Chapter 2
“What’s happening?” one of them demanded, screaming and crying in desperation.
“We’re going down!” he answered breathlessly as he struggled to release the first woman he came to. He felt a slight relief as he heard the click of the lock holding the chains around her wrists in place. He shook the lock free and tossed it away. “Go up the ladder, run for the side and jump off. The shore is near. Don’t stop no matter what you see or hear.”
“What’s up there?” she asked.
“Just jump over the side. Don’t stop,” he repeated.
“Gracie, do what he says. He cared enough to come after us, he wouldn’t send us to die if that’s what’s going to happen anyway.”
Gracie looked at the woman chained on the next row over. “You’re right, Delia. Godspeed to you all. May we all make it to freedom.” She rose to her feet and started for the ladder Ridley had come down.
Ridley in the meantime had managed to free another woman.
“Wait! I’m coming with you!” she cried.
Gracie looked back at her. “Hurry it up, then!”
The second woman did her best to catch up with Gracie and followed her toward the ladder. By the time she was halfway up the ladder, looking up at Gracie about to go through the hatch, several more women were at the bottom of the ladder and starting their climb up.
“Hurry up!” the last of them demanded, slapping at the feet of the woman above her.
“I’m going,” another answered, clinging to the ladder and moving as quickly as she could, with every woman below her only a rung apart as they gave all they had to try to survive.
Just as the last one cleared the top and Ridley moved over the next row of women, the ship listed, throwing Ridley off his feet and causing him to loose hold of the ring of keys. “The keys! I’ve lost the keys!” he shrieked horrified that he’d lost the only way to free them in the shallow, filthy water they all sat chained in.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, as he splashed hopelessly in the water, searching for the keys. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Keep looking. You can’t stop looking!” the woman called Delia ordered.
“I’m trying,” he said, almost in tears.
“Look over closer to the lowest part. They may have slid there under the water!” another woman suggested.
“And hurry up, that we might have a chance!” Delia demanded. This one, Delia, was the oldest of all the women, and was always the most difficult to deal with. She never cried and begged, instead standing strong, advising them all nonstop of exactly what fate would befall them as soon as she had the ear of someone in power. It was many a time the captain had ordered her gagged, and even thought of throwing her overboard more often than not. Only the threat of not delivering the exact number of females promised kept him from doing so.
Splashing around in the water he jumped to his feet suddenly, holding the key ring above his head. “I’ve got them! I’ve got them!” he shouted triumphantly.
“Release us!” Delia shouted. “Hurry before it’s too late!”
“I am. I’m trying. I’m so very sorry, ladies. I didn’t know you were here until I was already aboard the ship. I’m sorry,” he muttered, as he finished freeing another woman and moved on to the next.
“Can you not move faster? Did you hear me? I said to release us! Release us this minute!” the older woman demanded, attempting to slam her hands on the wooden floor at her sides and instead splashing the water that was pooling around her. The rattling of the chains that wrapped around her wrists, holding her in place, reminding the young man as well as herself that time was of the essence.
“What do you think I’m doing, woman?!” he snapped, stopping in his attempt to take the chains off the wrists of another.
“Do you not see me doing all I can?!”
She glared at him for a moment, the fear tainting her features beneath her bold facade. “Then do it faster!” she practically hissed at him.
The cry of the raptors up above the now opened hatch carried down into the hold, mixing with the sounds of the storm and the waves crashing above them.
“What is that?!” Delia asked, her face turned up toward the stormy sky peeking through the hatch above them.
“It’s the worst nightmare you’ve ever seen. Raptors from hell, big as two grown men, come to pick us off one by one, as if the storm wasn’t enough to kill us and send us to the ocean floor to face eternity with the fishes.”
“We can’t go up there!” another sobbed, shrinking away from the ladder that would take her to the deck if she bothered to climb it, since her wrists were already free.
“Then you’ll drown with the ship of your own free will. I’ll not be responsible for you then. At least I’ve given you the chance, I’ll not die with your deaths on my conscience.”
“Just release us…” Delia said, raising her chin defiantly. Her hands lifted from the wooden interior surface of the ship she and the others had been locked in for weeks. Unable to bring her hands together in front of her, she shook them out at her sides with the little leeway of movement she’d been allowed. Her eyes, accustomed to the dark after seeing nothing but since she’d awakened in the hold with the others, took notice of the three inches or more of water that had spilled into the hold since Ridley had unlocked and raised the hatch. This was nothing like the bucketfuls of water the crew poured down over them to ‘clean’ them from time to time. This was catastrophic. As the very thought cleared her mind, another wave crashed across the open hold, spilling down onto the women.
“We’re going to die!” one of them shrieked.
Others sobbed, but none of those already freed ventured up the ladder.
“It’ll be fine. Go up the ladder to the deck. Save yourselves,” Delia said.
“For what? To have some monster carry us away?” another asked.
“You’ll have more chance if you get out of this miserable hole!” Delia insisted passionately.
“Does it matter?” another shouted angrily through her tears. “We die now, or we die later! There’s no other outcome. I’d just as soon die now!”
“None of us are going to die! We’ll find a way.”
“We’ll all die either down here, or up there!”
“Yes, you will, with that attitude! Never give up! Do you hear me? Never stop fighting! Whatever you must concede, concede it, and live to fight another day. There is always a way to survive!”
“I’d rather die here, at peace, with prayers to our savior on my lips,” the weepiest of them all, Patricia, declared, her voice barely heard.
“If that is your choice, so be it. It is not my choice,” Delia said, watching the boy, just barely shy of being a man, work on the chains binding her. Her heart raced and she dared to embrace hope as she heard the click of the lock and raised her now free hand in the air, stretching her sore, stiff muscles as he began working on the next. “Come on, boy. Hurry up. I will not lose my life in this miserable place when I have the chance to fight for it above.”
“I’m trying,” he said, working feverishly at the lock on her other wrist.
Another deluge of ocean water rained down on them, causing all of them to scatter and hold their breath. Delia, the last to be freed, turned her body sideways to better weather the ocean waves soaking them from the open hold. She rested her still shackled wrist on the wooden beam at her back, and turned her face toward that side of the ship.
The ship listed again, throwing most of the women already freed against the opposite inside wall of the ship.
One of them, a plump, and Delia suspected delightful female under other circumstances, grasped the ladder and looked back at them all struggling to remain on their feet as the water dissipated.
“Yes! That’s it, Bettina. Go! Go and jump over the side. Swim, Bettina! Swim harder than you’ve ever swum before! You’ll make it!”
Bettina climbed up three rungs and looked back down hesitantly. “But…”
“Go, I’ll be right behind you!” Delia insisted.
Ridley fought against the rusted lock holding the last chain on Delia’s wrist, until finally the key he was using snapped off in the lock itself.
Delia’s gaze lifted slowly to his when she realized what had just happened. She swallowed calmly, her emotions well in check. “Go now, young man. You’ve done all you can. Take them with you,” she said, lifting her chin to indicate the seven women huddled at the bottom of the ladder, still too afraid to follow Bettina up and out of the hold.
Ridley stared at the lock still holding the oldest of all of them in place. His mouth agape, he took in the sight of the water that now stood at least five inches deep around her body where she sat, then finally looked into her eyes.
“You tried. It’s okay. Go before you can’t,” Delia said, blinking away a sudden rush of unexpected tears.
“No!” Ridley shouted angrily. “I will not have it!” he declared, and dropped to his knees inspecting the lock more closely through the water.
“It’s no use now,” she said.
“You, you hold your arm just like that,” he said, arranging her wrist just on the corner of the beam she was chained to, leaving the lock hanging barely over the edge. “Don’t move it! Do you hear?” he demanded, then got to his feet. He lifted his leg and brought his boot down on the lock, once, twice, then three times.
A pinging sound was heard, and both he and Delia, who’d looked away to protect her eyes if the lock or chain broke, looked hopefully at the lock.
Delia’s breath caught when she saw the slight separation between the shackle bar and the latch plate. She released a desperate sob as Ridley knelt in the water again and tried to force the lock to open the rest of the way.
His stomping of it had broken the old lock at its most rusted part. He glanced quickly around the hold for something to use to insert into the break in the lock and pry it apart. His gaze fell on one of the old metal plates he’d forgotten to collect after bringing them food that morning. He grabbed it and brought it back, forcing its edge into the split in the lock. He used all his strength to press it into the slight split in the metal, then stood up and raised his foot to bring it down on the plate wedged into the lock again. But he hesitated, his foot in the air looking askance at Delia.
“I die here, or I survive with an injured arm… stomp it!” she demanded.
Ridley brought his booted foot down, a creak of metal was heard.
Delia screamed, then Ridley was beside her, removing the chain and dropping the broken lock into the water. He helped Delia stand, then over to the ladder where he got her started on the first rung as she held her injured arm with her other hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said, putting his shoulder under her bottom and lifting her up to the next rung.
“Stop apologizing and get the rest of these women up this ladder!” Delia snapped through her tears.
“Get up the ladder! Get up the damned ladder!” Ridley shouted, jumping back down into the water and splashing his way around the hold, shooing them all toward Delia.
She jumped down to make room for them all to go first.
The women all started up the ladder, the first of them stopping just before she stepped out onto the deck. “I’m afraid to go out there!” she sobbed as the sound of screeches and the terrifying peals of raptors soaring overhead cut through the howling of the wind and rain.
“Go out there or I’ll wring your bloody neck myself!” Delia screamed.
The second girl in line urged the first up and out, then followed her right away. The rest were right behind them, until finally there was none left except for Delia and Ridley.
“I’ll help you out,” Ridley said, waiting for her to step onto the ladder again.
“I can do it. Just make sure I don’t fall back using only the one arm.”
“I’m sorry I hurt your arm,” he said as they started up the ladder with him up against her to make sure she didn’t fall back.
“You need to stop wasting time apologizing so much and concentrate on doing what you need to do!”
“I’m trying. I really am,” he said, his voice belying his near panic.
“You’ve done well. Don’t stop now,” she said, taking pity on him. He was after all, just barely old enough to be out on his own.