Red Sand (11 page)

“Hey.” It was the voice of the meanest looking man on the island. She had seen him making his rounds twice a day at the work details. Ados called him “Angel” but wouldn’t elaborate on his role. 

A bag of water sloshed on his back, beckoning like solid gold scales on a serpent. “Emily? Emily, I brought some water for you. Why don’t you climb down and have some, and then we’ll head back.”

“No.”

“Come on, Emily. Where are you going to go? We need each other on this island. We need you to catch fish. You’re such a good… fish catcher.” His sarcasm betrayed him.

“I can’t. I can’t live here.”

He stalked her, like a hunter approaching a baby deer. “Emily, baby, we all have trouble here. It isn’t easy. We have to trust one another to survive.”

“What about the other one?” She saw the island in the distance. Maybe it was more hospitable.

Angel’s face flickered with surprise, but he hid it quickly. “The other island? Sure, there’s another island. It’s no better than this one. Want me to tell you about it?”

He used her interest to edge closer.

“I’ve been to that island. It was Tuk’s idea, a couple of years ago. Tuk wanted to see if there were any resources we could use. You know, washed up on the beach like it does here. 

“There were eight of us on that trip. We landed on the beach, found a veritable treasure trove of debris, and started collecting. That night we built a big fire, got roaring drunk on Dragos’ home brew, and passed out. In the morning, half of us were missing.

“After a short search of the island, we found them. They were being cooked alive. The natives had a big lunch planned, and we were invited. We barely escaped. Haven’t been back since.

“Come on down. You have to be strong, for the others. You’ll be back in Minnesota before you know it!”

Her hand slipped and she fell to the sand. She didn’t know what to do. She had no plan at all. She had no strength to follow one.

Angel lurched over, plucked her off the sand, and cradled her like a baby rabbit. He reeked of sweat and some kind of fish oil. She revolted at the touch of his bare arms and chest. His sweat left long swathes of dampness on her t-shirt.

All strength left her. She wanted to be carried, even if it meant enduring this monster.

“When we get back, we’ll get you washed up and have you for dinner.”

“What?!” Emily tried to struggle upright, but Angel’s arms crushed her in a fetal position. He gripped the back of her throat with one hand and squeezed. She thrashed as frantically as she could.

With one palm out, like an australopithecine surgeon, he selected a mid-size boulder from the sand. “Nice bunny,” he said to Emily.

He hesitated with the rock, thinking. “You’re pretty light already, but you’ll be lighter if I gut and skin you here. I’m afraid if I wait you’ll taste gamey.”

Emily twisted her head and sank her teeth into his right teat. His hand released her and went to his breast. She fell hard on the sand and backpedaled away.

Her hand brushed against a rock. She picked it up, swiveled, hurling it like a discus directly at Angel’s head. The rock hit him in front of the left ear with a thick crunching noise. A second crunch sounded out, like an echo, when his body pitched backward and smacked head-first into a pointed, black stone on the ground.

She didn’t actually expect the rock to connect. She felt a moment of triumph.

He lay still for a moment, then dragged himself to his feet. His fingers tenderly brushed the gash near his ear. “It’s just a scratch. For a moment there, I thought my modeling days were over.”

A splashing sound caught their attention. He looked down. Rivulets of water trickled down his black legs. The water pack had broken.

Angel stared at the wet sand, his eyes wide. “No!” He lifted his brawny arms over his head, trying to get at the bag on his back. Water splashed all around him. The sand beneath him had already started to move.

Emily managed to scramble to the base of a boulder and started climbing again.

The sand erupted in rusted ivy. Tendrils warped out in every direction.

Angel wrenched the bag from his back and tossed it toward Emily. Water gushed across the sand below her boulder. Ivy erupted from the spot as he ran back the way he’d come. “
Ina ng Diyos
!” He shouted, pumping his legs as fast as possible.

“Wait!” Emily screamed, in spite of herself. She saw the naked fear in Angel’s eyes. Nothing scared that man. The thing that could, she didn’t want to see.

A sound washed up behind her, raspy, like the wind in high grass. She wouldn’t look back. Ahead of her a rockslide evened out the terrain, black rocks shiny in the hot sun. Each step tripped her. Every rock burned. The slithering came closer, and now she heard popping noises.

She pinched her foot in a crevice and fell, splitting her knee open on a twisted, pockmarked stone. Her head burst into flashes of white. It hurt with self-absorbed, all encompassing pain. She wouldn’t be walking again. Holding her knee in both hands, she turned to see the noise. She wished she hadn’t.

Red ivy crested the rock. It wavered in the wind, alive, searching. Pink pods ballooned at the tips of each vine, drooping like obscene breasts over the edge. These pods popped off, rolling around while thousands of tiny hairs sprouted from their sides. The hairs propelled the pods, skittering across the rocks toward her. With a rending sound, they split in half, opening jointed jaws. Soft tubers wriggled where teeth should be.

She wanted to scream. Wanted to but couldn’t. Her mouth opened; nothing came out.

Eyes wide open, gasping for breath, she kicked backward with one good leg. Her brain simply couldn’t process what was happening. Venus fly traps, watermelons with teeth, were about to devour her.

She felt the first one clamp onto her leg. It made sucking noises as some form of saliva poured across her skin. Everything the saliva soaked immediately dissolved.

Now she could scream.

Pod after pod latched on to her, covering her like tumbleweed. Each of them found purchase, some pound of flesh on which to feed. She felt that flesh melt off her legs, her arms, her chest. One clamped itself to the side of her face. It smelled like aloe vera, and tasted like it, too, as the digestive juices seeped into her mouth. The screaming stopped when her throat melted.

Something bit into her spine. She lost all sensation. She could no longer struggle. She stared out at the blue sky with her one good eye and wondered, idly, if those teeth were clean.

Detail of “
Untitled Map
”. 30cm x 45cm. Charcoal and tempera on dried leather.

Found floating off the coast of the Cape Verde Islands in a watertight plastic chest with various scientific books. No correlation to known islands or habitations. Markings indicate artist as “Ados”. 

This previously undiscovered volcanic island north of Cape Verde appears to have landforms matching the map. Note appearance of man-made structure in highlighted area. Unconfirmed.

The hurricane that stalked the cruise ship Prince Edward began where all hurricanes do – in the dry Sahara. A hot wind blew off the desert seeking freedom over the limitless ocean. It picked up speed and moisture as it traveled hundreds of miles across warm, humid ocean air. Its ambitions didn’t include reaching the coast of South America, as most do, to ravage little island nations. Not this storm. This storm wanted the Prince Edward. Halfway out to sea, it turned Northward, heading for the shipping lanes like Felix in ‘95, and, like Felix, it was shaping up to be a Category 4. A general warning went out to all ships in its path, but only one really needed to know.

First Officer Dragos tapped the screen. “Weather warning, sir.”

Captain Tucker Speyside closed the small notebook filled with receipts that distracted him from his duties. “What’s that?”

“A hurricane headed our way.” Dragos punched up a map. A green line plotted their course from Fort Lauderdale to Venice. To the southeast, a red light burned. “It blew off Cape Verde but bent northward. It will cross our path… here.” He pointed somewhere ahead of them.

Tucker inspected the map. The storm approached from the Southeast, gathering speed. If they kept on their current course, they would almost certainly meet it. He could steer North, but he had no taste for the cold.

Perfect.
He couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

“Take us Southeast.”

“But, the storm approach us from the Southeast. Sir?” Dragos’ strong Romanian accent trembled in confusion. 

“We’ll turn southeast and run below it. Once it passes, we’ll head back north.”

Mike, Staff Captain, Tucker’s best friend onboard, and the only one with the authority to question orders, had to put in his two cents. “Tucker. Come on. There’s a good chance it’ll peter out before it even reaches the shipping lanes. If we stay on course, it’ll blow right by us.”

“You want to risk running through a hurricane? Just because this is our last trip across the pond doesn’t mean we can take risks.” He was cross, and he let it show. Damn nerves.

Mike pursed his lips, but Dragos answered, “Dragos will need your override, Sir.” Tucker growled and punched in the coordinates.

An alarm blared. Tucker fumbled for the button to turn it off. His ears rang in the silence. “Goddamn that scared the crap out of me.”

Colin MacInness, Able Seaman, appeared on the bridge as if out of thin air. “What was that?”

“Colin, get off my bridge.” Tucker knew it was him without even turning around. A ginger headed Scottish boy who looked five years younger than he was, Colin always had too much excitement for Tucker’s taste, moved too quickly.

Mike was kinder. “That was an alarm. It sounds automatically when the ship is off course.”

Colin, wide eyed, backed out the door. “I never heard it before.”

“I guess you’ve never been off course before.”

Tucker marveled at his luck. For two days he’d been dreaming up ways to trick the crew into turning south. Now the beast set it’s prow toward Africa, and the crew had a reason to believe. If he could just keep up the charade for another twelve hours, it would be too late for the crew to do anything.

“Years later, her mother still hasn’t forgiven me.” Mike relaxed on the bridge, feet up on the steering console, hat over his eyes. “As if I deliberately set the dog on fire. She’s a ball buster, that woman! Like mother like daughter. What are you gonna do? Two kids, a mortgage, and a little Nutcracker in the kitchen. That’s the sum of my life. Before I left, she had the balls to ask me, ‘Why do you spend so much time at sea?’ Why? So I don’t put a rope around my neck, that’s why.” He let out a long, dramatic sigh, shaking his head. “I dread retirement. I really do. I think I’d rather be stranded on a desert island.”

Tucker didn’t look up from his leather bound copy of
The Tempest
. “That can be arranged.” He only managed to get a word in every twenty minutes whenever Mike paused to find a new story about his ball-busting wife and her family. With Mike aboard, the crew never lacked for conversation. One-sided, anyway.

Tucker wasn’t really listening, or reading for that matter. His eyes drifted out the window, down to the upper deck. A family played miniature golf on the putting green. They looked so blissful. The father laughed when the little girl missed the ball. The wife kissed him on the cheek. The daughter looked up at Tucker, spotting him the way children seem singularly able to do. She waved. He waved back, with all his fingers.
What are they doing here?

They must have felt alienated. Most of the ticketholders had an average age of 78, when the tickets sold at all. Half of the cabins remained empty. The bursar wouldn’t even break even. The cruise line had already decided this would be the last voyage, though only the Officers knew this.

Mike followed his gaze. “Is it just me, or are there a lot of old people on this trip?”

“It’s just you. You’re old.”

“No, seriously.”

“Old folks home in Maryland booked out half the cruise.”

“I knew it. Sammy, you owe me ten bucks.”

“Dammit. What did you do, take a census?” Chief Radio Officer Kandasamy Rasalingam, aka Sammy, folded a tenner into a paper airplane and threw it at him. 

“Yeah, I counted the eligible tail. Came up with binary numbers.”

“Eligible meaning anyone under 80.”

“At least I have standards.”

Tucker let them chatter on. He’d worked with them a long time. Now he was selling them out. There was no harm in it. They all had the axe waiting for them after payday. What a great way to answer that age old recruiter’s question!
“How did you leave your last job?” “After we got hijacked by pirates, the company flew me out of Monrovia.”
Meanwhile, Tucker’d be sipping Mai Tais in the Caymans a rich man. No harm, no foul.  

His mind obsessed on the impending end of his career. After twelve more hours on this heading they would find a small tender with one Liberian pilot and several men with AK-47s. Not many, just enough to give his crew a hard time. Hopefully a few more than Angel could handle. Tucker planned to slip a mickey in Angel’s drink at the poker game, just to even the odds. Then Tucker hands over the ship, offloads the passengers, checks his account for the second half of his payment, and disappears.

Simple. Painless. 

After that, he didn’t have a plan.

This troubled him. Take the money and run, but where? Where could a man like him go?

In his father’s time, a Captain could work anywhere. He could pilot a ship up the Amazon, hide out in the Seychelles, tramp up and down the Chinese coast. Back then, a captain still controlled his ship. He carried his skills with him. Any ship. Any time.

Now, the bridge lit up like Star Trek. Computers and flashing lights and joysticks entertained an adolescent fantasy, not a nautical adventure. The position-control system downloaded data from a Global Positioning System receiver and gyrocompasses, auto-controlling the propellers to counteract wind, wave and current factors. He spent more time catching up on company paperwork than actually steering his vessel. When he did steer, it was with dynamic positioning on two little joysticks. Where was the romance in that?

Only a handful of companies in the world could afford this kind of hardware. Once this caper put him on the map, he became untouchable. Here, at the top of his game, computers rendered him useless.

He would have to go deep. Maybe Macau, or Bangkok, or some other hole. Trouble was, a very rich man living in a very poor country tended to stand out, get robbed, or worse. It dawned on him that this lucrative caper would squeeze him out of the world. Too rich for the poor. Too wrong for the right.

He fingered the little slip of paper in the notebook in his pocket, a bank receipt with six delightful new figures.

The door opened and Colin tumbled onto the bridge.

“What is it Colin?”

“How’s the storm?”

“Nothing to worry about. We’ll head below it.”

Colin looked disappointed.

Mike gave him a dirty look. “Look at him. He’s dying for adventure. Forgot he’s on a cruise ship.”

“Will there be anything else, Colin?”

“Captain, I just… I just wanted to know...”

“Spit out it, Colin.”

“Well, I hope I can be a Captain some day. I hope to be as good a captain as you.”

Tucker tried not to roll his eyes. Mike hid his smile behind a beefy hand.

“But, what I wanted to say is that I’ll do whatever it takes to move up the ranks. Give me a task and I’ll do it. Nothing is too small or too petty. I want to learn this job from the inside out. If you give me a shot, you won’t regret it, Sir. I’m learning about the bridge. I’m taking classes on the side. Someday I want to steer my own boat. Anything. Anything you need me to do.” Colin didn’t know the cruise line faced bankruptcy.

“Colin?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Can you find your way off the bridge?”

He looked crestfallen. “Yes, sir.”

Tucker felt bad for the guy. He’d picked the wrong voyage to grow ambitions. And the wrong captain. As Colin turned around, Tucker stood up and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Tucker was certain he saw a tear in the boy’s eye. That gave him an idea.

The hurricane hadn’t made an appearance before the sun settled on the horizon. It looked like clear sailing.

Dragos noted this. “We clear the storm by morning, sir.”

“Good. That means we won’t run into any trouble in the night. What do you say, boys? Ready to lose your shirts?”

It was Poker Night. Tucker could spend the evening with his crew rather than bullshit with the old people around a dinner table. He never did relish the public side of this job. He wanted to steer the ship and command men. That’s it. Unfortunately, twice a week, when duty called, he put on a smile like any other decoration on his crisp, white uniform and headed to the Banquet Hall to sit through mind-numbing conversations with Mid-Westerners who treated him like Magellan. The adulation itself wasn’t so bad, but it only highlighted how far from those great navigators the job of Captain had actually deteriorated. It depressed him.

But not tonight.

“You coming?” Mike looked forward to Poker Night even more than Tucker.

“I’m waiting here until Colin relieves me for the night. You boys go on down and I’ll meet you.”

“Colin? You’re kidding.”

“He wants some experience.”

“He’s never manned the bridge alone.”

“He’s an Able Seaman. He’s been trained. And besides, maybe if I give him a shot, he’ll shut the hell up.” 

Mike stepped off the bridge. His sarcastic voice echoed in the hallway: “Oh, hello, Colin. Funny bumping into you here.”

Tucker summoned up his most fearful, commanding voice. “Colin!”

Colin tripped in, then snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”

“You’re early.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Wait outside in the hall.”

The rest cluttered out the door. The bridge was quiet; all his.

He didn’t have much time. He checked to make sure Colin didn’t have a clear view. Colin stood rigid as a Beefeater.
Good. No peeking.

A few quick turns on the screwdriver popped off the AIS cover plate. He wanted it to look like faulty wiring disabled it. The Automatic Identification System is a collision avoidance system. Every few seconds it pings out a signal with the ship’s name, course, speed, and location. This information transmits to every ship in the area on a readout about the size of a garage door opener. With the AIS on, everyone knew his course. He didn’t want that.

Turning off the AIS was strictly against international maritime law. All passenger ships are required to have one, for obvious reasons.
They can send the fine to the Liberians.

He did worry about a collision, though.  Without the transmission, they were on a ghost ship. If they crossed paths with any other ship in the night, god forbid it be an oil tanker, that would end their trip in a hurry. 

That was a risk he was willing to take.

“Damn it!” he seethed as a tiny blue lightning bolt licked the end of the screwdriver. A spark, a hiss of smoke, and the AIS was no more. He’d planned on a more elegant solution, but this would do the trick. He inspected it a moment. Anyone would think the unit had just shorted out.
Okay
.

Now he had the course laid in, the AIS off, and no one to question it. The Black Box would record that the ship was off course by his authorization. Every ship had a black box, but he had no reason to try to destroy it. He could justify the course change.

Only one thing could tip his hand now, but there was nothing he could do about it.

A quad of electric motors maneuvered the ship into port. Unfortunately, a sensor sent updates wirelessly to the pods’ manufacturer, Rolls-Royce. If they malfunctioned, or started to take on water, an automatic alert went out. It was a nice customer-service gimmick, but Tucker couldn’t turn it off. It didn’t matter. As long as they didn’t scrape bottom along the way, those sensors would remain silent.