The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth)

by Stark, Michael

  I frowned. “About what?”

  She waved toward the cabin.

  “I asked if you smoked and drank. You said you did. There’s liquor down there, cigarettes down there, but nary a one has been opened and I ain’t seen you partake in either since we left.”

  I sipped at my coffee, enjoying the rich taste and noting her slip back to the country-girl language.

  “This stuff is good.”

  She nodded.

  “That it is. I have that coffee imported from Hawaii. It’s one of my few indulgences. A pound of that runs about sixty dollars. Enjoy it. What gets me is why a man would carry tobacco and alcohol and not use either.”

  I lifted my shoulders in a slight shrug.

  “It wasn’t a lie. I used to smoke, a long time ago. A lot of ex-smokers will tell you that the urge never really goes away. Even now, after fifteen years, I still have times when I find myself reaching for one.”

  I offered her a wry smile. “It’s just not often. I figured if I wanted one while I was out here, I’d indulge. Right now, the Surgeon General is probably more worried about the Fever than whether or not someone smokes a couple before he dies.”

  I watched as she lit the cigarette she had pulled from the pack.

  “As for the alcohol, I like a shot now and then.”

  She blew smoke into the cockpit. Although the tarp shielded the back of the boat from most of the wind, enough slipped through the edges to whip the plume away.

  “The trick to enjoying things like this Hill William, is to control them and use them when you want. Addiction is all about letting stuff pick for you. Pleasure is about choosing when to indulge--like first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee. You want a smoke now.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I do?”

  She nodded and shook another from the pack. I stared it at for a long moment. Quitting had been one of the hardest things I had ever done. The thought of lighting up seemed to crap all over the years of fighting back the urge. Even so, resisting then seemed stupid.

  I sighed and took it. You’d think that a decade and a half of staying away from them would have left me hacking and coughing on the first pull. You’d think that if you had never smoked. Therein lies one of the most insidious characteristics of tobacco. Two puffs in, the smoke went down as smooth as the last puff had fifteen years earlier. That didn’t stop the immediate head-rush that left me reeling.

  Elsie laughed.

  “God you are a bad influence.” I said hoarsely. “How the hell am I supposed to drive the boat out of here when I can’t even stand up?”

  The laughter died away.

  “We ain’t going anywhere. That water ain’t going to get better for a while. We’d probably make it okay, but not by the deadline and honestly, I don’t like the word probably. I’d just as soon not take the chance. Besides, I’ll call the Judge once the weather dies down.”

  It took a minute to get my wits back.

  “Who’s the Judge?”

  She sipped at her coffee.

  “The Judge is Dwight’s daddy. He’s been sweet on me since my husband died twenty years ago. The feelin’ is not mutual but as long as a man ain’t weird, it don’t hurt to be nice to him.”

  She looked up over the edge of her cup and grinned. “He’s the real law in this part of the state. That’s why Dwight backed up so quick at the store. Five minutes after he drove away with you, the phone woulda been ringing and his poppa on the other end.”

  I sipped at the coffee and took another experimental hit off the cigarette. I’d forgotten how deliciously well those two went together.

  She pointed inside the cabin.

  “I turned on the radio a few minutes ago. There’s a warm front heading up coast that’s going to smack right into this cold air. We’re sitting at ground zero for that collision. That means big storms, maybe even a tornado,” she said and paused long enough to puff at her cigarette. “That’s another reason not to go traipsing off across the water. That mast up there reminds me of a big lightning rod. I’ve seen what that does to a boat. If you make it past the strike, you got to deal with floating around in the water on your own. I’m too old for that.”

  “Me too,” I agreed. “That means I need to find a place we can hole up.”

  She waved dismissively.

  “There’s nothing to find. We’ll go up to the old life-saving station. It’s big enough to hold us and the rest of them people. If I remember right, there’s a wood stove inside so we can warm it up some. It’s up near the point. Remember that thing that looked like a big house?”

  I nodded. After miles of uninhabited coast line, seeing what looked like a large Cape Cod with a covered front porch had left me staring.

  Something she said tingled at the back of my mind. It took a minute to put my finger on it.

  “I wonder how many people are still here. The kayakers were planning on leaving this morning too.”

  She snorted. “They’re fools if they did. That’s bad water out there. You get wind blowing from different directions in a short period of time, water currents start switching back and forth and the whole mess gets to boiling like soup in a pot. There’s as many ships and boats sunk around here as anywhere in the world and most of them because of the weather.”

  She canted her head toward the bow.

  “That dune buggy thing of your dad’s really work?”

  “It really does,” I said. “It won’t go much more than seven or eight miles an hour but even that beats walking.”

  She took a last puff off her cigarette and snuffed it out in an empty soda can.

  “Then I say get the thing down. Run around, let the others know what’s coming, and then come pick up me and Daniel. We can use it to ferry enough supplies up to the station to eat for a couple of days. How heavy is that thing anyway?”

  “I don’t know for sure, maybe a 150 pounds or so.”

  Elsie blinked. “How you going to get it off then?”

  “The same way I put it there, “ I answered. “I’ll pick it up and set it off.”

  She brightened. “And it’s got a real bathroom!”

  I looked at her, confused.

  “I’m talking about the station. It has a toilet and one of those big old iron bathtubs.”

  I laughed at her. “So where do we get the water to fill it?”

  “The same place we always did,” she retorted. “There’s no fresh water on this island. Everyone had a rainwater cistern. I don’t know about the other ones here but I do know that one is still working.” The Park Service oversees this place and shares maintenance with a historical society up on the Cape. They come down once or twice a year and do a week of restoration.”

  She sipped at her coffee. “One of the workers told me they fixed up the cistern to use for cleanup. I think he said it was three hundred gallons. I wouldn’t go around drinking the stuff, but take a bath and flush the toilet? You’re dang right I would.”

  A gust of wind shook the boat. The edges of the tarp flapped wildly.

  “Go on now. See about them kayakers.”

  I drained the last of the coffee, and headed back out into the wind. Angel bobbed at the dock like a cork on the water. Getting the buggy off her cabin roof was hard enough when she was sitting still. Elsie had a point though. The life-saving station stood a good half-mile from where we had tied up. The buggy would make transporting her, Daniel, and food a lot easier.

  Moving the extra gas and kerosene came first. I unlashed them from the top of the box and set them across on the dock. On a calm day, I would have probably tried to hoist the box across with sheer muscle power. Tied up to the dock, with the sailboat bouncing up and down, that idea generated a fine image in my mind of the buggy, box and me ending up in the bay.

  Instead, I moved it in sections. The batteries went first since half the weight came from the bank of batteries that powered the thing. Dad had used a steel frame, but everything else he had crafted out of alumin
um tubing or aluminum supports made of thick L-shaped pieces. I reached down to give it an experimental tug and ended up jerking the entire vehicle out of the box. Rather than stop and try to balance on the wobbly deck, I kept the motion going moving sideways and plopping it down on the nearby dock. From crate to dock took less than two seconds.

  Scrambling over, I started putting it back together. The upright pieces folded up straight and locked into place. The seat was little more than a bench made of plywood bolted down on supports and covered with foam rubber. Six batteries powered the electric motor, turning out somewhere around eight miles an hour at top speed. The overhead--I couldn’t call it a roof--had been constructed to hold the solar cells mounted on Angel cabin top. The rear support on the driver’s side held a socket the same size as one mounted on Angel’s rear. Both were designed to hold the windmill stored in the rear locker.

  Dad had told me that he ran the buggy for five days on his last trip with nothing but sun and wind power. Given that 90 percent of his time had been spent fishing, not driving, I didn’t doubt those numbers. At the same time, I didn’t expect them on a continuous run either.

  The entire vehicle stretched almost five feet long, ran nearly three feet wide and sported oversized balloon tires. I couldn’t imagine it getting stuck in sand, mud or anywhere else for that matter.

  Once I had the pieces together, I hooked up the air pump stored on the back of it to a 12-volt outlet on Angel. Twenty minutes later the ugly little vehicle looked like it was ready for a Baja run.

  Elsie stuck her head out when she heard the air pump shut off.

  “That is the strangest contraption I have ever seen. I’d be embarrassed to be seen on it.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really? You planning on walking up to the station?”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “I guess not.”

  I climbed in and flipped the switch that sent power to the engine. The controls were simple. The transmission had come from a riding lawn mower, leaving only two options, forward and reverse. He hadn’t installed seatbelts. Then again at eight miles an hour, I’m not sure how useful they would have been.

  I pressed down on the accelerator. The buggy lurched forward, the only noise coming from the tires rolling across the wooden dock and a slight whine from the transmission. I hit the sand just beyond the dock and climbed through it easily. Just beyond the slight rise, the ATV path led off to the right in a long loop around the town. I ignored the cut-off that led up through the old village and headed for the swamps at the far end.

  The wind had grown stronger, blowing hard enough to whip a fine stream of sand across the path. Out on the sound side, the water didn’t have the long rolling swells that had been pushing through the inlet. Instead it looked choppy as hell, with short, steep waves and boiling whitecaps.

  I found their camp about fifteen minutes later. Kelly and Tyler stood near the shoreline, looking out over the sound. Neither of them heard me coming. I’d pulled to within ten feet of them before the boy turned around.

  The look on his face went from anxious to startled amazement.

  “What’s that?”

  The girl turned when he spoke, worry strong on her face.

  “The weather is going to turn ugly later. There’s a warm front pushing in. The weatherman said big storms this afternoon, a lot of lightning and maybe even some super cell formations,” I said, ignoring his question. “I’m taking Elsie and Daniel to the old life-saving station. She says there’s plenty of room. You’re welcome to join us.”

  She bit at her lip.

  “Zach left. We’re not sure when. He was adamant this morning about leaving. I thought I’d talked him out of it and went back to sleep. When I got up, he was gone.”

  I looked out over the water. The sound stretched off to the horizon, all of it painted on a storm-tossed canvas of gray, choppy water and gloomy skies.

  “How long does it take to get to your car?”

  The wind whipped her hair away from her face.

  “I don’t know, maybe three or four hours.”

  “How far are we talking?” I asked.

  She nodded toward the inlet.

  “We logged six miles across to Ocracoke. We put in about a mile and a half above the village. All together, we paddled a little over three hours. But we spent another two hours waiting near Silver Lake for the tide to change.”

  “When did he leave?”

  She threw her hands up. “I don’t know.”

  I felt the irritation rising and fought it back down.

  “Give me an estimate. What time did you go back to bed?”

  “About five o’clock. Somewhere around there, I’m not sure.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair. The kid could have been in the water for three hours. I had no idea which way the tide was running. In that time he could be sitting in Ocracoke, swept out to sea or still battling waves and tides and being pushed deeper and deeper into the sound. The last option had final written all over it. He could already be dead.

  The buggy could hold two people, barely.

  “Get in,” I told her, and then looked at Tyler.

  “Pack up your stuff. I’m going to run her to my boat. We’ll try raising Ocracoke on the radio. Either way, one of us will be back soon to pick you up.”

  I wheeled the buggy into a tight turn and left him standing there. We rode in silence most of the way. The windshield on the buggy was little more than a thin sheet of Plexiglas fitted into grooves on the uprights. My father hadn’t been an engineer. He was, at best, a jack of all trades. I had no idea if the grooves would hold it in place or if the thing would tear loose in the wind and come flying back on us.

  “When we get back, I want you to start ferrying Elsie and Daniel to the station. It’s that big building up on the point. You know the one I’m talking about?”

  She nodded, her face white.

  “I’ll start hitting the radio and throwing supplies together. I’m thinking two or three runs to get the gear and people moved. After that, go get Tyler. When you have everyone at the station, send Tyler out to get Joshua’s crowd.”

  She opened her mouth as if to speak.

  “If there’s time, you can come back for me then. If not, get the buggy out of the rain. I’ll walk up.”

  I rounded the turn just before the dock and slid the little dune buggy to a stop at the edge of the wooden planks. Kelly followed me out. A strong gust swept across the bay just as we made it to Angel. The boat shuddered and slammed against the two-by-eight stretched along the side of the dock as a rub rail. The wind hit me hard and sent me stumbling toward the edge of the dock and the dark water beyond. I caught myself and looked back to see Kelly on her knees. For the first time in my life, I heard wind whistling through the shrouds. The shrill whine jerked my head up even as another gust blasted across the water.

  “Elsie!”

  She pulled back the edge of the tarp.

  “Come on. She’s going to ride you up to the station. Show her where it is. She’ll come back for Daniel. I’ll watch over him until she gets back and we’ll pack up some food for tonight.”

  “Don’t bother. I been busy. It’s all packed, out here in the cockpit.”

  I looked past her. She had piled two large duffel bags and a Hefty Cinch Sack in the cockpit floor.

  “Then come on. Get going. The sooner you get out of here, the sooner we get everyone safe.”

  Daniel stared up at me from the cabin. He looked terrified.

  “I’m not leaving him here.” Elsie said stubbornly. “If he don’t go, I don’t go.”

  I cursed under my breath. “Then both of you get up here. He can sit on your lap.”

  Relief washed across his face.

  I reached down and pulled Elsie out, literally lifting her clear of the boat by a foot. Daniel scampered up behind her. The instant his feet hit the dock, he wrapped his arms around her in a vise.

  Another gale-force blast of air hit the boat.<
br />
  “Let’s go,” I shouted, and began herding them toward the shore. The old woman couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. I wanted her and the boy off the dock before both ended up in the bay.

  The wind had to be blowing forty knots or better. At that speed, air starts to become a physical force, an invisible hand shoving, pushing, and trying to drag everything along with it. The terrifying aspects came from how it stole my senses, leaving me feeling as if I was groping along a topsy-turvy world, deafened and partially blind. My eyes burned from the spray whipped off the booming surf and torn from the tops of the waves. The wind roared in my ears, making anything but shouted voices impossible to hear.

  Kelly had retreated to the buggy. She waited anxiously while we made our way across the wooden causeway. Elsie slid into the passenger’s seat first. I lifted Daniel into her lap seconds later.

  He looked up at me, his eyes dark and unreadable.

  “That man, he makes me think of bats.”

  I stared at him.

  “What man?”

  He squinted into the wind and looked toward the water.

  “The man they can’t find.”

  Elsie hugged him tight.

  “Let Hill William go, Daniel. We don’t have time for nonsense.”

  His odd choice of words had me confused. I had no idea what he meant.

  Another gust slammed into the buggy, carrying fine particles of sand and debris that felt like tiny needles punching into my face.

  “Go!” I yelled at the girl in the driver’s seat. She needed no urging. The buggy leapt forward, spun for a moment in the loose sand, and lurched toward the little road that led up through the village.

  I waited until they were out of sight before I raced back to Angel. Elsie’s bags still lay in the cockpit floor. I groaned when I saw them. Snatching them up, I hurried back across the wooden planks and dumped them on the sand at the edge of the island.

  Back in the cabin, the physical assault lessened enough to catch my breath. Out of the wind, the noise dropped measurably. The boat however pitched and rocked, alternately pulling away from the dock until her mooring lines grew tight, then throwing herself back. Fenders took up most of the impact, but the sound of her sides scraping along the wooden rail made me wince.