Washed Up - Chapter 1

The first thing he noticed was the heat. A thousand pounds of it bore down on him like a big, wet, scorching anvil. He lay facedown on the ground. For a moment, all he knew was heat. Heat like an oven. Heat like the steam room of a spa in hell.

The second thing he noticed was that he seemed to be lying in sand. He wasn't quite sure how he knew this, but something about the texture of the substance couching the undersides of his forearms and his shins gave him that notion. Electrical impulses originating in his yawning brain traveled down his spine, and he stirred.

When he did, the impression that he was lying facedown in the sand in a mind-melting heat intensified. Then he noticed the third thing: he was sore all over. He felt as though he'd just run several miles, or perhaps swum them. He stirred an inch or two further, and became aware of the pounding in his head. His heartbeat tapped out a kind of rhythmic agony against his temples. He lifted his hands to rub at them gently. The backs of his arms stung with incipient sunburn.

Suddenly curious about all of these strangle reports from his senses, he opened his eyes. Before he shut them again a moment later, squinting in pain against the glare, he saw that he was indeed lying on sand. White, hot sand. Pressing his lids down and grimacing, he saw scarlet. He put his hands over his eyes, and a low moan escaped him—one of several he would utter that day. For what felt like a long time, he lay there, facedown in the sand under the searing sun, his hands covering his eyes, just breathing. All thought was reduced to the heat, the heat, the heat. But of course, he had no way of knowing how long he actually lay there.

Eventually, however, he relaxed. He noticed something else: a low roar came from behind him. He smelled salt. The sound was like the breath of air you hear putting your ear to a conch shell. The ocean? Without thinking, he opened his eyes a second time. And a second time, he squinted them shut again, muttering “Jesus Christ” under his breath and spraying a few sand particles from where his lips almost touched the earth.

That was when the thought hit him for the first time. It came seemingly out of nowhere, as most important thoughts do.

Get out of the sun.

It made sense when he thought about it, though. He had no real clue how long he'd been lying there. His mind was still mostly blank but for his increasing awareness of his surroundings. He didn't know where he was or how he'd gotten there, but these thoughts barely crossed his mind for now. In this moment, all he thought about was the heat, the sun, the sand, the possible ocean behind him.

And sunstroke. Now he thought about sunstroke. For some reason, an association existed in his mind between sunstroke and terrible unpleasantness. Half of a sentence buried deep in his memory came to the surface, and he understood a little better the sudden frantic urgency that he felt.

“If it hadn't been for ____,” he thought—there was a mysterious break where the person's name should have gone, “I'd have died that day.” That day was the day—though he could for now remember nothing else about it—he'd once suffered sunstroke. He didn't know whether the thought was incomplete because he was still only half-conscious, or because he'd been only half-conscious when he first had the thought. Either way, the implication was clear: the sun would drive him mad, and then it would kill him, if he didn't find shelter soon. The sunburn on the backs of his arms and legs told him that he must already have been here for some time.

But before he could find shelter, he'd have to force his eyes to open. He grunted to himself at the thought, and opened them. People who are trying to keep their eyes open always seem to raise their eyebrows. Not that it helps, but it seems, in the moment, like it should. He did this now, his eyelids narrowed to slits in his face. The sand burned whitely up at him, and he heard that strange whirring sound, like a hurricane through padded walls, that comes when the eyes and the brain are at war.

Finally, however, after what felt like an eternity (though he had, of course, no way of knowing how long it actually lasted), his pupils shrank to pinholes, and his eyelids relaxed. He could see. Not that it raised his spirits any. At first, he saw nothing but sand. It stretched out quite some distance ahead. But as he raised his eyes toward the horizon, he saw the sand broken in the distance by a line of palm trees. The ground beneath was tangled with undergrowth, looking green, moist, and most importantly, shady. He turned his head to the left and to the right, saw the sand stretching out as far as the eye could see in both directions. He was at the edge of some kind of jungle.

Noticing again the low roar behind him, he craned his head around to see. There it was: a vast turquoise expanse, broken in the middle distance by white as the waves crashed against the sand. Above, the sky was cloudless.

He almost chuckled to himself, as an uninvited thought, one completely inappropriate considering the circumstances, struck him. Add a golden retriever, a girl in a white bikini, and a beer with a lime in it, and this would make a fine vacation spot. He pictured tikki torches glowing just where the palms began, a path that vanished into the jungle and led to a resort, and

Get out of the sun.

The thought came rudely back, as if to slap him. He needed to focus on getting up and getting to the line of palms before sunstroke set in and he died lying right here fantasizing about hotels. He gathered his limbs under him, stood, and took a step towards the palms. All the blood drained out of his head. His vision turned light and hazy. A purple haze descended over everything. His step forward turned into a fall to one knee, then to all fours; he thumped right back onto his belly.

He lay there, head spinning. Nausea reached a wriggling hand up through his gut. He had not been feeling altogether fantastic when he went to stand. But now, all he could think about was the sick turning-over going on in his belly. He rolled to his side, thinking it might help. It did, at first—or was that just his imagination?—and then the nausea came back full force. He stuck two fingers in his mouth to try and make himself throw up. In his experience, it was best to just get it out of the way, rather than wait for his body to do it for him; you spent much less time rolling around in weird wobbly agony.

He felt his stomach pull taut, then relax. Nothing came out. He did it again, with the same ineffectual result. The only thing that came out of him was the salt water leaking from his eyes. Crazily, a voice in his head whined that he had to stop; the crying was a waste of water. Water, he thought. Then

Get out of the sun.

Damn it! he thought. I'm trying. But trying wasn't going to take care of him when the sun stroke set in, or bury him when it killed him. He'd be food for the crows, or the parrots, or whatever strange fowl lunched on the sun-cooked flesh of the recently deceased in this part of the world. But for a long time, all he could do was lie there, feeling the world spin underneath him, and wait out the nausea. But of course, he had no way to know how long he actually lay there dry-heaving and spinning.

Finally, however, the nausea did recede. Inch by agonizing inch, it slithered back to the obscure intestinal lair whence it emerged. His breath came heavy with relief. Dizziness abated. He felt like a million bucks now, come to think of it. At least by comparison. But that thought

Get out of the sun.

would not go away; indeed, it came with increasing frequency and urgency now, like someone shaking him ever more frantically awake while he refused to stir.

More cautious this time, he rolled back onto his stomach and gathered his strength. He pushed himself up the foot or so it took to get him resting on his elbows. His head wobbled once and he blinked hard as he felt a wave of disorientation. But it passed after a moment and he could regard the palms ahead freely. Then, he slid one knee beneath him, lifting himself another inch or two. He pushed up until his arms were extended fully below him. He looked like a runner poised for an Olympic sprint, though nothing could have been further from the truth. The nausea threatened again, and after a few seconds, he lowered himself again.

Ugh, he groaned to himself. He felt deeply frustrated. His mind still screamed at him that to remain here was to die, but his body seemed determined not to cooperate. He would have to do something. Faced with imminent insanity and demise, a stroke of genius took him. Or perhaps 'a stroke of desperate practicality' more accurately describes it. One hand stretched out in front of him, planted itself in the uncomfortably warm sand, and pulled. He slid forward what felt like a few sixteenths of an inch. Then came the other; he slid forward again. Enlisting the help of his legs, he managed to increase his speed, though not by much. Neither dizziness nor nausea, however, threatened to return whilst he remained supine on the white sand. Like a slug he left a wake behind him, a trail marking his progress toward blessed safety beneath the lazing palms ahead.

The palms grew closer so slowly, it was hard to tell he was making any progress at all. The ocean roared behind him. A slight breeze kicked up. It felt like the fingers of angels across the backs of his arms and legs, and all too soon, it was gone. But while the wind whispered over him, he became aware of what he was wearing. He felt a shirt, stiff and sticky with sweat, on his back. He seemed to be wearing cargo shorts, though he didn't stop to look. He just felt the extra padding, the fabric of the pockets, as his legs shimmied over the sand. He seemed to be without shoes. Tied up in the repetitive, not altogether stimulating task of belly-crawling over the sand, his mind, increasingly alert now, began to wander. For the first time, he wondered with some seriousness where he might be. His brow wrinkled a little as he lurched another inch forward, and tried to remember something about the last few days. He found that, while he could call to mind general facts about his life—he'd been born in California, had grown up in the suburb of Riverside, had gone to collge at the University of Georgia on a scholarship, had graduated to a job in (what?), had a girlfriend somewhere—memory of specific events, especially recent ones, eluded him.

--

The sun has always been a creature of habit. With slavish devotion, it ascends the sky for half the day, descending the far side for the other half. Oblique overhead it presided when he started up the beach, one quavering hand over the other like he'd mistaken the sand and the ocean and was trying to swim to shelter. And by the time the treeline finally grew near, it had ambled some distance toward the far horizon. It hovered just over the canopies of the palms the next time he looked up from his labor.

Uselessly, his mind made nitpicking note of the fact that this meant the beach faced to the east. On edge from the unpleasantness coming in through nearly every sense, he aggressively refused to care. But there was at least one practical advantage that soon presented itself. As he crawled through the sand toward the safety of the jungle, the jungle reached out long, purple, palm-frond fingers to greet him.

Finally, after what felt like a long time, he grasped forward, pulled, and the sun went behind a tree. His head was bathed in cool. The glare vanished. He pulled again, and relief from the heavy heat inched down his back. This filled him with resolve, and he charged forward—if someone crawling can be said to be charging anywhere.

Thus, in no time at all, relatively speaking, he lay fully in the shade of the trees. And within the space of another infinitesimal division of time, he was in the jungle. He nestled in the undergrowth, wrestling his complaining body into submission, ever-fearful of returning nausea. Finally, after wrangling with his limbs a moment more, he sat, surprisingly comfortably, his back against the trunk of a tree.

He had a view of the ocean, and the shade was comparatively cool. He looked out at the ocean before him, crashing out its ancient rhythm against the low pitch of the sand. The sky still held no clouds, and as the sun sank behind him, the temperature dropped a few degrees. Safe for now at least, he was struck by the beauty of what he saw. For the first time that day, something other than pain or confusion—or oddly inappropriate ideas for lucrative resorts—held his attention. He sighed, satisfied... relatively speaking, anyway.

--

His eyes opened with a start. He looked around, and saw that the calm chill of evening had been replaced by the buzzing heat of midday. His head no longer throbbed, a welcome relief. But his limbs still felt sore when he stretched out his arms and yawned. His back rose an inch or two where it rested against the trunk of the tree.

He hoped against hope that the nausea would not come back. Comfortable as this spot was, he knew he could not remain here forever. So far, it seemed to be gone. But he'd have to try standing and walking around to find out for sure.

A sharp pain like a strained muscle tightened his belly, which already felt flatter than usual. The cramp went away after a moment or two. He licked his lips; they were dry. He remembered the big ropy globs of nothingness he'd puked up the day before. Thus today's most pressing problem presented itself. He had nothing to eat but sand and nothing to drink but ocean water; unattractive propositions both.

And so he leaned forward, hands on his shins, blinking the last of the sleep from his eyes and trying to gather the strength—both physical and mental—to get up and solve this problem. His head felt a little wobbly as he raised it, but that wasn't entirely unusual. One thought whispered to another thought, and a few associations later, a piece of his still-obscure history revealed itself.

His head was wobbly; he'd just raised it from the pillow. It was his body telling him to let it rest a little longer. Having nowhere in particular to be, that day—he thought with relish—he let it have its way, and slumped back onto the pillow. Glancing up, he saw beside him the curved lump of a feminine form, facing away from him with one hand tucked beneath the other pillow. With hardly a thought, he scooted closer, fitting the fronts of his knees into the backs of hers, and reaching over to nestle an arm in the dip of her waist and across her belly. She stirred, voiced a satisfied gurgle.

“Gmrng,” she said.

--

He frowned down at the hair on his shins, and at the backs of his knuckles. He wasn't wearing shoes after all, he saw.

Water.

The thought struck him, and he turned his head a little when it did, brows still furrowed in thought.

He couldn't argue with the thought. It made an excellent point, even if it did so with only a single word. He'd need to find water, or his days lazing on this untapped coastal paradise would be few and unpleasant. He rocked back, planted his hands beside him for balance, and pulled his knees up to his chest. Sliding against the tree trunk, he straightened out until he was standing full upright, one hand on the trunk for balance. He waited, steeled for the oncoming bout of dizziness and nausea. His head got a little wobblier, but after a single sway, he was safe. Safe, and standing, and sound. For now.

He peered into the jungle. His line of sight was obscured by trees, hanging vines, and a wealth of undergrowth. He reasoned, albeit imperfectly, that where there was this much vegetation, there had to be water. At least he hadn't woken up in the middle of a desert. Now that would really mean he was

Water.

He blinked, shook his head to clear it, and took a step into the jungle.

--

There was no path to follow, only instinct. And instinct—or perhaps just some distant memory of a half-baked factoid from the Internet—told him that to find evidence of water, he should head for higher ground. This was no easy trick to turn, partially because he had to navigate obstacles of every conceivable size and shape to effect any progress. Now crouching under thorn bushes, now leaping over a hole, he tried to listen for the sound of water, but all too often whatever audible evidence there might have been was drowned out by his desperate crashing through the wilderness.

Waves of angry protest from his stomach did little to ease his passage. Every so often he'd stop, bending at the waist and clutching at his belly, a grimace on his face. He wasn't sure if pressing on his stomach did any good—like making a face to make brain-freeze pass—but he still had nothing to instruct him but instinct. The cramps were surprisingly painful. He remembered hearing something about them somewhere, a long time ago (another Internet “fact”?); they'd only get worse, until they debilitated him completely. He didn't like the image that came to mind, of lying on the jungle floor writhing and moaning, attracting every unpleasant and hungry beast infesting the jungle. He picked up his pace.

Despite the many attempts from various quarters to slow or halt his progress, he was, slowly, making his way to higher ground. The terrain grew rocky. He could still see only fifty yards or so, but the ground kept rising, at least that far in the distance. Another fifty yards forward, and still it rose.

And so it was with a bit of surprise that he looked up from navigating around a large stone sticking directly out of the ground—like some poor worker had gotten lost on his way to Stonehenge and never been heard from again—to find that the jungle ended abruptly a few feet ahead. Sunlight glared between the trees, which turned to black silhouettes of sticks.

He put out a hand to steady himself against a tree as he stood puffing at the edge of the jungle. Looking down, his eyes almost popped out of his head. Stretching before him lay an expanse of pristine jungle. He stood at the crest of a low hill, and the ground fell gently away before him. Beyond was a vista that all but took his breath away.

The horizon rose in two places, culminating in craggy mountains with flat tops, both hazy with the distance and shimmering in the heat. Between, the land was low. Off to his left, and much closer, he could see a third mountain, rising out of sight into a low cloud. All three were rich with vegetation, as was the center of the island. In fact, everything seemed to be drowning in green, but for the spots between, where he could just see the ocean.

The sight may have been breathtaking, but it was far from water-giving. When the thought came back

Water.

he was jolted from his reverie. He wondered how long he'd been standing there, regarding with awe the expanse before him. He'd been all over the world—places like this one were truly rare. Especially if it was as untouched as it looked. He tried not to think about the fact that the more primeval the forest, the lower the likelihood of running into any other people who could help him. Instead, he scanned the island for signs of water. He was hoping for something like a waterfall with a rainbow curving over it, Nature's version of a neon sign inviting him nearer. But no such sight presented itself.

He wondered about the kind of people who lived on islands like these—Easter Island or Hawai'i. Where did they get their water? He was sure he'd read something about it, once. But rack his brain as he might, he couldn't think of anything. His hopes sank. Frustration rose.

“God damn it!” he yelled out over the expanse. He looked down, saw a rock by his bare foot, picked it up, and flung it as far as he could down the hill. It vanished into the bushes with a rustle. He swore again, but it vanished to a moan and then to a gurgle as another cramp ripped through his lower intestinal tract. He sank to squatting, and then to sitting on the ground, muttering obscenities under his breath.

The cramp passed eventually, and soon he was just sitting on the crest of the hill, the view still incredible. He was unsure what to do now.

He found that the sound of a human voice, even his own, was comforting. So he spoke his thoughts aloud.

“Well,” he said, “it's not like I've searched every inch of the island. I was just looking for something obvious. There's nothing to do but keep going, I guess.” He pushed himself back to standing, felt his head wobble, took a tentative step down the hill. He made his way deftly—he didn't want to trip and go tumbling head over heels to land in one of the tangles of thorn bushes that seemed to thrive with such enthusiasm all over the island.

Then it hit him with a strange suddenness. An island. He hadn't appreciated fully the ramifications of this. He had been able to see coast on three sides of him—and he already knew what lay behind him. He must have been traveling on a ship, or in an airplane...

He felt the plane lurch, and then drop what felt like a thousand feet. Outside, lightning danced back and forth between clouds, but all else was black. He was sitting in an aisle seat. He thought, and not for the first time, how flimsy an airplane seemed against the marshaled forces of the elements. He looked across the little aisle at the girl there. He was aware, the way you're sometimes aware of things in dreams without knowing why, that this was not the girl from the bed. This was not his girlfriend. This was another girl, one he'd met on the way to join this expedition. This was the girl he kept telling himself he wasn't going to sleep with, especially after last time, when he'd had that major fight with his girlfriend and she'd forgiven him even though he...

He reached out a panicked hand to stop himself from tripping and doing precisely the kind of head-over-heels dance he'd been trying to avoid. But his hand caught a strand of thorn vines. He cried out and let go. But instead of tumbling down the hill, he landed face-first on the jungle floor. He somehow managed to avoid landing on any rocks, or anything else unpleasant—like more thorn bushes—but the fall knocked the wind out of him. And so he lay there for what felt like quite some time, trying desperately against the paralysis in his diaphragm to wheeze out a few breaths. Eventually, however, his breathing went back to normal. He lay there a little longer, just relishing how good it was to be able to breathe, when

Water.

he realized that there was something else that his body had been missing, and for quite some time.

As he gathered himself up and set off down the hill again, he reflected on the hierarchy of needs. First and foremost, a person needed air. Lacking that, you were a goner after more than a few minutes. Then, came water. He half-laughed, half-sighed at this. It was with a resigned kind of humor that he noted his own sorry place in that hierarchy.

After water came food. A person could live quite some time on air and water alone, however unpleasant it might be, but without food, they'd be skinny and enervated within a few days, desperate and hallucinating after a few more.

Then, his line of thought turned truly unpleasant. The next item on the list was shelter, of which he had conspicuously little—though more, he realized, than he'd had yesterday on the beach, when it had taken Herculean commitment just to get out of the sun. Then, other humans. He looked around through the undergrowth when he thought of this, as if half-expecting to see some other humans hanging around in the jungle. Preferably the kind who wore crisp uniforms, talked in clipped tones, and said things like “are you hurt?” and “let's get you to safety.”

He didn't see the eyes—alien, curious—peering back at him through the undergrowth.

--

A particularly large thicket of thorns pulled him—not ungratefully—from these thoughts and back to the present moment. He had to go out of his way to get around it. He wondered idly how many separate plants constituted this particular tangle. The further he went to get around it, the less likely it seemed that one plant could possibly be so huge.

But nature seemed set on preventing his progress. Where the thorn bushes ended, a ravine began—not the kind he wanted to cross, either. In his current state, malnourished, thirsty, and alone, he had no doubt that a fall would spell his death. So he kept going around. He had no idea how far he'd gone; time had a way of pushing and pulling out here; there was no real way to tell it, especially with the sun all but invisible above the jungle canopy.

Where the ravine ended, more thorn bushes began. He was beginning to question the wisdom of his entire quest down this hill, though he had no idea what other viable alternatives might exist, when the ground began to level out. Suddenly, he could move forward again. No ravines or thorn bushes—or anything else—blocked his way. Looking down to keep from stepping on anything sharp (or anything that might bite), he headed deeper into the jungle.

The monotony of one foot in front of the other can make time pass more slowly, or more quickly, depending on the circumstances. In this case, it might have been neither—or both. He couldn't tell. The cramps came and went; he stopped periodically to hold his belly and grimace, then set out again as they abated. The sky darkened. He couldn't tell if evening was coming on (already?), or if it was just a cloud passing in front of the sun, but the jungle seemed gloomier than it had. Increasingly paranoid he'd take a bad step, he'd jolt to one side to avoid something on the ground that looked like a rock or a giant insect, only to find out upon closer inspection that it was nothing but a leaf.

He realized out of nowhere, and after he knew not how long traipsing through the jungle that had no idea which way he was going. All around him now, the jungle stretched out; at least, the fifty yards or so he could see. And while the ground was broken here and there by outcroppings of rock, ravines, and hillocks, he could no longer detect any sign of the hill he'd been on a few minutes (hours? days? years?) before. All around him was uniform, uninformative jungle landscape.

That was when he stepped on the rock. Hilariously enough (to someone not in his position), he'd thought it was a leaf. But the pain that shot up through his foot said otherwise. He cried out, hopped forward, dropped to the ground. He sat with one leg outstretched and his wounded foot cradled in his hands. He turned it toward him.

Its bottom was already dark with dirt, but a sizable patch, just between the big toe and the ball, was darker: blood. Crimson rivulets ran to drip onto the jungle floor.

Water.

The thought was enough to drive him crazy, arriving just then. He glanced around frantically, looking for a sign of water. But day had given way to gloaming, and he could see almost nothing. He knew he wouldn't be able to walk any further without risking serious further injury, or worse, infection. There was no telling what strange diseases lurked on the jungle floor. Setting out across it barefoot had been a bad enough idea, he thought. But he hadn't had many options.

And now he had even fewer. All he could do, for now, was sit holding his foot and stare out at the darkening jungle. It wasn't a cloud in front of the sun after all. It was oncoming night. He'd been walking all day, and now he was lost, wounded, and helpless. He wondered frantically what sorts of jungle animals populated this island. A lifelong environmentalist, he would have been perversely thankful for a little deforestation just now. Another little piece of his past came back—riding in an open Jeep through high grass on a bumpy dirt path that led to a row of tents, where raggedy natives had thronged medical tents hoping for care. But then he was looking at his foot again, spreading the toe away fwith a tentative finger, trying to see what the cut actually looked like. It was getting harder to see, but there was still enough light to make him gasp when he saw the ragged gash that ran all the way across the tender skin between the calluses on toe and foot. It spread wide open when he pulled, and a sharp pain made him release the toe quickly.

He swore a few more times, still under his breath. He wanted to cry. But no tears came, because it was only then, as he sat still and quiet, that he heard the sound.

Water.

There was no way it could be anything else. That characteristic babble, so like a little sister to the roar of the ocean; he'd heard it a thousand times before. Suddenly, his bleeding foot seemed only a small obstacle to surmount. He thought he could pinpoint the source of the sound, no more than a hundred yards away, and he wondered how he hadn't been able to hear it before. Then again, he'd been focused on avoiding the thorn bushes and sharp little rocks littering the ground—for all the complete failure that had proven to be. And he'd been lost in thought, too, trying to remember something, anything about how he'd come to find himself on the beach of an apparently deserted island.

But now he heard it, and he determined to get there, as soon as the unforgiving laws of physics and biology would allow. He would get there even if it killed him. The irony eluded him.

He set off on hands and knees toward the sound. He made his way in a kind of shuffle, searching with each hand for safe purchase, then sliding each leg forward, all the while remaining carefully aware of what was beneath him. This was made easier as the jungle grew darker; there was soon little to rely on in the way of sight. Eventually, he just closed his eyes, the better to focus on his other senses. He was crawling, blind and wounded, through an alien jungle. His intense concentration kept him from the more grotesque flights of imagination toward which the human mind tends in such moments. He had little time, for example, to consider what might be lurking in the jungle, watching him. Perhaps, even, coming closer. And, considering what was, in fact, lurking in the jungle and watching him, it was a mercy he did not.

As it was, he lost track of time again, so absorbed was he in avoiding rocks and reaching the water. A cramp tied his stomach into a tight knot, but it didn't even slow him down. He gritted his teeth and slid another hand forward: the end was near, and like a runner finding a final burst of energy somewhere deep within himself to sprint the last twenty yards of a marathon, he kept moving.

The sound seemed to be getting louder, but it was hard to tell over the rustle he made gliding across the jungle floor. He stopped a few moments, poised and tense, listening for the aquatic babble. Around him, bugs called, growing active with nightfall. Aware now that the jungle was very much alive in the dark, the first pangs of fear went through him as to what else might be out there.

Dammit, he said to himself, resolute in his commitment not to stop, no matter what. If something's gonna lunge out of the forest and eat me, then that's gonna be the end. But I have to get to the water; I just have to. He might die, but at least he'd die on his feet (sort of). He stopped again to listen. Close, now, he heard the water, gurgling carelessly somewhere ahead. The bugs kept at their joyous racket—impossible to judge how close they might be. But he thought he heard something else, like a rustle of limbs behind him...

He shuffled a hand forward, and it went straight into frigid water. This time, he almost did break into tears. It was nearly pitch dark beneath the trees, now, what sky was visible deepened to purple. He slid his other hand forward, and it too splashed into water. He lowered his head, feeling all around to get an idea of the stream's shape. It was tiny, no more than a foot wide, but it was deep enough for him to dip his chin into it and open his mouth. The cleanest, clearest, purest taste he thought he'd ever tasted rushed in. He gulped, slurping, crouched over the water like a dog. He swallowed again and again, unmindful of the rising protest of his stomach. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

When he finally leaned back on his knees, wiping at his mouth with the back of one arm, his stomach's discomfort rose, and he turned his head and fell forward on his hands as what felt like six or seven gallons of water came rushing out of him. He made a kind of gurgling roar as his stomach convulsed again and again.

“Ugghhhh...” he said, as if disgusted. But far from it—he was confused and bewildered, sure, but the first thought that came to him after each new sluice of watery discharge was to get back to the stream's edge for another gulp.

Finally, wet-eyed and buzzing with those strange endorphins that come after a thorough purge, he wiped his mouth again—this time on the stiff fabric of one sleeve—and turned back to the stream, blinking away tears. He leaned down, but this time he drank only a little before sitting back. He let it settle in his stomach, then leaned down again. He repeated this process several times, until the water no longer tasted like the milk and honey of heaven.

Finally sated, he sighed from somewhere deep in his gut, and his shoulders—which he'd held tight with tension all day, he realized—finally relaxed. This close to the brook, the sounds of the bugs and whatever else he'd heard seemed quieter. He leaned down and drank again, this time mostly because he knew that he must be horribly dehydrated. His thirst slaked, feeling in fact almost waterlogged, he realized how hungry he was. It was his second night on the island, and he still had no clue how long it had really been since he'd eaten. He could have been floating on the ocean for days, he thought, without nourishment of any kind. It certainly fit; he'd never heard of someone being so thirsty that drinking water too fast made them puke. It was a weird idea, one that made little sense, if you thought about it.

But reality was reality; no amount of reasoning would change it, however well-founded and logical it might be. For the time being, he needed to find a place to sleep. Making it back to the beach, with at least the comfort of the moon and stars overhead, was a certain impossibility. If he didn't hurt himself again on some outcropping of rock, or find himself helplessly entangled in thorns, he was sure to get lost, and spend the night crawling aroud on all fours like a wounded animal. The exact kind of wounded animal, he reflected, to attract hungry predators. He was stuck here in the alien pitch-dark of the jungle. The least he could hope to do was fall asleep without rolling into the puddle of his own vomit.

He felt around in the dark for a patch of ground free from sharp rocks. This he accomplished relatively easily—the ground here seemed to be covered in patches of moss and moist soil. The kind a wood-elf might sleep on, he thought crazily. He tried to banish the thought, but it had a certain charm. There, in the gloom beneath the trees of some nameless jungle on some unknown island, he actually smiled to himself as he lay down on his back to stare up at the blackness above him.

--

But sleep would not come. He felt restless; he wanted to get up and walk around, to talk to himself, to sing—anything to satisfy the tossing and turning he was doing, not just on the mossy ground, but also inside his head. He closed his eyes, opened them again. He lay now on his side, now on his back, now on his belly.

He wafted into half-dreaming; one moment, he'd be lying there, looking up at the void and worrying over what he was going to do, where he would go, whether his cut foot was destined to kill him. The next, he'd be talking to someone standing beside him in the gloom, some dim outline of whose identity, upon awakening, he'd have no memory.

It was his girlfriend. But she wasn't turned away from him in bed, now. She was standing in front of him, and the look on her face was a mix of disappointment and pleading. She was asking him... she was asking him if he was sure he still wanted to go. He was telling her that he had to. Why? Where was he going? He was leaving the country for what was supposed to be a month-long trip. But why take a vacation without his girlfriend, he wondered. Maybe that's why she was disappointed. He came fully aware halfway through the discussion. So many questions. He thought of his girlfriend, and the worry in his gut was now joined by a powerful longing to wrap his arms around her, wherever she might be, to sigh into her ear how worried and afraid he was, and fall asleep like that, holding her—even if she were scared and worried and helpless, too; at least they'd be scared and worried and helpless together. The worst thing was to be alone. That rung on the human hierarchy of needs was a powerful one. And though it caused him no direct physical pain, his chest did actually begin to hurt, after a while. Heartache, he thought, the ache no balm could salve.

He sat up suddenly when he realized that the light he saw was not part of some dream. It really was growing purple, even pink, in the gaps between the trees overhead. He was on his back, his arms wrapped around themselves on his chest, and his knees twisted a little to one side. The air was cooler than it had felt since he'd gotten here; still warm, to be sure, but almost comfortable, now. A welcome relief. As was the cool dew he felt settled over him. It was humid, this nameless island. A day before, desperate for water, he'd have found that comforting.

He turned his head, and saw the stream he'd found in the dark last night. It gurgled happily still, running the same course it had probably run for hundreds or thousands of years, undisturbed but by falling leaves and the lapping tongues of whatever animals populated the island.

He took note, just then, of something else: nothing had come in the night to eat him. He hadn't even heard anything lurking in the jungle.

the rustle in the bushes of

Or had he? He pushed the thought of his mind, and leaned forward to grab the foot he remembered gashing on that rock the prior evening. He turned it toward him again. Though still stained with blood, the stain was cracked and dry, rather than a spreading pool. He pulled his toe back again, very gently, saw the flaps of skin widen like the gorged rictus of some tiny monster. He peered down at it, at once fascinated and repulsed, a trainwreck of sliced flesh from which he could not bear to look away.

Finally, he let it go, and lay back down on the earth. He wanted to go back to sleep—if he'd ever really gotten there all night. He felt exhausted, and ravenous. The last few days had held more adventure—and less eating—than he hoped ever to experience again. Than he ever, he reflected grimly, would experience again, if circumstances stayed as they were. Walking on his wounded foot was still a recipe for infection. He had no interest in watching purulent necrosis creep up his leg, blackening his flesh until the whole thing fell off, and the greedy infection made a meal of him. Better to die of hunger, he thought. Though perhaps not by much.

He felt like crying. He looked around: rays of sunlight fell in misty shafts to the jungle floor. It would have seemed magical, celestial even, if not for his deepening despair, and the pounding longing in his chest just to see his bed and his girlfriend and his family (another piece of his past returned! the family!) again. To nuzzle against the soft flesh of her neck, to bask in her comfortable warmth...

He was jerked back rudely to reality. His head turned on a reflex, and adrenalin jolted him like espresso injected directly into his bloodstream. His eyes followed the movement he thought he'd seen, but like the dream-visions of people around him in the darkness the previous night, the apparition was gone as soon as he set eyes on it. It had gone off behind a tree, he thought, whatever it was. It had seemed to be running, but silently. He drew his legs up under him, now posed in a kind of lean with one arm supporting his weight.

“Alla bin-see, lakka sham-ya, yama-lan!” The sound was a human voice, without doubt. It was so sudden, so loud, and so unexpected, that for a moment he remained nonplussed, and sat beatific in a shaft of morning sunlight falling through the trees. Then he heard, unmistakably, the sound of running feet. Forgetting the wound on his foot, he stood straight up. Putting his foot down on the ground did, mercifully, more or less hold the wound closed, so there was no shock of pain to distract him from the jungle, suddenly alive with activity. He twirled around, his arms poised at his sides to—what could he do? What could he possibly do? These were thoughts for which he had no time. The rustle of leaves, so like the ones he'd barely registered hearing the day before, were unmistakable now. His eyes locked on a form, a running form, bounding between trees and over rocks. The form was apparently human, but smaller and skinnier than usual. Not a midget or a pygmy, just a diminutive, lithe human form. The skin was dark, almost the shiny black of a native African, and seemed nearly hairless. But its hair was not curly. It hung down around neck and shoulders, bouncing with every leap and bound. The form vanished into the undergrowth. He heard another rustle, this one behind him, and whirled so fast his feet got tangled under him and he fell backwards, arms pinwheeling, back onto his mossy bed.

The person who landed on top of him a few fractions of a second later was male. He noted this immediately because the skinny brown man wore little more than a kind of woven loincloth. The eyes were brown, and the hair, indeed, was straight.

The man scrabbled atop him like a spider over its prey. He wasn't sure, at first, what the man—boy?—was doing. Then, a muscle flexed in the man-boy's shoulder, and he felt his arms pulled together over his head. Someone else—with the same slight build and shoulder-length hair—appeared, upside down in his vision, and then he felt his ankles come together. Within seconds, he saw all around him more scrabbling versions of the first man-boy who'd leapt on top of him. Something sharp pricked his neck, like a thorn or a needle, and his vision went hazy; he was crazily reminded of the first time back on the beach when he'd tried to stand. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He was hoisted into the air on many little hands, and realized what they'd been doing: they'd bound him at the wrists and ankles and were now bearing him off somewhere. He noticed that he was shouting at them, hurling curses and frantic questions to which they responded in their strange language. But they seemed mostly to be talking to each other, making outsize gestures like angry, naked little Italians.

Soon, he could speak only in slurs, not that it made any difference to these gentlemen, who seemed to speak little English. As his vision went from hazy to blurry to double to black, one last thought reverberated back and forth in his skull, like a lost child alone in a dark auditorium.

Guess there are people around here, after all.

He couldn't see it, but as he lapsed unconscious, one corner of his mouth twitched in a perverse smile. Oh, the irony.