
“We’ll find some paint down below and make the sign tomorrow,” I said.
Thunder rumbled again.
“You think there’s more storms out here than on the shore?” Shane asked.
“No,” I said. “But it seems like it. It’s just easier to see and hear them.”
Shane looked at me. “I’m sorry I was such a wimp.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“You know, in the water. After the anchor pulled.”
“You weren’t a wimp. You were scared. You didn’t know anything about it.”
“I saw the anchor,” he said. “I knew something wasn’t right.”
“We both did, but who would imagine it would turn into this?”
“We should have waited on you.”
“We all made mistakes,” I said.
Shane didn’t answer me.
“I’ve been in that water more times than I can count,” I continued. “And the more you do it, the more you realize that you’re just a guest. You can’t really control any of it. You have to get in there quietly and get out and hope you don’t make her mad.”
“Who?”
“Mother Nature.”
Something splashed in the water far below us. We crawled to the edge of the platform and peered down. The surface crackled and popped with bait fish and the dark shapes of larger fish moving in and out of the rig structure.
“You think we could eat them raw?” he said.
“The tuna for sure,” I said.
“You think there’s tuna down there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And you can probably eat lots of other fish raw. This water’s so clean I don’t think it would hurt you.”
“But we still have more of the rig to explore. Maybe we’ll find some way to signal for help before it comes to that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe so.”
* * *
That night was hard. In addition to my hands hurting, nightmares played in my head like little horror movies. All the visions had to do with my parents finding me on the rig but not recognizing me or a search party arriving but not being able to locate us. I tossed and turned, trying to sleep, but I couldn’t get out from under the bad dreams like they hung in the air itself, as though the rig was full of them. The worst part of it all was waking and thinkings that these nightmares, unlike any I’d had before, had actually happened.
36
As sunlight crept over the room, I hung my head over the edge of the top bunk and watched Shane’s face, waiting for him to wake. After my night of terrible visions I desperately wanted to hear his voice.
“Shane,” I finally said.
He opened his eyes.
“Let’s go make the SOS sign,” I said.
“Okay,” he said.
We went downstairs to locate some paint. We found three spray cans of orange Rust-Oleum in the storage room and took them back up to the helipad. We started at opposite ends of the pad and made our SOS signal. Each letter was nearly fifteen feet tall and we figured a plane or helicopter could see it from miles away.
I felt better once we had the SOS sign working for us. For added measure we also got the flares from the lifeboats and brought them up to our bedroom. If by chance we happened to see a passing plane or ship, it would be good to have them centrally located.
So far, all of our exploration had been focused on the rooms on the outside edges of the rig. Shane wanted to see the derrick up close, so we went downstairs again to find our way to the center. We exited a rear door of the generator room and emerged with the derrick looming a hundred feet overhead. We approached it and wandered about its base, inspecting the giant cables and hardware used to handle the drilling pipe. After a moment we got up the nerve to step beneath it and peer down through the drilling hole at the waves below. Wind came from under the platform and up through the opening to blow across our faces.
“I wonder if there’s still a hole down there,” Shane said.
I backed away. “Come on,” I said. “I’m done hauling you out of the water.”
Shane followed me and looked up at the derrick. A steel ladder was welded to the support beams in staggered twenty-foot sections. Each section was connected with a narrow platform that seemed designed for a climber to stop and rest.
“How’d you like to have to climb that thing?” I said.
The backdrop of passing clouds against the tower made it appear to sway in a way that made me dizzy.
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
We wandered about the drilling area, picking up old tools and kicking at bits of trash left behind years ago. We didn’t find anything we thought was helpful, so we eventually returned to our room upstairs. We ate a quick snack before Shane went to look for fishing equipment and I set about cleaning up, determined to rid our space of five years of dust and grime.
I put on some rubber gloves I’d found in the kitchen, got an old towel, and attempted to wipe some of the mildew off the furniture and the walls with Clorox and water. I was able to remove some of it, but most, especially around the ceiling and the floor, was too thick and it hurt my hands to apply much pressure. But just the little bit I was able to do made the place feel cleaner.
An hour later Shane returned with a fishing rod and tackle box that he’d found in a utility closet on the other side of the rig. We took the equipment to the mooring platform and cast a spinner bait. A large fish flashed through the water and attacked it immediately. Shane tried to reel it up but the weight broke it off.
“This fishing line’s too old and brittle,” he said.
I recalled watching shark fishermen on the public pier in Gulf Shores and how they hoisted their catch.
“Got an idea,” I said.
I found a laundry basket and had Shane tie the winch rope to it in a way that we could drop it to the water. The next fish we caught he pulled into the basket and I winched it up from above. In a moment we had a thirty-pound jack crevalle flipping about on the platform. Shane and I gave each other a high five to celebrate the teamwork.
Jacks are especially bloody fish, and I didn’t want to eat it raw. I sent Shane to get matches from one of the lifeboats, a large pot and a grill from the galley, and some paper to burn. Meanwhile I used my dive knife to clean the fish.
When Shane returned I had several filets on a plastic tarp before me and my cloth gloves were ruined with blood. We made a fire in the pot and lay the strips on the grill. As the paper burned it floated up and stuck to the fish, and soon the meat was covered in black ash. It was clear that our grill wasn’t going to work without wood or charcoal.
“We can break up some furniture and burn it,” Shane said.
“How many matches do we have?” I asked.
“I found about twenty in one of the boats. There’s probably that many in the other one.”
I cut away a sliver of meat and brushed the ash off with my glove.
“Forty matches won’t last us long anyway,” I said.
“I’m sure there’s a cigarette lighter or something around here.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Then we need lighter fluid.”
I held the glistening bloody sliver up before my face.
“That’s nasty,” Shane said.
“Here goes,” I said.
He watched with a disgusted look on his face as I lowered the meat onto my tongue. I chewed slowly and let the strong coppery taste of fish blood fill my mouth. Then I closed my eyes and swallowed quickly.
“How is it?” Shane asked.
I opened my eyes. “Not great,” I said. “But not too bad.”
Shane ate a sliver and agreed that it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever eaten. And it seemed more practical than trying to build a fire every time we wanted to have meat.
I grabbed some shop towels from the storage room and we both ate more of the raw jack crevalle, wiping the blood from the edges of our mouths. When we’d had our fill we tossed the rest of the fish overboard, since there was no way to keep it from spoiling. Then I threw my gloves over the railing after them. I’d get more from the storage room on the way back upstairs.
37
Over the next few days we continued to explore the rig, hoping to find more water, better food, and some means of communication with the outside world.
Shane eventually found the tank for the rig’s supply of fresh water. It was drained and empty. That got us thinking about having something to drink once the bottled water was gone. We gathered all the pots and pans we could out of the galley and placed them outside to collect rainwater. Then we got all the bottled waters we could find from the lifeboats and scattered throughout the rig and carried them to our room and inventoried them. We counted a hundred and eighty twenty-ounce bottles. It sounded like a lot, but if we limited ourselves to just three bottles each per day, that was only about a month’s worth. And the way things were looking, it was likely we’d be on the rig at least that long.
Water didn’t worry me. It was lack of food and no hope of rescue that fueled my nightmares and kept me up at night. Most of the food we found was spoiled, and without power we couldn’t get any of the electronics working. We identified several generators throughout the rig, but even if the engines had remnants of fuel in them, they were giant and complicated and intimidating. We thought about the Deepwater Horizon disaster and feared that we’d start a fire if we tampered with any of it.
After a week it seemed we’d been through every part of the rig and we were no closer to finding a way off. I found a calendar in one of the offices and brought it back to our bedroom. I hung it on the wall and marked off the days we’d been gone. Since the calendar was five years old, the exact days didn’t match, but it gave me some sense of passing time.
We used the restroom outside and over the edge of the walkways. There wasn’t enough water to waste on showers so I had to get used to the parched feel and sour smell of dried sweat on my skin. My hair was stiff and salty and felt like a dirty mop on my head. I could get past the thought of using someone else’s old toothbrush, but I felt foolish wasting water on my teeth too. I got an old stick of Axe deodorant from one of the medicine cabinets and occasionally wiped my underarms with it just to feel a little clean.
In addition to nightmares and bouts of depression, we fought boredom. In the recreation room we found a cabinet with DVDs, decks of cards, and checkers. It was hard for me to handle cards, so Shane and I spent a lot of time playing checkers and talking.
We had nothing better to do, and after all we’d been through, sharing personal things wasn’t a big deal.
“I’m not going to worry about my parents anymore,” I said to him one day.
/> “What’s wrong with them?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think even they know. They’re just not happy.”
“Were they happy before the divorce?”
“I thought so. It all happened so fast. I always thought it was because of Dad and the stupid Malzon tanks. Now I think it had to have been a lot more than that. There must be stuff I don’t know about.”
“Sometimes people just end up not liking each other. Like my parents.”
“Dad’s frustrating, but there’s no way not to like him. And I know he still loves Mom.”
“Maybe she doesn’t love him.”
“She does. But she can’t admit it. She’s stubborn like that.”
Shane watched me and didn’t answer.
“But I know now that I can’t make them happy. They’re going to have to figure it out.”
Shane continued to study me. “You think I’m selfish for not missing my dad?”
“No,” I said. “But that’s different. It sounds like he wasn’t nice to you or your mom.”
“It’s like he had me in this hole I couldn’t climb out of, and every time I tried he kept shoveling dirt on me. Why would anybody be like that? He was supposed to help me and give me good advice. You know, stuff like that.”
I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t have an answer.
“I used to be really mad about going to boarding school,” he said. “Like my parents were just throwing me away.”
“But you’re not now?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I can start over with people I don’t know.”
“You’ve already got a lot going for you.”
“I’m pretty good at sports.”
“You’re good at a lot of things.”
Shane smiled to himself and moved a game piece.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” I said. “You need a haircut.”
He looked at me. “Why don’t you cut it for me?”
I held up my hands.
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
“But when they’re better,” I continued, “that’ll be the first thing I do.”
I didn’t really want to cut his hair. His long hair was part of the Shane I’d come to know.