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Current-Ripped on Cape Lookout

By Cindy M. Amos

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She’d started too late for this journey, a fact the racing current made ever apparent. Shaina Gillespie adjusted her footing to keep the stand-up paddleboard from nosing directly into the rippling stream forced by the bottom of an ebbing tide. At this rate, Core Sound would decant into the mighty Atlantic Ocean with her riding escort. Over her shoulder, Cape Lookout wagged a sandy finger of correction, as she’d vowed to her mother to keep her SUP on inland waters.
Curse the promise that can’t be kept. She shifted forward, hoping to dig the nose of the board under the surface and brake against the misdirecting flow. Drawn seaward at a steady clip, she’d never make her destination, the beachfront of Shackleford Banks. With the paddle as her only weapon, she stroked at a rapid pace until her shoulders ached. Crossing the ebb current proved impossible. Between two land masses, she floundered against the water’s command.
When the half-sunken war bunker came into sight, a chill shot down her spine offsetting the heat of June. Though no German U-boats awaited her tiny vessel, the ocean had no shortage of other perils to offer. From the outer shore, wave action could make a beach landing more like a Normandy invasion of the personal kind. Seconds ticked by as the tide drew out the sound’s contents through the narrow inlet between the two islands.
She lost traction with her lead foot, shortening her next breath. Though she’d perfected paddleboarding for over a year, her confidence took wing with the slipping motion to alight on a distant shore. Her knees started to quiver. With a broad sweep to turn the board’s nose back toward Lookout, she could abort the mission. The current volleyed against the move and turned her ever south—straight to the mouth of Barden’s Inlet where she’d never dared to go.
The upper corner of the concrete bunker scarred Lookout’s scenic island vista to her left. Remnant from less peaceable times, the bunker held few prisoners in its day. Sunk in the sand, the structure seemed poised to be claimed by the sea at any given moment. Should the narrow inlet shift in a hurricane, that swallow-up might happen.
The current dipped in a small trough as a standing wave formed from the fluid motion constricting past the sandy shores of both islands. Shaina chose the closest beach to focus on, her last chance to clasp land before being dragged out to sea. She knelt on the board, secured the paddle between her knees, and alternately cupped water in her hands trying to make for the protruding spit of sand on the Shackleford side.
Rough waters shook her floating platform in the crossing. A huge mullet leapt from the water and splashed her as if racing to the inlet. All at once, the board began to quake, dipping side to side. To lessen the tempest, she lowered to her stomach. Every ripple turned gigantic with her new perspective. Panicked, she dug deeper beneath the water’s surface, attempting a last-ditch maneuver out of harm’s way until her shoulder muscles burned.
A dark cloud of thunderous motion split the dune line over on Shackleford Banks. A herd of galloping wild ponies crossed the ridge aimed straight for the water’s edge. Distracted in the moment, she failed to navigate the next hazard, the convergence of two currents running parallel to each shore. She lasted half an inhalation when the board struck her forehead and then bucked her into the labyrinth.
Cool sound waters closed over her as she sank like an unwitting submarine. A modern U-boat with no mission to accomplish, she clung to the paddleboard in white-knuckled fear while her skull throbbed with pain. Survive to tell about it. She surfaced, but the current splashed her face, causing her to gag. Braced against the board, she grew powerless to navigate the onslaught.
~
Judd Pearce felt his sunset ride shift from glorious to gut-wrenching as the woman with shapely legs fell from her paddleboard and dipped into the sound. He’d ridden to the shore on Thunder, a well-padded stallion that assumed the herd’s lead when the gray-muzzled Atlantica succumbed two months ago. The herd had experienced a scattershot of deaths since then, which confused his scientific research even further.
To slow the heaving pony, he slipped a hand down the side of its harness. As the dwarfed beast descended the primary dune line, he slid from its back and hit the beachfront running. Before he could wade into the sound thigh-deep, the woman lost her last handhold on the paddleboard and disappeared from sight. Not willing to let the day lapse into full-fledged tragedy, he dove toward her and swam at an angle to offset the swift current.
Intercepting the nose of the paddleboard first, he maneuvered around its length and caught a stretchy cord across his arm. As he fished for the far end, he took a deep inhalation and prepared to dive. Before he could register the meaning, a slender ankle filled his palm. Next, he spotted the wrapped floral print of the woman’s board shorts, so he reeled her in like an ensnared fish, hand over hand, wrapping the cord around his wrist.
The woman’s eyes fluttered open for a moment, a flash of honey-brown. “No ocean.”
He spied the tip of Shackleford’s sandy shoal as it passed on his right. Unfettered by the land mass, the paddleboard made for the open ocean with total abandon. To avoid the ocean excursion, he would have to force the woman and her vessel toward the shore. Using a strong dolphin kick, he thrust his shoulder landward and pressed the issue in his preferred direction.
As if entertained by his sputtering performance, the ponies followed along the intertidal zone and trailed out onto the sandy spit, an interactive audience. Though provoked to laugh, he couldn’t spare the breath. He managed two more kicks when the woman hooked her elbow around his neck and trailed behind, streamlining his efforts. With the board bobbing from the far end of the cord, he bested the ripping current and soon landed in the shallows.
Stormy, the best swimmer in the herd, nickered not far from his position. Taken as an offer to help, he redirected for the four-hoofed assistant. The pony waded out to shoulder height, its head elevated with wary jerks. The whites of its dark eyes flashed with alarm.
“Steady, boy.” He eased the woman onto the pony’s back and gestured for the shore. When his hand dropped back into the water, he caught a length of ankle leash. A necessary detachment, he yanked the Velcro closure loose from her leg and took sole possession of the paddleboard. Lacking any exposure to this type of leisure craft, he settled for splaying across its length and paddling to shore in low profile.
Stormy halted just short of the wrack line from the afternoon’s high tide where the victim slid off in a fetal curl onto the drying sand. A moan accompanied the shift which caused the herd to back away. A herring gull abandoned the beach with a complaining cry at the disturbance.
Judd floated the board as far as it would go. When sand scraped the bottom, he rolled off into the shallows and rose onto his knees. Beyond the woman, only a six-foot stretch of sand had prevented the inevitable meet-up with the mighty Atlantic Ocean, a slender success. “Not today, Neptune.” With a shove landward, the paddleboard’s shallow skegs gripped Shackleford Banks with some degree of permanence.
He soon knelt beside the victim to assess her medical condition. Finally, an advantage. A darkening lump on her right temple spelled head trauma, though he didn’t know how severe. At best calculation, the cot inside his tent offered softer accommodation than water-lain sand. Without much of a jostle, he scooped her up in his arms and rose to make quick work of the journey back to research central. As a specimen, she resembled more of a mermaid than his typical equine client which would make for an interesting recovery period.

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