Red Sand (3 page)

"Don't bother asking for names," said Carter. "These guys don't talk."

“He has no... He can’t speak because…”  Howie stuttered. Splashing water interrupted him. They neared someone else, a man. The White Hairs rowed close, and Carter and Howie pulled him in, Howie less so as his bulked tipped the boat dangerously whenever he leaned.

Their new guest lay at the bottom gasping, grateful, and naked.

“Hey!” shouted Carter, frightening everyone as he pointed at the man. “I know you! You’re the guy who left with the Lady in Red last night, right? Did you get lucky?”

The man stared at him. His expression was clear. Plucked from certain death the first question he faced was about a tryst? No “How are you, are you okay”? He pulled himself to a sitting position and turned toward the ocean. “I think all of us got lucky.”

“Howie,” said Howie, thrusting out a pudgy hand, relieved that this man could talk.

“Mason,” said the man, extending his own hand. “Who else is here?”

The theme for the evening seemed to be clothing optional. The survivors looked like losers in a strip-poker tournament. Whatever the calamity, it happened at night, and fast. No one had time for decency. One woman wore a sport bra and yoga pants like she worked out in her sleep. A cotton nightgown clung to the diminutive body of the second. Boxer shorts and socks covered Carter. Only Howie wore clothing and shoes as he’d passed out fully clothed with a photo of Barbara on his chest.

“I’m Lauren,” said the first woman, a brunette who looked like she could have swum laps around the lifeboat without tiring.

“I’m Emily,” said the tiny blonde beside her. Emily pointedly drew out a bottle of hand sanitizer after she shook his hand. It was attached to her wrist by a thin rubber chord. She slept with a bottle of hand sanitizer. She almost found out if cleanliness is next to godliness. 

The sound of retching brought their attention to the rear of the lifeboat. Another man lay there with his head dangling over the side, grasping the bulwark with white knuckles. He only nodded their way, absorbed in keeping the contents of his stomach from erupting, again.

“That’s Max,” said Emily. “He’s a dentist. He sat at my table last night with his wife and daughter.” She paused. The wife and daughter were not in the boat.

Clearly, Max suffered from something other than sea sickness. He continued to puke over the side, and a nutty smell indicated he’d evacuated in the other direction as well. Sweat slicked his face, matting his hair. He lay half over the edge of the boat, like a woodland animal obsessed with its own reflection.

“Norovirus.” Carter nodded knowingly. “Cruise ship virus. Must have picked it up at dinner last night.”

Emily skittered backward, bumping up against Howie who took up the entire front end of the craft. “Is it contagious?” Instinctively, she shook out a dollop of hand sanitizer and rubbed furiously.

“No. You have to ingest it. And that smell isn’t from something I would eat.”

Max’s dry heaving interrupted them. They stared in horror, as if they had invited the Red Death into the relative safety of their confined world.

“He ate the fish last night,” Emily piped up. “Did anyone else eat the fish?” They all shook their heads in tandem.

“Anyone have any water?” Mason asked. They repeated the movement. The White Hairs remained silent. Turning to the one at the stern, he tossed his hand as if holding a cup, the universal sign for water.

Carter snorted. “They don’t speak. That doesn’t mean they’re deaf.”

“Do they speak English?” Mason asked. “This guy needs to keep hydrated or he’s going to die.”

Howie just stared on in helplessness. Amazing, to be surrounded by nothing but water, yet Max could die from dehydration. Despair left the boat silent but for the steady dipping of the paddles and the low suffering noises emitted by the sick man.

Mason turned and spoke to all of them. “There are six of us in this boat. We’re a crew now. Let’s make a pledge, right here, right now, that we’ll look out for one another. No matter what happens. Give me your oath.” He held out his hand. Howie and Lauren took it right away. Carter hesitated and then joined in.

Emily added hers to the pile as if they all had cooties. “Even Max?” she asked.

“Even Max.”

Howie saw half a dozen more boats peppered across the water. At least two others buoyed survivors, but the rest were busy collecting… trash.  They used long poles to pick up junk out of the water, particularly plastic bags. Anything plastic went on-board along with anything clear - glass bottles, plastic bottles, pieces of translucent fiberglass.

Hard-core environmentalists? National sea park stewards?

But where did they come from? He stretched his neck searching for land but saw none.

"Hey, Moron! Sit down! You don't want to capsize us!" Carter shouted.

No land. Anywhere.

The boats completed their search of the wreckage and rallied. Silence made a seventh companion as they paddled through the night. Once, from another boat, they heard a scream, a splash, and some commotion as a body was dragged back in. The White Hairs didn’t even slow down. 

Howie had to pee.

He couldn’t remember drinking anything, maybe salt water. He wondered what to do. He wasn’t about to pee in the boat, in front of everyone. He wasn’t going to stand up and risk capsizing. The more he thought about it, the more he had to go. Water sloshed around his knees at the bottom of the boat, wet, cold, and constricting. The paddles splashed with wet, dripping noises. Water flowing under the lifeboat  gurgled past them in a long stream. Every now and then a wave would jolt the boat, increasing the pressure on his bladder.

He’d played a game at a carnival where he shot a water gun into a clown’s mouth to inflate a balloon. That’s how he felt right now, and whoever was firing the water gun was a deadeye. Every dip of the paddles pumped that balloon. Dip, pump. Dip, pump. Dip, pump. He shifted in his seat, undid his belt to relieve the pressure. That worked for a while, but within an hour it pumped up again.

Shouldn’t he save it? He remembered hearing somewhere that you weren’t supposed to drink sea water, it was worse than no water at all. Didn’t people without water resort to drinking their own urine? That was healthy, right? The thought of saving it just to drink was abhorrent, and he wasn’t about to ask if anyone else wanted some. At this point, he just needed to get rid of it.

They travelled for almost two hours. He leaned into the darkness to catch some glimpse of land, some indication that their journey would close. He craned his ears for some end to the monotony of that vast seascape. Nothing.

Several of his fellow survivors passed out from exhaustion. Lauren slept with her head on Carter’s shoulder. They looked sweet. Emily’s tiny body lay curled up on one seat like a cat. Mason snored like he was on a camping trip.
Maybe I could do that, drift off into sleep until we land.
His bulk prevented him from any position beyond sitting up. He let his head roll against the fat of his neck, like a travel pillow. That wasn’t comfortable, so he propped his elbow on the edge of the boat and supported his head on it. His elbow promptly slipped off and the whole boat rocked ominously as he regained his posture. That woke the other sleepers momentarily, grumbling and shifting, until they fell asleep again.

Sleep eluded Howard. He glanced across the calm faces of his comrades. How peaceful they looked! Plucked from certain death, headed into an uncertain future, yet they slept with angelic faces.

Howie wondered how they all ended up here. Raised in different parts of the world, to different parents, with different jobs, income, and family matters, they had very little in common, yet, through some twist of fate, through decisions made somewhere in the midst of time, they converged here, as if their whole lives had been meant for one purpose - bred for this boat. The present, and present company, felt more real than anything Howie ever experienced.

How odd that they would have pursued, or not pursued, college degrees, sought the love of companions, found their soul mates, took  jobs in industries that could support them, worked hard, saved or splurged, and somehow reached the decision, all of them, to take a cruise. Whether bought in cash or credit, they paid for this moment, bought it with their lives, and now here they were. Survivors.

A sudden lurch knocked Howie’s head against the gunwale. He woke with a snort. It was daylight.

“Welcome back to Hell,” said Carter. Everyone else was already awake.

“Where are we?”

“In the middle of the ocean with no water, no food, no clothes, and no supplies.”

“You’re so negative, Carter.” Emily unfolded from her seat.

Carter wouldn’t be stopped. “Listen, I don't know if you guys noticed this, but these are not our lifeboats. Remember the lifeboat drill you had when you got on board? Those were shiny and white. These are dingy and old.”

“So what are you saying?” Mason was still groggy.

Carter didn’t answer right away. He let it sink in, making eyes at the two men paddling the boat.

Howie struggled to follow, so Mason whispered in his ear. “He means we’re either being rescued or kidnapped.”

This was not good news.

Max lay limp at the end of the boat. Carter prodded him with his foot. A groan emanated from the body. “He’s not dead,” said Carter.

“He’ll need water soon or he will be.”

The sea reflected the sun like a crisper. Howie felt his pasty skin peeling like dried latex. His bladder was fit to explode.

Lauren shaded her eyes with her hand. “Is that an island?” Everyone turned.

Yes it was. An island.

A dark shape crawled over the horizon. A head rose from the water with a long tongue tasting the sea. The shape resolved into a volcano. Though dormant, at some point in the recent past lava flows shed a black apron around the core. These flows ended in ebony cliffs, unapproachable. The surf beat against gleaming black rivers of stone. Their lifeboat headed for the sandy wasteland that extended several miles to the right of the volcano. Light green grasses dotted the dunes, but not one man-made structure broke that monotony of sand.

A desert island
, he thought.

“Magnificent,” Howie heard over his shoulder. He turned to see Mason smiling.

“What!?” Emily asked, surprised. “We’re kidnapped by tongueless natives, taken to a deserted island, and you think it’s magnificent?”

“Yeah, I do! This is great! I mean, how routine was life when we got on that ship, and now this!”

“You could have been a nudist at home.” Carter held up his hand to hide parts Mason accidentally exposed.

“My life was fine,” Emily added.

“What? Hunched over a computer keyboard? Lorded over by urban slavers? C’mon. When was the last time anything crazy like this happened?”

Lauren took him to task. “Hundreds of people died, Mason.”

Mason looked down. “Yeah, well. Listen, you know what ‘anomie’ is?”

“When you don’t have enough iron?”

“No, that’s anemic.”

“When you throw up to look good?” added Carter.

“No, that’s Max. He looks thinner already. No, ‘anomie’ is when you’re stuck between two worlds. I suffered from that when we left.”

“There’s a drink for that,” Carter added.

“I tried that. It didn’t help.” Mason paused long enough that they thought he was done talking. Finally he said, “My wife left me not long ago. I came on this cruise to, you know, ‘find myself’. And here we are, on an adventure.”

Howie commiserated. He patted Mason’s bare leg. “My wife left me, too,” he said.

Silence fell over the boat. The island grew with every paddle stroke. Then Max muttered, “I’m thirsty.”

“I hope they have martinis,” said Lauren.

Howard hoped they had a restroom.

Their lifeboat glided over a coral reef into smooth, bright blue water. Howard spotted hundreds of fish drifting in lazy circles around the shadow of the boat.

The boats steered close to the black cliffs. Lava flows frozen in time spilled over fifty foot accretions of prior eruptions to form a serrated and deadly coastline. Suicidal waves rushed that torn edge only to explode in thunderous oblivion. Deep beneath overhanging rock, caves of night sucked in the tide and then blew it out again like whales hunting krill. Howie felt the ensuing concussion as much as heard the echoing boom as the island devoured each new wave. The boatmen paddled furiously to keep their distance.

Why would they risk their lives to stay so close to these dangerous walls when the rest of the island stretched away with miles of pristine, sandy beaches? Was there something even more dangerous there?

High above them, a massive red wall protruded from the cliff. Although clearly man-made, Howie couldn’t make out the material. Immediately on the other side of the wall, the shore sloped back to the sea, calmed, and spread out in sand dunes. A final wave rushed them past the cliffs and whispered the boat calmly up the sand. Tongueless leapt out of the prow to pull them beyond the surf.  The other lifeboats rushed ashore as well, disgorging their passengers on the beach. There were woefully few.