Overfall (8 page)

Figuring to start over in her talk with her father, she went into the hall and took a seat. She thought about the tree. Big hot tears rolled down her face. A second and third nurse came down the hall.

“No code. No code,” she heard the big one say. Then they closed the door. It was taking a long time. She went to the door and just then they opened it. They were fixing his hands. His head was thrown back and his mouth was open. There was a stench. Her knees shook, and the big nurse came over and pulled her to her bosom.

“Honey, I’m sorry. He’s gone.” Her knees shook and she wanted free. The woman’s flesh and perfume were suffocating. Her head was spinning.

“I’ll be okay,” she sobbed, and ran down the hall.

When she got outside, it had stopped raining. Life was cheating her.
Please let it rain.
She said it all the way home. To this day she remembered nothing of the walk. The tree in front of their house was no longer dripping. Just the same, she went and stood under it She tried to remember. But there was no rain.

Lying on the ground next to the house was the garden hose, right where her father had left it not two weeks ago. She went to the faucet, turned it on, and took the hose to the base of the tree. Using her thumb she created pressure and squirted water on the leaves of the big maple, letting it drip down over her body. Three years ago there had been a swing from the large branch, but it was no more. He had pushed her on the swing in the rain with the water pouring down. It was a simple moment. There had been no joke. He had said: “I love you and I’m so proud to be your father.” That was all.

Sam realized that maybe she was crying. There was no sound, it was just a feeling. Maybe a vibration in her body.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Sleep,” she said. Then she wriggled even closer. Of course the heat of her and the smell of her filled his mind.

He breathed deeply and thought about his grandfather and a place of old trees—fir, hemlock, cedar, and pine. A lake, opal smooth, cooled the eye while the leather brown of its sand shore rippled the air in the afternoon sun. There was the emerald green of spring-fed meadow dotted white, yellow, and fireball red. Around the cabin, mountain bilberry grew, heavy-branched with sweet fruit. He was walking through the pasture to the trees and there was a tunnel shaped by the foliage as if elephants had passed through. When he looked down the dark of the tunnel, there were people running and hearts pounding. Anna was there, out of nowhere, and she was panting bent over and the crowds were rushing past. Then the fire came, a ball of yellow and red rising, tearing through the trees and opening a hole to the sky. Fear was in her eyes and she was shaking him, talking, trying to tell him. But he couldn’t understand.

Sam awoke with a start, still glued to her back—sweating. “We’ve got to go now.”

“What? Why?”

“Out.” He jumped out of his bag, pulling at her.

“You were dreaming.”

“Yeah.”

He turned his back as he pulled on his clothes. “We’ve got to get off this island and get to a place we can really build a fire.”

“How do you intend to get off this island, or do I want to know?”

“We can make it. Misery doesn’t usually kill, it just hurts. Staying here we could be instantly crispy. Like one rocket into this place and pufffff. A fireball.”

She fingered her still-damp clothes. “What if we stay here and dry off a little more by the stove?”

“You stay. I’ll go check around and see if anybody is coming.”

They were both nearly dressed when he turned and looked at her.

At that moment the roof exploded over their heads and it began raining fire.

On this clear night in the wilds of British Columbia the sky was splashed across with stars in myriad swipes and trails set against the black. So luminescent was the three-quarter moon that one imagined warmth but for the bitter cold edge to the air. It lit the meadows nearly green and left the forest in deep shadow. The wind had blown away the clouds.

Under the trees it was still darker, and Anna understood they dare not use the light. So when they left the creek, they crashed through the brush in cold wet misery, feeling their way like blind people, stepping into holes, trying to find trails and to stay on them. Finally they found what seemed like a real pathway.

“I’m vibrating like those wind-up teeth,” she said. The cold was terrible and wet. It ached the bones and palsied muscles until she thought she couldn’t stand it; then she would take another step, only to be clung to by a wet branch or torn by a prickly vine; and there were more steps, and it seemed a mockery of her self-awareness that she considered each step to be her last, when there was always another.

“You Manhattanites are tough.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was a compliment. But don’t get any ideas.”

Despite her abject misery she laughed.

They stooped through a mucky thicket of something Sam called salmonberry with water running down the leaves all over her and gnashing prickles irritating her arms and legs. They exited into some sort of overgrown pathway.

“It’s an old logger’s skid trail cleared by a dozer,” Sam said. “But someone has been hiking it, probably the people from the oyster farm you’ve been telling me about.”

After a time they came to a small patch of moonlit, knee-high grass forming what appeared to be a natural meadow. They stopped and listened. In the distance there was a crashing sound in the forest that signaled pursuit Then they heard the muffled sound of a helicopter rotor. As it drew closer it grew into a distinct thump-thump, thump-thump. Sam took Anna’s hand and stepped back into the forest, picking up the pace. Soon, above the sound of slapping branches, there was the rush of moving water. For ten minutes it grew louder until they could smell the stench of low tide. When they arrived at the beach, green-slimed rocks slipped beneath their feet with every step, and they looked out over moonlight blazing on the roiling sea.

Down the way construction at the oyster farm was obvious. A large gable loomed against the sky.

Now they could see the copter’s spotlight working along the beach a half mile distant. It was coming at them.

“You’re not going to the oyster farm, are you?” she said.

“They’d find us in minutes.”

“Then where do we hide?”

“We don’t. We’re going to swim Mosquito Pass and get to Chatham Island and then make a nice warm place to sleep. In the morning we’ll find people.”

“Swim? Again? Oh, God.”

“Come on.”

Ahead, the beach became a cliff, and the water was edging ever closer as they approached the steep ground.

It was a hundred feet across Mosquito Passage to Insect Island, and then only half that far to Chatham Island, where, after a long overland hike, they could find a wilderness resort that would have a radio and air service. But the water through Mosquito Pass flowed like a river when the tide was running. From the sound of the faint roar, they were walking up-current and away from the overfalls.

“You do hear that roar in the distance?”

“There is always a roar in the distance. You’re just listening to this one. We’re going to swim fast.”

“No way. I’m not going,” Anna said, the terror of the sailboat ride fresh in her memory.

“This isn’t nearly as big or bad as the overfall at Devil’s Gate,” he said. “And the tide isn’t running as hard.”

“Will it kill us just as dead?”

“We aren’t going through it. We’re going to the kelp beds on the other side, hang on, and pull our way to shore.”

“But if we don’t make it?”

“We’ll make it. This way they’ll waste hours, maybe days, crawling over this island. They won’t suspect we swam.”

“You’re damn right. They know at least one of us isn’t crazy.”

Now the helicopter was moving fast in their direction. Sam tugged her hand, starting to run. He was headed for the base of the cliffs.

The stench grew as potent as an old-style outhouse with an added sulfur odor. At the base of the cliff were black holes. They ducked into a rock chamber exposed to the channel where flowing water had undercut the cliff. The eelgrass on the rocks made her feet slide crazily.

Then they heard it. Snarls and yelps from dogs in pursuit.

“They’re killers,” Anna said.

Sam grabbed something from the ground.

Out of nowhere there was a roaring bark, then another. It startled her.

“Sea lions!” Sam said. “We woke ’em.”

Then two huge growling shadows came through the cave entrance. Sam put her squarely behind him up on a rock. There were splashes all around as the sea lions hit the water.

The rotweillers were ignoring the sea lions. Barely visible, Sam was moving. He held something large over his head. There was a hollow thud and growling. Sam had struck a dog. Then Sam screamed and charged. It was primal. He was more animal than the dog. Into the water they went, dog and man. Instantly she knew to follow. She ran down into the splashing, growling melee. Then came silence, but for the barking of the dog on the beach. Sam had pulled the dog under. The chopper flew low overhead, just outside the rocky hollow, then turned out over the water heading back down the beach.

Now she was in water to her chest and nearly out from under the lip of the rock. There was a slight current. Everything was black. There was a sound like a billion bursting tiny bubbles that was life in the rocks. The thought of crabs and bugs shivered her spine.

Sam burst from the water. The dog was growling but swimming for the beach.

“Bastard bit me,” Sam said.

The first dog was now barking, but without enthusiasm.

It was plain the dogs would stay on the beach.

“I don’t think I can do it. That damn wave.”

He whirled and held her close. “You’ve gotta do it. Period.”

“You could kill them.”

“Right behind them will be guys with guns.”

She was trying to concentrate. To summon her will against the fear.

He put his face close to hers. “You can do this. I won’t leave you, but you gotta swim. Get your shoes off. Tie them.”

She struggled, but got them on her belt.

He did a surface dive. She hesitated, then followed, and raised her head when she got beside him. The current wasn’t strong.

Go,
she told herself. When they were near the middle they were considerably downstream, and the current was rushing toward the jaws of the wave. Doing the crawl, she swam vigorously until her arms ached, breathing maybe every other stroke. Suddenly she once again heard the faint roar and it was growing closer, maybe a couple of city blocks away. And she was being pulled by a whirlpool. Her clothes felt as if they were lead-lined. Sam was strong and was leaving her behind. She swam harder. Then he was behind her—she felt his hand pulling on her fanny pack.

“Go!” he half shouted. “Go!”

Her arms and legs were losing strength. She seemed to be flailing. A gulp of water had her choking. The roar was now clearly audible.

“Swim!”

Then she felt slime everywhere, heavy and horrible, miring her down. It was like swimming through wet towels.

“Grab the kelp, you’re drifting.”

Reaching out, she grabbed a handful of slime. Then she could feel the water pulling on her. It was fast! Looking over her shoulder in the distance, she saw the white of the foam. It was the wave. Once locked in the current, she would go there. The thought of the black water and its secrets put her on the verge of panic. Pulling with all the strength her near-dead arms could muster, she tried to make headway. She couldn’t. In truth she was sliding slowly backward through the kelp, headed for open water and the wave.

Sam lowered himself backward through the matted vegetation, reached around her, grabbed her belt, and used one arm to pull her to him and the other to hang on to the kelp. He knew how her body would respond to the cold of immersion. Water lowered body temperature approximately twenty-five times faster than air. In water temperatures of fifty to fifty-five degrees, given her prior exposure to cold, it would take only five to ten minutes for her body to experience cold shock. Struggling would become a reflex as her brain, befuddled by cold-induced neurological impairment, told her body that she needed air and her respirations escalated into harmful hyperventilation.

All her instincts would be telling her to thrash. Movement would push the blood to her extremities cooling it, in the fashion of a radiator. Her motor control would go and her limbs would feel detached and spastic. As her blood cooled, it would lower her vital core temperature bringing on a loss of consciousness. She would begin to take in water and die.

He clung to the kelp for both of them. “Put your hands on my shoulders, your legs around my body,” he screamed. She did it. “Lie back.” She did that. Her arms were straight; her hands gripped his shoulders like talons, communicating her fear. Now he used both his hands to pull them through the kelp, pushing her body as if he were a tug moving a barge. As he methodically grabbed kelp, some of it gave way and some of it held. Even as they inched toward shore, they were pulled downstream. Over his shoulder the roar in the blackness created a palpable vibration in the air. The ocean wanted to feed its young.

Sam could feel himself start to gasp, and forced a rhythm to his breathing. Desperate, he reached down with a foot and felt for the bottom. Nothing. It cost him mentally, and he slipped a few feet downstream in the attempt. It was hard to concentrate. He had to get them out of the water. Pulling and kicking like a man possessed, he sensed the shore but couldn’t see it. “More, more, more,” he grunted as he pulled. His body had nothing left to give and he moved it by sheer strength of mind.

Then a toe hit a rock; he reached down and stood. Two more pulls and a stride and he was dragging her up the boulder-strewn beach toward some trees. As they neared the trees the helicopter neared them. Sam stumbled up the bank, carrying her, just as a brilliant wand of light encompassed them and they fell into the brush.

Through her chattering teeth she tried to talk. “Did they see us?”

“Don’t know.” The chopper was turning back. “They overshot us if they did.”

Sam urged her farther under a dense tree. There was no way they could now be seen from the air. When the chopper returned, it hovered, and its brilliant spotlight hit the uppermost portion of the tree and lit the area of the nearby beach.

She shivered uncontrollably. Sam knew this was going to be a bad night. “They may have seen us but there’s no place to land.”

Sam pulled her tight to his body for warmth, and she welcomed it. Her teeth chattered as if they might crack. In moments the helicopter moved off. They pulled on their shoes over bloody feet.

“They aren’t sure or they wouldn’t keep moving like that. Let’s go,” he said as they stumbled through the trees to another smaller expanse of fast-moving water.

“What’s th-th-tha-that?”

“It’s the last little stretch of water. We’re on Insect Island. It sits in Mosquito Channel and goes most of the way across.”

“No.” She shook her head, backing away.

Sam grabbed her and put his face close to hers. “Do you want to live?”

She nodded.

“You have enough left. If you want it bad enough you can do it. You can live. But if you give up, you’ll die. You’ve never given up.”

Sam wondered if he really believed she could make it. Her breathing had become more regular, there was less gasping. Maybe she could get most of the
way before he had to push her. They needed to make it to the kelp on the far side. Once again they went through the frustrating task of using shaking fingers to tie their shoes to their belts.

Taking her by the hand, he hobbled in the moonlight down the beach and into the second channel.

Sam felt the
cold go straight to his innards—worse than he thought. Once again they swam and to his relief, she did not lose her nerve or her will. On this side of the island the current was less and the overfalls smaller, but still lethal for Anna.

As they swam, he watched her constantly. They had covered about ninety feet, with only ten more to the kelp, when she began completely losing her strength. It was as if her coordination left her and her muscles spasmed crazily. Sam could begin to feel his own arms turning to butter. Grabbing her belt beneath her fanny pack, he sidestroked with the last of his energy and managed to get a hand in the kelp and to begin hauling her. The first giant strand pulled its anchor-rock from the bottom, but the second two plants held.

But he wasn’t strong enough. They couldn’t make headway. All he could do was hang on and prevent them from drifting with the current.

“You gotta kick,” he said.

She thrashed, but it wasn’t enough. The kelp snapped. Floundering, he grabbed again. The plant held, but he was getting weak fast. Before he realized it, he began gulping air.