Left on Paradise by Kirk Adams

and draw military rations from the commissar. Every inhabitant was allotted four MREs—more than enough to cover three expected days of encampment. Water purification tablets were distributed by the handful as settlers gathered into their respective neighborhoods and sent delegations to collect tents, medicine boxes, cooking utensils, farming tools, food supplies, and water jugs. The process was completed before noon.
    In the meantime, the ship’s crew secured anchor and lowered the landing craft using cables and a crane. The flat-bottomed LCVP then moved entire neighborhoods in a single trip—taking less than two hours to load, thread its way through a reef channel, and disembark its cargo. Each neighborhood moved with tents, camping gear, medicine boxes, cooking utensils, water rations, and personal effects while the ship’s crew both helped settlers climb down netting into the vintage landing craft and unloaded heavier cargo with a light crane. The first trip commenced at noon and the final landing was concluded at dusk. Russian sailors worked fast, though they took little care with their more urbane passengers—carelessly casting man and material alike on the sand so they could finish the day’s work as fast as possible. In their haste, they even dropped one crate of supplies into the sea (where it sank) and damaged two others. Disembarkation timetables and incentive bonuses required citizens to be ashore by day’s end.
    After reaching shore, colonists moved materials to an open field previously designated a recreational area and base camp. Maps were checked for campsite markings and cargo was moved beyond the reach of the tide. As time permitted, tents were pitched and sleeping bags unrolled—and when each group completed its assigned tasks, members returned to the beach to assist new arrivals. Willing hands raised tent poles, built campfires, and warmed dinner packets. Groups of men equipped with axes cut firewood from fallen trees while older children scoured forests for kindling.
    It was nearly dark when the last boat was unloaded and the final tent was pitched. The new land had been peopled and only a few settlers remained on the freighter to tend heavy cargo, feed hungry livestock, and water those plants which hadn’t been hauled ashore. For those settlers already ashore, there was both gratitude and relief for having escaped the inconveniences of life at sea—though not a single person, man or woman alike, was observed kneeling on the soft sands of a tropical beach to give God glory for delivering them from the perils and rigors of their ten-day journey.

 
    6
    The Sands of New Plymouth
     
    “We came for them.”
    A dark-skinned man who looked to be in his early thirties and sat before a dying fire spoke out loud. Only a few flames flickered in the cool night air, dimly lighting the shadows of his dark flesh. The fire had burned down long ago and now was little more than white-hot coals covered with gray ash. Only after the man threw another log into the coals did it flare into flames as the green wood quickly dried—steam pouring from the pores of the bark and sap sizzling from every crack. Within minutes, the log blazed bright as it began to burn to soot and coals.
    Watching both the fire and the man, an ebony-skinned woman, dressed in a sleeveless shirt and cutoff shorts—and who looked to be the same age as her mate—smiled.
    “Remember,” the woman said, “how I didn’t want kids.”
    “Only because of society,” the man replied, “and I never really blamed you.”
    “Maybe we were right. But all the same, I’m glad we had them.”
    “I guess accidents aren’t always bad.”
    The woman smiled.
    “I wonder,” the man continued, “how our parents are doing? They weren’t prepared to lose both grandchildren so young.”
    “It’s only been four years since they were born.”
    “It seems longer. The work’s been awful—twins for our first pregnancy—but it also seems that we’ve