Miss Taylor Young
Chapter Seven
Running throughout the deck of the USS Indianapolis
The USS Indianapolis
July 29, 1945 (Almost July 30)
23:58 hours (11:58pm)
Tom was so tired, and yet wide awake, as if he had been awake all day long. He had been dozing off not 5 minutes earlier, and dreaming that he and his family were together again, eating dinner without a problem in the world. And not on a sinking Portland-Class ship.
Tom had lost Steve, as they were separated about thirty seconds ago. Steve got caught in a crowd of people going in the opposite direction of Tom, and couldn’t get out.
Tom was alone now. He’d bumped into dozens of people, along the way to the back of the ship. No rescue boats were in sight, and that meant one thing; almost every single man on the ship had to go overboard. All of the rafts for carrying men were full already, and Tom realized that he was going to have to tread water.
Tom had bathophobia, which meant he had a phobia of deep water. And he had it bad. Although he had no choice, Tom would have rather stayed on the terrible ship, being seasick, than going into the God-who-knows how deep water.
Then, he turned his attention back to the ship, which was now ablaze with fire. The smoke leaked into the night sky, and the ship groaned. The bow was rising quicker every second. Then, Tom suddenly felt the urge to fall on his back. He ignored it, only realizing that the urge was growing larger every second. Then, he did fall on his back.
“Ow!” He yelped. And he lay there, and started to slide head-first toward the waves.
Tom slipped into the freezing cold water below him.
“Ahhhhhhh!” He just barely managed to let out before the water encased him in a wet tomb.
Splash.
Tom felt as if a thousand knives had stabbed him all over his body, as he sank into the water. He felt the air-trapped bubbles fizz all over him. Then, he looked down. He saw, below his feet, the USS Indianapolis slipping rather quickly into the Pacific ocean. Everything seemed to fly by, looking back at how he was sleeping a few minutes before, and now, he was going for a midnight swim in the ocean. He then snapped awake and struggled to the surface.
It felt rather nice to breathe again, when he poked his head out of the water, but then he heard screaming, coming from the souls next to him. He turned his attention to them and saw them looking up at something. He followed their gaze, only to realize that the ship was rolling over onto its roof, and if he didn’t move, he would be crushed by it.
He turned around, and swam as fast as he could with all of his might. The waves crashed against him, seeming like they wanted to swallow him whole, making it even more difficult to swim in the opposite direction of the sinking ship.
Kersplash!!!
Tom had just barely made it without getting squashed by the ship. The men who were previously standing on the deck were now tossed off the ship, and in the water, like a soaking wet dog shaking off the water on itself.
Tom treaded the water frantically, trying to prevent himself from getting sucked down with the ship he saw before him.
He then looked at the ship for the very last time of his life, the stern slowly sinking below the sea. It slowly disappeared beneath the water. It seemed unreal, but it was. The majestic USS Indianapolis sank into the horizontal line that was the ocean.
Groan. Splash. Splash. Splash. Splash. Sputter. Gurgle.
After watching the ship sink into the freezing depths, Tom felt that he needed to hop into a lifeboat.
He swam to the nearest one, but it was full. So he proceeded to the other nearest one, which was also full.
He repeated this for quite a while, and found that no lifeboats would have the room for him. Finally, after almost giving up hope of getting himself a lifeboat, not only did he unsurprisingly find a completely empty lifeboat, but he saw a fin sticking out of the horizon on his right. And it was moving towards a group of men, moving swiftly through the frigid waters.
No. Thought Tom. This can’t be a–
Just then, he heard a man scream. And then he heard others scream, and then he heard bones crunching. More screaming. He heard splashing, and soon, saw blood infect the black water.
Tom went into an immediate panic, and looked around frantically, soon seeing a large, navy blue creature with hideous teeth with one It was an orca. No. It was a shark.
Tom swam as fast as he could toward the empty lifeboat, as the man continued to scream, and the shark continued to bite them. Soon, Tom was only a few inches away from the boat, when he heard a really nasty mix of a snap and a crunch. The screaming and hollering stopped. He clambered onto the boat, unsure of what had just happened, and looked back at the shark and the man. But they were both gone. Or at least, half of the man was gone. He had been bitten in half at the waist. His legs were missing, and the water was filled with his guts and blood, which were continuing to spill out of him. He was bleeding out of the mouth, probably from his organs being turned to a mush.
But other than that, no other signs of the shark were there.
About fifteen minutes later, he heard another man scream. He looked in their direction, and saw a tiny sand shark burrowing into someone’s face. The shark dragged him into the water, and a few seconds later his body floated back up to the surface. His face was missing, a crater as big as a basketball down to his brain.
This process of sharks mauling and biting men continued for all night long, before the sun rose above them all. Most of the sharks went away after that. And after that night, over 100 men had been killed. The sea was red, and bodies were floating around everywhere.
Tom didn’t know where Steve was. He just knew that he was resting in a lifeboat, like him, or dead; eaten by a shark or dead from injuries. There were dozens of lifeboats scattered across the scene, and Tom was unsure of which one Steve was in.
Tom would later find out that ¾ of the men who were originally on the ship when they left San Francisco.
Tom thought it was horrific.