I sat on the shaking wooden bench of the ship watching everyone else dance and drink. All my friends made me go with them on this cheap “cruise”. In reality it was an old creaky boat the people from the resort tried to call a cruise. I was eager to get back to the room and relax. As all the other passengers made a fool of themselves after too much booze I sat patiently and looked out to sea. My stomach turned when I looked around and saw no land. I never liked boats. I looked at my phone to check the time. Not only did I notice that it was almost 2 hours after we should have gotten back but I didnt have service either. I tried to take deep breaths and not panic. Suddenly I wish I didnt turn down the bartender.
About 30 minutes later I started to be able to see land. I was thrilled at first until I realized it wasn't the resort. It was just a verdant island. I was perplexed as I notice the waves were pulling us in and the crew didn't even notice. The boat started so sway faster and faster. My impulse was to stand up but before I could do anything the boat crashed into the sand. I got up and walked up to one of the crewmembers. “Are we supposed to be here?” I asked. “Uh, one sec” he replied and slowly backed up. I could see the terror forming in his eyes. All of a sudden the captain stood on a table and yelled “Everybody out! Come on, hurry up! Get off the boat immediately.” A shudder went down my spine as soon as he said immediately as if it was an emergency.
All the passengers got off the boat and stood in the sand waiting for an explanation. There was me and my two friends, Aria and Bella. Bella also brought her boyfriend Mason with us. A couple feet away stood two men. One of them crying in his boyfriend's arms as the boyfriend stood with blank eyes as if he was zoning out. About 10 feet back there was another couple, two old people. That sat in the sand talking about what had happened. As we all sat there waiting for an answer we saw two crew members unloading a lifeboat. Aria sighed and placed her hand over he chest “I knew it would be ok”.
After about fifteen minutes the crew got the lifeboat. As it floated in the water the passengers in the sand walked up to the water eagerly. The waves were too sharp for us to get to the boat so we waited for the crew to bring it to us. Instead, they walked it to the back of the ship. The older couple walked to the other side of the ship to try to see what they were doing. We couldn't see or hear anything happen for about 10 minutes. We sat down in the sand and waited the the crew to come to us. All of a sudden Mason yells “Hey!”. He caught me off guard but as soon as I looked up I saw the crew and the captain in the lifeboat about 100 yards out.
My heart started beating so rapidly it hurt. I couldn't believe what just happened. The two guys started crying and the old woman was just whispering “dear lord” to herself. Bella sobbed hysterically with Aria. For the next day we didn't talk much. We waited endlessly to be rescued.
Mason was the strongest of the passengers so he climbed onto the ship and threw supplies down to the rest of us. There wasn't much food but he found some emergency kits with canned goods and extra water jugs. We had things to build shelters with so we built a shelter. The older couple wanted to split up but everyone else knew we needed to stay together so they took supplies and head into the greenery. Building our shelter brought us together. We found out the two guys were Jackson and Oliver. They were from San Diego. Jackson was 29 years old and worked at a bank and Oliver was 33 and was an interior designer.
By the end of the night we had a sustainable shelter. We were exhausted but none of us could sleep. The eerie wind whispering things to the trees outside of our new home and the water creeping up with every wave was enough to make the feeling of doom in our hearts a hundred times worse. I couldn't stop thinking about the older couple deep in the greenery. We didn't know what was in there. They couldn't be younger than 65 years old. After making our shelter and seeing how much it took out of us I knew there was no way they were going to survive. I shouldn't have let them leave.
It was the same thing day over day. We were surviving all right for the first 5 days but by the tenth day we were starving. Oliver was dizzy all the time and began to hallucinate. The 11th night went smooth at first. We slept for a few hours but then scream abruptly awoke us at around 3 am. I sat up and looked around the shelter. In the light of the fire I could see Aria was wide awake beside me and Jackson sat still as stone trying to listen for more screams. Bella sat up and put her finger to her lip signaling us to keep quiet. She slowly got up and stepped into the night after the screaming stopped. After a few minutes she came back with blank eyes. “Oh lord-