The Lost Island (14 page)

T
HE DAWN WAS
little more than a smear of mud along the eastern horizon. The storm continued unabated, mostly wind, roaring over the sea and roiling up gouts of spume. Gideon and Amy clung to the mass of life preservers, too exhausted to speak. It seemed to Gideon their lives had been reduced to a kind of ghastly sea-rhythm: the rise, rise, rise on each swell; the growing hiss of the approaching comber; then the sudden boiling of water, pushing them under while they clung for dear life, often gripping each other, then clawing back to the surface, gasping for breath—and then the awful sinking into the trough, with a sudden silence and cessation of wind, to be followed by the inevitable rise that repeated the terrible cycle all over again. The air was so full of water it was all he could do to breathe. The seas and wind were driving them westward at a tremendous rate.

At least they had drinking water. Gideon managed to open a drysack and get one bottle out, at the cost of the bag shipping seawater. They managed to pass it back and forth, draining it. Gideon immediately puked it all back up.

Slowly, slowly, the day rose. The wind didn’t abate, but at least the sea became more orderly, the great march of waves going in the same direction as the wind and currents. Periodically, bands of rain came lashing down in torrents, the sky split with lightning. The heavy rain seemed to flatten the chop and lessen the wind, and Gideon finally ventured to speak. He could see Amy’s dark hair and small face, drawn and pale, as she clung to the other side of the makeshift float.

“Amy?”

She nodded.

“You…okay?”

“All right. You?”

“Good.”

“More water.”

Gideon waited for a wave to pass, and then he unsealed the drysack and pulled out another liter bottle. More water slopped in as he resealed the bag. He waited, cradling the water bottle protectively as another wave crushed them, and then handed it to Amy.

She opened the top, drank deeply. Another wave passed and she handed the half-empty bottle to him. He finished it. Thank God—this time the nausea passed and he managed to keep the water down.

All day they fought the sea, enduring the endless cycle of up and down, wind and water, the half drowning with each passing wave. Toward evening, Gideon could feel his arms growing numb. He would not be able to hold on much longer—certainly not for another night.

“Amy, we need to tie ourselves on,” he gasped. “Just in case we can’t—”

“Understood.”

Gideon struggled to get the rope out of its drysack, and then, with numb fingers, managed to loop it through his belt and through the rope holding the life preservers together, and then through Amy’s belt, keeping it slack but not so slack they might become entangled.

The wind began to abate as night descended, and once again they were surrounded by the thundering blackness of the sea. They had now been in the water eighteen hours. In the darkness, with his eyes open, Gideon began to see shapes, in brown and dull red, flickering about. At first they were mere blurry lights, and he told himself they were delusions. But as the night wore on, with the terrible rhythm of the sea never ceasing, he began to see a face—a devil’s face, mouth opening wide, wider, like a snake, vomiting blood.

Hallucinations
. He closed his eyes but the shapes only grew worse, crowding in. He quickly opened his eyes, tried to slap his own face to give himself a taste of reality. Hours had gone by and he hadn’t spoken a word to Amy. Was she even there? But, looking over, he could see her pale face. He sought out her cold hand, gave it a squeeze, and felt the faintest pressure in return.

Another wave buried them; another spluttering rise. He realized that, even with the water at around eighty-five degrees, he might be suffering from hypothermia. Or salt poisoning—God knew he’d swallowed enough seawater. And now, in the roaring, hissing, and boiling of the water, he could hear voices: whispering voices, cackling voices. Devil’s voices.

He squeezed his eyes tight shut, waited, and opened them again. But the Devil was still there: the vomiting Devil, mouth opening, showing its hideous pink cavernous interior, the rotting teeth, the sudden eruption of blood and bile…

“No! Stop!”

Had he spoken? He thought he heard Amy say something. His head was spinning.

“. . . fight against it…
fight
…”

Fight what? And then he saw it, out in the water. A light. A real light. Glinn’s rescue mission.

“Amy!” he cried. “Look!”

But she didn’t seem to respond.

“Help!” he screamed. “We’re over here!”

He felt a terrible desperation. How could they be seen in this darkness, this howling watery wilderness?

“Amy, a ship! Over there!”

He felt her hand gripping his arm, cold and hard. “Gideon. There’s nothing. No ship.”

“There is, there is! For God’s sake,
look
!”

Now he could see it clearly, and by God it was as large as the
Titanic
, a huge cruise ship, lit up like a Christmas tree, all sparkling yellow, rows of windows, black shapes of people on deck silhouetted against the warmth. It was amazing what Glinn had done.

“Amy! Can’t you see?”

“Fight it, Gideon.” The hand tightened.

The ship let out a long, booming steam whistle, then another.

“You hear that? Oh, my God, they’re going to miss us. Over here—!”

A wave came over them, burying them, pushing them down into roaring blackness. Gideon struggled without air, clawing up, having sucked in water with his shouting. It felt like he was under forever. And then they broke the surface, coughing, spluttering. He looked around wildly.

“It’s gone!”

“It was never there.”

“Come back!” Gideon screamed in the extremity of desperation.

“Gideon!” He felt fingers tightening around his own. “
There was no ship
. But if you’ll just shut up for a moment, there is something out there. Something real.”

Gideon stopped shouting and listened. All he could hear was the sound of wind and sea.

“What?” he asked.

“Surf.”

Gideon strained to listen, to ignore the odd shapes shifting in front of his eyes. And then he did hear it: a faint susurrus of thunder below the howl of the sea. The wind and waves were pushing them steadily toward the sound.

“An island?”

“Don’t know. Could be brutal.”

“What can we do?”

“Nothing to do but hold on and ride it in.” A pause. “We’d better untie ourselves, or we could get all tangled up.”

Gideon fumbled with the knot, but his hands were not working.

“Knife,” Amy gasped. “In the bag.”

Now the roar was getting louder. They were being driven toward it at a tremendous rate. The seas were growing steeper, the breaking tops more violent. Gideon fumbled with the latches on one of the drysacks, finally got them open, reached in, pulled out a knife. He could barely hold on to it, but somehow managed to slice himself free of the rope. He passed the knife to Amy.

A wave buried them. The drysack was open, full of water. And now, on a rise of wave, Gideon could see a vast band of white surf, with blackness before and beyond.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Just hold on, don’t fight, ride the waves in.”

The waves were looming bigger, terrifyingly steep, smooth and glassy. The roar ahead sounded like a hundred freight trains. Up, up they rose, and a great curl of water loomed above them, over them.

“Hold on!”

Gideon felt himself flipped over, then engulfed in a tremendous, violent, boiling blackness, which instantly ripped the preserver raft out of his hands. He tumbled and thrashed in the darkness, disoriented, with no way of knowing which was up, down, or sideways, the water tugging at his limbs and almost tearing them out of their sockets. His powerlessness in the grip of the sea both terrified and stunned him.

Suddenly—just when he felt his lungs would burst—he broke the surface, gasped, sucked in salt water, and was thrown back into the maelstrom, whirled about, utterly at the mercy of the sea. The faces appeared, now grinning, vomiting over him, and he struggled to thrash free, to no avail…And then a strange peace stole in, slowly, slowly, and the sea and the waves and the faces all vanished into a warm, lovely dark.

A
S CONSCIOUSNESS SLOWLY
returned, the lovely dark gave way to a sickening, nauseating feeling of pain and exhaustion. Gideon coughed, his chest and lungs feeling like they were on fire. He opened his eyes. There was still the close roar of surf, but he realized he was lying on wet sand. It was still night.

With great effort he managed to get his arms underneath himself and sit up. His skin felt raw and cracked. He was surrounded by a dim, featureless beach, vanishing into darkness in all directions.

“Amy.” His voice came out as the merest croak.

The beach was empty. He struggled to get to his feet, head pounding, and was immediately overwhelmed with dizziness. Falling to his knees, he vomited salt water, again and again and again, until nothing remained but dry heaves. A few deep breaths and he collapsed, falling to the sand, curling into a ball, and losing consciousness once again.

After what seemed like an eternity, he slowly swam back to consciousness. He opened his eyes. Day. Again. A dull, zinc light suffused everything. He looked about through bleary eyes, at the empty beach, the dark gray ocean, the thundering parade of surf, a dark line of limp jungle. How he possibly could have ridden through and survived boggled his mind.

The wind had died away, and the clouds above had taken shape. The storm was clearing. His head was still pounding, but he felt a little better. He rose to his knees, and then lurched to his feet, fighting a wave of nausea and vertigo. In the light of a filthy dawn, he could now see where he was: on a deserted coast, the gray beach stretching in either direction as far as the eye could see, a few tattered palm trees, the land receding into jungle-clad hills. No sign of life; no sign of Amy; no sign of the raft or their drybags of supplies.

A raging thirst had taken hold. His lips were cracked and bleeding. His tongue was swollen. He felt so weak he could barely stand.

He had to find Amy. Or, at least, her body. And he had to find the bundle of life preservers and the drysacks with their water.

It took all his willpower to take a step, and then he fell once again to his knees. Despite every effort, he was unable to get back onto his feet. He continued slowly on, crawling down the hard sand until he could go no farther. He lay down. He wanted badly to sleep—or, perhaps, to die. He closed his eyes.

“Gideon.”

He opened his eyes to find Amy bending over him. She looked awful—pale, thin, wet.

“
Amy
…thank God…”

“Let me help you up.” She grasped him under the arms, and he rose to his feet even as she staggered with the effort.

“Water…”

A bottle appeared and he fumbled for it, unscrewing the top with trembling hands, jamming it into his mouth and sucking down the liquid so desperately it spilled over his shirt.

“Easy, easy.” She laid a hand on the bottle. “Wait a minute.”

He waited, trembling. He could feel an immediate surge of energy from the water. “More.”

“Pace yourself.”

He drank more, swallowing just a little bit at a time, until the liter bottle was gone.

“More.”

“Sorry, we need to ration.”

It was amazing how quickly the water helped him regain strength and alertness. He looked about, breathing slowly and deeply. There, a few hundred yards down the beach, was the sodden bundle of life preservers. He could see Amy’s footprints in the sand.

His tongue and mouth were becoming rehydrated, and he found he could speak without croaking. “How did you survive?”

“Just as you did, I got washed up on the beach. I don’t quite know how. Karma.”

“Where are we?”

“The Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua. I’d guess we’re about twenty miles north of Monkey Point.”

“How far to the nearest settlement?”

“We don’t have a local map. This is one of the loneliest coastlines in the world. Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a little weak myself. Give me your arm.”

They walked down the beach, supporting each other. She led him into a grove of palm trees along the verge of sand. There were the drysacks, with various items laid out and drying on banana leaves—their two weapons, knives, the satellite-phone case, the briefing book with its wet pages laid out, a dozen granola bars, bottled water—and, to Gideon’s surprise, the mysterious computer printout of a Greek manuscript Amy had been looking at on the boat, sealed in a ziplock bag that had nevertheless suffered some leakage. She sat down on the sand, and Gideon collapsed next to her.

Even in his weakened state, he couldn’t help feeling annoyed at the sight of the printout. She must have taken it with her when they abandoned the
Turquesa
and put it in a drysack at some point while they were on the raft. “Of all the things you could have saved—maps, GPS—you rescued that computer printout? What’s the big deal with it?”

“It’s just something I’ve been working on.”

“What?”

A shake of her head. “Later. We both need to rest. And eat.”

Gideon felt utterly spent, but now a hunger was taking hold. Amy picked up two granola bars and passed one to him.

He lay back, peeling off the wrapper and stuffing the bar into his mouth. The clouds were breaking up, and a single ray of sun came streaming through them, illuminating a spot on the sea. The granola only seemed to make him hungrier, but he could feel his strength returning.

They lay on the beach, barely moving, barely talking, slowly recovering their strength, as the day passed. As the afternoon merged into evening, the last of the clouds cleared away. Gideon now felt nearly himself again, strong and alert, unhurt save for a kind of dull and universal ache—but the passage of time had him confused. How much time had elapsed since their vessel was scuttled? Forty-eight hours? Seventy-two?

“Does the sat phone work?” he asked.

“I think so. Container’s waterproof.”

“Then we’d better call Glinn,” he said.

Amy nodded. She finished her granola bar, then took up the sat-phone container, unlatched the seals, and opened it up. The phone appeared intact. She took it out, turned it on. The LED screen popped to life.

“A miracle,” said Gideon.

“Yeah, but the battery’s run down. We’ve only got five percent juice.”

“Christ.” Gideon shook his head.

She glanced at him. “I’ll do the talking, if you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest.”

She put it on speaker and pressed the
FASTDIAL
key to connect with EES headquarters. A moment later Glinn himself answered. He wasted few words.

“Where are you and what’s happening?”

“Had a run-in with some treasure hunters. They shot up the boat.”

“Life raft?”

“Destroyed.”

“Launch?”

“Gone. Look, it’s a long story. We were able to sink the treasure hunters in a storm but the
Turquesa
went to the bottom as well.”

“Position?”

“My best guess is eleven degrees forty-four minutes North, eighty-one degrees one minute West. We’re on the Mosquito Coast maybe twenty miles north of Monkey Point, Nicaragua.”

“Do you have food and water? We’ll get a rescue vessel out to you just as soon as we can.”

“We don’t need picking up.”

Gideon looked at Amy, startled. She held up her hand, asking for his silence.

“I don’t understand,” came Glinn’s voice over the sat phone.

“We’re right where we want to be. I know where we have to go next. We can get there on foot.”

Gideon listened. This was nuts. He grabbed for the radio, but Amy held it out of his reach.

“On foot?” Glinn’s voice crackled over the radio. “I’m extremely concerned about the situation you’re in. You’ve been shipwrecked on an unknown coast. How are you going to finish the mission? We’re going to outfit a second boat for you, bring you some crew. I’m looking at the map as we speak. If you can head toward Monkey Point, there’s a lagoon just north where we can rendezvous, refit the expedition, and get you back on your feet.”

“Your concern is appreciated—but misguided,” Amy said firmly. “We’re on track. The next landmark on the map is ten miles from where we are, maybe less—I know it.”

“How do you know it?”

A silence.

“Gideon,” said Glinn, “are you there? Do you agree with this plan?”

Gideon glanced at Amy. She was staring at him. He hesitated and then said, “Yes.”

A long silence. “All right. I’m going to trust you. But I want regular updates. Twice a day, morning and night. Do you both understand?”

“We may have to make them less frequent than that,” said Amy. “I’m getting a low battery signal.”

They disconnected. Amy looked at Gideon, a smile breaking over her pale face, producing dimples he’d never seen before. “Thank you for backing me up.”

“I only did so because I expect an explanation from you.”

“You’ll just have to trust me for a little while longer—”

“No. I want an explanation
now
.”

This was greeted by silence.

“Christ, Amy. Here we are, castaways on a deserted coastline with nothing but a few granola bars and half a dozen liters of water. How do you know we’re still on track?”

Amy picked up the sodden briefing book and opened it to the Phorkys Map. The picture showed a flat line rising into a sharp line pointing toward a rounded line. The clue simply said,
aquilonius.

“You showed me that before. What does it mean?”

“Stand up and look inland.”

Gideon did as he was told, and was immediately staggered by the two hills in the near distance: one with a sharp peak, the second rounded. “Oh, my God.”

“Yes. Oh, my God.
Aquilonius
is one way of saying north. So we go north, looking for the next clue.”

“Damn it, Amy, it would’ve been nice if you’d shared this with me earlier. And why hide it from Glinn?”

“Because I’ve discovered something even more incredible. It has to do with that printout I’ve been dragging around.”

“What is that damn printout, anyway?”

“
The Odyssey
, by Homer. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”