“You’re an early bird,” Reggie said.
“Just felt like trying to wash up.”
“Yeah, don’t we all.”
I smiled. It felt so weird being so close with people I hardly knew. They all had a shared history together, but me and Trevor were the outsiders. It was like going to a new school.
“So…did any of you guys…lose anyone?” I asked as I lowered my head and poked around in the sand. “You know, is anyone missing.”
“Friends,” Reggie replied. “No one really had family, except Sherry and Conner, but we all grew up together. Everyone knew everyone, you know?”
“Yeah. I just can’t believe any of this is happening. It’s crazy, we can’t be that far from a main island. Where’s the coast guard? Where’s the rescue planes?”
Reggie shrugged. “They’ll come. I’m sure they’ll come. Our job is to survive until they get here.”
“Easier said than done. Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here.”
“More reason to go get all the supplies that washed up.”
“Supplies? What kind of stuff are we talking about?”
“There’s medical kits, flashlights, silverware…all kinds of stuff. There were even a few suitcases stuck in the rocks.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I think we need that. We should do that today.”
“Do what today?” Amber asked.
“Just talking to Reggie about getting the supplies that washed up. Sounds like there’s a lot of stuff we can use. Gotta prepare for worst case. Could take rescue a while.”
“It won’t be long. If we can see the ship so can the rescue planes. Somebody is probably already on the way.”
“Yeah…just saying better safe than sorry.”
Amber crooked her mouth to the side. “Don’t waste your time.”
“Look, I don’t wanna burst anybody’s bubble, but I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy. You keep talking about a rescue, but it’s not here yet. There’s a lot of water out there to search.”
“Oh my God, not you too,” Amber groaned. “Sherry is bad enough with that shit.”
“I’m not saying we won’t get rescued, I’m just saying it’s not a bad idea to take some precautions.”
“Give it a break Daniel,” Chase blurted out as he leaned up on his elbows. “I’m burnt to shit and tired. It’s all in the rocks, it’s not going anywhere.”
I wanted to punch him in the face. He was such a lazy ass, sitting in the dirt like a beached whale. I didn’t know what his angle was, but I didn’t need his permission for anything.
“You don’t have to help Chase. You can stay here and eat yourself into a coma.”
He wheeled around on me, but before he could say anything, Sherry burst into tears, moaning and sobbing in dramatic cries. She buried her head into her arms and fell over into the sand.
Chase gave her a sideways glance then stood up. He walked off about twenty feet then fell to the ground and tucked his knees to his chest. “Somebody shut her up,” he grumbled.
“Fuck you Chase!” Sherry snapped. “Don’t any of you get it? No one’s coming! We’re gonna fucking die here!”
“Jesus Sherry,” Amber said in an exhausted tone.
“I’m serious. We’re stuck on a fucking island and you assholes are strolling around here like it’s band camp. There’s nobody fucking here! We don’t know where the fuck we are, and you guys are eating leftovers from a mini-fridge like any of this shit is normal. And Amber, shut the fuck up already with your rescues!”
I didn’t know what to say. My mouth dangled open as I watched her fall apart. She was losing it and as she ruffled her fingers through her hair and cried her eyes out, my heart broke for her. Not only for the pain she was going through, but because I was sure that same fear lived inside of all of us.
“She’s crazy, but she’s got a point,” Trevor said as he sat up.
“Trevor,” I groaned.
“No, I’m serious. Might as well be band camp.”
“Can you guys take that shit somewhere else?” Antonio chimed in. “Some of us just wanna sleep.”
“Fuck you new guy!” Trevor snapped.
“New guy? I’ll kick your ass up and down this beach.”
“Give it a shot asshole!”
“Hey!” I shouted. “Enough!”
Antonio was already on his feet and Trevor had jumped up as well. I stepped in between them and held my arms out, but if push came to shove, Antonio was gonna get punched in the face.
“Guys! Jesus Christ!” Amber suddenly screeched. “Look at us!” She leaned her head back and took a deep breath. “We’re alive.”
Her words echoed as they fell into the waves crashing against the rocks. It was more than a statement, it was a proclamation, a decree as if someone had challenged that fact.
She turned and stared out at the water. “All those people out there are dead, but we’re here…we’re alive. We’re lucky to have made it off that ship, we could’ve drowned with everyone else. And all you want to do is lay around in the fucking dirt arguing, but we’re here and all those people out there…they are fucking dead!”
Trevor turned and clenched his jaw. “My parents aren’t dead!” he barked then stormed off.
Amber suddenly deflated as the weight of her words hit her. She gasped, and her eyes welled with tears. “Trevor, I didn’t mean---”
“I’ll get him.” I said then jogged after him as he headed toward the far side of the beach. “Dude slow down,” I called out to him.
“Fuck her Daniel! Fuck all of them!”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know how to reply. We walked around the edge of the beach and followed the shoreline toward the small lagoon. The sun had risen high in the sky and the wind was blowing a nice cool breeze that kept the heat at bay.
We sat down on a row of smooth stones that were embedded in the sand. In silence, we watched the waves tumble into the barnacle encrusted rocks, spilling over into the lagoon. Tiny fish swam about in the little nursery, their world safe from the raging waters that pounded the beach just a few feet away.
I sucked the cool, salty air through my nose. The scent was calming and the squawk of seagulls was like a soundtrack to a cheesy movie. A cheesy movie where everyone was happy and the tropical location was some exclusive resort. But this wasn’t a resort at all. Everything about where we were looked right, but it wasn’t. This wasn’t a movie, and if it had been it would’ve been a horror film.
Amber was right, we were alive. Alive and alone, lost somewhere in the Bahamas I guessed. And the fact that I hadn’t seen a boat or heard a plane or any semblance of life scared me more than I could articulate.
I wanted to believe we’d be fine. I wanted to believe that someone was on the way to rescue us. But as the minutes turned to hours and hours to days, I wondered just how lost we truly were.
“It’s nice out here,” Trevor said casually after half an hour of silence.
“Yeah?”
“You know, like it’d be a nice place to visit or vacation.”
I nodded my head and stared back at the water in the lagoon. Flashes of color zipped by in blurs as the fish chased each other in circles. The fish were no bigger than a finger, but dozens of them sped through the blue water like torpedoes.
I looked up as the crunch of sand caught my attention. Amber was slowly making her way toward us. She was biting her lower lip and fumbling with her hands, but staring right at Trevor, waiting for him to make eye contact.
The sun bounced off her crimson hair, making it blaze like fire. She’d twisted it into loose braids and pulled it back out of her face. Her fair skin was already tanning, her shoulders turning a rosy red color and peeling in spots. She was starting to grow on me.
Trevor slowly raised his head and glanced in her direction. He mumbled under his breath then stood up and started to climb over the rocks.
“Wait,” she called after him. “Please.”
Trevor sighed then turned arou
nd and stopped. “What?”
“I just wanted to tell you I was sorry. I…I wasn’t trying to say anything about your parents. I just meant in general you know? There were people in the water and clinging to life boats…” she looked up at him and paused. “I’m sorry. That’s it. I’ll leave you guys alone.” She started to walk off when Trevor called back to her.
“Apology accepted,” he said. “Now I’m going for a walk. You can keep my brother company. If you happen to see Sherry and she’s not crying or even McKinsey and that ogre isn’t with her, be sure to send them my way.”
She gave him a confused look, but his mood swing didn’t surprise me. It was his way of dealing with shit, turn everything into a joke. I looked at Amber and shrugged.
“That’s Trevor.”
She smiled and took a seat next to me. Digging her toes into the sand, she leaned back and I followed the lines of her stomach up to her bathing suit top. I continued further until I met her eyes and looked away.
She giggled. “Where you from?” she asked.
It was an odd question, in the sense that it’d never come up before. Neither of us really knew anything about the other and as far as I could tell, we were gonna be living together for a while.
“Orlando,” I replied.
“Oh wow! Our church is in Kissimmee. I go to school in Altamonte Springs.”
Both were towns twenty minutes from Orlando. It was all the same area, but Orlando was the hub of Central Florida.
“We’re practically neighbors,” I laughed.
“Yeah, we’ll have to hang out when we get back home.”
I frowned and looked off into the distance. Home seemed like a destination I couldn’t even recall anymore. It was just a distant place I sometimes saw in my dreams.
“We are going home,” she said more forcefully.
I swallowed and kept staring away.
“We are,” she mumbled like she needed to convince herself.
“Is Sherry gonna be okay?” I asked. “She…she looked like she was having a meltdown.”
“That’s kind of Sherry’s thing.”
“Meltdowns?”
“Drama. It’s her bread and butter. Don’t think too much about it. She’ll be fine.”
I shrugged. The wind started to blow a bit harder and I could hear faint rumbling in the distance. I looked further out into the water, scanning the horizon. There was a wall of gray slowly moving toward us and dark clouds swirling above like buzzards.
“That doesn’t look good,” Amber whispered.
It was moving fast. Gnarly, gray fingers stretched across the sky and I felt the cold wind on my face that normally preceded disaster. Whitecaps whipped across the water and the waves hit the rocks on the shore with enough force to push them into the jungle behind us.
I stood up and a gust of wind nearly knocked me back down. An electric flash sizzled the air and a boom exploded so close that I could feel it.
The hairs on my arms stood on end and panic slithered up my back like a snake. It was a paralyzing fear that I thought I’d left back in the ocean. I was so stupid. I’d watched so many episodes of Survivor and Bear Grylls it was pathetic. But I hadn’t lifted a finger to make sure I was safe while stranded on this desolate rock. We had no place to go.
“Get back to the others,” I said to Amber. “Pull the life raft up on the beach and use the ropes to anchor it to the trees.”
She gave me a confused look.
“Turn it over,” I continued. “We can get under it, but make sure they tie it down.”
“Where are you going?”
More flashes of blue lit up the darkening sky and I jumped. It sounded like boulders were crumbling down the side of the mountain. Wind was pushing sea spray into the air like a water gun and in an instant, the sun had vanished and clouds as black as obsidian crawled across the sky.
“Oh my God!” Amber groaned.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted over the roaring wind. “I have to get Trevor. Get back to the others, I’ll meet you there.”
CHAPTER 7
NO HOPE FOR THE HOPELESS
I ran into the trees with the screeching wind, howling behind me. Debris trailed in my wake, sand and loose rocks, flying like shrapnel.
“Trevor!” I screamed, but my words were swallowed by the thunder.
It was dark and the only light came from the flashes of lightning and the bit of sunlight that forced its way through the nebulous clouds. Rain fell in pestering bands, striking me sideways with vengeful force. I’d never seen a storm blow in that fast. The island was screaming at us to leave.
The palm trees leaned over as the wind pushed against them. Branches swung wildly, smacking me in the face as I bored through the dense brush.
I didn’t know where I was going, but something inside of me pulled me in one direction. I sped up, nearly falling over the overgrown bushes and the cluster of vegetation that littered the floor.
“Trevor!” I shouted again.
“Daniel!” a faint voice called back.
I slid to a stop and looked around. “Trevor!”
More wind blew through the trees and the rain fell harder. The dense foliage shook and rattled violently then Trevor suddenly popped out from between two large palms.
“Dude!” I screamed with wild eyes.
“I found something!” he yelled to me.
“We’ve gotta get the hell out of here.”
Thunder boomed like the sky had ripped in half. The clouds opened and unleashed a hellish downpour. It was raining so hard I could hardly see a few feet in front of me. I grabbed Trevor’s arm and pulled him back toward the beach.
“We’ve gotta get somewhere safe,” I told him.
He pulled away from me. “Follow me.”
“Trevor, we don’t have time for this shit.”
“Just follow me.”
He turned, ripping his arm away and ran back through the jungle. Groaning, I hurried after him. It was hard to keep up, the ground was turning to slick mud and the rain was like pellets of iron.
I screamed for Trevor to slow down, but my words were blown away in the wind. My only choice was to run faster. I leapt over the short bushes, covering my face as I smashed through the feeble branches. My clothes were drenched and so much water poured down my head it felt like I was being water boarded.
A white noise filled my ears from the steady deluge. Muddy water splashed into the air with every stomp of my feet in the trench-like puddles. Every time I inhaled it was like I was breathing underwater. We needed to find shelter.
Trevor suddenly stopped, and I almost ran into him. I slid through the mud and he caught my arm to help me steady.
He was standing at the edge of a sheer cliff that fell off into the turbulent waters on the backside of the island. Jagged rocks rose up out of the waves like the spikes on a dragon’s back. My knees shook just staring down into the rapids below.
“What the hell are we doing Trevor?” I asked.
“It’s around here,” he said and started down a narrow trail beside the cliff.
Chunks of dirt gave way and fell into water. There were only inches between each step I took and plunging to my death as I tried to follow him. My feet sank into the muddy soil and I struggled to maintain my balance.
The rain was menacing. It was like God was trying to drown me. Buckets of water poured down, hindering my sight and making every footfall an act of blind faith. Every gust of wind pinned me against the wall of the cliff and I clung to the twisted vines in fear for my life.
The lightning strikes looked like fireworks and the accompanying thunder sounded like bombs exploding in the distance. I could feel the ground shaking, the ledge breaking apart under my weight.
Trevor vanished around the narrow trail as it twisted and turned. I wanted to race after him, but any faster and I was certain I’d fall.
“Trevor! Trevor” I called after him. “Where the hell are you?”
“In here,” he
shouted as his hand jutted out from nowhere and grabbed my shoulder.
To my left there was an opening in the wall of the cliff. It was covered by vines that climbed up the rocks, tangling into knots like a drape.
I held my hands out and pushed the thick, twisted plants to the side. Tucking my head, I hesitantly stepped in behind Trevor. It was damp and dark, but I was out of the weather. Trevor grinned then sat down on a large boulder near the mouth of the cave. He let out a deep breath then held his hands out wide.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“How the hell did you find this?”
“I was bored, so I went exploring. There’s all types of shit on this island.”
I looked around the cave in awe. We were only a few feet inside, but it seemed to go own for hundreds of yards. The ceiling was at least fifteen feet high and the craggy walls opened like an amphitheater as you went deeper.
“This is crazy,” I mumbled. “You could fit a house in here.”
Trevor laughed. “Take a seat. We’re gonna be here for a while.”
I frowned and stared out at the storm. The wind cried like a banshee as the sound of the crashing waves echoed from below. The rain sounded like machine gun fire and chunks of thick ice splattered the ground outside.
“It’s really coming down out there,” Trevor said. “I bet Antonio and Chase are spooning each other.”
Another crackle of thunder shook the air and riddled my arms with goosebumps. I jumped then instinctively took a few steps deeper into the cave.
“We can’t just leave them out there,” I mumbled to myself.
Trevor grumbled. “Screw those guys. A little rain never killed anyone.”
“It’s more than just a little rain Trevor. I’m going back to get them.”
“Fuck Daniel! Why do you always have to be so dramatic? They don’t give a shit about us. They can pray for the rain to go away if they feel like it.”
“This is stupid Trevor. I’m going back to get them.”
“Well find your own cave then. Don’t bring them to mine.”
“You’re an idiot.” I pushed the thick, vines to the side and poked my head out. The thought of scaling that trail again made me nauseous, but it was the only way back to the beach.
Deconstruction- The Complete series Box Set Page 56