Fractured Tide by Leslie Lutz

Author:Leslie Lutz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blink
Published: 2020-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

I staggered back to camp, the crab clenched in my fist, my legs shaking and my stomach queasy. Steph had put aside her homemade net and dragged the canopy from the Last Chance farther up onto the beach. She kneeled next to a pile of metal odds and ends, lashing together rods, making her sun shelter. It seemed such an odd thing to do—making us a shelter—when the world was splitting in half.

Ben sat against the boulder, the notebook in his lap, a couple of crude sketches crossed out. Felix was dragging a piece of driftwood, heading to a spot down the beach where he’d laid out several others in a row. It looked like the beginnings of a giant S.

His face broke into a smile as I approached, although when he got a good look at my expression, it faded.

I dropped the crab next to the fire.

“Hey, you got a big one!” Felix said, leaning over the crab and poking it with a stick. It snapped at him.

I pulled him back and showed him my hand. “You wanna lose a finger?”

A few feet away, Steph put down her screwdriver, her expression unreadable. “Yeah, so if you get a cut like that, Felix, just keep it clean with seawater, okay? And we’ve got a tube of Neosporin in the charter.” She glanced at my hand and went back to her work. “Don’t use it all, Sia.”

Ben limped over and picked up the crab. “Sorry, Felix, but this one’s dinner.”

His face fell and he turned away to the ocean, wincing. “Bye, Frankie.”

Ben threw the crab on the coals. It struggled, its powerful claws fighting across the sizzling glow.

“You have to give some of Frankie to the guy,” Felix said.

I followed Felix’s gaze and my breath stuttered.

Our prisoner was awake. Blood from the wound Ben had given him stained the collar of his dingy white shirt. And his hands and feet were turning an unnatural blue. I’d tied the rope too tight.

I grabbed another line from the Last Chance and kneeled in front of him to tie a better version of your handcuff knot before taking off the old one. When I finished and stood, he looked up me at curiously and flexed his fingers.

“Better?” I asked.

He didn’t respond, his gaze returning to the crab that smoked and turned brilliant on the coals.

“Did he say anything while I was gone?” I asked Ben.

Ben shook his head. “Nothing that makes sense. He keeps giving us his rank and serial number. He thinks he’s a soldier or something.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Ben squinted at me. “What is what?”

“His rank and serial number.”

“Why? He made it up.”

I didn’t tell them what I’d seen, what I thought. I still had something to figure out. Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor told Ben the guy was from the science trip, wrecked here when we were, just getting out of the ocean on a different shore, and out of his mind with grief after watching all his friends die. That explanation had the fewest assumptions.

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