by Ethan Chione
Lucy has passed out. Or so I hope. I hope so because if she is not passed out she is….No. I will not think like that. She is alive. Yes she is she is still breathing. She is alive. I clean and bandage both our wounds that are now closed up. The bleeding has stopped now. It looks much better. I hope she will be alright. Lucy is not awake and not in pain I don’t think. I am glad. I sit back on a chair and look at my hands. They are both covered in blood. Then I realize the motor is still going.
I run out onto the deck. The motor is not going after all. I do not know how long I have been under the deck. But there is no land in sight. The motor is out of gas. Or dead. Either way we are not moving anymore. Except drifting aimlessly with the sea current. I look around us. No land. No land anywhere. This is scary. Lucy is wounded. I am wounded. We are drifting in the middle of the ocean. I do not know where we are. And I am wounded. And Lucy is too. I wince as I put my hands on my hips and my left hand brushes the bullet wound. The bullet went right through me. Thank God.
I go back down below deck. I realize how lightheaded I am from blood loss. But now it is over. The fight is over. We are away from the bad people. From the soldiers. But where are we going next?
I take a rag and dunk it in the ocean. I press the cool sea water against my face. The cool water feels nice.
I fall asleep. When I wake up, I hear moaning. The moaning wakes me. I jump to my feet. Thinking of the Stumblers. I am still in that mind frame. It is not a Stumbler. It is Lucy. I go to her side and put my hand on her sweaty forehead. She is very hot. Burning up with fever. I go into the medical kit and pull out a bottle of pills that are supposed to bring down fever. There is a bag of water bottles that I find in another cabinet, along with some cans of food. We can ration these. I sit Lucy up into a sitting position. Then I help her drink the water and take the pills. I do not know how long I was asleep for. It must have been a long time. The sky is dark. But light is starting to show. It is almost morning. I do not know of what day though.
“Tom,” Lucy says as she begins to shake uncontrollably.
“Lucy,” I whisper in her ear, holding her close to me.
“Tom, I love you,” she says.
“And I love you,” I say softly. Tears form in my eyes and gently roll down my face. I hate crying. But no one is here except me and Lucy. Lucy will not care. I am crying for her. I am afraid for her. I am afraid she will die. She has a fever. I do not know what else to do for her. I take another rag and pour water on it and let it rest on her head. She is so hot that I have to change rags every couple of minutes. I have a few rags thankfully. Wet rag. Wet rag. And wet it again. I wet the rag. Put it on her head. It gets hot, and I take it off. I wet another rag. I wring out the other rag and let it cool while the other rag is on her head. I do this for hours.
I find a water purifier in one of the cabinets in the cabin of the boat. It has a little pump, and I put the hose in the ocean and begin to fill up one of the bottles that we drank from.. It still tastes a tad bit salty, but I think it will have to do once the fresh water totally runs out. I hear a clap of thunder far off. I turn and see huge dark clouds approaching us. The wind is starting to pick up. I am filled with dread. I finish filling the bottles and go below deck. There are some snacks in the cabinet. I eat a little and try and get Lucy to eat crackers. She eats one but cannot eat anymore. I go back on deck and fill a bucket with sea water. I again begin draping the wet rags over her forehead again. I alternate rags like before every few minutes or so. I have done this for an hour when we hit the storm. The sailboat is tossed about the sea. I hear the rain hitting the boat and the loud claps of thunder. I see flashes of lightning through the small round windows of the ship. I sit next to Lucy. All we can do is wait out the storm. I just hope she lasts through the storm. The storm might take us closer to land. Closer to help. I cannot let her die. I love her.
Chapter 8
I fell asleep sometime during the storm. I wake up. All is calm. The storm has passed and we are again floating aimlessly in the ocean. I go up onto the deck. The sun is shining and I see seagulls flying around us. Seagulls. Birds that nest on land. I look around us and see an island a ways away. It is pretty far. But we can make it. I know we can. I run down below deck. Lucy’s fever is broken. The storm lasted a long time. A couple of days maybe. But it brought us right where I wanted it to. It brought us near land. Lucy is still asleep. One of the rags hangs limply on her head. It is room temperature. Not cool, but not hot either. She is much better. I pull her shirt up slightly again and pull the bandages off. The wound looks just alright. I think it might be infected. I should have cauterized it with the hot blade as well. I clean the wound and put fresh bandages from the medical kit on again. I pray that she will be better now.
I am sitting on deck when Lucy comes up onto it with me. She is weak. I can tell. She sort of stumbles around and I have to help her sit down before she falls down.
“How are you, Lucy?” I ask her.
“Alright, Tom,” she says smiling at me. “Thanks to you anyway. You did a good job.”
“Not good enough. I think your wound may be infected. That is probably what brought on the fever. I’m surprised it broke. But look,” I point to the island, “maybe we can find help there.”
“Land! Excellent! What about you though, Tom? What about your wound?”
“It is alright. I’m fine. I’m just worried about you.”
“I’ll be alright, Tom. Don’t worry about me please.” She rests her head on my shoulder. We are slowly drifting in towards the land. I get up and go to the sail. I am not sure how to put it up. Lucy knows. She and her parents used to sail on the ocean in a sailboat. She tells me what to do and I do it. The sail is up. The wind is pushing us quickly towards the land. Within an hour, we are washing up onto the beach of the island. I do not care that the boat is run aground. A worry for another time.
I help Lucy off the boat. Then I grab the gun. I put my arm around her and she leans against me and I help her up the beach. The sand is very soft. Much softer than the course stuff of the Safe Zone. We move to the shade of a palm tree. The island is big. Very big. The beach stretches on and curves out of sight a way off. The jungle on the edge of the beach looms high over us. It is somewhat foreboding, but I have the gun. We should be safe here. Hopefully there are no Stumblers...or anything worse. Lucy sits in the sand against the tree while I stand, looking into the jungle. The jungle is big. Anything could be in there. I wonder if there are any Stumblers. There is a small thump as a coconut falls to the ground from the tree. I use the butt of the assault rifle to crack it open. I have Lucy drink all the milk inside. I use my pocket knife and cut pieces of the coconut off for us to eat. We sit for a few hours. Eating the coconut. Resting. Lucy falls asleep against the tree just as the sun starts to go down. I pick her up and carry her back to the boat. I do not want to stay on the edge of the jungle in the dark. As I am half way across the sand I hear a voice call out to us. I spin around, gun at the ready. Several people, two men and a woman, are walking towards us. Waving to us. Smiling at us?
“Hello, there!” shouts one of the men.
“How do you do?” asks the second man.
“Come over here, friends!” calls the woman.
I walk over to them cautiously. They see that I am holding a gun and stop approaching us. They eye me and the gun suspiciously. But they continue to smile all the while.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“We are the leaders of the Safe Zone of course!” says the woman cheerfully.
“The Safe Zone?” I ask wearily.
“Yes,” says one of the men. “This is the island Safe Zone. There is one on the coast, or so we heard. But we set up this one as well. You see this island is pretty large, but it is also isolated. There were no Stumblers here. We were fortunate to “find” plenty of scanners and syringes of the antivirus to set up our own community. We used to be on the coast. But no more. If you wish to stay here you will need to be scanned and injected
with the antivirus.” The antivirus. I never got sick from it. Then it won’t be so bad to be injected again. Hopefully.
“What about the military, have they set this place up?” I ask.
“No, no,” says the other man. “This is our island. This is my wife Lily. My name is Peter. And this is my cousin Roger. The three of us set up this island as a safe haven for survivors all over the world. The virus is everywhere. Well, everywhere except here in the Safe Zone. And you’ve come to join us haven’t you?” I think about this. Lucy needs help. This is the only place to go right now. I do not want to go back out into the ocean. If we do, we will both die soon enough. So if we die here on this island it would be no different. I decide it is a chance I will have to take.
“My friend has been shot,” I say. “Can you help her? I got the bullet out, but the wound is bad. She had a fever but it is gone now.”
“Yes we can help her!” says Lily. “We have a very good hospital here. We have some doctors who are here on the island.”
“You have a hospital?” I ask in surprise.
“Yes,” says Peter, “as well as a cafeteria where we all eat, and we even have a game room. Just a place to hang out and play board games. But let me tell you now so you know. Everyone must do their part here in the Safe Zone. Everyone is assigned a job to help keep the community alive and well. We get all out food from the ocean. It provides everything. My cousin Roger here is in charge of the fishing. I hope you won’t mind donating your boat. We could certainly use it you know! I think you’d make a good fisherman or a farmer. And we can certainly help your friend there. So would you like to join?”
“Yes,” I say after a moment of thinking, “yes, I would. Just help my friend please. I’ll do whatever work you need me to do. Please, just save my friend.”
“Of course, dear,” Lily says, “welcome to the Safe Zone.”
Epilogue
There are buildings all over the island. Small buildings made out of tree branches and palm leaves. They are the houses mainly. Then there are the big buildings made out of big rocks and trees. There is the hospital that is built like a log cabin almost. It is made from palm trees. Heavy logs stacked together for the walls and thick palm leaves for the roof. It is not very big though because most people do not get sick often here. In fact, it is usually quite empty, except for maintenance. There is also the game room. A big building that has crudely-made tables and chairs in it. We sit in here and talk and play games and such. It is sort of the town hall of the island Safe Zone. There is also the food house. We store food here. The food that we grow that is. We have no place to store fish so we eat those on a daily basis at dinner. Also there is a big building that is the cafeteria.
I am co-head of the fishing group. Roger is the head of it. Sometimes me and a few guys go out on the boat and fish. Other times I go out onto the reef with others and fish. We always bring in enough fish for everyone on the island to have plenty at mealtimes. Fishing is fun. I enjoy it. I feel quite relaxed here. Fishing is relaxing. There are always a lot of fish to catch. The supply never seems to end. Which is a good thing. Plenty of fish to go around.
Lucy is better now. The doctors helped her get better. When they need her there, she works in the hospital as a nurse. But mainly she helps Lily and the other women and men farm. They grow lots of vegetables on the island. There are also many fruit trees that they use. One of the best crops we have is turnips. They grow almost all year round so it is good. Only the hot summers hurt them. But we store up and stock up. Winter is never too cold here.
We have been here for two years now. Two months after we arrived on the island, after Lucy was better, I asked Lucy to marry me. We were working together in the jungle collecting coconuts from the ground. I am rummaging around on the ground when I find a small, short vine that is curled around itself forming a ring. I pick it up. It is a ring. A ring. I turned to Lucy and said her name. When she turned to me, I knelt down and took her hand. I told her I loved her and then I put the ring on her finger. I asked her. Asked her to marry me. She said yes. Right here in the Safe Zone.