The first thing Alejandra Albright felt was sand against her cheek. The second thing she felt was a flash of irritation. Of course it was sand. Because three tours in the biggest sandbox in the entire world hadn’t been enough sand in her life.

  The third thing she felt was surprise. Shouldn’t she be dead right now?

  Feeling flowed into her limbs slowly, like her blood had turned to molasses and was oozing through her veins barely fast enough to wake her nerves. Her arms hurt. Her back hurt. Her legs were on fire. Her head pounded like a drum-major with a sadistic streak. And her mouth felt and tasted like something small and furry had been using it as a latrine. And then died in it. Along with all its friends.

  Matty. Kids. The thought dredged itself up from the depths of her throbbing head. Where was her family?

  She tried to move, and found she couldn’t. Her limbs were leaden and lifeless, her muscles screaming with pain and fatigue. As more of her nerve endings reported in, she found herself feeling like that second night back in Basic. Not the first night, the first night had been easy.

  The second night had made her long for death.

  On your feet, soldier. Work’s not done yet.

  It took almost twenty seconds and a herculean effort, but she managed to crack open an eyelid. The one that wasn’t pressed into the sand. Light assaulted her senses and made her squeeze her eye shut. She growled and forced it back open, demanding that the streaks and blurs coalesce into something she could understand.

  After a short eternity, her eye finally adjusted to the bright light, and she got her first look at where she was. And where she was… Was on a beach.

  What?

  That wasn’t right. Matty had said they’d been in deep water. The nearest beach was hundreds of miles away–

  Stop. Focus.

  The sand was golden-white and rolled on as far as she could see–which by her estimation was about twelve feet. Half of her vision was filled with the sandy beach, the other half with sapphire-blue. Judging from the closeness of the water in her vision, she must be half-in half-out of the ocean. She could smell the salt in the air. As soon as she thought that, her legs confirmed. They were immersed up to her thighs in something warm and wet.

  Get up, soldier.

  She forced her limbs to move. They were sluggish and screamed in protest the entire way. After around two or three years, she managed to get her arms under her and apply enough pressure to lever her top half up off of the sand. Her left eye was crusted closed, hopefully just with sand. She scooped water up and rubbed her eye as clean as she could. Her hand came away light pink. Blood then, and not just sand.

  Was she hurt? Well, yes. Was she injured. Harder to tell. She washed her face a couple more times then managed to crack her other eye open. Yay, stereoscopic vision. She took in a deep breath and levered herself the rest of the way to her feet, wobbled for a second as her balance tried to find itself, then planted herself with feet wide apart and started turning to take in her surroundings.

  There was jungle just a ways up the beach, and mountains beyond that. It wasn’t Hawaii, the mountains were the wrong shape and in the wrong place. But it was similar. She heard bird calls from somewhere in the thick foliage. She started turning in full circle, taking in everything around her. Jungle. Rocks. Sand. Ocean. More sand.

  And then she was stumbling forward, running towards the bodies she saw just a little ways down the beach.

  The kids were all lying together, with Matty just a few yards past them near a rocky tide-pool. She went to her knees next to Lucas, brushing her son’s shaggy brown hair away from his face before leaning in and desperately searching for a pulse. She found one, strong and steady. Alive.

  “Mom?” Lucas’s eyes cracked open. “Z’at you?”

  “Si, mijo,” she said, her voice cracking with dryness. “You stay still. Don’t try to move until you are ready.”

  “‘Livia, Bel, are they…?”

  Alejandra smiled at the concern in her boy’s voice. “Right next to you, mijo. They are breathing. I am going to check on them now. You rest until you feel able to move.”

  “I c’n move,” he said, struggling. “I can move.”

  She allowed him to fight through his soreness with the power of youth as she moved over to his sisters. Isabel was groaning and moving by the time she got to her, and Olivia was already sitting up and blinking owlishly.

  “Mom?” Isabel said, squinting against the brightness of the day. “Mom! What happened? Are you alright? Where are—Oh thank God,” her voice broke when she saw Lucas and Olivia. “Where’s dad?”

  “Over here,” Matty’s voice was rough and sounded like he’d swallowed sandpaper. “Little surprised to not be dead.”

  “Well I’m dead,” said Olivia, cradling her head. “Dead, buried, and wishing my coffin had some aspirin in it. Where are we? Where’s Dinah?”

  “She’s over here.” Matt’s voice drew Allie’s gaze. Her husband was up on his knees next to another shape–Dinah, it must be-and helping her sit up. “She’s okay. As okay as the rest of us, anyway. Is anyone hurt?”

  They all did a quick check, and Allie ran through her own as well. The result was plenty of bumps, bruises, and scrapes. But no major injuries, thank God.

  That realization seemed to be a catalyst of some kind, because as soon as Lucas–the last of them to call himself good–finished speaking, the tears started flowing.

  “Oh my god,” Isabel said, an inch away from hyperventilating. “Oh my god, we almost died!”

  The others said nothing, but the way they clung to each other in hugs so tight that it looked like it might cause asphyxia was enough of a response. Olivia was the first to start weeping, her face buried in Allie’s shirt. Alejandra clutched her daughter to her, feeling the tremors run through the teen’s body and into her own. Isabel practically dove onto them in a fierce embrace. Lucas got on the other side. And Matty came limping in carrying Dinah, set the teen down beside them all, and wrapped everyone he could up in a massive bear hug. Soon they were all bawling. Even Matty.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  And for the first time in she didn’t know how long, Alejandra leaned into her husband’s strong embrace and didn’t experience anything except profound almost painful relief.

  They stayed like that for long minutes, just holding each other as the sound of the waves breaking gently on the beach washed over them.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Allie heard her husband pray quietly, his gentle voice wrapping around them all, “for keeping us safe and keeping us together.”

  “And for bringing us through the storm,” she added, her own voice rough in her throat.

  “Amen,” the kids all said together.

  Gradually, Alejandra felt her foundation return and her heart quiet. Gradually the sobbing faded into sniffles and hiccups. And gradually, so gradually, they all started to loosen their lifeline holds on each other.

  “How about,” Lucas said, hiccuping and wiping snot from his upper lip, “let’s never do anything like that ever again.”

  It wasn’t even that funny, but everyone on the beach burst out laughing as if he’d just told the opener at Red Rocks. Alejandra leaned in and kissed her son’s salty hair. Matty was right behind her with a hearty clap on Lucas’s shoulder.

  “Second the motion,” Olivia said, still laughing.

  “Motion carries,” Bel chuckled, holding her sides.

  “Wait, wait,” Dinah raised her hand, “we didn’t vote.”

  “You want to do it again?” Olivia asked her friend, face aghast.

  “No! But if we’re going to put forth a motion, we need to vote on it.” Dinah crossed her arms and glared at Olivia. “It’s the rules.”

  Matt caught Alejandra’s eye and just shook his head helplessly, grinning the whole while. And that grin, cheeky and bemused and just a little bit exasperated, made her laugh again, and that set them all off once again.

  Finally, finally, they seemed to calm down, settling from the manic laughter into a sort of pensive silence as they all looked around their new surroundings. Part of Allie’s mind kicked herself, telling her she should have been on guard from the moment she woke up, should have been scouting the area for hostiles.

  The rest of her brain told that part of her brain to shut up and let them adjust.

  But annoying as that first part of her brain was, it also had some basis in truth. She was a soldier. The last thing she had seen before that massive ship had plowed into the Dilligaf had been pirates with grapnels and guns boarding her ship. The fact that the family had survived with only minor injuries meant there was a chance that the pirates had survived too, and might be on this… wherever they were… too.

  Alejandra stood and swept the area with her gaze. The beach was a long narrow strip of sand that disappeared behind rocky outcroppings about a hundred yards on both sides, and was maybe thirty feet deep before it started to give way to shrub grass and bushes, which swiftly turned into an overgrown jungle canopy about fifty yards from the ocean. It wasn’t incredibly dense, she could pick out several possible paths that could be taken should they desire to go further inland, but it was still jungle and therefore dangerous.

  Her hand twitched, and she realized with a start that her gun was gone. The last clear image she had of it was of placing it in its holster at the small of her back when she grabbed her rifle–also gone–and she had no clue where it had ended up. She did a quick pat-down of herself–she was still wearing the same clothes as when she’d been on the yacht, but her wallet, her weapons, even her knife which she always kept in a secure pocket-sheath was gone.

  So were her shoes, she realized with a blink. Her tennis shoes. That she’d double-knotted as was her habit before she joined her family for dinner.

  She frowned and turned back, taking in her family and Dinah one at a time.

  None of them were wearing shoes.

  It was such a strange, simple detail. Something so innocuous that it scarcely bore noticing. Except she did notice it.

  “Where are we, do you think?” Isabel asked, glancing around. “This doesn’t look like Hawaii.”

  “Definitely not Hawaii,” Matty agreed. “We were too far away for that.”

  “Mexico then?” Asked Olivia.

  “An uncharted island!” Lucas said with a massive grin.

  “That's just stupid,” said Dinah. “There's no unexplored islands this close to the American coast.”

  “Okay, so maybe it’s an explored island,” Lucas shot back, still grinning at the prospect of being shipwrecked on an actual island. “Or maybe we’re not on the American coast anymore.”

  “Has anyone seen my watch?”

  The question came from Matty, and caused every eye there–Alejandra’s included–to swivel to stare at him. The big man was scratching his head and peering at his now-empty wrist.

  “Dad.” Bel said, her tone flat.

  “What?” Matt blinked at their eldest daughter. “It was a good watch. Had a compass and everything. Which, you know, might help us figure out where we are?”

  “Oh, shoot!” Olivia squeaked and her hand went to a buttoned pocket on her pants. “My phone! I put it in an Ottercase before we left the docks! If it still has a charge–Hey, where’s my phone?”

  The question triggered a flurry of pat-downs and limb-checking, and the hairs on the back of Alejandra’s neck started to rise. No one had any piece of technology, any tool, anything except the clothes on their back. Minus their shoes and socks.

  “So,” Isabel said slowly, staring around at the others. “What you’re telling me is that we get wrecked in a storm, washed up on an unknown shore that is kinda impossible to be here, and somehow we’ve all lost literally everything except our clothes, even stuff that was in buttoned pockets or attached to our bodies? Or in our bodies?” She tweaked her earlobe, now vacant of the earrings she always wore.

  Alejandra, Olivia, and Dinah all automatically put their hands to their ears, and all blinked hard when they found their own earrings gone.

  “How is that possible?” Isabel demanded when no one answered her.

  “Uh, sis?” Lucas’ voice had an odd faraway quality to it. “That’s a good question, but I’ve got a better one.”

  They all turned to look at Lucas, who was looking up at the jungle.

  “Oh yeah?” Bel asked, raising an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “Has anyone here ever heard of a purple tree with orange leaves?”

  They followed his line of sight to the jungle, and to a small copse of… Well, Allie probably would have called them palm trees, what with their barrel-body trunks and long waving fronds. But Lucas was right. No tree she had ever heard of had a trunk that shade of royal purple, and certainly no palm tree she had ever heard of had fronds the color of her favorite nectarines.

  And then, as if sensing their gazes upon it, the fronds shuddered and curled up on themselves, until they formed a brilliant orange shield of sorts around the trunk, hiding it entirely from view.

  “We all just saw that, right?” Alejandra heard herself ask. She was impressed how level her voice sounded.

  “You mean the funky alien tree try to hide itself from us?” Matty asked, and his voice sounded just as level as hers, which probably meant he felt just as off-balance as she did.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “I saw it,” Dinah said, and her voice sounded like she’d just been hit in the face with a brick.

  “Me too,” said Isabel and Olivia at the same time.

  “That is so cool,” Lucas said, wide-eyed.

  They continued to stare at the tree, not moving. Alejandra was rifling through possibilities, trying to come up with an explanation for what she had just seen. Movie set, maybe? Had they somehow stumbled onto the most random special-effect in the world?

  They were all staring at the tree.

  Which was why no one noticed the monster behind them until it exploded out of the water and charged.