by Неизвестный
Can’t leave that animal in the plane. It might chew through the wires. And then where would you be?
It sounded like something her mother would say, but that last bit about the wires told her she wasn’t crazy. Not yet, at least. The voice was still just another part of Amelia. The part that kept her awake in the dark hours of the night when someone had to fly the plane. The part that kept her alive.
She felt steadier. The little flutter in her gut had dwindled to a slight hiccough. Might as well handle the crab now, she thought. Besides, she wasn’t ready to deal with what was waiting for her on the beach. Not just yet.
She sloshed through the water to the plane’s open side hatch. That was the whole problem right there. The crab never would have gotten inside if she had secured her plane. It was her own damned fault.
Considering how scared she’d been only a few moments ago, removing the crab was easy. She came up through the cabin and grabbed one of its back legs. It was so heavy, she worried that instead of getting the thing out of her plane, she’d just end up pulling the leg off.
She didn’t. The crab writhed and bucked. She let go of it twice, but managed to get it out in the end. Once it skittered away across the reef, she closed the plane’s side hatch.
She faced the island. She couldn’t stay out here forever. Fred Noonan required burial. She needed to find water. She could always eat crab if today’s little adventure indicated how easy they were to catch.
She walked back to shore. She could be alone. There was a picture of her in her high school yearbook with the caption “the girl in brown who walks alone.” She knew how to do it. Preferred it, really, even though she had married Putnam. But being alone with people around was a very different proposition than being alone with the sand and the sky.
An odd, scraping sound vibrated up through her feet. Birds erupted from the coconut trees. Amelia whirled around just in time to see the Electra tip sideways over the edge of the reef.
“No.” Her voice, so weak, couldn’t rise over the chatter of birds. She fell to her knees. Not the plane. Not after everything else.
The wing swung up, throwing a glittering trail of water through the air. She reached out, as if she could catch it, pluck it from the sea and set it back on its gears. But even if she were large enough, strong enough, it was too late.
The plane slipped under the waves. The engine wouldn’t turn now. The radio was dead.
She slammed her fist down, shredding the skin over her knuckles. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Not like this. It would have been better if she’d crashed the damned plane on landing. At least she would have been closer to the air.
She sat there for a long time, watching the empty space where the plane used to be. Her brain tried to sketch out the lines of the wings. Maybe if she stared long enough she would wake up and find out this was a nightmare.
Still alive, Meeley.
“Shut up, Mother.”
You still have chores.
“I’m on an island. There are no chores.”
The voice that wasn’t her mother didn’t answer. And she did have chores. She had to find water, fresh water. And food. But first she had to bury her navigator.
She stumbled through the sand to where she left the pack, the first aid kit, and canteens. Fred Noonan’s body was gone.
Amelia searched the island. She walked the outer ring of beach, then made her way into the lagoon and circled it, too. She trekked through the coconut grove, searching for fresh water. The jungle was denser than it looked from the beach or the air. Scrub and tall, unfamiliar trees with huge trunks that grew so close together she could barely squeeze between them in places seemed to fight her every step. She suspected she circled the same stand of trees two or three times before she moved on. The damned island wasn’t even that large.
She pushed, sweating and hungry, through the brush. Her pack with the last crust of bread and nearly empty canteen caught on a branch. She jerked it free.
Maybe he wasn’t dead, she told herself. She had been exhausted and dizzy from thirst. She could have made a mistake. What if he woke? He could have been hallucinating and wandered into this damned mess. He’d called her Mary Bea.
She pushed another branch out of the way. It whipped back, laying a sharp track of fire down her cheek. “God damn it!”
The ever-present bird chatter wound up. Amelia cursed again. The damned birds got even louder. If she couldn’t get some peace and quiet, she thought she might go mad.
“Shut up!”
They didn’t. She heard them in the trees, their huge black wings rustling against the leaves. Scavengers, most likely, waiting for her to die.
They came closer. Amelia slumped again the trunk of one of the big trees, defeated. Let them take her. At least she’d be out of this God-forsaken jungle.
She sank to the ground. She rested her head against the trunk and closed her eyes. The rustling grew closer. The birds chattered. Then, under the birds, something groaned.
Amelia’s breath caught. She scanned the jungle. “Fred?”
She waited. The birds’ calls sounded like laughter now. Stupid woman. Stupid for getting lost. Stupid for losing your navigator. Stupid. Woman.
She buried her face in her hands. It was over. All of it. She’d never get out of this. Never.
Then she heard it again. Under the sound of the retreating birds, came a groan.
“Fred!” He wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. There was still hope. She leapt to her feet and plunged headlong into the jungle. “Noonan! Wait!”
She yelled his name until her voice turned rough, but he’d disappeared again. She continued searching, though. It gave her purpose. Reminded her she wasn’t dead.
For three days, she searched. When the water ran out, she drank the juice inside coconuts, drilling into them with the sharp end of the screwdriver. What if what she heard had been some animal? Or worse, her imagination? What if she wandered around this island, wearing herself out for nothing?
She didn’t let herself think about Noonan’s body, lying unguarded on the beach while she slept in the plane. She tried not to imagine giant crabs crawling out of the surf for him. What if she did find him and there were only bones to bury?
She was up in a coconut tree, knocking coconuts onto the sand below when she heard the plane. At first, the engine’s buzz sank into the sounds of the ocean, the wind, the birds. But then she saw it.
“Hey!” She almost fell waving her arms. “I’m here!”
But they couldn’t see her. They were too high, looking for the plane. That’s when she saw the man stumbling between the trees. Relief so strong it loosened her grip on the tree washed through her. Her body shifted sideways over the drop.
“Fred!”
His head tipped up, as if he was sniffing the wind.
Amelia half-slid, half-climbed down the tree. She jumped the last ten feet. She hit the sand hard. Her ankle rolled and something crunched. Pain spiked up through her leg to her knee.
“Damn it!”
The plane circled over the far end of the island. She couldn’t make it in time, not on that ankle. But all Fred had to do was walk out onto the beach.
“Fred!” She pointed at the sky. He sniffed their air again. “Get the lead out of your ass!”
This time, he didn’t sniff the air. His head turned toward her on a slow pivot. His mouth hung open. Green and purple tinted the hollows of his cheeks. Mucus—dried, dark, and bloody—crusted his nose. He shuffled toward her.
“Fred, go to the beach!” He acted like he hadn’t heard her, but he must have. She limped forward, her ankle screaming with every step. Overhead, the plane’s engines buzzed louder as they came back around the island. “Turn the hell around!”
He did not turn around. He walked, shuffled really, right for Amelia.
The smell reached her first. Rot. She scanned the ground for the screwdriver she used to break into the coconuts. There, near the base of the tree with her supply p
ack. Noonan was getting closer. She hopped on one leg back to the tree. She slung the pack over one shoulder and scooped up the screwdriver.
Fred moved slowly, but he didn’t stop. Amelia braced her back against the tree trunk and held the screwdriver in front of her. “Go to the beach, Fred, or we’ll both die.”
He didn’t answer, just kept pushing forward. That’s when Amelia noticed his eyes. She forgot the plane. She didn’t remember what color Noonan’s eyes were when they landed on the island, but it sure as hell wasn’t milk white.
She pointed the screwdriver at him, the tip shaking with the trembling of her hand. “Don’t come any closer, Fred.”
Every step he took toward her, away from rescue, drove a shaft of icy fear further into her heart. The sound of the plane grew fainter. They were lost, alone, abandoned. Noonan was past caring. Amelia was trapped here, like a mouse under the great bowl of the sky.
Noonan’s hands curled into grasping claws as he came near. Strands of saliva hung from his lips. The sickness couldn’t be airborne or she’d already be ill. That meant whatever virus infected him had come from the bite.
He stumbled closer. G.P. used to tell Amelia, “You are the thing with feathers.” But the real line was: “Hope is the thing with feathers.” From Emily Dickinson.
Hope. I am hope. And Fred is the last man I’ll ever see.
He was only about six feet away now. Amelia’s fist tightened around the screwdriver’s handle. “Fred, you’re very ill, but you need to stay back.”
He lurched forward, his hands scrabbling at her arms. Amelia felt the screwdriver hit flesh and sink in. She staggered back, the screwdriver still clutched in her hand.
At first, she couldn’t tell where she’d stabbed him. Then she saw it: a hole in his neck just above his collarbone on the right hand side. He hadn’t even flinched.
Her fingers opened. The screwdriver fell and stuck tip down in the sand. Though it was against every fiber in her body, she wheeled around and stumbled into the jungle.
Amelia set up camp at the western end of the island near the lagoon. She drank coconut milk and rainwater. She ate crabs, and once a turtle. Every night she lay under the open sky, hoping for her mother’s voice or another dream to tell her what to do. Never had her life been so purposeless.
She sat in the water at the edge of the lagoon soaking her sore ankle. Only a sprain.
When she was ten, maybe eleven, she had found a rat in the yard near the street. She wanted to bury it. Her mother wouldn’t let her. “They carry disease,” she’d said.
So Amelia did what she did back in those days. She went to the library. She learned one very important fact about rats. They spread the bubonic plague.
She had wanted to protect her family, so she went into the house and got her father’s .22 rifle. She spent the rest of the day wandering around Atchinson, searching for rats. That’s what her father had been talking about in her dream.
More than once during her short treks into the brush to gather firewood, she’d heard Fred and his avian companions rustling through the jungle. She could ignore her fear and revulsion, but the guilt drove her back to the little camp near the lagoon.
So far, she’d managed to avoid him. It couldn’t last forever, though. She wasn’t ill. He was deathly ill, and seriously wounded. All she had to do was wait him out. If she couldn’t, and he came for her again, she might have to do something drastic. She wasn’t ready for that.
She stood and made her way back up to the campfire. Thank God for the stupid jar of freckle cream. Amelia had always hated the freckles sprinkled across her nose. They made people treat her like a child. But that jar had a base shaped like a lens. Once it was rinsed out, all she had to do was use it to direct the sun into a little pile of tinder . . . and wait.
Noonan’s words from the dream echoed through her head. She said them out loud. “I burned her.”
The screwdriver hadn’t worked. If Fred came for her, she’d have to burn him. She wasn’t sure how, though.
She gathered more wood from the scrub forest and built up the fire. She didn’t want to kill Noonan. She hadn’t known him long. He wasn’t even the first man she’d hired to navigate. All those hours in the plane hadn’t drawn them closer. Loud engines meant they couldn’t talk. Only pass notes. Still, she didn’t dislike him.
She took a coconut from the pile near the campfire. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could last on coconut water. Breaking through each husk and shell weakened her more now than it had a week ago. And she needed at least three to slake her thirst.
She reached into the pack for the screwdriver. She’d gone back for it, a feat that took every ounce of courage she could muster. Then she’d boiled it in salt water for what seemed like hours to make sure it didn’t carry any of Noonan’s infection.
As she pulled it out, her knuckles grazed Fred’s bourbon. She dug it out, too. The first swallow burned all the way down her throat and slugged a fiery fist into her gut. Fire. She took another mouthful and spat it onto the fire. The flames roared up, making her lie all the way back.
Amelia sat back up and looked at the bottle. A tiny, feathered thing fluttered in her chest.
Splash Noonan with that, and he’d go up like a torch.
She took another drink. She didn’t care anymore. Not one little bit. The world could be what it was going to be. Dead men could dance the Lindy Hop for all she cared. All her life, she had tried her damnedest to be the best she could be. Even the setbacks couldn’t keep her down. Crash the plane in Hawaii? Fix it and start over going the other direction. Never give up. Never, never, never.
But all that determination meant nothing. She felt tears squeeze out the outer corners of her eyes and roll toward her ears. She’d been holding onto them since she realized she’d missed Howland with its landing strip and the Coast Guard standing by. It didn’t matter if she cried. There wasn’t anyone here to see. No one would ever see her again. No matter what she did, she would die here. Alone.
Amelia slept hard that night, clutching the half-empty bottle tight to her chest. When she woke, her head and mouth felt as though they’d been packed with moldy cotton. She couldn’t stand, so she crawled to the lagoon.
She vomited twice on the way.
When she finally reached the water, she splashed handfuls over her face then rolled back onto the sand. Her throat ached for water. Fresh, cold, clear water from the well outside her grandparents’ house in Kansas.
She lifted her hand to shade her eyes and realized she’d dragged the bottle down to the water with her. She knew it wouldn’t do her any good, not in the long run. But for now, at least her throat wouldn’t be so damned dry.
She heard her mother’s voice for the first time in days. Meeley, don’t.
“You can’t stop me.” Amelia sat up and lifted the bottle to her lips, anticipating the burn.
The burn. She lowered the bottle so fast it slipped from her fingers and landed on the beach on its side. Golden brown liquid glugged out.
“Damn it!” She snatched the bottle upright. One of the few things she had from home, and she was pouring it all over the ground. She’d gone mad. That was the only explanation for wasting her one best weapon against Fred Noonan.
Birdcalls stabbed at her aching head. She didn’t know if the world was gone or not. She didn’t know how long Fred could last in his state. She didn’t think anyone would come for them, but what if they did? What if some well-meaning captain brought Fred aboard before she could warn him?
Amelia’s mother was out there, house sitting in California. Her mother. If it came down to keeping her mother from whatever plague Noonan carried, she had to try.
As if on cue, the late Fred Noonan dragged his reeking self out of the trees. Once she saw him, Amelia couldn’t believe she’d missed his smell, like sour eggs. Of course, she still had the stink of slightly used coconut bourbon crab clinging to her nose and throat. And the damned birds. She should have known.
He didn’t notice her at first. She patted her hand across the ground, never lowering her eyes. She’d dropped the screwdriver near the campfire after prying open last night’s coconuts.
Fred shuffled forward. Amelia abandoned her search for the screwdriver. The damned thing hadn’t done her any good last time. She reached for one of the twisted branches from the fire, and held it out in front of her.
She held the bottle in her other hand. Simple plan. Splash Fred with the bourbon then light him with the burning branch.
Noonan didn’t cooperate. Instead of coming for her he scuffed along the edge of the trees.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Amelia muttered.
Noonan’s head swiveled in her direction. She’d assumed he hunted by smell. As bad as he stank, she couldn’t smell much better at this point. Now he relied on his ears.
“Hey, Fred.”
He turned his body. The birds quieted. Amelia felt thousands of bright, black eyes trained on her. Whatever happened next, the birds stood as mute observers, distant and unmoved.
“Are you even Fred anymore?” Amelia asked. “Or did you stop being Fred on the beach?”
The questions were meant to keep him coming, but once she said the words she realized she wanted answers.
Of course, he didn’t answer, just stumbled his weary way forward. She could outrun him even on her sore ankle, but that hadn’t done her any good the last time. Here Fred was again. Her father was right. Never run.
The real question was: would Amelia deserve to die if she burned a sick man to death? She didn’t know the answer.
Amelia let him come closer. Closer. Closer. Finally, she gave the bottle one good shake. Clear brown bourbon arced through the air and splashed down across his shoulder. The second stream hit him in the face. One last drink, Amelia thought, with something like affection.
He reached out for her. Amelia jabbed forward with the burning branch. Fire raced across his chest and over his shoulder, but he kept coming.
Damn it.
She swung the bottle. It smashed across his temple. The flames on his shoulders flared. Amelia’s feet tangled under her. She fell back. As she hit the sand, a sharp pain stabbed into her back just under her shoulder blade.