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Page 37.

Chapter 7. Castaway

I am alive, Tim thought as he felt the weight of the land assert itself. Somehow I have survived and all the others are dead. Slowly, he rolled over onto his side, feeling sickness and grief. He lay doubled over, feeling the sun drying the shreds of his clothing. He smelled dying kelp, rotting mussels. He heard the loud buzzing of countless flies. On his sun baked, salt-crusted lips and nose, on his cracking skin, flies and ants crawled but he was too weak to swat them. He lolled dizzily as the water drained away, leaving him to dry in the sun. He was alive, at least, to smell and feel these things.

He raised himself up and looked out to sea. A smudge of black smoke stained a violet evening sky. Night was coming, and he began to feel cold. He was too weak to jump up, but he lay back and inhaled great gulps of living air as if it were some wonderful champagne. He lay gasping the marvelous near-liquid called air while the planet wheeled in the heavens and then sun began to turn large and orange on the western horizon, over the fatal sea.

He again saw Jerry Harris’s dark beard and eyes fading under the waves. Again he saw red-haired Harvey Kinnan torn to pieces by sharks. He cried out “No!” and beat his forehead against the sand, sobbing. He pounded his fist down again and again, thinking of the finches and the one-handed nurse and all the aching holes this war was leaving in a billion lives around the world. These others had given their all, and he had been given a new life. He must make something of it, for his sake and theirs.

He rose, staggering, and wandered through stranded kelp until he came to the rubber dinghy. It looked inflated, but flattened when he crawled on his hands and knees into its shelter. No shelter there. He found the laces holding shut the emergency kit, and fumbled with the hard, dry strings until slowly they pried loose. He used his teeth to try and bite through them. Finally, he braced his feet against the inside of the raft and pulled with all his might, until the cabinet spilled its contents into the boat. There was a first aid kit, a flare gun, a bottle of water—he fumbled with the water, uncorking the tin lid and tilting it back to drink and spat—it was contaminated with seawater and oil. A hideous taste filled his mouth, making his thirst worse. The sea biscuits were stale, moldy, wet, ruined. The medical kit, same. Iodine and mercury and other chemicals all run together, soaking the bandages, and the small bottles of salve broken, shattered. He groaned with frustration, pawing through the wreckage. Nothing at all useful there.

Wait, one thing. A web holster, an old Webley Mark IV .38 revolver, rust on the handle, six rounds. He took off the life jacket, laid it aside. He put on the web gear, first one arm then the other, so that the gun dangled loosely under his left shoulder. The straps crossed over his back and met in a clasp on his belly. At least he had that, unless it blew up in his face if he ever needed to fire it.

He rose and looked about. Where am I?

Africa.

That was all he knew.

He was someplace on the western coast of Africa. He tried to remember his geography—anything. Africa was shaped kind of like a prehistoric skull, facing east. The back of the brain case was Western Africa, and on it was what? Inland would be Mali. He was 1,000 miles of desert away from Timbuktu. The Atlas Mountain range stretched north into Morocco, amid endless desert. Hitler’s adventures on the Dark Continent were almost finished. Montgomery and Eisenhower were just mopping up the last German and Italian legions in Africa, driving Rommel back to Europe. Now my adventures are just beginning, Tim thought as he slogged along. He must find shelter for the night, water, food. Next, he needed to find a U.S. consul somewhere to repatriate him.

A golden evening set in. Haze blew in off the sea, and the wet sand shone like gold. About two miles down the coast, Tim saw a building of some kind. It looked like a ruined tower. Naked except for shreds of his shirt, remnants of his pants, and the web belt with the old gun, he walked on bare feet in the sand the way he’d done in Milford or West Haven as a boy. In those days you’d get hot dogs and root beer at a stand, and the merry-go-round at Savin Rock blared with music and laughter. Here, all was silent, like the time before time when the world still stood empty, or like an empty time after the end of the world.