Page 24 of Untamed Coast

2017—Marconi Franco

Red metal roof.

This had to be the place. The canted red roof rose above the bushes behind a small beach. The shack looked from the water like one side had collapsed. From this distance, the sand looked normal. None of the stripper-bikini-sparkle the barfly had described.

In the movie that played in Marco’s mind, SOS was spelled out in rocks on the beach and Crystal came running out waving her arms when his boat appeared.

The beach was empty and still.

Where are you?

Marco clipped on his go-to-shore fanny pack and felt a pang of apprehension about leaving the boat again. His knee ached, and he figured his chin looked like he’d lost a fight. Dropping the anchor was easy enough, but in launching the dinghy he was hardly able to lift his arm to release the tie-down.

Climbing out of the dinghy was a chore, and his rubber boots slugged through the shallows onto the beach. Marco tried to walk without favoring his injured knee. He secured his shore line to a large piece of driftwood.

Where was she? There were no fresh footprints on the beach, but a pattern of footprint divots in the soft sand higher up the beach indicated someone had walked here recently. The strong tides had washed most of them away, so it had been a couple of days at least.

If she was still here, she’d have made new ones.

“Hello?” Marco shouted. “Anyone here?”

His voice echoed back from the hills on the neighboring islands. The only reply a raven’s shrill croak from a nearby tree.

He knelt on his good knee and picked up a handful of coarse sand. It sifted dry and cool through his fingers. There was a decent amount of colorful ground glass in the mix. It was not like the sand on any other beach he had seen.

This had to be Radioville.

Marco moved toward the abandoned shack, making his way through some heavy brush and around to the rear of the building. The door was missing.

He tentatively stepped inside.

A heavy odor of mildew permeated the dank interior. Rays of light streamed in ribbons through a broken window, illuminating piles of debris strewn about the cabin—empty beer cans, a couple soggy stuffed animals. Two empty energy bar wrappers lay near the door. It looked like kids had used the place for partying. But kids from where?

An old iron woodstove was rusting in the corner, and mattresses had been pulled from their bunks and lay slumped and rotting on the floor amid the garbage.

This was a small island. If Crystal had made it to shore here in the storm, she’d certainly have looked for shelter in the shack. If this was really where she’d come ashore, where was she? If she’d already been rescued, the Coast Guard would know.

Marco struggled to remember exactly what he’d heard on the radio. His brain felt foggy, and he realized he was having a hard time distinguishing between reality and his own internal monologue. For sure she said “Come get me.” Said she was cold. Said she swam. Had she actually replied to Marco’s call, or was she just talking to the other man? Maybe she didn’t even hear him. Red metal roof had to be Radioville. Coast Guard report confirmed a missing woman falling overboard, but the woman he heard had an SSB radio, a strobe, presumably full survival gear. The footprints showed someone had been here recently, but if not Crystal, then who? Why? He moved farther inside, waving his arms to break away the cobwebs, sending a new shot of pain through his shoulder. He stepped over a broken lawn chair. The half of the shack where he stood was standing, but the far end had collapsed.

The intact end of the structure had obviously been the kitchen and sleeping area. There was an old washbasin with a crank wringer and several broken Jack Daniel’s bottles. A dining table rested upside down near the wall. Past that, a shelving unit had collapsed under the weight of the fallen ceiling.

There was no sign of any radio gear. What had transpired here over the eight decades since Joe Baxter’s time? Marco realized he might not find any evidence of the former radio station after this long.

He walked back outside and around to the fallen end of the building. The edge of the red metal roof sloped up from the ground to the remaining structure. The ruins of some kind of storage shed or outbuilding protruded from the wreckage. There were signs all around that this had once been a developed homestead—level areas that had probably been gardens, collapsed structures that might have been a smoker shed or storage.

A single wooden pole stood a couple feet from the cabin with an insulator hanging from it. More than likely, that had once held one end of a dipole antenna, or maybe there had been a mast with a vertical antenna extending up from the pole. A cable hung from a nail about halfway down and disappeared into the brush at the bottom. Marco followed the cable through the weeds to the edge of the dilapidated building.

He eased down onto his healthy knee and pulled up on the corner of the metal roofing. The cable continued on the underside. He stuck his good arm through and pulled on the interior segment. It was buried in cold, sticky mud. It didn’t budge. He used part of a broken board to prop up the corner of the roof, then crawled into the exposed area and began digging through the debris. Cobwebs clung to his damp face, and a sharp must filled his nose. Following the cable through the mud into the darkness with his hand, his fingers found something cold and metal.

Marco crawled back out and grabbed another board to work on prying up a beam that was lying on top of the object. After several minutes, he had uncovered what looked like a piece of radio equipment.

The front panel of the black metal enclosure bore two large knobs with meters just above them. A row of toggle switches lined the bottom. Several wires hung from the rear.

Radio transmitter—had to be Baxter’s. Vintage looked to be pre-war. The top was damaged—maybe dented by the weight of the beam that had fallen on it when the shed collapsed. Otherwise, it looked in decent condition.

The heavy radio shook in Marco’s hands. He wiped away the grime with the cuff of his jacket and found an engraved placard.

Signal Corps U.S. Army