Chapter Two: Stranded

Doug Bryant lay on the sandy beach gasping for air. Mary was dry heaving beside him, the contents of her stomach having been left far out in the water. Alyson was crying on the other side of her. Mary and Alyson had briefly gone under with the boat, but had somehow escaped. They broke surface on either side of another life vest. Mary and he had insisted Alyson wear it. He'd had to half-drag Mary to the beach against the pressure of the wind. It hadn't been easy swimming in his canvas deck shoes, despite his almost legendary endurance, but he knew he'd need them on the island since neither Alyson nor Mary had any.

Lightning struck another tree on a hill, reminding him of how exposed they were.

"Come on! We have to get off the beach. Don't stand up or you'll attract lightning."

They were all too tired to do more than crawl anyway. It took both of them to stop Alyson's crying long enough to get her moving. "We need to get back into the dense trees as a minimum. Maybe we can reduce the chance of being fried. Maybe we can find some kind of shelter. A cave or something. Come on!"

"Shelter" was just a large fallen tree lying at a forty-five degree angle against a small rise in the ground. It looked stable enough, so Doug put Mary and Alyson under it while he scrounged branches, fronds, small bushes-anything he could use to build a lean-to wall on the windward side. Mary had insisted on helping, but he overruled her. "Aly's hanging by a thread. If we leave her alone she could snap. Just get back under there and comfort her. Tell her it will be okay when the storm passes. Please, Mare."

Doug's wall didn't block all of the wind, but it did keep out over ninety percent of it and effectively blocked the rain. He had enough material to create a partial windbreak on the leeward side, then crawled in with the others. The temperature would have been comfortable were it not for the chilling effect of the wind and rain. Mary was sitting behind the still-sobbing Alyson, her nude body wrapped around her daughter's to share warmth.

Doug's exertions had left him overheated. He had the other two cuddle around him to share his warmth and to keep himself from cooling too quickly.

"Daddy..." After six attempts and never getting past that initial word before breaking down in sobs Alyson gave up.

His left arm tightened, squeezing her to his side. He spoke in a quiet, gentle voice barely above a whisper. "It's okay now, Pixie. The worst is over. We'll be safe here tonight, and tomorrow we can look for something better. Search and Rescue will be looking for us when the storm clears." He hadn't had the opportunity to ask Mary if that last was true. But it could wait until he could ask her out of Alyson's hearing. Knowing the answer now wouldn't make any difference at the moment.

"Your mom's already asleep. You need to sleep, too, because tomorrow you'll need your strength. We'll have work to do. Okay?"

"But..."

"Shhhh! No buts, okay? Worrying tonight won't solve anything. We'll have time to worry tomorrow, but let's not do that until we know what the situation really is. Tomorrow things will probably turn out to be better than they seem to be tonight, and we'd be worrying about non-problems. Pixies have better things to do than worry about non-problems. Okay?"

Her tear-streaked cheek snuggled against his left shoulder. "Okay. I'll try."

He couldn't free his right arm from around Mary, so he brushed her bangs aside with his nose and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead as he raised his left hand. He ran the side of his left forefinger down the line of her jaw and whispered, "G'night, Pixie."

Her arms tightened about him for a moment, and then she lifted her tear-streaked face and he heard the two soft little grunts. He gently pressed his lips to hers for the "MmmmmmmmMAH!"

She returned her face to his shoulder and sniffed once. "I love you. G'night."

"I love you too, Pixie." He lowered his arm and wrapped it around her, holding her to him while realizing he should have put her in the middle where it was warmest. But her breathing had suddenly become deep and regular. He suspected she hadn't gone to sleep as much as she had passed out from exhaustion, the same as Mare. And the same as he was going to do.

His last thought was the sudden realization that in addition to the soft handful of Mare's right breast cupped in his right hand, he had a firm little cone under the fingers of his left. He jerked his arm down. "Goddamnit, Mare," he mumbled as exhaustion took him.

While Doug headed for the beach to examine the leaden sky and take stock of their surroundings, Mary tried to explain the basics of field sanitation to their discontented daughter. "Look," she finally said, her shoulders sagging in frustration. "You don't have any other choice. There's no C-store handy to buy toilet paper, not that we have any cash on hand anyway. You can always wash in the surf, you know. Now, scoot! I have to talk to your father."

"What if I use poison ivy?"

"Your father left a stack of leaves on the log for you. Use those."

"What if a bear attacks me?"

"Lie to it. Tell it you always root for the Bears to beat the Chargers. Go on!"

As Alyson rolled her eyes and minced her way to the slit trench that Doug had dredged with a broken tree limb, Mary followed the trail back to the beach, looking as she went for suitable ways to improve their makeshift shelter. She found Doug standing just beyond the treeline, the two orange life vests dangling at the end of one arm, staring to the right. The south, more or less, she assumed.

"Doug?"

"Look at that."

She followed his pointing finger. A small wooden dock, weathered gray with age, stuck into the water a couple of hundred yards to the south. "I thought this island was uninhabited," she said, her eyes now searching the treeline near the dock.

"That's what the chart said. That does look rather old..."

"There!" She pointed. "Right down from that tallest tree with the broken top."

She waggled her forefinger while he squinted. His lasik surgery had not been a hundred percent successful because he'd insisted on going to that jerk McLaughlin instead of to Brilovic as she'd done. But this wasn't the time to point that out. She waggled it again and he suddenly grunted as he saw the debris-strewn clay tile roof and the weathered gray walls half-consumed by the surrounding vegetation.

"It looks worse than the dock." He looked toward their makeshift camp. "Where's Alyson?"

"Taking care of Number Two. She's not happy that there's no Charmin to squeeze."

Doug glanced toward the water. "Well, she can..."

"I told her."

Doug already knew that, just as she knew he already knew. They could practically read each other's minds after all these years. But he didn't need to be a mind reader to know that her next question would be about Search and Rescue. She explained that she'd just given the coordinates but didn't get a confirmation before the boat was hit. She saw the look on his face and stopped talking. "What?"

"That was an eight, not a zero. That's about a hundred fifty miles difference, Mare."

She blinked at him. "But if they don't find us there..."

"If there's another of these little islands there, they'll assume that's where we went down, and that's where they'll start looking for us. If not, then they will assume our bearings were off slightly and start searching with the closest island, moving downwind. They may give up before they ever get to this one."

She thought he was blaming her. "Well, I warned you about your handwriting!" she snapped.

He placed his free hand gently on her shoulder. "What's done is done. We don't need to be arguing about this, especially in front of Alyson. What we need to do is prepare for a slightly extended stay here. That cabin is a good sign, even if nobody appears to be home. We can try to salvage stuff from the boat. The water's only about thirty feet deep out there, depending on exactly where it went down." He pointed along the shore. "A few things have already washed up here."

"Where are you?" Alyson's voice was shrill and shaky.

"Here!"

Two more shouts and Alyson stumbled out of the trees before them. "I couldn't find you," she said, brushing a tear from her cheek. "I'm going to get lost here."

"You never get lost in the mall," Doug said. "And who's the one who always knows where the car is in the parking lot?"

She gave him the standard Frustrated Daughter Dealing with Obtuse Parents look. "Daddy!"

"I'm serious. You keep track of the landmarks there. You just have to do the same here, except they aren't letters on signs attached to light poles. Just because you grew up in the city doesn't mean you have to forget everything you learned while you're out here. You just need to adjust some of your thinking for the changed circumstances."

"Why didn't you just follow the trail?" Mary asked.

"What trail?"

Mary blinked. "Just what did they teach you at that camp three years ago?"

Alyson's thin eyebrows pulled down from her bangs in a frown. "Pottery and archery and swimming..."

Mary interrupted her. "Speaking of swimming, do you want to go wash up before we check out the area?"

"Yeah." She glanced at the shoreline and back at them. "Shouldn't you be building a signal fire or something, like they do in the movies?"

"Sure," her father replied. "How do you want to light it?"

"How should I know? Bang two rocks together or something. Rub two sticks together. You're the adults. You grew up in this sort of place. I'm just a city girl." She trudged toward the water, the onerous burden of being stranded hundreds of miles away from the nearest Godiva Chocolatier, Pizza Hut, or movie cineplex, without even her portable MP3 player for diversion, evident in her posture.

After a dozen paces Alyson turned around. "What about jellyfish or sharks or something?"

"I meant to warn you," Doug said. "They might be endangered species. Don't hurt them."

Mary saw the standard Frustrated Daughter Dealing with Smart-Assed Parents look, but she also saw the first hint of a smile that day. She went back to discussing plans with Doug while Alyson splashed and scrubbed in the shallows, no doubt upset by the absence of her favorite coconut oil-based bath soap. They had decided to delay diving to the boat until the next day to let the storm-churned turbid water return to its natural clarity when they were interrupted by Alyson's scream.