Gill, Igg and I's Land

The single woman was doing the same thing. That astounded me more than anything else.

After that I was too shocked to notice anything as the boat crashed into something that felt extremely solid and a huge ripping sound blocked out everything else.

I looked at the wall across from me and saw a huge gaping hole in the side and there was water pouring in through it.

"We have to get out of here," I shouted. "Come on, back up on deck. With a hole that big in her side this boat is going down." As soon as I said it, the muscular guy pushed his way past the women and jerked the door open and ran up onto the deck. I helped one of the plain women to her feet and the fat woman as well. Then I got Natalie up and onto the deck.

The captain hadn't insisted that we wear life jackets, so I started looking to see where they were stored.

"What do we do now?" the muscular guy asked me. He looked frightened.

"I'm trying to find the life jackets, in case we have to go into the water," I said.

"Yeah, me too," he said. He started opening cabinets. The Captain and Gill were busy trying to find something to patch the hole in the ship and also trying to connect with anyone on the ships radio to relay our position and request aid.

I pulled out my cell phone and noticed that there was no signal. The rain had let up but the high winds were still buffeting the boat around like a cork in a bathtub. When you added to that the fact that the boat had a very distinct list, I think we were all a little afraid.

One of the women found the life jackets. "I found them," she yelled. The muscular guy quickly made his way over to her, pushed her to the side and then grabbed a life jacket. He quickly put it on and then started handing them out to everyone else.

It was about that time that the boat struck something really hard. The impact was so great that we were all knocked off of our feet. I saw the captain literally leave his feet and land badly on his upper back and shoulders. There was a sickening crack sound as he landed and then remained still.

We all grabbed onto something to hold onto. Natalie grabbed me and sat by me whimpering for a few long scary moments. During that time we noticed that the boat had stopped moving. I crawled over to the captain and called Gill. I felt around on the captain's neck until I was sure that he had no pulse. I looked at Gill then and shook my head.

"The Captain's dead isn't he?" whined the muscular guy. I nodded.

"Oh this is just great," he whined. "How the hell do we get home now?"

I looked around and noticed that the boat was actually aground. I climbed over the side and noticed that we were on a fairly large land mass that we'd somehow run into during the storm. The others also got off of the boat and followed me. We were on a fairly large beach.

"Gill, do you think there's any chance that we could patch up the hole in the side of the boat?" I asked. He just looked at me.

"Why the hell are you asking him?" asked the muscular guy.

"Well, because he's the Captain now. So he's in charge. We need to make a plan and figure out how the hell we're going to get off of this island or signal the authorities to let them know that we're here," I said.

"We don't need to do any of that, Grandpa," he said. "Everything is automatic now. As soon as the company notices that they're out of communication with one of their boats they'll track us down. All we have to do is to sit back and wait. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn't trust a word that this moron has to say. He and his buddy almost got us killed. Some Captain that guy was."

I ignored him and started to walk around the beach. As I got away from the group I noticed that I was being followed. I turned to see Gill, the guy, and the pretty black woman all following me.

The guy who was just a guy caught up to me. "Are you scouting the island?" he asked. I nodded.

"We need to know what's here just in case the rescue that steroid guy talked about doesn't come. I know this is stupid, but there wasn't supposed to be a storm this afternoon. There is supposed to be one this evening and another tomorrow afternoon," I said.

"George Ignikowski," he said holding out his hand.

"Robert Sinclair," I said. "George, I think we'll cover more ground if we split up into two teams. Gill and I'll go East, you go West with this lady. Does your watch still work?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Let's meet back on the beach in an hour. We probably don't have more than three or four hours before the sun goes down. The storm will probably start by then if it hasn't already. We're looking for a cave or any type of natural formation that would make shelter easier to build in a short amount of time."

He nodded and we left. As Gill and I moved around the Island he seemed to come out of his shock.

"How do you know that this way is east?" He asked.

"The sun sets in the west," I said. He nodded.

"You learned that from some kind of survival training right?" he asked.

"Nope, I watched a lot of cowboy movies when I was a kid," I smiled. We saw a few natural rock formations that might work but we'd need some supplies to make them livable. We spotted lots of thin yet strong trees and several larger trees that we could cut or break long slender branches from.

From talking to Gill I got a pretty good idea of what supplies and tools were available aboard the boat. So after an hour I had a pretty good idea of what we needed to do to make it through the storm in relative comfort.

I sent Gill back to the boat with a list of things to grab and bring back. I headed back to the beach to explain what we'd found and the plan. Unless George came up with a better site, we'd go with what I had. Time was short so we needed to do something quickly.

I had only been gone for about an hour. And maybe it was pure luck that I picked the route that I took back. That area was a little bit more woodsy that the rest of the area. I later discovered that they'd decided on the safety in numbers strategy. So whenever someone needed to go to the bathroom two people had gone.

All of the women had gone in two's. Unfortunately, or perhaps by design when Natalie went there were no women available, so she'd gone with him.

I heard them talking as I approached them. I wasn't trying to walk quietly until I heard her voice. "But aren't you married?" he asked her.

"This is nothing new," she said. "I've been broadening my horizons for a couple of years now. A friend of mine got caught, so I decided to quit, but maybe this isn't the right time for me to do it." Then I heard a slurping sound that I recognized all too easily.

I also heard the sound of a guy moaning. I knew what was going on and I knew what I'd heard but somehow it wasn't enough. I crept closer and saw my forty plus year old wife's head bobbing up and down in his lap. Then she straightened up suddenly. I almost thought that she'd heard me. But she looked off in the direction they'd come in. I saw her looking towards the beach and checking to make sure that everyone was there.

"Why'd you stop?" he asked.

"We're just getting started," she said. She reached down and pulled her panties down and bent forward. In a few minutes he was grunting away behind her.

"Just remember those younger girls are prettier," she said. "But they won't do everything that I will. And since you're in charge, I'll be expecting you to make sure that I'm okay and that I get out of this okay. As long as you do that, I'll give you as much as you want."

"But what about your husband," he grunted.

"What he doesn't know won't hurt him," she said. "You can always give him something to do to make him feel important. Like send him off scouting or something."

I guess I should have been shocked. But once she talked about how she'd been cheating on me for years, everything had fallen into place. I understood the reason that she'd suddenly decided that we needed to discover each other again and it all made sense.

She'd been screwing around with Edie and when Edie had gotten caught, Natalie hadn't. She'd seen how Edie had ended up. And she didn't want that to happen to her, so she'd run the whole renewing the romance bit on me.

The thing that hurt, even more than the betrayal, was the fact that she'd done it so coldly. She hadn't given a single thought to me. Being a practical man, I put it behind me. Broken heart or not, there was still a storm coming in.

I backed away from the woods and approached the beach from a different angle. As I came towards the beach, I saw George and the woman he'd gone with coming from the other side.

We met in the center and George shook his head. "We found a small cave," he said but it's nowhere near large enough for all of us. The woman yanked his sleeve. "Oh yeah we did find some berry trees. Some of them are ripe. I saw a bunch of squirrels too.

"Okay, Gill and I found a natural rock outcropping that'll do for tonight. We can use some of the tarps that Gill says they had on board and some rope. We'll need to make some kind of frame to strengthen the tarp and use as walls to prevent the storm from blowing it away though and we'll need to get started on that pretty soon so I..."

"We're not doing any of that," said a voice from behind me. "While you guys were gone off on your little hunting expedition we had an election. This is still the United States after all. And I'm in charge." I noticed that the two nerds and the idiot's friend were nodding their heads in agreement. So were the other four women.

"So we don't get to vote?" asked George.

"It wouldn't have mattered," said the muscular guy. "There are only four of you. There were nine people here. Anyway I've decided that if the rescue mission doesn't come by tonight, which I'm sure it will. We'll just sleep on the boat. Why should we waste time, energy or effort trying to build something when we have the boat?"

George and I both shrugged our shoulders and headed off towards the location I'd picked.

"Hey," screamed the muscular guy. "Where are you going?"

"There's a storm coming," I said. "We don't have the time to waste on you."

"But I'm in charge," he said.

"We didn't vote for you. So you're not in charge of us," said George.

"What about your wife?" yelled the guy. "She's with us. Don't you want to try to convince her to go with you or try to fight for her?"

"You already said it," I said. "She's with YOU." I looked right into Natalie's eyes and she gasped. "I only fight for things that I think are worth it."

"But Rob," whined Natalie.

George, the quiet woman and I started off away from the beach. As we left the chunky woman ran towards us.

"Dana, where are you going?" asked one of the other women.

"Look Peggy, I already know how this movie ends," said Dana. "Four guys, five women and I'm the fat girl. I'll take my chances with the other side. And to tell you the truth, they seem to have a plan and they have reasons for it...I hope."

Once we got to the area I'd found before, we all introduced ourselves. The chunky girl was Dana. The quiet one was Ella. Ella was miraculous. She didn't talk much because she didn't like explaining her accent. She was a mutt as she called herself. Her father had been half black and half Latino. Her mother was an Irishwoman who lived in England. Ella had grown up in London and had the accent. She was a librarian and very proud of it.

George, like me, was an engineer. The difference was that he was mechanical and I was manufacturing. I gave him my idea for how to fortify the site.

The place I'd picked was the side of a relatively steep hill. On one side of the hill there was a vertical notch formed. It was like a "V" rotated onto its side. The idea was to build a fairly large lean-to that would take advantage of the sheer wall against its back and blend in with the slope of the hill. As a bonus there were several large rocks and fallen trees that we could place in front of it as we settled in to further protect the front from the winds. Since the tarps were water proof, I wasn't nearly as worried about the rain as I was about the wind.

Gill arrived shortly after that and we filled him in. The tarps were larger than I'd expected and thicker. We filled him in and I sent him back out on another trip. George decided to start building. Dana and I went in search of the limbs we'd need to lash together to form the walls and Ella went back to gather as many of the berries she'd seen before as she could and anything else she could find that was edible.

As Dana and I looked for the right sized limbs, we talked and I kept an eye out for smaller pieces of dry wood. I expected that it might get cold during the night and I'd asked Gill to bring a couple of things I'd seen on the boat that might be useful for building a fire.

Ella came back with more than enough berries for the five of us. I crooked my finger at her and she smiled and came towards me.

I handed her a fishing pole. "What am I to use for bait?" she asked. The precisely clipped syllables of her words were magical.

"What did you say?" I asked. She smiled and repeated her question. I pretended I didn't hear her again. Dana came over and told me that George had enough poles for the two layers of the wall that we needed.

"Is it a color thing?" asked Ella.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I asked you the same question two or three times and you couldn't hear me," she said. "But when Dana came over you heard her immediately and answered her question and sent her off."

"Sorry," I said. "And it's not a color thing. Shit your skin is probably lighter than mine is."

"Is it a cultural thing then?" she asked, looking at me as if she was really disappointed.

"Ella, it's a stupid thing," I said. "And I'm sorry."

"You think I'm stupid," she gasped. "I'll have you know, my good man..." That was when I burst out laughing.

"Ella, I never said that you were stupid," I laughed. "I meant that I was." She calmed down and looked at me.

"I highly doubt that you're stupid," she said. "And since we're all following your plan, if I'm wrong, we're all going to suffer."

"Ella, I kept having you repeat things because I love hearing you talk," I said. "Your accent, your tone of voice, even the phrases you use are just magical. I could listen to you talk forever." Both of us turned red and we walked away.

"Ella," I yelled as she picked up the pole. "There are all kinds of worms on the ground near some of the muddy areas. Try some of those and also some of your berries as bait.

A few minutes later she came over and grabbed my hand and pulled me over to a puddle. "Put that on my hook," she said, pointing to a large fat worm.

George had started pounding the long spars into the side of the hill if you looked from a distance you almost couldn't tell they were there because he had come very close to the exact angle of the hill. The next step would be to lay the tarp on top of them followed by another layer of spars to protect the tarp from being blown away by the high winds.

I got Gill to take the large flat metal disk he'd brought from the boat and place it in the center of the large lean too. I put a lot of crumpled paper and kindling and the pieces of dry wood I'd gathered in it. A few carefully arranged metal skewers above it and we had both heat and a stove.

On Gill's last trip back he brought a few bottles of water and three cans of soda. The clouds had begun to fill the sky. It took all of us together to push the large rock and the split stump in front of the wall. With some of the smaller pieces of tarp we made blankets. We also had life jackets that we stretched out and piled to serve as mattresses. The final piece came together as Ella marched up carrying three nice sized fish.

"These are all I caught," she said.

"I got 'em," said George. "I'll fillet them."

"I got Gill to take that first one off of the hook for me," said Ella proudly.

I noticed that the other two fish were still attached to lines on the poles. Ella gravitated towards me after George had relieved her of both fish and poles.

"I'll just eat berries," she said. "I'm just not a sushi girl."

"Well not a sushi girl," I said. "What do you make of that?" I pointed towards my impromptu stove.

"I dunno, what is it?" she asked.

"That's where we're going to cook the fish you caught," I smiled at her.

"Clever boy," she smiled back. "I might have to eat some of that after all."

"Ella, we really don't know how long we'll be here. We're not going to be able to survive and keep our strength up on just berries and greens. So whenever there's any sort of protein available, I want you to eat it. Whether it's fish or squirrel or whatever we find, even if it tastes like fried shit, you eat it, okay?"

She nodded. "Rob?" she called. I turned and looked at her.

"I was just wondering," she said in her musical voice. "What exactly does fried shit taste like?"

We both erupted in laughter and soon everyone came over to find out what was so funny. Before we could explain it to them, we felt the first rain drops. We went inside of our hastily built structure. We left the flap behind the rocks open but slid the log as close as possible. After a few tries, I lit the fire using my lighter. The small fire and the open flap provide some light. I took a skewer and put Ella's fish that George had filleted over the open fire. I very slowly turned them every few moments. The smell of the cooking fish was tantalizing.

As we waited for the fish to cook, we took turns telling the others more about ourselves. Dana was full of questions.

"I feel good," she said. "Considering the circumstances, I feel very good. But why didn't we want to ride out the storm in the boat with the others?"

"Because the boat is sitting very precariously on that same spar of rock that split her hull," I said. "It's not stable. Once the winds start and the tide comes in either one of them may lift the boat off of that rock," I said.

"You mean they might sail away without us?" she asked.

"I mean they might sail straight to the bottom of the lake," I said.

"The lake is over a thousand feet deep in some spots," said Gill.

"But, what about your wife?" asked Ella.

"I'm pretty sure she can swim," I said.

Nothing but silence and the crackling of the small flames filled the tent as everyone looked away from me out of embarrassment.

"Look guys," I said. "Natalie and I were supposed to spend the day today getting to know each other all over again. I didn't think we needed to. It was her idea. A couple of hours ago, I caught her doing something that she shouldn't have done if she wanted to stay married to me. I also overheard her telling the person that she did it with how she'd been cheating on me for a couple of years. So as far as I'm concerned, whether we get off of this island or end up stuck here for years, our marriage is over. It wasn't love that suddenly made her want us to become closer, it was the fear of finally getting caught, mixed with guilt."

"In a way, I'm glad I found out. Now I can get rid of her and find someone else to spend the rest of my life with before I'm too old to start over. So good riddance to bad rubbish, let's eat."

We ate fish and berries and drank water or soda and talked about other things including what we'd do the next day until we all dropped off to sleep with the wind howling outside and the rain pelting the lean to. We'd built it well though so we stayed warm and dry.

The next morning we all got up to take care of the jobs that we'd decided on the night before. Dana would take care of straightening out and neatening up the lean-to. Ella was fishing. George was hunting for any small game he could find and berries. Gill and I were going to try to make some kind of signal that would be visible to passing ships. Dana also wanted to visit her friends.