Chapter 8

Robin stumbled out of the life boat, her legs shaking from exhaustion and adrenaline coursing through her veins. The relentless rain pelted her face, mixing with the saltwater that drenched her clothes and shoes. She had no clue how long they'd been paddling, or in what direction, but eventually Captain Russo shouted, "Land!" and they all fought with renewed strength to reach it.

As soon as the life boat juddered to a stop against the rocks, a bone-deep exhaustion washed over Robin, and she could think of nothing but feeling solid earth beneath her feet.

Of course, first she felt slippery rock and jagged shale, grateful for the hiking boots she'd put on that morning–

Was it that morning? Or had more than a day passed since they abandoned the ship?

It was dark now, but was that because it was night, or just due to the storm?

It was too much effort to think, to do anything but fumble her way up onto the shore and make sure everyone else from her life boat got there too.

"Where's the other boat?" someone called.

"I lost track of them," somebody else answered.

Fear gnawed in Robin's gut and she was running on autopilot as she helped a couple other survivors haul the life boat ashore.

"Stay together," the captain called. "Move inland, but as a group!"

Robin felt someone take her hand, and followed them blindly. She felt the tide leaving her feet, and the earth changed from small, jagged rocks to sand that gave way under every step.

"Trees," someone said beside her. "We can take shelter until the storm quits."

If it ever quits, Robin thought wearily.

Somebody deposited her beneath a palm tree and she felt soft, mossy earth under her palms. The tree cover did hardly anything to shield them from the storm –the rain was coming in sideways off the beach –but at least the ground didn't move beneath her like the ever-pitching life boat.

Beside her, somebody was being sick.

On her other side, she felt a woman's arm against her, shivering violently.

"Are you okay?" Robin asked, beginning to come back to her senses. They needed to dry off and warm up, or else even in the tropics, they were going to get sick from the exposure.

How exactly they were going to accomplish that in the middle of a fucking monsoon…

"Look!" someone screamed, and Robin's adrenaline-addled brain thought, What next, the Lost monster?

"The other boat!"

Robin's heart skipped a beat. The last thing she saw before her own life boat got too far away to see the ship through the storm was Scarlet descending in the second boat, arm wrapped around Zoe of all people.

Forgetting all the cold and fatigue and fear in her body, Robin popped up and raced back toward the shore in the direction the woman had pointed. She could make out the life boat, just barely, through the storm. It was riding a lot lower on the water than their own had, and coming in from a different direction.

"It's taking on water," Robin cried. "Help me!"

She ran straight into the surf, just in time to see the second life boat go under. It was about fifty feet from the shore, and she swam as hard as she could out to it. There were at least two dozen women in the water, some of them flailing like they weren't strong swimmers. Robin spotted Scarlet's distinctive lavender hair and relief flooded her. Scarlet was helping a couple of women who were panicking, and Robin came to the rescue of another.

Together, they made sure everyone got to shore, and Robin pointed them up the beach to the tree line where the others were.

They all collapsed together in the dark, taking any little respite from the storm that they could find.

Robin pulled Scarlet to her. "Are you okay?"

Scarlet nodded, shaking and cold. "Are you?"

"I'm okay now. Let me warm you."

She wrapped her whole body around Scarlet's as they lay down, terrified and shivering and in shock, but alive.

Robin's eyes peeled open, registering sun and warmth.

"Hey, it's over," she groaned, nose nuzzling into Scarlet's hair. It smelled mostly like salt and seaweed, but she could still pick up the faint scent of citrus and it made her feel like everything would be okay.

She uncurled herself, whole body stiff from not moving a muscle all night. Or maybe it had something to do with surviving a freaking shipwreck and paddling for her life. Either way, it felt good to stand and stretch and look out across a beautiful, calm ocean.

She left the security of the tree line, walking across the sand. Everything ached –her legs, her arms, even her throat from screaming over the rain. But fresh air filled her lungs and the sun was already beginning to dry her damp clothes. Scarlet followed wordlessly and the two of them stopped just short of the surf.

It was breathtaking, in a way –the beach seemed perfectly untouched, the water was smooth and sparkling, the sand glimmering in the sunlight. A stark contrast to the violence of the storm last night.

"I don't see… anything," Scarlet said.

Robin scanned the horizon. Scarlet was right. The cruise ship was gone. The second life boat was gone. The first one lay on the rocky part of the beach, a big hole punched in its bow from where they came ashore against sharp rocks hidden under the waves.

There was no sign of land except the sand beneath their feet.

"Where are we?" Scarlet asked.

The first trickle of dread began to drip down Robin's spine. Her relief and elation and euphoria at having survived had been awfully short-lived because Scarlet was right: they were stranded, God knew where, with next to nothing for supplies and no way to contact the outside world.

Robin started breathing fast.

"Whoa, whoa," Scarlet took Robin's shoulders in her hands. "You'll hyperventilate. Deep breaths, it's going to be okay."

"We're trapped here–"

"We survived," she pointed out. "We'll figure this out. It's not forever. Look at me."

Robin obeyed, her eyes meeting Scarlet's. Even tossed about by the ocean and dirty from sleeping on the ground, she was the most beautiful woman Robin had ever seen. Scarlet took a long, deep breath and Robin matched it.

Again.

Again.

"I'm okay. Thank you."

"Yes, you are." Scarlet kissed her. "You were amazing last night, pulling all those people out of the water. I wasn't sure we were going to make it to shore."

"What's out there?" somebody from the tree line called, interrupting their moment of solitude.

Robin turned her attention back inward, to the island itself. About a dozen of the survivors were awake now, in various stages of getting up the courage to leave the comparative shelter of the trees. There was dense foliage there, and the leaves rustled gently in the morning breeze. Robin could hear the distant calls of birds with unfamiliar songs, but no human noises save for the ones being made by the survivors.

The beach itself curved around a rocky outcropping on one side, and there was a long coastline on the other, stretching on and on before curving out of sight.

"Suppose it'd be too much to hope for to find a dock," Scarlet said.

Robin slipped her hand into Scarlet's and they walked back to the group.

"We didn't see much, but we should scout along the shoreline," Scarlet suggested. "There could be other people here."

There were 127 islands that made up the Galapagos – Robin had learned that little factoid while she was in the ship's library. They ranged from large landmasses to little more than outcroppings of rocks, and only four of them were inhabited.

What were the chances they"d gotten so lucky?

Still, many of the others were visited by tourists and scientists, like Fernandina Island, and the whole area wasn't that big. Somewhere around this little island, there had to be another one visible that they could swim to, or signal to.

"I put out an SOS while we were evacuating," the captain said. "I didn't reach anyone, but someone had to have heard."

"There's debris on the shore," Robin pointed out. "Things that washed up from the ship, I bet. We should collect it –you never know what could be useful."

"God, I hope we're not here long enough to need any of it," Lex said, flopping down on her back on the sand.

"Better safe than sorry," Robin said. "We don't have a hell of a lot to work with right now."

The clothes on their backs, the meager supplies that had been packed into the one surviving life boat. How long would it last them?

She saw panic in a few people's faces and knew she'd said the wrong thing. She wanted them to be calm and organized, not freak out and be useless because they were losing their minds.

"We can use the life boat as a shelter if we're still out here by nightfall," the captain pointed out. "And maybe we can pull the second one out of the water too."

"I don't want to be here at nightfall," Simone said. "I'll go scouting with Scarlet."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Captain Russo called, loud enough to cut through the din. "Don't anyone go anywhere yet. I need to get an accurate headcount, make sure everybody got here safely."

"And I'd like to do quick exams," Krys added. "Treat any injuries, make sure no one is in shock."

"I think we're all in shock," Reese pointed out.

"Well, to a dangerous degree, anyway," Krys amended.

"I'll help," Amelia volunteered. "Not my normal purview, but I do remember basic exams from med school."

"First, does anyone know somebody is missing?" the captain asked.

The group started to devolve into a dozen separate conversations again, everyone talking over each other. Robin looked at Scarlet, seeing her own worries reflected back in her eyes. Scarlet squeezed her hand.

"Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…"

"Does that hurt?"

"We can't drink the water, can we?"

"That life boat looks wrecked too–"

Robin noticed Amelia kneeling beside one of the crew members, inspecting a gash on the woman's arm. She took a few steps closer. "How"s it looking?"

Amelia glanced up, her expression stern. "It"s not a bad cut, but I'll need to keep a close eye on it in case of infection. Any open wound is a risk in these conditions."

Robin nodded, her gaze sweeping over the group. She could see a few other passengers sporting minor cuts and bruises, no doubt sustained during the frantic evacuation from the sinking ship. Thankfully, she didn't see anything worse.

"Do you need help?" she asked.

"Find us a first aid kit," Krys said, then laughed grimly. "A sterile environment would be nice too."

"Zoe. Hey!" Somebody cut through the noise of the group. "Anybody seen Zoe?" It was Lex, sitting up again. "I haven't seen her since the ship."

"She was on our life boat," Scarlet said. "But I don't remember seeing her since we got to shore."

The captain cupped her hands around her mouth. "Zoe!"

A few others joined in calling her name.

"Maybe she just went off to use the, uh, ladies' room," Lex suggested.

A few more people spread out across the tree line, afraid to go too far inland but looking as much as they dared for Zoe. After a couple minutes of calling, they all reconvened.

"Did she fall out of the life boat?" Jess wondered. "It was pretty sketchy for a while there."

"Don't remind me," Dana said, her head resting against her wife's shoulder.

"God, I hope we didn't lose her." Scarlet looked sick over the idea and Robin wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

"We'll keep looking," she promised, although she forced herself not to think about what they could do if they found her badly injured… or worse.

Scarlet put both arms around Robin's waist, holding her tight. She must have been thinking the same thing, because she said softly, "We were lucky. We could have died out there."

We could still die here, Robin thought. It wasn't going to help anyone to say things like that out loud, but she kept looking at the debris scattered all over the beach, thinking that if this island was as desolate as it looked from this particular part of the shore, they needed to act fast and be smart if they were going to survive long enough to be rescued.

Best-case scenario, she was worrying over nothing. The captain's SOS had been heard and somebody out there knew exactly where they were and were en route to pick them up right now.

Or…

Well, they had to be prepared for either scenario.

"I want to collect the debris before the tide washes it back out," she said.

"It's probably a bunch of garbage," Marnie pointed out. "Look how bad the two life boats got banged up."

"I don't care if it's literal garbage –it could be useful," Robin said.

"Who made you boss?" Alicia, asked. "Shouldn't we let Captain Russo tell us what to do?"

The captain looked exhausted and overwhelmed simply from attempting the headcount with everyone moving around her. She sighed and said, "I'm just as inexperienced at being shipwrecked as the rest of you. I think we're all making it up as we go along."

Great, way to build morale, Robin thought.

"Do we at least have a radio?" Darcy asked. "Some way to call for help?"

Evie patted down her torn uniform, then held her hands out in exasperation. "Where do you think I'm storing it?"

"Well, excuse us for thinking the captain should have an idea what to do," Darcy's wife Krys cut in. "You don't have to get shitty about it."

Robin looked around at the group, taking in their haggard appearances and the fear in their eyes. She couldn"t blame them for being upset – they were in a terrible situation, and the worst-case scenarios were probably swirling in all their heads just as it was in Robin's.

Plus, she wanted to know if any part of their current situation had to do with the corner-cutting the captain had accused Zoe of.

Zoe couldn't answer that question because she wasn't here.

And as she watched the tensions mounting among the survivors, Robin knew now wasn"t the time for questions like that anyway. They needed to focus on the present, on getting together their supplies to survive as long as they had to, and figuring out how to signal to rescuers where they were. Placing blame and stirring up anger would only make things worse.

"Okay, okay," she called, drawing everyone's attention away from the brewing argument. "I know we"re all scared and confused right now. But we need to work together if we"re going to get through this." Her voice was strong and steady despite the fact that she was just as scared and confused as the rest of them. "We need to gather up what we can find on the shore –food, water, supplies, let's hope something useful washed up from the ship. Our job right now is to survive long enough to be rescued."

Beside her, Scarlet said, "And I need a couple volunteers to come scouting with me. We have no idea where we are, right Captain Russo?"

The captain shook her head, despondent. "No. Just call me Evie."

"Well, for all we know, we could be on one of the inhabited islands," Scarlet said. She seemed calm and focused, a natural leader emerging from the wreckage . "Who wants to come with me to look for signs of civilization?"

"Yes," Simone said.

Darcy raised her hand. "I will too. I'm former military. I have some navigation experience."

"Perfect," Scarlet said. "Let's go while we've got plenty of light to make it back."

She turned to Robin.

"You gonna be okay?"

"Yes. I'm glad you have those two," Robin nodded to Darcy and Simone. She hated the idea of Scarlet leaving her sight again after the frantic evacuation, but it sounded like she had two of the best people for the task. "Be careful."

"You too."

Robin pulled her into a fierce kiss, then reluctantly let her go.

"All right, who's helping gather supplies?"

To her pleasant surprise, half the remaining group stood up. It'd do them some good to stretch their legs, let their clothes dry in the sun, and have some purpose. Robin started pointing them in different directions along the beach, instructing them to bring back anything they found and collect it in a central location near the trees.