Last of the Good Guys - Sample Chapter

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sinking

The Gulf of Mexico

Wednesday Midnight

Bobby staggered to the dinghy. The journey forward had been a continuing struggle, the weather deteriorating with his every step. He struggled to collect what little survival gear there was, happy to have the dinghy. It was small, four-by-eight, a minute buffer. People had survived with less, he told himself, not believing it. It was always possible — stay with the positive.

He thought about dragging it astern and tying it off back there. The stern sat closer to the waterline when, or if they abandoned ship. Too late. He’d never make it back. Besides, the engine room was too unstable, could blow her ass right out of the water. He decided to leave it forward. He knew he couldn’t make the trip now, anyway.

He did what he could, wondering how to get back and fetch Gomez. He was cursing himself for not dragging the amigo forward with him. It was then the Mexican showed up behind him, shouting unheard through the howling wind. He gave it up and smacked Bobby hard across the back with his good arm.

“The Lady have flame now, Bubby!” The wind made communication impossible without their shouting nose to nose. “She burn real fire.” Bobby heard his words, his mind still working to accept Gomez’s survival of the trip forward. Another wave thundered over the storm railings, drenching them. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the hold decks were awash. They were covered for the most part but not lashed or proofed. He knew a good breaking wave could easily bare them. If that happened she would fill fast. It would put out the fire and drown them both in the process. Feast or famine, Bobby thought as he spit salt water.

Only the breaking waves and the occasional freak managed to breach her, pounding down on her decks. It was the freaks that worried him. When the storm turned from adolescent to adult, so would the freaks. A real freak could bury a ship.

Movement around the deck was slow and artificial. Visibility was nil in the intense dark. Only the long, jagged bends of lightning permitted temporary vision a few feet in front of them.

They decided to make their stand below the forecastle, running life lines back and forth across the deck. The Lady’s violent and unpredictable tossing made it difficult to stay upright, let alone work.

Once rigged, Bobby hooked the two of them to both sets of lines. He crawled, dragging himself and Gomez up under the edge of the forecastle overhang. He figured the winds were well over forty knots now, wave height at least twenty to thirty feet, freaks peaking out at fifty, maybe more. On a healthy ship a gale still permitted on-board control. But once you were past a gale, you moved in survival mode. By then the wind and sea became the master of the vessel — no matter who she was.

They waited now. Talk was impossible, and, for the most part, irrelevant. Hours passed. Both men were paralysed. Nothing existed a foot in front of them. Lightning broke constantly, the ship’s rigging distorting into ghoulish, phantom-like apparitions.

An enormous jolt found the mainmast, ran down it, and sparkled with rage through the superstructure. The Fourth of July. Images you found only in animation — the Headless Horseman running amok in Fantasia. The thoughts merged as the charge ran its course, spending itself a hundred feet from the forecastle.

Gomez was huddled onto his side now, hands clutching the lines across his chest. Bobby heard him moan above the storm, call to his wife, his children, his God. Cursing his own casual meandering, Bobby longed for someone to call to, to save him. For him there was only the ship. He checked his watch as if he might be late for work. It was just after ten.

Through the cacophony he heard the Lady struggle. Her plates ground in defiance. He drifted away from it, drawn into the other sounds around him. He heard the screams from her stern as she fought fire and ocean, possessed devils in conflict for her soul. He wanted her to stop it, to speak to him, to calm his fear, and withdraw the terrible vision from his eyes. He desired her to save him once more, find strength for the impossible.

The Lady heard his plea and pulled him closer to her bosom, holding him as she’d held so many others in their fear. He weaved in and out of her company, riding with her now across seas serene and savage. He ate in her galley, laughed with her crew and stood with each man at his watch. He talked amongst them, knowing them by name. He was one with all of them. He’d heard it happened to sailors before they died.

He returned as she screamed to him. A wave crashed across her beam, broaching her, throwing her to her side. Gomez and Bobby hung vertical with the deck, safety lines alone standing between them and the end. Thrashing like epileptic puppets while the top twenty feet of the freak collapsed tons of water over them, the two twirled in tangled line and black water, lost.

It was anything but peaceful, not the way Bobby’d imagined it many times when he’d thought about drowning. Time slowed while they hovered in a pressurized vacuum. Gomez’s face passed close in front of Bobby, all mixed in with foam and debris. Bobby beheld his mate’s pain — the sheer terror and impotence. His mouth moved as if he was in distorted conversation, chewing air from water.

Bobby’d been a diver for a long time, kept his mouth closed from habit, staying calm. He’d been underwater before with no air. He knew the tricks — everything in slow motion. Make it a movie, a dream. Make it anything but reality. Reality means panic. Play the game, hold your breath until you wake up. There will be air again. He’d done it before, and lived.

He wanted to tell Gomez but couldn’t find him.

And the end did come, as the peak of the wave withdrew, disappearing into the ocean bed as quickly as it had arrived. The sentence was suspended, for a moment, perhaps. Still, Bobby took the offer. His lungs sucked air as he fought the draining of the deck. He struggled through it to Gomez, strangled in his safety line, full of water, and drowning. Bobby heard himself shrieking to God. He pounded Gomez’s chest while a slashing rain squall pummelled him from nowhere. Gomez gagged, puked watered vomit, and contorted back into life.

The sea screamed for them. Bobby knew without looking the holds had ripped open. The Lady would have cargo at last — too much, to be sure. He sought her out again, entreating her to endure, to keep them with her.

The squall slackened and the waves came on again, growing. Sheering white foam tore in under the brow of the forecastle, his safety line cutting into him hard as the seas tried to tear him from her. Through it he stayed close to her, heard her saying she was tiring. She could deliver no more, could give him only the moment, no more. Wait for the moment, she murmured.

Bobby heard the seven short and one long blast of the general emergency signal. He drifted in and out with it, not wanting to go. He prayed. She blew the signal again, seven short and one long, no mistaking it. Abandon ship.

Bobby moved between realities. The lightning skies talked to him, the wind climbed. Another freak and the Lady would roll right over. There was no doubt.

Again, seven long and one short. Again.

He crawled to Gomez, and shouted into his face, telling him the Lady was dying, they must leave. It was only a question now of how much time, ten minutes or ten seconds. Squatting there under the forecastle it didn’t matter anymore, he didn’t notice. He listened only for her now, for her voice. Again.

And again, she spoke within him, confirming the cataclysm, her Armageddon. Bobby affirmed her voice. He accepted it completely now, as his reality. Leave he would, on command, in her moment. It was what he believed.

He pulled close to Gomez, pressing his face against the Mexican. He shouted at him and hit him, looking far into his eyes, for he was far away. They staggered together to their feet. Floundering, they united in the conflict, cursing and screaming into the rage, the language garbled and universal, spitting bile and anger.

They made the raft. Bobby cut the lines and tied them to it. He was clinging with Gomez to the raft and the rail, the two of them joined, screaming allegiance, screaming it to no one. Clinging to her against all of it, the unceasing pound disappeared inside her voice.

Water was everywhere upon her. Still he waited on her word. Nothing could take them but her command. Lightning broke and showed the sea standing mountains on all sides, breaking the length of their slopes as they avalanched down. His lungs sucked for air through it. In that avalanche, Bobby died, hallucinating drowning. And in that moment she spoke to him, his eyes opened from death, untroubled, trusting. It was then that the wind stilled, the squall ceased, the waves quelled themselves. A clear full moon sat mute in the sky above him. Everything slowed to a stop. Now, she whispered softly, you are in the eye.

Obedient, he dragged them atop the rail. He turned back to her for a moment and went over, obedient. He watched himself topple, attached and fantasy-like, into the water, under it. It was warm and quiet, all around him soft. Womblike, he transferred into the dream state, knew he must hold his breath a long time.