An Inch Of Infinity (Short Version)

CHAPTER 32~Crocodiles and Tears

By the time I wake up, everyone has left. They are either showing Kadek his scorched village, or are building our new civilization. I change into a frayed blue blouse and a pair of shorts. Then I brush out my long brown hair, and pull it back. I stare at a bar of soap, then think better. I had a bath last week. I should be fine, and that way we can have more freshwater. It's not an infinite supply. That's true and certain. I walk outside, close the door, and head down the hall. Then out to the deck.

I don't think I've ever looked better without taking a bath. I take a glance at my reflection in the calm water. I do look kinda pretty. I have freckles up and down my face that I could never see before. The water is so beautiful, it's hard to even think it is so dangerous.

The wind is blowing softly and I can smell fresh earth. It feels good to smell something other than salt. My face, hair, clothes, feet. Everything smells like salt. I see all kinds of crazy things as I near the end of the deck.

There is a group of children collecting stones, some as big as my head, and stacking them in one big pile. Then the teenagers mix together clay, mud, dry cement and water, to make a makeshift mortar. The adults lay the rocks in a long row, slap on morder, and add another layer of rocks. It is already about three feet tall. Only when a group of people carrying bamboo arrive do I understand what they are doing.

We are making our own community, on land! I watch to see what they are doing, and decide to help the kids pick up the heavier rocks. I drag, push, and roll a small bolder over. I step back in surprise at what happens. Emma, of all people, has a rock saw. She cuts my boulder into slabs about one inch thick. I help her pull them over to another building. A school. A real school. We all have seen schools before, but seeing the stone walls go up, I realize that we are really doing it. We are going to make it out of here, and we already escaped. We are free.

We put the slabs into dug holes in the ground. They use mortar and bamboo to hold each in place. Soon the walls are done. The door is made from a massive piece of broken away tree bark. We help build buildings for eighteen hours that day. I'm so tired that night, that I forgot about Kadek and everyone else.

I awake the next morning feeling more sore then the time I got in a fight for a fresh loaf of bread. It all seems so petty now that I think about it. I could have easily gotten the cold bread or the stale bread, but instead I attracted unwanted attention to myself by trying to get the better thing. I was such a fool, it's a miracle that I made it out of there. Period.

I was thinking to myself when I heard a noise down the hall. Crying, why was someone crying? Then it hit me like a rock.

"Kadek" I whisper. I pull on a hoodie, some shorts, I pull my hair back, and run as fast as I can down the hall. I skidded around the corner and leap into the room we assigned Kadek. He isn't there. I ran past every room, with but a glance inside. I finally find him in a conference room. I run in there, and he looks up. His eyes are red and puffy.

"My home is gone. My friends and family are gone. It's all gone." He started to wail. I feel horrible for letting him go out there. What was I thinking? He stops crying and says something I never would expect.

"A deal's a deal. The fresh water, is, on ,the other, side of , the, island." He starts sobbing, barely able to spit out words between sobs. I pull him close. I feel horrible that he had to go through that.

"Not all of your friends are gone, and while blood runs thick, friendship is as thick as blood is. I don't mean give up on them. Family is the best thing. I understand You miss them, but friends are the family we choose, family is the friends we must keep. You see? We all lost something. We just try not to show it. I never even met my family, my friend Coral? Hers left her in a box at the Keepers station. She never even had a childhood. We all have tough times, and all storms pass" I tell him, with a firm hand on his shoulder. He nods, and calms down.

"Thank you, you told me not to go, and I did, and I shouldn't have. I now understand that I can trust you. Thank you for that." He says emotionless, and nods to me.

That night I was awake with the sound of the storm. It shook the windows, and the entire boat itself. There was an occasional flash of lightning, and even more crashing thunder. Soon the raging storm died down, and the gentle waves rolled smoothly. The bed swayed gently until I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The next morning was foggy and gray, with a pinch of sprinkling showers. Some of our newly set mortar had washed away, leaving some buildings and walls in ruble. I breathed in the fresh air in slow deliberate breaths. The grass was wet with dew, and I listened to the slapping waves. After my break, I get to work.

We are already done repairing three walls when we hear yelling. We race into the woods. After a minute or so, we see a person, they are running at top speed. And they are yelling something. We run closer to hear them better. Just as we get in hearing range, the under bush starts rustling, something is coming towards us, and It's coming at us fast.

"Crocodile, there's a crocodile! RUN!"The person yells. Now I can see it is a boy with dark skin and darker hair. He has a red t-shirt on and blue Capri pants. He looks scared, who wouldn't be? We run back to camp and get on the closest boat. Whatever is coming is getting closer. I hope it's not a crocodile. We pull up the ramps when we reach the boat and watch as the saltwater crocodile runs out of the canopy of the jungle.

It is fat and ugly, with dead-gray skin. It is incredible that it's small, tiny, puny, worthless arms and legs could get it to go so fast on land, while dragging its bulging body along with it. It has a menacing glare that chills me to the bone, and it's eyes are green, and slit like the eyes of a snake.

It must know that we can't be caught, because it just plops it's fat body and opens its mouth, right there to wait for its next meal, which will be no time soon if I can say anything about it. Soon a crowd appears at all the boats railings. The cooks have been dumping the leftover meat onto the sand so that the thing will get close enough to kill, but it's either too dumb to follow food, or too smart to follow this food. Either way, it stays put.

After almost an hour of waiting we all are getting sun burns, but we can't do much until we can go on land, and the blood from fish and chicken gullets have attracted sharks. We are about to give up, when a shark pulls itself onto the beach! It's a black tip reef shark. I have read that they will sometimes chase their prey onto the beach, but this still surprised me very much. The shark soon was attacking our leftovers. The crocodile slowly crept towards it.

The shark soon started to edge back towards the water at a painstakingly slow pace. Realizing its prey couldn't move with any swiftness, the crocodile picked up speed and was upon the shark in minutes. The crocodile was upon the small reef shark, slowly pulling it back onto land. Once the shark went still the crocodile started ripping chunks off and swallowing them without chewing.

"NOW!"Yells a person and an avalanche of spears, rocks, and arrows rain down on the crocodile, just to bounce off it's hard armor.

"AIM FOR THE EYES!" someone screams, again an avalanche hits the crocodile until an arrow finds its target. I wish we did that earlier. We wait before sending one person to make sure it's dead, it wouldn't have been me for the world. It is dead. That day we finish building walls to completely surround the area we have settled on. After a hard day's work, we feast upon fresh fish, apples, pie, sushi, bread, clams, chicken, pears, and there is even some crocodile meat. We have enough to fill ourselves completely. And we go to bed full. I wonder if I'll ever be used to that feeling.