Storm Blown

by Nick Courage

  Alejo took a deep breath and peered through the darkness.

  The billowing fabric of the awning was lit from below by the cabana’s television. Its screen flashed red, casting the awning in a soft pink light. From where he was standing, Alejo could just barely hear the newscasters. Valerie’s winds had topped a hundred miles an hour, they said, their voices half lost in the rain. And she was still gathering steam over the Atlantic. By the time she reached the island, she’d be even stronger.

  “Catastrophic,” they said.

  Alejo strained to hear more, but couldn’t.

  Not over the creak of the cabana as the awning struggled to free itself.

  It twisted tortuously in the wind, slowly ripping the power line from its mooring. Metal brackets wrenched loose and rusted nails fell to the ground as the power line sparked. Alejo clapped his hands over his ears, bracing for an explosion.

  As if on cue, the television went dark and the sky opened up with lightning.

  If Alejo had looked up, he would have seen huge banks of gray clouds racing overhead—Valerie’s outstretched fingers, reaching ominously toward land. There wasn’t a bird in sight. They were long gone, but Alejo was too distracted to notice. Finally free from the cabana, the awning soared over the empty pool like a parasail, its cables trailing calmly behind it. Frozen in a sickly white flash of lightning, it looked almost alive. He blinked the water from his eyes, wondering how far inland the awning would fly, but by the time the thunder clapped again, it had fallen back to earth, the power line limp and lifeless in its wake.

  Alejo held his breath, waiting for fireworks.

  But there were no sparks and no flames.

  Just a low, rumbling thunder and unrelenting rain.

  The piercing wail of sirens cut through the night, and in the distance, the lights of the camera crew continued to shine. Crouching low against the wind, Alejo gave the downed power line a wide and careful berth as he made a break for the pool. It felt so strange, that it was empty. Even in the off-season, the pool was warm to the touch and postcard blue. Dazzling with reflected sunshine. Alejo helped skim its surface with a long net every few hours to keep it that way.

  “These people only visit paradise,” Padrino Nando would say, gesturing at the recliners as he emptied his net into the trash. “How lucky for us to live here!”

  Lucky, Alejo thought, gripping the rattling aluminum ladder so tightly his knuckles whitened. He hated to see the pool drained. Dirty water puddled in the deep ends, and with the sirens warbling overhead, it felt like he was climbing into a bomb shelter. But despite everything, Alejo felt some of Padrino Nando’s luck as he hopped the last few feet to the concrete floor. The tiled walls shielded him from the worst of the storm, and even with Valerie raging overhead, it was quieter beneath the water line.

  Calmer.

  Alejo trailed his fingers across the blue and white tiles as he jogged through the basin of the pool, toward the news vans and the breaking surf. The pool snaked around the cabana like a lazy river, and his bare feet splashed against the smooth cement as he followed its curves—sprinting beneath arched footbridges and banking around the tall concrete walls of manicured islands. Alejo didn’t slow down until he was in the shallows, the wind ripping through his hair at full force again.

  Red-faced, he squatted to catch his breath.

  He was close enough to see the bleached white teeth of the reporter from where he was sitting, but he couldn’t hear him. Not over the wind and the crashing waves. The fog was so thick that Alejo could still only see the ocean in fragments: windswept and jagged swells, tall enough to dwarf the vans, crashed angrily into their own shadows, spitting sea foam into the rippling wind.

  Alejo’s chest tightened with panic.

  The reporter was a big man—tall and broad-shouldered, perfect for the evening news—but he looked like a little boy next to the mountainous sea. One strong gust, Alejo thought, and he’d be in the riptide.

  Never to be seen again.

  The hair on Alejo’s arms stood on end as he watched the sea gnash its teeth at the shoreline. It wasn’t until the news crew moved in for another shot that he realized he wasn’t alone. Huddled behind one of the vans, staring open-mouthed into the encroaching waves, was Ms. Ana—drawn to a scene she’d recognized, with horror, from the lobby’s many televisions. She looked small and scared. Like a child. If she hadn’t been flanked by one of the chefs and the night concierge, Alejo would have thought she had lost her parents.

  “¡Aló!” he yelled, waving his arms.

  The concierge clutched his stomach and frowned, then vomited behind the van.

  Even if Ms. Ana and the chef hadn’t turned to comfort the concierge, none of them would have heard Alejo. It was too loud, so close to the sea. Alejo swallowed the sour splash rising at the back of his throat, then spat. Every instinct told him to run back to the hotel—to stay inside, to stay safe. Like the last remaining guests of the San Juan Pilastro Resort and Casino—two dozen stranded tourists, secure in their rooms. Or the rest of the staff, who had disappeared while Alejo was sleeping, either to abandoned hotel suites or home to their families.

  Away from the worst of the wind and the rain.

  But Alejo couldn’t go back to the Pilastro.

  Everyone he loved was out in the storm.

  There was nothing to do but join them.

  Rainwater oozed through the cracks in the boards as Alejo stepped onto the boardwalk. He took one step and then another, his toes spreading on the slick wood as he tested his weight. The boardwalk shifted beneath his feet, turning his legs to jelly. “Severe damage is expected on the north coast of the island,” the reporter shouted into his microphone. “If you live in any of these areas, a mandatory evacuation is now in place.”

  The cameraman had his video camera trained on the reporter, but his eyes were locked on the black, webbed waves behind his back. They were so close that Alejo could have reached out and run his fingers through their troughs. Too close, he realized. His stomach dropped as it finally hit him. The beach was gone, the entire sandy crescent swallowed by the surf.

  And the boardwalk rocking beneath his bare feet felt like it would be next to go.

  Alejo’s heart pounded as he ran to join the hotel manager by the vans.

  “Ms. Ana,” he yelled, but she didn’t turn to look at him. He tugged on her sodden sleeve. When she finally tore her attention away from the waves, she blinked at Alejo as if she were waking from a dream.

  “Ms. Ana, we need to get out of here.”

  “Alejo!” she shouted into the wind. Her was voice was raw, like she’d been yelling all night. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “We saw him,” she said, pointing at the reporter. “On the news.”

  The night concierge nodded weakly, then ran to the back of the van to be sick again. “I need to go to La Perla,” Alejo said, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “I need to go home.” He didn’t mean to sound so upset, but the glistening eye of the video camera had started circling him, drawn to the drama of the moment. Alejo could feel it taking everything in and could only imagine how he would look in the morning papers, soaked and shoeless.

  He didn’t like it.

  “Oye, movie star,” the cameraman shouted from behind his camera, his lens still trained on Alejo. “I thought you were in for the night?”

  Alejo shrugged, squinting angrily at the camera.

  “You gotta wait until morning to go anywhere,” the cameraman said. Alejo could hear the years of tobacco in his raspy voice but couldn’t see his face. Just his scraggly beard peeking out from behind the camera. In the big black lens, Alejo watched the corners of his own mouth twitch into a frown. “It’s a state of emergency in La Perla. Mandatory evacuation,” the cameraman shouted. “National Guard’s the
re and everything.”

  Ms. Ana squeezed Alejo’s shoulder, but he rolled out from beneath her grip. Freeing himself again. He didn’t want to cry, not in front of the video camera or Ms. Ana, but he could feel his face crumpling as she walked over to the cameraman and whispered in his ear. The cameraman nodded, and Ms. Ana ushered Alejo to front door of the idling van. There was no way she was going to let him walk back alone—not now that the storm was reaching a fever pitch. He would ride back to the lobby with the rest of them instead, once the news crew had finished filming.

  “It’s okay,” Ms. Ana said, rubbing Alejo’s back as she opened the door.

  The heat was already on and there was a towel draped across the passenger seat.

  “We know you’re worried. We’re all worried, but everything’s going to be okay, verdad?” She waited for Alejo to nod, then smiled with tight lips and slammed the door closed. Alejo sighed, pointing all the heater vents at his face. He shivered for a moment, on the verge of tears, but felt less hopeless as he warmed up and took stock of the van. It was mostly empty. There were no monitors and no expensive equipment. The backseats were strewn with wet plastic ponchos and backpacks waterproofed in trash bags.

  The other van was the control center, he realized.

  Alejo’s van was just the extra.

  The rain drummed on the windshield and Alejo settled into the towel.

  Everything’s going to be okay.

  Ms. Ana was so nice that he almost believed her.

  Almost.

  Alejo reached next to the steering wheel and turned on the wipers, his hand grazing the keys in the ignition. Even with the wipers on, it was hard to see. They weren’t fast enough to keep up with the rain. Nothing was. The beach was already gone, and high tide was in a few hours. It would take the boardwalk with it—and there was no telling what else it would take.

  If Alejo wanted to find his padrino, he couldn’t wait until morning.

  Not if it was a state of emergency in La Perla.

  Everything’s going to be okay, Alejo told himself, crawling into the driver’s seat.

  The keys jangled across his knees as he stretched to reach the pedals. Wishing he’d paid better attention when Nando worked them in his yellow truck.

  It wasn’t so hard.

  Nobody even noticed the big white van inching off the boardwalk, its revving engine masked by the raging winds. They were too focused on the rabid sea and the rising waves. As he bounced over the lawn—stretching to reach the gas and tap the brakes—Alejo caught a glimpse of the San Juan Pilastro Resort and Casino in the rearview mirror. The windows looked golden against the night.

  Warm.

  It made it harder for Alejo to drive away.

  To leave everything behind.

  But actually driving, on the other hand, was easier than he expected.

  Like riding a roller coaster without the tracks.

  fledge (verb): to acquire feathers large enough for flight

  —OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

  There were exactly twelve crew members remaining, down from the usual two hundred fifty—enough to fill up an emergency helicopter, if it came to that. They spread out on well-worn couches in the common room, shifting uneasily in their seats. Not paying much attention to the shoot-’em-up playing in the corner. The movie was easy to ignore. They’d all seen it a hundred times, and the volume was so low it was practically a whisper. Quiet enough that Silas could make out the gentle lull of the ocean against the steel pylons beneath them.

  When the storm rolled in, they wanted to be able to hear it.

  If it rolled in.

  There was a good bet going about whether or not it would even rain.

  Silas and the rest of the skeleton crew had taken that bet when they decided to wait Valerie out on the rig. The rest of the crew—the ones who evacuated—had put money on it. They’d already been home for hours. Silas had gotten texts from some of them: selfies in their trucks, showing off thick hamburgers and fries in the parking lots of their favorite restaurants. Holding up twenty-dollar bills. “I got three times this much says you’re gonna be stuck there for a week,” his rig-mate wrote. “Livin’ on oatmeal and wishing you’d listened.”

  Silas ignored their texts.

  He was too tired to joke around.

  They all were.

  They’d worked late by floodlight—the last remaining twelve—securing the enormous platform as best they could. They’d tied the cranes down into their cradles and cleared decks the length of two football fields. It was heavy work, and every so often Silas had wiped his brow and stared into the horizon, wondering if the reports could possibly be true.

  Silas shifted in his chair, then stood—making his way out of the breakroom and onto the deck. He still wasn’t sure what to believe, and now that their work was finally done, his mind wouldn’t stop racing.

  He needed some air.

  He needed some reassurance that he hadn’t messed up.

  The moon was set low in the sky, reflecting brightly against the placid Gulf. When Silas looked at it long enough, he saw layers and layers of stars in the distance. Whole galaxies he’d never seen before, strewn like shattered glass in the purple depths beyond the Milky Way.

  But no hurricane.

  Silas pushed his sleeves up his sweaty arms and told himself he’d made the right decision. It had taken them a full six hours to prepare for the storm, and in all that time, he hadn’t even felt the hint of a breeze. The weather people had gotten everything wrong, as usual. There was nothing left to do but lean over the rusted railing and watch the seagulls gather in the gentle swells. The operations manager joined him, spitting wetly into the wavelets.

  “You know how much it costs to shut this thing down?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. He wiped the spittle from his lips with the back of his arm. “Eight hundred thousand dollars. Per day, not counting lost revenue.”

  The operations manager shook his head and stalked away with a pained expression on his face, like it hurt him personally to have to send everyone home and lose all that money. The truth was he didn’t have a choice. It was procedure. Lost lives were more important than lost revenue. But on the rig, revenue meant oil, which is what they were all there for in the first place, so of course they waited until the last possible minute to shut off the valves.

  When the operations manager finally pressed the button, Silas thought he’d feel the entire platform shudder to a stop beneath his feet—but nothing happened. The manager looked like he was going to have a heart attack, but there were no other signs that the rig had turned into a billion-dollar lump in the middle of nowhere, with no land in sight.

  Silas shook his head as he made his way back to the common room.

  “All this for nothing,” he said, settling onto a weathered brown couch. “I don’t think it’s even coming.” The other eleven could have gone back to their bedrooms. They could have gone anywhere on the rig: the gym, the galley—there was even an actual theater—but they all stayed with Silas in the common room, not saying anything. Half-watching an old action movie they’d all seen before.

  Waiting for the sound of rain on steel.

  When it finally came, it was like fat fingers tapping on a hollow wall. So slow you could almost hear each individual drop. Silas cocked his head as the operations manager took out his phone to make a call. Just as he walked out of the room, the tapping fingers formed a fist—the rain pounding against the offshore rig so hard it shook. The eleven remaining workers sat listening to the storm as Silas paused the movie, trying to gauge how big it was as the waves pounded against the pylons, echoing up into the drum of the empty rig.

  Reverberating.

  “Just got word from the mainland,” the operations manager said as he blew back into the room, his clothes so wet they clung to his arms and
legs. He was breathless from his phone call and looked almost relieved. “It’s actually happening. Waves are fifteen feet tall and growing. Good thing we evacuated, right?”

  The rig creaked in the sudden wind and rain.

  “We didn’t evacuate,” Silas said. “Not us. Not yet.”

  He wasn’t sure if he should call his wife.

  He didn’t want to scare her, but it looked like he was coming home early after all.

  Alejo hunched over the wheel of the borrowed van, peering into the darkness.

  He had tried to find the headlights as he splashed through the storm, but after twisting and pushing every knob on the dashboard, he’d only managed to turn on the radio. It glowed with the signal of a satellite floating twenty-two thousand miles above Australia…but the lights were still a mystery to him.

  It hardly mattered.

  He hadn’t seen another car since he’d left the Pilastro, and the fog was so dense it was like swimming through milk.

  The rain only made it worse.

  Alejo bobbed his feet on the pedals—gas and then brake and then gas again—as he veered off the empty road into the heart of the city. The asphalt gave way to cobblestones and the steering wheel vibrated beneath his fingers. On any normal night in Old San Juan, he would have seen couples lingering in secret alleys, glowing from a night of dancing and cocktails, and men puffing cigars while feral cats stalked between their legs—all in the soft amber light of gas lamps, with live music from open-air restaurants mingling in a warm sea breeze.

  Salsa and jazz and marimba, a different song for every block.

  Tonight, there were no cats and no couples.

  No men smoking cigars.

  Even worse, it was as if they’d never been there in the first place. The windows of the storefronts and restaurants lining the plazas were either shuttered or boarded up with fresh planks of wood. Alejo drove slowly, looking for signs of light and life. But the cracks between the colorful plaster and the plywood were dark. It was a complete blackout.