“No. But…”
“But just because we won’t kill him doesn’t mean we’ve got to drag his batshit-crazy ass into shelter with us. Leave him to the storm.”
“Fine by me, but how do we make sure he… oh! Oh, hells, yes!” Emily scrambled for the fallen flashlight and skidded to her knees beside the backpack.
“What?”
She held a roll of duct tape aloft. “Allow me to introduce the wonder of the ages. I’m intimately acquainted with this little roll of joy.” She advanced on the fallen killer.
“You want me to—” Boone began.
“Oh, no, no, nooooo. I’ve got this. You get that door open.” She knelt in the mud beside Aidan. “Sauce for the goose, you daft prat,” she snarled, tearing loose a long strip of tape. “You’re the gander, in case your volcano gods don’t do idioms.” She wrapped the man’s arms together behind his back, sparing no expense. A loud ping sounded from behind.
“Got the… got the door…”
“Good. Almost done with this tosser,” she spat, trussing his ankles in a mummy’s wrap of duct tape. She rolled him faceup so he wouldn’t drown in the growing puddles. “Hey Boone, should we drag him—”
A loud splash cut her off and she snatched the flashlight from the ground and swung it toward the door. Boone lay on his back in the mud.
“Boone!” Emily slipped in her rush to reach him, faceplanting in a puddle. Staggering to her feet, she closed the distance and threw herself down beside him. His side was soaked with blood, far more than before. She shook him. “Boone…?”
“Martin’s made pumpkin sopa…” Boone slurred.
He’s hallucinating about his cook friend back in Bonaire, Emily thought. Tears warred with the rain sluicing down her face. “You betcha, Booney. And Martin’s got some of those pastechi belly bombs you like so much, too.” She moved behind his head and knelt, sitting him up so she could get her hands under his shoulders. “Let’s go have some, yeah? Gonna need your help, though, ’kay? You’ve got a foot and a half of height on me and you wouldn’t want me pulling a muscle dragging you, now would you?”
“No… never…”
“Okay then. Upsy daisy…” Emily managed to get Boone onto his feet, draping him over her shoulder while maintaining a grip on the flashlight. “Jesus, Boone,” she grunted, “how many of those soursop smoothies have you been snarfing down?” Staggering toward the door, she pulled it open and lugged Boone inside.
Aside from some red and green buttons that glowed from a back room, the building beneath the tower was pitch black. The place appeared to be divided into sections and she sat him down against an interior wall. “Boone… you with me?”
He moaned softly but made no intelligible reply.
Emily lightly slapped his face, then planted her mouth on his, pressing a kiss against his lips.
Boone blinked, seeing her. “Em…?”
That did the trick. No surprise there. Emily reached down, pulled his bloody shirt over his head, and wadded it up. She briefly suppressed an unexpected snicker as she spied the pink whistle on a lanyard on his neck, the other one the Double Gs had given them. One look at the blood on his side and the brief spark of levity was extinguished. “Boone, I need you to do something for me, okay? Here.” She stuffed the shirt into his hands and pressed the mass of cloth over the wound. “Press this tight, yeah?”
Boone winced, roused by the pain, and nodded vigorously.
“Back in a jiff!” Emily ran back outside. She spared a moment to flick the light toward her former captor. Duct tape shone in the light and she felt a touch of satisfaction. A loud crash sounded nearby, as something blew loose from the communications tower and struck the ground a few feet away from her. Here comes Irma. Emily grabbed the tape and the backpack and went back inside, pulling the door closed. Outside, the wind keened and moaned. She dashed back to Boone’s side. Her flashlight caught his face, and she was relieved to see his color was improved.
“How… how’s our friend?” he asked.
“Still communing with the mud and coated in duct tape.” She dug a bottle of water out of the backpack and unscrewed the cap. “How you doing? Looking a bit less zonked, if you ask me.”
“Better… I think. Em… if we don’t… if…”
“You ‘bout to get maudlin? Shut your piehole and drink this.” She pressed the mouth of the bottle to his lips. He took it with his free hand. While he was busy with that, she gently pried his other hand and the blood-soaked shirt loose from his side, shining her light on the gash along his flank. She shuddered, then reached into the backpack for another bottle and poured part of the contents onto the blood that obscured the wound.
“Cold.”
“Yeah, I bet. We’ll do something about that in a moment, Booney-boy.” She stripped off her sodden tank top, catching a little glint in his eyes as she did so. “Don’t get any ideas. This is for the good of medical science.”
“Your sports bra… isn’t green,” Boone said. “I must be delirious.”
“Hey, sometimes I like yellow. Now shut up and let Doctor Emily concentrate.”
She folded the tank top into fourths, then rinsed the wound again. Pressing the square of wet cloth over the cut with one hand, she retrieved the dwindling roll of duct tape with the other, tearing off strips with her teeth and affixing the makeshift bandage over the wound. “Like they say, duct tape fixes everything!”
Boone laughed out loud, the laugh turning into a grimace. “Ease up on the comedy, Em… I think that machete broke a rib.”
“Right-o, I’ll dial it back… but it’s so hard, when I’m—” A loud bang cut her off, as something crashed against the concrete building. “Bloody hell…”
“How fast… were the winds… when you…”
“Well, the last time I checked before Volcano-lover knocked my ass out and dragged me up a mountain… almost 180 miles per hour near the eye.” The door rattled as the winds outside clawed at it. Emily headed over to it. “Lucky for us they didn’t throw this deadbolt, yeah? But now we need to keep out the wind and lunatics, so…” She tried the lock. It didn’t budge. She tried again. “Bloody hell,” she grunted. “Rusted. No wonder they left it… there!” With a supreme effort, she managed to turn the knob, locking the bolt in place. “Mum always had me open the pickle jars,” she said, shaking the pins and needles out of her hand. She stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Well, that’s sorted.” The wind rattled the door again. “Sort of.”
Boone fished a phone from his pocket. It was his own, so he pressed redial, trying 911 again. This time, “all circuits are busy” didn’t even grace the call. Nothing happened. He checked the time. “Just past midnight,” he said.
“Bloody hell, Boone, the center of the storm isn’t supposed to hit here until early morning. If it’s this bad already…”
“We’re in for a long night… but I can’t think of someone I’d rather spend an eternity of hurricane force winds with than you.”
Emily felt the side of her mouth quirk up. “Smooth talker.” She shined the light into the backpack. “Got a couple more bottles of water and some energy bars.”
“Any beers?”
“Listen to you, you lush. No, sorry, no libations of a recreational nature.” She stood up and shined the flashlight into one of the back rooms. “I think our main problem is, we’re 3000 feet up, half-naked and soaking wet.”
Boone snorted a laugh. “I can think of one way we could warm up.”
“Yeah, yeah… and tear your side open? Hang on—what have we here?” She went to the rear of the building. From a shelf beside a massive generator, she pulled a pair of rolled items loose, returning to Boone and dumping them at his bare feet. “Slumber party!”
“Sleeping bags?”
“Yeah, who’d a thunk?”
“I guess, if you’re working up here and you don�
��t time the end of your workday right…”
“…you might get stuck up here,” Emily finished, already unrolling the sleeping bags. “We’re going to zip them together and get cozy.”
Wrapped around each other in the warm confines of the doubled-up sleeping bag, Boone and Emily drifted off to sleep, the low moan of the winds outside a discordant lullaby.
That soon changed.
They both awoke as a sudden pressure change pushed against their eardrums. The low moan of the wind was now a freight train, roaring against the side of the building. Objects struck the walls every few seconds while above, the metal spars of the massive communications tower creaked and screamed as winds exceeding 200 miles per hour blasted across the mountain top. The tiny, insignificant humans clung to each other. There was nothing else they could do.
As Hurricane Irma approached the Northern Leewards, she was so powerful that her winds registered on seismic instruments designed to detect earthquakes located over 200 miles away on the French island of Guadeloupe.Just before one a.m. on September 6, Hurricane Irma made landfall on the sleepy island of Barbuda. By the time she left its leeward shore, 180 mph winds had devastated the sea-level territory of 1,700 souls, destroying most of the structures on the island. Two days later, the population would be evacuated to neighboring Antigua as Barbuda was surrendered to nature.
Later that morning, Irma dealt major damage to Saint Barts before reaching the French and Dutch island of Saint Martin. Her winds were at peak intensity as the eye passed directly over the island, damaging or destroying ninety percent of the buildings and causing widespread flooding. A year later, the Princess Juliana airport would still be operating out of tents.
To the south, the other two SSS Islands, Saba and Statia, were struck by the outer bands of the hurricane, the powerful winds tearing off roofs and stripping leaves from the trees. On Statia, The Quill was denuded of much of its foliage.
From there, Irma ripped into the U.S. and British Virgin Islands before visiting her fury on Puerto Rico, whipping up thirty-foot waves and dishing out a billion dollars in damage. The next day she smashed into the Turks and Caicos Islands, before brushing the Bahamas and angling toward Cuba. Irma weakened to a Category 2.
Turning north and strengthening to a Cat 4, she barreled into the Florida Keys, coming ashore at Cudjoe Key with 130 mph winds and a substantial storm surge. Much of the Middle and Lower Keys were devastated. Irma continued north into Florida, spawning numerous tornados and leaving eighty-four dead in that state alone, before roaring into the Southeastern U.S. to eventually die out in a deluge of rain.
When it was over, 134 people were dead and damage to property and infrastructure reached sixty-five billion dollars. Hurricane Irma broke multiple records, maintaining maximum sustained winds for a phenomenal length of time, and was recorded as one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in history. And, as if that wasn’t enough, Hurricane José was over the horizon with Hurricane Maria hot on its heels.
But back on Saba, on the morning of September 6, as Boone and Emily huddled together in the screaming dark at the top of Mount Scenery, the island below was experiencing the fury of the storm that lay just to the north. The movement of the storm’s core meant the counter-clockwise spin of the swirling winds struck Saba from different directions throughout the morning. At first, the winds spun into the northwest coast near Well’s Bay. Later, as Irma’s eye moved west of Saint Martin, the winds came in on the west and south. Exposed on its bluff, St. John’s was hit hard, numerous red roofs peeling off and flying down into the nearby guts.
Maskehorne Hill protected Windwardside somewhat, but the nature of the geography resulted in several microbursts being whipped up. This phenomenon was far worse in The Bottom, as multiple tornados and microbursts were generated in the bowl-shaped valley between the surrounding cliffs. All in all, on this five-square-mile island, some residents estimated that nearly two dozen tornados or near-tornados were generated, an astonishing number for such a small land mass. Unfortunately, one such tornado found Lucky’s dive boat. The Shoal ’Nuff met her end as she was torn loose from the yard where she lay and dashed against a nearby retaining wall.
After the storm, residents recalled the wild events of those endless hours: some described their beds scooting across the floor, doors being pulled open, roofs peeled away, and everywhere, the disconcerting squeeze in the middle ear from the sudden drop in barometric pressure.
Miraculously, no one died on Saba during Hurricane Irma. Well… almost no one.
The Servant opened his eyes—for all the good it did him. He could see nothing but dark shapes whipping by and the only sound he heard was the deafening roar of the wind, so loud it rivaled a jet engine. Water sheeted against the side of his face, some of it rain, some of it portions of puddles scooped up and hurled horizontally through the air. His right arm screamed with pain, his left knee, too. He howled at the night. They should have killed me when they had the chance! Oh, I will make them pay, I will… He sat up and tried to rise… but couldn’t. My arms… legs… I can’t… A bolt of lightning, lured by the nearby communications tower, split the darkness. In the flash of illumination, the Servant saw the swaddling of duct tape encasing his lower legs.
He screamed again, mindless with rage. Tightening his muscles, he managed to place the soles of his boots under him. Straining, he rose to his feet with a roar. He took two undignified hops toward the shadowy shape of the tower building before losing his balance and toppling into the muck, rolling down an incline and coming to a halt in a puddle in the middle of the trail.
Shrieking in impotent fury, he thrashed like a game fish that had just been gaffed into a boat.
Why do you shout so, Chosen?
The Servant stilled. “What… what did you call me?”
Chosen. For that is what you are this night. Do not despair. Your purpose has changed. All has happened as it should.
“What… what must I do?” he asked himself/those-he-served.
First, free yourself.
“But, I—”
It’s… just… tape.
The Servant/Chosen rolled to his knees. Flexing his arms, he tried to raise them toward his shoulder blades, forcing his forearms apart. His dislocated shoulder filled him with agony, but at last he felt the tape begin to pull loose. With a final, savage effort he tore himself free, then made short work of the tape around his ankles and shins.
He tried to rise to his feet, but here, away from the building, the wind was blasting across the mountaintop at full force. Instead he crawled, but even that proved nigh impossible. A gust tumbled him further along the trail. He tried to rise again and this time was blown down a slope in the trail, coming to rest with a thud as his head struck something hard. Woozy, he squinted at it in the dark. There was writing. A headstone? Another flash of lightning and words appeared: Saba. Mount Scenery. 877 meters. Is this the summit? He reached up to his head and felt warm blood mixing with the mud and rain. And then a smell. Lavender…
Aidan.
The Servant looked to the east. “Lucy?”
It is time. Rise.
“Lucy!” Aidan lurched to his feet.
Open your arms… and embrace me.
“Yes…” He thrust his arms out, tilting his face to the sky.
Amplified by the altitude, Hurricane Irma’s winds screamed down the trail behind him, slamming into Aidan’s coveralls with the force of a firehose.
“Take me…”
The storm obliged. The Servant’s boots left the mountaintop as his body took flight, hurled toward the distant sea.
“Time is it?” a lump in the sleeping bag mumbled.
“No idea,” replied the neighboring lump.
“Is it over?”
“Hope so.” Boone shifted in the warmth of their cozy cocoon, stiffening at the jolt of pain in his side. “Ow. Wait! What if this is the
eye of the hurricane?”
“I don’t think so,” Emily said. “The speed Irma was moving, it should be past us by now.”
“So… do we go outside?”
“Let’s give it a minute, yeah? I’m kinda cozy.”
“Ditto.” Boone brushed a kiss against her lips—an easy task, considering how tightly they were entwined.
“I wonder if there’s some hurricane version of the mile-high club we could apply for membership in,” Emily whispered.
“We’d never qualify. Not while I’m being held together with duct tape.”
“Yeah, ’spose you’re right. Put a pin in it, though.”
The night and morning had been unending, the wind sustaining a near-constant howl for hours. Boone and Emily had clung to each other throughout the ordeal as objects struck the building, nearby trees cracked and popped, and the sounds of banging and creaking mere feet from where they lay had the couple concerned that the door or windows would be torn from the walls or that the tower might topple. But the sturdy little structure weathered the storm. At last the wind weakened, the rain slackened, and the sounds of flying debris finally ceased.
“Okay. Let’s unzip,” Boone reluctantly said.
“The sleeping b—”
“Yeah, the sleeping bag.”
Slowly, they extricated themselves from the warm cocoon and rose to their feet, Boone a little less steadily than Emily. She slipped an arm around him, careful to avoid the wound across his ribs. Approaching the door, Boone tried to flip the deadbolt.
“Damn, you weren’t kidding,” he said through gritted teeth. “It doesn’t want to turn.”
“Step aside, mortal,” Emily said, smacking his hand from the latch and opening the door with a brutal twist. “Would you like to push the door open? So you can say you helped?”
Boone chuckled and opened the door, but it came to a halt almost immediately. Shouldering it, he was able to shove aside the debris, mostly branches, that had blown up against the western wall of the building. As they stepped outside into the moderate drizzle, Emily gasped.
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