“It’s so hot out here,” Nick moaned, looking longingly out at the
ocean. He would have loved to just jump
in for a swim, but he felt so weak, he could barely move, let alone try to swim
in the rolling waves.
Nick glanced over at his best friend. Brian was lying down, his head rested
against the side of the raft. His eyes
were closed, and his skin looked flushed.
His whole body was bright red with sunburn; all of their bodies
were.
The five of them had been stranded for two days now, without
water. They had only enough food left
to last them the rest of the day, and then they would be out of that too. They were all suffering from dehydration and
heat exhaustion from being out all day in the bright tropical sunlight.
And with the sun shining down on them from the sky and reflecting
up on them from the water, they were more sunburned then they had ever been in
their lives. Every inch of their skin
that was not covered by their swim trunks peeled off in large patches, leaving
raw skin beneath that would then become sunburned and peel off as well.
“How’s Kev doing Howie?” AJ spoke up, glancing at Howie, who was
sitting beside Kevin, who had been drifting in and out of sleep ever since his
brush with death.
“Not too good,” Howie said sadly.
“I think he’s in pretty bad shape.
If we don’t get rescued within the next day or so, we’re screwed.”
Nick ran both of his hands through his greasy blonde hair in
desperation. He glanced all around him,
squinting his eyes in the sunlight, praying he would see land. But he saw nothing, nothing but ocean.
***
Hours later, dusk finally arrived, offering the five men relief
from the burning sun. The temperature
fell, as the sun lowered in the sky, scattering a beautiful array of colors
across the sky and sparkling water.
It was a beautiful night, but for the Backstreet Boys, nothing
seemed beautiful. The food was gone,
fresh water was non-existent, and no land had been spotted. Both Kevin and Brian had been dozing for
hours, waking up delirious and disoriented for a few minutes every hour, before
falling back to sleep. Meanwhile,
Howie, AJ, and Nick lay back, not sleeping, but staring up at the sky, and out
at the water, with nothing but their thoughts.
Their hope was slowly fading, just as the light of the day
was. Thoughts of death were becoming
more and more common in their minds, as that fate seemed most likely to them by
now.
That is, until something caught Howie’s eye, something far off on
the horizon. He jerked upright,
squinting out into the distance. Was
that what he thought it was? Was it
real, or was it just a mirage, a figment of his imagination?
Never taking his eyes off of it, he reached out and grabbed AJ’s
shoulder. AJ winced in pain at Howie’s
touch on his sunburned skin.
“What, D?” he asked in irritation.
“Look!” Howie whispered, pointing.
AJ squinted in the direction his friend’s finger was pointing
in. Suddenly, he gasped. “Land!” he cried, leaping up onto his knees
and leaning over the side of the raft to see.
“It’s land!!”
Nick’s head shot up, and he followed their gaze. He, too, saw the strip of land in the
horizon they were pointing at. “Oh my
God!” he cried, breaking into a mile-wide grin.
“We’re saved! We’re gonna be
okay!”
AJ started laughing giddily, bouncing around on his knees in the
raft, his energy suddenly revived.
“Settle down, Bone,” Howie laughed. “You’re gonna poke a hole in this
thing.”
AJ just grinned, but he stopped bouncing.
“Hey, Brian!” Nick cried, gently shaking his best friend, trying
not to touch his sunburned arms too hard.
“Bri, wake up!”
Brian’s eyelids fluttered open, and he looked around in
confusion. “No…” he mumbled.
“Come on, Bri, wake up,” Nick urged. “Howie saw land! It’s gonna be okay, Bri. Come on now, wake up. Soon we’ll have food and water, and
everything will be fine!”
This brought Brian somewhat out of his daze. He blinked and struggled to pull himself
into a sitting position, trying to see this land Nick had spoken of for
himself. But as soon as he was sitting,
he became very dizzy and collapsed back down again.
“It’s okay, Bri, just relax,” Nick said soothingly. “We still have a ways to go, but we should be
there by morning at least.”
Brian nodded, and soon, he had drifted off to sleep again. Nick glanced over at Kevin and figured there
was no point in even trying to wake him up.
He would be even more out of it than Brian was.
Instead, he turned back to Howie and AJ, who were talking
excitedly, the smiles never leaving their faces. He joined in on their enthusiasm, an
exhilarated shiver running down his spine as he thought about how nice it would
feel to take a cool bath and then fall to sleep in a nice, soft bed.
But what the three men did not know was that, in a short time,
their shouts of excitement would turn into screams of terror.
***