Island Refuge EMP Box Set | Books 1-3

by Hamilton, Grace

  He rose and bowed to her. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t eat the veggie omelet,” Malin said, stepping out of the cabin. “That might be last-resort food.”

  Elna took Raymond’s place, and Malin found a spot on the deck. The sun was low, bathing the ocean in a deep, orange light. It burned on the tips of the waves like fire. The sharpest edge of the cold wind had dulled, but Elna still shivered.

  “Well, I learned a few tricks today,” Malin said. “I know more about sailing into a strong wind. Maybe it won’t be so nerve-wracking next time.”

  “Let’s just hope for good weather,” she replied. “The faster we get there, the better.”

  He reached over then and took her hand. She didn’t resist. Many times, in recent weeks, she’d been so distracted by all of the little things she had to take care of every day that his displays of affection caught her off guard. In those instances, she knew she sometimes reacted coldly, though it was never intentional. Now, with the island well out of sight, she felt a rare moment of distraction-free warmth toward him, so she held his hand tight.

  “We’re going to be okay,” he said. “I really think so.”

  “Expect the worst, hope for the best,” she replied.

  “I’m sick and tired of expecting the worst.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Raymond appeared on deck then, carrying a big piece of dried meat and a bottle of water. He hopped up on top of the cabin and sat cross-legged near the grabrail. As he did, he gestured at the mainsail. “Malin, my friend, can you trim the mainsail a little bit.”

  Malin hopped up and grabbed the boom, pulling himself toward the rigging. “How much?”

  “Just until it stops luffing,” Raymond said.

  Elna glanced up at the mainsail and saw it flapping in the wind. She didn’t know the term luffing, but she assumed that’s what it was referring to. Malin trimmed the sail just enough to make it stop.

  “Are we still on course?” Elna asked.

  Raymond pointed at the passing shoreline, where the rising tide was now crashing against the hills and beaches. Elna saw abandoned vehicles and beach paraphernalia, but she hadn’t yet seen any people.

  “Still good, señora,” Raymond said.

  You keep calling me señora when I’m clearly a señorita, Elna thought. She almost said something but decided it wasn’t worth it.

  “Raymond, will your son be okay for the time we’re gone?” she asked instead. “He seemed tired and maybe a bit jaundiced when we left. Is that normal?”

  “Fatigue and weakness are the most common symptoms,” Raymond replied. “Sometimes, he has trouble breathing, and he bruises very easy. Also, back pain and stomachaches. The biggest danger is blood clots, but I don’t have a way to test for those. We just have to cross fingers and hope the clinic has what he needs.”

  “There’s no other treatment for him except this experimental drug at the specialty clinic?”

  “They used to give him folic acid and iron supplements,” Raymond said. “It’s supposed to increase red blood cell count, but it didn’t seem to help. Mostly, his condition is progressive, and we are running out of options.”

  He gazed off sadly into the sky. Elna saw tears in his eyes.

  “Who do I have left in the world but him?” he said, softly. “We must come back successful.” Raymond finished off the water bottle and rose, hopping down into the cockpit. “I will put away my trash, and then I can take over again, if you want.”

  “I’m fine,” Elna said, gazing off at the setting sun. The ocean was just about as beautiful as she’d ever seen it, burning like golden glass. “Actually, it’s quite nice right now. I’m enjoying it.”

  “Very good.”

  He went back into the cabin, and Elna heard him moving about. Malin hopped down beside her and sat on the other side of the tiller.

  “When the wind is reasonable, I can see the appeal,” he said. “It’s nice. The wind and waves, the sun making everything glow. I wouldn’t mind if the temperature rose a few degrees, but you can’t have everything.”

  “Don’t fall in love,” Elna said. “We have to return to the island eventually.”

  “We could park a boat at the fishing dock,” he replied. “Raid the coast from time to time like pirates.”

  “Now, see, I know you well enough, Malin.” She wagged a finger at him. “You’re not completely joking. We’re not going to take up piracy.”

  “But you admit that Rod Smith deserves a pirate raid, right?”

  She couldn’t hold back her smirk but before she could reply, they heard Raymond curse loudly, and then he raced out of the cabin, catching himself against the open hatchway.

  “What is it?” Elna asked.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said. “Señora, come and see.”

  “How serious is it?” Malin said, grabbing the tiller. “Are we sinking?”

  “No, but still bad.” Raymond turned and stepped back down into the cabin.

  Elna followed, her mind racing as she thought of a dozen different things it could be.

  “Here. Right here,” Raymond said, pointing into the corner beside the couch. “Do you see it?”

  He appeared to be pointed at the big, blue barrel. Elna saw water puddling on the floor there, but she’d noticed it before.

  “Go closer,” Raymond said. “Look.”

  Elna slipped past him and knelt beside the water barrel, and finally she heard it: the trickle of water. She leaned to one side and saw water spewing from a crack near the middle of the barrel, splashing against a corner of the cabinets and running onto the floor.

  “Oh, great,” she muttered. “How the hell did that happen? We brought this stupid barrel from the winery. I guess I know why it was stuck in the back of a utility closet. This is all of our drinking water!” She smacked the cabinets in anger, hard enough to make the doors bounce against the frames.

  “We must save the water,” Raymond said, squatting down beside her.

  Elna rummaged in the cabinet and managed to find an empty pitcher. She pulled it out and wedged it into the narrow space between the barrel and the cabinet beneath the flow of water.

  “The manual bilge pump should take care of anything that collects on the floor,” Raymond said.

  “Yeah, but we brought just enough water for the trip,” she replied. “We can’t afford to lose it. We have to find a way to patch the barrel.”

  “Tell me you have an idea,” Raymond said.

  Gripping her forehead, Elna said, “The epoxy. We put it in a box with the other repair tools. Do you know where it is?”

  “I think so.” Raymond rose and crossed the small cabin, searching through a set of small cabinets beside the bunks.

  As Elna was working the filled pitcher out of the narrow space, the barrel gave out a soft groan, and the plastic split farther, tracing a crooked frown. Suddenly, the trickle of water became a relative faucet.

  “It’s always some damn thing,” she muttered. “Raymond, where’s that epoxy? Hurry before it’s too late.”

  “Got it,” he shouted, hopping down from the lower bunk and dropping onto the damp floor beside her.

  He thrust a small plastic box at her.

  “Listen,” she said, as she opened the box and rooted around inside. “You’ll have to use a manual bilge pump on all of this water.”

  “Okay, I know where it is.” He turned and ran toward the cabin door and a small closet nearby.

  As he did that, Elna opened the tubes of epoxy, slathered a generous amount on a nearby countertop, and mixed it with the tip of her pocket knife. Then she began attempting to apply it along the crack. She moved slowly, but it was no good. The epoxy wouldn’t stick, and with the flow of water, she couldn’t get it into the crack. As she worked, water sprayed out from between her fingers, splashing her in the face, hitting the cabinets and floor.

  “Is it working, señora?” Raymond said.

  “No, not at all,�
�� she replied.

  By the time she gave up, it didn’t much matter anymore. The water level in the barrel had dropped below the crack. Cursing under her breath, Elna rose and dumped the tubes of epoxy back into the box.

  “So, we lost half our water,” she said. “At least the crack wasn’t lower.”

  “Perhaps it will be enough for the rest of the trip,” Raymond said, operating the manual bilge pump.

  “No, it won’t be,” Elna said, scraping up the blob of epoxy she’d mixed on the counter and wiping it off the blade of her pocket knife with a nearby rag. “But I couldn’t fix it.”

  She handed the box to Raymond, who turned to put it back in the high cabinets. Just then, the sloop rolled, and Elna went stumbling across the cabin. She hit the low table with her right hip, spun, and dropped to the floor. Behind her, she heard Raymond slam into a bunk. Then the sloop rolled the other way, which shoved her against the cabinets.

  “What is going on up there?” she cried.

  10

  Rough seas lasted all night. While it wasn’t as bad as before, they were once again sailing into a headwind, forcing them to resume a zigzag pattern in order to continue following the coast. Attempting this in near darkness, with only a couple of flashlights shining on deck, made the whole endeavor far more difficult. Malin felt the terrible blackness all around him. It was just as disconcerting every time the boom would swing toward him until the jib pulled taut.

  Eventually, they were forced to take turns sleeping. One would go below deck, while the other two stayed above. Malin’s turn came somewhere around midnight. He clambered into the cabin, his mind buzzing from exhaustion. Not wanting to sleep on the cramped bunks, Malin curled up on the couch instead. He was cold and miserable, shivering in his rain gear, but he eventually managed a light sleep.

  It seemed like the blink of an eye before Elna was shaking him awake. Malin groaned and sat up, his head swimming. It was hard to remember a time when he’d felt this thoroughly miserable.

  Was it really just tonight I said this was a pleasant experience? he thought. Was I out of my mind?

  He wanted nothing more than to be back in the guesthouse on the island with a nice warm fire burning and Norman rambling on about his gift shop in Santa Monica. Just solid earth beneath his feet would have been enough.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Early morning,” Elna said, her voice creaking in the dark. “No sun yet. I let you sleep a little longer than I was supposed to.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.” He fumbled around, found her hand in the darkness, and briefly squeezed it. “You need sleep as much as I do.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “You can make it up to me somehow.”

  He pushed off the table, stood up, and dragged his feet as he moved toward the hatch. The sloop rolled, and he fell against Elna, shoving her against the cabinets.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I still don’t have my sea legs.”

  “You and me both,” she replied, giving him a brief hug.

  That brief hug, and the fact that she instigated it, did more to wake him up and reenergize him than a dozen cups of coffee could have. As she moved to the couch, he practically danced up the steps and moved outside into the strange, shifting flashlight beams. Unfortunately, the first blast of chilly mist in his face immediately diminished his enthusiasm.

  “Welcome to the utter darkness of the sea on a cloudy night, my friend,” Raymond said. “Be very careful up here. The weather cannot make up its mind.”

  Malin turned and reached for the grabrail on top of the cabin.

  “I saw the lights of a small city a couple hours ago,” Raymond said. “Campfires burning.”

  “Did you pull over and ask for directions?” Malin asked.

  He could just make out the shape of Raymond beside the tiller, a yellowish lump rocking from side to side.

  “I did not, but it means we are still on course,” he said, apparently missing Malin’s joke.

  “I guess that’s a good thing.”

  They continued sailing, and for a couple of hours, the wind and waves relented, but as the first light of morning lit the eastern sky, casting the hilly coast in silhouette, Malin noted dark clouds on the horizon. Another October storm. When Elna finally climbed out of the cabin and took Raymond’s place at the tiller, their noble skipper rose and scanned the shoreline. The sloop was rocking wildly by this point, and Malin was impressed at Raymond’s ability to maintain his balance.

  “Seas are getting rougher with that storm coming in,” Raymond said. “If we want to stay in sight of the shore, we might have to sail closer and find calmer waters. What do you say, my friends?”

  “It’s your call, Skipper,” Malin said, once again trimming the mainsail as another fierce gust blasted over the bow.

  “If we could find an inlet or something. Maybe there.” Raymond pointed toward a spot on the shoreline where there seemed to be a break in the hills. A few homes were clustered around an intersection on the south side, but the area seemed quiet and still, perhaps a ghost town.

  As they sailed closer to shore, the waters did indeed become a bit calmer. Elna had a bottle of water with her. She took a sip and passed it to Raymond. He drank from the bottle and gave it to Malin.

  “What’s our water situation like?” Malin asked, finishing off the dregs.

  “We lost too much,” Elna said. “It must have been leaking for a while. The crack was in a location where we couldn’t see it, so…” She shrugged.

  “Do we have enough fresh water for the trip?” Malin asked.

  Elna started to answer, hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so, not unless we start making a lot better progress. Raymond, have we passed any of the towns on your list?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “When we get close enough, maybe I’ll spot something I recognize, but I’ve only been this way one time before.”

  “We have to stop somewhere and get our bearings,” Elna said.

  “I don’t want to stop,” Raymond said.

  “I know, but if we don’t figure out exactly where we are, we won’t have any idea how long this trip is going to take. We lost at least half our water supply, Raymond. We have to know what we’re dealing with, so we can plan accordingly.”

  Raymond bowed his head. “Very well. We can find a calm place to anchor.”

  They approached the inlet, and Malin realized the cluster of houses was actually a small town. Through breaks in the trees, he could see a small white church, some kind of inn or restaurant, and a school nestled along the street. Now, he saw people moving about in the city, and he was pretty sure a few had spotted their sails and stopped to gawk.

  The inlet turned out to be a cove, with tall rocks rising on two sides. The waters were practically still, and when they dropped anchor, Malin was amazed at the sense of stability he felt, as the wild rocking of the deck ceased. Raymond backed the jib to windward and eased the mainsail as Elna fixed the rudder to turn them into the wind. This brought them to a complete stop.

  “Are we safe here?” Elna asked, gesturing toward the town.

  “I believe so,” Raymond replied, “but if someone comes out to meet us, we will immediately depart. This town seems unravaged by gangs, but appearances can be deceiving, señora.”

  “We may have to go ashore to find out where we are,” Elna said. Despite her words, she was huddled over the tiller as if she could barely prop herself up.

  Raymond replied, taking a seat with his back against the main mast. “In a few minutes, okay? Maybe we take stock of our water supply first, in case we need to barter for more.”

  “I’ll go down and check,” Malin said, heading for the cabin.

  He went to the water barrel in the corner, raising the lid and moving the discharge tube aside. In the dim light, he could see the water sloshing around.

  Dang, did we really lose over half our water supply?

  Setting the lid back in place
, he checked their food supplies. At least they’d been conservative with food. They had enough left, although maybe a few too many veggie omelet MREs for his taste. He shut the cabinets and went back on deck.

  “Well, folks, as it turns out…”

  He stopped talking midsentence. Elna was curled up beside the tiller, her cheek resting on her right hand and her eyes shut. Raymond was sprawled on top of the cabin, both hands tucked behind his head, snoring like he had sawdust caught in his throat. At first, Malin had the crazy idea that something was wrong with them, that they’d been attacked, maybe knocked unconscious, and he looked around wildly. But they were alone.

  They’re just exhausted, he realized. Like me.

  He decided not to wake them and took a seat on deck, gazing off at the distant shore. The sun was well up, bright and blinding as it shone out over the forested hills. Somehow, its heat didn’t reach them, as the cold continued to bite deep.

  He fully intended to stay awake and keep watch, but he found the calm water soothing. Soon enough, despite his best efforts, he drifted off to sleep. It didn’t last long. Some distant but familiar sound roused him, and he awoke with a pounding headache. It took a moment to realize he was hearing voices echoing out over the water. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, and looked toward the shore. People had gathered on a narrow strip of sandy beach behind the white church building. Malin counted at least two dozen, and they were all talking and pointing at the sloop. A tall man was waving both of his hands over his head, as if trying to signal the crew. Malin was tempted to return the wave, but he decided not to.

  Don’t know what sort of people we’re dealing with here, he thought.

  “Um, folks, it might be a good time to wake up,” Malin called, trying to speak just loud enough to be heard over Raymond’s snoring.

  If the tall sail didn’t draw their attention, they no doubt heard the echo of Raymond’s god-awful throat sound, he thought.

  He studied the distant crowd, but he couldn’t tell whether they were excited to have visitors, desperate for help, or hostile and hungry to attack. Whatever the case, they seemed to be getting more and more worked up. Some of them were now jumping up and down as they waved their hands in the air.