He had jumped into the water and was trying to swim away. Behind him the hull of the ship cracked and shrieked as it burned out on the water, groaning like a great metal dog about to drown amidst the bubbling cauldron of noise and sound.
Amongst jagged framework and debris he tried to swim, kicking furiously and gasping and waving and reaching out for anything that he could find, fingers clutching out like two fragile skeleton hands up from the dirt, slowly circling around, the air bubbling, wind spurring across the wreckage. Someone clawed out at him in a rising wave, disappearing underneath.
The pearl gray sky cracked and shot out, thunder bellowing down over the scattered crew of the freighter as it bottomed up with a horrible groan. He struggled for air, thrashing out amongst the autumn leaves he’d collected for his daughter while in Boston, each one the colors of flame and fire.
He managed to grasp the ruined carcass of some part of the ship, somehow pulling himself upwards until his head was above the waves, but then slipping off back into the water, which way is up, everything looks the same, feels cold, all just dreary reflections as the storm raged around him, until finally he clasped onto someone’s hand and he could breathe and he turned furiously only to find that he was staring into the eyes of a dead man.
He wrapped his arms around the floating dead mans waist and hoisted himself up again as the waves came against him harder and harder and the wind whipped him and tossed him. Each spark of lightning lit up his dire circumstance like a tiny distant explosion, and in one of these blasts he caught a glimpse of the sinking, burning ship behind him.
Alone and scattered they each washed ashore in the dimness and were bloody and broken and crying out for each other but against the massive sounds of the storm their voices became puny and unheard. They struggled to their feet shivering and desperately trying to collect whatever they could from the water as the bodies of their comrades floated blank and dead along the shoreline, mingling with the logs and the wires. Someone saw him floating there on his back where the water was only waist deep and ran to him and reached and pulled his unconscious body back towards the shore.
Farther out in the water the hull cracked and things exploded as the ships lights flickered a final time and died and there was suddenly a blast of color and light and metal and the ship was gone with an underwater blast that shook the ground and sent shrapnel and swinging ropes and sharp fragments falling all over them on the shore like a meteor shower.
Most who washed ashore that night were already dead and the survivors stripped them of their clothes and bags and some began to carry the bodies off towards the far end of the beach while the rest searched the shoreline and the water for any other item that had survived the wreck. Several hours passed before the thunder and the lightning faded and the wind died down and there was only a hard rain that lasted and dawn came gray and unwelcoming and with no sun or warmth.
He woke up and for a moment forgot where he was but then suddenly there was a terrible throbbing coming from all over his head and he could think of nothing else but to scream and cover his face and clench his eyes shut because the pain was so horrible and as he kicked against the sand rolling over violently some of the others began to call out to each other and they ran over to him and crouched at his side in the sand and held him down as he kicked and shoved against them like a prisoner about to be punished with needles and they were all screaming at him and at each other and as their voices all blended he passed out again.
“This way to the end, of the beach,” someone said in the half-blur of incomplete consciousness, their voices strange and blurry.
“My eyes,”
“We’ve gotta drag this sonofabitch to the end of the beach.”
*
In his dream he was stumbling through the desert wearing rags and he was unshaven and dirty and called out for God to save him. Spread out before him the mountains were awkward and stubby as if a small child using only his thumb dipped into a cup of wet pastels had drawn them and then crushed the paper and threw it into the desert. Time suddenly moved as time often does in dreams and he was still in the desert but now surrounded by artifacts of war and a large gathering of rich aristocrats wearing suits and dresses slow dancing to a string quartet playing on the stage of a crashed airplane hull. He was still in his rags and after a moment they all turned to him smiling and raised their glasses of champagne and then abruptly there was a great wind and in the distance he saw the mushroom cloud.
*
During the first morning many of them perished from the cold or from their wounds and their bodies were laid at the far end of the beach next to the ones that they themselves had earlier carried. It was snowing and freezing and from the sky with the snow came the ashes that were almost constantly falling.
They spent all day digging holes in the sand to sleep in and many stripped naked and burrowed far down into the sand and buried their clothes to try to dry them. Someone had pulled him into one of these holes and when he woke up he found himself dark and stripped almost naked and somehow warm and for a moment he wondered if he had died and somehow been reincarnated as a child still in its mother’s womb. When he heard the coughing and struggling of those around him he began to remember what had happened but the throbbing in his head was too strong and so he lay his head back down, aching.
The woman was screaming. He assumed it was night because of the darkness but someone flipped a tarpaulin sheet above the hole and the ugly grayness of daylight fell in onto him and so did the snow covering the tarp and the stinging cold and he saw that there was a handful of others smothered and huddled together with him in the hole. The screaming woman was clenching onto her stomach with both hands and her teeth were gritting and she was trying to get up but she couldn’t and he saw that through her fingers the blood was pouring out and she was cut open.
He tried to sit up but the throbbing was becoming more violent every time he woke up. The other men in the hole were arguing and yelling about the dying woman and they shoved each other and there was cussing and cursing and all the while the woman was sinking slowly lower and lower towards the her knees and her screams turned to moans and then after that into whimpers and as he fell back asleep the arguing had stopped and he heard nothing.
The next time he awoke he was in the hole alone and he was shivering, his fingernails clawing at himself. He grunted and coughed up blood and struggled onto all fours like a dying naked dog and knew he would be sick but knew there was nothing inside him. He stayed like that for what seemed like hours, and still there was no one. Finally he managed to rise to his knees, his head brushing the tarpaulin sheet. He reached upwards and struggled to lift his arm. He managed to flip the sheet across the hole and the dead gray daylight blinded him and surprised him and he fell backwards into the hole and cried out.
After a time he struggled, crawling, upwards out of the hole the others had dug in the beach. He squinted and clenched his eyes shut and opened them again and surveyed the land.
To the right was the sea, clammy and unwelcoming and bringing with every wave a terrible wind that seemed to scream in his face and forsake his body. He turned trembling and saw scattered remnants of clothes and belongs strewn up the shoreline. To the left the sand went upwards along a gentle slope towards a valley of dead tall grass and then beyond that were bare woods littered with skinny branchless trees. It was snowing. He rose slowly on his aching legs to his feet and began to walk, limping.
He walked towards the first small pile of ruined clothing, seeing no bodies or debris from his shipwreck everywhere. He found a sweater, somewhat dry but caked in sand, and slid it over his freezing torso. He continued on.
About 40 yards down the beach he saw another blue tarpaulin sheet and he assumed it was covering a hole similar to the one he had just pulled himself out of. He began to trot. He yelled and as he did he stopped running and placed both hands on his knees from the pain in his throat. He picked his head up and yelled again and then coughed up blood onto the sand and realized for the first time how ridiculous he must look; wearing only a ruined, tattered sweater and nothing else. It snowed harder.
He caught his breath and continued to trot towards the tarp. He knelt down and lifted the loose end furiously, expecting to find the other survivors. There were none, at least not here. All he found was another hole, about 3 feet deep and 8 or 9 feet wide. He slowly stepped into the hole and found one of the lenses fro ma pair of binoculars and a navy skullcap. He put it on and grasped onto the looking glass piece and stepped back up out of the hole and looked around and continued down the beach.
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