Jo shook her head and adamantly refused to look over the side. "Nope, not gonna look. I wouldn't want to be on the ship at all when it hit. I wouldn’t have wanted to be within 100 miles of this coast. I didn't even want to be on Mount Desert Island."
"Turns out it was probably the best place to be on the coast," Reese observed as they walked along toward the massive wheelhouse that rose up at the rear end of the ship. "Look at that out there," he said with a sweep of his hand, indicating the wide open ocean before them. "Those waves gotta be 10-15 feet high, all the way out as far as you can see.”
"So you think we’re in the eye?" Jo asked as she glanced up at the sky. "I think I see some blue up there." She pointed at the fast-moving, low clouds.
"Well, it ain't rainin’, and the wind’s not carrying us clear off the side of this thing...I'd say it's a fair bet we’re in the eye," Reese admitted. "All the more reason to hurry up and find a way off this rock and get ashore."
"So how we gonna do that?" Jo said a few moments later as they stood at the entrance to the wheelhouse. The oval hatch hung open this time, allowing a shaft of dim light to penetrate the inner depths of the building-sized structure.
"Way I figure it,” Reese commented as he peered inside. “This pig’s got to have emergency lifeboats and a way for the crew to evacuate the ship."
"Great, where are they?" Jo asked as she looked around. "I don’t see any boats or anything hanging off the side..."
"Well, not all lifeboats are...well, boats. We might be able to find one of those—look!" he said as he pointed at the aft railing where it curved around the very stern of the ship. "Like that!" He jogged off toward the back of the ship, as Jo called out behind him to slow down.
Reese didn't care—he had to find out if what he'd seen was in fact one of the inflatable life rafts that many modern ships carried, shrink-wrapped into a canister about the size of a loveseat. He reached up and pulled down some seaweed and flung it to splat on the deck at his feet. “Hello, beautiful,” he murmured as he wiped the grime from the side of the pod, and read aloud as Jo pounded along the deck and joined him. "Right here...lifeboat, size 84”, six-man capacity."
He turned to Jo and smiled. "I think this is our ticket out of here."
"Great," Jo said as she puffed for breath. "Two questions," she said as she put her hands on her hips. "One, how do we get that daggum thing over the side, and two, once it’s over the side, how we going to get to shore?"
"Well, this isn't the only one," he said as he craned his neck around the side of the canister. "I say we pop this baby open and see what happens. I think there's an inflatable zodiac type boat in here."
Reese felt his way around the side of the canister, looking for a release latch. "Somehow we gotta get these metal straps off..." He dusted his hands and stood up. "Don't know how that works yet, but I doubt they got an engine or gas inside this thing. It's probably meant to be hooked up with an engine once it's in the water, yeah?"
Jo turned and looked around. "Who you talking to? I sure don't know. Landlocked Texan, remember?"
Reese laughed. "Yeah, I forgot—you sound so much like a Yankee, I figured you grew up on a whaling boat."
"Boy, remind me to slap you upside the head if we ever get off of this thing."
"Stand back, would you?" Reese said as he laughed. "I think this lever here’s what triggers the manual override.”
He cranked a heavy, yellow painted handle attached to the side of the wheelhouse, and two heavy bolts snapped back. The lifeboat cannister lid flew off, and the container split open like a pecan shell. A large, bright orange, tightly wound package tumbled out onto the deck. A loud hissing sound accompanied the explosion of the package, and within seconds, the life raft unfolded itself, filled with compressed air, and attempted to fly away in the stiff breeze coming off the ocean.
Reese laughed as he and Jo fell on top of the raft to keep it anchored to the deck. "Quick, grab one of those lines over there and lash it to the railing. I'll do the same on this side."
When the raft was secure, Jo stepped back and admired their work. "I'll be an armadillo's uncle. Didn't think that was going to work," she muttered.
"Okay...we got a life raft." Reese glanced up at the sky. "We’ve still got some time before the second half of the storm hits. I say we run up in the wheelhouse, do a quick search on the bridge and see if we can find anything useful. We still gotta find some oars or something to steer us."
"Yeah, some rope would be nice, too," Jo said as they entered the wheelhouse.
"For what?" Reese asked as they mounted another set of steps up to the bridge deck.
"Well, unless your name’s Aladdin and you plan on riding that thing all the way to Charleston through the air, somehow we gotta get down to the water without it blowing away. I may be a simple Texan girl, but the way I figure it we need to lasso that frisky filly, so she don't fly away on us before we get back down to the bottom."
Reese stopped outside a sealed hatch with a sign that read Bridge. He turned and looked at her with a smile. "You know, for a landlubber, you sure think like a sailor sometimes." He laughed as he put his shoulder to the door and pushed it open. A wall of foulness he hadn’t experienced since they left Boston slapped him in the face and knocked him back.
"Close the door, close the door!" Jo yelled as she shoved him back toward the door.
The sight that greeted Reese when he reached in to grab the handle would stay with him for the rest of his days. Several bloated bodies lay clustered by the massive bank of computers that ran the ship.
"What was that?" Jo asked as she gagged and dry heaved over the railing.
"I think the captain and most of the crew went down with the ship..." Reese said as he turned away and choked on bile. "On second thought...let's see if we can find something on the lower decks and get out of this thing."
Jo wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glared at him. "Come on, let's check it out, it'll be fun..." she mocked. "Next time we go on a trip, I'm picking the destination," she said as she pointed a finger in his face.
Chapter 16
Braaten Forest Preserve
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Cami pushed forward through the wind. She dodged around trees and kept her head down as the relentless wall of wind continually pummeled her with horizontal rain. In patches where the leaves and pine needles had been swept clear, she found herself slogging through mud that was so slippery she had to cling to trees and saplings to make any headway at all.
Her world descended into a small bubble of continually howling wind, horizontal stinging rain, and the next tree that she could cower behind and catch her breath. The travel was exhausting, but the thought of reaching Amber gave her enough energy to keep placing one foot in front of the other. She couldn't give up, she wouldn't. Now that she'd escaped Cisco and evaded those sent to find her, her only goal was to get back to Bee’s Landing—to get home, to get to Amber.
Cami lost all track of time. Her world was measured in footsteps and inches as trees in the forest—let alone the outside world—ceased to exist beyond maybe 20 or 30 feet out. The woods were too close, and the rain too heavy for her to see much beyond that. Still...she continued to plod forward, one painful step after another.
A stout pine tree emerged from the gloom in front of her as she briefly lifted her face into the wind to check her bearings. She slogged forward another few steps and collapsed gratefully behind its bulk, taking what respite she could from the roaring wind. She turned and slid down to the base of the trunk, and rested her head against the wet, scratchy bark. She couldn't rest long, for she knew if she closed her eyes she’d fall asleep and become an easier target for Cisco's men.
“Gotta keep moving…” she muttered.
Cami massaged her right leg. The fat lawyer had managed to wing her with a wild shot before she escaped. The wound wasn't deep, and she had merely tallied it up with the rest of her cuts, scratches and bruises. But
pushing herself through the teeth of the hurricane had stretched the wounded limb to its limits. Without her pack, Cami had no first aid kit or supplies of any kind. She had the small knife she’d brought with her from Cisco's camp and the captured AR 15 with its braided paracord sling.
"Well…” she said to herself over the keening wind. "This is a fine mess you've gotten yourself into. I suppose," she muttered as she looked at the rifle in her lap. "I can make pretty good use of the sling…” She looked around, narrowing her eyes into the wind as she sought out any unnatural shapes or movement in the saturated forest. "But it makes it too easy to carry the rifle at the moment." She leaned her head back against the trunk and exhaled deeply. Wiping the water and grime from her face once more, Cami used the butt of the rifle as a crutch and stood, groaning as she put weight on her right leg again. "Gotta get this patched up, but there's no time."
She turned and stepped around the tree trunk and back into the gale once more. She lowered her head and raised her right arm to shield her face. "What I wouldn't give for a freakin’ GPS right about now…” she yelled into the storm. She had a good idea of where she was, but shrouded in the midst of the storm, Cami couldn't be sure she was on the right track.
Her only consolation was the fact that Bee’s Landing lay due east of Cisco's encampment in the forest preserve. She’d traveled some ways north, hoping to draw any pursuers off of an immediate attack against her neighborhood, and after successfully fighting off the lawyer commando, she’d finally turned east. Question was, how far north exactly did she go before she turned east?
Cami puzzled over her location as she slogged forward and flinched when a bolt of lightning struck close enough nearby that everything turned an otherworldly pink electric hue. She paused and glanced up at the tops of the swaying trees. Maybe standing near a tree wasn't the best thing to do…
It felt like hours had passed before Cami approached a small clearing. Either the storm had intensified, or a break in the trees had allowed more wind to pour down like a funnel into the forest. Branches, lightly rooted bushes, and on more than one occasion an old tree, weakened from disease or age, had fallen, collapsed under the relentless pressure of the wind.
It was only when Cami noticed what looked like a floating corndog a few yards ahead of her did she realize where she was. She whooped with joy and staggered forward to collapse at the base of a wide willow tree. Cami raised her hand and, panting with the effort she'd expended to make it this far, leaned around the tree and shielded her face. Just visible in the distance was the dark smudge of the beaver lodge. She'd made it to the pond. If the weather cooperated, she was no more than an hour or so from home at a brisk walk.
Cami flopped back behind the tree and relished the drop in wind pressure. By the dim light in the sky, Cami guessed she only had a few hours of daylight left. She glanced around the other side of the tree, through the whipping bushes and flying green leaves that slapped her in the face. There was no way she could get any further without attending to her leg and resting. Her leg had about given out on her more than once in the past few hours.
"Won't do anybody any good if I trip and fall out here and break something." She glanced up at the whipping branches above her. She needed shelter and a respite from the storm. Cami glanced down at her wounded leg.
The camo pants that covered her right thigh had been soaked in the rain, but the fabric was especially dark on her right leg where the bullet had nicked her, parting skin and muscle in a shallow gouge that still leaked a little blood. A particularly strong gust of wind buffeted the tree and made the trunk quiver. Cami glanced up and swallowed.
Forcing herself to get back to the task at hand, Cami leaned around the tree once more and spotted the floating corndog she'd seen earlier. Though she often joked that it was nature's corndog, what she was looking at was actually a patch of cattails growing by the side of the beaver pond.
"Perfect," she muttered. Cami expended precious energy to crawl forward the last few feet and rip up a handful of the cattails as they bent almost double in the wind. She dragged them back behind the willow tree, and rested against the trunk with her eyes closed as she tried to calm her breathing, and catch her breath.
As an experienced Alaskan guide, and also an outdoorswoman who prided herself on living off the land, Cami couldn't be happier to have found the patch of cattails. With trembling, rain-slick hands, she did her best to rip the outer leaves away from the stalk. The closer she got to the core of the plant, the more she discovered a gooey, clear slime.
Long known among the Native Americans for its antiseptic properties and soothing ability, the cattail mucus was worth its weight in gold to Cami. She used the knife from Cisco's camp to slice the fabric of her right pants leg over the injury, then cupped her hands and gathered water from the wind. It wasn’t exactly the same as irrigating with saline solution, but it was all she could manage.
After a quick rinse, she managed to shift herself to the right and get her leg exposed out into the wind and rain, which cleansed the wound even more before she scooped out the slime from the cattail plants and slathered it across the smooth skin of her thigh. With little else to bandage the wound, she took a knife to her top and converted the long sleeve camo shirt she wore into a tank top. With trembling hands, she cut the thick fabric of the sleeve lengthwise into two long strips and managed to tie them together and wrap it around her injured leg.
Panting with the effort, she leaned back against the tree and stared up at the swirling cauldron of gray clouds, lightning flashes, and wind-driven rain. "If anybody's up there looking down on me right now, I could sure use some help.”
Chapter 17
Braaten Forest Preserve
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Cisco shoved the man in front of him to keep him moving. “Don’t slow down! Go!” he hissed. The man flinched at his words but picked up his pace just the same. Cisco grinned and checked the locations of the rest of his squad.
He’d split his task force into two groups, just like he and Jenkins had discussed, and after pushing hard into the forest as the storm first showed signs of slackening, they were already at the beaver pond.
The first group, led by Jenkins, stood around talking as Cisco’s group emerged from the tangled, storm-flattened forest. The men were sweaty and tired—the trip through the preserve had been twice as hard as expected, even with the wind dying off.
Cisco slopped across the wet, muddy, storm debris that covered the ground: broken branches, leaves, pine boughs, even palm fronds—though where they came from Cisco could only guess. He signaled his men to take a break and walked up next to Jenkins at the edge of the water.
“Sky’s pretty clear,” Jenkins mumbled in that soft voice of his. He peered up at the patch of bright blue that looked like a piece of a popped balloon tossed into the sky.
“It’s getting there,” Cisco allowed as he watched the shoreline. “Seen anyone?”
“Nope. But she was here…or came through here.”
Cisco started. “How do you know?”
Jenkins pulled a filthy wad of camo patterned cloth from his pocket. “This is her sleeve. Or part of it.”
Cisco took the damp, muddy cloth from his underling and worked it between his fingers. “How can you tell?”
“Got to be—ain’t nothing else out here for miles. But we know she was. Best guess is she’s injured and cut a strip off her shirt to wrap the wound.”
“So Porkins nicked her, huh?” Cisco looked around as if the troublesome woman might be lurking behind the next bush. “Any other sign of her?”
Jenkins shook his head sadly and turned his eyes on the still waters of the beaver pond. “Nope. We looked. No tracks, no nothing. One of my boys found a weird little stack of pine needles and mud between some trees a ways back. About yea-high,” he said, and lowered his hand to just below his knee for clarity. “Could’ve been pushed there by the wind, but could’ve been stacked up by someone building
a shelter. Ground was scooped out a little behind it too.”
Cisco grunted. “Could’ve been…”
After a moment, Jenkins spoke again. “So, what’s the word? We settin’ up shop here or moving closer?”
Cisco looked around and squinted. “Looks safe here—they’re not likely to come this way and we’re still what, an hour or two from the neighborhood?”
Jenkins nodded. “In terrain like this? Yeah. When the storm comes back, might take half a day to get there.”
Cisco shook his head. “That’s no bueno, then. We keep moving. We’ll get closer and set up shop so we can jump on them at a moment’s notice. Not after a half-day hike through the storm.”
Jenkins crossed his arms, his rifle slung across his back. “Risky.”
“Even more risky to show up too tired to think straight. They’ll be well fed and rested, sleeping nice and dry inside, right?” Cisco countered.
Jenkins nodded, but looked reluctant.
Cisco narrowed his eyes. “We gonna have a problem?” he asked, stretching his shoulders.
Jenkins looked at him sharply but shook his head. “No problem, jefe.”
“Good,” Cisco said, forcing a grin. “Get ‘em moving. Tell that hunter boy of yours to scout out a good location about an hour east of here.” He glanced up at the broadening blue dome overhead. “I want to start making shelters before round two starts.”
“You the boss,” Jenkins said as he moved off to gather his team.
Cisco watched his lieutenant lope easily through the forest undergrowth and debris. The man was comfortable in the woods, there was no doubt about it. Cisco himself hated the woods—he’d take the concrete jungle any day. But he needed to lead half the squad to show he was still in charge and wasn’t afraid of anything.
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 13
