The radio hung from the cabin roof on the port side. I flicked the on-switch, waited until the numbers settled on the display and switched to Channel 16. Taking a deep breath, I thumbed the send button on the microphone.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the sailing vessel Angel, Angel, Angel. My position is the old village of Portsmouth on the North Core Banks. My vessel is sound and in no immediate danger. We have a man lost in transit to Ocracoke.”
I let go the send button. Static poured from the radio’s speakers. Thirty seconds later, I repeated the call, following procedure my father had grilled into me on a trip twenty years earlier. I had no idea how correct or official I sounded.
A woman answered on the fourth call. The words that erupted from the speakers boomed loud and full of static.
“Angel, this is Silver Lake Harbor. You have a man overboard, is that correct? Over.”
I sighed and hit the send button again.
“Silver Lake, we do not have a man overboard. A camper disappeared from the island this morning with the stated intention of crossing to Ocracoke in a kayak, over.”
For a long moment, the only sound in the cabin came from static pouring from the radio and wind whistling through Angel’s rigging.
“Angel, would you repeat your last, over.”
Even through the background hiss, I could hear the incredulous tones in her voice.
“Silver Lake, we’re missing a camper. He left early this morning in a kayak with the intention of crossing to Ocracoke.”
Her voice came back moments later.
“Angel, Standby while I make a couple of calls to see if he’s arrived.”
At least five minutes passed before the radio blared to life again. I used it to gather up a few more items. I had no doubt that Elsie had taken care of the food. What I wanted were things that would help me survive once the food was gone. Somewhere in the middle of stuffing a bag full, the absurdity of that urge struck me hard. I’d come here to die, and yet was fighting to survive.
“Angel, this is Silver Lake.”
The squawk from the radio startled me when it came. I dropped the bag I had been packing on the port bunk and grabbed the microphone.
“Go ahead Silver Lake.”
“Angel, be advised that the Coast Guard has been notified. A search vessel will be dispatched as soon as possible. However, you should be aware that several calls have come in this morning.”
I didn’t need an interpreter. That officially worded response basically meant, get in line buddy. Every boat on the water is trying to make port ahead of the travel ban and they’re all running into the same weather.
“Angel, did you copy my last?”
I hit the send button. “I did, Silver Lake.”
A fresh blast of wind hit the boat hard. Off in the distance, thunder growled.
I looked up.
“What? It isn’t enough that we’ll probably die in a week or two anyway? You have to send this crap too?”
When I finally dropped my gaze, I looked around the cabin. Clothes, foam plates, packages of food, all manner of items were scattered across the bunks and the deck. The only thing missing was water. The boat was bone dry.
The rain might come. The seas might thunder. As long as I took care of her though, she would take care of me.
I shot another look toward the overhead.
“Alright, this is about the point in the movies where the hero does something brave and strong and stands against all the odds. That ain’t me. Just so you know, I had no intention of pissing you off. I was just blowing off a little steam. So when I get out there, don’t hold it against me. Okay?”
If God answered, I didn’t hear him.
A few minutes later I eased the boat away from the dock with the throttle at one third and her nose bearing into both wind and waves. She took the chop on the bay easy enough. The real test lay ahead. Just how much of a test, I wouldn’t know until she hit the current and the rollers racing in from the ocean. Nor could I tell which way the tide was running. The confused waters outside the bay swelled into geysers when cross seas rammed into each other, and settled into a throbbing, heaving gray beast the rest of the time. Rain had started to fall as well, splattering across the cockpit in cold wet drops.
The waves grew higher and stronger the farther out we went. Where she once bobbed, Angel now hit with a solid thud, sending spray scattering across the bow. The instant we hit the current, I knew the tide was coming in, and fast. The boat lurched sideways, nearly exposing her beam to an incoming swell that carried short, steep sides and looked as if it were about to break. I pushed hard on the tiller to bring her back around enough to quarter the wave. A white sheen of spray exploded across her bow.
She clawed her way into deeper water, smacking against steep waves that pounded rather than lifted. Wave height can be completely misunderstood. The swells could have been running twenty feet high. The problem lay in how precipitous the slope. Long and gentle meant a slow rise, and equally slow fall. Steep meant running into, and through rather than riding over. Angel rode over nothing. Everything we hit slammed as if we had struck rock. Twice her bow disappeared, digging in the face of the next wave while still riding down the back of the last one.
A bigger boat could have taken the water without much fuss. Five to six-foot waves on a twenty-three footer ,however, meant that at the bottom of trough, anyone riding in the cockpit would be seated maybe a foot above the waterline, and would be looking up at the next crest bearing down like a giant gray hand ready to smack them into oblivion.
I beat into the waves for half a mile or better, before I realized that the battle had become surviving the sea rather than finding Zachary. I had been spending so much time just trying to keep Angel from being broadsided that I could have passed within five feet of his kayak and never seen him.
. What I couldn’t understand was: Why hadn’t he turned around? Halfway down the back of a huge wave, the answer hit me.
He had.
The next wave struck a massive blow, jerking the tiller out of my hands and shooting a fountain of water high across the bow. Salt water rained down in the cockpit.
I lurched feverishly for the tiller, and pulled hard to swing her bow into the wave already forming just ahead, knowing all the while that I had to turn her around and knowing just as well that the water coming across her bow could capsize the boat if it struck her broadside. I had hope, though. Every fifth wave came one gentler than the others. In the confusing cauldron where wind and water clashed, salvation had a home and it lay in that fifth swell. I waited, counting to make sure, letting half a dozen cycles pass under her before making my move. The instant the Angel smacked through the crest of the fourth wave, I gunned the engine and cut her deep to port.
She came around quickly, but not quick enough. The next wave hit dead on her beam. She heeled as if struck a mortal blow. For what seemed an eternity, Angel hung precariously between that precious moment of righting herself, and giving up the battle and falling over. The engine screamed, clawing at the water, forcing her to turn. I saw the next wave rising off to the right and hung on with every ounce of strength I had. The right blow could not only send her to the bottom, but just as easily catapult me across the gunwale and into the sea.
It struck on her rear quarter, sending a wall of water cascading into the cockpit, but shoving her forward more than sideways. Inch by inch she pulled herself up straight. As soon as the stern came about, she leapt forward, propelled by the engine, by gravity pulling her down the face of the wave that had nearly swamped her.
I kept the throttle shoved forward as far as it would go out of fear of being swamped from behind. With the current under her keel, Angel raced along shoreline half a mile distant, catching up and sliding over waves rather than being beaten by them. The sudden lull in violence would have been almost pleasurable if it hadn’t been for the storm gathering to the south. Rain already lashed the boat. Lightning wouldn’t be far behind.
I passed the kayakers camp five minutes later. Zachary had been in the water for nearly three hours before they realized he was missing. The combination of wind and water could have dragged him well past his base camp. The current in the channel looked to running four to five miles an hour, strong enough to carry a kayak miles down the coast. I kept the engine at half throttle and used binoculars pulled from the rear locker to scan the shoreline, expecting to see him trudging along at any minute.
Mile after mile slid under by. With the adrenaline and fear gone, the cold took over. Every inch of my body dripped water. My tennis shoes felt waterlogged. Every time I stood, water squished out around my ankles and bled down on the cockpit floor.
The farther south I went, the darker the clouds grew. Electricity seared through the skies. Each time I glanced up at the top of the mast, rising twenty-five feet above me. Angel had more going for her than being the highest point on the water. She held a giant metal rod up to the sky as if daring the gods to strike her.
Four miles below Portsmouth, a long, low strip of orange sliced across a stand of reeds. I angled the boat toward the shoreline, knowing without raising the binoculars that I was looking at the bottom of a fiberglass boat. I cut the engine to an idle twenty yards out and let the bow coast into water less than three feet deep. About fifteen feet out, I switched to reverse and backed her down until she floated at rest.
I didn’t bother with the anchor, but grabbed the rear dock line instead and jumped over the side into waist deep water. Before I leapt over, I’d thought my body complexly soaked. I found that not to be true, and stood with gritted teeth while cold water worked its way into every nook and cranny.
The hope in your mind is that you’ll get to the boat, find it empty, and see a trail leading off through the reeds. What I found was Zachary, underwater, his arms splayed wide and his mouth open. Where he died, when he died, I don’t know. He was too young to end up face down in a marsh, though. That I knew for certain.
I pulled him out and struggled to get him into the cockpit. It took forever, with rain washing down from an angry sky and lightning tossing bright blue-white shards of light across the heavens. I finally gave up trying to be graceful about it. The dull thud when gravity eventually came to my aid nearly turned my stomach. I joined him a few seconds later, and stood in the cockpit, letting the rain pour down my face me while I caught my breath.
I couldn’t bring myself to leave him lying in the floor, but shoving him up onto the port seat proved no easy feat. Every time I tried to move him, the dead weight of arms, legs and body felt like I was trying to lift a monstrous balloon filled with Jello. With the task finally accomplished, I fired up the engine and pointed Angel’s bow north, toward the inlet again. Once I had her back out at the edge of the channel, I took a line and lashed the tiller as dead in the middle as I could. I let her run that way for a few moments, adjusting the knots until she kept a fairly straight course. She would eventually veer off to one side or the other, limiting the amount of time I could leave her that way. But I didn’t need much. A few minutes would suffice.
I stepped into the cockpit and turned on the radio. Three calls later the woman from Silver Lake answered.
“You can call off the search,” I told her. “I have located our missing camper.”
Static followed that announcement. When she finally came back, her voice carried the same official tones it had earlier.
“I read you Angel. I’ll notify the Coast Guard. I also have some news to pass on.”
I took a deep breath and flicked the send switch.
“Go ahead Silver Lake.”
“As of one hour ago, the President of the United States, citing an imminent danger to public health, and invoking authority granted by The National Defense Authorization Act, declared a state of martial law to exist in all US territories, effective noon today. National Guard units, along with specialized components of the United States military have been mobilized and will assist local authorities in enforcing the travel ban issued yesterday. Do you copy Angel?”
I stared at the microphone.
“You’re telling me no one can leave?”
“That is affirmative Angel. This order carries the full authority of the Office of the President. Violators will be detained, and if they resist, shot. You might want to impress that last fact on your camper. When the weather clears, he is not to attempt a crossing until such time it has been authorized by the appropriate authorities.”
So many emotions boiled up inside me that defining them all would take more words than I have. Anger rode high on the list however. I wanted to tell her that the wretched old windbags in Washington could go fuck themselves. I wanted to tell her we would cross the damned water any time we wanted.
Instead, I did what every good hive citizen would do.
I told her I understood. I turned the radio off at that point and stepped back into the gathering storm. Rain pelted the fiberglass. Already I could feel the temperatures rising as the warm front approaching from the south ran headlong into the cold air that had settled in the day before.
Massive black clouds boiled in the sky behind me. Lightning spat in thin electric fingers from the belly of the beast and arced toward the island in bright, jagged streaks. A few seconds later, thunder rolled across the heavens, deep and booming.
Zachary lay face up on the port side, his eyes open and mouth stretched unnaturally wide. I fished the tarp I’d used earlier to make a tent over the cockpit from one of the lockers and covered him with it, tucking the edges in around his body to keep the wind from blowing it away.
Angel had deviated from her course, the wind pushing her into a more westerly tack that drove her farther out into the channel. Once I had the boy covered, I took the tiller and pulled her back toward Portsmouth. I had no intention of running the gauntlet of waves and current again. Instead I rode her close to shore, looking for the little opening where the three of them had set their camp and where he had launched his ill-fated voyage only hours before.
I’d take the boat back up to the dock when the weather cleared. At that moment, with lightning scoring bright lines across the clouds behind me, I needed to find shelter and find it quick.
As fast as the trip down had been, it seemed to take forever to make it back to the campsite. When the tiny point that marked the entrance materialized ahead, I breathed a sigh of relief. That emotion quickly evaporated when I rounded the break in the trees.
The buggy sat in the clearing, with a figured huddled inside.
Surprised, I turned the boat toward opening in the reeds that led to the tiny stretch of sand beyond.
Angel grounded only a few feet from shore. I flung the duffel bag I’d packed earlier high up on the island where it tumbled through the grass before rolling to a stop. Snatching up the bow line, I jumped off the bow and secured it to a gnarled pine near the water’s edge. When I turned, Kelly stood on the bank, shivering in the driving rain, eyes wide.
“Did you find him?”
Lightning flashed behind me.
“I did,” I said and left it there. “Let’s get out of here. That storm is going to break at any minute and life will not be good if we’re caught out in it.”
“Where is he?” she demanded.
“He’s dead,” I told her. “And we stand a good chance of joining him if we don’t get under cover. Let’s go. I’ll tell you what happened when we get to the life-saving station.”
She stared at the boat for a long time. When she turned, she pulled a strand of sodden hair away from her face. Rain dripped from the ends. I couldn’t tell
if the water running down her face came from tears or from drops leaked from the dismal sky.
“You two close?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not really. He’s Tyler’s friend.”
I nodded, still uncertain of the relationships.
She saw the question on my face.
“Tyler is my brother. The two of them had been planning on this trip for a year, waiting for Zachary to turn eighteen. I guess you could call me the chaperone, though I was just as excited about it as either one of them.”
She looked back at the boat. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell his mother.”
I motioned toward the buggy. “Why don’t we work it out somewhere drier and safer? There’s nothing you can do for him now. “
Electricity crackled in the trees to my left, close. I heard the sizzle before the thunder boomed. A great rush of wind sliced through the trees, pushing the tops into a tight arc.
She jumped, startled by the sound.
I looked up. Clouds boiled in the sky.
“Like now! Let’s go.”
The uncertainty in her face vanished. She raced toward the buggy and climbed in the driver’s seat. I snatched up the duffel bag I’d tossed out of the boat and followed her. The trip back took all of ten minutes, ten minutes with wind and rain lashing the buggy and adding more misery to bodies already drenched and cold.
The station had a ramp off to one side of the steps. A blue sign with a white legend depicting a figure in a wheelchair sat beside it. I motioned for her to take the buggy up under the covered porch. I had no idea if Dad had waterproofed the electric motor and didn’t want to walk out later to find a dead machine.
She parked near a big window. We both climbed out and raced for the door.
Inside, a fire crackled in a cast-iron wood heater situated on the right side of the room. Warmth flooded over me. Sleeping bags and people were sprawled out across the floor. Elsie sat in a rocking chair near the stove, a blanket across her lap. A teapot steamed on top of the heater. Behind it sat a coffee pot made for camping. I recognized both from Angel.
The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth) Page 4