Page 9

Chapter 9

Morse Code

Sam

“For Pete’s sake, Penny. I fucking love you, but you need to calm your shit down. There are birds outside. I know you like birds. But just stop.” I’m exhausted. Penny has been out of her mind. I had to keep her in my cabin yesterday while I worked tracing the electrical issue to bypass the motherboard. I had repaired a wire that the damn saboteur cut as well. Yes, I should work on the radios some more. But I’m not a fucking engineer. There’s nothing in the manuals. And Penny. Even when I went to sleep, she was going crazy. I went as far to grab a pair of the engine room earmuffs. Lumpy as hell to sleep in. But when your dog goes completely batshit? What am I supposed to do? I’m fucking exhausted. There are five hundred things I could do. And none of them have worked.

She jumps up onto my chest and licks my face.

“What in the hell has gotten into you?” I crouch and rub her ears. “You want to go play with the ball?” I glance outside. It’s low tide. Our whole five feet of sandy beach is exposed. I try to take her out every other day. It’s a battle. She hates the vest and the ocean. Hates being in the water. Retrievers and poodles are supposed to love the water, but not her. It’s most likely because my ex’s parents had a Shiba Inu when Penny was a puppy. They hate water, and Penny thought that dog was Taylor Swift and Oprah combined. “Fine, you want to go outside and run in the sand? Roll in some seaweed?” I wouldn’t mind standing on some land myself. Even if the tidal sand is mushy. Being on terra-mostly-firma feels good. It makes me almost believe there might be a way out of all of this. I grab a few balls and put them in the back of my wet shorts.

I’d planned on checking the collision patch anyway. It’s holding well, at least as of two days ago. Even still, the engine room is wet and I’ve been spending a few hours a day bailing. Fucking not fun. I certainly don’t love it. I’m not going to lie. But it’s keeping a roof over our heads until I can figure out how to get one of the damn radios working. So far, I’ve got nothing.

I check the solar battery panel on the back of the boat. The ones built into the ship were fried with the lightning strike. But one I found in the crew cabins works when the ship is in the sun. Which isn’t often with the damn cliff blocking it for most of the day.

“Let’s go, Penny.” I snap her life vest on. She hates it. But it’s the only way I’m getting her to shore. It would be a much shorter swim if I could get her to jump off the bow. But yeah. That’s not happening. No way she would ever do it, and the reef isn’t far enough under this to not be in danger of hitting it again. As it is, I’m adjusting the ropes every day. There’s a sweet spot. At least it’s been a sweet spot so far. I jump off the back and hold her leash. Some days I have to give her the slightest of tugs to get her in the water. Though not today. She splashes in like a toddler on a hot summer day.

“Who are you and what have you done with my dog?”

She’s paddling with all her might toward the beach. Most days I have to part carry her, part tug her. Crazy. “Okay, slow down, you.” But she’s not listening. Her feet are on the sand. Before I get there, she shakes off the water. The vest rattles, and she sits and barks again.

“Enough with the barking, Penny. Cool it.”

She glances back at me and then at the cliff.

“I told you, you can’t get those birds... what the hell is that?” There’s a piece of fabric hanging down from the cliff. I crank my neck back, but all I see is the white cloth flapping in the breeze. My head goes to possible answers. A helium balloon seems to be the most reasonable. Or a bird building a nest with trash. Like a really big bird. I glance up. I fucking don’t need to be shat on by something that is big enough to haul that up there.

“What is it, Penny? Is that what you’ve been barking at? I take back all those horrible things I said about you. Well, most of them.” I scratch behind her ears and take the ball out of my pocket. “You want this?”

She looks at me and then at the cliff and back at the ball. Her head cocks. I can hear her saying humans are so stupid. Then she jumps and runs, and I throw the ball—for a good hour, until our little bit of sand disappears for another twelve hours. “Time to go, girl. We’ll play ball again tomorrow.”

Penny takes another look at the thing on the cliff before we head back. I yank her up onto the swim platform. She’s a sixty-pound wiggling dog with another twenty pounds of water stuck in her goldendoodle fur, equal to 200 pounds by my math. Then again, I did feed her almost a whole chicken a day for a few weeks. It’s possible she’s up ten pounds. I strip the life vest off and take her towel from the back of the deck. After the crew left, while the boat listed along for a while, I tried to keep the boat guest ready. Then I snapped. Threw almost every damn horse statue overboard. All but the few that are keeping Penny’s pee pad from sliding off the back from a wave. Though the few big waves we’ve had over the aft have cleaned things up a bit.

“You ready for dinner?”

She gives a happy bark. It’s like now that I’ve seen the thing hanging off the cliff, she’s happy enough to go about her day. “It’s back to kibble for you, girl.” The fresh food is mostly gone. But she doesn’t mind. I’ve moved her things to the chef’s galley. I let her eat while I go out back and scrub my plates from yesterday in the ocean. I watch some reef fish grab at the few grains of rice that drift off my plate. And it’s crazy. It sounds like someone is singing. That happened once before. In the first week, I found an old school mp3 player in one of the crew cabins. In the rolling waves, something had slid and clicked it on. But damn, I really thought I’d gone through the entire ship, that I’d collected everything I could find. I stand up and wipe my hands on my beach towel.

Penny’s done by the time I eat half a can of beans from the can. I drink some water. I’m done with the tequila and the whiskey too. I lost a good few days to them. No, I need to go back to the electrical. Then I remember the thing on the cliff. In the wheelhouse, I grab my binoculars. The sun is starting to go down. Another hour and I’ll light a few candles and spend some time reading the oh-so-not-thrilling ship manuals. It’s an exciting life.

I pull on my crew warm-up jacket too and head out to the bow. I bring binoculars to my eyes. It’s not a balloon or trash. It’s cloth. That’s... I put the binoculars down and look at my chest. Then I look at the white flapping fabric again. My heart thuds. What, how? That’s a Rock Candy crew jacket in the middle of a cliff. Did one of the rafts land here? Did they fall from the cliff? Did a rogue wave carry debris up? I shake my head at the last one. Impossible, without a tidal wave, and that’s something I would have known about. I focus on the jacket. There’s a hole next to it. It’s not big, but it’s there. “How in the hell?” I scan to the top of the cliff. It rises another fifty feet. Then a light flashes. A mirror catching the last of the setting sun.

“I’m here.” I wave. Like they can fucking see me. I don’t know who it is. Or which raft, the first or second to launch. Honestly, I only know that Calvin, Dante, Zane, and Haley were on the second raft.

The mirror drops, and Rocky’s son Easton’s head appears. Which raft was he on? I have no idea. He waves his hand excitedly but then is gone. Fuck, fuck, fuck . I race into the wheelhouse and find the strongest of the flashlights I have and run back to the bow. I lift the binoculars to the hole in the cliff. I’m hoping to see either Calvin or Anders poke their heads out. Either one of them should know morse code. It’s not required for certification anymore. But both of them are the type to go above and beyond.

My heart waits for the next beat. Part of me wants it to be Anders, which would mean Haley is safe. Or at least floating somewhere in the middle of the ocean. The other part wants to see the raft with Calvin, because with enough time, I know the two of us can get the Rock Candy going good enough to get her to limp to port. And that’s all we need. Or a fucking radio. A radio would be amazing.

Nothing.

Finally, there’s a little movement. And it’s neither Calvin nor Anders but Dante the chef. I make a mental tally—Zane, Calvin, and Haley. Haley. Fuck, I want her safely back on the mainland. At least she’s not drifting in a raft.

Dante flashes a flashlight that’s on its last bit of power. At first, I assume he’s just randomly flipping it on and off. But no. He’s using code.

dit dah dit dit / dit dit / dit dit dit dah /dit / dah dit dah dit / dit dah / dah dah / dit dah dah dit / dah / dah dah dah / dit dah dah / dit / dit dit dit / dah

Okay, okay. I look down at the beach. Five camps to the west. Five. Easton, Dante, Calvin, Zane, and Haley. Five.

I glare at the wall.

I send back: O-K. Then I pause. I haven’t gotten the inflatable together yet. There had been no reason to.

I hold the binoculars up, and Dante gives me a big thumbs up. And starts signaling again.

Bring... then his head disappears. I can just hear the chef murmuring. He’s yelling at Easton and whomever is with him.

He’s back. “S-P-I-C-E-S, B-L-A-N-K-E-T-S, S-O-A-P, L-U—” He’s gone again.

But then he’s back. And fuck, I should be writing this down. C-L-O-T-H-E-S, C-H-E-F K-N-I-V-E-S, R-A-Z-O-R-S, S-H-A-M-P-O-O, T-O-I-L-E-T-R-I-E-S, T-O-O-L-K-I-T, T-H-E W-H-O-L-E D-A-M-N B-O-A-T.

I signal back. “Will try.” He gives me a big thumbs up.

I’ve thought about inflating the spare inflatable for a while. But I haven’t had the need to. I lost one of the inflatable docks to the sharp rocks on the reef. I figured if there was anyone on this island, I would have seen them by now. The only reason to leave the ship would be if I needed something, which I haven’t. I debate if I should gather all the things on Easton’s shopping list. Their camp might not be close by, and if it’s not, it could take a lot of trips back and forth. Plus, with six of us living on Rock Candy, we would run out of water quickly. No, if they’ve made camp, it’s better I bring supplies to them for now. Then we can figure out how to fix the Rock Candy and finally get off this hunk of rock. I look up at where Dante is, but he’s gone. Probably to the west, going back to tell the others.

Excitement bubbles inside me. It’s like the first day of charter or pulling off an amazing docking. This is going to be good. Oh, so good. We’re going to get her running and out of here.