“Help me,” he rasps, bloody spittle falling from his lips. “Help me, please.”
Recovering from my surprise that Dawson is still alive, I inch closer. Wracked with pain, his eyes beseech me. How could a man suffer such trauma and still cling to life? “What happened to you?”
“I… don’t… know,” he struggles to say, and then contorts in excruciating pain. It subsides and he continues, “Set sail… from London three days ago. Rio de Janeiro. Head for Rio. Everything… good. Two nights ago… just past Tropic of Cancer… storm. Massive storm. Out of nowhere. Wind roaring loud. So loud. About to capsize. Had to go on deck—right the boat. Everything foggy. The fog burned, felt like—like being roasted… alive. Need doctor. Please.”
Conner backs away towards the door, eyes wide with revulsion. “What kind of storm could do this?”
Dawson’s head sinks down. Only the faintest movement of his chest indicates he is alive.
Not getting an answer from Dawson, Conner grabs my arm and jerks me back. “Tell me what did this to him!”
“I… I don’t know. Maybe some kind of volcanic eruption—no, no, that couldn’t be it. The boat isn’t burned. He sailed into some kind of acid cloud. Maybe a chemical spill. Something that burns flesh but not wood—not the sails,” In a jolt, the answer hits me. “Radiation. These are radiation burns.”
With an awful rumble, the boat lurches downward. As Conner and I grab hold of the doorframe to steady ourselves, Dawson tumbles head first from his chair into the water.
“No, no, no,” I thrash through the water towards Dawson and flip him over.
“Leave him,” Conner orders. “We’ve got to go.”
“He needs a doctor!”
“No doctor can fix what’s wrong with him.”
Conner staggers towards the deck leaving me alone with the floating, blistered body of Dawson Hartford. His eyes flutter open—his swollen, ruined face just inches from mine. I struggle to drag him with me. I cannot. He is too heavy.
“Don’t… leave… me,” he chokes on each word.
I look into the blue, terrified eyes of a man who toppled empires with a single word. He probably never imagined that some day he would beg for help from someone like me.
“Don’t… lea—”
“Shhh,” I calm him. “Save your strength. I’m not going anywhere.”
Conner tromps on the deck over our heads.
“Just one man on board,” Conner yells to Robby. I cannot make out Robby’s response, but Conner replies. “Horrible, man. Burned up—peeling skin. As good as dead. The boat’s sinking fast.”
Embarrassed by Conner’s bluntness regarding Dawson’s survival odds, and uncertain what to do, I look at Dawson. He gives a weak smile, as though appreciating a joke played at his expense, and closes his eyes. I hold his head out of the water, repulsed to touch him, but unwilling to turn my back on another human being. Anxious minutes pass as the boat slips further to the sea bottom. The water in the sleeping cabin rises to my chest. I listen to Conner stomping about on deck, to the waves slapping against the ship and objects clunking together in the water, and above all, I listen to the faint rattle of breath in Dawson’s lungs. Despite his blistered and burned skin, with his eyes closed and the faint smile still on his lips I get an idea what he must have looked like as an infant dozing dreamily in his mother’s arms.
His chest stops moving. The wheeze of his breath is gone. Only the curious smile remains on his cracked, bleeding lips. He is dead. I let him sink away.
I slosh through the water and debris to the deck just as Conner crawls from the sailboat to the hobie cat.
“Wait!” I yell.
“We’re not taking him,” Conner shakes his head. “Come with us now or stay here with him.”
“No, you fool,” I snap. “The ham radio. It still works. We cannot leave it. It’s the only thing we’ve got to communicate with the outside world.”
Conner groans with exasperation, but he knows I am right. He climbs back on the sailboat.
“The fucking thing is bolted down,” Conner grunts as he tries to move it.
“Watch out,” I wield a fire extinguisher and use it to smash the wooden counter apart. Together, we hand the ham radio to Robby on the hobie cat.
We sail back to the resort; I face the sailboat and watch it roll to the side.
“Dawson?” Conner asks.
I do not take my eyes from the sinking boat. “Dead. Like you said.”
Conner tells Robby all about the distinguished man who died in my arms. I watch the sailboat until it sinks from sight.
Chapter Eight
“This is Phillip Crane, Phillip Crane on 14352.6—anyone on this frequency, over?” I speak into the mic on the ham radio. The radio sits on a table in the restaurant.
“No luck getting anybody on that thing?” Bill asks. His white hair seems damp with sweat, and his face is ashen.
“No, but it’s definitely got power,” I point to the battery that comes attached to the radio. “So far as I know, this is the only working electrical device on the island and our best shot at getting help.”
The resort buzzes with news of the sunken sailboat. Many of the guests, especially the British ones, express shocked disbelief that Dawson Hartford is dead. I am probably the only person at the resort who did not know who he was.
A sizable crowd surrounds me: Jonas, Bill, Pamela, Don, Amy, Robby, Alexandra, Conner, and others. Gwen is here, too. We do not speak to each other. Sans make-up, her hair pulled into a low maintenance ponytail, she seems somehow more fragile, like a knight without a suit of armor. With each turn of the dial on the radio, Amy wrings her long, bony hands together and restlessly spins a diamond tennis bracelet about her wrist as though it were a magical talisman. Hunched on a chair, Don leans forward on his cane, closely observing what I am doing. From the radio speaker comes a low buzz.
I drop the mic to my lap and stare at the radio. “I don’t understand. I’ve been at it for two hours. We should have contacted somebody by now. Where is everyone?”
“The damn thing could be broken,” Don suggests.
“I don’t know. It appears to be working as it should, but if that were the case we should hear other chatter,” I stare befuddled at the gauges that show I am getting a good signal. “The internal antenna on this thing is weak, but even with a weak antenna we should hear something. We might not get a clear transmission, but we’d still hear voices… people talking back and forth. There’s nothing. Absolute silence.”
Robby pushes to the front of the crowd. “You’re probably doing it wrong.”
I step back from the radio and offer him the mic. “I’m no ham radio expert. My father had one when I was a boy, so I have a rough idea how it’s supposed to work, but you’re welcome to give it a shot.”
Suddenly uncertain of himself, he takes the mic. “Hello, hello, anyone out there?”
“I already checked on this frequency,” I advise, and turn the dial on the radio for him. “Here. Turn this to check a different frequency.”
Robby tries to reach someone, switching the frequencies without success.
Finally, he puts the mic down. “It’s no use. This machine is broken. You probably damaged it when you removed it from the boat.”
“And if I left it on the boat it would be at the bottom of the sea by now,” I retort.
Robby rolls his eyes and stalks off. The crowd disperses; the excitement of a working ham radio replaced by sullen disappointment. Gwen walks in the direction of our bungalow—probably to change her clothes since she has not returned to our bungalow at all the previous day. I want to follow her there and tell her how fucked up she is for avoiding me as if I am toxic. However, there is no point in following Gwen back to our bungalow to blast her as she rightly deserves. Alexandra is with her. I do not need an audience.