Island Adventure Chapter 3

A small tattoo on the forearm confirmed it — the same design Mark had worn for twenty years.

Claire collapsed over the body and sobbed without caring about the rot or the stench. Ethan pressed his fist to his chest and cried until his throat burned, and then Claire went limp.

Ethan caught her before she hit the sand. He pinched the point between her nose and lip — a trick she'd taught the family for emergencies. Nothing. He laid her flat, covered her mouth with his, and pumped her chest, hands pressing against her breasts through the thin fabric of his shirt.

CPR. She'd drilled them on it at the kitchen table. Neither of them had imagined she'd be the one receiving it.

After two cycles, she gasped awake.

Ethan sagged with relief. Claire looked at the body and broke again. They sat in the sand and cried for two hours without speaking.

"We need to move him," Ethan said finally, voice shredded. "To shore. Near camp."

He lifted what was left of his father — impossibly heavy, impossibly foul — and carried him step by step. Claire followed like a ghost.

"I'll bury him," Ethan said at the shelter.

"No," she said, empty and final. "Not yet."

He set the body as far from camp as he dared. Claire sat beside it and stared.

Ethan took his post at the fire. Night came. Neither ate. Claire watched the corpse while Ethan watched the flames, and when dawn arrived nothing had changed except the light — they rose with bloodshot eyes and hollow faces.

By morning Ethan found something like resolve. He couldn't look at the body — the sight was a knife — but he could look at his mother. He gathered dried fish from the reef racks, warmed them over the coals, and held one out to her.

She shook her head.

"Please eat."

Another shake. Her gaze returned to the rotting thing that had been her husband.

Ethan set the fish aside. He'd planned to leave it near her, but the body was too close — bacteria, infection, no antibiotics on an island that could kill them both over a meal left too long in the heat.

He ate a few bites himself, mechanical and joyless. Then he worked — fishing, foraging, moving until his muscles burned and his mind went quiet.

Noon came and went, then night fell, and still she wouldn't eat.

"Mom, you'll die like this." His voice cracked. "We don't have the calories to spare."

She didn't answer. He understood. He set food beside her anyway and tended the fire through the night.

Another day brought another refusal.

The body was dissolving in the tropical heat, features erased, smell unbearable.

"Mom — Dad needs to be buried." Ethan kept his voice gentle. "For both of us."

She nodded at last.

He'd spent the day building a litter from branches and salvaged metal. They dragged Mark into the tree line. Claire had barely eaten in days; every step cost her. Still she followed.

Ethan dug with stones, sticks, plane scrap — no shovel, no civilization, just two people and a hole growing slowly in the earth. When it was deep enough, he lowered his father in and began filling it while Claire wept.

"When they find us," Ethan said quietly, "we'll bring him home. He won't be alone. We'll stay close."

He wiped his eyes when she wasn't looking.

She wouldn't leave the grave. She sat the way she'd sat beside the body — hands on knees, staring at fresh soil — and Ethan stood behind her, helpless, watching the woman he had left breathe in the salt wind.