Poison Paradise - Damned of the 2/19th

Skirting the Beach

"Hello!" The shout, a man's voice, made Sarah look up from the baby. "Is anyone else alive?"

Sarah stood up from next to the pile of debris she had gathered up, waving her hand over her head. The baby was older than Sarah had first thought, able to walk on its own, and was sitting in the sand playing with a chunk of seat stuffing.  The baby looked up at Sarah and started chewing on the stuffing.

"Here! I'm over here!" Sarah cried out.

The man was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. He stumbled toward her, breaking into a run. He came running up, gasping.

"Thank God, I thought I was the only one," The man gasped. He pointed at the dock. "Tell me there's a radio or a someone there."

Sarah shook her head. "No. The island's property of the Navy. Nobody's here," she blinked back tears, holding in the sobs.

"Have you seen anyone else?" The man asked.

The man shook his head. "What about you?"

"Just her," Sarah pointed at the baby.

The man came around the small pile of debris and looked down. He covered his look of shock with a big smile. "Well, hello, little one."

"Blah," the baby said, and went back to chewing on the rubbery stuffing.

"She's got teeth, so she'll eat solid food," The man sighed. "Can she walk?"

Sarah nodded. "Yeah. She says like 'mama' and 'no' really well."

"She's about two then," the man said. He held out his hand. "Don, Don Markam," he said.

"Sarah Hollings," the young woman said, shaking the man's hand. After the handshake ended she looked around. "I don't know what to do."

The man looked down at the pile of debris. "What's all this?"

"There's nobody here. I was hoping to find useful stuff, I guess," Sarah admitted. "She keeps following me into the water and I'm afraid she'll get swept out to sea."

The man nodded.

"Hey, hey!" This time it was a woman's voice. A man's voice joined them, and Sarah saw four people running toward her and Don. The four ran up, panting, and stopped next to the pile of debris.

"What are you doing?" One of the men asked.

"Gathering the debris. We might be able to find useful stuff," Don said. He pointed at Sarah. "It was her idea."

One of the women nodded, looking at where a couple of suitcases were floating in the water. "Makes sense," she said. She turned to the two men. "Come on, help me."

"Is that a dock?" One of the men asked.

"There's no-one there," Sarah said, shaking her head. The baby threw the stuffing and reached out, grabbing a shoe, and started smacking it against the seat cushion, making happy noises.

"Well, there's a dock, someone has to come by," the guy said.

Don had joined the man and the others heading down to the surf to help pull stuff out of the water and up onto the beach.

"It's a Navy dock. It's some kind of Navy island. Nobody is supposed to be here," Sarah said.

"That's stupid," the other man said. Sarah noticed he was roughly the same age as she was, with bad acne and hair that had dried to a greasy looking disheveled mop.

"Go look," Sarah snapped, bending down and taking the shoe from where the baby was chewing on it. "Sweety, no."

"No!" The baby yelled. "No! No!" The baby began to shriek, a high pitched shriek of rage.