The water, refreshing as it had been, had done little to revive him or Becky. He hadn't even urinated yet. Any precious fluids were sweating out from his scalp. He wore only his boxers and T-shirt, the rest of his body exposed to the sun like a fast food burger under a heat lamp.
Words kept rolling around inside his mind-Scott's words: the water has to go somewhere. But it hadn't. It hadn't gone anywhere except away. Drawn from everything on the planet as far as he could tell. Taking life away with it. Some lives faster than others, but all life in the end.
Where had the water gone?
Beside him, Becky groaned. She had stretched out first about an hour ago, sick to her stomach, aching and dizzy, talking to Cobe like it was just any other normal day.
He'd tried to get her up, but soon realized the futility of it. She wasn't going to move. She probably couldn't move.
He saw the futility of everything else as well-trying to find more water, walking across the dry sea floor, pushing himself harder than his body could take. They'd bought a tiny bit of time with what they'd drunk, but not much.
Enough, perhaps, to finally rest and be together.
"Becky," he whispered. She grunted and lolled her head sideways to look at him. Her tongue was swollen, her jaw bone thin, the gums receding around her teeth. "I'd have changed. I swear it. I know I hurt you, real bad, and I'm sorry."
She blinked, said nothing.
"I love you," he said, knowing for once what the weight of those words really meant. "Oh God, I love you."
It was a slow movement on her part, but she laid her hand out for him, and he took it. They held hands as the sun climbed higher in the sky.
CHAPTER 25.
There was an Eighth Day, which passed without movement or sound, and eventually fell into darkness.
CHAPTER 26.
On the Ninth Day, the sky turned gray, then green, then black, and with a low rumble that sounded like an old man waking up, a single raindrop fell onto the three lifeless bodies that lay in an eternal embrace in the trench cutting across the ocean floor.
Another drop followed.
And another.
And another.
end.