7.
Water lapped against sand. Sea birds called. The gentle undulation of a ship in water. Hawkins sensed all of this as he awoke, and for a moment, they combined to put his mind at ease. Memories of a two-week vacation in Bermuda, and the woman he’d met there nine years ago—what was her name?—drifted through his waking thoughts. Lazy days aboard a catamaran. Fishing. Snorkeling. Eating. Drinking. And the nights.… Where the days passed calmly, the nights burned with passion. Belowdecks. On deck with only the stars watching. Even in the water.
Water …
Memory of the crashing wave woke him fully.
Hawkins gasped and sat up straight. Pain bloomed immediately, pounding at the back of his head. He moved his hand back and found a lump matted with blood. He’d struck something when the giant wave had slammed into the ship, but had no memory of what it was.
He found himself against the back wall, his view of the wheelhouse impeded by a workstation and, to his right, a refrigerator. The fridge looked new. In fact, it was still wrapped in plastic. That’s how it had stayed afloat, he realized. The plastic had kept the water out, and the air trapped inside kept the fridge buoyant. It might have been floating in the Garbage Patch for years before being turned into a projectile. The top of the fridge was crumpled now, and smeared with rich, red blood that seemed to glow on the white surface. The blood made his stomach twist, not so much because it disgusted him, but because he knew it had come from one of the other crewmembers.
A seagull squawked so loudly that Hawkins surmised it was actually in the wheelhouse. He pushed himself up slowly, pausing to let his spinning vision focus. The first thing he saw was a blurry mix of bright green and blue. His eyes refused to focus on the distance, but Hawkins could tell they’d made it out of the storm and found themselves … where? At an island? The nearest island should have been nearly two hundred miles away. They couldn’t have covered that much distance overnight.
Turning his attention to the interior of the wheelhouse brought his eyes into focus. Bray lay on the other side of the fridge. He looked dead, but his rising chest revealed he was merely unconscious. Hawkins stepped over the fridge, into the center aisle of the bridge, and found Joliet on the floor.
The seagull stood beside her, violently tugging at her hair. What the hell? Hawkins had never heard of a seagull entering a ship, never mind trying to scavenge a meal from a living human being’s body. Was it rabid? He couldn’t be sure, but it was the biggest damn seagull he’d ever seen, a fact that didn’t slow him down as he charged the bird, waving his hands and shouting.
At first, the bird didn’t back down. It opened its wings wide and squawked at him.
“I don’t care how tough you think you are,” Hawkins said, unclipping his knife from his waist and drawing it out, “I’m not going to let you eat her.”
The seagull seemed to recognize the threat and, with one last angry squawk, spun around and flew out of the wheelhouse through a large hole in one of the big windshield windows. Given the size of the hole, the fact that it was bent inward, and the positioning of the fridge, Hawkins guessed that appliance had punched the hole.
Joliet stirred with a groan. “What happened?”
Hawkins helped her into a sitting position. “Not really sure. Just came to myself. But we’re safe now.”
He helped her into a chair where she sat, holding her head.
“I’m going to check on the others,” he said. “Don’t move.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, rubbing her temples.
Hawkins went back to Sanchez, who’d been knocked unconscious just before the big wave struck. After checking for a pulse and finding one, he shook the man’s arm. “Sanchez.” He tried to wake the man as gently as possible, but Sanchez didn’t move. Hawkins pinched the man’s arm hard. Sanchez didn’t flinch. He was out for the count.
Hawkins moved to Bray next and smacked his cheek a few times. “Bray. Wake up.”
The big man grumbled.
“Wake up, Eight.”
Bray’s eyes popped open. He shouted in surprise and tried to scramble away.
“Bray!” Hawkins said, holding his friend’s shirt. “It’s over. We made it through the storm.”
“Everyone okay over there?” came Drake’s voice.
As Bray calmed down, Hawkins looked up over the console blocking his view. Drake stood on the far end of the wheelhouse. A streak of blood ran down his forehead and face. “We’re alive,” he replied. “How ’bout you?”