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  67. 3:46 a.m.

It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the first buildings fell. Come tomorrow it would be forty-eight. Starting tomorrow, I wouldn’t be missing. I would be dead.

I will have to save myself.

::::

The sound of my stomach rumbling breaks my reverie. The last thing I ate was the sandwich and smoothie forty-eight hours earlier.

My body is acclimated to long periods without food or water, but I am suddenly aware of how thirsty and hungry I am. I can go another week without food, but I need water.

I gaze down at the river. The shallow water has taken on the color of the rock and silt directly below. I cup my hands together and scoop the water to my face. It smells faintly musky. It is as clear as the water from my faucet in Virginia, which doesn’t mean it isn’t crawling with deadly microbes, bacteria, or intestinal parasites.

I open my hands and let the water fall back to the river.

I check my watch.

3:13 a.m.

My eyes move to the canoe resting high up on the sandbar. What if I continued down the river? Pushed the canoe back into the flow and rode it until I lucked upon a small river community? In any other state this might be an option, but in Alaska, where heartbeats were separated by thousands of miles, this would be a huge gamble.

There are three large rocks near where the brush begins, and I wring out my clothes and drape them over two of them. Standing on the third rock, wearing only my boxer briefs — which thankfully are nylon and nearly dry — I survey my surroundings. Rolling green mountains and yellow valleys in every direction.

“I am in the middle of fucking nowhere,” I say, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I can’t go far without my shoes, so I stick to the sandbar. I find a stick and I begin trying to sharpen it on one of the rocks.

I’ve seen sixteen movies in my life and one of them is Castaway.

It was the closest thing I’d ever seen to a horror movie.

In fact, I couldn’t finish watching it. When he lost Wilson, I turned the movie off. But not before I learned a thing or two.

“You can do this,” I tell myself. “You are in good shape. You can go long stretches without food or water. You are made for this.”

I spend the next twenty minutes moving up and down the sandbar, using my stick to etch HELP ME in elephant sized letters.

At 3:50 a.m., I check on my clothes. My sweatshirt is nearly dry and I pull it on. Everything else is still soaked, but the rocks have started to absorb the sun’s heat and they will be dry when I wake up tomorrow.

My heart races.

Dehydration is setting in.