Herm stood there holding his sticks and watching her like the lost soul he was. He’d never looked quite so alone, and there was something disturbing about that, as if he’d realized it just then too. But neither of them could do anything about it. Neither of them could do anything about any of this.
As Quinn got closer to the trees, Harper noticed her.
Dropping a coconut to the sand, Harper inspected her hand with a look of disgust. “Broke a nail,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Only got a couple left.”
“Looks like you’re making out all right otherwise.”
Harper pointed to the coconuts she’d gathered. “Is this enough, or, like…”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Good, because they’re, like, really gross. I don’t even like coconuts.”
“Come on,” Quinn said, bending down, “let’s carry these back.”
Wringing her hands, Harper looked down at the sand. “Quinn, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Are we going to die here?” She bit her bottom lip, and began to cry.
Quinn reached out and touched her arm. She knew the real answer was she had no idea, but instead said, “Of course not. Don’t cry.”
“You think we’ll get rescued?” She sniffled.
“Maybe not right away but…yeah, sure I do.”
“Really?”
“I know it’s hard, but you have to try to hold it together, okay? We all do.”
“I’ve been too busy falling apart.” Harper laughed nervously then grew quiet and serious. “I’m sorry about Nat. I didn’t know her that good, but she was a nice person.”
“Yes, she was.”
“I never saw anybody die before. I never even knew anybody that died, except for my great grandma. She died when I was little but she was mad old.” Harper shook her head, as if doing so might better illustrate her point. “I’m a server at JUGGIES, what do I know about death anyways? If you want yummy appetizers or a drink from the bar, I got you, right? But I—I can’t believe this is happening. It’s like a movie. I just want to go home, you know? I want to, like, take a shower and get in my jammies and play with my kitty— I miss her so bad—for real. I want my iPhone so I can talk to my friends and post and chat and hang out, and I want to have drinks and dance and have fun, I—I don’t want…this. This sucks.”
Quinn nodded, unsure of how to respond to any of that.
“Gino gets mad at me sometimes because I don’t pay attention to all that survival stuff he’s into. But, like, that’s just not me. I’m more into fun stuff. YOLO, girl. Right? I may not know a lot of things, but we should’ve never gone on that stupid boat. We could’ve just stayed on the beach or at the hotel and stuff, it was so beautiful there. It’s beautiful here too but it scares me. Does it scare you too?”
“A little bit, yes.”
Harper offered a cartoonish frown. “Can I ask you something else, Quinn?”
For the love of God, I wish you wouldn’t. “Okay.”
“Do you think Andre’s all right?”
“I guess there’s no way to know for sure, but no, Harper, I don’t.”
She grimaced, and more tears came.
“Come on,” Quinn said softly, crouching down again. “I’ll help you with these.”
Harper wiped her tears. “Quinn?”
“Yeah?” she said through a heavy sigh.
“Thanks for being so nice.”
Though it took some effort, Quinn smiled then began gathering the coconuts.
Suddenly, she looked out into the jungle. A strong sensation that someone was watching them flooded through her with such ferocity, it caused a chill to dance along the back of her neck even in the relentless heat.
“What’s wrong?” Harper asked, wide-eyed.
Rather than answer, Quinn stared into the jungle, slowly scanning it back and forth, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing…yet she couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched by someone…or something…and either way, it wasn’t friendly. A primal sense of danger took hold of her, and her instinctual reaction was to run. But she held her ground.
“Why are you doing that?” Harper persisted. “You’re scaring me.”
A warm wind blew in off the ocean, rustling the edge of the jungle as it passed through, like a whisper. And then, quickly as it arrived, the feeling was gone, as if it had escaped on the breeze.
“Nothing,” Quinn said absently, her body gradually relaxing. “I thought…”
“What?”
“It’s nothing. It’s okay.”
Quinn returned to gathering coconuts, and thankfully Harper joined her without further questions or monologues, and together, they carried several back to the others.
As they walked the beach, her arms full, Quinn looked back twice. But there was nothing, no one, only jungle, sand and a glaring sun.
Having finished the burial, Dallas walked across the sand to the water and slowly waded in. Gino went right to work, telling Quinn and Harper they’d done well then taking Herm with him up closer to the tree line to stoke the fire.
Quinn watched Dallas in the water. She knew him better than anyone, and understood it was more than the dirt he was attempting to cleanse himself of. Emotion got the better of her, and she steeled herself, looking away and back down the stretch of beach from which she’d come.
“So, like, now what?” Harper asked, dropping the coconuts to the ground.
Murdoch still lying a few feet away, groaned, as if on cue.
“Why don’t you sit with him for a while?” Quinn suggested.
Harper scrunched her face up and leaned in close, lowering her voice. “He kind of freaks me out, with, you know, his eyes like that and stuff.”
“John?” Quinn asked. “Are you awake?”
He turned his head, following the sound of her voice, his eyes caked and closed, covered with dried blood. She’d dabbed at them and cleaned them earlier as best she could, but due to the severity of the gashes hadn’t been able to attend to them as sufficiently as she’d have liked. In addition to the excruciating pain he was surely feeling, infection was the main enemy, and with no access to antibiotics or even anything to properly dress the wounds, she knew that even if they were meticulously careful with him, it was highly probable one would eventually set in anyway. So keeping him comfortable and even somewhat hydrated was paramount.
“Quinn?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m here. Can you walk?”
“I think maybe, yeah.”
Quinn turned to Harper. “Help him up and get him over there to the trees so he can have some shade and shelter. We can’t just leave him here out in the open under this hot sun.”
“Me?” Harper mouthed silently. “Can’t you?”
“Harper’s going to help you, John,” she said. “She’s going to get you into some shade, all right?”
“Okay, yeah that—that’s good.”
Harper put her hands on her hips and cocked her head in what Quinn could only assume was supposed to be a look of annoyance. “Chica, seriously?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said evenly, “seriously.”
Without another word, Quinn walked away. She couldn’t take another second of this airhead, and was afraid if she didn’t get some physical separation she was going to tell her so. More conflict was the last thing everyone needed, so she did her best to summon the tools she’d acquired as an EMT, when she’d often have to not only care for those injured, but diffuse a situation before, during and sometimes even after doing so.
She breathed deeply, walked along the sand and tried to clear her mind. Her legs were still weak and a bit shaky from having not been used or bearing any weight for three days in the raft, but they were slowly regaining their strength. Her stomach grumbled from hunger, and the nearly constant thirst she’d endured for days was back.
It all still seemed like a dream. A horrible dream, but a dream nonetheless. These things didn’t
happen to everyday people. Yet here they were.
The more she thought about it, the more she understood Gino’s harshness and cold, calculating approach to things. He was right. They’d never survive without taking certain measures.
She looked back down the beach, saw Harper playing with her hair and gazing up at the sun. Her lips were moving so she was obviously talking to Murdoch.
Natalie’s face flashed across her mind’s eye, and Quinn found herself crying quietly as she walked along the water’s edge. Get yourself together, she thought, hearing Natalie’s voice in her head instead of her own. You have to be strong now.
Quinn wiped her eyes, and that’s when she saw it.
A shoe, lying in the wet sand just beyond the reach of the water, a sneaker she recognized. For a second, she froze, staring at it and trying to convince herself it was actually there. Looking back at the jungle, Quinn realized this was almost exactly where she’d had the feeling of being watched. She took a step closer to the sneaker. It was on its side but pointed in the direction of the jungle, as if the person wearing it had stepped out of it just a few feet onto the beach, then continued on without it. Had it been last night, she thought, if one lost a shoe, one would likely never be able to locate it in such unfathomable darkness. Quinn crouched down and picked it up.
Like an electrical current, a surge of emotions coursed through her. Andre.
The sneaker was Andre’s.
CHAPTER THREE
Dallas hated the ocean. He’d grown to despise it in these last few days. No longer was it a beautiful and majestic entity of wonder and awe, but instead a heartless monstrosity teeming with predators and dangers that existed for no reason other than to destroy him and those he loved. Were it up to him, despite having grown up an avid swimmer and beachgoer and having lived within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean for the majority of his life, were he to never lay eyes on an ocean again it would be too soon. But in this case, with grit and sand and remnants of Natalie—her perspiration and even her smell—on his skin, he had no choice but to walk out into the waves and let them cleanse him as nothing else here could. Although Gino apparently felt no need to do the same, and had instead gone about his duties, Dallas ventured out until the water was up to his chest. The tide was strong and his legs were still weak, but he was able to remain upright. After a few moments, he let his body fall back so that he was partially floating, though he could still feel the bottom with his toes. As the back of his head touched the water, he looked up into the deadly sun and closed his eyes, letting the sway of the waves rock him slowly back and forth. He tried to force the visions of Natalie’s dead, limp body from his mind, focusing instead on the pain in his chest. It still hurt a bit when he took a deep breath, but he was relatively certain it was getting better. He couldn’t be sure if something was hurt inside him or if it was just another symptom of stress and exhaustion. Either way, he had no plans to mention it to anyone, not even Quinn. There was no room for weakness here. Dallas understood that all too well now. Gino wasn’t playing games. He’d known him since their college days, long enough to realize that regardless of what happened from here on out, Gino had every intention of surviving this ordeal. That much was painfully clear, and although Dallas outwardly showed concern and questioned his friend in the hopes he could keep him at least somewhat grounded in all this madness, secretly, he agreed with him. Whatever it took, he and Quinn were getting off this island. They were getting home, or he’d die in the attempt. Either way, much as his conscience wanted to condemn Gino, Dallas knew that were it to become necessary, he’d be no different in the final analysis. Could he be as brutal as Gino likely could be, though? If he were backed into a corner, could he come out swinging with such vengeance and desire to survive that it made no difference who or what had to get hurt in the process? It was about living or dying now, nothing more. Maybe it always had been. Andre was gone, probably dead. It was time to face that, to get his mind around it not only conceptually, but as a cold hard fact. Like the vision of poor Natalie, nude and dead, rolling lifelessly into that makeshift grave, looking as if she were asleep and might at any moment open her eyes, stand up and assure them it was all some elaborate bad joke. He clenched his eyes shut tighter, but the pictures in his mind refused to let him go. Natalie was dead and nothing was going to bring her back. A sweet and wonderful person who wouldn’t hurt a fly was one of the first among them to go, along with Andre, who other than Gino, was the strongest and most physically fit of the group. What did that tell him? That all bets were off, and although it might not yet be necessary to behave as such, when the time came, he’d be ready to do whatever he had to do in order to make sure he and Quinn survived.
With a tangle of thoughts and fears coursing through him, it was the sound of Quinn’s voice that brought him back. He sat up quickly, his hair dripping water as he spun back toward shore, his eyes panning across the waterline in search of his wife’s voice. She was calling for everyone to come, and even before he’d managed to locate her through the glare, he was wading fast as he could toward shore.
By the time he’d made the sand, Gino was sprinting down the beach toward her, Herm and Harper walking well behind him and far less urgent in their movements.
Though his legs were not quite ready for the strain, Dallas pushed them anyway. Running with a bit of a hobble, and at nowhere near the speed he normally could have, he closed on Quinn, who had seen him too and was motioning for him, even though Gino was already at her side.
When he got within a few feet of them, he saw she was holding something.
“It’s Andre’s,” Gino told him before she could.
Dallas, out of breath, wiped his eyes and took a closer look. “Yeah,” he said. “It is. Where did you find it?”
“There.” Quinn pointed to the section of sand where she’d first seen it. “It was just lying there.”
Herm and Harper had joined them now.
“What does it mean?” Harper asked.
“Gonna roll the dice on this one,” Herm said. “You ask that a lot, don’t you?”
Harper cocked her head. “Huh?”
“Doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Gino said, looking out at the ocean then back at the jungle, his eyes squinting. “He could’ve just lost his shoe in the surf and it cleared the reef but his body never did.”
“But if his body was out there,” Quinn said, “on this side of the reef, it would’ve washed ashore by now.”
“Yeah, it would’ve.”
“So he could still be alive?” Dallas asked hopefully.
“If he came ashore last night and lost his sneaker right there,” Gino said, pointing, “it was so dark he could’ve made his way into the jungle and we would’ve never seen him.”
“But isn’t it safe to assume he would’ve seen us by now?” Herm asked.
“Not if he’s hurt,” Quinn said. “He could be lying just a few feet inside the jungle and we’d never know he was there.”
As a group, they hurried across the sand to the jungle.
They cleared the two rows of palm trees then stopped, looking for the best route into the jungle. Although accessible, rather than gradual, the vegetation was sudden and thick in places, which made visibility difficult. There was no telling what awaited them beyond the edge of the jungle.
Quinn thought of mentioning the strange feeling she’d had earlier, but decided against it. The sensation, though strong at the time, was gone and had not returned.
“Everybody stay together,” Gino said, pushing his way in, “and stay behind me. Single file, watch your step and keep your eyes open.”
Things became immediately darker in the thickness of the jungle, which included a heavy canopy of vegetation and trees. Sunlight cut through in beams crisscrossing before them, and the heat remained a constant. Here, unseen things crawled and slithered and made strange sounds, reminding Gino and the others that they were the intruders, the aliens in this foreign world. Quinn had reluctantly
taken Natalie’s sandals, and although they were a little small, they were preferable to being barefoot, particularly once they’d left the sand, something Dallas quickly realized as the only member of the group still without shoes. Pulling up the rear, he glanced behind them every few seconds to make certain he knew the path they were following and where to go to find their way back out. Regardless of how deep they went, the jungle essentially looked the same, so becoming disoriented and lost within it was highly probable were one not careful.
The ground was uneven and treacherous, and Dallas soon lagged behind the others, as with each step the bottoms of his feet were subjected to progressively painful terrain. He’d have to come up with something, put together some sort of coverings or something for them, he thought, or his feet would never hold up and they’d soon be ravaged even worse with cuts and scrapes, which would not only leave him hobbled, but susceptible to infection. “Slow down, guys,” he said, his body already drenched in sweat and his throat constricting and in need of water.
Quinn and Herm stopped and waited for him, but Gino and Harper continued on, pushing their way through the brush.
“No shoes,” Dallas said. “I’m having trouble keeping up.”
“How far are we supposed to go, anyway?” Herm asked.
“Why don’t you go back to the beach and wait?” Quinn suggested.
“There’s no sign of him anyway,” Herm said, nodding in agreement. “And I may not be the survival expert Gino is, but I do know the more we exert ourselves in this heat the more water we’re going to need. I don’t have any desire to go on some wild goose chase looking for Andre when he may not even be here. His sneaker could’ve just washed ashore, for Christ’s sake. It doesn’t mean he made it to shore, and there’s zero evidence he walked into the jungle.”
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