Dauntless by Shannon Mayer Page A

boat and the bodies were never found. And here we were, in a sinking boat. I couldn’t count on him right now to help me; for now I would have to make do with Dan.
    Of the group, I knew that Dan and I might be able to swim the distance to shore. Annie probably could too and maybe, between the three of us, we could drag Dustin. But Jessica would sink for sure and Sebastian . . .
    “This ain’t going to turn out well,” Dan muttered. “I only got one life jacket.” He held up an ancient looking orange rag, mold growing down one side of it, which appeared to be one of the forerunners to the modern life jacket. He handed it to me and I stared at the limp hunk of material.
    “You’re kidding me, right?” I asked, my eyebrows climbing into my hairline. He snatched it back and tied it on to Dustin himself. The boat had a foot of water in it now and Jessica was crying as she clung to me.
    Sebastian continued to stare out at the distant sky and ocean. “You got a flare gun, Dan?” he asked. We all went silent and looked out in the same direction he was. In the distance was tiny black speck in the sky. A helicopter.
    Scrambling, Dan had to duck his head under water to get to the flare gun buried in a pile of his junk. The water had risen another foot and was almost to my knees now. Dustin was whimpering and Annie was attempting to soothe him. I couldn’t blame him for panicking when he saw Jessica. No doubt what the two kids had to survive to get to this point would have been horrendous.
    Sputtering up to the surface, Dan stood. He set the flare gun and pulled the trigger. For a brief second I thought it was a dud and then a brilliant red streak of light leaped out of the barrel and into the sky.
    The boat lurched; Annie and Dustin screamed and clung to one another. I held Jessica on her feet and Sebastian continued to stare out at the helicopter. They had to have seen that flare, there was no way they could’ve missed it. Even as the thought crossed my mind, the helicopter turned and flew down the coastline away from us.
    Our mismatched group let out a collective groan. There was no one coming to save us.

 
    17
     
    “What are we going to do?” Annie whispered, her voice easily carrying over the water.
    “We’re going to get to shore and set up camp,” I said, prying Jessica’s fingers off of me. Dan’s eyebrows lifted and he spit out his soggy stump of a cigar.
    “Just how do you plan to do that? One can’t swim, one’ll sink like a rock, I got a broken arm and . . .” He trailed off and looked over to Sebastian’s broad back.
    Sebastian turned his head towards us. “. . . And you don’t know yet whether I will be able to keep my head above water.”
    I slogged through the knee deep water and looked over the side of the boat. The fishing buoys were still hanging off the edge. There were four of them. “We’ll use those. Annie and Dustin can use one, Dan and Sebastian can each have one, and I’ll help Jessica.”
    In under a minute, we had the floaters cut free. They wouldn’t be perfect, but they would do the job.
    “I don’t want to do this,” Dustin whimpered.
    Before I could say anything, Annie grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. “Hey, you’ve faced down scarier things than this. So grab the floater and let’s go.” She turned him, her face drawn and looking far older than her years. But, she got Dustin in the water and they started towards the shore.
    Dan went in next, his gun slung across his chest, taking Nero with him too. We tied the puppy to the buoy so once he tired he wouldn’t drown or get swept away.
    The water was up to my waist now and Sebastian and I watched the two groups swim out into the ocean with no difficulty, other than Nero making an attempt to catch the seaweed as it floated by him.
    “What if we tied the last two buoys together? Would that make it easier?” I asked.
    Sebastian shook his head. “Yes, then if I sink, you can easily get to shore with two