I wanted to tell her more. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted her to know everything about me, about John Paul, about the things that happened to me in jail. I even wanted to tell her about the night her father was tortured and executed along with fifteen others right in front of my eyes while I stood there and fucking watched it happen. Yeah, what would she think of me then, when she finds out I never said a word? When she knows I didn’t do anything to stop them?
I shook my head from side to side violently, trying to force the sights and sounds to remain contained as they attempted to break out into my conscious mind. I could hear the screaming, see the looks on their faces as each one of them realized they were next, feel the splatter of blood on my skin, and smell the sickening stench of death. I swallowed hard, trying to force bile back down my throat.
I wanted a drink. I wanted a drink so fucking bad it fucking hurt.
I looked up into the eastern sky as the sun’s rays slowly broke over the horizon, telling myself over and over again not to think. For a moment, I just stared, eyes narrowed, trying to figure out the trick of the light causing the diffraction of the sun’s beams off to one side. A small band of cumulus clouds brightened the sky with gold and orange hues. There was a tinge of green on the underside of the closest clouds.
Four pelicans flew overhead towards the west.
I realized my breathing had escalated, and though I fought against hyperventilating, I welcomed the rush of adrenaline.
“Raine, wake up!”
“Hmm?” She rolled and rubbed at her eyes. Her eyes meeting mine was the only thing I could have considered more beautiful that the sight on the horizon. “What is it?”
“Land.”
*
“There ya go,” I said, watching Raine tie the edge of the blanket-towels-turned-into-sails down close to the canopy top. “Just keep a good hold of it – we don’t want to land on the windward side.”
“Why not?”
“If there are reefs or rocks, they’re more likely to be there. The leeside of the island – if it is an island – is more likely to be sandy. Reefs are the real danger right now – they could tear the raft up. If we make land, we’re going to need everything we got until we figure out where we are.”
“Do you think there are people there?”
“I have no fucking idea,” I growled. “Now don’t start with the questions. Just hold on to that sail.”
I adjusted the pair of floating anchors, which would help us from capsizing in the waves as we approached shore. Though being in a survival situation on land was much better than in the water, landing on shore in an inflated raft was dangerous at best. I picked the paddle up and started pulling us around the left of the slight peninsula jutting from what looked to be a small island.
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!”