Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

Jacob made a small hopeless sound as the plane climbed toward the clouds. Daniel pressed his cheek to Jacob's, nudging his eyes back to the approaching ship. "There, Trip. That's our ride home."
    "Right."
    The ship slowed and then hove to, about a half mile off. In the gathering dark, it was hard to see what was happening, but the movement of lights suggested a boat was being launched. The ship wasn't large and seemed low in profile, a destroyer escort, he thought. Daniel couldn't remember how many boats she would have or what size of crew would be there to man them. But anything was better than that long day of struggling men in an empty sea. Glimmers of brightness dipped and moved.
    Down in the troughs between waves it was dark now. Each time they sank, the water surrounded them in a wet salty hole of blackness. But when they rose, there were still lights and motion to be seen. Time passed in the rise and fall of darkness and hope. Daniel was past talking now, but he held onto Jacob, shifting his grip when hands and arms got numb but never letting go. Jacob mumbled a couple of times, sounds that made no sense.
    Then there was suddenly another ship on the horizon, showing almost no lights. No telling in the darkness if it was friend or foe. Daniel strained his eyes, blinking hard. The newcomer passed the escort and stopped much closer, bringing up her lights as she did so. It was another larger destroyer escort. Daniel had studied the hulls of ships once, their own and the enemy's. Once he would have known her approximate displacement and maximum speed and a host of other things about her. Now all he knew or cared about was that she was refuge and the promise of safety, less than a couple of football fields away.
    Men in the water around them shouted out again. On one rise of the waves Daniel saw what appeared to be a boat, with lights shining onto the water. Then he did yell and wave, one arm for Jacob and one whirling his shirt above their heads. It took two plunges into the waves, shouting and choking together, for him to regain sense. He conserved his energy on the down swoop, resting his arm. On the rise he waved again, yelling with a force that cracked the sore tissues of his throat, waving that shirt like a banner. Again. Again. Again. Jacob was a silent, dead weight in his grasp now, the soggy kapok just barely keeping his mouth above water. Again. Again.
    The boat crested a wave, much closer than he expected it and he almost screamed. He yelled, "Here. Over here! Wounded man!"
    A swimmer came up to him, cutting through the water in smooth strokes. He reached Jacob's side and felt towards his neck for a pulse. Daniel knocked his hand aside. "He's fine. He's alive. He just fainted. We need to get him on board."
    The man placed three fingers against Jacob's throat below his jaw anyway, and then said, "Yeah. He's still with us."
    Daniel almost let go in the relief of hearing those words. It had been a long time since he had dared to check. The boat came closer, riding high on the swells. The swimmer guided them toward the stern, helping Daniel tow Jacob. Daniel tried not to think about how still Jacob was. They were rescued. It would be all right now. One last effort and he could rest.
    Daniel and his fellow swimmer struggled to lift Jacob's limp body out of the waves. Men reached down over the stern, hands stretched toward them. Then a lucky wave raised them enough at just the right moment and the waiting men grabbed Jacob's hair and the shoulder of his vest. His weight was lifted out of Daniel's hands. At the last moment he remembered to let go, staring up in the harsh glare of the lights as Jacob was hauled up and over.
    Daniel almost lost it then. Fatigue and sorrow and pain hit him there in the water like a dark club and the world wavered around him. A voice in his ear yelled at him, "You're next. Come on, buddy, help me out here." From somewhere he found the reserves to stretch his arms upward. The man beside him grabbed him around the hips, heaving up and sputtering as he was driven under in return. But fingers gripped Daniel's wrists successfully and he was hauled over the stern, raw skin scraping painfully over metal, and down into the belly of the boat.
    There were other survivors there already. Daniel felt a tepid curiosity about whom. But the darkness was closing in again and he had time for one last thing. He squirmed forward toward the bow as far as he could, following a pair of limp bare feet he