Chapter 2

The next morning was just as visually stunning as the previous day had been. If there were ever a question as to where you would want to be stranded with little hope for rescue, this would be close to the top of the list. The island, or the little I had seen of it, was paradise. The pure, fine, white sandy beaches. The tall, fruit-ladened palm trees rocked lazily in the gentle breeze. The pleasantly warm temperature of the air was heated by the tropical sun and cooled by the crystal-clear turquoise waters. The sounds of tropical birds mixed with the soft wind. Looking up at the mountain, the mists were starting to drift upwards, like a ghost being released from its prison out of the tree canopy and into the clear blue skies. It was perfect.

Of course, none of us were thinking of that.

The discovery of Ellie the Elephant had shaken me to my core. The bottom had fallen out of my world, and I had collapsed under the emotional weight of the preceding twenty-four hours. Hayley and Hannah had seen me fall and had both rushed over, quickly followed by Amy the Doctor, and the rest of the group. The two stewardesses had recognized the toy immediately, and with it, the implied connotation that little Jonny, along with his mother, had been lost in the crash. The only thought that seemed willing to stay for more than a few moments in my mind was simply to ask why them. Why did I survive when they could have lived instead? What kind of God ended the lives of a young boy and his mother, only to spare a man in his mid-thirties with almost nothing to live for?

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

My breakdown had a profound impact on the group. As if we were all collectively holding it together, for the sake of the others, the first of us to break gave everyone else permission to let their own bottled-up feelings finally escape.

The group gathered around me, sitting or kneeling in the lapping waves, all of us holding everyone else, and we just sobbed ... all of us. Even Tom, whose condition stereotypically robbed him of the ability to express emotion, cried and wailed along with everyone else.

Somehow, over the course of hours, and long after the sun had gone down, we dragged ourselves back up onto the beach closer to the swaying palm trees, curled up into one large pile and, for the most part, we passed out.

The day had been exhausting to a degree that most people will never experience in their lifetimes. They should be grateful for that. But the only thing worse than that level of tiredness was feeling it and still not being able to sleep. With Hayley curled up on one side of me, and Hannah on the other, both sleeping peacefully, I just lay there, staring up at an endless star-lit sky.

By morning, most of us had recovered. The catharsis of getting those emotions out seemingly pulled everyone out of their stupor. Even Louisa, a Latino-looking woman around my age whose husband had gone down with the plane, was working to keep herself busy. Over the course of the night, the tides had changed, and, as Ray had predicted, the luggage and wreckage from the crash were starting to wash up on shore. So, with the exception of Lizzy and Hannah, who started making their way towards the mountain not long after daybreak, and Tom and Amy, who were trying to knock coconuts from the trees and open them without spilling their milk. The remainder of the group waded into the water, or scoured the beach, pulling every case and every piece of debris we could find to a central point on the sand.

In a moment of unexpected clarity, I had realized that everything would need to be saved, as much of it as we could. We had no idea what piece of scrap, or which seemingly worthless item in a case, might be useful days, weeks, or even months from now. Ray, for example, had decided that despite the low chances of it being spotted by rescue aircraft, we would need to build a fire. Even if we didn’t light it until we spotted something worth lighting it for.

But aside from a few dried-out palm leaves, there was nothing to burn. That would mean we would need to cut down a tree, and contrary to what Minecraft may have taught you, you can’t do that by simply punching it. Somewhere in these cases or piles of twisted metal may have been something that could form part of an ax or a saw. Or if there wasn’t, maybe there was something that could help us make one some other way.

Hell, maybe one of them had a lighter because I sure as shit didn’t know how to light a fire without one.

“This is going to have to be something of a regular job for us as well,” Ray said as he dropped one of those reinforced plastic suitcases onto the pile. “Something like ninety percent of all goods on earth are still transported by sea, and you would be amazed at what falls off those container ships. You never know what could wash up here.”

With my eyelids being held open by less than a few hours of sleep, I just nodded and carried on dragging part of what looked like a plane door further up the beach.

Time is an odd thing. Five minutes of overtime in the Superbowl goes by in the blink of an eye; five minutes hopping from one foot to the other outside an occupied bathroom feels substantially longer. With no means of accurately measuring its passing, aside from the general movement of the sun, it had become impossible to tell how long even the simplest of tasks had taken. All I knew was that the sun had been fairly low in the sky when we had started and was now beating down on us from close to its apex. But it was mid-summer on a latitude that I was unfamiliar with, so that could have been two or three hours. It could have been six. Either could have been true, but what was also true was the fact that all of us, despite not wanting to say it aloud, were waiting for Elizabeth and Hannah to return. That waiting was dragging out this seemingly simple task into eternity.

On their shoulders rested the fate of our group. Food was already looking bountiful. Trees heavy with all manner of fruit could be found only a few dozen yards into the tree line. Coconuts, bananas, mangos, and citrus trees laden with oranges and limes. Not to mention the immeasurable numbers of fish swimming around our feet when we waded into the water. All of these added up to the realization that nobody was in danger of starving on this island. No, what really mattered was fresh water. The only person capable of reliably finding it, was now several long hours into an expedition with no means of communication with the rest of us. For all we knew, the two of them could have been hurt and unable to call for help. They could have gotten lost. None of us had really considered the possibilities of predators on the island either, poisonous insects ... the list of things that could have happened to them was long. Nobody wanted to be the first to voice those concerns, but there were plenty of nervous, anticipatory glances into the trees as we worked.

It was Amy who finally called a halt to the afternoon’s labors. “Alright, everyone out of the sun!” She shouted over the beach, as she and Tom dropped armfuls of coconuts onto the sand beneath the shade of the trees.

“No, there is still too much left to do,” Ray grumbled, looking back at the volumes of debris still bobbing in the shallows. “Anything we miss could end up floating away.”

“Yes, I know. But none of us has had anything to drink since the plane. Dehydration is a very real danger until we find water, so until then, you are going to need to take it easy.”

“But...”

“Listen...” Amy rounded on him. “You’re a military man, Coast Guard, right?” She waited for him to nod before continuing. “Who is the highest authority on a ship at sea?”

“The Captain.” He said with a confused look on his face.

“Wrong, it’s the Doctor. Doctors are the only ones able to supersede a Captain’s orders.” She answered back, smiling but clearly tolerating no question of who was in charge at this moment. “Now, I need you to stop, take a break, cool down, and get something liquid into you. Because I don’t feel like losing any more people, least of all on the first day here. And if you pass out, I don’t have an IV or fluids to bring you back. Understood?”

Ray sighed but nodded in acquiescence. “Yes, Ma’am.”

I had to admit, casting a look back to the sea and then up and down the beach, I had started the conversation agreeing with Ray. The tides that had washed us here seemed to have brought every piece of luggage and cargo on the flight here, not to mention a large portion of the actual wreckage. The bits that had already washed onto the beach were safe. They were going nowhere until the tides changed again. But the pieces still floating in the water could be taken out of reach by the smallest gusts of wind. It was only as Amy pointed out the risks of dehydration did I allow myself to feel it. The headache stomping through my brain would have put the worst hangover in history to shame. My muscles seemed to be on the verge of cramping constantly, and there was a definite shake in my hand as I dropped the aircraft door onto the pile.

Hayley was still sticking close, not quite clinging onto me as she had done the day before and throughout the night. But she seemed to be making a point of staying within view of me. She and one of the other girls, a high-school teacher in her late twenties by the name of Katie, seemed to have struck up something of a friendship. The pair of them were chatting happily as I joined the group and flopped down onto the sand. Hayley had a glint in her eyes and a hungry look on her face as I brushed the sand from my sweat-sheened body and reached for a coconut. Katie giggled a little and whispered something to her. A grin curled onto the redheaded stewardess’s face as I examined the brown, hairy fruit and arched an eyebrow at Tom.

I should point out here that “beggars can’t be choosers” is about as close to Gospel as a group of starving, dehydrated island survivors are going to find. I don’t like coconut. I have never liked coconut; not coconut milk, not even coconut-flavored candy. It just wasn’t my thing. It was, perhaps, for that reason that I had never dedicated a single moment of thought to how exactly you open one.

The answer, as it turned out, was ‘carefully.’

Tom, it would seem, loved coconuts and had devised a system of opening them involving a few carefully chosen rocks. Without even realizing he was performing a demonstration to the less coconut-orientated members of the group, he took a long, pointed rock, pressed it against the shell, and then used another larger rock to hammer it in. He then drank the milk straight from the hole, then smashed the rest of the fruit open on a larger rock, and pulled the flesh off the inside of the shell with his fingers. Some of the others seemed to be trying to pull the hair off them, apparently taking issue with drinking the milk through the fibers of the coconuts’ outer shells. Tom, apparently, couldn’t have cared less.

“Alright, people, no more than two each,” Amy said, wiping a dribble of milk off her chin with a gesture that, under any other circumstances, would have looked downright pornographic.

Katie frowned, looking over her shoulders at the countless palm trees, most of them heavy with fruit. “Why? It’s not like we have to ration. There must be thousands of them.”

“Coconuts are a natural laxative,” Amy replied with a grunt, smashing hers open on a rock by her knees and collecting the shell halves before they gathered sand. “They are great for rehydrating you, but too much, too soon could give you a nasty case of diarrhea. At this point, having the shits would be worse for you than drinking nothing.”

I’m not sure why I laughed. But having a medical professional referring to a potentially life-threatening condition as “the shits” just tickled me. The laughter was instantly cut off by the full-body shudder that ran through me as I swallowed down the first mouthful of coconut milk. I eyeballed the hole in the top of my fruit uneasily as Hayley and Katie giggled louder.

“Looks like someone doesn’t like coconut.” Hayley laughed.

“I would rather be eating anything else ... literally,” I chuckled back.

“Anything, huh?” She smirked back. “I may hold you to that.”

“Get your coat, Hayls,” Katie giggled. “Looks like you’ve scored.”

“Finally!” Hayley grinned, pulling another bout of giggles from the pair. Even Amy joined in, her cheeks flushing as the two younger women bantered teasingly. Looking around, almost all of the girls, with the exception of Louisa, were following the conversation with a blush on their cheeks. My eyes finally caught Ray’s, the only other guy in the group who was paying attention - Tom was too busy playing with his nuts. He arched an eyebrow and shrugged. Apparently, as confused as I was about this sudden shift in mood. Neither of us had failed to notice that Zoe and Caroline had both shuffled a little closer to him, either.

My headache was fading quickly, the vile-tasting milk clearly doing its job. But following the doctor’s orders, I cracked open the coconut and started scooping out the flesh and forcing it down my throat. The look on my face was drawing more and more giggles from the stewardess and the chestnut-haired teacher. “Mmmmm, my, what big strong fingers you have,” Katie grinned teasingly. Even Amy snorted a laugh at that.

I eyeballed the coconut again. The women were acting like sorority girls with a few too many drinks in them.

I was fairly certain that naturally occurring alcoholic fruit was not a thing. I decided to just shrug off the playful banter as just that. I turned my attention back to the two giggling ladies. “Look, draining the milk out of a hairy, wrinkly ball is not how I enjoy getting my meals,” I smirked, joining in with the innuendo. “Jamming a spike into them and then smashing them open isn’t something I like to think too much about either,” Both women erupted into fits of laughter.

“Awww, do you not like swallowing the milk from those big hairy balls, Dan?” Hayley grinned between giggles. “That’s okay. I love to swallow!” She licked some milk off her lips and winked.

“Oh, me too!” Katie grinned, nudging an elbow into Hayley but letting her eyes wander adventurously over my half-naked body.

The rest of the group was laughing along now. Ray just shook his head and laughed, gesturing for me to just go with the flow. It was probably nothing more than steam being blown off after a stressful few days. Whatever the cause of the sudden mood shift was, it had done a great job of easing the tension of waiting for Elizabeth and Hannah to return. He didn’t seem to mind having Zoe and Caroline moving even closer to him, either. Although I still couldn’t tell which one was which.

“We’re only playing.” Hayley cooed as her giggles died down, reaching over to grab my wrist and pulling me between them on the log they were sitting on. “Well, mostly.” She finished, albeit a little quieter. She leaned her head to the side and rested it on my shoulder, taking in a deep breath.

Her head shot up suddenly, her face turning to mine and her eyes dilated to the size of saucers. She leaned in again, taking another deep breath. I was suddenly very aware that I had been sweating profusely since landing on the beach. But the look in Hayley’s eyes was the sort of gaze a hungry lioness would give a wounded gazelle. “Oh God, you smell good!” she whispered breathlessly.

Katie, the only one to have heard her, the rest of the group having fallen back into their own conversations, frowned a little and leaned into me, taking a deep breath of her own. Her whole body shuddered before her eyes flicked over to Hayley. “Holy Fuck!” She whispered.

“Oh God, that is not normal. But Jesus, I have never smelt anything so ... alluring ... In my entire life!”

“No wonder you don’t want to be far from him!” Katie whispered again.

“He didn’t smell like that last night! Fuck, I would have been on top of him in a heartbeat in the dark,” She giggled again, then groaned deeply as she inhaled again.

“Umm ... I’m right here.” I smirked, my head turning to watch the back and forth.

“And you are going nowhere!” Hayley purred, nuzzling back against me.

“Damn straight.” Katie echoed in my other ear.

I’m not the guy to be fawned over by anyone, and I was not the kind of guy to look a gift horse in the mouth, either, but something strange was clearly going on. I nervously and quietly finished the rest of my coconut. Already feeling much better and much more energized than I had done earlier and was cautiously enjoying the company of the group ... two of them in particular.

Ray also seemed to be the recipient of Zoe and Caroline’s sensory attention. He flicked a nervous-looking glance up at me as he downed the last of his coconut. He nodded back to the beach, gesturing for me to join him.

I pulled myself to my feet to the whines and groans of the two girls around me. “It’s okay, ladies,” I said with a smile as Ray also stood, getting the same reaction. “You stay here and relax. Doc, that milk really hit the spot. We are just going to grab a few promising-looking things from the water, and then we will relax for the rest of the day.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Amy said with an acquiescing smile. “Any headaches or lethargy, and you get yourselves back here. Got it?”

“Got it.” Ray and I said in unison before making our way down toward the surf.

We were waist-deep in the water, a hundred yards or so from the group, when he spoke. “What. The. Fuck. Just happened?” He asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not the only one who thought that was weird, right?”

I shook my head. “You don’t think it was the coconuts, do you?” I cast a glance back up the beach. Amy, Tom, Louisa, and the other girl - whose name I still couldn’t remember - seemed to be acting fairly normal. But the four others, Hayley and Katie on my side and Zoe and Caroline on Ray’s, had their eyes firmly fixed on us. “The others seem to be okay, and I feel fine.”

Ray followed my look back up the beach, his frown growing deeper. “Dan, they said I smelled good. I absolutely don’t smell good. I fucking reek! But one of them fucking licked me!”

“They all seemed normal before we had the coconuts” I nodded. “At least, I think they were.”

“It can’t be the coconuts.” He shook his head, both of us reaching down to take hold of a large chunk of what had formerly been the plane’s fuselage and starting to drag it to the beach. We needed to look like we were busy. “If it were, the others would be acting weird too. Hell, we would be acting weird. Do you feel weird?”

“No, I feel fine,” I shook my head. “Actually, I feel better than fine...” A frown started to weigh on my eyebrows. “I feel...”

“Great.” Ray finished for me, both of us pausing mid-step to look at each other nervously. “Yeah, I feel better than I have done since boarding the flight. That is ... Strange.”

“Fuck.” I groaned. The pair of us were making light work of the wreckage, both of us having boundless levels of energy that was, only an hour ago, completely drained. “We have to tell them.”

Ray furrowed his brow and thought for a moment. “We can’t,” he finally said. “If we start making a big deal about something being wrong with the food here, we may freak them out, and they may refuse to eat or drink at all. This may not be great, but it’s a damned side better than one of them starving or dehydrating to death. There are other fruits for them to eat, but the Doc is right; coconuts are our only real source of hydration for the time being.”

“And it may only be until Elizabeth comes back,” I added. “If she has found fresh water, we can stop drinking from the coconuts entirely.”

“Right.” Ray nodded. “I mean, assuming that the coconuts are the problem.”

“You don’t think they are?”

“Shit, I don’t know, man.” He sighed. “I’m inclined to side with you and say that they are. But how do we explain the Doc and the others not being affected? We all ate the same stuff. Hell, we all ate the same amount of the same stuff. There has to be another variable.”

We pondered in silence for a few moments as we dragged the sheet of metal and plastic onto the beach, tossed it onto the pile, and then headed back to the water. Neither of us wanted to speak anymore until we were back out of earshot of the group. “So what do we do?” Ray finally asked.

“You’re asking me?”

“Tom doesn’t seem to be affected, so it looks like you and I are in this together,” He sighed. “But those girls were making some pretty explicit plans before we left. If they decide to act on them...” He let the sentence die in the air. “Look, I am a nice guy. I would never take advantage of something like this back home, but it didn’t sound like I would be given much of a choice in the matter.”

I cast a look back up the beach, dragging a hand over my mouth as I thought about it. “I’m not going to lie. If one of those two threw themselves at me, I’m not sure I have it in me to refuse, let alone both of them.”

“Same here.”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said after a little more thought as I grabbed a handle of a case floating next to me. “We do nothing, we don’t encourage them, we don’t act like we would be receptive...”

“Even though we are.”

“Right ... But they don’t need to know that. If they make a move and act like they are in their right minds, we are not going to get pissed at each other for ... helping them out ... despite it possibly being a case of taking advantage of them. Which we may have to do because telling them about potentially tainted food may do more harm than good.”

Ray paused for a moment. “You know, there are probably guys all over the world who would sell major body parts to be in this position.”

“What, trapped on a deserted island with a bunch of ... Yeah, okay, you may have a point.”

Ray chuckled. “Alright, let’s get this stuff to the beach. Do you really think all this shit will be useful?”

I shrugged, scooping up another case and hooking it under my arm. “I doubt it, but some of it might be. Who knows what is in these cases, even if it’s just clothes to protect us from the sun? I don’t know about you, but I’m not looking forward to traipsing through the jungle with bare feet, so shoes would be nice.”

Ray nodded, grabbing a case of his own and reaching for another one. We were interrupted by shouts and screams coming from the beach. We both turned around to see what the commotion was about. The entire group, save Tom, was running towards us, waving and pointing frantically to something behind us and to our left. We both turned to see what they were yelling about.

“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Ray muttered.

About a hundred feet from us and in slightly deeper water, the hulking, unmistakable fin of a shark sliced through the surface, aiming for one of the cases. In only a few seconds, it had covered the distance and, with a foaming splash, burst from the waves and clamped its massive jaws down onto the grayish-looking case. The luggage was torn apart as the shark thrashed its head back and forth. I turned and started to run back to the beach before Ray shot out a hand to grab me. “Run, and you’re dead,” He whispered. “There is no way on God’s green earth you are going to outrun that thing and trying is only going to draw its attention to you.”

I gulped and froze, watching as the shark released its polyester prize and lazily started circling.

“That’s a tiger shark.” he hissed. “They are nasty and very dangerous. But they don’t attack humans ... unless they mistake them for something else.”

“Like a suitcase?” I whispered back.

“In shallow water, with limited vertical vision, it’s anyone’s guess. My point is they respond very aggressively to splashing. To them, it is like a bird or something struggling in the water. If we run, he might think we are something worth chasing.”

“So ... what? We stand here and wait for it to go away?”

“Ideally, yes.” He said quietly, holding up his hand to gesture to the group on the beach that we were okay. “But who knows how long that is going to take? We need to back away, very slowly, very calmly, and try not to disturb the water.”

“And if we do?”

“Throw the cases at him and run like hell.”

“But you just said ... You haven’t done this before, have you?”

“Dealt with a fifteen-foot Tiger shark on the beach of a deserted tropical island while holding a suitcase in each hand? No, this would be a first for me.”

We started moving backward, one very careful and deliberate step at a time. Neither of us lifted our feet more than a few inches off the ground before moving them and putting them back down. Contrary to the massive amounts of adrenaline in my system and the heart pounding fearfully at my chest, Ray appeared to be the picture of composure. The shark seemed blissfully unaware of our presence as the water grew steadily shallower around our legs. The waves were lapping just below our knees when Ray’s foot caught on a rock that was jutting out of the sand. He flailed briefly, his arms looking for something to catch onto, but being full of suitcase handles, they failed miserably, and he fell backward into the water.

The response from the apex predator was immediate and explosive. It spun around and launched itself toward us. It covered half of the area between us in only a few seconds. I wheeled around, hurling one case towards it as hard as I could and dropping the others. I reached down, grabbed Ray by the scruff of his collar, and started to run towards the beach as fast as my legs would carry me. Ray stumbled forward a few times, his feet trying desperately to find purchase beneath him as we both looked back at the shark.

The case sailed through the air and landed just in front of the shark, as the shallow water forced the enormous carnivore to breach the surface. A mighty splash erupted around the case as the Shark’s terrifying jaws clamped down on it. Shards of broken plastic and uninflated beach toys were thrown into the air as the predator thrashed its head from side to side. By the time he realized that it was not the meal he had been hoping for, we were in water far too shallow for him to follow.

Ray and I collapsed in an adrenaline-filled heap on the sand a few seconds later, as the rest of the group rushed over to us. Both of us were panting, wheezing, and quite surprised to still be in one piece. Unsurprisingly, Hayley and Katie were practically on top of me in seconds, checking me over to make sure I wasn’t hurt. Fawning and cooing about how scared they were and how brave we had both been. Ray was receiving the same treatment from Zoe and Caroline.

“You okay, Man?” I called over to him.

“No, I stubbed my fucking toe!” He laughed back. “That shit hurt!”

I cast a look back over to him. “There was a kid in every class who ate glue. That was you, wasn’t it?”

He laughed and held out a hand, clenching his fist. I bumped mine against it with a chuckle. “Okay, new rule.” He shouted out over the commotion. “Nobody goes into the water!”

“Am I the only one who is grateful that big fucker wasn’t around when we were all dragging the raft ashore?” I asked a few hours later. All of us were sitting next to the debris pile, watching the shark still circling out in the shallows. It seemed to have given up on the suitcases, having chewed up another three of them since our escape to the beach. The adrenaline had fled my body, and I was close to something able to be called calm now. The Shark was now just swimming in large, lazy circles. For a while, we had thought he was waiting for us. But every now and then, he would dart beneath the waves, and a portion of the crystal-clear water would turn red for a few moments.

“He’s hungry.” Ray nodded. “Shallow water, lots of big fish. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet out there for him.”

“Do you think he would have eaten you?” Zoe, or maybe Caroline, asked with a gasp.

“No,” Ray shook his head with a reassuring smile. “Sharks don’t really have much of a taste for humans. He would have taken one bite, realized he didn’t like us, and then let us go...”

“Those looked like pretty nasty bites, man,” I added.

“Yeah, usually one bite is all it takes. Especially with no trauma centers around.”

“So, what are we going to do about the rest of the debris out there?” Caroline, or maybe Zoe, asked.

“While he is out there? Fuckin’ nothing!” Ray laughed.

Caroline/Zoe slapped his arm playfully. “I meant when he goes.”

Ray pondered for a few moments. “Hopefully, most of it will wash ashore. But even when he is gone, I don’t like the idea of anyone being more than knee-deep out there. If that means we lose things that could be useful, so be it. It’s better than one of us losing a leg. Until further notice, we need to act like we are in the middle of a shark’s feeding area ... it is not a good idea to be wet in one of those.” He looked over at me, and I nodded in agreement. Getting the debris had been my idea, but there was nothing out there worth that kind of risk.