Chapter 2

It had rained during the night. The roof had done fairly well, just a few places where it dripped. Unfortunately, one place was right on Darcie and she let Mike know in no uncertain terms that he wasn't up to snuff as a builder. 'Oh well, ' he thought. He patched up the roof with additional palm fronds.

Breakfast was bananas. The fact that there were banana trees proved people had been here before and planted them. He wondered if there were still people, maybe on the other side. How long would it take to paddle around the island? Could he even do it in the little rubber raft? Maybe he could climb the mountain. From the top he was sure he could see around the island, certainly tell if there were any people. He hoped they would be spotted soon so he didn't have to try any heroic stuff. Mike wasn't the hero type.

The emergency box had a trident inside. He cut a longish pole and shaped it to fit the trident. With that he had a fish spear. Mike had been wearing Dockers and Florsheims but quickly realized that walking on the beach with them was ridiculous. He stripped down to his briefs and shirt. He could tell the girls were a little scandalized, but also curious as they stared, while pretending not to.

Mike dragged the raft down to the clear aqua water of the lagoon. Beyond the reef the water turned to the deep blue of tropical seas. It was a picture of paradise, the green hills of the island, the variegated colors of the water, the flashing of light on waves like diamonds in the sea. He paddled out to the lagoon and approached the reef where he knew most of the fish would be.

Mike found out it isn't as easy as it looks, spearing fish from a boat. All those National Geographic specials where they shoot fish with arrows or spear them, well; Mike started to think they were staged. The water makes the fish look farther away, or impossible to see, or here or there as the surface of the water moves. Mike finally got lucky and hit a good three pound grouper. Once he got it in the boat he sped back to the beach. It had only taken about three hours and Mike considered himself lucky.

"Lunch," he called out.

The girls came running. They saw the grouper. Darcie turned up her nose. "I don't like fish."

He shrugged. "More for the rest of us. But Missy, this is your only source of protein. Up to you." He threw some more wood on the fire and put the grouper on a pole over the fire after gutting him.

He dug around in the box and found a pot that would be useful for heating water and one flat piece of aluminum that could be a serving platter but no spoons or knives. Hands it would be. When the fish was done, Mike put it on the platter and peeled back the skin. Damn, but that smelled good. Nothing like fresh fish and this one was still wet when he went on the fire. "Sorry ladies, but it looks like native style eating. Hands only."

He used the survival knife to peel the meat from the bones. Emma was the bravest, taking some meat and eating it with her fingers. "That's good," she said in surprise. Jenna joined her as he had most of the meat from the one side separated. Jenna nodded in agreement. Mike joined in on the feast.

Darcie sat to the side watching. It was getting to her, watching them feast. She was hungry for something besides fruit. "Try it," Mike said.

She got that teen look, eyes rolling, then softened and finally came over and took a little. She ate it hesitantly. Jenna and Emma were pigging out. This was a good two pounds of fish meat and one side was almost picked clean. Darcie figured out that she was going to get what the little piggy got and that it actually didn't taste bad, not fishy like old supermarket fish. She dug in and Mike had to hurry to keep up. He turned the fish and scraped off the skin on that side. The girls finally slowed a bit and the last few bits slowly disappeared.

The four leaned back, full for the first time in days. Mike surveyed the girls. They seemed happy for the moment. Considering all they had through in the last 48 hours, it was a wonder. Keeping them active and occupied was the only way to keep them from moping and grief. Not that the grief was inappropriate, but survival came first.

Mike knew he needed to have the girls obedient. They were teens and probably did all the teen eye-rolling for their stupid parents back home. But here, he needed them to do it his way so he could help keep them alive. Here there was danger whether or not the girls knew it.

Their natural reaction was to look up to authority, represented now by Mike. He had learned this in the army. If every man did what he thought was right under the circumstances, they all died. It was only by doing your job in the scheme that allowed everyone to survive. You could have initiative, but only within the plan, someone else's plan. He had learned that in the mountains of Afghanistan. If you did your job exactly and the man next to you did his, you could go into those rugged mountains, kill the enemy who wasn't as disciplined, and get back out. Life meant following the leader, thinking about your tasks, and carrying them out, even when you were so scared you felt like burying yourself in the rocks.

Planes were quartering the seas along the track the missing passenger plane had planned to fly. Their radios were tuned to the emergency beacon channel. But the pilot had seen the weather on his radar and had turned west before he had run into the weather hoping to loop around it. He was well off track. And the emergency beacon on the plane was under ten feet of seawater. The searchers slowly expanded their tracks but still they found nothing. The rescue agencies finally decided that the plane must have gone down in the open ocean. The search was called off.

Mike kept them busy. There were still times when he would see a tear and he would say nothing. There were times when the girls would all be morose as they remembered. It was to be expected and not unhealthy. They settled into a routine.

Mike had assigned tasks. The girls foraged wood for the fire, jackfruit and breadfruit for the table, though they didn't actually have a table. Mike brought coconuts and fished. Darcie, a little acrobat, figured out how to climb the palms better than Mike and appropriated the job of supplying coconuts from him, proud of her ingenuity.

Their feet hardened, their skin darkened until they didn't need the sunscreen. Mike started going without his briefs and shirt which startled the girls at first. The clothes were more trouble than they were worth in the hot humid climate of the island. The first couple days, the girls stared while pretending not too. In a few days, they rarely noticed anymore.

Pretty soon, they weren't always looking up at the sky wondering if the plane was coming. They settled into life on the island.

It was their first periods on the island that changed things for the girls. The little nylon panties weren't comfortable anyway and the bras irritated their skin in the humid jungle. When their periods started, all within one day, the panties became a hindrance. There were no feminine products on the island. Darcie was first to toss her panties aside followed by her bra.

"What are you doing?" Jenna asked.

"Throwing them away. Mike goes naked. I can too," she said clasping arms across her chest.

"No you can't," Jenna said stomping her foot. "I'll tell..." There was a pause as she realized again, there was no one to tell.

Emma had come over as the sisters argued. "Jenna, I want to throw mine away too. Please. They scratch all the time." She tossed her bra down.

Jenna's panties were stained and dirty and seemed like they would never be clean again. Emma and Darcie were pleading with their eyes. "Oh..." Jenna looked around. She pushed her own panties off and tossed her bra in the small pile of stained clothes. "I guess we'll be savages," Jenna said smiling. Emma hooted and tossed her panties on the pile of discarded clothes.

Mike was surprised to see three naked nymphs when he returned from fishing. He had caught two good size fish. When the sea wasn't running high, he had found the fishing on the seaward side of the reef much better. Dinner that night was a feast of fish, breadfruit, and coconut milk. Mike couldn't help but think about the girls in a new way. Up until this moment, he had been much more concerned with survival. Seeing them all sitting around naked, he couldn't help but notice just how sexy they were.

Jenna of course was already a woman, with her dark hair and flashing eyes, full breasts and hips and dark triangle between her legs. He caught flashes of labia between her legs as she sat and moved around. Darcie was younger and smaller, but no less sexy with her tighter pointed breasts and small patch of hair. Emma caused Mike to struggle with himself. She was too young, he thought. But there was something undeniably sexy about how she moved, the alluring way she smiled at him.

Unknown to Mike all three girls were having exactly the same thoughts that night. The freedom, the naughtiness of sitting around naked with a sexy man like Mike, their savior, provider, and hero, the girls did all know that Mike had saved them, made their thoughts turn to sex. They surreptitiously looked at that fleshy staff between his legs. All three wondered what it would look like erect, what it would feel like inside them, what it would be like to have Mike make love to them. The sexual tension was electric in the air that night, but each thought it was just them that felt it and hoped the others didn't notice how they were behaving.