Chapter 10 #2
She scoffed. “And how are we going to be saved if you’re not being smart about it?”
This stopped him and his steps faltered.
While he’d been teased over the years by friends and family for always being the brawn in the equation and never the brains, it had been something he’d gotten used to.
For Catalina to imply it, and not as a friendly joke, hit him harder.
He often wondered why she no longer wanted him to escort her to any of her work’s fancy PR functions and fundraisers, telling him she was mainly making contacts and getting commitments from people.
There was no reason for him to go to something where he’d only be bored, she had insisted.
The wheels in his mind had been turning for a while.
Perhaps her reasoning went deeper. Maybe she was afraid he’d say something ridiculous, something not smart, and embarrass himself or, worse, embarrass her.
Whipping around to face him, there was no trace of tears in sight anymore.
She seemed unaware of how her previous words had struck him in the gut.
“This isn’t a superhero movie, Trey. This isn’t about you saving the day and ending up with the girl.
We’re in a life-and-death situation here, and the odds are stacked against us.
Everything and anything can kill us. The only thing we can do is utilize what we have, which isn’t much.
But we do have each other, so it’s not just one set of ideas but us working together to come up with a good plan.
Maybe then we’ll find a way to come out on the other side of this. ”
She punctuated the next sentence by pressing a finger into his chest. “But if you think I’m just going to keep following you around as you try one risky thing after another, I’m not. That was the last time.”
He laid his hand over hers, and some of the previous sting he felt dissipated because the main thing he heard was the word “together,” and this was something he could work with. “Okay. I get it.”
“I’m serious. You keep doing this, and there won’t be anyone to rescue. We just have to make sure—” She yanked her hand away, her eyes searching the length of him before she frowned. “Where the hell is my bag?”
“Oh, uh…” He hadn’t noticed it had gone missing from his torso. “I think it got ripped off when I fell.”
“In the box?”
“No, here on the beach. Look, I also lost my other flip-flop.” It took him this long to realize he was as barefoot as she was. How hard would it be to fashion some from the seaweed? Not that walking on the sand had been bad except for being hot against his skin.
“I don’t care about your shoes. Where is my bag?” She pronounced every word of the question pointedly, as if this was the best way to convey the importance of it and he was supposed to understand why. He didn’t.
All he could do was gesture helplessly toward the mass of seaweed.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in there,” he replied.
“I need you to remember where. We need that bag.”
“Forget it. I’ll buy you another one.” He realized how silly this sounded as soon as it left his mouth. But after having worried that his wife was lost or dead, the location of her purse was the last thing he was concerned about.
If her face was any indication, she wasn’t about to be so forgiving. “Where? At the seaweed market? In that case, maybe you can also buy us some more water and food.”
It was then he understood the importance of the bag, why she was making such a big deal out of it.
Avoiding giant wheels and spiders and Buddy was one thing, but when it came to basic survival, they didn’t have anything.
They couldn’t drink the seawater. They couldn’t feast on sand.
If they had any hope of making some kind of trek under the hot sun and over the dunes stretching in front of them like a vast desert, they needed supplies, no matter how limited they might be.
Think.
His gaze dropped to the ground as he thought about it.
While his brain knew he was looking at sand, he couldn’t help but marvel at the ground from his new perspective.
The flakes of sand were like pebbles, smoother, made up of a variety of muted colors rather than a monochrome shade of brown.
These flakes and stones and small shells gave the ground texture and wonder.
He’d never seen anything like it even though he’d looked at sand a hundred times before.
It was almost like being on a foreign planet when they’d never left Earth at all.
It was beautiful. How could he capture this as a show-and-tell for some future class of students, to let them experience the same thing?
He took out his phone. While there wasn’t any service, it wasn’t completely useless. Switching to the camera app, he took a picture of his feet on the sand. It was truly amazing.
“What the hell are you doing?” Catalina asked him.
In his viewfinder, the answer suddenly came to him. “My footsteps. We can follow them.” While the sand was different at this scale, his feet continued leaving impressions, marking his earlier race to get to Catalina.
Her eyes lit with understanding, and he grabbed her hand as they ran along the seaweed bar, searching for his earlier footsteps. “Here!” They stopped at the point where he had earlier emerged from the seaweed jungle.
Before he was able to celebrate this lucky break, a shadow fell over them.
Straining his vision upward, it was hard to see much of the giant man’s facial features.
He was backlit by the bright sun, but was wearing work boots, and he held an item that looked suspiciously like a rake.
It dropped prong first into the sand, sending a spray of sand flakes over the couple.
“Ah, shit,” was all Trey could say because it was one more situation requiring quick action.