It had taken most of the day just to get this close. The “sails” we made weren’t doing a lot for us, but they were better than nothing and it gave Raine something on which to focus her energy. Otherwise, she’d start asking me her customary five thousand “I’m nervous and babbling” inane questions and I’d lose it. Paddling was only slightly beneficial, though I hoped it would become more useful as we got closer to land. Another hour went by, and the sun was starting to descend towards the horizon in the west, and a small, sand-covered beach was now to the east of the raft. I paddled harder, trying to make some kind of progress, and saw a small section of reef near the closer edge of the beach.
“We have to get further out,” I said, pointing towards the reef. “If we hit the reef, it’ll tear up the raft. Pull the rod for the sail to the right about twenty degrees, and then let the wind catch the sail again.”
“Too far,” I growled as Raine moved the sail but brought it back about thirty degrees. I fought down the urge to yell at her, which was becoming a little more difficult as fatigue began to set in. “Move it back ten degrees.”
“I don’t have a compass up here, you know!” Raine snipped back. She was tired as well, I knew. She was also undernourished and not used to this kind of physical exertion. I told myself to feel sympathetic, but it didn’t work.
“Didn’t you take geometry in high school?” I snapped back at her. “Ten fucking degrees. It ain’t that hard.”
Raine said something under her breath, but the wind took the words away from my ears, which was probably for the best. She adjusted the sail again, and the raft shifted in its course. I went back to paddling, keeping a close eye on the reef as we passed it by. We were still way too close for comfort – there was no telling when an offshoot would suddenly appear under the water and take us down. I went back to hard paddling in order to keep us as far away as possible.
Two more hours passed.
No matter how hard I paddled, we just weren’t moving. The riptide was pulling us farther out, and we were still too far from the beach to try and swim it. That was a shitty option anyway because I needed everything on the raft – nothing was expendable.
“Tilt the rod to the side!” I yelled out at Raine. “We need to aim for the other side of the beach!”
“Why?” Raine yelled back over the sound of the crashing waves. “It’s farther!”
“Don’t fucking question me!” I growled. “Just do it!”
Raine scowled and moved the sail slightly. It rippled and lost wind, then immediately filled up again, pulling the raft to one side and nearly making Raine lose her balance.
“Be careful!” I screamed at her.
“I’m trying!” She was close to tears, but I just didn’t have the time to deal with anything other than the immediate situation. I felt myself shutting down – turning everything off except what I needed for right now. If we could get farther down the beach, we might get out of the riptide and be able to make it to shore.
It was more than an hour of heavy paddling and sail adjusting before we finally pushed past the tide, and we could steer back towards the beach. My arms ached, but I pushed the pain down, refusing to acknowledge it. The anchors were starting to drag in the sand, which was both good and bad. Good because it meant I could probably get out now and bad because it was slowing us down. Deciding it was still too soon, I paddled against the drag of the anchors, forcing my brain to ignore the increasing pain through my back and shoulders.
I could finally see the sand bank below the waves and tossed myself overboard, pulling the lead behind me. I heard Raine scream out at me but ignored her as I pushed my feet to the bottom and started hauling the raft by the rope closer to the beach. The sail was no longer effective, and trying to yell back at her was only going to compromise my resolve, so I just pushed on. Through blind determination, I didn’t realize I had jumped out too soon – we were still too far from the beach. My feet suddenly gave out as the sand bank disappeared from under me.
I went under, choking on seawater and feeling the rope cut into the skin around my stomach. I pulled on it, and it tightened further into my skin, but at least I knew I hadn’t let go. If I let go, the raft could have easily been pulled back out by the currents. There would be no way for Raine to get it to shore on her own, and I probably couldn’t swim fast enough to get back to her. I had to get across to the next bank, and to do that, I had to let some of the rope out.
I came up spurting water from my lungs, coughing and gasping for air right before another wave hit me. Thankfully, it at least knocked me forward – closer to the beach. I reached down while I was under, untying the lead from my waist and wrapping it around my arm. My fingers clenched onto it – I could not let go. No matter what, I could not let go.
I pushed up long enough to get another breath and hear Raine screaming my name. When I went back under, I swam as hard as I could, feeling the weight of the raft and the crush of the waves all around me. My limbs were already so tired they didn’t want to move, and I bit down into my lower lip just to focus on something other than the pain in my arms. I needed air, so I pushed up again, took a quick breath, and continued on.
I pushed through the pain. I swam hard. Another breath. I listened to her screaming because it meant she was okay and then pushed through the pain some more.
When my feet finally hit sand, I almost went into panic mode, believing I had gone backwards and was on the outer sandbank again. When I pushed myself up and got my head above water, I could see the beach in front of me. My feet dug in, pushed forward, and I dragged the raft behind me. Raine was still yelling, though the tone of her cries was decidedly different. Another pull and I yanked on the raft’s lead to pull it over the sand. It was dragging hard now, and I wasn’t sure what the obstruction was, so I just pulled harder, my muscles straining and complaining about the exertion. Most of my body was out of the water, but it wasn’t registering. I just kept pulling on the rope. Even when I heard splashing behind me and felt Raine’s hand on my shoulder, I wasn’t quite sure what was happening.
“Bastian, you did it!” she cried out. Her arms were around my neck, but I shook my head and pulled again. Raine held on, her hand on the side of my face, trying to turn my head to look at her. “Bastian – stop. We’re on the beach!”
My feet heard her, apparently, because I stopped walking and turned to look at the raft. It was half in and half out of the water now, still rising and falling a little with the remaining waves as they crashed against the beach. I turned around, wrapped the rope around my waist again, and pulled hard, then again, and again, until the raft was completely beached. I looked around, trying to determine if we were at high or low tide. It appeared the tide was high at the moment and was probably going out, but I couldn’t tell for sure. My mind started checking off the important things I had to consider.
Raine was on the beach, and she was safe for the moment.
The raft was out of the water, and high tide meant it shouldn’t be pulled back out again.
There were still two liters of water left on the raft, which would be enough to get us through a day or even two easily if we were careful.
We were on land, and our chances of survival were now exponentially higher than they were an hour ago.
There were trees, which meant shelter and hopefully a source of water as well.
The sun was setting, and our immediate need for shelter would be delayed until the sun rose again.
There were probably edible plants in the area, and fishing would be easy with the reef on the other side of the beach.
There was a cliff, which also meant a high probability of a water source, as well as a place for a signal fire.
We were going to make it. I could make this place work. I could save her.
I vaguely registered my body hitting the sand before I passed out.
* * * * *
“Does it hurt? Huh? Huh? Does it?”
Maniacal laughter filled the room. Gunter held up a
long serrated knife dripping with blood, and showed it to the last of them…the sixteenth one. The last one was older and nearly calm, or maybe his brain had just shut down at this point. Gunter’s previous victim was still twitching a little, but I didn’t think he was still alive. I hoped he wasn’t. Landon’s grip on my arm tightened.
“One last show, Gunter!” Franks laughed. “It’s almost time for the salad course. We don’t wish to be late for dinner.”
“Turn him around.”
I started to move forward, but an owl landed on my shoulder. When I looked at it, it wasn’t an owl any longer. It was Landon.
“Don’t move, Bastian, for fuck’s sake. You think he’d hesitate to kill you, too?”
Disorientation met me when I woke. The light was all wrong, and the familiar feeling of riding on waves was curiously absent. The texture of the surface where I lay was also wrong, though Raine's familiar and comforting weight was on my chest, and that was completely and totally right.
I had definitely been awakened by a nightmare, but I thankfully couldn’t remember many details. I thought it was about Theresa since I remembered something about an owl. I swallowed hard a couple of times, noting how dry my throat was. I opened my eyes and looked up at clear sky and bright stars. I was lying on the beach in uncomfortable, damp shorts.
Land.
Despite Raine's weight on my torso and the nightmare, I felt lighter. Here I could survive and keep her safe. We would be able to find everything we needed. I took a deep breath and raised my head to evaluate our surroundings. There were drag marks near my feet, and I surmised Raine had tried to pull me farther up the beach but hadn’t been very successful. I must have passed out hard. We were far enough up the beach to stay out of the rising tide's path anyway, and the raft, still secured to my right wrist, was not in danger of floating off. I loosened the rope from my wrist and felt the blood flow a little better before I lay my head back down against the damp sand, wrapped my arms around Raine, and slept.
I woke to Raine's fingers gently brushing sand from my stomach. There was light in the sky but not much. The cliff behind us would block the sunrise for another hour at least. I tightened my grip around her waist, holding her to me for a moment before relaxing again.
"We'll be okay now, won't we?" she said.
"Yeah," I replied. "We should be. I need to look around when it gets a little brighter.”
“Is this from the rope?” Raine asked, her fingers gliding an inch below my navel where an ugly red streak marred my skin. It looked a lot worse than it felt.
“Guess so,” I said.
“You scared me,” Raine said, tucking her forehead between my neck and shoulder. “When you passed out, I couldn’t wake you up. I didn’t know if the tide would come in or not, but I couldn’t move you.”
“Look down the beach,” I said. Raine’s eyes followed my outstretched arm. “See the line of debris? That’s the high tide line.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You just might learn a lot in the next day or two.” I smiled when she looked up at me. “We have a lot of work to do today.”
“We do?” Raine questioned, tilting her head to the side. “What, exactly?”
“First, we need to make a shelter,” I said. I pointed up to a group of palm trees and the coconuts at the very top. “Then we start collecting those.”
“Coconuts?”
“Yes,” I said. “Food and water all at once.”
“There are a bunch of them on the ground,” Raine noticed.
“Yeah, but they’re dry. We need the green ones for the water. There may be water up the cliff, but there’s definitely water in the coconuts. Go with the sure thing. We can make a solar still this morning and then look for a better source of water later.”
“A what?”
“I’ll show you.”
“You’re the boss,” Raine said with a shrug.
“Am I now?” I raised my eyebrows at her, rather liking the idea of being the boss when it came to her. I considered the long list of things I might ask her to do.
“Don’t get carried away!” Raine laughed.
“Damnit,” I growled. “Do you have to fuck up my good time?”
I grinned, and she laughed again. We got up, brushed a lot of sand from our skin and clothes, then I took her hand and led her over to a group of smaller trees with trunks the right size for building our first shelter. I used the knife from the survival kit to cut them down – wanting to keep my jackknife sharp for hunting – then placed them deep into the sand on the top of the dune near the beach. I had six long poles about eight feet apart forked together at the top with a longer, thicker pole over the top of them. Though obviously fatigued and possibly suffering from minor muscle atrophy, Raine helped me place as many straight, long poles as we could find over one side, then covered the whole side with palm fronds.
“It doesn’t look anything like the huts on Gilligan’s Island,” Raine observed.
“I’ll work on that tomorrow,” I snorted. “I’ll see about making one of those bicycle carts as well so you can fan yourself with a palm frond while I drive you around the island. Maybe some bamboo golf clubs, too.”
Raine giggled and placed a few more fronds over the top. I pulled one back and showed her how to lace the top layer together to make a more watertight roof.
“It might not look like much,” I said, “but it will give us what we need for now. I will build you something better in time.”
“I was only joking,” Raine said, looking down at the ground for a moment before glancing back up at me through her lashes. I took a step forward and lifted her chin with my forefinger.
“I know,” I told her. “I’ll still make you something better.”
I placed my lips against hers for a moment and was rewarded with her glorious smile when I pulled back. I toyed with the idea of turning the kiss into something more, but irrespective of my protesting cock, I needed to get her basic needs taken care of before I could consider indulging my baser ones.
“Now we find water,” I said. “I’m going to climb up there. You are going to start digging.”
“Digging?”
“Yeah, you can use the paddle from the raft to dig in the sand. It should make things go pretty fast. We need a hole about three feet across and two feet deep. Find a place on the beach that will be in the sun most of the day.”
“O…kay…”
I winked at her and then walked over to the first of the coconut trees. I took a deep breath, hoping I could remember how to do this. I placed one hand on the far side of the trunk and the other one right in front of me at the same level as my chest. I found my center of balance and then jumped, placing my feet on either side of the tree. I pushed up with my legs, allowing my hands to rise up with me, then held on and jumped with my legs again. Using this method, I quickly leap-frogged my way to the top and started throwing green coconuts down to the ground.
By the time I had cleaned out three trees, Raine had a pretty good start on the hole for the still. I went to the raft and pulled the top part of the collection canopy off the roof. It was clear plastic and exactly what I needed. I collected as much greenery as I could from the edge of the jungle area and brought it back to Raine. Once we had the hole finished, I placed one of the water containers at the bottom of the hole and placed the greenery all around it. Then the plastic sheet went over the top, and I anchored it down with a few rocks. Finally, the last, smaller rock went in the center of the plastic – right above the water container.
“The green plants are full of water,” I told Raine. “Once the sun reacts with it, it will form condensation on the plastic which will then run into the water container. It won’t be a lot, but between this and the coconuts, it will be enough until we find a better source.”
“You really are incredible,” Raine said as she wrapped her arms around my neck and brought her lips to mine.
“And you have been in the sun too long,” I said, forcing my
self to pull away from her. I ran my finger over her warm cheeks. “Let’s get you under the shelter. You need to drink, and eat, too.”
Raine protested, but I reminded her she had already appointed me boss, so she had to do what I said. I cracked open two of the coconuts, and we shared the water inside before eating the nutmeat. After our snack, I decided to see what I could find on the reef while Raine rested out of the sun.
There was a decent-sized outcropping of rocks on the south side of the beach, which served as a home to a variety of potential meals – including crabs and mussels. The mussels were easy – I just pulled them off the rocks and tossed them into one of the plastic bags that previously held part of the raft’s survival kit. When I leaned over to pull some out from in one of the tidal pools created between rocks, the sun hit the water so I could see my reflection. Damn, I looked rough.
Once I had a decent number of mussels, I sat back and looked into the water again while running my hand over the full beard I seemed to be sporting. I released my jackknife from my belt, ran water over my face, and started shaving it off. It took a while since it was pretty long, but I managed to get it done without cutting myself, thanks to the sharpness of my knife. I looked back into the pool, turning my head so I could see different angles. I checked my face with my fingers, found a bit I missed and corrected it. I ran my hands over my cheeks and neck, pretty impressed that I could get such a close shave under these circumstances. My reflection informed me I was at least passable, so I kissed the edge of the blade, folded the knife up, and put it away.
I grabbed two crabs off the rocks and smashed them open before adding them to the bag. I ended up being pinched by one in the process, but it didn’t break the skin. I would have to be careful about that – the lack of antibiotics was probably the biggest concern we would have now. I picked up dinner and started into the green area at the edge of the beach, picking up pieces of wood that would burn well for a cooking fire before heading back. Raine wasn’t at the lean-to shelter when I got back, which pissed me off until I saw where she was.