Something was wrong. Not the massive storm pummeling mercilessly over us. Not that, but something else. Had I inhaled some weird fumes? But then she would have been affected too. No, something else was going on.

Sometime just after we left the main auditorium and just before we were shunted into this storeroom, my head began to ache. I couldn’t be drunk, not from one beer, and even being the lightweight I was, I knew I couldn’t still be drunk from the night before.

So then why was I having such a hard time standing? Why did it feel like now, of all possible times, my muscles were liquefying inside me, just barely responding to anything? I tried to hide my panic from her. She was freaked out enough as it was, and I certainly didn’t need her losing her head on top of everything.

I remember standing with her in that weird storage room, the storm trying to beat its salty way inside, and her wide eyes as she looked up at me. Fuck, man, I’m not a cheater. I don’t make commitments, not because I don’t think they’re worth anything, but because I think they’re worth so much. Shit, I don’t know. Maybe we were all gonna die and getting a kiss in edgeways was just making the best of an increasingly shitty situation.

Her lips felt so cool on mine. So wet and slippery. It felt good, carving out that weird little moment between us. All the tension we had built since the day before seemed to come to one gooey point and just melt. She was a fucking amazing kisser. There was something so trusting about her, so open.

When the roof bust open and sent a metal beam smack into the back of her head, I was almost certain she was killed instantly. It sickened me to see it, the way her body went limp and just folded down with a sploosh into the water. I yanked her up again but she was a deadweight. I pressed my face to hers. Thankfully, she was still breathing. A thin black ooze appeared at the back of her head. Shit. She was hurt badly. But at least she was still alive.

The ship gave another heave and sent us both rolling and tumbling to the back of the room. We had only a few minutes in here until the water filled it entirely, and then who knows if we’d be able to get out. The water was already lapping aggressively at my waist.

I looked down.

Huh.

It was no question the most awkward boner I’d ever have in my life. I smiled wryly to myself as briefly I imagined telling this story around a beer later on. If there even was a later on.

Gravity suspended for a while as the weight of the water inside the room lifted us both off the ground. At least she was easier to hold onto and steer this way. I couldn’t tell if the water was icy cold or too warm, or if it was just my legs feeling heavy from shock. But something wasn’t right. She started to drift away from me and bang into the wall, but I clutched at her flimsy little dress and pulled her towards me, anchoring her against me and noticing in a daze that I had torn some of her dress, and now had a handful of weird lace in my hands.

Why did I feel so weird?

It took all my energy to steady us both against the brutal flood of water rushing into room, but I did it. I had been fucking trained for this. All my work had to have been for something, right? If I couldn’t put all of those hard-earned skills to work now, then I deserved to die. But I owed it to this woman, this sad-eyed, soft lipped, beautiful woman that had landed in my lap just 24 hours ago. She was still breathing, and as long as she was, I would find a way to get control of my sluggish muscles and haul us out of here before the entire ship went down. We were lucky to be on the upper decks – I had never been trained to manage this particular crisis situation, but even my foggy brain could see that the sheer suction force of a huge passenger liner like this dipping under water would be too much to escape from. Especially too much for a knocked-out woman and a guy who for some reason couldn’t get his legs to work anymore.

Through a massive deluge of water, I managed to stick out my hand and hook it against the store room door. The water immediately picked up my feet and washed me out nearly horizontal. But it lifted her, too, and with so much effort I nearly screamed out loud, I pulled up and out, both our body weights levering on my beleaguered bicep. I eventually wrenched us out and into the rushing flow outside.

The change was swift. My head ducked under and I felt bubbles clattering in my ears. I clung to her for dear life, tumbled over myself until my feet found metal and I pushed up, breaking the surface of the water to bring me a merciful gulp of air. I wanted to throw up. All around the storm was dark, chaotic, and carrying disjointed screams and the sounds of sirens on its lashing winds, whipping up water all around. It was hard to even know which way was up.

The body of a large, heavy wave came lurching over us both and lifted our bodies a good few yards up, but our life jackets kept us buoyant and floating high above the weird debris I saw floating in the dim water beneath our feet. It was bizarre. The whole world was topsy turvy. I tried to call out to a clump of people clinging to a raft to our left, but they soon bounced out of sight behind a curtain of rain, and I realized with alarm that I couldn’t work my tongue, either.

Drugged. I’ve been drugged.

I wracked my brain as the waves and water pummeled us in a swirl, Ellie’s limp body locked against mine as her head lolled scarily from side to side.

I had had only one drink.

The beer.

From Charlie.

I felt a wretching sensation in my guts, but tried desperately to stay focused. To stay awake. I couldn’t leave Ellie like this.

Another wave came roaring over us and dipped me under again. I was slowly losing sensation in my arms, now. I couldn’t feel the water against my skin. Underneath, the world went quiet and slow and green, and I saw a million swirling faces frozen in screams under the water.

Up swelled the water and I burst out again. The ship, unbelievably, was now almost out of sight. I watched in disbelief as it listed and tilted heavily to each side, thrown by the waves like it was made of paper, each dip down to the side scooping up whole decks full of water and rinsing off people, who looked like nothing more than mice from this far out.

I blinked hard to get my vision to stop blurring. Maybe I was just paranoid. Maybe I had taken something by accident. It couldn’t have been Charlie. She would never… I would think about that later. For now, I had to get us both to safety.

Like I was summoning each of them from the dead, I commanded both of my heavy legs to start kicking for all they were worth. The effort of dragging myself and Ellie through the raging tail of the storm was so extreme I felt like my heart would burst. Rain still lashed at us from above, but was starting to clear. When I turned to look behind me again, there was nothing but a giant, foamy patch on the ocean surface where the ship used to be. It swirled and rose in nauseating waves, dotted with screaming people and debris. I paddled harder, leaning back and noticing that Ellie’s wound was leaving a fine ribbon of red as we swam on.

“Todd! Todd, come here! Todd!”

I could no longer lift my head up. I felt the tension in my jaw loosen, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep my eyes open either. I vaguely felt hands on me, and could do nothing but succumb to the feeling of being hoisted up. Or maybe down, and the hands were not my rescuers but the fingers of deep water demons reaching up to claim me and pull me under forever.

“Todd, wake up! Todd, can you hear me? Todd!”

Everything disappeared except the faint ring of that voice. My body shut down, each of the sense switching off, except for my water-logged ears, which could still make out my name being yelled. I shifted my weight and felt my skin squeak. Was I on a raft? Was Ellie still attached to me?

“Todd, can you hear me? Open your eyes if you can hear me,” the voice said.

Was it Charlie? Maybe I was already in hell. In any case, I couldn’t open my eyes. The roar of the rain seemed to settle down to a regular drone. Remarkably, I was still conscious. Barely, but conscious. I felt as though all of me had died, except one small little flicker at the center that was still awake somehow. This little flicker crouched somewhere unseen, while the rest of the world tossed and raged around me. I knew that if I let go of that flicker, I might never get it back. I had the dim sense that my arms were around Ellie. I couldn’t feel them anymore, and I couldn’t open my eyes to see, so I contended myself with the idea that I just wouldn’t let go of her in thought.

When I finally woke up, it was to the sound of crying. My eyelids felt salted over but I managed to peel them open. Still dark. Slowly, like painful patches of a picture coming back together, I realized what had happened.

The storm.

The ship had gone down.

Ellie.

I tried to sit up and look around me, but a searing pain shot all the way up my spine and immobilized me again. I pushed through it, dragged myself to sitting and tried to find the source of the crying.

It stopped.

“Todd …Todd, oh my god,” the voice said.

“Charlie?”

“Todd, I’m so sorry…” she said. It was Charlie, but not like I’d ever seen her. And I barely could see her. We were in a tiny inflatable lifeboat, and I could feel the waves of seawater heaving beneath the thin tarp under me. It was dark all around. A little light from the stars and moon overhead gave a hint of an outline of a crouched woman in front of me and …Ellie! Ellie lay crumpled at the bottom of the boat. My eyes gradually started to adjust.

“Ellie, are you awake?” I said and grabbed her. I nearly flinched when I touched her cold skin. I pressed my face to hers and, like a miracle, the delicate rush of air was still entering and leaving her small body. I wanted to cry.

“Todd …Todd, I never meant to. Thank god you’re awake. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Oh thank god. I never intended for this to happen…”

Slowly my confusion was lifting. And in its place was anger. I took a few moments to find my lungs again, to breathe, to steady myself against all the many miscellaneous pains I was now aware of in every corner of my body. I was cold. And in pain.

“What are you talking about, Charlie?”

“Your beer,” she said quickly. “I put something in it.”

I groaned. It was all too much.

“Is it gonna fucking kill me?”

“Todd, I’m so sorry…”

“Well, is it?” I snapped.

“It was just a roofie, Todd. Just a stupid mistake. But I pulled you from the water. You and the girl. You had passed out…”

She was speaking so quickly I was having a hard time keeping up. My eyes still weren’t doing a good job focusing on the surrounds in such low light. It was dark, and it was wet, but beyond that I was having a hard time orienting.

“I’ve bandaged her head,” she said, now flapping the lower half of her torn jeans at me to show me. I squinted my eyes to look, then examined Ellie again. Yes, I could now make out a crude bandage over her wound, made of stretchy denim material.

“How long…?”

“We’ve been floating for a few hours. I haven’t seen anyone else, Todd. I’m so scared. The ship’s gone. It’s just …gone” she said.

“Charlie, calm down. You’re in shock.”

I was gradually finding the energy to look around the boat. It looked pretty miserable. Nothing to keep us warm. Nothing at all. Just us three, this wet rubber, and the incessant rain.

“Todd, I’m sorry.”

“Will you shut up? You’re fucking crazy, you know that? I could have died out there because of …let’s just figure out how to get out of this mess, OK?”

“It’ll be morning soon and--”

“Just shut up.”

I hated speaking to her like that. But I hated even more the sensation of not having any control over my body. Of not being able to do the things that I needed to do, right at the most crucial moment I needed to do them. She could have gotten me killed. And what if I had passed out before I could strap Ellie in a vest and carry her away from the wreck?

I lay my broken body down beside Ellie on the cold rubber and huddled next to her. Charlie sat on the far side of the boat, still crying.

“Ellie,” I whispered into her ear. “Ellie, wake up.”

Her breath snagged and caught, then she took another deep inhale and cracked her eyes open slightly. Even in the darkness I could see the light green of her iris swivel around to focus on my face.

“Todd?”

“I’m here.”

It was all I could think of to say. She drifted back out of consciousness and her eyes flickered closed again. I didn’t know how we were going to get out of this. I didn’t yet know how to keep her warm, or how we were going to find dry land. But I was here. That much was true.