The survivor

by Robb White

  "We haven't got far to go," Adam said. Then he held his Mae West up as far as he could and showed them how to deflate the things.

  He felt much heavier in the water as the Mae West sank in a glowing yeUow shimmer into the sea.

  Now all of them were floating low in the water, only their heads above it.

  ''We shouldVe backed Adam up," the Rebel said in his Yankee voice, and seriously. "We shouldVe said, "Yeh, that's an order' Then maybe more of us could've made it."

  "Maybe I should have made it an order," Adam said.

  "No, Lieutenant," Guns said. "No oflBcer I know in the Marine Corps would order his men to go on a thing like that when there wasn't any real use in it. You did right. But we should have made them come vAth us. Me and the Rebel and Jason."

  "Maybe those guys will look at that old black .45 and get it on up here," the Rebel said.

  "I don't think they will," Jason said. "There's nobody to show them how."

  Guns turned over and looked at them. "They wont come," he said flatly. "I wouldn't either. Even knowing as I do now that I could make it, I wouldn't try it again, Adam. No, it was too hairy."

  "I died eleven times," the Rebel said.

  "I died all the time," Jason said. "It was hairy."

  Guns suddenly began to laugh. "Man, this is the most formidable invasion force I ever saw. Fom: wet marines without a weapon in the crowd."

  "So what do we do now, boss man?" the Rebel asked.

  "We'd better stay out here until dark," Guns decided.

  "No," Adam said. "With you bleeding, that isn't healthy. Anyway, we've got to see what we're do-

  ing when we go through the surf or we might not get through."

  "Looks Idnda rough," the Rebel said.

  "Nothing looks rough to me any more," Jason said. "After that, nothing."

  "Jason, boy," the Rebel told him, "that warnt nothin' but a Little ol' swim."

  "A million miles," Jason said, "Can they see us out here?"

  "I don't think so," Adam decided. "Not unless they're really looking for us, expecting us."

  "It's easy to tell," Guns said. "If things start going chunk and the water splashes around, they've seen us."

  "Let's go see what it looks like," Adam said. "I feel Hke stretching out on a beach somewhere and letting the flies walk around on me."

  "No," the Rebel said, "Ah want one of those dusky maidens to fan off them flies."

  Adam started swimming through the warm, clear blue water, and as he swam he noticed that the color was fading into a dark and then pale green, and soon, down through it, he could see the roil of the surfs backwash.

  He had not heard it before. Rather, he thought, he had heard it but had not registered it in his mind because he was then only happy to hear any sound at all. But now he heard and listened to it and paid attention to it.

  The sound was in three parts: first, a low, steady, mushy roaring; then a slow beat of waves break-

  ing; and then after each break the long, hard rumbling of the water crossing the land.

  The sound alone told him that it was a high, hard surf. The water was deep, right up to the coral of the island; so the waves swept in, long, unbroken, and silent, with no opposition from the bottom of the sea until they met the sudden shallow barrier of the coraL

  Here, where they swam, there was almost no indication of wave action. Their bodies rose slowly and fell slowly in a smooth surging motion, and the water, in the windless air, was smooth and pretty as tinted glass. They rose, they fell, and the suri ahead of them seemed disconnected from the sea they were in.

  As Adam approached the line of the surf he began to realize that getting through it was going to be almost, if not more, dangerous than the ascent from the submarine. The waves were booming like cannon, and he knew that these shore-breakers were high and fast, breaking straight down on, he suspected, the coral barrier reef, not on sand.

  But, Adam remembered, if the operation plan called for going into the lagoon at sunset they must now be twenty or thirty miles from the lagoon entrance, where the surf would be milder or, perhaps, nonexistent. Twenty or thirty miles was too far, too risky, and anyway there would probably be people on the beaches there. Here, he hoped, with this surf constantly breaking there

  would be no reason for people to be wandering around.

  "Is that thunder?" Jason asked.

  "Waves," Adam said.

  "What are we going to do?**

  "A little plain and fancy surfing, m'boy," Adam said. 'Tes, a little surfing."

  He swam on toward the island, watching the surf ahead, and now feeling the smooth pull of the water trying to draw him on toward the rising wave or draw him back as it fell.

  He let himself be carried up almost to the break of the crest and, from there, he looked down.

  He had never in his life seen a wave break more viciously than this. From the crest he stared almost straight down for, he guessed, forty feet. Stared down at bare, broken, and dead coral, with only trickles of the previous wave running in it. As he backed off, the wave broke, curling almost straight over and falling. It hit the land with a force so great that Adam could feel the shudder of the land in the water around him.

  These waves were impossible. As he swam away from them he felt a bitter, mean defeat attacking him. There should be a reward now, he thought bitterly: We've come out of the submarine. We came six hundred feet from the bottom of the sea and we lived. Can't we rest now? Can't we He on the beach beyond the coral and rest? Be rewarded for what we've already done? Why must this line of surf hold us out here in the sea after what we've done?

  As he swam away from the roar of the surf, he knew that those waves were impossible, their threat to his hfe greater even than the six hundred feet.

  "How does it look?^ Jason asked.

  **A Httle rough," Adam said.

  He swam on past the three marines, swimming away from the island until, when he looked back, he could not even see them except when their heads came up on the high swells of the sea.

  Now he looked back at the white curtain drawn between him and the land, looking for some break in it, or if not that, then at least some small place where it was not so high, so furious.

  He remembered now seeing on the aerial photographs of this island the extending white areas on the seaward side, Httle finger reefs of coral sticking out from the shore a Uttle farther than the rest of the formation. Perhaps, with these finger reefs breaking the wave action, the surf would be less monstrous between them.

  It was hard to tell in the high haze of water and the white blasting of water beyond the blue backs of the waves, but as he watched, he thought he saw two places where the waves broke a little sooner.

  Adam swam back to the others. "AU ashore as is going ashore," he said.

  ''Ah'm ready," the Rebel decided. "In fact. Ah been ready."

  "Any of you been in heavy surf?" Adam asked.

  "Ah was knocked down by a wave," the Rebel

  told him. "Ah was three years old and that was a mother of a wave!"

  Adam looked at the other two and they shook their heads. 'There's a way to get through it," he told them. "I remember my flight instructor telling me that when you get in trouble in a plane the best thing to do is turn loose the stick, shut your eyes, relax, and hope for the best."

  They followed him along the roaring line of the surf until he could see one of the finger reefs sticking out almost in front of him. He led them around that, and on until they were about halfway between the two reefs. Then Adam turned and started swimming slowly toward the shore. He took them in as close as he could, but still free of the wave puU. **Anybody want to go first?" he asked.

  T don't know, Lieutenant," Guns said. "Do you think it would look good for the Marine Corps for us noncommissioned oflBcers to invade this island and then you come along behind? You think that would look good?"

  "It would look better if I didn't get there at all," Adam told him. "Only I haven't got any place els
e to^go.^

  "Ah'm all for education," the Rebel declared. "Mah pappy used to say, 'Son, if n you don't learn something today, Ah'm goin' to knock you down to stump size.' That's what he said."

  "I don't mind going first," Jason said. "Somebody's got to." He was looking at the wall of the surf, his eyes very serious about it.

  "Have you gone through surf like this?" Adam asked.

  "I got ashore at Guadalcanal"

  '"Son," the Rebel said, "you was in a boat at Guadalcanal. I bet the highest surf you ever saw was when your maw threw you in the bathtub."

  "Okay, Tarzan, you go," Jason said. "You so big and brave."

  "We're wasting time," Guns said. **What's the trick, Adam?"

  "It's a one-time thing all the way," Adam said. "Once you're in it, there's no way back out. I think the marine word is 'committed.' So don't try to fight your way out of it, even if you think you've goofed and can get out. You can't. The next thing is to go with it; just stay loose and go with it. Most of all, don't look at it. I mean, when you go in, don't look down. You won't Hke what you see, and you might try to back out of it"

  A wave struck the beach with a roar so loud that it drowned out what he said next and, more than that, scared him. Even between the finger reefs these waves were monsters, rising high, breaking, falling straight down on bare coral.

  When the noise subsided, Adam started again. "Waves come in sets," he told them. "Six, seven, a dozen at a time, then there's a Httle lull. In each set there's usually one that's a good deal bigger than the rest, and the one after that one is the smallest. That's the one we're looking for. I've been watching, and these waves seem to be coming in nine at a time, and the seventh is the big one. It's

  not a law, but that's what it looks like. So watch 'em, so when you hit maybe there'll be some water left from the big one."

  "Why don't we all go, together?" Jason asked. **You can tell us which one to take and all."

  *'No," Adam said. "One at a time, so if one of us gets through he can help the others."

  "What do you mean 'if'?" the Rebel asked. "Is it that tough?"

  "It's tough," Adam said. "Now, when you pick the wave you want, take it. Start going with it, but stay back a little from the front—you don't want to be the first thing to hit the ground.

  ''When it starts to break, the top—where you are —will begin to roll over. As soon as you feel it really rolling, get all the air you can and then pull yourself up into a ball. Make a tight ball and stay tight—aZZ the way. If you come out of that ball with your arms and legs sprawHng around it's going to break you all to pieces. No matter what happens —and it's going to be a long ride—stay in the ball.

  "Next, after the wave strikes you'll be deep in the soup. This stujff can kill you even quicker than water, because you think you can breathe it, but if you do the drops of water in it take you right out. So get all the way out of the soup before you try to breathe."

  "They gonna serve us soup when we get ashore?" the Rebel asked.

  "Yeh," Adam said. "Soup made out of a couple tons of wave churned into nice salty foam. You'll like it. Rebel. Only—it'll kill you if you stay in it."

  Adam looked at them, three serious faces just above the level of the water. "Here comes a set," he said, beginning to paddle toward shore. "Remember, don't look dowTi, stay balled up, and get out of the soup."

  "Bye, l5ye, Lieutenant," the Rebel said.

  WHEN YOU LOOKED toward the shore, the oncoming waves didn't seem to exist; it was just rolling blue water suddenly exploding. Now, though, Adam was close to the break and was treading water, waiting, and looking back toward the sea.

  From here it was different. He could see the monsters as their backs began to hump up, blue and slick. They seemed to rise out of the calm, im-moving sea as though some enormous animal was inside them, struggling to get out of them. And the sea could not contain them, for behind him Adam could hear the roaring of the animals as they broke loose.

  He waited, watching, and the three marines farther out lay in the water watching him.

  The set was coming in steadily, a long reach between each wave, and he counted them as they moved smoothly under him, each one tugging at him as though trying to lure him to destruction.

  And then the seventh one began to rise, himiping up huge and blue from the flat sea, going higher and higher. As it swept past the marines it Lifted

  them up into the sky and, to Adam, it looked like a moving wall of water.

  He backed away from shore, afraid of the big one's pull, but it passed under him and crashed with a shocking sound behind him.

  The next one was here, smaller, lower.

  Adam turned and swam with it, swimming hard, for he wanted his speed to reach that of the wave's, so that he and the wave would move together and thus the wave would throw him farther out of the sea.

  As he swam he could feel the wave bunching up under him, coming up and up Hke a bucking horse, the muscles of it growing taut, as though the water was changing into a fluid steel.

  The thing was going up into the sky at a fearful rate, higher and higher, and now it had gripped him and he knew that there was no use swimming any more.

  And he was beyond the point of return. He was, as the Marine Corps put it, committed to this wave. He would either live or die with this one, no other.

  The crest had not yet started to curl over and he was in thin water, a long, thin, greenish ridge of water which seemed to be trying to break loose from the great body of the wave below but could not.

  Adam hoped that the others would not do as he was doing now, for his eyes were open and he was looking toward the island.

  He was looking down on a thick grove of coco-

  nut palms, their long drooping fronds motionless in the windless air.

  Water from the seventh wave was still high up on a sandy beach, but as he looked down at it he could see that it was already draining back through the coral of the reef which lay between the sea and the sand.

  This was not the first wave Adam had ever ridden in to the shore. He had surfed hundreds, thousands of them from the sea to the kind California beach wdth its long, sloping bottom. He had surfed big ones, the man-killers, and he had been afraid in the moment of taking them, and afraid during the wdld, wild voyage with his body half out in front of the wave and the thing roaring and clawing at him from behind.

  But this thing he was in now was horrifying. As he looked down, the front of the wave was a smooth blue straight-up-and-down wall of water reaching from the high sky to the naked coral far down there below him.

  Don't let them look, he prayed. Make them keep their eyes shut. Or they'll fight the wave and get caught in the front of it, and it will slam them down and kill them.

  All along the top of the high blue wall now a feather of white water was beginning to form, racing along. The wall itself was curving smoothly seaward, the solid bottom of it hke a gigantic foot being pulled by some force away from the shore.

  Adam pulled backward with all he had as the feather of white swept across his back. He could

  hear the hiss of the crest beginning now to break as the curving wave rolled downiward upon itself.

  He rode it, feeling the tremendous strength of the thing around his body. He rode it, watching and Hstening to it, and feeling it—feeHng its growing speed, growing strength; feeling now his body moving not only forward but down.

  He remembered a wave once which had thrown him completely out of itself. Thrown him straight up out of the water, as though it personally foimd him distasteful.

  He remembered that and got deep into this wave so that it could not throw him away.

  It was almost silent, only the hissing of the crest and a wet, slithery sound, and the drier sound of the coral, beaten dead by previous waves, rattling wetly far below him as the wave swept forward over it.

  And now he was truly going down, the feel of it a movement faster than a plane, even an SBD, in a steep dive or even an uncontrolled fal
l. He and the wave were falling and faUing, the hard, rocky coral rushing up at him, the trees, a greenish-brown blur rushing up past him.

  Adam waited, Hstening and sensing the movement, and gauging until he felt that it was time to tuck.

  From then on, until it killed him or threw him up on the shore alive, there would be nothing more he could do. Nothing.

  Adam drew his legs up now and wrapped his arms tighdy around them, jamming his knees

  against his stomach. Then he lowered his head and rammed it in against his kneecaps and felt the water fold around him.

  It was dark blue in here and noisy and fast-moving.

  The wave had him now completely and was rolling him over and over.

  Then the blue was gone, the noise was wet and huge, there was violence all around him, and the wave slammed him down on the coral.

  He landed on his back and shoulders with such force that it almost tore loose the grip of his hands locking his knees against his belly. He heard the air rushing out of his lungs and clamped his mouth shut.

  Then he was rolling through a turmoil of soup and sand and huge pieces of coral, rolling over and over.

  Then it was quiet, with only the sound of water trickhng somewhere.

  Adam loosened his hands slowly, then slowly straightened his legs. No really great pain stabbed him. He hurt; his back hurt and his head hurt, and his knees and elbows hurt, and he could see that they were bloody through the torn green cloth. He sat up and looked toward the sea and saw the next wave curling right on top of him. He spun around and, on his hands and knees, crawled away from it and on up into the surprisingly hot, dry sand.

  There was nothing in that wave. Nor the next. Adam got up and walked through the receding

  water and looked at the next monster curling down, looking through the great blue body of it.