by M H Ryan
A moment later, a lightning bolt struck the deck, blinding and deafening in its power. The women around me screamed and scattered.
I jolted awake. The recollection of events leading to the storm raged in my mind, and I took slow breaths as I glanced around the island, making sure we didn’t have any visitors.
The moon hadn’t moved much, so I didn’t think I was out for more than half an hour, but a whole lot could happen in that span of time.
I stayed up through the night, making sure we weren’t surprise attacked by tree-climbing pigs. After seeing what I’d seen yesterday, the realm of what was possible had widened by a large margin. Tree pigs weren’t my only concern, as there were things in the ocean and in the sky that were eating those boars like popcorn. If they were the rodents of these islands, I figured the food chain went high and wide, and Benji and I wouldn’t be more than pancakes on a platter.
The wildlife seemed to be more aggressive here, as if our mere presence was pissing off the ecosystem. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I swore I thought I could feel them in the ocean, swimming, and crawling on the ground. There was so many of them. I’d never had this feeling before, and I wondered if I had a head injury from the boat wreck. I wasn’t ready to start telling Benji that I had some Aquaman complex building. Shit, was I losing it?
A rescue couldn’t happen soon enough and for more than just for my sanity—I almost died last night.
Thankfully, the emergency blanket held up to the harsh winds of last night’s storm, and now that the sun had risen over the waters, I got a good look at the island. It had fared surprisingly well, even with the pounding waves rolling all the way across is. In fact, it had washed away all evidence of our existence. The fire pit, the footprints, the broken bamboo and gathered wood was all gone.
The gentle morning breeze pushed against the blanket above us, rolling over it and causing a loosened end to flap. Thankfully, the storm hadn’t lasted long, and the weather had been calm for most of the night, but I still welcomed the rising sun like a warm hug. It would dry us out and give us the light we’d need to accomplish the next goal.
I looked down at Benji, still asleep on my chest. Even though we had lots to do, I didn’t want to wake her just yet. She looked peaceful and unaware that we were stranded on a tiny island. She could dream for a minute longer.
Benji stirred and then woke up quickly, jerking back from me in confusion. I grabbed her right before she fell off the edge of our raised platform. She glanced down to the sand a few feet below us, and I felt her whole body sag with a sigh.
“I sort of thought I’d wake up back home or on the ship,” she said and stood up and yelled to the sky. “Where’s my helicopter, motherfuckers?”
“They might be inbound right now,” I said.
She rubbed the back of her neck and stared at the cloudless blue sky for a minute. I’d been looking since the sun peeked over the horizon, and there was no signs of aircraft. Not even jet trails. Nothing. Ocean was the same—just a blank, blue expanse without a single ship in sight.
“I don’t know, Jack,” Benji said, sitting down on the edge of the platform, her legs dangling. “If that beacon thing isn’t working, we might be screwed, and this is one tiny island to be stranded on. Freaking water pigs…what the hell is this place?”
I slide over next to her, my feet hanging off the edge, and she leaned on my shoulder. I put my arm over her shoulders, and she scooted closer to me.
“This could be like a Galapagos Island,” I said. “Charles Darwin based some of his theory of evolution on that island. He found that in a cut-off environment, the animals would adapt and change based on what helped them survive. This could be some isolated place where things took a different evolutionary path.”
“Great, so we’re on some Lost in Time type place,” she said.
I smiled at the reference. “Possibly. I really don’t know, but wherever we are, we’re going to make it through this, together.”
“Well, if we can make it through that night, I think we can make it just through about anything.”
“And I have a plan,” I said, and she perked up at this. “We’re getting off this island, Benji, and going to the bigger island.”
“The bigger island,” Benji said, looking out at our neighbor. “Good, spending another night here was not something I was looking forward to.”
I was glad I wouldn’t have to do any convincing. I just stared at her for a moment in the morning sunlight. She had such a soft, beautiful look. All your worries in the world could get lost in her smooth skin and gentle smile. Her eyes had a sparkle to them, that tricky middle ground of intelligence and optimism.
“You’re staring,” she said with a smile.
“And why wouldn’t I? You are beautiful and an amazing person. How many would take this situation as well as you?”
She laughed and said, “Most of my sisters are tougher than me.” She looked out into the ocean. “I hope they’re okay.”
We sat in silence for a minute, and then I reached into one of the bags and pulled out a two MREs.
“Breakfast?” she asked as I handed her the green bag.
“Of champions,” I said. I wasn’t exactly sure what these would taste like. It wasn’t as if you ever ate such things outside of the service or when camping, and the times I went with my dad, he brought or made food. “We’re going to need all the energy we can get if we’re going to get off this island today.”
“Good, I want a task,” Benji said.
She wasn’t impressed with the chili-mac MRE for breakfast, but it didn’t taste too bad to me. All things considered, it was actually pretty good. We drank a bag of water each while we discussed the plan for building the raft that would get us off this island.
“And you think this bamboo raft is going to float?” Benji asked.
“Yeah, bamboo is perfect for floating. They hold a lot of air in them, and they are fairly light. If we didn’t have that bamboo patch on this island, we’d have to swim to that next island.”
“Swimming isn’t my strength,” Benji said, glancing at the ocean. “At least that monster shark isn’t around anymore.”
I needed to teach her how to swim, but first things first. “You think you can work on making a bow and arrows?”
“Sure, but I’ll need that knife a few times.”
“Awesome, we’ll make a few weapons first, just in case we have visitors again, and then I’ll start building the raft.”
We hopped off the platform and onto the sandy island. There was a light breeze that kicked up the scent of the place. I’d never smelled air so sweet around an ocean before. I breathed it in and felt better about our tasks for the day. We weren’t going to let these islands beat us.
Over the next hour, I cut up skinny sticks of bamboo for Benji to make her bow and arrows. I wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to make one and couldn’t wait to see what she came up with. We also made a few more spears before she went back to the platform to work on her project. I was glad to see her up on the platform; she’d be safer up there while I made the raft down here.
The thick bamboo wasn’t nearly as easy to cut down as the smaller pieces, but I wanted to make sure we had a large enough raft that it would hold the both of us and our supplies. After a few tries, I found I could cut about two-thirds of the way through the bamboo before using brute strength to break the rest of it down. It was some of the hardest work I’d ever done, but in about an hour, I had a twenty thick bamboo sticks that would make up the base of the raft.
I dragged them to the flattest part of our island, near where our fire pit had been, and laid them out.
“Check this out,” Benji said, standing on the platform.
To my surprise, Benji held up a bow and pulled back on the string. The bamboo bent way back as she pulled it tight.
“Wow!” I said, dropping another bamboo stick on the pile. “That is amazing. Good job.”
She smiled and shrugged. “It w
as nothing.”
She pulled on the string again, and the muscles in her arms and stomach tensed. Good God, she was amazing. She caught me staring, and I busied myself looking at the pile of bamboo I’d made.
“I bet this bow has fifty pounds on it,” she said. “Once I get some arrows made, it will do some serious damage. Not like shark-killing damage, but if those hairy water pigs come back, we’ll be having bacon for dinner.”
“That’s incredible. You’re amazing, Benji,” I said. “You think you can make some arrows before I finish this raft?”
“I guess we’ll see,” she said and sifting through the various sticks she had laid out in front of her.
The raft wasn’t a complex design, but I had a shit-ton of work ahead of myself if we wanted to get to the next island before nightfall.
Over the next few hours, I had about twenty logs cut to length, and I had started to tie the pieces together with the rope we had. I used a floor tie knot, binding all the logs to three base logs that gave them support. I was sure there were better knots but none that I could think of at the time.
It was a simple pattern of weaving up and down between the logs and making sure they were tightly bound. I tested each knot to make sure they weren’t going to fall apart on the ocean. Benji had made a dozen arrows before I finished the raft, so she hopped off the platform and asked how she could help.
“Can you help me bind this?” I asked and then showed her how to make the knots and run her section of rope through the logs.
My hand ached by the time we were done, and the sun had traveled across much of the sky during the process. I figured we had maybe five hours of sunlight left, and we still had more stuff to do. I stood on the raft, testing the strength of my knots and getting a general feeling of it. The raft was about ten feet long and about six feet wide. I hoped it would be big enough to be sturdy in the water, but we’d find out about that soon.
“We still need to make two paddles and a long pole for shoving off. I think the water will be shallow enough for most of the trip,” I said.
“Well, a pole is simple, and for the paddle, I can use a bamboo stick as the pole and then duct tape a paddle on the end using a halved coconut shell?”
“That could work really well,” I said, and then thought of something. “We need to make a marker, too, in case someone spots this island. Then they’ll know where we went.”
“Yes,” she said. “We can make an arrow out of rocks on the white sand, pointing to the bigger island.”
“That sounds perfect,” I said. “Let’s make our paddles and pole then we can move onto the marker.”
The paddles weren’t as easy to make as we thought. The coconut shells wouldn’t adhere to the bamboo well and kept falling apart. In the end, we took a sturdy bamboo stick and duct-taped two larger chunks of bamboo to the bottom, making a silvery square of tape at the bottom. It held together and was still light enough to handle properly.
With the raft packed, we went to making the marker. We spent half an hour gathering and placing the darkest rocks we could find in the arrow, pointing to the island we were heading. We spelled out SOS next to the arrow.
With the bags set and tied to the center on the raft, our spears and arrows loaded, we pushed the raft to the water’s edge. Small waves rolled in a few feet and lifted the front of the raft off the sand a few inches. I looked to Benji and then around at the island that had given us life for a day.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Yes. You think we can get there before dark?” Benji asked, looking at the sky.
“If we paddle hard, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“You think there are…creatures over there?” Benji asked.
“If there are, I know of a badass archer,” I said.
“This is it, then,” Benji said, looking around the small island. “We’re leaving it.”
“Hey, we’re going to be fine,” I said, sensing her trepidation. “We’re going to a place that can support us better. This is a good thing, Benji.”
“I know. It’s time to go. I’m ready.”
Together we pushed the raft further into the water. I kept a keen eye on the waters, looking for that dorsal fin or anything else that might be in the water. The front end of the raft lifted up and floated as we pushed it further into the water.
“Get on,” I said.
Benji climbed on and got near the front as I kept pushing it from the back. Once I got to knee-deep water, I jumped up on the back of the raft and climbed aboard.
“We built this,” I said, looking at the raft.
“Hell yeah, we did.”
It actually worked. We had a raft. I mean, I knew it would work, but to actually see it working under my feet and in the ocean felt very different than building it in my head. I took a few cautious steps around my end of the raft. It rocked hard against my weight, and Benji stayed on her hands and knees, bracing herself. After a few seconds, I got the feeling of how it balanced and grabbed the pole and thrust it into the water, pushing off the sandy bottom with it. The effort sent us away from the island and into deeper waters. I’d use the pole as long as I could and switch to paddling when the waters were too deep. I sent the pole back into the water when I heard Benji scream.
“Shark!” Benji yelled.
Dammit, couldn’t even get a hundred feet off the shoreline.
Chapter 5
Benji, on her knees, raised her bow, an arrow nocked, and pulled back the string. My God, she looked amazing, like a warrior goddess.
“Hold your shots until you have to,” I said.
“If it gets close, I’ll put one right through its eye.”
I glanced at the few spears we brought. They were stuffed in between bamboo shafts and sticking up next to me, ready for the grabbing.
The shark swam with its gray dorsal fin carving through the water, edging closer to the raft. I yanked back up the pole and sent it right back into the water, letting it slide through my hands until it hit the bottom. Then I pushed hard, while keeping an eye on the shark. It seemed hostile, and I could feel as much from it, but it also seemed curious, as if not knowing what we were pissed it off.
Benji kept her arrow locked in position. She followed the shark in the water with it, rotating close to me before stopping and lowering her aim around me as the shark circled our raft.
Push and go. I slammed the pole into the water as the shark swam around the raft. We had to keep moving.
Then the shark’s fin dipped under the water and disappeared.
“Where did it go?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
A shark fin wasn’t the scariest thing in the water, the absence of one gave me the chills. The thing was under us, somewhere, I could almost feel it down there. Our raft floated along as Benji and I waited for something to happen.
A thump sounded from under my feet.
“Oh shit,” I said, jumping up as water pushed up between the slots before retreating back to the ocean.
The raft lifted enough to make me balance check.
“It’s hitting us from underneath,” I said.
Another thump, and few splashes of water came from between the bamboo, but the raft held together. It shoved against the bottom again, this time hard enough that I went to my knees for balance. I went back to working the pole from my knees, but I had half the leverage. I knew outrunning the shark wasn’t an option but the quicker we got to land the better.
The shark pushed against the bottom again, lifting up the boat half a foot. How freaking strong was this thing? I steadied myself before pushing off again, propelling the raft forward. We just needed to get to land and away from this damned shark.
“There,” Benji said, pointing at the shark fin slicing through the water away from us.
“Maybe, it’s had enough,” I said. “Get out of here!” I screamed at the shark.
“It’s coming back,” Benji said.
I pulled the pole up, letting it fall to
the deck, and grabbed a spear. The shark made a few swift motions with its tail, splashing up some water as it rushed straight for us. In a burst of speed, it rose from the water, mouth wide, its white, triangle teeth bit into the side of the raft. Wood cracked and water rushed onto the raft as the thing chomped down. I reared back my spear, but Benji fired first.
The arrow struck it right in the eye, just as she had said. I thrust my spear at it, striking a glancing blow across its back. It let go of the raft and sank back into the water. I jumped with my spear, stabbing the top of its head before it slipped deeper.
I pulled my wooden spear out of the water and held it out, expecting the teethed demon to pop back up at any second. The tip of the spear, smeared with its blood, dripped into the ocean. A new emotion came from the sea—fear. It reeked of it, mixed with anger like a cheap cocktail.
“You okay?” I asked, glancing back at Benji.
“Yeah,” she said, breathing hard.
She already had another arrow nocked and ready to go. I let out a long breath and took a step back from the edge. “That’s right! And don’t come back!” I shouted at the dark water, shaking a fist.
“Yeah!” Benji yelled.
After we didn’t see it for a minute, I turned to Benji and started laughing.
“You hit it right in the freaking eye!” I said in amazement.
“Yeah, but you stabbed the shit out of it,” Benji said, cracking a smile.
“I don’t think it’s coming back after that,” I said, feeling good about our shark victory. “Go tell your friends they can’t mess with us,” I yelled into the water, stabbing the spear back between the bamboo.
I grabbed the pole and thrust it back into the water, pushing us toward the larger island. We worked hard the next thirty minutes and made good time across the calm water. I only wished I was as calm. I couldn’t stop looking for that dorsal fin. Benji constantly scanned the water as well.
