Chapter 36 Ore
Chapter 36
Ore
Ore woke up with a start and an immediate sense that something was wrong. At first she couldn’t work out where she was and the static sound of the TV added to her disorientation. Right. Yes, I’m on the boat. But that realisation was not comforting in the least. It meant that the room swaying was most probably not in her head. She scrambled for the robe on the back of her door, but lost her balance as the cabin jerked suddenly, sending her shoulders plummeting into the plush carpet. She decided crawling was best.
Next she made her way to the windows, pulled the curtains, and then immediately wished she hadn’t. Through the glass, which now didn’t seem at all sufficient, a black and angry sky stormed intermittently. The nightmarish scene was punctuated by washes of ink. It took Ore a moment to compute that that was the sea and when she did, she felt sick to her stomach. She was no expert but she was pretty sure the waves shouldn’t have been reaching up that far; she was on the mid deck …
Ore had never been in a situation where the possibility of death felt so looming. No longer was her brain at the wheel; instead she felt like a passenger in her own body, a body that was hell-bent on staying alive.
The floor see-sawed erratically but she managed to get to the door. All the lights in the corridor flickered a ghoulish green and it was eerily silent. She laid her hands flat on the wall for support but a sudden sway sent her flying sideways and there was an almost deafening shattering sound as she hit the ground. Confused, she rolled herself onto her other side. Her white bathrobe was soaked in blood. For the first time since she’d woken up she felt a cold sweat of panic prick the back of her neck.
She gingerly ran her hand up her side and winced as she hit a tender patch on her side. She pulled back the robe, but there was only a small scratch on her belly. It only occurred to her in that moment to look at what she’d fallen onto. Seeping into the threads of the carpet were trails of oozing deep brown liquid, and then nestled on top, a steak.
Ore laughed out loud and the sound bounced off the walls. That must have been her dinner. She guessed Carlos had left it outside her room when she was asleep. It was not her blood soaking the robe, but that from a medium-rare ribeye. It looked delicious, she thought, before another violent tip brought her back into the moment. On closer inspection the scratch seemed the result of the smashed plate scraping across her skin. It wouldn’t be this that killed her, she thought wryly.
Ore began dragging herself along the corridor. In moments of calm she would get to her feet, still keeping her body low to the floor in a sort of crouch, and try and cover as much ground as she could before the boat was thrown once again by the waves. As if on autopilot, she made her way up to the top deck. The stairs were particularly perilous, and it took what felt like an age to get to the top.
Finally she found herself outside the door of the wheelhouse. Her body had sought out the safest place on the boat, as close to Daniel as she could get.
She braced as the impact on the left side of the boat sent the wall to her right into a horizontal lunge, and then moving with the momentum on the way back up, she lurched for the handle and fell through the doorway.
‘What the hell!’ It was Dudley, and he sounded agitated. Worse than that, he sounded scared.
From her position on the floor she could see Daniel, sitting at the helm, eyes trained straight ahead and seemingly calmly adjusting various dials in front of him.
‘Who is it?’ he asked, not turning round, and without a hint of Dudley’s panic in his voice.
‘It’s our errant reporter,’ Dudley said dismissively, before turning his attention back to the small screen in front of him.
‘Ore,’ Daniel breathed, as if in a sigh of relief, ‘are you OK?’ He was still looking straight ahead, but Ore reasoned that it was definitely for the best. She was about to answer when a sheet of whistling black sea washed across the entire pane of the windshield.
‘Holy Christ, mother of God,’ Dudley exclaimed. ‘How the hell have we found ourselves in the middle of this, Captain?’
‘It’ll be fine, Dudley; we just need to ride her out.’ Daniel’s voice was steady, but Ore was sure she could detect an edge to it, as though he were trying to convince himself as much as Dudley.
‘Why are we even in this mess? Weren’t you in charge of charting? Annie would have never got us into this situation.’
‘Annie isn’t here.’ Daniel’s tone had turned steelier. ‘I am in charge of this boat now.’
Dudley huffed, exasperated, but he didn’t answer.
A radio crackled to life. ‘ Thalassa , do you copy?’ The voice sounded distant, and Ore felt acutely aware of how far away from anything they were. In the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night. What had possessed her to accept this assignment?
Dudley lunged for the radio. ‘Copy, we’re at minus 18.2871, 147.6992, sailing through violent storm.’
That didn’t sound good.
‘Charting east,’ Dudley clarified.
‘You’re around fifty-five nautical miles from the reef. Chart west to reach calmer waters,’ came the urgent voice.
‘Captain?’ Dudley turned to Daniel, who remained silent. ‘Captain!’ Dudley repeated. ‘This isn’t some ego test; you don’t have to prove anything to Chuck. You need to get this boat to safer waters.’ Dudley was pleading now.
Ore kept her eyes on the back of Daniel’s head, the whole room holding its breath.
‘Copy, charting west,’ Daniel said finally, and Dudley let out a loud sigh.
For a few moments the only sounds were the waves crashing and Dudley typing. Ore didn’t dare make a sound. Maybe she’d been wrong to come here. She scooped herself into a ball on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, and focused on her breathing. She looked up at the clock hanging in the corner of the room: 2.31 a.m.