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Thunder ripped so loud it hurt my ears, and lightning struck about a hundred metres away. I must have jumped a metre in the air, my heart was hammerin’ to the point of pain. That was far, far too close.
“Jeremiah!”
He held up two fingers. “Two more minutes!”
“Now!”
He shook his head.
I unzipped my bag and shoved the screen in it, then began pulling pieces off the station. We were done here. This was stupid and crazy, and he was in-fucking-sane if he thought we were staying in this. The anemometer was spinning so fast—the wind was in a frenzy, blowin’ the rain in all directions, but I unhooked it anyway. We were leaving, whether he liked it or not.
The thunder was constant and the lightning all too frequent, and far too fuckin’ close.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was then I noticed his shoes. They were completely underwater. I looked at mine. The water was up to my ankles.
“Jeremiah, now!”
He turned then, his hair stuck to his forehead, water pouring from his chin, and I don’t know what he saw on my face but it made him pause. I pointed to his feet. “We have to go!”
He was clearly surprised to see his feet underwater. He nodded quickly, and we packed up, shoving everything into any bag. It didn’t matter. He folded up the tripod and began for the return trip and stopped. “Which way?”
It was hard to tell now that everything looked different. Our footprints were all underwater and washed away, but there was a pink stripe on a tree to our left. “This way.”
Going back was harder and slower. The rain was whipping us, and we were trudging through almost shin-deep water and waterlogged sand. We had to climb and hurdle branches, and I held my hand out for Jeremiah to hold as he swung his legs over one in particular.
Then something splashed in the water behind us.
I pulled Jeremiah in front of me. “Move,” I yelled. “Go, go!”
Like the storm was keeping tempo with us, thunder rumbled and roared and lightning put on a light show around us. And we hightailed it as fast as we could. My heart was in my throat the whole freaking way. I had scratches up my legs and hands, but I didn’t care.
High tide was comin’ in way too fast with the storm.
We passed more trees with the paint spray, and the further we went, the more the water level dropped and the sand was firmer underfoot until Jeremiah stopped. He put his hand on a tree root, bent over, trying to catch his breath.
“What did you stop for? Keep going.”
He pointed his chin further along where, through the mangroves, I could see the Jeep.
Oh, thank god.
I sighed, taking in gulping breaths of air.
The rain had eased up a bit, the storm clouds had mostly passed over us, leaving behind the setting sun, humidity, and the sounds of birds and cicadas.
“We can stop when we’re in the Jeep,” I said, urging him to push on. “High tide’s coming in faster than us.”
With a nod, he collected himself, scaled the tree root, and walked the final distance to the embankment and up to the Jeep. He dumped his backpack, his hands on his hips, panting. “That was fun.”
Fun. Did he just say...
“Fun?” I pointed to the way we’d come. “We almost died. Several times.”
He smirked. “I got some good readings.”
I threw my hands up. “Well, that makes dying all worth it then, doesn’t it?”
He laughed, walked over to me, took hold of my face in his dirty hands, and kissed me. A big wet smacker on the lips. “Thank you.”
