Getting Away from it All, Pt. 1

Here’s the whole thing.

Kira sat on deck with the maritime wind in her dark blond hair, the salt smell in her face and the sun shining on her skin.

Life didn’t get much better than this. Well … This particular aspect of “this”, anyway.

The chartered boat sat lolling on the waves, bobbing on the gentle sea like a cork, and Kira felt the first tug of sleepiness on her eyelids. The two-man crew – Skipper Steven Flanagan and Mate Willy Jurgen – worked with a couple of overweight, balding business men at the transom, instructing them for the umpteenth time on handling the lines and keeping them from crossing, how to seat the heavy rods in the harnesses, how to strap into the fighting chair, and so on. The crass, middle aged braggarts cocked their Wal-Mart fishing hats, strung through with “lucky” lures, and laughed until their faces reddened at their own inappropriate and humorless jokes. The crew joined in with polite enthusiasm, tolerating them long enough to collect their pay and have done with the blowhards.

Kira, on the other hand, wasn’t having as much fun as she hoped.

She didn’t know what to expect when she called WTNZ. It sounded nice – a four-day, three-night fishing trip off the coast with two of “sea fishing’s foremost experts to teach you the ins and outs, tips and tricks, all while on a luxury charter fishing boat with a small passenger list, so you get the personalized attention you need to master the art of …” blah, blah, blah. It seemed simple enough. Kira loved fishing, and she loved country music, and all she had to do was be lucky caller seven.

She figured she had no chance of winning. She’d never won anything so grand before. And besides, she thought while the phone rang in her ear, there had to be a catch of some kind, right? No prize so nice would just be free, right?

Well, Kira turned out to be right. The trip didn’t include air fare, if necessary, to the port city from which the craft would launch. It wasn’t a solid four days on aboard, either. They would set out each morning and return every evening, and the guests stayed at a local motel. Since the area’s not a high-resort area, the motel wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton, but it was clean and run by a nice elderly couple during the day. The night shift, Kira found, consisted of a huge bear of a man with a shaved head, fading tattoos and a mustache denser than most toupees. He was built like a bullet and when seated, was taller than Kira’s diminutive five-foot-three figure. He eyed her with something that might’ve been desire, but Kira tried to avoid passing the front desk at night.

This was the last day of the trip. She’d caught nothing. No one had. She suspected the “experts” – and she’d never heard of either of them – weren’t everything they were cracked up to be. She suspected they were nothing more than yocals who offered the lowest rental rates in the area, so WTNZ, being cheap, paid them their rate plus a little stipend to pretend to be “world-famous experts” on ocean fishing. All they do is take fat business men out for a day of beer, sandwiches and sunburn, turn around and come back in. They go to different, pre-determined locations the same distance from shore each time, say they’re “finding the fish” or whatever load of crap they feed, and then go back to land. If the passengers happen to catch something, great, and if not … well, they get paid either way.

Kira returned her gaze to the leather-bound book on her legs, jotting on the half-filled page in front of her. She’d kept a journal most of her life and was so excited – at first – about the trip, there was no way she’d leave it behind.

Last day of the trip. Thank Goodness! It’s been miserable so far. Bad fishing, bad company, bad crew. Well, not all the company’s bad. The really young, hot girl (damn her!), Sam, is nice. The two guys though – ugh. If I have to hear them laugh after I get off this boat I’m going to hang myself from the doorknob of the hotel.

The boat’s nice, but it’s not a luxury liner. And the food is pathetic. It’s like airline food but warm. The only thing cold onboard is the beer, and I can only stomach so much of that. So I’m chugging room-temp water and listening to two fat guys laugh themselves a hernia. Woo-woo, what fun. Sure am I glad I won. Yee. Ha. Go. Me.

Kira sighed again. She never used to be so jaded, and wondered if she was just getting old and cynical. The sound of her name drew her gaze to the aft of the vessel. It was the “first mate”, whatever that meant on a two-person crew. He’d made overtures at Kira almost the entire trip and didn’t seem to understand subtle rejection. Kira figured she’d have to resort to being direct if he didn’t get a clue. Most people call it “rude” and she supposed since she wouldn’t see the bozo again, she shouldn’t care, but … she hated to be rude just the same.

“Kira, aren’t you goin’a drop a rod?” He smiled with nicotine-stained teeth at her, his dark, dry skin as weathered and cracked as a tanned lizard skin, his dirty, bleached-brown curls tussled by the breeze. She tried to fake a smile but couldn’t manage one.

“No, thanks,” she said, trying to raise her voice to sound less morose than she felt. “I’m just going to catch some rays.” She turned her face away from him and muttered, “… And stay the hell away from you, bean-breath.” She considered putting something on over her halter top, but the sun beat down warm. It was the last day; she’d deal with it.

Kira heard footfalls on the deck and tensed, expecting the so-called first mate. She turned and instead found the other woman onboard, Samantha, looking as bored and sick of the trip as Kira. She offered the tall, lithe blond girl a wan smile.

“Hey,” Kira said, again envying the younger girl’s Hollywood-perfect figure.

“Hi,” Sam sank down, her taut, sinewy body sliding onto the deck with the grace of a rope being coiled. Kira tried not to stare, but the girl – no older than her middle twenties – was an amazing physical specimen. Five-eight, curved and contoured with muscle and just enough fat to make it feminine and sexy, long golden locks and big, emerald-green eyes. She never wore make-up. And she was here with a man almost twice her age and more than double her weight. Kira wondered again why.

“You okay?” Kira stared off and closed her journal.

Sam hung her head. “I guess so. I’ll be glad when this is over. I just want to go home.”

“What sort of things do you do at home?”

“I go out with friends, mostly.” Her smile didn’t make it to her eyes. “You know … Just doing stuff we like to do. We … as in, younger people.”

Kira nodded. “Does your husband go with you?”

Sam giggled. “He’s not my husband. We’re just … I don’t know what we’re doing, really. But no. He doesn’t.”

Kira nodded again, slow. “What’s up?”

Sam cast a worried glance at her. “Nothing, but if you want to be alone I can -”

“No, no,” Kira interjected, putting her hand on Sam’s knee before she got up and left, “that’s not what I meant. I … You look like you have something on your mind, that’s all.”

“Well, I was … Hey, what’s that?”

Kira saw Sam crane her head to one side, staring over her, off the bow.

Her heart pounded in her chest.

An isolated, dark and active storm cell, lightning skipping from one section of the low, narrow, leaden wad of cottony cloud, piled just over the water’s surface. The brilliant flashes ripped one after another across the slate gray face, then ignited its bowels, and flashed down at the ocean. An intense curtain hung to the water obscuring everything behind the rapid, flowing, amoebic disturbance. The cloud seemed to pull itself along, tendrils extending from the main cloud and dragging the body along behind, then others doing the same, all the while the cloud tacked toward the craft.

“Storm,” Kira intoned, absent and distracted, her interest sparked.

“Wow, it’s … weird.” Sam pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them.

Kira nodded. It was weird. Kira had chased storms as long as she could drive, and she’d never seen one like this. Maybe it was because it blew in from the open water, but …

Then it hit her. “There’s no wind. I mean, it’s moving really fast but there’s no wind. We should be feeling the wind.” She narrowed her eyes at the amorphous shape spreading and oozing over the water toward them.

It was closing fast. They had minutes before it hit.

No wind.

“Hey, Captain?” Kira called over her shoulder, but it died amid the purple-faced guffaws of business men, clutching their bellies and collapsing on the gunwhale, while the crew smiled and nodded, trying to look genuine.

“Captain?” she called louder, and Jurgen looked her way, his smile fading as he did.

He swatted Flanagan on the shoulder, and tipped his chin toward the horizon. Flanagan stood upright, put a hand across his brow to shield his eyes. He spoke to Jurgen, who turned to the business men, then Flanagan stepped onto the gunnel and around to the deck, coming up behind Kira and Sam.

“You ladies better get inside the cabin,” he said, eyes on the pressing cloud and flashes of lightning. Kira’s heart fluttered when she realized there was no accompanying thunder.

“It’s weird,” Kira said. “No wind. No thunder. Plenty of lightning though, and that’s the lowest singular cloud I’ve ever seen. It’s like it’s sitting right on the water.”

“Might be. Might be a white squall.” Flanagan gave an absent scratch at his bare chest, hooking the other thumb into the pocket of his cut-off jeans.

Kira turned to the cloud. “I … I don’t think so. It’s got a cloud; white squall wouldn’t have that distinct a cloud.”

Flanagan never looked at her. He just shook his head. “I dunno. Looks bad though. Go on into the cabin, just ’til it blows over.”

“Well, ya don’t have to tell me twice,” Sam said, hopped to her feet and minced over the deck toward the main cabin. She stopped and looked back. “Kira? Coming?”

Kira stared into the creeping, crawling cloud, now so close it blotted out the rest of the ocean beyond. “Uh … Yeah, I guess.” She got to her feet, and the squat blossom of cloud diffused the daylight around her.

She and Sam went single file under the flying bridge and down to the main deck. “There’s no wind,” she muttered again.

“What’s that?” Sam said, and turned to Kira, whose face was a quizzical scowl.

“Huh? Oh, I said … it’s just weird there’s no wind.”

“Yeah, you were sayin’.”

Sam retreated into the cabin, and fished through her bags for a pair of shorts and a button-down, short-sleeve shirt to cover the expanse of tight, smooth skin and the skimpy bikini. One of the tubby bald guys groaned.

“Aw, babe, putting on more clothes is the opposite of what you should be doing,” and he and the other chubby man belted laughter.

Sam didn’t smile. “There’s a storm coming, Edward,” she spat, “in case you’re too clueless to see.”

“Well the storm won’t be the only thing rockin’ the boat, baby!” He turned red with more rib-straining laughter as he and the pudgy partner in humor lost control of themselves in mirth.

Sam turned away and went deeper into the cabin. “Yeah, right. Like you could rock anything but a chair, you dried up, withered old …”

Kira blushed and tried to move from between them as Edward sobered and followed her. “Hey,” he said soft in the flat acoustics of the cabin. Kira stepped onto the deck to avoid hearing them.

The storm was almost on them now. Kira watched Jurgen and Flanagan on the flying bridge, pointing and whispering. In a second, Flanagan skittered down the ladder and dropped in front of the door to the cabin, and ushered Kira back inside with an extended hand.

“Folks, we’ve got a little storm coming on us. Looks worse than it is, from all I can see. We can’t feel the wind and the sea’s still calm, but she’s moving quick and that’s a little weird. So we’re gonna batten down here and ride her out. It should get past us in just a few minutes, based on how fast it’s comin’. So, please put on your life vests and make yourselves comfortable, it shouldn’t be too long.”

Kira sighed and sat down, tried to stay out of earshot of the pleading Edward and the shushing Sam as they argued in muted tones. The crew tossed yellow life vests around, not donning any themselves, and then returned to the flying bridge. Kira peered out the door as the underbelly of the cloud moved overhead, stretching and pulling and tugging its way across the sky.

And there was still no wind.

Kira leaned forward and got her journal, then opened to the partial page she began earlier.

Strange storm has blown in. It’s moving fast – very fast! – but there’s no wind. The sea is calm. There’s lightning but no thunder. At this moment – 12:23 pm – there’s no rain, but I can smell precipitation in the air. It’s a low, heavy and very dark cloud, and it moves like … well, like it’s crawling along the surface of the water, not being pushed along by the wind. Very strange.

Her hand closed the journal with a gentle motion as the sound of a driving, dense rain started to swell around the boat. In a moment she couldn’t see the transom across the deck from the paned door of the cabin. The walls of water pounded down so hard she saw accumulation on the deck, and wondered if they would sink under the gathering liquid.

All the passengers were quiet, eyes turned to the ceiling as if listening for some mysterious enemy to descend on them from above. The steady hiss of rain beating down filled the stillness.

Kira saw a flash, then another, and a few more rapid-fire as the lightning began. She counted off seconds in her head, waiting, staring out the door of the cabin.

The thunder never followed.

She wanted to open the cabin door and stand on the deck, but would only flood the cabin if she did. The weather stripping under the door was holding back the water for the moment, and she didn’t want to compromise the situation. And the rain fell.

And fell.

And fell.

“This … This isn’t right.” Kira turned and it was Charles, Edward’s comedic second. His face dripped sweat and a slight flush colored his neck and most of his cheeks around the blob of zinc oxide on his nose. Big patches of dark pooled under his arms, breasts and down the middle of his back on his Hawaiian print shirt.

“It’s okay, it’s just a storm.” Kira tried to sound confident.

“No,” Charles said, and shook his head, causing droplets of perspiration to fall onto the table where he sat. “No, it’s not just a storm. It’s … it’s weird. There’s something wrong. Where’s the skipper?”

“They’re on the flying bridge, Charles, just calm down.” Sam’s voice bit the silence. “You’re whining like a little girl.”

“Something’s wrong.” His voice did have a more nasally, whiny tone, Kira noted.

“Charles, please relax, it’s just a storm. It’ll pass in a few minutes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it was moving too fast not to.”

“This could go on for days! We might be -”

He never got the chance to finish. The sound of the rain climbed for a moment, then receded to a soft patter, then ceased. The flashing, crawling cloud moved across the transom and into the open water beyond.

“See?” Sam said. “It’s over already, before you were even done pussing out.”

Charles turned to look out the cabin door, but a solid sheet of slate gray stared back at them. The cloud wasn’t visible anymore. The hazy, softened shape of the boat’s aft floated in and out of view, paling and darkening.

“Wh … What now?” Charles clambered to his feet and jostled Kira aside. “What’s … What’s going on now? Wh-”

“Charles, shut up!” Sam snapped.

Kira was grateful, but kept silent, staring into the gloom for a moment, until she realized what happened.

“Fog,” she said. “The storm must have … It must’ve been behind the cloud.”

“Fog?” Sam stood and almost toppled Edward from her as she shoved him aside. “Shouldn’t the rain have … Shouldn’t it be clear and stuff after that hard of a rain?”

Kira gave a helpless shake of her head, staring at the thick, shapeless mist. The boat’s stern was almost lost now, the mist seeming to thicken as they watched. “I don’t know. I never heard thunder. Did you?”

Sam looked at her. “No.”

“This is weird.”

“Where’s the crew?” Edward pressed himself against Sam and she grimaced in awkward discomfort and shrugged his sweaty palm from her shoulder.

“Yeah, where are they?”

“I told you, Charles, they’re on the bridge.”

“Doing what? Huh? What’s keeping ‘em up there? We should go out and see what’s going on!”

“Jeez Louise, Charles! Did you take special courses in being a chickenshit little pussy or is it just natural for you??” Sam glared at Charles with savage disgust and it forced him onto his seat. She turned to Edward. “And get your hot, slimy mitts off me, Edward, or so help me God I’ll -”

“Here they come,” Kira interrupted, grateful for the distraction from Sam’s ire. The thud of Flanagan dropping onto the deck thrummed the cabin. The passengers backed up as the skipper opened the door, letting the water in.

“Well, folks, I’m sorry to say this,” Flanagan said, dripping wet, “but we’re going to have to pack it in.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Charles’ voice still leaked tense panic, but he refrained from the whiny twang it had before.

“This fog, Mr. Beaushanks, is the thickest I’ve ever seen ’round here. And there’s no tellin’ how long it’ll hold up. The storm blew through fine, just like we thought, but the fog it pulled in behind it’s a doozy.”

Kira studied his face, her arms folded over her chest. “But?”

“’Scuse me, ma’am?” Flanagan perked his brows at her.

Kira blushed. Then pressed him. “There’s something else you need to say.”

He sighed. “Well … yeah.”

“Oh crap!” Charles wailed like an old woman on the verge of fainting. Sam raked an exasperated sigh. Edward tried to scoot closer to her.

“We … we seem to have some … some engine trouble.”

Kira’s heart jolted in her chest, tried to scrabble out her mouth. She dared not speak or it would escape.

“What??” Edward bellowed.

“I’m afraid we … we have some problems with the engine. It won’t turn over. Mr. Jurgen’s lookin’ into it right now, and I’ll be helping. Uh …”

Kira steeled.

“… And the … the radio’s not workin’, either. I think … I think the unusual storm did … something.”

“No radio?” Sam said.

Flanagan cleared his throat. “I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

“No engines?” Edward barked, wiping a meaty palm over his smooth, sweat-slicked pate.

“No sir.”

“Oh my GOD!” Charles’ sudden scream gave them all a bad start, and he stood so fast his thighs slammed into the table and knocked everything on it asunder.

“Now, calm down everybody, we’ll get the boat fixed. Just wanted to make sure you all knew what the situation was ‘fore we got too far along. Now, crew’ll be busy trying to figure out what’s wrong with the engines for a bit so please, occupy yourselves in the cabin or on the sundeck but stay off the main deck. We need to open the engine hold and work there.”

He shut the door before any of them could respond.

“Did I … Did I just hear what I think I heard?” Sam’s voice was tight, thin.

Kira looked at her, saw the girl’s wide eyes zeroed in on her, hoping for an answer.

She considered, then nodded. “Yes, you heard right. We’re stranded, dead in the water. There’s no engine and no radio.”

“And from what I can see, no crew, either,” Sam spat and collapsed onto a seat at the windowless end of the cabin.

Kira sighed. She had a sinking feeling Sam was right. The crew didn’t seem capable of solving a simple problem – like where or how to find fish for their charter guests – never mind a complex one like figuring out what’s wrong with a boat motor that won’t start. Or a radio malfunction. She put her forehead against the cool glass of the cabin window and stared into the fog.

She sure was glad she turned out to be lucky caller seven.