Skeleton crews were sent to lock down the platforms just as their regular workers were sent back to the mainland to weather the storm at home. But as the hurricane got close and its powerful winds churned the ocean below, something began to stir under the ocean floor.
At the continental shelf, the loose silt layer was stripped aside as if hit by a water cannon that the hurricane effectively created as it neared land. The churning silt was swept into the underwater cyclone and shot back down to the floor, where it sandblasted the rocks below.
What emerged from subterranean confinement was hungry.
Barely affected by the churning seas, it quickly moved to the surface. Though there were close to four thousand oil platforms in the Gulf, only a couple hundred were directly in Eliza’s path. Only thirty-one of these were near-shore platforms, easily sighted from land. The skeleton crews on each of these numbered four men a piece and would become the first to die. Poor communication was expected. The lack of radio traffic back to the mainland on that Tuesday afternoon set off no alarm bells, as the readings from the monitoring equipment on each platform suggested stability and expected working conditions.
What had awoken was still hungry. It turned towards the outer platforms, registering the hundreds of crew members still out there who had successfully ridden out the worst of the storm. But then, it felt the pull of the millions on land. It collected itself, turned, and followed in Eliza’s wake as it neared land.
Chapter 3
The rain came down in buckets. Alan booked it from the bus stop through the grass so recently bent by Muhammad’s footfalls. Catching amused looks from the long line of night-shifters now heading down Deltech Drive to the highway feeder roads, Alan knew he was late but didn’t think he was that late. He reached the garage, bounced past a minivan, and hurried up to the security guard’s desk.
“Badge?”
Alan fumbled in his pockets for a moment, incredulous at the idea he might’ve forgotten it, and finally found it. The guard zapped him in a second later, and he was halfway to his line when he saw the line’s supervisor, Dennis Webb, on the stairs leading to the second-floor offices.
“Hey, Dennis,” Alan said, feeling like a truant sixth-grader about to be confronted by his principal. “Sorry, I missed my ride. Again.”
Dennis Webb was a wiry, middle-aged white guy who wore khakis and a Deltech polo almost every day of the week except when pulling a rare Saturday shift. On those days, he invariably wore a Houston Astros away jersey his kids had gotten him for his birthday with “Webb” and “40” stitched on the back.
That’s when Dennis reminded Alan that, more than anything, he just wanted to be seen as one of the guys.
“If it bothers your conscience, work 3.5-percent harder for the first three hours of the shift. I think you’ll be square with the company.”
“Appreciated, man.”
Alan thought that would be it, but Dennis fixed him with a conspiratorial gaze.
“So? What time did you hit this morning?”
Alan bit his tongue to do some fast math, which Dennis took to be the tardy athlete playing coy.
“Come on. Just tell me.”
“1:59…,” Alan said. “…15.”
Dennis grinned from ear to ear.
“I’m telling you. There’s going to be a day I’m just ‘kicking it with the fam’ and there you’ll be on ESPN, running circles around your competition.”
“Thanks, Dennis.”
As Alan hurried up to the line, his mood darkened. He needed it to be 1:59:15, needed it more than anything in the world, but that just didn’t make it so.
• • •
“Whoa, Native Son! Getting better and better!”
Big Time smiled as wide as Dennis when Beverly Larson, a rotund, forty-something who worked the station just before pack, added Alan’s daily time to a dry-erase board. The board had four columns: 400-meter indoor, 400-meter outdoor, 800-meter indoor, and 800-meter outdoor. The list of numbers in each column descended with regularity, indicating the time Alan chiseled off each day as he continued to train.
Alan had felt bad the first time he’d reported a time that wasn’t altogether accurate. He figured he’d make it up the next morning or later in the week. After a couple of months had gone by, the board was filled with more wishful thinking times than real ones. But Alan knew people, and not just Dennis, cut him slack because they were rooting him on. They wanted to eventually have known him “when,” and he didn’t want to disappoint them.
“What’s that get you to?” Big Time asked as Alan reached the pack station.
“At the beginning of summer, I had two whole seconds to shave off my times to be in the collegiate elite: top ten athletes in the country,” Alan began. “Those two seconds dropped two weeks ago, and I’m now running times just under that, fastest unofficial times in college track.”
Elmer, who was stacking manuals and cords to be placed in each outgoing box, let out a low whistle.
“But if I can drop another second and a little more than a half off of that, I’m top ten in the world.”
“That’s major, Alan,” Beverly rang out. “Major!”
“How many times have you complained that this job is messing up your training?” Big Time asked. “I’m telling you, working pack, you’re building stamina. My boys are pulling for you, too. I tell them, another NOLA fugee out here, going to be that big story in the news one day.”
Alan nodded. He’d thought Big Time was the biggest blowhard he’d ever met when Zakiyah had hooked him up with the job at the beginning of the summer. Four months later,
