Chapter 1 Conception
When Chevron oil drilling platform MP 205B exploded, I was flung a hundred feet into the air. I crash landed into the churning waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Fortunately I had all my PPE on at the time. That is Personal Protection Equipment for all you landlubbers; Hard hat, safety glasses, steel toed boots, neon orange fire resistant coveralls with reflective strips, and most importantly, a life vest. Turned out the safety glasses might not have been a spun of good ole fashion scrubbing.
Sometime during my expulsion from the rig, one of the safety glass' s lenses shattered, sending plastic shards slicing into my right eye. I was only vaguely aware of my partial blindness when I popped to the surface of a cresting wave. What vision I had left was filmed red and black. Partly because the night sky and the sea below were licked by flame and partly because of the blood streaming down my face from a dozen cuts. Miraculously, my hard hat was still on my head. It wouldn't occur to me until sometime later to question how this was possible.
Dazed I floated on water which was quickly darkening as oil from the burst well seven thousand feet below broiled to the surface. I watched the platform melt as I drifted away, feeling strangely removed from the catastrophe raging around me. Not even the sight of the screaming embers I knew to be friends and coworkers leaping to the dubious safety of the burning ocean could not stir an iota of emotion. I knew only that there was something I should be doing if I ever wanted to see the shore again. I had to get someone's attention.
I reached for the whistle tied to my life vest for that very purpose and found I did not have a hand with which to grasp it. Where my right hand should have been there was a tattered stump with a bit of bone sticking through it. Oddly, the sight of this new atrocity did not move me either.
MP 205B gave a throaty roar, shooting flame and debris into the sky, expelling remnants of its former structure far and wide, metamorphosing briefly from a manmade technological marvel into a force of nature as grand and indomitable as a volcano. Then it began to crumble, metal screeching as the platform folded in on itself .
Just as the rig disappeared beneath the fire and oil coated sea I heard something moan in grief. It may have been the misfortunate pod of whales I'd glimpsed earlier in that block of the ocean, or the lament may have issued from my own bloodied and blistered lips. I would never know for sure for my mind chose then to mercifully take a trip to never-never land.
Never never-land was not nearly far enough away. In what could only have been a couple hours I woke to pain and the overwhelming smell of oil. I knew this because when the accident occurred, I had been headed down to the galley to meet my friend Jimbo for the zero six hundred breakfast and it had still been dark outside. Now, the sun was rising. It did not peak over the sometimes serene blue green seas I was accustomed to, but crept tentatively over an icky alien landscape that writhed with undulating ebony waves. In every direction desolation. Slowly rolling black water coated by filth and debris. Black and pink smog road the wind, blanketing the sky a color akin to my blasted skin.
Pink smog. How strange.
Every inch of my body ached, and where my flesh lay open to the sea the slick intruded, burning chemically what had not been burnt by the actual flames. The oily water around me had a pink tint to it that I assigned to my leaking body. While I was indeed bleeding from several wounds, there was another origin of the carnation hued water of which I was unaware. If I had known what the foul substance was I might have loosened my life jacket there and then. Although I'm not entirely sure the ultimate consequence would have been affected.
I reached for my whistle again. This time with my left hand which I found to be intact. I blew on the small orange device attached to the breast of my life preserver. I blew until my lungs ached and I was out of breath. The only answer to those shrill calls was the soft clap of three foot seas against the life jacket. I pulled the whistle from my lips. Its mouth was bright red with blood where it had been in my own. I didn't have to be a doctor to surmise I was most likely as busted up inside as I was out. Nor did I have to be a genius to know that I would die if not rescued soon.
The likelihood of rescue wasn't that remote, even considering my desperate situation. While MP 205B had been a prototype rig drilling in the deepest portions of the Gulf, it had been accompanied by the Majestic, a two hundred foot long supply vessel prepped for any emergency the rig might have.
The sea was a slowly rising and falling ebony plate glowing faintly orange to the east where sun light burnished it. Using the sun rise I splashed about to confirm my bearing and look for the rescue ship and fellow survivors.
What I saw was not encouraging. MP 205B was only a spot on the distant northern horizon. There was no sign of the Majestic. Remembering my water survival classes, I tried to swim back toward wreckage of 205B. That would be where rescue efforts, be it boat, plane or helicopter would begin.
It was impossible. An insistent current carried me further away, to the south, and infinitely open water. At least a thin trail of flotsam bobbed doggedly in the same direction as myself. Barrels and bodies (men and fish alike), pallets and a slew of mismatched pieces of plastic. None of the scoured and mangled bodies moved.
What I did not see was a life raft. Not surprising considering the swiftness with which the rig went up. I was utterly alone, drifting further and further from any hope of salvation.
It was winter, the sea was cold. If I didn't die of blood loss, hypothermia surely would claim my life. Oddly resigned to my fate I looked to the heavens. By now the sky was overcast by the billowing plumes of chromatic smoke yet rising from the ruptured well below. I closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep. I did not want to be awake when the sharks came.
Come they did. I was awaken to the sound of moans and violently thrashing water. Gray fins christened by white tips patrolled the caravan of wreckage. The majority of these sleek predators dined at the center of the debris trail where the amount of corpses numbered the most. However, it seemed the feast the sharks had come to sample was not the meek buffet they'd hope to find. It appeared as though not all of my coworkers had perished in the explosion. Some were able bodied enough to resist the ravenous attentions of the sharks. If not for the strange apathy that had come about me since the accident, I would have been equally awed and appalled by the confrontation that came next.
Instead of remaining still or grouping in defense as any sane men familiar with the ferocity of their hunters would have done, these wounded souls went on the offensive. Men swam toward the sharks, many biting the beasts even as they were themselves bitten and dragged below.
Pink smoke, shark eating men. Mystery upon mystery. When would they ever end? I was given little time to ponder these enigmas, for something large and bullet shaped brushed against my side. I glimpsed a black, passionless eye as the shark swam by. I returned it's gaze with equal indifference. With my one good eye I watched impassively as the beast swung about. I knew from repeated episodes of Shark Week that the first run was just a trial, a drive-by to scent whether the object it had grazed was worth eating. Calmly, I looked about for something to bludgeon the shark's snout with. Another piece of lore gleaned from the Discovery Channel. I idly wondered whether it would be effective. It didn't matter. There was no flotsam of sufficient bashing value within sight.
It's dorsal fin cutting a wedge shaped wave in its wake, the shark lunged for my thigh. Reflectively I raised my right arm, the one with the missing fist, and punched downward. My writing hand, the one I had wiped my ass with, fired my favorite Glock with, pleasured women and myself with for thirty some years, had been replaced by a fleshy stump surrounding a jagged shard of bone. I missed the shark's nose with the lance of bone, striking it instead in one of its lidless eyes. The beast was not pleased. It's jaws, festooned with row upon row of arrow shaped teeth, opened wide and clamped on my left leg. Then it dove with it's prize. I think I died then.
