Dead Calm Read Online Free Page A

sick—at least, I wasn’t so far. I got the medicine kit out and started through the first-aid handbook that came with it. It was no help; there wasn’t anything about food poisoning in it at all, just a lot of jazz about what to do if somebody swallows lye or iodine or something, and how to treat burns and fainting spells and broken bones.
    “By ten o’clock Lillian was beginning to have the same symptoms, the fuzzy vision and difficulty in swallowing or talking. The breeze had died out, and it was like an oven below deck with the sun beating down. Russ and Estelle were having trouble breathing. I gave up pawing through the medicines long enough to rig an awning over the cockpit, intending to move them up there, but by now they were too sick to make it up the ladder. I couldn’t carry them, not with the boat rolling the way she was, lying becalmed. I rigged wind-chutes, which was stupid, because there wasn’t a breath of air moving, but by this time I was so panicky I didn’t know what I was doing. I gave them the turista pills, and aspirin, and paregoric, and I don’t remember what else, but by noon neither Russ nor Estelle could swallow anything any more. They couldn’t even talk. All they could do was he there and fight for breath.
    “Russ died a little after three in the afternoon. I hadn’t thought there could be anything more horrible in the world than standing there listening to the two of them fighting for breath in that stifling cabin and not being able to do anything to help them, but there was. It was when I realized that only one of them was making that noise now; Russ had stopped. Which meant there was no hope for the others either. Estelle was unconscious by that time, so she didn’t know he was dead. Lillian was still conscious and just beginning to fight for breath, but she was in our cabin, aft of the doghouse, so she didn’t know either.
    “Then Estelle died, less than an hour after Russ. The rest of the day is kind of mixed up and run together; I can only remember crazy pieces of it—Lillian asking me how the others were, and I’d say I’d go see, and I’d go into the forward cabin where they were both dead and then come back and say they were getting much better now and that she’d be over the worst of it in a little while. Then I’d go out of the cabin to pray, so she wouldn’t see me. I remember going up on deck once; maybe it would work better up there in the open. I hadn’t prayed for anything since I was a kid, and I guess I didn’t know how; it struck me once that it seemed like I was trying to negotiate with God, or strike a bargain, or something. I kept saying two of them were gone, couldn’t He leave one?
    “Lillian died a little after six. When the sound of her breathing stopped, the silence was like something screaming in my ears, and I let go of her and ran up on deck and the sun was just going down. The sky was red in the west, and the sea was like blood, and everywhere there was that terrible silence that went on and on and on as if it was pressing in on me from all around the horizon…” Warriner dropped his face in his hands.
    Tears were overflowing Rae’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” Ingram said, conscious at the same time of something that disturbed him. It was the word theatrical intruding on the perimeter of his mind, and he was angry with himself at this apparent callousness. Try it on your own stiff upper lip, he thought, before you throw any rocks; try ten days of it without hearing another voice and you might get a little purple about it too. He wished uncomfortably that he could think of something to add to the simple “I’m sorry,” but nothing was going to help the boy except the passage of time. He reached toward the ignition key to start the engine. “But we’d better shag over there and see if we can salvage some of your gear before she goes under.”
    Warriner shook his head. “There’s nothing worth going after. It’s all ruined by the