“I’ll get off!” someone shouted from inside the lifeboat in front of them.
Shy watched the guy climb over the other seated passengers and jump down onto the deck. It was the guy Shy and Kevin kicked out of the Jacuzzi on the first night of the voyage, Christian. He was actually giving up his seat.
Christian asked about the man’s leg, explaining he was a doctor, then he helped boost him onto the boat. Shy scanned the rest of the faces on board, looking for Carmen or Rodney, but they weren’t there. He was sure he’d seen Carmen climbing into one of the lifeboats, though. Maybe hers had already launched.
Kevin and Shy started cautiously down the slanted deck toward the raft-launching site, Christian following closely behind them. But when they arrived they found Marcus and Paolo shouting for them to hold on and pointing toward the ocean.
Shy spun back around, saw another huge wave. This one only half the size of the previous two but big enough to lift one of the lifeboats and slam it against the side of the ship. Pieces of shattered boat flew into the air and flailing passengers spilled out into the stormy sea.
The cruise ship creaked and shifted under the power of the wave, the water just failing to reach as high as the Lido Deck.
Shy stared down at the battered lifeboat, scared to death that Rodney or Carmen might have been aboard. The top half ripped completely away. Paolo now explaining that they had to be close to the islands. Otherwise the waves wouldn’t be breaking the way they were.
“I don’t see any land!” Kevin shouted.
“We will by morning!” Paolo answered. “We just have to make it through the night!”
“If a boat can’t make it,” Marcus said to Shy, “how will a raft?”
Shy had no answer as he scanned the water, looking for Carmen’s head. But it was too dark to see anything more than shapes.
The final two lifeboats were being lowered toward the ocean, several passengers staring out of the opening, looking down at the people floating on the water or back up at the burning ship.
Paolo loaded the few remaining passengers and crew onto rafts, one after the other. Shy looked around as he moved with the line. The sinking ship. The lifeboats getting tossed around on the ocean’s surface. A group of passengers trapped up near the burning bow of the ship, leaping off, one by one, screaming as they fell past the raft launch site, into the raging water.
Shy was shoved onto one of the rafts by the crew member behind him, bodies quickly filling in around him, and then the raft slowly lowering down the side of the ship. When it reached the end of its launch rope, the raft plunged toward the sea, Shy gripping the handle beside him, yelling like everyone else, weightlessness like a knot in his stomach, his gaze fixed on the life-vested bodies below, on the stripped ship parts and swirls of ship fuel, and then he shut his eyes as tight as he could and braced for impact.
26
Power of the Sea
The raft slammed headfirst against the surface of the water, Shy’s grip ripped away from the handle and he was thrown into the freezing black ocean. He kicked and reached frantically with his hands, choking on salt water, coughing out the last of his air as he was completely submerged.
Soon as his head poked back through the surface, he gulped in a desperate breath and coughed and looked all around in a panic. Heavy swells rolling past like moving mountains, lifting him, then dropping him, then lifting him again. Thunder pounded in the distance. A small wave broke over his head and he swallowed more salt water and gagged.
He wiped his stinging eyes with the back of his wrist and spotted the raft floating upside down, half a football field away, a handful of life-jacketed people already swimming for it. He’d turned to look back at the sinking ship when someone grabbed on to the back of his jacket and started pulling him toward the raft.
Shy spun his head back around, found Christian.
He couldn’t process anything except that he was in the massive ocean now, freezing-cold, whitecapped waves cresting all around him.
Lightning lit up the night sky and for a fraction of a second he saw all the survivors thrashing around in the water near the ship.
Shy shook free of Christian’s grip, turned onto his stomach and started swimming for the raft himself, fast as he could, thrusting hand after hand into the furious water in front of his face, ignoring the pain in his ribs.
Kevin was the first one to the raft.
Then Paolo and Marcus.
Shy saw them right the raft and begin pulling themselves up by the handles, heaving their waterlogged bodies over the sides. Kevin reached out a hand, pulled in Christian, then he reached for Shy, and Shy fell into the raft on his back and lay there, staring up at the smoke-filled sky and sucking in breaths and listening to the voices all around him.
“Which way are the islands?”
“We have to move away from the ship! There’s fuel all around us!”
“Look! That woman’s alive!”
“Grab the oars!”
Shy told himself what was happening. They were lost at sea, and nobody was coming to their rescue. Carmen flashed through his thoughts, and he pulled himself up to a sitting position and scanned the water, but it was too dark to make out faces.
Kevin was in the raft with him. Paolo. Marcus and Christian. Several passengers he vaguely recognized. The bodies floating near the raft were mostly on their stomachs, facedown, but a few held up their heads and beat the water with flailing arms and shouted for help.
Two jagged fingers of lightning lit up the sky.
Marcus and Christian were on opposite sides of the raft, digging oars into the choppy sea, propelling the boat toward a screaming woman. Paolo grabbed her by the arm, pulled her into the raft. Shy watched her curl into a fetal position in the water sloshing around at their feet. She looked up at him in shock.
Shy turned back to the rolling ocean, looking for someone else to help, looking for Carmen, Rodney. He saw mostly lifeless bodies and ship debris. Three lifeboats in the distance. He saw pieces of the shattered lifeboat, the bottom half still floating near the ship, which was now mostly underwater, the front end lit up in flames.
A passenger suddenly stood in the middle of the raft and shouted: “Row faster, goddamn it!”
Shy spun around, saw another huge wave roaring toward them, at least as big as the one that slammed the lifeboat against the ship. And all they had to withstand it was a wide-open twelve-man raft.
He started hyperventilating again.
“The other way!” Paolo shouted. “Turn it around! We have to make it over!”
Kevin and Christian spun the raft around, started rowing directly toward the rising wave, fast as they could, Shy gripping the raft handle, unable to take his eyes off the towering wall as it rose higher and higher before them, Paolo now shouting it down: “Come on, you son of a bitch!”
Kevin and Christian rowed and rowed until the colossal wave was directly in front of them, carrying their tiny raft up its steep, roaring face, Shy leaning forward with everyone else, clutching the raft handle, clenching every muscle in his body.
At the last minute, Kevin and Christian pulled in their oars and leaned forward, too, everyone yelling and Shy losing control of his bladder as the raft went nearly vertical with the cresting wave, spray battering his face.
They were suspended like that for what seemed like forever, all gravity vanishing and sounds disappearing, Shy holding his breath and trembling—then the raft slipped over the thick lip and rocketed down the other side, dropping into what seemed like a hole in the ocean and at such speed Shy’s whole body vibrated and he ducked his head down inside the raft to avoid being blown back into the growling giant.