Read The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth) for Free Online

water.
    “Elsie!”
    She pulled back the edge of the tarp.
    “Come on. She’s going to ride you up to the station. Show her where it is. She’ll come back for Daniel. I’ll watch over him until she gets back and we’ll pack up some food for tonight.”
    “Don’t bother. I been busy. It’s all packed, out here in the cockpit.”
    I looked past her. She had piled two large duffel bags and a Hefty Cinch Sack in the cockpit floor.
    “Then come on. Get going. The sooner you get out of here, the sooner we get everyone safe.”
    Daniel stared up at me from the cabin. He looked terrified.
    “I’m not leaving him here.” Elsie said stubbornly. “If he don’t go, I don’t go.”
    I cursed under my breath. “Then both of you get up here. He can sit on your lap.”
    Relief washed across his face.
    I reached down and pulled Elsie out, literally lifting her clear of the boat by a foot. Daniel scampered up behind her.  The instant his feet hit the dock, he wrapped his arms around her in a vise.
    Another gale-force blast of air hit the boat.
    “Let’s go,” I shouted , and began herding them toward the shore. The old woman couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. I wanted her and the boy off the dock before both ended up in the bay.
    The wind had to be blowing forty knots or better. At that speed, air starts to become a physical force, an invisible hand shoving, pushing, and trying to drag everything along with it. The terrifying aspects came from how it stole my senses, leaving me feeling as if I was groping along a topsy-turvy world, deafened and partially blind. My eyes burned from the spray whipped off the booming surf and torn from the tops of the waves. The wind roared in my ears, making anything but shouted voices impossible to hear.
    Kelly had retreated to the buggy. She waited anxiously while we made our way across the wooden causeway. Elsie slid into the passenger’s seat first. I lifted Daniel into her lap seconds later.
    He looked up at me, his eyes dark and unreadable.
    “That man, he makes me think of bats.”
    I stared at him.
    “What man?”
    He squinted into the wind and looked toward the water.
    “The man they can’t find.”
    Elsie hugged him tight.
    “Let Hill William go, Daniel. We don’t have time for nonsense.”
    His odd choice of words had me confused. I had no idea what he meant.
    Another gust slammed into the buggy, carrying fine particles of sand and debris that felt like tiny needles punching into my face.
    “Go!” I yelled at the girl in the driver’s seat. She needed no urging. The buggy leapt forward, spun for a moment in the loose sand, and lurched toward the little road that led up through the village.
    I waited until they were out of sight before I raced back to Angel . Elsie’s bags still lay in the cockpit floor. I groaned when I saw them. Snatching them up, I hurried back across the wooden planks and dumped them on the sand at the edge of the island.
    Back in the cabin, the physical assault lessened enough to catch my breath. Out of the wind, the noise dropped measurably. The boat however pitched and rocked, alternately pulling away from the dock until her mooring lines grew tight, then throwing herself back. Fenders took up most of the impact, but the sound of her sides scraping along the wooden rail made me wince.
    The radio hung from the cabin roof on the port side. I flicked the on-switch, waited until the numbers settled on the display and switched to Channel 16. Taking a deep breath, I thumbed the send button on the microphone.
    “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the sailing vessel Angel , Angel , Angel . My position is the old village of Portsmouth on the North Core Banks. My vessel is sound and in no immediate danger. We have a man lost in transit to Ocracoke.”
    I let go the send button. Static poured from the radio’s speakers. Thirty seconds later, I repeated the call, following procedure my father had grilled into me on a trip twenty years earlier. I