by Joe Hart
Larry mumbled something about needing to call his daughter and stumbled past the other man in a shambling jog. He made it down the hallway to another row of offices that branched off from the main walkway to the left. His office was set off to the far right corner of the large design room, and it had a great view of the city stretching to the north. His secretary, a woman in her early fifties with dark hair that was gradually turning gray at the temples, was standing at the door of his office with a bundle of folders and several envelopes clutched to her chest.
“Morning, Larry, you’re late. You’re never late.”
Larry could just hear her over the whining in his ears. He smiled another tight smile and wiped the tears that were forming in the corners of his eyes away with the heel of his hand.
“Sorry, Joan. Had a rough morning.” He stepped past her and motioned for her to shut the door of the office as she entered behind him.
“Jesus, Larry, you look terrible. Is that blood on your pants?” Joan said, pointing with one outstretched hand at the spot where he had banged his shin that morning.
Larry set his briefcase on the large desk that sat in the middle of the room and fell heavily into the swiveling chair behind it.
“Yeah, hit my shin this morning.” Larry leaned forward and carefully put his face into his hands. He breathed in and out and willed the pain that was beating wings of agony in the back of his head to go away.
“Well, we lost the Larson project, but I’m guessing you heard that already from big-mouth Bob. He sent out e-mails to half the building already. That should’ve been yours.”
“I know!” Larry yelled suddenly, causing Joan to take a surprised step toward the glass door behind her. He saw a few people look up from their desks and peek from their cubicles in the main work area. He breathed deeply and drew another stiff smile across his sweating face.
“I’m sorry. I know I lost it, because I was late and with what’s going on at home right now. How the hell did that spread so fast anyway?” Larry asked.
Joan only shrugged and pursed her lips with heartfelt sympathy in her eyes.
“I’m sorry about all this. Jill called this morning and …” He stopped and shook his head.
Joan’s eyes softened further in her lined face, and she nodded in understanding. He had let the older woman in on the news of his home life in the last two weeks. She hadn’t been a shoulder to cry on, really, but she listened and she was the closest friend he had here at work.
“You know what? You don’t want that project anyway. It’s going to be a pain in the ass, and not to mention a ton of paperwork on my end.”
Larry glanced up and had to smile for real at the look of levity on Joan’s face. He snorted and shook his head again, this time in amusement.
“You’re right, let Apple deal with the ins and outs of building an exec in the city. He’s never done one.” The pain receded suddenly as though he had thrown ice water on a fire. Maybe it was just stress, he thought. He needed a break. Maybe he would take Mattie to the beach for a week when this whole thing settled down. No, not settled down—when he had custody. He smiled for real at this thought, and Joan smiled back.
“Thanks, Joan, I needed that.”
“Anytime, boss. I’ll be out front if you need to talk.” Joan shut the door quietly behind her, and he watched her sit down at her desk and begin filing papers.
He breathed deeply a few times and took a moment to enjoy the lack of pain in his head and the clear sound of silence that filled his ears. Things would be okay. He’d get Mattie this weekend, and they would do something fun. He would explain to her about what was happening, because she was probably afraid and felt very alone. He would make it okay somehow.
Larry blinked several times and decided he needed some coffee. The coffee machine was at the other end of the hallway. The execs hadn’t spared any expense when they had put it in a year ago. The machine made cappuccinos, lattes, and some of the best black coffee he had ever had.
He had just risen from his chair when his phone beeped, and Joan’s voice filtered in from the other room.
“I just wanted to make sure you saw you had a message waiting.”
The phone clicked off, and his eyes landed on the blinking light next to line one. He sat back down, lifted the receiver to his ear, and punched the button.
“Hello, Mr. Daniels, my name is Sheri Davis with Los Angeles County Court Services. I am getting in touch with you about the paperwork you filed last week regarding custody of your daughter during your divorce proceedings. Your wife, Jill Daniels, has filed an injunction against you gaining custody or having visitations with your daughter on the grounds that she has voiced concern about your mental well-being. At this time she has also filed a restraining order, which I can go over with you if you would call me back when you get this message. For the time being, you’ll need to come to the courthouse and set a date with the court-appointed psychologist. The findings of the appointment will be examined by the judge assigned to the divorce proceedings. Once again, my name is Sheri Davis, and you can reach me—”
The phone dropped from Larry’s hand and hit the floor with a resounding crack. He didn’t notice the dropped phone because his head suddenly felt as though a railroad spike was being driven into the back of it. The pain didn’t stop at its mid-skull boundary line as it had before. It continued and began to fold the front of his forehead into its fiery grip.
Larry stood and took a shaky step toward the door. What did I stand up to do? he wondered. Coffee. That was it, he needed coffee. The whining sound of the jet had returned, and had increased tenfold. His eardrums thrummed with it, and he feared that they would simply perforate from the sound. Coffee. Yep, coffee would do the trick. Had he been talking on the phone to someone? He felt as though he had gotten some bad news, but he couldn’t remember what it had been.
He staggered to the door and pulled it open roughly. Joan’s head swiveled around, and her eyes widened at the sight of her boss. Larry’s face was pulled into a fixed grimace of pain, and his eyes had gone wild. She had seen those eyes before. They were the eyes of a gazelle on the nature channel she watched sometimes, as a lion closed in and made to tear out its throat. They were the eyes of an animal in panic.
“Larry, are you okay?”
Larry stumbled past her, stiff-legged and gritting his teeth so hard that she could actually hear pieces of them snapping off in his mouth. She could hear something else too. A dull static whining, like a TV on a fuzzy station in another room. It seemed to be coming from the man who was making his way across the front of her desk toward the hallway.
“Just need a coffee!” Larry screeched through his clenched jaw.
Joan stood and watched as the young man staggered out into the hall and turned left toward the lounge area.
Larry made his way down the hall, bouncing off of a wall every so often and returning to his course like a bowling ball on a lane with bumpers. He passed drunkenly by Bob Apple’s office, and the other man spotted him and immediately jumped from behind his desk and followed, holding a half-empty cup of coffee.
Larry arrived at the coffee machine, grasped the stack of foam cups, and after several attempts, managed to pull one off. He put his shaking hand that held the cup under the silver spout at the top of the whirring machine and tried to hold it steady as another wave of misery washed over the coast of his brain. His knees buckled slightly and he nearly went straight to the floor, but he managed to hold himself up by putting his other hand out onto the table that the machine sat on.
Bob stepped up behind Larry and immediately began spewing words out like water from a sprinkler. “Hey, buddy, didn’t get to finish what I was saying back in the hall there. I was hoping you could head up my team. We could start organizing this afternoon. I have to hit the links with a couple of the investors this afternoon, but I’ll send you a memo on who I want on the team.”
Larry could barely hear the other man rambling behind him. He concentrated o
n pushing the button that said “Coffee” in the center of the machine before him. He punched the button with a shaking finger and held it as the directions at the top of the silver contraption said. No dark liquid came out. Not a drop. He released the button and punched it again. Nothing. He pushed it again, harder this time. Nothing.
“Oh, hey, buddy, I actually just got the last cup. Someone needs to come down and refill it, I think. Anyway, when you get the memo, just use your own discretion …”
The sound in Larry’s ears rose until he could feel the fillings in his teeth begin to tingle and shake. He turned on rubbery legs, eyes bulging and mouth gaping at the man standing behind him.
Bob took one look at Larry and stopped talking. Larry’s head was completely aflame with agony now, and the pain was spreading down into his chest. There was nothing other than the pain. It was all he knew. It flowed inside his stomach like molten lava and washed lower into his legs. His head was shaking now with the sound, the muscles and tendons in his neck straining against the skin that held them back. His eyes stared at the ceiling. His knees finally gave way and he fell to them.
The high whining that had started coming from his mouth began to deepen, and blood vessels in his eyes and face started to rupture. Larry’s white fingers scrambled at his throat as if to quiet the noise, but it continued to drop in pitch.
Bob started to back away from the kneeling man but failed to notice the leather footstool behind him. He tumbled backward over it, only to land in the matching overstuffed leather chair behind it. He watched in horror as Larry’s head tilted back farther and farther, until his mouth was open and his tongue stuck out like a child catching the first snowflakes of winter.
The whistling whine coming from Larry’s mouth continued to deepen as his hands dropped from his throat and he leaned farther back like some sort of human loudspeaker.
Bob sat motionless on the expensive leather chair, and his mind subconsciously connected the dots that the auditory signals were sending to his brain. It was a bomb. The whistling that was coming from his co-worker’s mouth, emanating from his skin, was the sound of a large bomb slowly dropping to the earth, inexorably and surely. Bob curled into the fetal position on the large chair and tried to cover his head. Several people stepped out into the long hallway to see what was causing the noise.
Blood began to pour from Larry’s ears, and a thin stream dripped down his chin and onto his neck. The sound dropped even lower, and abruptly the hair on Larry’s head erupted into flames that danced across his blistering scalp in a small inferno. His vocal cords ruptured, and a white light bloomed from every pore in his body.
“We interrupt this program to bring you breaking news. At a little after nine Pacific Standard Time this morning a nuclear weapon of some sort was detonated on the western edge of Los Angeles. Initial reports are saying that the blast has reduced an area of the city five miles in diameter to rubble. Casualties are still being estimated at this time, but all early calculations put this disaster in the realm of three million dead, with more in the surrounding area soon to die from the inevitable nuclear fallout. Theories are still being brought to light as to whether this is an attack or an accident. Either way, this is, bar none, the most horrific catastrophe the world has ever witnessed …”
ADRIFT
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Case File: 00017451
Designate Code: Zebra
10/15/11
Authorized Personnel Only:
The following journal entries were recovered from the southwestern Pacific Ocean, approximately three hundred nautical miles off the coast of Japan, by the Jill Alverez, a United States oil tanker en route to Kobe. The entries are believed to have been made by Nathan Vannek, an independent investment banker from San Diego, California, who was lost at sea over six months prior to the discovery of the journal. A crewman on the Alverez spotted the buoy that was attached to the journal and hauled it aboard. The crewman read it and, after landing in Kobe, sent the journal to Agent Schael, who is, in fact, the crewman’s brother. After analyzing the journal and verifying its authenticity, a large search was launched in the area described early in the journal. No wreckage or body was recovered.
2/6/11
I wasn’t going to have a journal on this trip. It’s kind of cliché to keep a sea log. “Sea log” sounds like a wet turd. Well, with nothing else to do but wait for a rescue to come, I might as well write down what I’m seeing, thinking, feeling. Maybe I’ll get a book deal out of this. I can see the headlines now: “Man Rescued at Sea after Two Days.” Not really dramatic stuff, but you never know, I am an opportunist. That’s what Gale always says. It’s true; I do look for the best in a situation and try to use it to my advantage. It’s made me rich, so I can’t complain or question how it works, and that’s that, as they say. That’s actually why I’m here right now in this drifting boat in the middle of the North Pacific Sea. I saw an opportunity and took it. An opportunity to make a grand proposal to the woman I love. I’ll read this to you, Gale, when I get to the mainland, so I have to make it romantic! Ha, ha.
I got the idea when Gale’s company called and she announced she’d be leaving to work in Japan for three months. She works as a product manager for a company that distributes promotional pieces. Basically it’s her job to make sure the seams don’t leak on batches of travel mugs from China or the printing stays straight on golf balls from Indonesia.
When she got the call that she was needed in Japan, I already had a ring stored away in an old shoebox tucked in the back of our closet. (Yep, honey, it was right there in front of you the whole time! I’m glad you didn’t spring clean and throw everything out though!) I couldn’t bring myself to propose before she left, it just didn’t feel right. So then I considered going with her and asking her there in Japan. It would be romantic, under the lights of the Orient. She begged me to come too. But this idea was already blooming in my mind. It would be grand and wonderful and something she’d never forget. I love her very much and that is the God’s honest truth. I wouldn’t settle for anything less.
So, the day I saw her off at the airport, I took a three-week crash course in open-sea sailing. I did some sailing when I was younger, just around some islands off the coast of Maine where I grew up. Sailing’s fairly simple once you get the hang of it. I’ve always been able to pick things up quickly, and this was no different. A few days after I completed my class, I rented the boat that I’m sitting in now (writing this survivor journal) the Wind Clipper. Cool name, right? I thought so. There’s even a mural of a huge pair of scissors running down both sides of the thirty-six-foot boat. I packed the necessary gear and provisions, made arrangements with my business (I told my secretary that if Gale called while I was making my journey, tell her I had an urgent business trip that was taking me off the map for a while and it might be some time before I could reach her), and set off from San Diego Harbor. I was going to sail into Tokyo harbor and call her as I was arriving and ask her to go the docks. I would sail up, tie off the boat, and bend on one knee, as she stood there holding her hand on her throat as she does sometimes when she’s excited. I couldn’t wait. It would literally be the best moment of my life. That was, if she didn’t crack me for not calling her for two months.
Now I bet most people would say that the idea was reckless. Stupid. Insane. Well, I wouldn’t disagree with them, but I also have more money than the average person. I had the best distress-signal transmitter and lifeboat installed before I left. It was going to be an adventure, my last real-life adventure before I settled down and married the woman I love. There’d be no traipsing across the ocean for me once there were little feet pattering around our house, that’s for sure. I also brought Will. Will’s a two-year-old beagle and one of my best friends. Gale bought him for me as a Christmas gift, and he’s almost never left my side. I even bring him to work most days. There was no way I was leaving him behind for two months.
So, like I said, we set off. The waters were
calm on the Pacific as we made our way farther and farther across the deep blue. Every day was a new beginning. I would rise with the dawn and eat a light breakfast while watching the sun climb out of the water like an ancient god of fire, and I’d fall asleep looking up at the stars as the gentle rocking of the boat lulled me into dreamland. Everything was fine until the storm hit two days ago.
I was still about four hundred miles from seeing land, but for a moment I thought I’d sailed into an unknown black-and-gray Island that blocked out the whole horizon. I could even see it before the radar on the computer picked it up. The huge mass of dark rolling clouds was like an ocean unto itself. It loomed above the water, turning it a dirty dishwater color that unnerved me to say the least. My heart had started beating harder as I tried to remember what to do when encountering a storm on the open water. I knew if at all possible that I should go around it, but there was no way, it was too large. I also knew I had to keep the boat headed right into the waves; otherwise, I’d be flipped and torn apart like a papier-mâché toy.
It came faster than I’d expected, and the waves crested at nearly twenty feet. My boat was only thirty-six. Thirty-six feet. It had sounded impressive and seaworthy when I left the mainland. Now, in the face of Mother Nature’s fury, it seemed insignificant, and I did too. My confidence that had always gotten me so far had ebbed away like blood from a deep wound and left me feeling weak.
The waves pounded the boat through the night and sometime around three a.m. I turned on the emergency beacon. I held Will tight to my chest as I steered the vessel as best I could. Just when I thought we were coming to the end of the storm, a giant gust of wind caught the mainsail from the front, and I heard the mast cracking like a walnut’s shell. The beam of wood snapped off about two feet above the deck and fell back toward the helm, where I was standing with Will. I jumped down into the cabin area below deck just as the mast hit the spot where we’d been. Luckily, that was nearly the last push of the storm, and within an hour the sea had calmed and the sun began to rise.
