Page 77 of Totally Wrecked
“DEPLOY!”
“GRAY!”
“Gray… wake up.”
I struggle against the smoke and heat, and I try to bury myself further into the soil…the sand.
“Gray…”
I open my eyes. Stephan’s screams still ring in my ears. Rex looks down at me. “We are on the island, remember? Remember?”
Fuck.
When I have these dream, I fucking remember, and I really wish I didn’t.
“There are no viable exits on either side…the helicopter can’t get to you…” pause, “...you have around four minutes…”
Heat, smoke. Then dispatch says something you never, ever want to hear. “Deploy fire shelters.”
Fire shelters are the last resort. A fire shelter is basically a tiny tent made of fire-resistant material. To deploy, you scrape a depression in the ground, then you get in the shelter, seal it, stick your nose into the earth and pray.
Better than nothing, but hardly ever enough. Not enough for Alicia, Hutch, Stephan, and Carlo.
Rex had sent the rest of the crew over the ridge, to dig lines to prevent the fire spreading to a farm nearby.
Me, Leander, Rex, Alicia, Hutch, Stephan and Carlo were trying to do a controlled burn. But then the wind changed, out of fucking nowhere. That wasn’t the real problem, though. It was the lightning that set alight our escape route. How do you prepare for that?
“DEPLOY!”
“Gray, we are on the island. The boat exploded…”
“Right.” I raise myself up onto an elbow, “I got it now, thanks.”
Rex puts a hand on my shoulder briefly then moves away. I wait until my heart has returned to a reasonable pace, then get to my feet.
Our bodies are exhausted, so it’s not surprising after the swim we all crashed.
Now it’s mid-afternoon, and we’re dehydrated and sunburned—not a good combo.
“Pick up the pace,” yells Rex, and he soon has us trekking through the jungle once more. Water is our first priority. We are able to moisten our mouths with the condensation dripping off the huge leaves, but it’s not enough. I want gallons inside my belly.
Marching on we don’t find water, but something else catches my eye. “Bananas.”
“Fecking score!” Killian gives a grin that lights up his tired face as he jumps up to grab a bunch that hang almost out of reach.
“Come on, we gotta keep going,” Rex snaps after Killian passes bananas around.
The longer we take to find Keyara, the closer he is getting to losing his shit all together.
“I need a break,” Harvey calls out.
“NO!” Rex yells back. “We’ll have to stop soon anyway. It’s getting dark.”
My shoulder aches, my lungs are burning, and I feel nauseous, probably from dehydration. If I feel this shitty, Harvey will be feeling ten times worse.
“Rex, we can stop for a couple minutes.”
He spins around to look at me, a wild light in his eye. I just stare at him until he calms a little.
