"I Got The Goods"

[TheKookroach]

The storm had passed. Considering how violently tragic the past 44 hours had been, this morning's sunrise was probably the most serene beginning to a day that he had experienced in ... in years. That was, of course, until he walked down the beach a bit and saw his boat setting up in the rocks of the little island. All he could do was shake his head and mumble, "Fuck."

He continued onward, boarding it to inspect the damage and conduct an inventory of the stores. And all the while, he ran the events of the past two days through his head, desperate to know whether he could have prevented this tragedy without simply losing his boat in another way.



"You will take these kids out," the bitch of a Travel Agent was demanding, waving his contract with the Tour Company before his face, "or I'll sue you right out of your boat. You'll be back to chipping paint off fishing trawlers and selling sea shells to afford being a fish."

A fish... Just calling him that showed how little she knew about the new Terry Biggs. He no longer drank like one, having quit his self-destructive drinking when his favorite uncle died and left him The Mary Jane. Terry knew he couldn't operate the charter business and be an alcoholic at the same time. It had been hard to abandon the rum, but he'd succeeded. Five months sober, he reminded him, as he now searched the destroyed boat anxious for a stiff drink.

"Thirty-six college kids," the Travel Agent had told him, "from all over the world. Half of them are here for some kind of save the world conference. The others ... oh, I don't remember and I don't care. They're here to party and screw and have a good time, and all I really care about is they already paid me for a tour of three islands ... and I don't give a crap if you think a storm is coming or not."

She turned the pages of the contract back until she came to a page with a highlighted section, what anyone would call the dreaded fine print. "Unless the Weather Service declares a storm condition -- which they haven't -- you ... go ... out!"

And he did. He had the boat fully loaded and ready to go by the time they arrived the next morning. He was a bit overloaded, actually; he'd taken on everything he'd need to satisfy the kids, as she'd called them, as well as the resupply goods for the little hotel at the first island they'd been visiting.

Was I overloaded? he wondered. Did I cause this? Hell no! Terry knew what had caused this. The storm that he'd warned the bitch was in fact coming, whether the Weather Service wanted to declare it or not. He'd lived in these islands for almost thirty years, since he'd come to live with his Uncle at the age of 11. He could smell an approaching storm, and as he'd tried to tell the Travel Agent, "That scent in the air ... is tragedy."

And ... now here he was, standing on The Mary Jane's stern with his binoculars to his eyes, looking across a half mile of water to the larger island where he could see inflatable rafts pulled up on the beach.



The storm had been raging for a full day before he saw the waves breaking in a way that could only mean shoals. The electronics had been gone for longer than he could remember, and the engines had failed two hours before, leaving them bobbing helplessly in the fierce sea. They were dead in the water, figuratively, but if they were to strike the rocks still on the boat, they'd be dead literally.

With the exception of a trio experienced with boats, Terry had ordered all of the passengers below deck, which wasn't hard, since most of them were scared shitless. He signaled them to him, ordering, "Abandon ship! Get everyone topside now. Get'em forward! To the rafts!"

The evacuation was text book, impressing Terry. The trio had the others topside and overboard into the inflatable rafts in less than five minutes. Terry was waiting for the last of the kids to get over the railing before he joined them -- and then The Mary Jane struck the rocks. He flew over the railing and slammed into the hull, dangling from his safety line.

And an untold number of hours later, he came to, laying in the underbrush of the island's little jungle as the fronds and limbs of the trees and bushes surrounding him beat against him in the near typhoon strength winds. He could vaguely remember The Mary Jane being carried on a large wave up onto the shore of the island while he still hung over its side. Somehow he'd gotten loose and staggered inland, to collapse and wait out the storm.



He began to see movement on the beach. One by one, his former passengers began rousing and walking about; some were still in the boats while others had fled to the jungle, as Terry had, whether he remembered doing so or not.

He spent several minutes surveying the entire beach. The rafts were spread out over almost a mile of beach. He could see two fully intact rafts, two more partially deflated, and what looked like the remains of three more moving up and down the beach with the surf. The Mary Jane had had 12 such boats, and he'd seen at least nine of them inflated the night before. Which made him wonder: was he just not seeing the others? or was no one in them to begin with? or, and this bothered him horribly, had they missed the island, leaving them to bob on the ocean elsewhere ... likely never to be seen again...?

Terry caught a sudden, quick movement in the binoculars. He focused on a new location and found one of the women waving her hands desperately over her head. Others moved to her and, as she was, looked toward Terry across the body of water separating the two islands and began waving to get his attention. He moved higher on the boat and, using the small mirror that never left the pocket of his shorts, signaled his acknowledgment of their waves by reflecting sun light their way. He signaled, ***Stay put. Rafts have first aid kits ... emergency food and can make fresh water. Is anyone hurt?***

He waited for a response, knowing that in this day and age of texting and iPads and the internet, no one played around with Morse Code anymore. There were the three who'd helped him during the storm -- a former Navy enlisted man and a pair who said they'd sailed quite a bit -- but he didn't know whether they'd even made it, let alone knew the code.

As he waited for a response, he saw a pair of men hurry to one of the seemingly intact boats and begin pushing it toward the water. Then, Terry's stomach rolled and his entire body was suddenly covered by goose flesh. Quickly and repeatedly, he sent his new signal.

***Stay put. Sharks. Sharks in water. Stay there. Do not enter water.***


(OOC -- See this for an explanation.)

 

[TheKookroach]

Patrick and Larry paddled hard, moving the life raft easily out across the calm water just beyond the beach. The little bay had very little slope for the first minute or so, protected by a reef that ran parallel to the shore.

Suddenly, the boat began to spin. Patrick looked to Larry and realized the other college student had stopped rowing. "What's wrong?"

The other young man pointed, seemingly toward the little island that was their destination. But, following the aim of his trembling hand, Patrick realized that that wasn't what his friend was pointing at. The light blue water that signaled the continuing shallow bay suddenly darkened as the depth suddenly increased just beyond the reef ... and just beyond that were the fins.

"Are those...?" Patrick began, letting his words die off.

"Sharks... right?" his friend asked. "Those are sharks."

They bobbed in silence on the light surf for a long moment. Their eyes moved from the distant island to the one they'd just left, to the boat that they knew had stuff they needed and the sharks that were between it and them.

"It's okay," Patrick said, urging Larry to paddle again. "There are only three species of sharks that attack human beings, so odds are--"

"Odds my ass!" the other man said. "You don't know what those are ... or aren't. And I'm not going out there in a fucking rubber boat."

Larry paddled backward, causing the boat to slowly turn back toward the larger island.

"What're you doing?" Patrick snapped. "We need to get to the boat. There's food and water ... and he might have fixed the radio or the sat' phone or some thing that will--"

"Radio...?" Larry laughed. "We've been out here for two fucking days, you idiot. We're on our own until a plane flies over and sees us."

"Well ... then ... then we should get to the boat!"

"Why?"

Patrick dropped the oar into his lap and grabbed handfuls of his hair in a gesture of frustration. "I told you. Food ... water!"

"There's food on the rafts."

"Fucking energy bars! And we'll be through all of them this morning!"

"I'm not paddling through sharks!" Larry said, trying to again maneuver the boat back toward where they'd originated.

Patrick began to argue with his boat mate and suddenly went quiet. When Larry looked his way, he found him white as a ghost, staring past him with his eyes and mouth wide open. Larry looked left ... and saw the huge fin pass the boat. After a long moment, as the fin moved away and began a slow turn back toward the open sea, Larry suggested quietly, "We need to go back."

Without hesitation, Patrick joined the other man in hurriedly paddling the rubber boat back to shore.

 

[TheKookroach]

Palu Palu


Marla Biggs stood at the pier, staring at the empty berth, as the Dock Master stepped up behind her, his heavy steps alerting her to his presence yet not causing her to turn.

"I'm sure they're fine," he said to her, his tone unconvincingly. "Terrance is a good man ... a good captain. And his boat--"

"Of course he is," the older lady snapped, still staring at the patch of still water that should have been displaced by the hull of The Mary Jane. "I'm not worried about his abilities."

The man hesitated a moment, wondering whether Terry's aunt was going to tell him exactly what was worrying her. When she didn't, he told her he was heading back to the Harbor Office for an update and she was, of course, welcome to join him.

Instead, Marla headed for the shop from which Terry had been operating Custom Charters since his uncle -- Marla's husband of 40 years -- passed away. She hesitated before entering, looking about for nosy members of the Charter Guild or the Merchants Association or, particularly, the Coast Guard. Finding herself alone, she unlocked, entered, and immediately relocked the building.

Inside, spread out upon just about every horizontal surface, were the electronics needed to make the emergency beacons on The Mary Jane and her emergency life boats works. Against Marla's advice, Terry had taken all of them apart at one time and began updating the technology, rather than doing one at a time, claiming that an assembly line approach would get them done faster.

"It's better to have one or two of them upgraded, and the others still operating on the old satellite system," she'd tried to tell him, "then to have them all disassembled and not be able to charter the boat."

But of course, Terry had chartered The Mary Jane -- without any of the beacons in place, and now, after a major storm, the boat was two days overdue. Her eyes filled with tears as she murmured, "Oh, Terrance, my boy ... where are you?"