We’re now down to six.
In my mind, I recalculate our water supply.
* * * *
I’m sneaking a swallow of water the night of day thirteen when I finally process I’m hearing…something.
It’s…
It sounds likewaves, but it doesn’t sound the same as what we’ve been hearing against the sides of the raft.
My mind is puzzling this over for the better part of an hour when enough brain cells finally band together to smack me upside the head. I rise, trip, and fall flat on my face, waking everyone up when I scramble to my feet and start looking around the outside of the raft.
In the distance, thanks to the moonless night, I spot the soft bioluminescent glow of waves breaking against a shoreline.
My hoarse, wordless scream gets George up on his feet. All I can do is point and scream. We’ve all seen daytime mirages—another reason I opt to try to sleep through the days—but George also starts wordlessly screaming and stumbles as he dives for two of the paddles, handing me one. We start paddling like crazy motherfuckers, now with Allen and Collin both trying to help.
It takes us nearly an hour, but we finally hear scraping beneath us as we bottom out in the shallows. George is laugh-sobbing as he falls out of the cutout and stands, showing he’s in water that’s not even waist deep on him. We’re all wordlessly sobbing as Allen and Collin both clamber out and help George drag the raft out of the water.
I nearly face-plant when I try to get out, and George has to catch me and help me out, but…
It’s fuckingland.
I don’t know if it can rightfully be called anisland, because it can’t be more than three thousand square feet, if that.
But it’s not.
Fucking.
Ocean.
The six of us sit there, crying and holding each other in the dark.
* * * *
I must have used up what little energy I had left, between the paddling and trying to get out of the raft, because as my watch shows it’s 5:30 in the morning, I realize now that I can’t stand. My body still wobbles like I’m on the raft, and my knees won’t support me. I have to crawl or drag myself across the ground.
George, Allen, Collin, and Connie have all scoured the tiny spit of land in the dim light for everything possible we can use. There’s various plastic debris, some random metal, pieces of styrofoam fishing buoys, and other crap. There’s some tufts of grasses at the highest point of our current residence, which is maybe ten feet above the water, if that, but that’s all in terms of vegetation on the mostly rocky land. We must have arrived at high tide, because the water eventually starts to recede, giving us a few more yards of real estate all the way around.
I catch sight of something moving near me in the pre-dawn gloom. Reflexively, I grab a paddle and smack the fuckingcrapout of the moving thing, hearing a sickening and yet satisfyingcrunchas I do.
Turns out it’s a crab.
Motherfucker.
I let out another wordless scream that probably sounds more psychotic than celebratory as I point to my smashed prize.
It takes the men less than five minutes to grab paddles of their own and start searching for more of the little fuckers, where they’re mostly hiding among the piles of seaweed left bundled at the high-tide line. Connie and Lisa are nearly as bad off as I am, Lisa sitting there and silently watching, Connie aimlessly standing in one spot with another paddle, but not much help as she looks around her at the ground.
We end up with fifteen. They’re less than four inches across, most way smaller, but George uses Pat’s pocketknife to start splitting them open and divvying them up. While my stomach rebels, I manage to keep a couple of bites down but hand the rest of mine off to Connie when I realize if I risk any more, it’s just going to come up again. I need to preserve the water in my stomach.
She looks like she’s going to argue with me before she sighs, takes it, and eats it.
* * * *
Once it’s fully daylight, the men carefully drag the raft all the way on shore. We don’t want to lose it. We’re not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, but we’re still alive.
#notdeadyet
