“You are stupid,” she whispered to herself. “If Noah did call, then he might have figured out something was wrong and I’d have been rescued and safe in his arms already.”
Her throat was parched, and the words she uttered made her cough uncontrollably for a minute or two. The thirst was making her delirious. Every now and then Izzy fought a private battle with herself, using all her willpower so as not to succumb to the temptation of drinking the seawater that was all around her.
A soft moan somewhere out in the darkness made her sit up. That sounded like a man, but where is he?
Izzy leaned out and spoke with a hoarse voice. “Who’s out there?”
A pained sigh came from somewhere to her right. Izzy turned and saw what looked like a plastic box, floating in the water a few meters away. Narrowing her eyes, she could see the shadowy outline of a man hanging on to its sides.
“Help,” the man said. “Help me.”
It took her less than a minute to figure out who he was. “Matt, is that you?”
“Yeah,” Mullins the diving supervisor answered.
She waved her right arm towards him. “I’m over here.”
“I’ve b-been hanging on for over two days,” Mullins said. “My arms… too tired… and I don’t have a life vest.”
Izzy pulled herself up higher along the still inflated part of the life raft. “I think there’s room for the two of us here. Can you paddle with that container over to me?”
“I… I don’t have the strength. My right leg’s k-killing me. I-I think it’s broken.”
Izzy bit her lip. Like Mullins, she was both exhausted and dehydrated. A part of her felt she couldn’t help him, for she feared that moving away from the half-submerged raft would leave her without any endurance to make the return trip back.
But then her conscience took over, and she knew she had to try. “Hold on. I’ll see if I can get to you.”
Slipping back into the water, Izzy began to use her arms to breaststroke over towards him. Her limbs ached with both malnourishment and fatigue, yet she ignored the pain. The guilt of leaving Mullins to his fate would be too much to bear, and she willed her body to keep on going. Keep paddling. Just one more kick of the legs and we’re nearly there. That’s it, that’s it.
With each stroke making her even more exhausted, a timely spurt of adrenaline kept her moving ever closer to him. Progress was slow, yet her determination egged her on. Cupping her hands in order to displace more water with each stroke, Izzy continued to make an effort as she neared the floating white plastic crate.
Mullins gave a sigh of relief as Izzy grabbed hold of one of the side handles along the container. “I-I’d thought I’d be a goner by now.”
“Don’t think that way,” Izzy said as she tried to pull the box along with her, only to realize the bottom part of the container was tethered to something beneath the small waves, acting as a sea anchor to somehow keep it in place.
Grabbing the collar of Mullins’s waterlogged jacket, she inched closer to him. “You can let go, Matt. I’ve got you.”
“Okay.”
Making her way back to the life raft while dragging him along was an even bigger effort, and took more than twice as long, yet she somehow managed to get it done. Once Mullins was able to pull himself onto the flooded canopy, Izzy pushed her tired body onto the inflated portion and lay down with an exhausted sigh.
Mullins was out of breath too, but he reached out and slapped Izzy gently on her knee. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
For what seemed like a long time neither of them said anything, for they were both exhausted to the point of collapse. Mullins was able to relax his numb, tired arms as he lay spread eagle on the floating canopy.
The effort had kept Izzy awake, and she reopened her eyes once again. “Did—did you see anyone else alive?”
“No,” Mullins said softly. “Not anymore.”
“Was there any—”
“Yes. Joseph was with me in the water, but he was bleeding from his side. Must have scraped his body as he jumped out of the boat or something. He s-swam away from me when the sharks came. I… I think h-he saved my life.”
Izzy placed her hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out. She had known Joseph for ten years, and now he was probably dead. All the tenders, the life support personnel, and even her ROV team… all gone. The sea had swallowed them up, as if they had never even existed.
With his strength partially returning, Mullins sat up and groaned while running his hand along his injured leg. When Izzy looked towards him she stifled a gasp. Mullins’s fractured limb had swollen up to twice its size, nearly bursting out of the wet trousers he wore.
Mullins winced in pain as he reached out and tried to untie his shoes. He managed to undo the laces, but his foot had swollen well enough that he could no longer slip off the genuine leather sneakers from his injured limb. He cursed softly before lying back down again.
Izzy had checked the life raft the moment she got into it, and the stowed emergency gear was either missing or had gotten loose when the inflatable was damaged. Without access to water or any other survival gear, she knew they would both die very soon unless help came. Running her hand along the sides of the raft, she once again tried to determine if there were any items still around.
When her fingers felt the crinkling of a plastic wrapper, Izzy’s demeanor quickly brightened. She reached deeper along the raft’s deflated folds until her hand finally managed to grab onto something before she pulled it out.
Mullins tilted his head in her direction. “What have you got there?”
“I dunno,” Izzy said as she held the small plastic bag in front of her and began to feel its contents. “Long and cylindrical. Maybe a container for hooks and matches?”
After opening the wrapper and pulling out its contents, Izzy frowned slightly as she held the small tube in front of her. “It’s just a glowstick.”
Mullins let out a small yet hopeful sigh. “Well, at least we can signal with it.”
“You’re right,” she said, using her teeth to rip open the plastic covering since her fingers were too slippery from being wet all the time. Once she’d unwrapped it, she held it with both hands and bent the middle with a loud snap before shaking its contents. A greenish neon light began emanating from the plastic tube a few seconds afterwards.
Balancing on her knees while on the inflatable part of the life raft, Izzy tried to wave the glow stick around, hoping that someone from across the horizon might see it, only for the neon tube to slip away from her moist fingers as it fell into the water.
Reaching out, she tried to make a grab for the luminous neon green tube as it floated on the surface, only to release a terror-filled shriek. Izzy quickly fell backwards into the raft as a tiger shark suddenly appeared just below the surface and nudged the glowstick away. The illuminated ocean now looked like a transparent window to another world, and it showed a multitude of sharks swimming around just underneath the raft, being tended to by countless schools of smaller fish.
Mullins quickly sat up again. “What happened, Izzy?”
“Shark, shark!”
Mullins had no time to react. His swollen foot was right at the edge of the partially flooded canopy when another tiger shark broke the surface of the water in front of him and bit down on the swollen limb, all the way up to his ankle. The marine predator quickly pulled its head back beneath the water, dragging a screaming Mullins even further away as half his body was now immersed beneath the surface.
“Matt!” Izzy cried as she tried to hold on to his right forearm, but he slipped through her wet hands as more sharks joined in and dragged him from the canopy. Mullins gave a tragic, raspy bellow before his head was pulled under the water, his arms thrashing about along the waves before they too were submerged, leaving only a whirling froth above the sea’s surface.