Runaway Storm

by Dawne Knobbe

  Finally, having half jogged his way back, he stumbled down a hill by the picnic tables and onto the beach. He was hungry, wet, and tired. He felt as though his mother had won, and he blamed her for how bad he felt.

  The clam holes squirted water as he walked the beach. He stared at them until their significance sunk in, and then he searched for a good digging stick. He didn’t have to starve; he’d show his mother he could survive on his own. He didn’t need either of his parents: neither his wish-washy dad nor his bossy mom. Clams and boiled rice would fill his stomach just fine.

  An hour later Nate leaned against a beached log, a small bowl of freshly steamed rice and clams in his hand. He had smashed the shells open on the rocks, just like birds do, extracted the meat, and dropped it into the boiling rice water. He took a hesitant bite; it didn’t taste half bad, so he wolfed down most of it.

  A young boy of about nine wandered down the beach toward him.

  “Watcha doin’?” the boy asked, obviously bored.

  “Nothin’,” Nate said. He didn’t feel like company.

  “You eatin’ clams?” the boy asked, kicking at the small pile of broken shells near Nate’s gas stove.

  “Yeah,” Nate answered. “You have a problem with that?”

  “You’re s’posed to steam ’em in the shells. That way, you know if any of ’em are already dead.”

  “How so?” asked Nate, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  “Dead ones don’t open up. You never eat the dead ones.”

  Nate dug his spoon back into the bowl and shoveled more of the clam and rice mixture into his mouth. “Tastes fine to me,” he said.

  The boy looked more closely at Nate. “What happened to your hair?”

  “Nothing,” Nate said, putting down his spoon. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?”

  “You can’t camp here. You’re on private property.”

  “As long as I’m not above the high-tide line, I’m on public property,” Nate corrected him. “Why don’t you go bug someone else?”

  The boy looked pointedly toward the trees farther inland. “Your boat’s on my grandma’s property,” he said, staring exactly at the spot where Nate had hidden Solace.

  Nate shrugged. “I was thinking about packing up, anyway.”

  “Better not,” the boy said. “My grandma says there’s a storm brewing. She knows, ’cause her knees ache real bad.”

  “By the look of those black clouds, anyone could tell you there’s a storm coming,” Nate said, pointing at the darkening sky. “Look, I won’t tell anybody I’m here if you don’t.”

  The boy lifted his shoulders in a shrug like he had seen Nate do. “Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, then, leaping onto the closest log, he stretched out his arms for balance and carefully walked its length.

  Nate watched the kid make his way down the beach hopping from log to log. He should have been friendlier to the pip-squeak, Nate thought, feeling a twinge as he thought of Joey and Beagle. This kid was probably just lonely. Now he’d probably go home and tell his grandmother that there was someone camping on the edge of her property, just to stir up a little excitement. Nate glanced across the water. Storm clouds were rolling in faster and lower, and the bay had become a blur of choppy, steel-gray waves.

  I should stay put, Nate thought, but what if the boy did tell his grandmother? What if she called the police? He’d be a sitting duck, that’s what if. The islands he’d paddled around earlier were small and uninhabited. It wouldn’t take long to go back to one of them.

  He picked out the few remaining grains of rice in the bowl with his fingers and then tucked it and his stove back in the kayak. If he was going, he should go, not wait around for the waves to grow even higher.

  In fact, the waves looked higher than they had a few minutes ago. He hadn’t unpacked anything else, so he could just leave, but could he make it somewhere safe before the storm hit? Grandma’s knees could be wrong. They might get a smattering of rain. Yet in his gut he recognized the signs. The approaching storm would be fierce.

  Nate scratched at the stray hairs stuck to the inside of his shirt. He must look like a lunatic, he thought, running his fingers through his badly cropped hair. Maybe he should sit and wait to be caught. Maybe he really was too young to be out on his own; maybe he should just let his mother drag him back to New York.

  A faint whining pierced his mental debate. Shit, it was a siren. It was a long way off but definitely heading toward him, growing louder by the second. Were they coming already? Panic zipped through Nate’s body, pumping adrenalin into his limbs. He stopped thinking and jumped to action. Picking up his fully loaded kayak as if it were empty, he raced for the water, tossed it into the surf, and paddled straight out into the middle of the channel.

  He aimed for the small islands heading back the way he’d come, but the current hauled him south, in a direction he hadn’t chosen.

  Better to go with it, he thought, surrendering his paddling before he got exhausted. The wild current drove him quickly away from Salt Spring, toward Pender Island. He’d never gone so far before. He was definitely moving into unknown territory.

  As if powered by a giant sail, Solace raced as dark clouds tumbled over each other to blacken the sky. In less than half an hour, Nate had zoomed beyond the end of Salt Spring to where the channel narrowed between two large islands. Whirlpools frothed and hissed around him, each grabbing and spinning the kayak before spewing it to the next. His heart pounded as each whirlpool tried to suck him under, but he managed to steer clear of either shore.

  Shoving on, he sought somewhere—anywhere—smaller, safer; no cops, fewer people. Forcing the rudder pedals and digging in with his paddle, he fought to stay in the middle of the channel, fought, that is, until the rain joined with the heaving waves, adding to the bulk of the storm.

  Lightning bolted overhead, followed by a thunderous roar, and the sky continued to pour down stinging arrows of endless rain onto his bare arms. Nate blinked to clear his eyes; the flashes showed him nothing of the islands that had seemed so close minutes before. They and the shelter they offered had been left behind with the whirlpools, he thought, replaced by waves whose gnashing white jaws chomped down on the bow, tossing Nate and the kayak into huge trenches that threatened to close over him. The whirlpools had been child’s play compared to open water in the middle of a storm in a flimsy kayak . . . How stupid could I be? he moaned inwardly.

  Nate couldn’t remember whether to point the boat into the waves or turn her sideways. His arms throbbed from fighting the current, and his stomach churned. Was it the storm or the clams? He retched into the foamy crests. Bad clams, he thought, trying to clear the briny taste along with the rubbery chunks caught in his throat. Maybe there was a red tide. That kind of poison could numb your lips or paralyze your whole body. You could even die. But maybe that would be better than drowning.

  It didn’t matter what he did with the paddle. The waves, towering at least fifteen feet high, picked up and hurled Solace at whim, bouncing her like a kid’s rubber ball. Bouncing him between them like his parents had been doing, neither one telling him anything about their marriage, their separation, their plans. They were trying to protect him, that’s what they’d say. Well, he had no one to protect him now.

  He felt puke rise in his throat again, and he tried to swallow it down. It forced its way out, nevertheless, and the wind spewed it back in his face. Slime ran onto the handle of his paddle, and it almost slipped from his grasp. Another wave pitched the kayak sideways. Weak and shivering, Nate bit into his lip to stop his teeth from chattering. No part of him was dry. Even his legs in the belly of the boat were soaked and so cramped he couldn’t move the rudder anymore. He tasted saltwater but didn’t know if it was ocean spray or tears.

  What a baby he was. What an idiot. He had less control over his own life than he did over the stupid kayak, and that was pathetic. He rested his paddle and shivered as rain and wind bit at him with their sharp frothing tee
th.

  Nate slumped forward over his paddle to shield his face. A wave heaved the kayak, pitching her over as if she were a toy. No warning tilt, no time to gulp in air; Nate was instantly upside-down and three feet under.

  He felt strangely calm under the sea; the silence was welcoming, the deadening cold better than the cutting rain. The cramps in his flip-flopped stomach eased. His brain stopped screaming orders. He could relax. Let the paddle float from his hands.

  Am I giving up? Giving in? Numbness washed through his limbs. Maybe the bad clams were paralyzing him. His mind shrieked, Not this way, not now!

  Beneath the numbness a fire sparked in his chest. It seemed to awaken his arms and his mind. He was made of stronger stuff; he knew it.

  Although his hands were stiff and raw, Nate shimmied them to one end of his paddle and shoved the other end up toward the surface above him. Then he jammed the paddle down hard, driving it through the water beside him with all his force. As his body moved upward, he shifted his hips like he’d practiced with David a hundred times. This time he got it right.

  He broke the surface, jerking fully upright, and sucked in glorious air. Shaking the water from his ears, Nate let the rain cleanse the salt from his eyes.

  “Yes!” he hollered at the storm, brandishing his paddle high. Then he began dipping his paddle from side to side, maneuvering the kayak as though she had fused with his torso.

  Nate stopped fighting the current and the waves and turned, instead, to flow with them. He became a part of the storm. The rhythm of the ocean beat within him akin to the heart of some mythical beast. He plunged his paddle in as he crested each wave, skimming downward into watery valleys only to rise again and dive over the next. Wave after pulsating wave propelled him and Solace forward, surging, he hoped, toward safe harbor.

  Maneuvering up the crests and balancing through the trenches, Nate rode the waves for what seemed like hours. At some point he felt the rhythm change, the storm softening. Glancing up, he thought he saw an island where there had been nothing a moment before. It loomed out of the ocean like the shell of a giant tortoise, no more than twenty feet away. Another wave lifted Solace and Nate dug in his paddle, this time trying to reverse, but the wave lurched them forward to where ocean clashed with land. The bow crashed on a jagged rock, splintering loudly. Nate’s head jerked back with the sudden stop. He tried to surrender the paddle, but his hands clenched around it like crab’s claws that refused to open.

  At last, Nate shook the paddle free, and it clattered to the rocks as he crawled, bruised and battered, out of his mortally wounded craft. Solid rock felt foreign beneath his feet, and his body swayed with the rhythm of the sea. It took him several moments to realize that somehow he had survived the storm, but his beautiful boat had not. Placing shaky legs on slippery rocks, forcing his raw muscles to obey his brain, he half pulled, half lifted, until the kayak lay above the tide line.

  In a daze, Nate dragged his sleeping bag from the busted hull. His fingers were tight and so cold that he had to use his mouth to force open the drawstring. When it wouldn’t give, he pulled out his knife. The unending rain pelted down, but he lacked the strength to look for shelter better than a small fir tree and a patch of damp, uneven ground. He stripped off his soaking clothes and crept naked into the waterproof sleeping bag. Zipping it from the inside, Nate shivered into the cocoon as his mind shut down.

  15

  When Nate awoke he was hot, sticky, and confused. Reaching toward the spot of light at the top of his sleeping bag, he fumbled with the zipper.

  As he wrenched the bag open, he was greeted by dazzling sunlight and blue sky. A few yards away, the ocean stretched out from the shore like tempered glass. Tiny finger waves lapped innocently at the sand, and not a single sign of the raging storm remained.

  Nate picked up his discarded clothes: the ones on top were dry, but the ones underneath were damp. He shook out his shorts to make sure there were no nasty earwigs hiding in the folds and pulled them on.

  How long had he slept? He glanced at his diving watch, but it was no help; the crystal was cracked and filled with water. Man, how hard did you have to hit a watch like that to bust it? Hard, he was sure. He slipped it off and touched the angry red circle marking the skin beneath.

  His arm muscles twitched with the memory of the storm. Just the thought of it made him ache. He held his arms out and twisted, trying to work the kinks out of his back. Judging from the sun, he thought it must be early afternoon. If he’d broken his watch when he’d smashed onto the rocks, he must have been out there for at least six hours. How could he possibly have survived? A grin lit his face with the memory. He sure wished David, Joey, and Beagle could have seen his storm roll. He had done it!

  But how he survived didn’t matter anymore; how he would continue to survive did. He glanced around again. He assumed he had landed on an island, but he had no idea how big it was or whether anyone lived on it.

  Thirst sent Nate to the shoreline in search of his kayak. He was surprised that he had managed to pull her so far across the rocks. His superhuman strength had drained away in the night, leaving him as weak and as shaky as an old man. Nate didn’t seem to have any serious injuries, but a mass of purple bruises trailed down his forearms like distorted tattoos, both his knees were badly scraped, and he had a large gash on the side of his left ankle. His ribs were sore too, especially on his right side. That was from the rollover, he thought and grinned again.

  He remembered hanging upside down in a moment of strange indecision before throwing all of his weight and strength against the side of the boat. He had done it! For the first time ever, he had rolled the kayak upright! That single move had saved his life. Instead of giving up and drowning, he had discovered a molten core of strength inside himself and drawn from it the courage to survive. He felt strangely peaceful. It seemed like all his anger toward his parents had been blown away with the storm. If he could survive that squall, he thought, he could survive whatever they threw at him.

  He turned his attention back to the kayak. Solace lay tilted on her side, exposing her wounded underbelly. Hunkering down, he gently tried to smooth out the torn fibers. I’m sorry, Solace. In his whole life, he would never forget her brilliant yellow deck. Now, though, he knew he needed to concentrate on more practical things. He was hungry and thirsty. He reached into the hull and pulled out one of his dry bags and a bottle of water.

  He took a drink from the bottle then hauled his supplies back up to his sleeping bag. He made three trips to get everything out of the boat; afterward, dragged her under bushes so she couldn’t be seen from the water.

  Nate’s stomach growled loudly, and he rifled through his dry bag. His food supply was minimal: a bag of rice, soup mix, mushy bacon, and a loaf of soggy bread. Turning the bag over, he discovered a small tear near the bottom. He ate a slice of the bread regardless. It was a little salty, but he didn’t care. He gobbled up a few more slices, making himself thirsty again, but at least his stomach felt better. Thank God he had barfed up all of the bad clams. He gulped more water, then, feeling somewhat restored, he pulled on his running shoes. He decided to walk the shore around the island to see if he could figure out where he was. If anyone lived on the island, he reasoned, they would probably have a cabin or house close to the beach.

  Glancing down the shore in both directions, Nate couldn’t detect a single dwelling. He wandered down a sandy stretch and onto large slabs of sandstone that extended into the water. It was so quiet he could hear minute waves lapping against stone. A gull squawked, rupturing the peace.

  Nate continued around the sandstone point, shielding his eyes against the sun. Still nothing man-made appeared. In the distance an island loomed. It looked much larger than the one he was on, and he thought the brown shapes were cabins.

  Within an hour, Nate was back at his sleeping bag and supplies. The island, not more than half a mile long, might be inhabited, but not by humans. As he approached, a couple of squirrels scurried away from
his supplies, clutching broken pieces of bread. Nate swore as he picked up the torn plastic bag, vowing to be more careful with his meager provisions. He might repay the squirrels by stealing their supply of nuts. If he got desperate, he might even try catching one. He wondered what roasted squirrel would taste like. Better than clams for sure.

  Nate thought about the neighboring island. He doubted he could swim that far, but if no one came to rescue him, maybe he could paddle over on a log or even rig up some sort of canoe or raft.

  Nate walked inland searching for a sheltered place to camp. He walked down the center and back before branching off toward the sandstone point.

  He found evidence that someone had lived on the island, once, not far from the beach that faced the neighboring island. All that remained, however, was a concrete slab where a house had apparently stood, including a fireplace of rounded stones topped with the remains of a chimney. He might be able to use the fireplace, he thought, even though there wasn’t more than a foot of chimney left. The slab had holes in the corners where wooden beams had probably been anchored to hold up walls. Maybe he could find driftwood to stick in the holes and form some kind of canopy with tree branches.

  As much as he missed the guys, Nate was excited to have an entire island to himself. He could get creative, do everything his way. But he’d think things through, not do anything rash. With his imagination running ahead of him, he sped off to gather his supplies.

  Nate set up his tent beside the concrete slab and strung a piece of rope between two small trees as a clothesline. He sorted through his belongings, pulled on his bathing suit, and hung up his damp shorts, T-shirt, and underwear. He tossed his remaining food inside his only undamaged dry bag, threw the bag in his tent, and zipped it shut. He wondered if the squirrels would chew through the tent to get at his food, but he couldn’t think of anywhere safer to put the bag.

  Hunger gnawed at Nate’s stomach, so he grabbed his mask, snorkel, and fishing rod, and headed to the bay.