Page 50 of Totally Wrecked
“I’m gonna take a slash,” Rex calls out to me. I turn and see him veer off the beaten path slightly. I figure I might finally be able to piss now, too. Facing the trees, I think about how we could filter the water. Boiling it is the best solution, but then we’d need fire and containers, preferably metal. But maybe a sediment filter could work? Once again I wish we had fire. Then we could crush charcoal and filter the water through that.
Fuck, the next job has to be fire.
Rex’s voice cuts through my musings. “Gray!”
“What?”
“Come here…”
I find him in a small grove of trees— and those trees are coconut trees. Thank fuck!
“Rex! You beauty!”
He grins and pulls off his shirt to start collecting up fallen coconuts. “The ones still on the trees are going to be more fresh, but we can take these for now, come back for more later. We should check in with the others first, eat some of these.”
Neither of us are whining, but both of us are nearly dropping with exhaustion. No food, too little water, too much exertion. We need rest, and we need food. We need a fucking break.
We stagger down the rocks to the beach with armloads of coconuts, and the first thing we see is a fucking fire! Halle-fucking-lujah.
“Yo!” yells Rex. Killian looks up and waves.
“How the fuck do you think he did that?” I ask Rex. I’m thoroughly impressed.
Rex shrugs, but I can’t stop grinning. It's the relief. Relief that Killian and Harvey are not going to be a dead weight after all. Or at least Killian isn’t. I have a hard time believing Harvey had anything to do with this. He is currently lying in the shade and appears to be sleeping.
I make my way towards Killian, and when he sees the look on my face, he grins.
“Hungry?” he asks, cocking his head to one side. “Lunch is just about ready.”
I nod. “Yes. Extremely.”
I pile the coconuts on the ground by the fire, then notice that Killian has two fish skewed on sticks and roasting above the flames.
Rex drops his shirt full of nuts and puts his arms around the Irishman, pulling him off his feet.“This was you? You fucking hero!”
Killian laughs. “Thought I’d better start pulling my weight.”
We meet eyes and I give him a nod of appreciation.
“Yeah, weight-pulling, something everyone needs to do,” Rex says pointedly, rolling his eyes at Harvey. “I’ll go ‘have a word’, with that one.”
“Good luck,” I tell Rex, then offer Killian one of the full water bottles we bought back from the spring.
“Thanks, I’m parched. We got through our water pretty quick. We need to do something about the shoe situation so we can all get to the spring at any time.”
“You make fire and catch fish, can’t you cobble as well?” I ask. I am truly impressed with everything he’s accomplished.
He laughs and crouches to check on the fish. “I’ll put my mind to shoemaking, but first, fish. I’m doing these kinda long and slow, I imagine they will be more smoked than anything else.”
“Sounds fucking amazing.” I look over to Harvey. “Has he been like that all day?”
Killian shrugs. “He helped some with collecting wood, and doing some beach combing. I think he’s just overwhelmed, not necessarily lazy.”
I think Killian is being kind, but I guess I can try to give Harvey the benefit of the doubt. We are stuck together after all.
I pick up one of the coconuts and give it a shake. “Any ideas how to get into it?”
“Heavy rock?” Killian takes the coconut from my hand. “Why don’t you tend the fire? I’ll work on the nuts. I want to hear about your expedition into the interior.”
