The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth) (5 page)

“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.

“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.

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 slid around the back of the island in what seemed only minutes, passing behind it and into the edge of a channel I knew from charts stretched almost a mile wide. The island had no real high ground and didn’t stand tall enough that the lee side cut much of the wind. The water though smoothed out noticeably. After the monstrous ride through the inlet, the chop on the sound seemed little more than an annoyance.

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 adrenalin
e 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.