The storm gathered strength as Sam lost his. The rain pelted him, and he drank from it, knowing it could stop at any moment.
Each time he rolled off of his back to resume swimming, it was a little harder. He was a little weaker, his limbs heavier.
Somewhere in the night, the rain stopped, and the storm clouds rolled away. Their departure calmed the sea. The silence that followed was serene. The rocking of the waves and sheer exhaustion conspired to lull Sam to sleep, but he fought to stay awake. He had to swim while he could. His belly was full of water now, and tomorrow the sun would sap his strength and burn his skin even more, until the blisters popped and blood flowed, and the predators came and ripped him to pieces, the sea swallowing him forever.
He refused to let that be his fate. He had to swim.
He had to reach the shore.
There would be a high tide tonight. Sam sensed that it was his best chance of making landfall. He was about to turn over when he heard a splash. He stopped, lay still, and watched a giant beast punch through the surface of the sea. It was bony and textured, with large plates that were almost like metal scales. Its head never cleared the water line to breathe, and there was no blowhole.
It wasn’t a mammal. It hadn’t surfaced to breathe. Had it come for him?
Another scaly spine broke through the water. It was smaller. A child, perhaps.
Sam swallowed and watched, not daring to move his arms or legs. He floated, watching the creatures, wondering if they could smell him or sense him. The sea was their arena. He was virtually powerless here.
To his relief, the dark creatures sank back into the water. Sam waited for his heart to stop hammering, and when it did, he began to swim again, with even more urgency now. He rode the waves and raced the sun and hoped the blisters on his hands and face wouldn’t pop before his fingers dug into the sand. With every last bit of strength he had, Sam swam for the shore.
But as the night wore on and his body slowly gave out, it became clear that his last bit of strength wasn’t enough to carry him to land.
His limbs went slack and he floated on the water, on his back, staring at the judgmental moon that he could almost feel laughing at him. In his mind, he cursed it. He was so angry he would have pulled it down from the sky and crashed it into the Earth as it once had billions of years ago, just to see it all burn. He was that mad at the world.
Not just this one, but the one he had left. And at whoever had framed him and that his wife had died and fate and everything else that had wrecked his life. It wasn’t fair. He was a good man doing the best he could.
He realized another truth then: one of the things extreme exhaustion took from you was emotional control. His mind was like the evening storm: raging and unpredictable.
Anger wasn’t the only thing he felt.
Helpless. That was the other feeling.
Between the two, Sam preferred rage. That was something he could use.
Mentally, he wanted to roll over and swim. But his body wouldn’t respond. His mind was telling his arms and legs to work—to fight, to swim—but they refused to comply. His body had quit. His brain still worked, leaving him feeling locked in, as if he was silently shouting orders that his limbs wouldn’t obey.
He refused to feel sorry for himself. Refused to close his eyes. If this was his fate—to die stranded in time and lost at sea—he would do it with his eyes open, teeth clenched.
But sleep tugged at him, a force as strong as the long waves of the tide moving across the ocean, propelled by gravity, directed by the pull of the moon and the sun.
Sam tried to fight the darkness and sleep, but soon, it came for him, and it was complete.
*
Light woke him. A hot, burning light on his face.
Sound washed over him next. Crash after crash.
A soothing, cool hand rubbing his legs. Reaching up and drawing away.
Sam cracked his eyelids and slammed them shut when the bright sun lanced through his eyes, bringing pain with it.
The gentle, cool hand came again, but it wasn’t a hand. It was a wave. Washing over him.
Sam’s fingers ached, but he forced them to move, to curl and dig—into the sand.
The beach.
He was lying on the beach.
His head rolled to the side, and he saw the sand. Tears flowed down his face.
He hadn’t swum to shore. He had gone as far as he could and given every last bit he had. The tide had carried him in. That was the way of the world, he thought: you give it your all; sometimes it’s enough, sometimes it’s not, and sometimes, the tide carries you in.
But the tide can’t help you if you don’t get close enough.
A strong wave washed over him, across his sunburned face, the saltwater stinging the blisters. The pain shocked his body into movement. He pushed up and scampered up the beach, getting his first clear look at Pangea.
A thick forest lay beyond the beach. At the edge were rows of broad-leaved shrubs. Behind them, trees reached to the sky. The forest looked so dense he wondered if he could even pass it, as if it was a wall of green, blue, and purple plants preventing anything from the beach from getting inside.
But what stopped Sam cold wasn’t the trees or the shrubs. It was the thing hanging from the lowest limb on the closest tree. Blowing in the sea breeze was a thick white sweater. There were no words on it. But even in his exhausted, nearly delirious state, Sam recognized the garment. It was the same type of sweater he was wearing. The type worn by an Absolom prisoner.
He knew instantly what it meant. And that scared him more than the sea he had just escaped.