Stranded (11 page)

The faster Crystal ran, the harder the current pushed against her shins. Jake was getting farther and farther ahead of her. “Wait!” she almost screamed, but then remembered, no, she was going to be brave. She shoved harder against the water. Ahead of her, Jake ran silhouetted in the triangle of light, elbows bent, arms pumping. She imitated him.

He stopped abruptly and turned toward her. Had he found people in the light? The grin on his face said whatever it was, it was good.

A stitch in her side pinched hard. She stumbled the last few steps, clutching her waistline. “What is it?”

He stepped aside, and she rasped in a breath. An oblong pool ten times the size of her best friend’s swimming pool stretched out in front of her. From a ledge even higher than the soaring tree line, a waterfall tumbled into the pool, spattering noise and a fine mist that sparkled in the sunlight.

“It’s beautiful.” Picture postcard perfect. Other than where the waterfall churned the water, the pool was clear all the way to the bottom. Small, round pebbles glinted like thousands of pennies. The bottom rose in a gentle slope until the pebbles merged with larger rocks, and then larger, until there was no more water but only the rain forest on one side and a steep hill on the other.

They waded to the edge of the hill and climbed its slippery, grass-covered side until they reached the level of the rain forest’s canopy. Soaked to the skin by the mist, they perched on the side of the hill like two giant birds and gawked at the sea of green leaves swaying around them. Everywhere she looked were birds and monkeys, fruits and insects, and huge, spectacular flowers.

How often had she dreamed of going to the Detroit Zoo with her mom and dad? And now, here she was, right smack in the middle of the real thing.

“Keep your eyes on the monkeys,” Jake whispered. “What they eat is what we can eat.”

“Oh!” She jumped when, only yards away from them, a snake darted out to catch a tiny bird in its fangs. She hadn’t even seen the snake, camouflaged as it was by its snappy green hues among the leaves. She made a sad face at Jake.

He shrugged his shoulders. “You just have to go with the flow, Pumpkin.”

“Why’d you call me that?”

“Pumpkin? That’s what I called my daughter when she was your age. Is that okay?”

Crystal’s heart skyrocketed. Jake had told her yesterday on the beach that God adopted believers to be His children. God could become her heavenly Father, too, if she wanted. But, really, a heavenly Father couldn’t take her for a walk in the jungle. Or show her how to make invisible trails. And, for sure, He wouldn’t call her Pumpkin. No, what she needed was a real father. She smiled up at Jake. “It’s okay if you call me Pumpkin. I like it.”

Warmth overflowed her heart and radiated into the cold cavity that had stood empty, aching for someone to love her, all her life. No more being a scaredy-cat. No more Crybaby Crystal. From now on, she’d be brave. She’d think of something to prove it, and Jake would be real proud of her.

The sea gulls’ raucous cries woke Jake to a rising sun. For the first time since the four castaways arrived on the island, they’d slept in the open instead of under trees. Eve had volunteered for the first watch, but had she wakened Betty for the next one? Both of them lay asleep near the stream, mouths slack, heads cushioned on their life vests.

So much for that plan. Did it matter, anyway? With no one else on the island, what could possibly threaten them?

The fiber filling for his moccasins was dry from last night’s washing at the stream. He reassembled the footwear and tested it for comfort. If he didn’t get the filling cushioned just right, the rubberized material rubbed his toes raw. Today he needed his feet to stay in good shape. It would take him most of the day to make the round trip to the top of the volcano.

Remembering his promise to not leave without telling anyone, he shook Betty awake. “I’m going to poke around the cove and then head out for the volcano,” he whispered.

Crystal popped up like warm toast. “I want to go with you.”

Eve raised her head. “Why aren’t all of us going? Is this another unilateral decision?”

He sighed.
“I figured Crystal could take you to see the jungle pool. You know, a day at the spa? The trip to the volcano will be grueling—uphill all the way.” Not to mention he could go faster by himself.

Betty got to her feet and brushed off the sand clinging to her clothes and arms and legs. “How about if we explore the cove together? We can decide about the volcano after that.”

Before he could protest, Crystal, Betty, and Eve were on their feet and headed for the cove, decision presumed by a majority vote.

The flat expanse of beach and grassland made it easy to see each other. They scattered. Eve sauntered along the shoreline, and Betty waded into the waist-high grass at the back of the beach. Jake opted for exploring the cove. Crystal followed him, scouting for seashells.

“I’m going to check out how deep the cove is.” He slipped off his moccasins. Tiny, black mussel shells lay half-buried in the shallow water. Protein. Larger ones had to be nearby. His mouth watered as he stooped to scoop up a handful.

“Jake, there’s a barbed-wire fence here,” Betty yelled.

A fence? He dropped the clamshells and spun around to face her. The terrain snapped like a photograph into his mind—the cove, the sloping mount to the volcano, the cover of long grass. “Stop!” he screamed. “Don’t—”

An explosion cracked pistol-sharp through the air. Betty dropped out of sight. Overhead, the sea gulls shrieked and veered toward the ocean.

He sped across the beach. “Crystal, Eve, stay where you are! Betty, don’t move!” He halted at the grass. With painstaking care, he stepped exactly where Betty’s footsteps had crushed the grass. If he was right, one wrong step, a slight miscalculation, and he was a dead man.

“Betty?” Sweat trickled into his eyes. The explosion had been minimal. Silly to hope, but she might have survived. The grass rustled. “Betty?”

“Here.”

The air whooshed out of his lungs. “Don’t move. Not even a finger.”

His heart hammered with each step forward. How far had she penetrated the field? The trampled stalks cut into his bare feet. Unbelievable she’d gotten this far.

He found her. Sitting on the ground. Speckled with dirt. Grasping her left ankle.

“My foot!” she groaned. “What happened?”

“I think you walked into a minefield.”

She caught her breath. Her face froze in horror.

“You’ll be okay. We’ll get you out of here the same way we got in.”

“Where are you?” Crystal shouted. “What happened?” Dry stalks crashed against each other.

Fear jammed his heart into his throat. “Crystal, stop! This is a minefield! Stop!”

“Jake, she ran in,” Eve yelled.

“I stopped.” Crystal’s voice, pitched high, teetered on the edge of tears.

“Don’t move. Do you hear me, Crystal?”

“Yes.” Then, words squeaking, “Eve’s here too.”

What? “Stay where you are, both of you. Don’t move and you’ll be okay.” He held his breath. Please. This time comply.

Silence. Blessed silence. The acrid stench of his sweat swept into his nostrils. “I’m bringing Betty out. Stay still, no matter what, until I get to you.”

The indistinct murmur of their voices filtered through the rustling grass. He took a deep breath to focus his mind. “Betty, give me your hands. I’ll help you stand up.”

“I can’t.” She raised her foot. Her leather sandal was gone. Blood seeped through black dirt caked on her sole and toes. He could only hope the sandal had protected her foot from metal fragments.

“Must have been the detonator that went off and not the explosive charge.” No guarantee that would hold true for the other mines, though. “I need to carry you out of here. If you can stand up on your other foot, I can get ahold of you.”

“I’ll try.” She gripped his hands and let him pull her to a shaky stand on her good foot. Her breath came in rapid, shallow jerks. She crumpled just as he grabbed her.

He folded her into his arms, cradling her like a baby. Her body was completely limp, her eyes open but unseeing. He should lay her down, but not here. Not where they could be blown to smithereens.

He retraced his steps. Forced himself to go slowly, to study the path of crushed grass. Listened at each step to the flutter of air in and out of Betty’s lungs. Cupped the faint race of her pulse against his palm.

“You’re almost there, Jake.”

At Eve’s voice, he lifted his gaze to where she and Crystal stood waist-high in the grass a few yards away.

“Just a few more steps.” The tight lines around Eve’s mouth belied the calm of her words. “Do you think there’d be mines this far out?”

“Not taking any chances. Stay put and I’ll come get you after I put her down.”

“Her foot is dripping blood. We’ve got to stop the bleeding.” Eve spoke sharply.

“I’ll deal with it after I get you and Crystal out of here. Just don’t move. Promise me.”

“I can see where we stepped.”

“No! Risk your life and you risk Crystal’s too.”

She glared at him. He knew what she was thinking—if he could walk out, so could she.

“You’ll never forgive yourself,” he pleaded.

Her lips tightened. “All right. We’ll wait.”

The footprints of his bare feet replaced flattened grass. He stepped onto the beach and carried Betty to the pile of seashells Crystal had stacked near the cove. Betty was still out. Bright red drops dribbled off her foot onto the sand, marking their trail over the beach. He laid her on her back and made sure her eyelids were closed to the sun. 

“Crystal, stop!”

Eve’s shout hurled him to his feet. Across the beach, Crystal’s head and shoulders bobbed through the grass toward him. Behind her ran Eve.

White-hot horror flashed through Jake’s body. Muscles and mind locked up. Lungs and heart slammed shut. Only his vision worked, beach and sky disappearing as he pinpointed Crystal and Eve. The head and shoulders of each rose and sank, rose and sank, as they ran. Any second, any footfall, and a land mine could wrap them in a geyser of sand, metal, and blood.

Adrenalin slammed the On switch and he jolted into an all-out sprint. Before he could reach them, Crystal broke through the grass, then Eve. She grabbed Crystal. Their legs tangled and they fell onto their faces in the sand. He stopped, chest heaving. Shaking. Relief barely holding his rage at bay.

Crystal, sand pasted to her face, squirmed out of Eve’s grasp. He grabbed the child by the shoulders as she stood. It took every bit of control he had to not scream at her. “Why did you do that?” She stared at him, blue eyes wide. How could she look so clueless? “Why did you run? I told you to stay there until I came for you.”

“I . . . I was being brave.”

“Brave?” He choked back a hot lava of fury. “Running over land mines is not brave. If you’d stepped on one, it would have exploded.”

Her chin trembled. “I followed my footprints . . . like I followed the trail of broken branches. I wanted to”—she jerked in a gasp of air—“make you proud of me.”

He released her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Crystal, I want you to be brave. But I want you to be smart-brave.”

“What’s that?” She brushed her hands over eyes brimming with tears.

“Putting your life in danger is not smart, and it’s not brave. It’s smart-brave only when there’s a good reason to do it. When you climbed the cliff over the ocean, you could have fallen and been killed. That was danger that wasn’t necessary. Not smart. Not brave. Just foolish, hugely foolish, because you put your life in danger for no good reason.”

Crystal frowned. “But I’m good at gymnastics.”

“In gymnastics you won’t fall hundreds of feet into an ocean full of rocks. On a cliff you might.”

Crystal blinked.

“When you ran in the minefield, your foot might not have landed exactly on top of your footprint. Right next to it could have been a land mine. Smart-brave would be to go slowly and study where to put your foot. But running wasn’t smart or brave. It put your life in danger—and Eve’s.”

Crystal’s face crumpled. “I made you mad, but I just wanted—”

“Yes, you made me mad. And I’ll keep on getting mad every time you do something stupid that puts your life in danger.” Tears toppled off her lashes, and he pulled her into a hug. “But only because I care about you, Pumpkin.”

Her body jerked in a loud snuffle, then yielded to his embrace. “I’ll try to be smart-brave,” she squeaked.

He gave her a squeeze and let her go. Tucking his finger under her chin, he stooped to meet her eyeball to eyeball. “And you’ll make me proud.” The brightness of her smile, the eagerness to please reaching out so desperately from her eyes, grabbed his heart.

“Jake, we need to take care of this foot.” Eve beckoned him from Betty’s side.

Crystal dashed ahead to her aunt. Betty was awake, clenching her jaw as Eve washed the grime off the injured foot.

Jake examined the torn flesh. “I need to probe for metal fragments. It will hurt.” Already Betty was pale under the splatter of black dirt clinging to her hair on down to her toes. Her face was contorted with pain. “I’m sorry, Betty. We can’t leave anything in there.”

“Be quick then.” She squeezed eyes, jaw, and fists shut.

He cleaned his hands in the salty water of the cove, then gently clasped her foot. At his first prod, she lashed her foot away and kicked him with surprising force with her other foot.

“Jake, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“And here I thought you were a frail, little thing.” He chuckled and patted her fisted hand. “But we’re going to have to apply a bit of restraining action now. Eve, pin her legs down—lie on them if you have to. And Crystal, you hold your feisty aunt’s hands and keep her from slugging me.”

When everyone was repositioned, he probed the bloody flesh of her sole with his fingertips. He blocked out her writhing and shrieks. He was no doctor, but he’d learned in Nam there was no mercy in leaving metal to fester.

As soon as he stopped, she collapsed. Crystal was bawling, Eve shaking.

“She’s clean,” he said. “Before I carry her back to camp, I need to bandage her foot. Run up there and bring me the T-shirt bandages I used on my feet before I made the moccasins. And several coconut shells of water from the stream. Please,” he added, as Eve stiffened. He wasn’t commanding the troops.

As soon as the two were out of sight, he grabbed a large seashell and turned his back to Betty. He filled it and turned to kneel next to her. She opened her eyes when he picked up her injured foot. “I know this is gross, Betty, but it’s the only sterile liquid on hand to disinfect your wound.” He waited for her to catch on while he poured the warm, yellow fluid from the seashell onto her foot.

“What is it?” she asked. Then the odor of Jake’s urine hit her nostrils. She jerked her head away. “Oh my!”

“The Marine Corps tells us to use this in medical emergencies. I’m afraid your injury fits the criterion.”

Her nostrils flared and she blew out a spurt of air. “Can’t argue with the Marine Corps, now, can we?”

Crystal arrived with the bandages. He scrubbed them in the cove and used one to wrap Betty’s foot. Blood seeped through but stopped before soaking the entire bandage.

“How about a drink?” Eve lowered herself next to Betty and raised her head for sips from a coconut shell. Crystal used the second, unused bandage to mop dirt from her aunt’s face.

They moved her to their campsite near the stream, under the three trees’ spotty shade. Crystal did her best to plump up her aunt’s life vest for a pillow, then lined up shells of water for her to drink. Eve took on the job of washing the dirt off Betty’s arms and legs and hair.

Jake put on his moccasins. “I’ll get breakfast.” He itched to examine the fence Betty had found, but until she was okay, he couldn’t ask Eve and Crystal to help him.

Getting to the fence meant he needed to enter the field. Enter and exit it. Not exactly what he’d planned for the day.

“Your color is back.” Jake opened the pouch he’d made of his shirt, and bananas, star fruit, and dark purple mangosteens tumbled out against Betty’s good leg. She was sitting up, her injured foot propped on a life vest. Eve and Crystal gathered around her and exclaimed over the two additions to their fruit choices.

Betty smiled up at him. “We’ve been talking about the minefield.”

His mouth twitched in amusement. Men would have discussed it first thing. To the women, it was secondary to Betty’s injury. They had mussed and fussed over making her comfortable and hadn’t asked him a single question. He was eager to get back to the minefield, but he relaxed and peeled a banana and stuffed it into his mouth. “And?”

“We think the land mines are Japanese,” Betty said, “left over from their invasion of the Philippines in World War II.”

“I agree.” He sliced open a mangosteen for each of them, and two for himself.

“How did you know Betty stepped on a land mine?” Eve cut open another piece of fruit. “It sounded like a gunshot.”

“The fence. The first thing an invading army would do is take the high ground—in this case, the volcano. To get there from the cove, they’d have to cross the grass field. It was the perfect location for a minefield. The mine Betty stepped on must have deteriorated over the years and was no longer functional. What exploded was the detonator that sets off the mine. It’s made of stainless steel and wouldn’t rust away like the explosive.”

They ate silently, their faces somber, until Betty asked, “Why was a fence there too?”

“As soon as we’re done eating, I’d like Eve and Crystal to help me answer that—if you’re okay with being left alone.” He glanced at Eve. “And if they want to help.”

“I’m ready now.” Crystal scrambled to her feet and wiped her hands on the back of her shorts.

Eve’s eyes narrowed. “Help how?”

“I’ll show you when we get there.”

She raised both eyebrows and looked away.

Could the woman ever cooperate without a protest? “I have to determine the angle of the fence first. Then I’ll know how you and Crystal can help.”

“All right.” Eve popped the last of her mangosteen into her mouth and rose to her feet. “Let’s go.”

What? He’d barely begun his meal. He stood and jammed a banana into each pocket. “You okay being alone, Betty?”

“I’m halfway to a nap already. I’m fine, Jake.” She dismissed them with a wave.

He led the way, heart pounding at what he was about to do. The risk was minimal, but still, it was a risk. The whole course of getting off the island would change if anything happened to him.

They stopped where he had emerged with Betty. “See the rocky ground surrounding each side of the field?” He pointed at two locations rising on either side of the grassy area. “That’s where I want you to walk. There won’t be any land mines there. But wait until I tell you to go. I need to get to the fence first.”

“Whoa.” Eve grabbed his arm. “You aren’t going back in there?”

“To get to the fence I am.”

“Not worth it.” Her grip tightened.

How was it that she didn’t want him to order her around, but she was certainly ready to tell him what to do? He bit back the rebuke. “If the Japanese were here, they had shelter and supplies. That fence could be our key to finding them and getting off the island.”

Her hold loosened, but she shook her head. “If you step on a mine, we don’t gain anything. We can search around instead.”

“Look, I know what I’m doing.” He removed her hand from his arm and stepped into the grass.