Tropic of Capricorn: Lost

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Garrison and Adrienne take stock of their situation after the storm and realize their predicament is dire, so they decide to build a raft and try their luck at reaching a larger landform.


It was still early in the daylight, but the sun had already blazed through the clouds, dispelling the fierce thunderheads that had stormed violently for hours through the night. Cold and exhaustion had given way to fitful sleep, and by the time they had come to, the rain had stopped, and already the fierce tropical sun was drying out the remains of the deluge.

Kane struggled up from the impromptu nest, feeling damp and dank, allowing the sun to reach him. He shielded his eyes from the glare off the white sand beach, noticing that the atoll looked to have lost some land mass in the night. The storm had surged with enough force to bury the long spur that had gone out from the west under a shallow breakwater which lapped over top.

"Some night." He muttered to himself.

"Hey, you're awake!" Adrienne called out from high up in a tree a short distance away, and lobbed a coconut towards him, grinning. There was a small pile of them at the base of the tree where she'd been dropping them. Her first thought when she'd realized she couldn't sleep anymore was to go lie out on the beach and suntan, but with Garrison not needing a lot of sleep it was so rare that she actually wake up before him, so she wanted to make the most of the occasion. Which in her case meant doing something useful rather than being lazy and leaving him to carry the weight of looking after her in the wake of what had happened. "Can you crack these things open?" she inquired, still up in the tree.

He took the coconut and dug his fingers into the heavy husk, pulling it aside in three sections. With the hard shell revealed, he carefully held it in one hand, and struck it sharply with the knuckles of his other, breaking open the top without shattering the whole thing. "Here. But five coconuts aren't going to last us long." Kane held out the fruit and peered out over the ocean. He could just see their wrecked boat bobbing lightly with the surf, still tangled on the reef.

"This is just breakfast," Adrienne replied, shimmying down the tree. "Fortify us for, y'know... whatever we need to do next. I imagine there'll be walking and physical labour involved." She picked up the other coconuts she'd dropped and headed over to him, taking the one he'd opened back from him. "Is there a plan about what we're doing next?"

"I'm behind on my shipwreck training." He looked around. "This is a small atoll. I don't see any sources of fresh water. That is not good for us."

Adrienne bit her lip nervously. "Awesome," she muttered. "Do your younger eyes spot anything we can use from the wreckage?" she suggested, gesturing to the debris scattered along the shore. "Water containers and purifiers, that sort of thing?"

"Can't tell from here." Kane pulled off his shirt. "I'm going to swim out and poke around. The surf isn't too bad, so as long as I'm careful, the reef should be safe enough."

"I'd come with you, but I think while you're doing that I'll poke around inland just to confirm the water thing, and collect what I can from the debris along the shore," Adrienne suggested. "Meet back here? Twenty minutes or something?" She dug into the coconut he'd opened for her.

"Might take more time than that, but I'll get back as soon as I can." He said. Adrienne would be able to see him in the water easily enough. Stepping into the surf, Kane launched himself towards the wreck, moving quickly with strong strokes straight out of a lifeguard's handbook. He disappeared under a swell a few times, but once clear of the shallower water, was able to ride more on the surface, eating up the distance to the reef.

Adrienne watched him for a few minutes, while she finished with the coconut. She tried to approach everything that was going on from a business perspective; making mental lists of things to do, prioritizing them, and forcing emotion or personal feelings out of her head. It kept her from panicking.

She walked the shore first, heading towards the wreckage that had washed up from their ship, and poked around in it. When she finished her search for water, she would come back and organize the debris into possibly usable pieces, if their situation warranted them needing to construct a more permanent shelter or some such, and complete garbage. Her preliminary observations about the scene, however, yielded a brightly coloured case which had her whooping happily. An emergency kit! However, Adrienne didn't want to open it without Garrison, worried that her need for self-preservation would lead to her squirreling something away, withholding something from him. And she didn't want to do that. So she picked it up and continued along the shoreline.

It didn't take long to circle the atoll, and when she'd done that she headed inland, walking in a grid pattern through the trees, stepping carefully and taking in everything she was seeing. Of course, she had no idea what most of her surroundings were- despite her love of gardening she was unfamiliar with the plant life on this side of the world- and once when she thought she saw a snake she screamed, then felt stupid when it was just a tree branch. She used a large branch to poke at the underbrush and at rocks and logs. Garrison seemed to be right, though. There didn't seem to be any sources of fresh water here.

Disappointed, she returned to their nest, still clutching the kit she'd found.

Meanwhile, Kane had reached the wreck, and with a minimum of scrapes from the reef, pulled himself on to it. Fortunately, his omni-skin was already thickened to accommodate for the rough pumice like stone and ridges. Half of the boat was simply gone, either shattered to pieces or washed back out to sea. The stern of the ship was partially trapped, crushed against the heavy reef, and one look at the damage left him wondering how they'd survived it at all.

He worked his way down in the water to the rear keel, where the emergency beacon should have deployed from. Like most boats, the sailboat had been equipped with a beacon, designed to be blasted out as soon as the boat had sunk a certain distance underwater, sending out a steady transmission that someone had sunk in the area. But his hopes disappeared once he was able to see around the crushed hull. They had hit the reef near the point of egress for the beacon, and instead of deploying, it had been trapped by the mangled hull and the reef, and pulverized by the heavy blows of the surf.

The rest of the ship offered little else to shake the dread. Still, he diligently searched, scooping up items that might have use from the water and out of partially destroyed cabinets. The pad which Adrienne had used for sunbathing was surprisingly still lashed to the ruined deck. Stuffed with kapok, the expensive 'all organic' mat was extremely buoyant, and he carefully stacked the few items of use he'd found on it, before paddling back, pushing it in front of him into the lagoon and back up on the beach.

"Lookit what I found," Adrienne called out as Garrison approached, holding out the emergency kit. She was still determined to sound cheerful, trying to badger her brain into believing that this was all a Danger Room session or something. "I haven't opened it yet." She wanted him to know that. "I feel like a pirate with treasure. Arr, matey. What sort of booty did you plunder from the ship?" she inquired, though she couldn't quite smirk properly.

"Nothing close to an emergency kit. Some spare rope from the rigging, a couple of empty water jugs, a fileting knife, some spare towels and oddly enough, your purse. Oh, and this mat." He nudged it with his foot. They traded the emergency kit for the purse, and Kane opened it up. There was a first aid kit, a pack of water purification tablets, some power bars and a small pack of hand flares. It also had an item that Kane was surprisingly grateful to find; heavy duty sunblock. His omni-skin would protect him from the tropical sun, but regardless of the tanning Adrienne did, she was still a pale New Englander by nature, and a couple full days without proper shelter could hurt her badly.

Adrienne was excited about her purse not because it held her wallet or gum or anything like that, but because it contained her hand-coating solution. "Thank Christ it still works," she muttered when she pulled it out and sprayed it onto her hands. "I wasn't looking forward to Reading every damned tree and rock out here." She dumped out the rest of the contents of the purse onto the mat: Her Xavier's phone, gum, wallet, tampons, makeup compact, mascara, eye shadow, Mace, a bottle of Aspirin, pens and a notepad, IPod, her old Zippo lighter, empty cigarette case, and some hand lotion. The phone wasn't displaying anything due to being waterlogged, but she took the battery out of it, pulled off her blouse, put it in their nest under the lean-to, and set the phone and battery on top of it. "Hopefully they'll dry out in the warm air, although if there's any charge left in that battery by now it would be a miracle." She took the sunblock and popped the cap on it- though she had her ball cap, blouse, and shoes (along with the bermuda shorts and bikini to complete her ensemble), she was still nervous about the sun dehydrating her, particularly with their precarious water situation. "At least we shouldn't need the phone, because the emergency beacon deployed, right?" she asked him casually.

"Beacon deployed straight into the rocks. It's crushed." Kane flopped down beside the mat. His skin had already turned darker, the omni-skin creating a layer of protection against the UVs. "Normally, I wouldn't be that worried. Dad knows when we're supposed to be back, and within a day of missing it, he'll be on the phone to the Royal Navy and Xaviers. I doubt it would be more than six days before they come looking for us, which would be uncomfortable, but not life threatening."

Kane pointed to where the spire of rock had been jutting out into the sea when the storm had been raging, which was now under three feet of boiling surf. "This is an atoll, and if the storm caused a lot of damage underwater, we could end up standing around in a foot of water with the ocean coming up within a day or two."

"What's an atoll?" Adrienne asked, not liking where this was going.

"Reef island. Lots of volcanic activity in this area - you get undersea mountians and formations pushed up. Coral reefs grow up around them and get high enough to start to trap sand and debris, forming into a mini-island like this one. There's probably thousands of tiny ones in the Pacific, some lasting decades before a storm or seismic activity breaks up the support and the whole thing sinks back underwater." Kane's grandfather had served in the Pacific, and had been training American aviators on Midway for a time. Long enough to ask some questions to pass along to a suitably enthralled grandson.

"I doubt there's a football field worth of land on this atoll."

"So you're basically saying the thing we're standing on could collapse at any moment?" Adrienne clarified, but then didn't really wait for an answer before adding "I saw some other land masses on the other side of this crappy football field." She gestured through the trees towards where she'd seen what was on the other side of the atoll. "And a volcano, which I thought at the time was just a mountain. Unless it is just a mountain. Geography obviously isn't my strong suit," she muttered. "Do you think those are collapsible, too?"

"Good question." Kane got up and hiked over to the other side of the atoll, taking less than ten minutes to complete the trip. As Adrienne pointed out, there were a couple of shapes, looking like similar, if smaller, atolls close to theirs, and in the distance, the cone like protrusion of a mountain. There wasn't any haze of smoke or distortion in the air around it, suggesting if it was an active volcano, it was at least quiet for the moment. The question was how far away was it? If could be five miles, or it could be fifty, without anything to help gauge the distance. "Looks like an island at least. More stable than here."

"Can we send up a flare or something? See if someone over there sees it and comes to help us? Not that I'm opposed to the idea of hanging out with you for a few days until your father or the Blackbird comes to collect us," Adrienne shrugged, "but, y'know... being somewhere stable is nice, too."

"We've only got hand flares. Plus, I don't even know where we are. We got blown completely off course. If it was in the wrong direction, we're in a pretty remote part of the ocean. Most likely there're no one on that island either." He sat down on the beach, considering. "I think we have to try for the other island."

"Try for it?" Adrienne asked, confused. "You mean... go there? Ourselves? What, like on a raft or something? Can we make coconut radios while we're at it?" Rather than sounding critical, though, she tried her best to sound like she thought this was a super fun idea. "There are a lot of pieces of wreckage that could probably be usable," she added, just so he could be sure she wasn't opposed to the idea.

"If another storm comes, we've got no cover here. The atoll isn't stable, and if it starts to break up, we could get trapped with it. We don't really have the supplies to make a real raft, but if we can make some kind of stable float, I should be able to push it across the ocean."

Adrienne finished putting on sunscreen and grabbed the rope Garrison had salvaged. "Well, it's a good thing you're a Boy Scout," she said with a grin, "since I'm sure you're aces at making floats to get across the ocean. Let's do it," she nodded, sounding much more confident than she felt.

"Hang on, Adri. It's a risk. If we hit a storm, we could both be killed."

Frowning at him, Adrienne tugged on the brim of her Sox cap. "Well, you aren't going alone."

"Everybody dies alone. That's the point." Kane sighed. "I'll start to put the raft together. We're in a lot of danger, babe."

"I get that we're in danger, but pointing out about dying alone? Really not helping," Adrienne muttered. "I'm gonna go climb some more trees and get some more coconuts so you don't get hungry."

"I-" Kane stopped as she walked away. She had a point. He had been looking at it as a lost cause. He didn't want to tell her that being lost in the Pacific didn't have a fantasy ending in most cases. After a moment, he jogged down the beach and caught up with her, taking her by the wrist. "I'm sorry, eh?"

Adrienne bit her lip, putting the hand he wasn't holding onto his shoulder, leaning in, and giving him a quick kiss. "Apology accepted. Look... you're always Captain Cool about these things, right? I mean, you go into India, Pakistan, Genosha; you protect people, you rescue them, you get home. Every time. So if you start to freak out, I'm definitely going to freak out. So can we just... save the freaking out for another time? Like when we're back at Harry's retelling this epic high seas adventure story while people buy us beers?"

"I think so." Kane shook his head. "We have a lot of really serious and dangerous days coming up. Do you mind of I drag you into the somewhat padded crop of trees first? Because I'd like to remind myself just why it's really important to get us both out of this."

Chuckling, Adrienne kissed him again, not-so-quick this time. "I think that's a really good idea. I'm a big fan of sex as motivation. But I'm on top. I'm afraid of ants. And snakes. And leaves."

"Also, If I'm about to be eaten by a shark, I'd prefer to have sex first."

***
Constructing the raft had taken a good chunk of the day, but since Adrienne knew that the sun reflecting off the water could make sunburns more severe, she didn't mind that they weren't shoving off in the raft until the sun was descending in the sky. She was lying flat on her stomach on the raft while Garrison pushed off from the shoreline, trying to distribute her weight more evenly. Not that she didn't have faith in Garrison's engineering skills, except, well, neither of them were engineers. And as he seemed keen to remind her, they were in a lot of danger trying to take this pile of planks and rope to the bigger island. "I wish we had a champagne bottle to christen this vessel with," she joked.

They had built the raft around the kapok stuffed sunning pad. Kane had found a small strand of bamboo shelters by the few trees, and had snapped them into the lengths he needed, cleaning the ends with the knife. They'd then built it into a rough shell around the pad, unwinding the rigging into small ropes, tying off sections, and then soaking them in seawater and letting dry in the sun to tighten the knots. The storm had left plenty of driftwood on the atoll, and Kane had taken the two longest baulks he could find, setting them on either side of the pad and then lashing them to the bamboo shell. The end result wasn't pretty, but it was stable and relatively sturdy. It wouldn't survive a big storm, and a bad wave would be enough to capsize it.

The last part was to stretch the towels and ragged bits of raft latex over the mat, creating partial shade for Adrienne to lay under. If Kane was wrong and the island was more than a day or two away, she'd need it to protect herself from sunstroke. Piled around her, as carefully lashed together as they could, were the emergency case, the two jugs of rainwater filled from the ruined raft, and made safe by the water purification pills, and the rest of their few belongings in Adrienne's purse. Her phone was ruined from the salt water, which wasn't surprising at this point.

"You ready to do this?"

"Yup, I'm stoked," she nodded with completely false enthusiasm. "Let's go. Goodbye, goodbye! I'll miss you all! I'll take lots of pictures when we get to Paris!" she made a big show of waving to imaginary people on the shore, like she was taking off on a transatlantic steamship in the early twentieth century.

"I think the sun may have already gotten to you." Kane said, pushing the raft forward in the shallows as she settled herself more comfortably on the pad. The plan was simple - with Kane's mutant strength and speed, he could kick hard and long, propelling the unwieldy raft towards the island. Adrienne would help keep them on course, keep an eye out for ships or storms, and a nearby dorsal fin if it came to it. Every so often, Kane would be able to pull himself on the raft and rest a bit, maybe correcting their course with the surviving utility paddle from the ruined lifeboat. In the event Adrienne saw anything, she had the hand flares at hand. Against the blankness of the ocean, the bright red flares would lit them up and make them easily seen, even by small planes.

"This is entirely possible," Adrienne giggled. She certainly hadn't been drinking as much water as she normally might if she was hanging out in the sun, although she had been keeping her hat and her blouse on and reapplying the sunscreen to try and keep herself from baking too badly. "Remember to let me know if you get too tired, right? I'm not afraid to push for a while. I haven't been swimming fifty laps every day for years just to look pretty. Well... okay it's mostly to look pretty, but also for the cardio."

"No offense, and you know how much I love your legs-" Kane grunted and shoved off from the bottom of the shallows. He began to kick, legs moving far faster than any human swimmer, and the raft began to pick up speed. "-but this thing is designed about as seaworthy as a lawn chair. I don't know if anyone could push it without mutant physical abilities."

Adrienne blew a raspberry at the comment as she scanned for life forms or obstructions as they headed away from the shore. "Fine then, I'll just sit here looking pretty. It's gonna be soooo tough not to help," she teased, adjusting the distribution of her weight slightly in reaction to the raft shifting in response to the force of Kane's pushing and the waves.

"Yeah, yeah. Just try and spot Jaws before he takes a leg off, would you?" A steady wake was being left behind as Kane kicked furiously, and the raft picked up speed, moving quickly over the relatively calm seas. The initial plan was to do as much as they could that evening, taking advantage of the moonlight to stay on course, so they could also watch for running lights or signals from other ocean or air traffic. Even if they weren't close enough to alert them with the flares, it would at least indicate the island they were heading towards was inhabited. Kane would then be able to join her on the raft and sleep through dawn before striking off again.

"Roger that, Captain," Adrienne answered with a salute he couldn't see. Since Adrienne had slept for a fair amount of the afternoon, she would stay up watching for Jaws while Kane slept, trying to keep them on course the best she could. Then, assuming they still hadn't reached the island but hadn't been drowned or eaten, either, she would sleep in the morning when Garrison started to drive them again.