ATTEMPT 3 – FAILED
LUKE
We’d been at this raft for days, patching it up, lashing new pieces of bamboo, making it as seaworthy as possible – not that I think it would pass any inspections. It just needed to get us to a nearby island fucking alive. We also needed to get there quickly – Josh’s leg was looking like shit and there was a faint red line running up his thigh which Sarah said was not a good sign. I saw the panic on his face but we didn’t talk about it.
She’d boiled seawater, washed out the wound, and smeared on some herbal paste Josh had read about in one of his survival journals. And while mango was good for his boredom, it wouldn‘ t kill an infection. If it did, Josh would be immune to infection by
now.
Finally, the sunset, and I did my best to get comfortable on the sand – not fucking possible but exhaustion would take over at some point. It always did.
A crackling whip of thunder tore through the silence, and I shot upright just as thick raindrops began pelting down. I scrambled to my feet, looking out at the once–peaceful beach, now a thrashing mess of rain and wind, trees bowing under the force of the storm. “Oh Fuck!” Josh yelled as his hammock swung wildly, then crashed to the ground.
“Get up!” I shouted as Sarah. I started grabbing what I could and put Josh’s arm over my shoulder to help him up.
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ATTEMPTS
PTS–FAILED
“We need to get to the cave by the waterfall–now!” I yelled over the howling wind.
***
The first thing I noticed as I woke was the damp, musty air of the cave, the kind that clung to my skin and smelled faintly of wet earth. My neck ached from where I’d slumped against the wall, and the gritty taste of dried salt was still on my lips from the storm.
For a moment, I lay still, letting the sounds around me filter in- the soft breathing of Sarah and Josh, the drip of water from the rocks above, the muffled crash of distant waves. “Storm’s passed,”
Blinking the grogginess away, I shifted, stretching out sore muscles and standing up. Josh lay sprawled on his back a few feet away, his mouth slightly open, one arm over his eyes, oblivious to the world.
I nudged him with my foot. “Hey, rise and shine princess.”
He mumbled something incoherent, swatting me away like I was a fly, but then Sarah stirred, stretching her arms with a tired groan.
“Is it over?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and glancing around as if momentarily forgetting where we were. Then her gaze fell on me, and she nodded, grim but awake. I helped her up, and the three of us shuffled outside, feeling the weight of the night’s chaos hanging heavily in the silence.
As soon as we stepped out of the cave, the destruction hit us like a punch to the gut. The jungle, once thick and lush, was
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ATTEMPT 3–FAILED
1288 Vouchers
ravaged–trees had splintered, their broken trunks jutting out. like fractured bones. Branches and leaves littered the ground, and the air smelled of wet foliage and the aftermath of a storm. The beach was unrecognizable; debris was scattered
everywhere, and the sand was churned and matted as if a giant had stomped across it in a fit of rage.
“Monsoon season,” Josh muttered, his voice breaking the silence.
I turned, my jaw slack. Sarah looked just as shocked, but Josh just shrugged, lifting one of his precious journals with a smug little grin. “Says it right here in the book,” he said, waving it in front of us like it was some holy scripture.
1 rolled my eyes. “Nice of you to mention it now,” I muttered, but he just shot me a smug look and kept reading, unbothered by the mess around us.
I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see what might’ve happened to the raft. But the second my eyes hit the shoreline, I couldn’t look away.
Pieces of bamboo were scattered across the beach, tangled in seaweed and driftwood.
Fragments of the tarp were draped over rocks like sad little flags, flapping weakly in the breeze. The raft we’d spent days working on, carefully lashing every piece together, was reduced to a collection of broken, splintered parts.
Useless.
I dropped to my knees, staring at the wreckage in silence. The small hope I’d nurtured, that maybe we could pull this off, was
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ATTEMPT 3–TAILED
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gone.
“So…that’s it, then?” Sarah whispered, her voice brittle.
I shook my head, my fingers digging into the sand. “I don’t know,” I said, barely able to keep the frustration from breaking through. “I don’t know if we can do this again. It took us a week to make that raft, and now…” I gestured at the debris scattered across the beach.
Sarah knelt beside me, grabbing a piece of broken bamboo and turning it over in her hands as if somehow it would give her the strength to keep going. “We’ll…we’ll figure something out,” she murmured, more to herself than to us. “Maybe this time, we reinforce it better, make sure it can handle the waves…”
I didn’t answer.
Josh glanced at me, his face unreadable. “Maybe the storm did us a favor,” he said quietly. “Maybe it’s better to stay put than try something that could get us all killed.”
I shook my head, clenching my jaw as I stared at the pieces of our raft, now nothing more than firewood and wasted effort. “We are going o fucking die on this island if we don’t get off it, man! Look at your leg!” I lost my shit but Sarah and Josh stayed quiet.
“We’ll try again,” I finally said, voice steadier now, though my
hands were still clenched in the sand. “Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But we’re going to find a way off this island. I’m not staying here for fucking forever.”
