by SLMN
The island’s two black JetRangers sat side by side on the pad, rotors drooping idly, vibrating on the wind. Twin fuselages glistened with rain drops.
“I take it you can fly one of these, Sven?”
“Like I was born to it. You?”
“Oh yes. Ok, ghost town or not, let’s do this.”
But before anyone could take a step forward both helicopters exploded in gusts of flames.
25
Passion wiped mud, vegetation, and water from her face. She was lying on her back in the wet dirt. She could feel the heat from the burning JetRangers over her body. As she cleared the mud from her eyes, the conflagration came into focus.
Both helicopters were intact, but burning from the inside. Their windows blown out, both cockpits an orange rage. Some sort of small incendiary devices had been simultaneously triggered within each machine. They were wrecked.
“You didn’t think we had a plan if someone tried to use the helicopters to escape? How sweet and naïve you are.”
Rosa was lying next to Passion, her eyes glittering in the flame-light, cast by the burning helicopters. “If you think getting off the island is going to be easy, please try. I like a good laugh.”
The others were getting up from where they’d dove for cover as the helicopters had combusted. Sven was rubbing his hands through his hair, Mary-Joy was helping Lainey to her feet. Ralston was up, and was kicking Crane in the guts.
Passion closed her eyes and shook her head. “Ralston! If you don’t leave Crane alone, I’m going to shoot you my fucking self!”
Ralston moved away from the wounded man, the wind and rain lashing at his enraged face. He spat at Crane. “Fuck you.”
Sven picked up Crane, and Passion dragged Rosa to her feet. She looked around. The place was still deserted. She shook Rosa. “Where has everyone gone?”
Rosa smiled and winked.
Passion felt like slapping the creepy old whore, but instead, lifted her up, slung her over her shoulder and looked around.
The wind was blasting them mercilessly now. This wasn’t just a bad storm; this felt like an approaching hurricane or tropical storm. Palm trees were bending against the wind, garbage was being blown across the compound from an overturned bin. The corner of one chalet root was flapping in the brunt of the weather.
Shit was going bad.
It was Mary-Joy who gave them the motivation to move as she pointed between the rows of buildings. “Look.”
Passion saw the Humvee, but was non-plussed. “What?”
“Maybe we could use it to drive to the ravine on the other side of the forest? Take shelter? It’d take ages to walk there in this wind. But Macy said there were caves there. Safer than these buildings.”
As if to underline what Mary-Joy was saying, a whole section of roof lifted off a chalet and cartwheeled through the air, smashing into the roof of one of the dormitories.
“The buildings have got to be safer, no?” Ralston ducked as a huge palm leaf flapped past his head.
Passion looked at the JetRangers, still burning.
“If these bastards would booby trap their own helicopters then I don’t want to be sitting in one of those buildings when the hurricane hits and it decides to firebomb itself. We have to assume all of the compound is wired to blow. Let’s get to the Humvee, and take it from there.
Sven insisted they all stayed back from the black vehicle while he checked it over for charges or traps.
“It’s clear,” he said, and they all piled in.
Sven drove towards the Enchanted Forest with Mary-Joy at his side to navigate. Passion sat in the back keeping Ralston and Crane apart, while at the same time sitting next to Rosa, wedging her in tightly against the Humvee’s frame so she couldn’t move or cause trouble. Lainey sat with her side scrunched up to the back of Mary-Joys seat, holding her hand through the gap.
“Hold tight!” Sven yelled as the Humvee smashed through the gates of the compound, and they were out onto the track running beside the putting course—heading toward the forest over the open ground.
“Would you like me to provide an inventory of our facilities?” Rosa said with her coughing laugh. “I assure you I make a fantastic tour guide.”
“Be quiet,” said Passion as she tried to marshal her thoughts. How could an entire encampment of people disappear without a trace so quickly? They hadn’t gone in the helicopters, and she hadn’t seen anyone leaving through the gates before the Humvee had smashed through them.
Contingencies.
That word again. As Rosa had said, they were three hundred miles from the mainland—if they were in the Caribbean, then that was a prime path of all the hurricanes that worked their way up to the Gulf of Mexico. So hurricane defense and preparation would be a very smart idea to plan contingencies for. Right now, it was all rather moot. The storm was happening right now, and although Passion was resourceful, she had no contingencies of her own to tackle a hurricane. She was going to have to make this shit up as they went along.
So, escape. How?
Without the helicopters, they were here for the duration. The JetRangers could have flown ahead of the winds, faster than any approaching storm and got them to land at least.
Unless they could find…
Of course!
How could she have been so stupid?
“Lainey, Mary-Joy! You didn’t come to the island in a ‘copter. You came here in a boat, right?”
The girls nodded.
“And what happens when a hurricane approaches any port in the world?”
The girls shook their heads.
“All the captains put out to sea. It’s the safest place in a storm, ride out the waves. Rosa, is the boat in the harbor right now?”
Rosa shrugged. “Do I look like a harbormaster?”
“Sven scratch the ravine, take us down to the coast.”
Mary-Joy pointed the way and Sven followed her direction, back towards the compound and then onto the track that wound down through the jungle to the sea. The Humvee bumped around in a wide circle, shaking and vibrating, heading away from the Enchanted Forest, buffeted by wind and rain.
The track was rough and ready, but they made good progress even though the vehicle was thrown around by the uneven ground. Crane cracked his head against the chassis and groaned. His face was gray and sweaty. There were huge gouts of blood down the front of his shirt from where the bullet had clipped his shoulder. Passion thought about leaning across to Crane and applying pressure to the wound, but in all honesty she didn’t care if the motherfucker died in front of her.
They burst out of the swaying jungle and back into the teeth of the wind. Leaves and twigs were blowing past them in a rushing stream. The sky was almost black with clouds. As the downward incline on the track steepened, and they ran past a wall of rock, the tires crashed and skittered over the loose stones, Passion could see past Sven to the jetty. The steamer was still there, rocking on the swell, smoke chugging from its single funnel but right now at least, the boat was attainable.
Sven pressed on, a tumble of loose rocks and stones from the cliff wall alongside them crashed and crunched onto the roof of the Humvee. Passion was deeply perturbed to look behind and see a boulder the size of a sedan drop into the road from above, and crash on into the swathe of jungle on the other side of the track.
“Christ,” said Ralston. He’d seen it too.
The track leveled out and Sven skidded the Humvee around so that as they got out of the vehicle, they had only a few steps to make before they were on the jetty.
The wind tore at their clothes and hair as they made it out of the Humvee, Passion pulling Rosa out by her skeletal arm. “You gonna walk, or do I have to carry you?”
“Carry me. I can spit down your back.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Passion hefted Rosa onto her shoulder, Sven hefted Crane and they battled the weather onto the jetty.
Waves lashed up and washed over the wood, making it as slippery as hell. Although
Rosa wasn’t at all heavy, she was awkward and angular. She also acted like a sail as the wind bashed into them. Passion had to steady herself several times to stop her now top-heavy body getting caught in the gale and thrown into the water.
The weather screamed down, the clouds—black and fat with their cargoes of heavy rain—rushed overhead, near enough to touch.
Twenty yards from the steamer, the wind seemed to go up three or four more notches. Mary-Joy skidded over and it was only Lainey and Sven sticking out a foot that stopped her crashing down into the waves.
Sheets of rain whipped across the surface of the jetty, and the steamer rocked. There was one wooden gangway left leading up to the deck, the others had already crashed down into the heaving swell. The remaining gangway had rope lines on both sides to steady anyone climbing its steep incline. Passion scanned the side of the steamer. There were no crew to be seen, not on the deck anyway. She thought she saw a flash of shadow behind the glass in the wheelhouse, but that might have just been reflections from the tumbling sky. Suddenly, the smokestack billowed and Passion thought she could hear the low rumble of ships’ engines below the madness of the storm.
“The captain’s having the same idea! Come on!”
The jetty was awash as the waves crested it. The gangway was tantalizingly close. Sven pushed the girls up it first and followed with Crane.
Ralston hobbled after and Passion, still carrying Rosa, came behind. The gangway yawed and pitched, the rope line on either side was slick with sea and rain water. Passion shifted Rosa on her shoulder, and that’s when the old woman sank her teeth into Passion’s shoulder blade.
The pain screamed through her like the rush of the storm, but she kept moving up towards the deck. Rosa scrabbled her hands onto the rope line, trying to arrest Passion’s progress. The gangway pitched again, and slid along the jetty as the steamer’s engines roared again, the smokestack belched and the boat began to pull away from the jetty.
Rosa’s teeth cut into Passion’s skin again and she screamed, beating at the old woman with her fist, the white shards of agony almost making her legs give way beneath her. But Passion wasn’t going to leave Rosa behind. If she could get to the mainland, this woman was going to stand trial for her crimes, however much flesh she chewed from Passion’s back.
The others were on the deck now. Sven was putting down Crane and was turning, his hands desperately stretching out for Passion.
She grabbed on, and he took her wrists. Sven pulled her up as the gangway fell back from the side of the steamer, crashing back down between the jetty and the hull with a heavy clang. Rosa was kicking and struggling with all her strength, biting, scratching and pulling at Passion’s hair. “Let go of me you bitch!” Passion threw the old woman onto the rain slick deck.
Rosa skidded away as the deck heeled, slamming into a bulkhead. The steamer rocked and the lifeboat on this side of the ship, thudded down off its davit, rope falls spinning back and lashing out like whips. One caught Ralston on the back of his legs, pitching him over onto his back and Sven had to duck as another davit twisted on its base, swinging over his head and crunched into a wall.
“I’m going to the bridge!” Passion shouted to the others, “There must be someone up there. Sven, watch Rosa and Crane, get everyone inside!”
Sven nodded and took hold of Rosa’s ankle, dragging her face down over the deck to where Crane lay, hand pressing at his bullet wound, rain falling into his eyes. Sven dragged Crane up with one huge arm, carrying him through a bulkhead door as the others followed.
Passion ran along the promenade deck to where there was a thin set of steps led up through the center of the deck, and up to the bridge wing, slinging the G36 over her shoulder.
The climb was wet, precarious and slippery as the boat was pummeled by the waves and wind. Flags hanging from hawsers from a communications mast were being torn apart by the wind, like stray fingers in a piranha pool.
Passion was battered and aching, wet and cold as she made the bridge wing next to the wheelhouse. Her shoulder blade where Rosa had bitten it was raw with pain, and the scratches on her neck were stinging as the thrashing rain spat at her like tiny needles.
She took the G36 off her shoulder, clicked the safety and opened the hatch into the wheelhouse.
Inside the bridge was only one man. He wore a captain’s uniform, grubby, stained with rust and oil. He was in his fifties perhaps, unshaven and mustached, arms crazy with old blue tattoos. The name tag on his uniform declared him to be “Captain Rawlings.” He was trying to do everything at once, and without any crew to help, he wasn’t getting very far. His wiry frame darted around the bridge, trying to operate the wheel and the throttles simultaneously, but not having the reach to do so.
Rawlings looked up as Passion entered. He barely seemed to register that she was carrying a gun. “Thank god you’re here. You can shoot me later, I need you to steer!” He pointed at the wheel as he worked at the controls for the engine.
“We’re taking water. We’re losing power to the engines. I’m going to try to pump out and restart the engine from up here. That means we’ll be without power. I can’t do that and keep the prow into the wind with the helm controls. Come on! Take the wheel. We’ve still got power to the rudder!”
Rawlings seemed genuinely trying to get the boat out to sea, best to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Passion slung the gun back on her shoulder and walked to the wheel, stopping it spinning of its own accord, and keeping it steady.
Through the wheelhouse windows she could see that they’d moved some way from the jetty, but now there was little or no power. The engines had coughed and died in the guts of the ship, the steamer was now fighting to turn. If it got sideways in the water, the whole thing would be consumed by the storm. Passion fought the wheel and the wheel fought back just as hard.
Rawlings thumped the throttle mounting, and then kicked at the steel plinth it stood on. “It’s no good!”
He came over and wrested the wheel from Passion’s grasp—not that anything she was doing with it had much effect. The steamer was turning against the wind, the headland swinging around, the rocks looming.
As she watched, Passion saw the jetty slide back into view. There was a huge rending crunch as the boat crashed into it, tearing it up like a scab from the surface of the sea, bleeding wood and iron spars—screeching metal drowning out the sound of the storm.
As Rawlings yelled for everyone to “Abandon ship!” the steamer rolled on the waves and crashed sideways into the wind, coming down with a boom and squeal on the metal of the bridge, and slowly it rolled over on to its side.
26
Water crashed in through the hatch, the world tumbled and Passion was thrown around like a sock in a clothing dryer. As she was already drenched by the rain, she couldn’t get any wetter, as the sea ran into the wheelhouse.
A clanging crunch told her that the ship was now scraping its side against the rocky seabed, and the whole vessel was grating over the rocks back to the shore.
Rawlings was floating unconscious in the water, face down. As the waves in the wheelhouse rose and fell, he was sent sliding into machinery with ever increasing ferocity. Passion threw out a hand to grab him, but she missed. She was holding onto the hatch at the opposite end of the sideways wheelhouse now. She pulled at the latch and the door fell open, narrowly missing her head.
Rawlings brushed against her legs and she managed to grab and turn him over. His face was torn and ripped along one cheek, but he was breathing.
The wheelhouse rocked as the storm battered the steamer. More glass smashed and through the open hatch Passion could see the sky above throwing everything it had at them.
She had to get out into the open. If the ship turned completely over, she might be fully trapped. With the hatch open, she had a chance.
Passion slapped the uninjured side of Rawlings’ face, “Wake up! Come on! I’m getting out of here, and I don’t want to leave you!”
The steame
r shifted again, and through the open hatch Passion heard another crash as something major sized and sounding like it was made of metal was ripped away from the superstructure.
Rain poured in, thunder rolled overhead, and Passion was thrown painfully back into what had once been the floor of the wheelhouse, the wounds on her back from Rosa’s attack smarting with agonized fury.
Rawlings’ eyes flickered open. “We…gotta…gotta get out of here.”
“Yes,” said Passion, waiting for the next rise in the water in the wheelhouse to carry her up to the hatchway. She launched herself up to the lip of the wall that was now an opening in the ceiling, and hauled herself up and out onto the outside.
The world was all the wrong way up. She could see the keel of the steamer half in and half out of the water. Where there had once been a prow was now a roiling mess of furious water, bursting in and out of the forward hold, and up going over the side in a white spray.
Rawlings’ arm came out of the wheelhouse on the next swell in the tide rushing through the ship. Passion grabbed him and hauled the captain out of the wheelhouse to lay on the deck that had once been a wall. They both crouched back into the shelter provided by the upended low walls that had once been around the bridge wing.
Out of the wind, Passion could think. The ship was still moving on its side towards the shore. They could hear the grinding of metal over the rocks. Even if the steamer had righted itself on the swell caused by the onrushing storm, the water now would be too shallow for it to float. This vessel was staying on the island. There really was no way out.
The grinding beneath the ship abated and there came a mighty thump through the superstructure. With a final heave the ship steadied—still on its side—but enough to suggest to Passion that the steamer was fully beached on the rocky shore.
Passion put her head up and looked along the exposed side of the ship. Her heart leaped at what she saw. Twenty yards down the rusted side of the ship, Sven, Lainey, and Mary-Joy were clinging to hawsers and open portholes in the passenger decks.