Chapter 3
She descended again below decks, where the air was warmer. Her bare toes felt numb and her bones felt chilled. It wasn't even that it was that cold above deck, but the thick, ominous fog chilled her to a depth she hadn't thought possible. She returned to the ballroom level, assuming the kitchen must be close to it. She needed something to eat. And she needed to assess what she had to see how long she could survive.
Every kid with a flashlight knew the ubiquitous SOS signal-dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot. But without power, she couldn't send a distress call. She wasn't sure that even if she could, that she could actually reach anyone. If she had slid off into another dimension, then maybe no one could help her anyway.
She perched on a long table in the galley and nibbled at some bread that had been left on a large platter, as though it had been ready to take out into the ballroom when all hell had broken loose. Looking around the galley, there were full pots, open cabinet doors, and piles of scraps left, just as though the people working with them had simply vanished. How was it possible that everyone had disappeared and left only her? It couldn't be that she was in her stateroom. Other people had surely been in theirs at such a late hour, and they too were gone. People had been running the ship, steering, cleaning, cooking, serving...and they had just vanished. And she remained.
The kiss. The notion struck her like a punch in the gut. The young man. Who knew her but did not know her. Who called her by the wrong name. Who somehow knew that something terrible would happen to the ship, and directed her to turn it around. How would he have known that unless he was from a different time himself? And he had jumped into the water and disappeared so thoroughly-where had he gone? If he couldn't swim, he wouldn't have jumped in so cavalierly. Yet he had gone down and vanished as though he had never been there, but the taste of him on her lips proved without a doubt he had.
Her hand flew up to her mouth. What if the kiss had formed a sort of link between his time and hers? And that link...was a tether...that kept her alive because she existed in his time? What if she actually was this Scully person and she was spared because she needed to exist in the future? Her pulse quickened. In case we never meet again. But they had. And they needed to. For some unknown reason, she and that young man needed to meet in the future...in his time.
She slid off the table, ready to go...then stopped. Where was she going to go? She was trapped on this ship. And if she couldn't even steer a ship, how exactly was she going to travel time? Build a machine like the Time Traveller in The Time Machine? She giggled a bit at that thought, then her heart drooped. He had made it there, and made it back, but hadn't found a happy future waiting for him.
Suddenly she hit upon another thought. What if it was HER, and not the ship, that needed to get back out of the Triangle? There was no guarantee that the people vanished from the ship would reappear even if she managed that feat. What if it was her, with this theoretical link to the future, that needed to make it out? It would be easier to get just herself out. Or would it? She'd die of hypothermia in the frigid waters inside of an hour. Lifeboat. It was her only hope.
She took some time to pack food, water, and lots of blankets and clothes. She worried that the fog would soak her through in minutes. Hauling her burden, she slowly slogged up to the lifeboat deck. Layering her things in the bottom of the boat, she searched for the mechanism to launch it. She prayed it wasn't electric. It wasn't. Her cold fingers did not want to cooperate in undoing the latch, and her fingernails shredded one by one. Sticking a finger in her mouth and biting off a rough nail, she pried desperately at the latch until she felt it move. When it finally did, it snapped on her other hand and she cried out in pain.
Nursing her bruised hand, she clambered into the boat, her stomach lurching with panic as it swayed and bumped into the side of the boat. She clutched on to the rope, praying she could hold it well enough to keep it from dumping her into the water. Slowly she released it until she felt the boat rest in the water. She breathed a huge sigh of relief as she placed her hands on the oars and pushed herself gently away from the Queen Anne.
Dina had never rowed a boat before, and her arms were sore and her eyes stung with the salt before she had made it very far. Angry tears of frustration began to well up in her eyes. She was going to die. In a boat. With no one else around. She struggled on and then realized if she tired herself out too much she wasn't going to make it. She needed to rest. Nothing would happen to her in the boat.
She made sure to secure the oars in place before lowering herself gently onto the floor of the boat. She pushed aside her provisions to make a sort of nest for herself. Looking up and back the way she had came, she was panicked to see she could no longer see the Queen Anne at all. She was alone. In the fullest sense of the word, she was alone. Huddled under a rough wool blanket, she could no longer hold back the tears and she wept silently into the bag her head was on.
She had had a storied life, and it was going to end here. She was going to die in the bottom of a little metal rowboat, in the middle of an eerily still sea, after escaping from a ship where the other passengers had all mysteriously vanished. Her last human contact had been a handsome young man she had never met before, yet oddly enough she seemed to know. It was now only a question of whether the cold, the moisture, or the dwindling provisions would finish her off.
Shivering, she drifted off into an uneasy sleep in her tiny little craft.
