“In the box?”
“No, here on the beach. Look, I also lost my other flip-flop.” It took him this long to realize he was as barefoot as she was. How hard would it be to fashion some from the seaweed? Not that walking on the sand had been bad except for being hot against his skin.
“I don’t care about your shoes. Where is my bag?” She pronounced every word of the question pointedly, as if this was the best way to convey the importance of it and he was supposed to understand why. He didn’t.
All he could do was gesture helplessly toward the mass of seaweed.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in there,” he replied.
“I need you to remember where. Weneedthat bag.”
“Forget it. I’ll buy you another one.” He realized how silly this sounded as soon as it left his mouth. But after having worried that his wife was lost or dead, the location of her purse was the last thing he was concerned about.
If her face was any indication, she wasn’t about to be so forgiving. “Where? At the seaweed market? In that case, maybe you can also buy us some more water and food.”
It was then he understood the importance of the bag, why she was making such a big deal out of it.Avoiding giant wheels and spiders and Buddy was one thing, but when it came to basic survival, they didn’t have anything. They couldn’t drink the seawater. They couldn’t feast on sand. If they had any hope of making some kind of trek under the hot sun and over the dunes stretching in front of them like a vast desert, they needed supplies, no matter how limited they might be.
Think.
His gaze dropped to the ground as he thought about it. While his brain knew he was looking at sand, he couldn’t help but marvel at the ground from his new perspective. The flakes of sand were like pebbles, smoother, made up of a variety of muted colors rather than a monochrome shade of brown. These flakes and stones and small shells gave the ground texture and wonder. He’d never seen anything like it even though he’d looked at sand a hundred times before. It was almost like being on a foreign planet when they’d never left Earth at all. It was beautiful. How could he capture this as a show-and-tell for some future class of students, to let them experience the same thing?
He took out his phone. While there wasn’t any service, it wasn’t completely useless. Switching to the camera app, he took a picture of his feet on the sand. It was truly amazing.
“What the hell are you doing?” Catalina asked him.
In his viewfinder, the answer suddenly came to him. “My footsteps. We can follow them.” While the sand was different at this scale, his feet continuedleaving impressions, marking his earlier race to get to Catalina.
Her eyes lit with understanding, and he grabbed her hand as they ran along the seaweed bar, searching for his earlier footsteps. “Here!” They stopped at the point where he had earlier emerged from the seaweed jungle.
Before he was able to celebrate this lucky break, a shadow fell over them. Straining his vision upward, it was hard to see much of the giant man’s facial features. He was backlit by the bright sun, but was wearing work boots, and he held an item that looked suspiciously like a rake. It dropped prong first into the sand, sending a spray of sand flakes over the couple.
“Ah, shit,” was all Trey could say because it was one more situation requiring quick action.
Chapter 11
Catalina
On instinct, Catalina turned away, covering her face protectively from the sudden rain of sand, small rocks, and shells spraying them. All thoughts about her bag were forgotten as she blindly reached for Trey, grasping onto his arm and wanting to escape to someplace safe.
“What is happening?” she shouted into the chaos.
“It’s one of the maintenance guys. They rake up the beach.”
“What?” She couldn’t have heard that right. Why did the beach need raking?
He pulled her into the stinky mass of yellowish-brown plants where they were more protected, and it felt safe enough to open her eyes.
“My brother said Cancun was in the midst of a bad seaweed season, so they sometimes send guys out to rake up some of the sarga-whatever seaweed. To keep it under control.”
“Sargassum?”
“Yeah, that stuff.”
Catalina took stock of the area around her. Okay, so this wasn’t a weird beach jungle after all, the plant becoming more recognizable in this gargantuan form. While she was thankful for the stuff providing a soft landing earlier, it wasn’t a complete sanctuary, as the smell was closer to sea farts. “So, if he’s here to rake up the sargassum and we’re inside of the sargassum… Doesn’t that mean he might rake us up too?”
“Uh…yes?”
