“The banner…” Mitch said, looking at them in turn for a flicker of recognition. “…Of rebellion…? Like calling an army to action…”
Amber stared at Mitch, then looked at Darien. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”
“It’s from fantasy novels.” Darien shrugged. “Sword and sorcery…that kind of thing…”
“Thank you! At least he gets it,” Mitch said. “And he’s way older than us. Come on, Amber.”
“Hey, wait a minute—” Darien began with a raised hand.
Mia shook her head. “I got nothing.”
Mitch cleared his throat. “Okay…so basically I went and told everyone what happened—"
“You are such a nerd,” Amber said in a teasing voice and punched his arm playfully. [MP7]
The young man blushed over his beard and cleared his throat again. “Anyway…it’s not nearly as bad outside as it was a few hours ago,” Mitch said, beaming. “I think we must be coming up on the eye…I swear you can see clear sky way over to the east.”
Amber looked at Darien. “Then you can go after…you can rescue my mom?” she asked in a tremulous voice.
Darien looked at Harriet, who inclined her head sadly. She nodded, ever so slightly and looked away. He turned to Amber and the pleading look on her face melted what resistance he had left. He squared his shoulders. It was time to atone for his sins. If he could do nothing else with the days left to him, he could bring the girl’s mother home and save at least one family from the destruction he’d helped bring upon the neighborhood.
“I’ll bring back your mom,” he said in a firm, deep voice. The smile that split Amber’s face belonged on an angel, and he accepted the hug she unexpectedly foisted on him. “I swear it.”
“Thank you…” she mumbled into his chest as her arms squeezed his ribcage tight.
Darien glanced at the others helplessly, and gave Amber’s back an awkward pat, unsure how to proceed. At last, the teenager released him and stepped back.
“What do we do?”
Darien shook his head. “There is no ‘we.’ For starters,” he said, looking at Mitch, “gimpy here needs to stay put this time. I’m not taking all the fighters we have left out into the woods.”
“Gimpy?” Mitch said, a shocked expression on his face. “I just walked—“
“You want me to do this or not?” Darien asked Amber.
She rounded on Mitch with all the grace of a thunderclap. “You’re staying here—I can’t lose you, too.”
Mitch blushed, nodded, and remained silent.
“Good. Now that’s settled, I’ll gather a small group of three or four men from the volunteers—“
“Posse,” Mitch offered. “What?” He asked with a shrug at the others, who all turned to stare at him. “Sounds cooler.”
“This ain’t some movie, boy,” Darien growled. He pointed west. “I aim to bring the pain, and there ain’t no room for jokes and sounding cool.”
Rufus limped into the kitchen from his position in the front room with the other men from Darien’s crew. “What’s up?” He looked at everyone in turn and took in the mood of the group. “It’s on?” he asked Darien, as he clutched a bloody emergency blanket over his shoulders.
“Guys,” Mia said.
Darien scowled and ignored her. He glanced at Rufus. “Oh, it’s on.”
Rufus let the blanket drop to the floor and flexed his shoulders. “‘Bout time. Gimme a minute to grab my gear and I’ll be ready to bounce.” He turned and headed back to the front room with a pronounced limp.
“Um, hey, guys—” Mia began in a small voice.
“He stays here,” Darien said with a look at Mitch, ignoring Mia again. “I’m only taking the able-bodied and rested. Anyone injured needs to stay here. That means you, too.”
Mitch held his hands up. “Okay, okay.”
“Hey!” Mia shouted,
“What?” Darien and Amber yelled at the same time.
“Anyone hear that?” asked Mia.
Amber blinked. “What? I don’t hear anything.”
Darien turned and faced the back door leading out to the patio. “She’s right. The wind…it’s almost gone. So’s the thunder.” He stepped to the door and placed his ear against the wood. “Sounds quiet.” He looked at everyone, then threw the deadbolt back and opened the door.
The winds that had howled and the rain that had sliced through the air horizontally had stopped. Peace reigned. Trees had stopped swaying, as branches hung limp from broken trunks. Leaves fluttered to the ground singly and in clumps, and everything—from the trees to the grass to the house to the fortifications they’d made—dripped water.
Darien turned as a pale twilight dropped down into the cavernous hole in the middle of the monster storm. Mia stepped out on the deck and looked up. “Stars…look at the stars!”
“This is the eeriest silence I’ve ever heard…” Mitch said. “No birds or bugs or anything…”
“Welcome to the eye of the storm,” Darien said. “Now where’s your posse? It’s time to get Cami back[MP8].”
Chapter 19
Fort Sumter
Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
Reese and Jo worked their way down the steps inside the wheelhouse, carefully searching every room that was easily accessible before heading down to the next level. Reese ended up using a discarded satchel to hold the treasures they found, including a small first aid kit that had a supply of alcohol wipes, and an emergency signal flare kit. The one thing they didn’t find was rope—or cordage of any kind.
“Who sails a ship without rope?”
Jo looked at him with a sour face. “Probably down in the hold in one of those containers. Probably a bunch of containers just full of rope.”
Reese snorted. “Right. Just our luck.” As he stood on the main deck, just inside the hatch that led back outside where the orange lifeboat waited, his eyes lit on the exit sign above the door. “Look at those wires…”
“The ones over the door—”
“Hatch,” Reese corrected automatically, as he stepped forward to examine the painted wires that extended in a bundle from the side of the exit sign. “On boats and ships, they’re called hatches.”
“Okay, professor—you thinking of using those?” Jo asked, stepping up next to him. “Don’t look all that strong…”
“Oh, wires should work just fine. All we want to do is make sure that lifeboat doesn’t drift away before we get in.” He reached up and pulled—another tug and the bundle easily parted from the sign housing. He looked at Jo and grinned, then took a good grip with both hands and yanked hard.
Two yards of bundled wires ripped free of the bulkhead, shearing their retaining clips. The broken clips tinked off the deck at their feet. Reese pulled again and another yard of wires pulled free, showering them in broken clips, right up to a junction box mounted on the ceiling.
“How you gonna get that out?” Jo asked. She narrowed her eyes. “Looks like it’s bolted clear to the ceiling.”
“Hmmm…” Reese said as he walked around the little foyer, his eyes tracing the wires as they criss-crossed the corners. He hadn’t noticed them before, but they were everywhere. Holes cut through the bulkheads in each direction, let the wires—on the other side of the metal junction box—pass through to the next compartment. “We may not have to get them out of that. I think I can just yank them out of this side, then pull those wires over there out…and we can just tie them all together.”
A patch of bright sunlight appeared in the open hatch and a seagull called outside, then the light faded. “Well, whatever you’re doing, you best do it quick.”
“Yep, eye’s passing. Come on, gimme a hand here, these are probably secured pretty well in that junction box,” he said as he handed Jo a coiled length of the wire that hung from the ceiling then took his place and got ready to heave.
“Ready,” Jo said grimly.
“On three…” Reese announced. “One…two…three!
” They pulled in unison and after a split second of hesitation, the entire junction box ripped free of the ceiling in a shower of paint flakes, screws, and wires. Reese laughed as he dusted himself off and handed the now loose end of the wires to Jo. “Here, can you start separating those out? We’ll need to tie them all end to end, I’m thinking, to make sure we can reach the water over the side out there.”
“Good grief…” Jo muttered as she gathered the wire. “I think we got enough…don’t you? We ain’t lowering that thing off the Empire State Building…”
“No, but we do need to make sure we have enough to keep some spare. If it’s too tight, it might snap when a wave hits it.”
Several minutes later, Reese had repeated the process and ripped down the wires in the next room, then returned to Jo with his own bundle. “I think that ought to do it. Let’s head outside and get some air while we tie it all together.”
Jo followed him out to the orange lifeboat, hastily secured to the railing. “Can you secure the lines there?” Reese asked. “Looks like they’ve loosened a bit, and I’d hate to lose that thing now.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Jo left her bundle with Reese and moved to the lifeboat.
Reese sank with a sigh of relief to the deck and braced his back against the railing while he worked. He kept one eye on the sky and looked up every time a stray cloud drifted by and blotted out the sun. The breeze remained a steady 5 knots or so out of the east-northeast and a few more gulls had joined the first brave explorer, all keening to each other above the broken ship. The waves continued to hiss and roll below, occasionally slamming into the fort with a deep boom and a shower of spray that almost reached them.
“This can’t last forever…” Jo said as she worked. “When we get to shore…” She paused. “Look at that…there’s so much…it’s gone…”
Reese shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t look—if I do, I won’t stop looking and we’ll run out of time. We need to get this finished and get the boat over the side, then get in and get across the harbor. We’ve still got a long way to go, and no good way to do it.”
Jo slapped the raft. “All right, you fiddle with your ropes. I’ll see if I can rustle up something we can use as an oar.”
“Two would be better,” Reese offered without looking up from his knots.
“Maybe you’d like a pizza and a few beers to go with that?” asked Jo as she turned and walked off, muttering obscenities.
“Make mine pepperoni and pineapple, please…” he muttered as he worked.
“Pineapple?” Jo blurted. “Ain’t no sane person puts pineapple on a pizza[MP9]!”
Reese laughed as she stormed off. He wasn’t sure what Jo might find to work as an oar, but just about anything would do. The current out there would be plenty strong to push them ashore, but…he swallowed. The idea of riding those 15-foot breakers in a bobbing life raft the hour or so it might take to drift northwest to the shore on the storm surge didn’t do his stomach any favors[MP10].
By the time he’d lashed together about half of the wire, he heard Jo shout from the other side of the ship. At first he thought she was in trouble and started to rise, then he heard a triumphant whoop and a rebel yell.
Whatever she’d found, she was excited over it. Reese shook his head, settled back into his spot and resumed his tying. He had a handful of five yard lengths to go and they’d have a ‘rope’ plenty long enough to lower the boat into the water and still have enough to provide a second line to toss over the side and keep it in place.
He frowned. His plan would require one of them going down alone and catching the handling line, then waiting for the other to descend. When they were both down at sea level, they could use the handling line to pull the boat to them, climb aboard, and cast off the line tied to the ship. What happened after that depended on whatever it was Jo had found.
“Lookie here what I found!” Jo exclaimed as she ran up, her boots stomping on the deck and making a hollow echo across the ghost ship.
Reese glanced up and stared. She held two gaffs—one in each hand—a long pole of wood with a backward curved hook on the end. Useful for holding landing craft steady—or landing tuna—and warding off boarders, but not much else.
“How good you think these things will work as oars?” she asked, holding them out for him to inspect, her arms akimbo. “They’re long enough, ain’t they?” The gaffs slanted away from her so that her body formed the middle peak of an eight foot tall ‘W.’
Reese sighed. “Well, they’re poles alright…but oars? Jo, there’s nothing to bite the water with those things…”
She frowned, deflated.
Reese blinked as she lowered her arms in defeat. “Wait, hold them out again!” He tossed the wires from his lap to the deck and clambered to his feet, watching her move. He ran to her, held out a hand, then stopped and looked around. “All we need is something to go between…”
“What in tarnation are you goin’ on about?” Jo scowled. “Best not be something involving pineapple—that’s the Devil’s fruit.”
He cast about for a suitable material to span the two poles. “A sail! We don’t need oars…the wind is gonna be constant from the east-northeast. We won’t have a keel, though…” he said, talking rapidly to himself as he searched, then froze. The plastic-canvas like material that had wrapped the lifeboat lay crumpled half in, half out of the empty capsule in which the boat had been stored. “Eureka!”
Reese rushed over and yanked the material free of the abandoned pod, then took it to Jo and held it up in front of her between the two poles.
“Whew, that smells worse than three-day-old armadillo roadkill.”
Reese snorted. “Just hold still. We need to tie this to the poles somehow.”
Jo grunted. “Get on back to that rope you’re making. Leave this to me. There’s a needle and thread in the first aid kit you found, remember?”
“Fair enough,” Reese said with a smile. “This can really work,” he told her, unable to hide the smile on his face. He dove back into his pile of wires with renewed hope.
“It better,” Jo grumbled. “I’d hate to have to kick you out of the boat if it don’t.”
Reese laughed, and in no time, they were able to finish up making the rope and attaching the ‘sail’ to the two gaffs—which Reese bundled together and made into a separate package to drop overboard. “No sense in spearing our boat with these things…”
“So how’s this gonna work?” Jo asked.
A deep groan echoed through the air—from inside the ship. “Did the deck just move?” Reese asked quietly.
“Felt like a little earthquake…like she’s sliding just a bit,” Jo breathed.
“I don’t think this thing is entirely stable,” Reese whispered.
Jo slapped him in the back of the head. “That was for earlier—I told you I’d do it.”
“Ow!” He complained.
She slapped him on the other side of his head.
“Hey!”
“That’s for saying it ain’t ‘entirely stable.’” She raised her eyebrows when he opened his mouth to speak. “If the next words outta your mouth ain’t ‘Let’s get out of here,’ so help me I’m gonna slap you again, boy.”
The ship shifted a few feet again, rocking ever so slowly from port to starboard. Reese staggered into the railing and leaned over. Bricks crumbled from the onslaught of the waves and the constant weight of the ship. “That wall’s starting to fail…” He looked at Jo as her eyebrow arched. “Okay, it’s failing more.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Fine!” He said, arms up. “Let’s get outta here!”
Jo’s face split with a wide smile. “Now you’re talkin’.”
“You’re not going to like my plan,” Reese warned as he coiled up the lines he’d created by lashing the wires together.
“Enlighten me,” Jo challenged.
“One of us needs to be down there in the water. The other tosses this line over,” he sai
d as he held up his right hand. “It’s tied about two-thirds of the way down the length of this line,” he said as he held up his left hand. “And the other end of this one is tied to the boat.”
“Why’d you think I wouldn’t like that?” Jo demanded. “I’ll go down first and catch the line.”
“Wha-?” Reese blurted. “But…I thought you’d want to stick together…”
“Shoot no, son. I want off this crazy train. How do I get down there—and if you say jump over the side…” Jo said as she raised her arm.
“Stop trying to slap me!” Reese said, flinching. “There’s a ladder cut into the hull. Saw it on the way up,” Reese said, pointing toward the bow. “It should get you down about fifteen feet over the water. You okay to jump in from there and swim to the wall?” He leaned over the side. “Doesn’t look like it’s all that far—or deep—and the waves will help push you toward the fort.”
Jo looked over, too. “Well, it ain’t ideal, but…” she sighed. “I suppose it’s the best I’ll get for now. Wish me luck.”
“You don’t want to stay up where it’s dry?” Reese asked, shocked, as Jo moved toward the gangway and started to step out over the side. “Or slap me again?”
She took two slow steps down, then looked at him with a frown. “You think I can get that boat over the railing when it’s time without following it down the easy way? Thanks, but no thanks, kid.” She laughed to herself and disappeared below the railing. “I’ll take the ladder.”
“Well…” Reese said to himself. “Okay, then.”
“Let’s go, junior!” Jo called from somewhere out of sight. “I’m halfway down!”
Reese moved over to the railing and looked over. Jo clung to the side of the enormous hull like a mouse on a log. Exposed to the wind, her long gray braid whipped back and forth with every step, slapping the faded red first aid backpack she’d been carrying since leaving Maine.
“That’s it…” Reese called. “You’re almost there! When you’re at the bottom, time the jump so you land on the crest of a wave!” He waved as she looked up at him. “That’s the tall part, landlubber!”
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 15
