Chapter 5

When they arrived back at the lifeboat, Jessica was ready for them. She immediately lifted his former Navy sidearm and pointed it at James. James ignored her while he put down the water pouches and unslung his waist bag. He had to get within ten feet of her to do this, but she just kept the gun trained on him until he stood up and looked at her.

"You're not going to be ordering anyone around anymore!" Jessica yelled nervously. "And you're not going to be creeping up on us when we're naked—or joining us for that matter. Not anymore!"

James smiled at her, taking a step towards her, "You ever handle a gun, Jessica?"

Jessica nodded, "Of course I have!"

James took another step towards her, "You're lying, Jessica. I can tell."

Jessica shook her head and warned, "You stay away from me, I'll shoot you, I swear it!!"

James shook his head, and took another step so that the gun was pushed right up against his chest, "No you won't, Jessica."

"Back off, I swear I'll shoot!" she cried.

James put his left hand in his pocket and withdrew a black metal rectangular box. He held it up for her to see, "How are you going to shoot me without any bullets?"

Then he quickly swept his hand out, ripped the gun from her hand, inserted the magazine and brought it up to bear on her. Jessica gulped in fear.

James shook his head pitifully. He made sure the safety was on before putting the gun in one of his large pockets. Then he smiled at Jessica before he punched her right in the stomach. It wasn't a full-force punch—mostly because despite his anger at this fucking twat, he still wasn't the kind of man who liked to hit women.

When he'd first joined the Navy, his aversion to hitting women had somewhat been exploited by instructors and his female classmates until he was forced to learn that sometimes it really is okay to hit a girl—when she's trying to kill you or your friends being the basic objection to the rule.

The punch was hard enough to knock Jessica on her ass and have her gasping for breath, but for the first time since he learned when it was okay to hit a girl, he felt no guilt about it. In fact, he'd had to hold back from hitting her harder. He wanted to kick the shit out of her.

"Julie, would you please search this cunt? I'll bet she's taken something that wasn't hers again," James said.

Julie moved over to Jessica, who was simply trying to get her lungs to function properly again after having the wind knocked out of her. She half-heartedly tried to wave Julie off, but didn't quite have control over herself. A moment later, Julie stood up and handed him an empty granola bar wrapper and his pocketknife.

James laughed, "I didn't even realize this was missing too. Now I'm really pissed. And you stole food from all of us again. Do you remember what I told you on the boat!? I was serious. I would have fucking kicked your ass out of the boat and left you to drown in the goddamned ocean, because stealing food and water from the rest of us is not just stealing—you're trying to kill the rest of us."

Jessica wheezed, "No, I—"

"Shut the fuck up, you stupid cow," James ordered.

He took a deep breath and sighed, "Well, I can't force you off the island, so I'll give you a choice. You can swear right now to obey every command I give you—and I mean every single goddamned one—and then strip down out of those clothes, lean against that tree, and take five lashes with my belt across your back from me and each of these women that you repeatedly stole food from, then you can stay. Your other choice is that you get your ass up, we'll give you two water pouches and a breadfruit, and then you fucking leave."

Jessica spat, "I'd never let you hit me again, and you can't make me leave!"

James squatted down so he was nearly at her level and said, "Mark my words, you choose to stay, you're taking a beating if I have to tackle you and tie you to that goddamned tree. Only then we're going to beat you until you swear to obey or until you're fucking unconscious. Then when you're conscious again, the beating starts again."

Jessica's eyes flared wide when she realized he was telling the truth. She said, "I'm outta here then."

"Understand, I mean it," James said. "You leave and you stay away from us. Everything here and at the pool of water is ours. If you can't find another source of water, then you come back here and ask us for permission to get water from there."

"I left my clothes back at—"

"You forfeit everything else if you choose to leave. We'll use those clothes for rags or something. I'm sure we'll find something useful to do with them."

Jessica turned up her nose at him, frowning, but after a moment, she simply stood up and said, "Fine. Give me some water then."

Julie handed her two of the refilled water pouches and a breadfruit.

Jessica asked, "Natalie? Stacy? Do you girls want to come with me?"

James glanced at them, but both of them were shaking their heads like Jessica was nuts.

In the end, Jessica walked directly into the jungle, albeit in another direction than the direction of the pool.

For the next few minutes, everyone in camp was quiet as they processed what had happened. Julie made herself busy digging out a pit in the sand and making trips into the jungle to find rocks to line it. When James noticed what she was doing, he gathered up some of the firewood the teenagers had stockpiled and started building a fire. Natalie simply walked over to the lean-to and started petting Fred, who was surprisingly still lying on top of the overturned lifeboat. The sun was just beginning to set when Stacy broke the silence.

"Would you really kill her if she tried to steal from us again?"

James turned to look at her, and shrugged, "Probably not."

"Were you really going to ... beat her?"

James nodded, "That I was going to do."

Stacy chewed on this for a moment, but Natalie said coldly, "I wish she'd chosen to stay."

Julie nodded a few seconds later, "Yeah, I'd really like to stripe her ass."

James and Natalie burst out laughing, and soon Stacy and Julie were joining them. Once the fire was going, James pulled the fish he'd caught earlier out of the chest. He then used the multi-tool's screwdriver to loosen and remove one of the sides of the inside of the chest. He then set the piece of sheet metal across the fire and placed the fish on the metal.

Within minutes, the four of them were sharing the three fish he'd caught earlier. Only one of the fish was really big enough to feed anyone more than a morsel, but it still wasn't enough that there were any leftovers whatsoever.

By the time they were finished eating and had drank most of the water the sun was set and the only light was from the fire, the moon, and the stars. Throughout dinner and for several minutes afterward, the four of them were very quiet.

Finally, James was the one who broke the silence, "Tomorrow we'll build a signal fire, here on the beach and we'll keep a flare wrapped up in some leaves and buried to keep it dry and safe, and we'll gather a pile of leaves and ferns and stuff by the tree-line. The idea will be if someone sees a search plane—that is, a plane that is flying low, not a big jumbo jet ten thousand feet up, but ... well, you should be able to tell the difference. If you see a search plane or a ship passing by, you get some dry leaves and stuff under the signal fire, light the flare and use that to light the fire, then once it's really going good, you start dumping all the leaves on it you can until they're all gone. That will make the fire smoke like fucking crazy.