Page 21 of Uncharted

Finally, there’s a little movement. And it’s neither Calvin nor Anders but Dante the chef. I make a mental tally—Zane, Calvin, and Haley. Haley. Fuck, I want her safely back on the mainland. At least she’s not drifting in a raft.

Dante flashes a flashlight that’s on its last bit of power. At first, I assume he’s just randomly flipping it on and off. But no. He’s using code.

dit dah dit dit / dit dit / dit dit dit dah /dit / dah dit dah dit / dit dah / dah dah / dit dah dah dit / dah / dah dah dah / dit dah dah / dit / dit dit dit / dah

Okay, okay. I look down at the beach. Five camps to the west. Five. Easton, Dante, Calvin, Zane, and Haley. Five.

I glare at the wall.

I send back: O-K. Then I pause. I haven’t gotten the inflatable together yet. There had been no reason to.

I hold the binoculars up, and Dante gives me a big thumbs up. And starts signaling again.

Bring... then his head disappears. I can just hear the chef murmuring. He’s yelling at Easton and whomever is with him.

He’s back. “S-P-I-C-E-S, B-L-A-N-K-E-T-S, S-O-A-P, L-U—” He’s gone again.

But then he’s back. And fuck, I should be writing this down. C-L-O-T-H-E-S, C-H-E-F K-N-I-V-E-S, R-A-Z-O-R-S, S-H-A-M-P-O-O, T-O-I-L-E-T-R-I-E-S, T-O-O-L-K-I-T, T-H-E W-H-O-L-E D-A-M-N B-O-A-T.

I signal back. “Will try.” He gives me a big thumbs up.

I’ve thought about inflating the spare inflatable for a while. But I haven’t had the need to. I lost one of the inflatable docks to the sharp rocks on the reef. I figured if there was anyone on this island, I would have seen them by now. The only reason to leave the ship would be if I needed something, which I haven’t. I debate if I should gather all the things on Easton’s shopping list. Their camp might not be close by, and if it’s not, it could take a lot of trips back and forth. Plus, with six of us living on Rock Candy, we would run out of water quickly. No, if they’ve made camp, it’s better I bring supplies to them for now. Then we can figure out how to fix the Rock Candy and finally get off this hunk of rock. I look up at where Dante is, but he’s gone. Probably to the west, going back to tell the others.

Excitement bubbles inside me. It’s like the first day of charter or pulling off an amazing docking. This is going to be good. Oh, so good. We’re going to get her running and out of here.

Chapter10

Territorial Waters

Calvin

“Pass me that board, Easton.” I hold out my hand.

“Here,” He says. It’s a green-stained one. The way they are fitting together makes it look like one of those bougie designs where everything doesn’t match, so it looks good. Then again, Zane spent the last hour laying the boards out where he wanted them. For a guy who’s never done this before, he’s good at it.

“Glad you could do that without shooting off by mistake,” I say taking the board.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to fire the flare gun. I was trying to get the flashlight to turn off.” Easton glares at me.

Right, he’s told us twice. Whatever. It happened. At least he didn’t set the Rock Candy on fire.

“Remind me why we’re doing this again? Captain’s coming, and we can head back to the ship.” Easton crawls to the next position.

I stop and focus on Zane. He’s marking and measuring another board. We’re almost done. Though if the captain brings the toolkit, we’ll have a saw. A real one. Or at least a sharper one. The one we have from the derelict trunk is good, but dull.

And suddenly I can’t remember if we’ve told him what a piece of shit the Rock Candy was before we left port. Anders spent most of the repositioning cruise trying to fix the problem with the electrical, and that was before the issue with the stabilizers hit. I can’t even begin to understand why we had a complete system failure. Why did the power stop working and the engines shut down? It’s kept me awake at night, as I comb through everything I remember. And because I don’t forget much, it’s haunting me. Day and night, when I’m not moving. Before the Rock Candy showed up on our island, I was getting close to pushing it out. But not now. Now, it’s at the forefront, which is why I’m not with Haley and Dante. They’re sitting on the beach waiting for the captain whenever he shows up.

“Fixing the ship isn’t going to be easy. There’s no unplugging it and plugging it back in. It’s going to need an overhaul. We can’t take it back out in the open seas, not with the issues we were having. Not to mention it sat for a long time with systems off. Things that worked when the engines shut down aren’t going to work now. That’s fucking nuts. The captain has been on board now for a long time. With us all on board, we’d run out of water in a week. What’s troubling is that repairs aren’t going to take a week. More like months, if we’re lucky. If we have the parts. If I can figure out how to do it. So we need a place to sleep. That hasn’t changed.” I grit my teeth, because the need for sleep hasn’t changed, but with the captain showing up, we haven’t talked about how things are going to go. It’s like we’re all super excited to see him, but we also want him to go away. Which is fucking twisted. Sam is my friend. And I’m sure as fuck glad he’s alive. But yeah, I saw the way he used to look at Haley when he thought no one was looking. The same way I did. We’re all assholes.

“Okay, okay, that’s logical. Why?” Easton’s eyebrow cocks up.

“Excuse me?” I push the next board in and glare at Easton. I take a straightened nail out of the tin can from the wreck. Two swings of the hammer and the board is in place.

“I mean, why was the Rock Candy so broken?” He takes the hammer and straightens a nail out, then hands the hammer and nail to me.

Right.

Zane cuts me off. “Your dad pushed Sam to leave before we were ready to go. He paid the factory off to rush the finish-work. And by finish-work I’m not talking about installing the damn horse statues. We were unboxing the interior as you came on board. Checking systems too. That’s not fucking normal.”

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