Escape, a New Life (17 page)

Eric shook his head in disbelief.

“Come back to my camp with me.  This has to be a lot for you to process.  Come back with me.  Rest, eat. We will figure out how to move on together.”  He placed his hand on Eric’s shoulder, “What do you say?”

Eric locked eyes with him. 
If he could kill someone with a stare, Robert would be lying lifeless on the ground.  He turned to walk back in the direction they had come from.

Robert trotted up behind him, “Eric, you cannot help them, they are gone.” 

Eric continued to storm down the hill.

“Eric, you cannot go in after them.  They are dead by now, and you will be to if you are foolish enough not to listen to me.” 

With his back turned to Robert, Eric spoke, “I can’t just leave her.”

Robert spoke harshly, “You do not have a choice.  She is gone.”

The anger rose in Eric’s voice as he turned to face Robert, “Now!  Now she’s gone.  When we were standing there at the water I could have jumped in, I could have helped her.”

“No, you could not have helped her.  You would just be with her.”  Robert went to put his hand on Eric’s shoulder. 

Eric slapped it away and pointed at him, “You have all the answers, don’t you.  Well let me tell you, I would rather be with her, dead, than be stuck here without her.”  He shoved Robert.  “You had me chasing you up this goddamn hill when I could have been trying to help her.”  He shoved him again, harder.  When Robert didn’t fight back, Eric shoved him again, causing Robert to trip backwards and catch himself. 

Robert stared at him and backed away.  “I understand you are angry Eric, but you cannot blame me for trying to save your life.”

Eric shot back, “I can when I could have been saving hers!”  Twisting his body, Eric cocked his fist and shot a right hook to Robert’s jaw that dropped him to the ground like a ragdoll.  With that, he took off running straight downhill toward the top of the cavern and the water.  He was not returning via the roundabout path they had taken, but was sprinting straight down an extremely steep incline.  Tripping over a large rock, he fell and rolled twenty feet, bruising his arm and hip.

Popping
back up, he continued his sprint without brushing himself off.  Skidding to a stop at the bottom, he stopped just a few feet from the ledge that doubled as the top of the cavern.  He looked down at the rushing current below.  From this vantage point, there was no doubting the water’s swiftness.  It was a long drop.  Looking to the left, he saw that he could climb down the rocky side of the cavern entrance and to the beach.  That would take too long he decided.  It was a long drop to the water, but he had wasted too much time already.

Taking a deep breath
, he ran and jumped off the top of the cavern, flinging his body as far from the rocks as he could.  His arms and legs flailed as the ground disappeared from under his feet.  There was something far out in the water.  He only saw it for a split second, but realized instantly what it was.  Several hundred yards out to sea, it was Emily’s body, the sun gleaming off her fiery red hair.

THERE WAS SO MUCH to process.  “What am I waiting for?”  Abby asked the question to the darkness that surrounded her.  For the past month she had been living on this island with no sign of civilization.  Warming herself by fires, eating and drinking what she could find, sleeping on piles of leaves and branches.  This very morning, she had woken up on just this sort of bed and drank water from a stream.  Now she was standing in some sort of giant pitch-black cavern, and while she not could see it any longer, directly in front of her was a large metal box with a giant lever to be used in emergencies.

Well, if there ever was an emergency this was it.  She
was effectively blind, and had three choices, none of which were great.  Heading up the ladder to another landing could lead to a way out, or it could just lead to another dead end.  Once she was up there, she would have no way to find her way around or see any dangers.  However she would have further to fall if she were to have a misstep.  Jumping back in the water was also out.  She had grown tired of fighting for her life surrounded by water.  That was not even a choice.  The only option she had left was the mystery box in front of her. 

She felt the very large lever.  It had to be twice the length of her forearm, and at least as thick as her wrist.  She wrapped her small hands around it and said a prayer to whoever may
have been listening.  With a grunt, she yanked the lever as hard as she could.  It did not budge.  Her shoulders protested the force that she had exerted.  It was as though she had tried to yank a rod out of the ground, but it was sunk into concrete.  It did not give even the slightest, discernible bit. 

Shaking out her hands and shoulders, she paced for a moment before trying again.  Wrapping her hands around it, as close to the top as she could get, she put her legs in a wide stance.  Pulling down with as much strength as she could manage, her feet came slightly off the ground.  She felt the lever move down just an inch or two before she gave up and it sprung back
into place.  It moved though, and that was all the encouragement she needed.

Taking a metaphorical step back, Abby assessed the situation.  She obviously was not big
enough or strong enough to pull down the lever.  Her full body weight had just been hanging from it, and it only gave a couple of inches.  Perhaps she could somehow push it down.  She climbed the ladder until her feet were near the top of the box.  The metal ladder and box were both a little moist from the condensation, and there was no chance of her drying off either of them with her soaking wet clothes.  She would just have to hold on for her life.

Reaching out with her foot, she found the top of the lever.  Her legs were much
stronger than her arms.  She put her weight and the power of her right leg behind it, while keeping her other foot on the ladder and clinging to it with both arms.  Pushing, she got it to move a few inches on her first try, but it just bounced back like before, as if it were on a spring. She tried again with her single foot, and again it moved, but not enough. 

Gripping the ladder as tight as she could, she inched out onto the box with both feet.  The box only came out about six inches from the wall, so there was no room for error.  She turned to the side so that her right shoulder was against the wall.  This way she was able to still face the ladder and hold on with both hands.  Abby did not think that what she was about to do was a good idea, but it was the only option she
had.

  With her left foot
now against the lever, she pressed down until it would not move anymore with just the force of her pushing.  Picking up her right foot, she carefully placed it against the lever, so that her full body weight was resting on it.  Her weight alone was enough to get it to sink a few more inches.  She began to bounce, only slightly, and felt it creep lower with each thrust. 

As she balanced for a moment, she reassessed. 
Was this the best possible plan?  Considering the circumstances, yes.  She could come up with no other alternatives.  Holding on tight to the ladder, she thought about closing her eyes, and then realized it did not make a difference.  Either way, she could not see a thing.  She bounced a couple of times, building momentum.  On the third bounce she pushed her entire weight and strength down against the lever.  To her shock, it immediately dropped with a thundering snap. 

With the lever suddenly gone,
Abby’s feet flew out from under her and she tumbled backwards, losing her grip on the ladder.  Lights as bright as the sun flashed on overhead.  The blinding light caused her eyelids to instinctively snap shut as she fell toward a gigantic swirling vortex of water.  Her left leg smacked against the railing, upending her, causing her to fall head first into the massive twenty-yard wide whirlpool below.

She went under immediately
, but somehow struggled back to the surface.  Being whipped around the edge of the whirlpool so fast, it was very difficult for her to get her bearings.  It was as though she were tied to the back of a boat.  She was convinced no human had traveled so fast through the water otherwise. 

Above her, the giant lights revealed that she was in a massive
cavern.  The walls, carved out of the rock, reached at least ten stories high.  She saw the ladder that she had been able to latch onto when she was sucked under water on her way into this place, but now she was moving too fast to grip it.  The best she could do was slam her hand against it, trying to catch it as she flew by.  This caused sharp pains to shoot through her wrist and up her arm.  Catching it the first time, underwater and blind, was just dumb luck.  She quickly abandoned the thought that she could do it again and frantically looked for another way out.

She was out of time
.  She was being pulled toward the center of the vortex.  She tried to swim back toward the edges, but the water was too strong, and her body was too weak.  Even if she managed to reach the side, the ledge above was far out of her reach, and there was no way to climb the sheer wall of rock.  Exhausted, she had reached her limit.  She stopped paddling and floated in the water.  She was no more than a cork bobbing in the ocean. 

At that moment,
Abby gave up.

Despite the violence of the water surging around her, t
he feeling of complete freedom and liberation washed over her.  She did not know why she was here on this island.  There was nothing that she could do about her present circumstance.  There was nothing left to do but accept it.  Abby found herself at peace with that thought more easily than she would have imagined.  Somehow, she felt as though she had accomplished what she had set out to do.  Whatever that was. 

Lying on her stomach in the water, she thought back to when she was a little girl.    Dead man’s float
was what they used to call it when she was a kid playing in her grandmother’s pool.  Thinking about her childhood, she remembered one time that the whole family was in that old circular pool.  There had to be at least twenty-five of them.  That was a fun day, laughing and playing with her family.  Abby held onto that memory.  She will meet the end like this, completely at peace and without struggle. 

Abby
smiled and relaxed for the first time in a long time.  It was over.

Yet
, the end simply would not be that easy.  Something heavy came up through the water under her and crashed into her chest, causing her to gasp and suck in a mouthful of water.  Lifting her head out of the water, her arms kicked into gear to bring her floating upright.  Hacking up the salty seawater, she glanced around trying to figure out what had just happened. 

Looking around, she saw nothing. 
Was it a fish?  A shark?
  Whatever it was, it was bigger than her.  Her eyes scanned the water until they came to rest on the figure of a man floating on his stomach a few yards away. The sandy hair gave him away.  It was Eric.

He was in front of her, so she easily swam to catch up with him and
latched onto him, pulling him tight.  Pulling his face out of the water, she realized that he was unconscious.  He probably was not breathing either, but that was impossible to tell in their current predicament.  She slapped him in the face, trying to wake him up.  There was no response. 

She held
onto him trying to determine her next move.  He had come after her.  He just was not as lucky as she had been, and now he was dead.  Her screams echoed off the gigantic walls.  It took her a moment to realize that she had actually
heard
her own scream.  The deafening sound of the water had died down.  They were still swirling around the giant pool, but there was no longer the funnel in the center pulling the water and everything else down into it.  The water was slowing down.

The emergency switch must have shut down the whirlpool.  Why there was a whirlpool in the first place was a question for another time.  Right now
, her only thought was how to get them out of the water and get Eric breathing again.  Hooking her arms under his, she swam with him toward the ladder that led up to the ledge.  She realized about halfway there that trying to swim in a straight line towards it was completely exhausting.  Instead she aimed for the wall to the right of it.  As she got closer, she allowed the slowing current to carry her close enough to the ladder so that she could grab onto the bottom rung and hold on. 

Looking up, Abby saw it was about a ten-foot climb to the top.  Up there
, she could lay him down on the ledge and get him breathing again.  In the water, she could maneuver him around just fine, but outside the water was another story altogether.  Eric was about a foot taller, and probably eighty pounds heavier than she was.  She pushed his back against the ladder so that they were facing each other.  Getting as close to him as she could, she put her ear to his lips to listen for any indication that he was breathing.  She heard nothing.

She had to act quickly.  In that same position, she tried to give him mouth
-to-mouth.  She found that she could not force much, if any, air into his waterlogged lungs.  She had to get him to the top.  Putting her arms under his shoulders, she tried to climb to the top while supporting his weight.  She made it up two rungs before his body was mostly out of the water and he became too heavy to support.  He slid down.  Abby kicked her knee forward to stop him before he went back into the water.  Her knee caught him in the stomach.

Shimmying down the ladder, she tried mouth
-to-mouth again.  Still she got no response.  She could not remember where she had learned CPR, but she knew she had to compress his chest.  Struck by an idea, she put her arms under his again, and climbed the rungs of the ladder until they were out of the water.  Her biceps burned under the weight of supporting the two of them.  She kissed him, blew into his mouth again several times, and said, “I’m sorry.”

With that, she purposely let him fall toward the water while she brought her knee up, slamming it into his diaphragm.  She braced herself, holding him in place with the first knee, and did it again with her other knee. 
Repeating this again and again, she screamed in frustration, desperate for it to work.  Just as she was about to give up, he coughed and choked.  Water came spewing from his mouth.  Gagging and gasping for air, he opened his eyes and saw Abby.

“Oh, thank God,”
she said.  She held onto him and the ladder, keeping them both out of the water.  Her muscles shook with fatigue as she buried her face into his neck. “Let’s never let go.”

Getting his bearings, he reached back and held onto the ladder with one arm
, the other still wrapped around Abby’s waist.  Looking around, he said, “Where the hell are we?”

She laughed
. “Let’s climb this ladder first.  I’ll tell you all about it.”