Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Dog Pound, Book #3 of the Janitors Series - Bye Bye boat.



Today’s excerpt is from Dog Pound, Book #3 of the nine-book Janitors Series.  Steve and Murgatroyd have to abandon ship.  Enjoy and have a great day.

m.j.

 

When he had closed to about half the distance between the two boats, the fire on the Freedom Express ate its way through to the engine room.  Soon the fuel tank erupted and the Freedom Express exploded into pieces.

Steve realized there was no way anyone could have lived through that explosion, but he reasoned that someone might have jumped overboard.  Therefore, he continued to steer toward the blazing remains of the boat.  However well-intentioned Steve was, he wasn’t rewarded for his concern for his fellow human beings.  As he drew near the site of the explosion, the first in a series of nearly impossible—and almost unbelievable—events occurred as the main mast from the Freedom Express slammed into the hull of the Dog Pound and punched a hole in her nearly two feet below the water line.

Steve was thrown to his knees by the force of the impact.  He managed to get himself back on his feet, then wondered what damage might have been done to his boat.  Water was pouring into the engine room, and in short order Steve realized he had a problem.  The engine died.   With no power, he realized he was in real trouble.  He also realized there was no need to continue to steer the boat because he was totally at the mercy of the sea.

Just as he had that thought, the small hand-held fire extinguisher in the bridge broke loose from its brackets and started bouncing around like a ping-pong ball.  After smashing into the boat’s radio, it slammed into Steve’s shoulder and bounced off his head.  Stunned, he fell to the deck just as a large wave plowed into him.  But for his safety line, he would have been washed overboard.

The cold water did snap him fully conscious, however, and he crawled away from the bridge until he reached the end of the safety line.  After resetting it, he again realized the Dog Pound without power was no match for the violent sea.

That thought in mind, he headed for the engine room.  One look told him all he needed to know.  With no wasted motions, he wrestled the large life raft he kept aboard over to the side of the boat, made sure the safety line he used was securely tightened to both the raft and a cog on the boat, then tossed the raft over the side as he pulled the release mechanism that caused the raft to inflate, even as it fell to the sea.  Struggling against the rolling deck, Steve commenced to load the raft with as much as he could.

His actions were swift—as swift as safety allowed—and sure, while at the same time careful and well thought out, being sure to keep the safety line attached, except in those brief moments when he was affixing it to another bracket.  There was no panic in his hurried movements, and absolutely no thought was given to what had caused his dilemma.  His boat was sinking, why didn’t matter.

If someone had told him that the hole in the Dog Pound had been caused because he had been attempting to rescue two awful human beings like Oscar and Henry, he more than likely would have said something like, “So what?  It was the right thing to do.”

Nor did he have any thoughts along the line of “Why me?”  That simply wasn’t in his make-up.  When he lost his wife, he never once had said or thought about his loss.  His concern had been for her loss of life, a life she had thoroughly enjoyed.  While he missed her terribly, she had suffered the real loss.

While Steve had great sympathy for survivors who lost loved ones, he never thought to put himself in that category—because of his feelings about Polly’s loss.  That part of his character had probably been ingrained in him by an uncle who had lost an arm in an accident.  That uncle had come out of the hospital and found a job a one-armed man could do.  He’d never looked back, never mentioned his loss…simply learned how to do things with one arm.  In many regards, that was the persona of Steve Bettencourt.

  With no thought about the how or why of his situation, Steve diligently kept at his task.  All the food he put into the raft was of the canned variety—except Murgatroyd’s big bag of dog food.  The loading process went rather smoothly after Steve got the hang of it.  He would simply wait for the boat to roll toward the raft—which would then be nearly level with the boat—and easily place the particular item he had at that time into the raft.  The raft was outfitted with a tarpaulin-type cover, which Steve unzipped—with great difficulty—each time he wanted to put more into the raft.  That way he was able to keep the raft from filling with too much water and avoided having a sloshing mess when he finally got into it.  After he put a small toolbox into the raft, Steve felt he had as much as he needed and decided it was time to abandon ship.

While he had been loading the raft, he noticed that the Dog Pound was getting lower and lower in the water as it filled up.  His last act was to go get Murgatroyd.  She wasn’t a happy dog as he picked her up and carried her out into the rainy night.  She had little choice but to go along as Steve had her firmly under his arm.

He timed the next wave perfectly and stepped into the raft, quickly set Murgatroyd down, undid the line holding the raft to the boat, and, with heavy heart, waved goodbye to his boat as the two vessels soon parted.  When he was sure he was well clear of the boat, he zipped the raft cover closed above him and settled in to ride out the storm.

 

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