Survivors (Stranded) (6 page)

W
hen Carter woke up the next morning, rain was beating heavily against the cabin’s porthole. That was no surprise. The weather changed all the time around here.

The surprise was that he could see daylight outside. Back at the old camp, sleeping in a cave at first, and then in their palm-and-bamboo shelter, none of them had ever gotten a full night’s sleep. To actually wake up in the light, feeling rested, was amazing.

Now, Carter sat up and took a moment to check his hand. The cut from the base of the pinkie to his wrist was caked with dried blood. Even worse, it oozed yellow liquid around the edges. The hand itself was swollen, and he couldn’t fully bend or straighten his fingers anymore. When he tried, the painful throb pulsed like a heartbeat in his hand.

Vanessa, Buzz, and Jane had all been telling him to keep the cut clean. But that was nearly impossible when your days were spent foraging in the jungle, cutting firewood, and moving all around an old, dirty ship. The sock he’d been using as a makeshift bandage had quickly grown so filthy, he’d thrown it away.

Carter stumbled out of the sleeping cabin and up the passageway to the center room outside the galley. Jane, Vanessa, and Buzz were sitting around the old wooden table, underneath the hatch that led up to the wheelhouse.

“Carter, your hand!” Vanessa said before he even spoke.

Carter shoved the hand into his pocket. He hadn’t realized how obvious it would be.

“It feels fine,” he said.

It was a lie, but if there was nothing they could do about it, there was no reason to worry everyone. They already had plenty to worry about. Vanessa narrowed her eyes at him, but Buzz spoke up before she could say anything else.

“We were talking about going to the old camp to get our stuff,” Buzz said.

“Good idea,” Carter said, glad for the change of subject. All of their things were still back there, including blankets, pillows, raincoats, and the axe.

“I think we should try to go through the woods,” Vanessa said. “There’s no way we can carry that stuff back over the rocks. And once we have a path, it’ll probably be faster, too.”

“The only question is whether we should wait for the rain to stop or just go,” Jane said.

Carter looked at one of the dining hall portholes. It was so blurred with rain, he couldn’t even see outside. Experience had shown them that this could be a passing shower, or it could continue all through the day.

“I say let’s go for it,” he said. “So we get wet, who cares? At least there’s coconut back at camp.”

“And coconut’s way better than snails,” Jane said.

Buzz nodded in agreement. “It’s better than sitting around, too,” he said.

That alone was a good enough reason to go, Carter thought. The hardest times here were at night, or whenever they stopped moving and working. That was when the dark thoughts tended to creep in the most.

“All right, it’s decided then,” Vanessa said, and stood up with the rest of them. “Let’s go get wet.”

The trip through the jungle was exactly as Jane expected. The rain poured down through the trees, and the ground was thick with mud in several places.

Even so, it was a shortcut compared to the rocky shoreline. Before long, they were slogging out of the woods and onto the beach they’d known as home base since crashing into the island a week ago.

There was no worrying about keeping dry anymore. In fact, being wet and muddy had become a badge of honor. It was how they lived here. They sat right down in the sand and opened two coconuts for a quick breakfast while the rain continued to fall.

As soon as they’d eaten, everyone agreed to gather up what they could, turn around, and head right back. Using their two blankets as packs, they piled in the axe, the sharp knife, the pillows, and all the remaining coconuts they could carry. There were four rain slickers as well, and everyone put one on.

Jane made sure to take the two pens she’d stashed between the rocks. Buzz took the little glass lens he used for making fire. He’d already found a substitute, but the old one was their good-luck charm, he said.

By the time they were loaded up and ready to go, the rain had gotten even worse. It poured down around them now like walls of water.

“Maybe we should wait,” Jane said.

“Wait for what?” Carter asked.

Mother Nature had an answer for that question as she rocked the island with a massive bolt of lightning and a thunderous boom.

“What about the cave?” Jane asked.

“What about it?” Carter answered. “Remember what happened the last time we used it to get out of a storm?”

Jane did remember. There was no forgetting that stampede of wild boars that had knocked her down—and very nearly done worse.

“If we’re looking for shelter, so are they,” Buzz added.

“Besides, Buzz already marked the trail,” Vanessa said. “We can get back to the ship in fifteen minutes.”

“But . . .” Jane started to protest, until she realized no one was listening anymore.

Carter slung one of the improvised blanket packs over his back. Vanessa took the other. Buzz carried the two coils of rope, one on each shoulder, and a pillowcase stuffed with silverware, socks, and some old sea charts from the
Lucky Star
.

Finally, Jane bent down and picked up the group’s one backpack, filled with their water bottles, while the others glared at her impatiently.

They’d always babied her up till now, but not anymore. It didn’t feel the way she’d always wanted it to, being treated just like anyone else. It felt scary. But that was beside the point, wasn’t it? Sometimes out here you had to accept what was and deal with it.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Jane declared. “Let’s go.” She firmed her grip on the pack, wiped the rain out of her eyes, and started following the others back up into the woods.

M
ud sucked at Vanessa’s feet as they made their way through the jungle. The heavy rain had turned the ground even muckier since they’d come through before. In the thickest patches, each step felt like lifting a heavy weight.

Their awkward load of supplies didn’t help. It made maneuvering around the thick vines, over fallen trees, and under low branches that much more difficult. Several times, Vanessa had to stop and adjust the bundle on her back, or pick up something that had fallen out.

Buzz’s blazed trail was the one thing that made the going easier. He’d cut deep V-shaped gouges into the trees along the way, pointing them back toward the ship. Every ten or twenty yards, there was another blaze they could follow.

As they came onto a steep patch of ground where the land sloped toward the ocean, Vanessa stopped at the head of the line.

“What is that?” she asked, peering through the rain. Straight ahead, a heavy stream that hadn’t been there before was washing downhill. It came from high on the slope to their left and continued all the way down to the ocean, somewhere off to the right. Most significantly, it ran directly across their path.

“Can we keep going?” Jane asked.

Buzz looked up and down the hill. “Do we have a choice?” he asked.

“We could go back if we have to,” Vanessa said.

“And then what?” Carter said. “Carry all this stuff over the rocks? Leave it behind? I don’t think so.”

Nobody argued with that. Vanessa could tell they were all as anxious to reach the ship as she was.

“All right,” she said. “Everyone hold on to each other. And be careful.”

Vanessa took one end and locked arms with Buzz. He had Jane on the other side, with Carter at the opposite end. It was awkward going as they waded in, but it was better than trying to forge the gully separately. The water rushed by at a surprising speed, and the ground underneath was mush.

Vanessa lifted one foot and then the other, picking up her knees with each step. Her makeshift pack was soaked now and twice as heavy. She struggled to hold on to it with her outside hand.

“I don’t know if I can carry this,” she said.

“Just keep going,” Carter said.

On the next step, Vanessa’s foot landed in an unseen hole. Her leg sank deeper than ever, all the way up to her waist. When she tried to pull herself out, the mud at the bottom sucked her sneaker right off.

“Wait! I lost my shoe!” she yelled over the rain.

Buzz had been trying to keep hold of her arm, but now they’d been torn apart. Carter stumbled forward, too. He grasped his own pack with two hands and heaved it onto the ground at the far side of the gully. As soon as he did, he yelled out in pain and clutched his bad hand close to his chest.

“Carter? Are you okay?” Jane asked, but he didn’t answer.

“Vanessa, here!” Buzz said, and reached to take her pack from her. As she handed it over, the knotted blanket came undone. One pillow and several precious coconuts washed downhill, immediately out of reach. Buzz threw the rest onto the bank.

“We have to go!” Jane yelled.

“I need my shoe!” Vanessa yelled back. She reached down, feeling for it, but found only handfuls of mud.

“It has to be there,” Buzz said, his voice edged with impatience.

“I’m trying,” Vanessa said. She knew they had to go, but a shoe wasn’t something you could do without so easily around here.

Then, looking up, Vanessa saw something that erased all of her other concerns. A giant wall of mud had begun rolling downhill. It was headed toward them at an alarming rate.

“Vanessa!” Jane screamed. She’d seen it, too. Everyone had. Buzz started pulling on the group to get them going again.

“Leave the shoe!” he yelled. “Let’s go!”

Vanessa couldn’t move. She’d sunk too far now. She had no leverage to get herself out of the hole anymore. Buzz was straining, pulling on her arm, getting nowhere. Carter tried for her, but his hand was just out of reach.

They were running out of time, and the earth itself, it seemed, was pouring down in their direction.

July 9. Day 11 on Nowhere Island. Two weeks(!!) since we left Hawaii.

Dear Mom and Dad,

It seems like forever since I saw you. I know these letters aren’t real, but I like writing them anyway.

It’s been three days since the mudslide, and we haven’t been able to get back to the old camp since then. Not even along the rocks.

The problem is, our old beach is where the coconuts grow. We’ve been all over the woods around here and haven’t found a single one. No other fruit, no nuts, no nothing. Not even another snake. The one thing we have left to eat here is snails. And you know how I feel about those! Still, I eat them, and it feels like nothing in my stomach. You should see how different we all look now. I think maybe we’re starting to starve, for real.

Vanessa’s working really hard trying to catch fish, but I don’t think they want to be caught. She thinks maybe if we build a raft, we can get out to the reef and find more of them there. So far, we’ve cut down a bunch of bamboo from the woods (too bad we can’t eat bamboo), and we work on the raft a little bit every day. It’s hard to get much done with just a few snails for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I know we’ll figure something out, but I really (really, REALLY) wish we would hurry up and do it. All we think about is food these days. I shouldn’t even be writing this right now. I should be getting ready to go out into the woods and start looking before the sun gets too high.

Maybe this will be our lucky morning. I hope so.

Miss you, love you,

xoxoxoxo to infinity,

Jane

Buzz knelt down next to Carter’s bunk and put a hand on his arm. Carter’s skin was hot to the touch. He definitely had a fever, and he’d been sleeping more than anyone.

“Carter?” Buzz shook him gently. “We’re going out scavenging. Can you come up and watch the fire?”

Carter stirred and came half awake. “I wanna come hunting,” he slurred.

“We need someone to watch the fire,” Buzz repeated. It wasn’t totally true. On a sunny day like this one, Buzz could easily use his little glass lens to restart the fire. In fact, he’d gotten really good at it. But everyone agreed that Carter needed to rest as much as possible.

Carter sat up and stretched. “I’ll go out and get some wood, at least,” he said.

“Already did it,” Buzz told him. “There’s a ton of it in the wheelhouse. Just make sure the fire doesn’t go out. There’s a bucket of oil up there, too, if you need it. And I left some water. Make sure you drink a lot.”

It was strange, telling Carter what to do. Not that long ago, it had been the other way around most of the time.

But Carter didn’t argue. “I’ll be right there,” he said.

Buzz left him in the cabin and walked up the passage to the middle deck’s central room. From there, he climbed onto the table, stepped onto the steel trunk they’d found in one of the cabins, and climbed up through the hatch to the wheelhouse above. It was enough of a makeshift stairs that even Carter could do it with one hand. But for how much longer, Buzz wasn’t sure. That hand wasn’t getting any better. The only thing they could do now was try to get some food into Carter, to keep up his strength.

And
that
was proving harder than anyone had thought it would be.

Inside the wheelhouse, Buzz picked up the axe and the backpack they used for scavenging. The pack was loaded with a sharp knife, a length of rope, and two empty bottles they’d fill at the stream on their way out.

Stepping outside, he could see Jane down by the water’s edge, writing in her journal. Vanessa was there, too, looking down at a row of bamboo she’d been trying to puzzle into a raft.

And out by the ocean, at the mouth of the cove, Buzz could see their new signal fire. He liked looking at it. It was the one thing that had come together well in the last three days. The tall tepee-shaped pyre of wood and kindling was similar to the signal they’d had on Lookout Point. It didn’t have the advantage of being up high like the last one, but if another plane or a ship came by, they could at least get to this one to light it in a matter of seconds.

“You guys ready to go?” Buzz called down to the girls.

Jane stood up and closed her journal. “What are we looking for today?” she asked.

“Cheeseburgers,” Vanessa answered. It was a daily joke now. The day before it had been pizza, and the day before that, chocolate cake.

“Think we’ll find any?” Vanessa added.

“Probably,” Buzz said. “But we’d better get moving before they run out.”

Vanessa led Jane and Buzz into the woods, hacking at anything that stood in their way. It wasn’t necessary to take out quite so much brush, but the entire jungle was getting on her nerves today.

The air here was a thick stew of humidity and stillness. It was like breathing through a wet washcloth. The shoes she’d borrowed from Carter for the morning were too tight, and the mosquitoes were always terrible in the woods. She didn’t even bother trying to wave them off anymore. There was no point.

She stopped and scanned the area, hoping for a flash of color that might turn out to be something edible. Bananas would have been amazing, or papaya, or mango, or any of the other things Jane said grew in this part of the world. Even coconut or another snake would have been more than welcome. But so far all they’d brought back from these morning hikes was firewood and kindling.

“Can we burn this?” Jane’s voice came from the other side of a scraggly thicket.

“What is it?” Vanessa asked. She ducked under a tangle of vines and worked her way over to where Buzz and Jane were looking down at a large dead tree on the ground.

“We could get a lot of firewood out of this,” Jane said.

“Does rotten wood burn?” Vanessa asked. She put one foot on the tree and buried the axe blade into its bark three times. On each swing, it landed with a soft thud that didn’t sound too encouraging. The wood only broke open and fell apart where she tried to cut it.

“Come on, let’s keep going,” Vanessa said.

“Wait!” Buzz said. The excitement in his voice stopped her. She turned back to see him kneeling right on top of the tree.

“What is it?”

“Jane, hand me the knife,” Buzz said. Already, he was picking through the crumbly bark with his fingers. Jane opened the pack on his back and handed him a six-inch serrated blade. He took it and plunged the tip into the soft wood, working the knife around in circles to open up a hole.

Whatever Buzz was doing, Vanessa could see he was onto something. His eyes were still and focused, his mouth set in a frozen line of concentration. Before Nowhere Island, the only time she’d seen that expression was when Buzz sat on the couch at home, deep inside a game of FarQuest or Reverb Alley.

“What are you doing?” Vanessa asked.

“I thought I saw a grub,” Buzz said.

“A what?”

He withdrew the knife now and stuck two fingers inside. When he pulled them out, he had a pinch hold on a lumpy white worm the size of his pinkie.

Buzz dropped it onto his palm and held the thing out to show them. “These little suckers are pure protein,” he said.

Jane leaned in to see. “We’re supposed to eat
those
?” she asked.

“I’m not saying they’re candy bars,” Buzz told her. “I’m just saying they’re edible. And there’s probably a lot more of them here, too.”

The grub was more like a caterpillar than a worm, Vanessa realized. It had a shiny dark head at one end and tiny legs that sent it wriggling across Buzz’s palm. Snails were one thing, but the grub was ten times as big and probably twice as disgusting.

Her empty stomach seemed to fold in on itself. She knew exactly what she had to do, and she didn’t like the answer one bit. It was another
island moment
. That’s how Vanessa thought of them now.

She was going to eat grubs. Not because she liked them. Not because she thought it would be fun. But simply because there was one thing about them that mattered more than anything else.

They were edible.