She ripped out a big chunk, coughing and wrenching. When her thumbnail tore off, she didn't notice her blood mixing with that of the shark. Kendle wrapped the meat in a towel, then began untying the carcass, not sure if she had taken it to eat or to look at and know the shark was dead. She felt the tears rise again, and didn't stop them this time.
The boat and the sisters had barely survived the rollover - being right by the stairs had saved them - but after three days of looters, fights, illnesses spreading, and drunken pounding on the door, Kendle had chosen to get off the crippled ship before they were dragged from their staterooms. Others had been - they'd listened in horror - and on the fourth morning after the tidal wave, she and Dawn had crept out to one of the three remaining lifeboats.
There had been five men there already and the girls had gone with them willingly. It had to be better than the rapes and murders on the boat that had started when the Captain admitted he had no idea how to fix the ship and get them home, didn't even know for sure where they were, then barricaded himself in the wheelhouse.
One day after the seven of them jumped ship, they found the speedboat, its owner looking much like the bodies they'd left on the doomed cruise liner. When its engine started, they'd all been crying, hugging. It hadn't lasted long. The boat's radio, compasses, and lights were out, the fuel gone before daylight, and the speed runner had come to a heartbreakingly slow stop with no land in sight.
"Lost two in the first week," she croaked, hating the sound of her rough voice, but needing to hear it just the same. "Didn't even know their names."
The third to go had either fallen in or jumped, and was hit by something Dawn had sworn was the roof of a house. He hadn't come back up, and the loss hadn't registered.
There had been little movement or conversation after that. Talking or moving required awareness, and no one wanted that until there was hope to go with it. They had survived by fishing garbage out of the ocean, slowly adjusting to life on a world that was never still.
Kendle had been alone now for 45 days, marking the boat each morning since the storm that had taken her companions. It wasn't the longest stretch she'd done - that would be her 88 days spent hiking from one end of the Colorado to the other - but it was the first time she was totally without backup. She had no phone, no camera crew with access to the outside world. "On my own for real this time."