Island Jumper: An Archipelago Series

by M H Ryan

  It clamped down on the spear and pulled at it. I held on and pushed back on it, looking for my knife. At the same time, the other boar got back onto its feet and snorted at me as I wrestled with its friend.

  “Turn it to your right,” Aubrey called out from the raft.

  I rotated the water pig, and then a spear thudded against the side of the beast. It pulled a few more times against my spear before giving in and collapsing to the sand.

  The last boar snorted and growled. I swung the spear so the pointy tip was just a few feet from its face.

  “Don’t do it,” I said. “Just get out of here.”

  It was gone with emotion, though. It oozed from it like a sickness, a mixture of so many things, but the underlying feeling I got from it was that it wanted to kill me and then eat me.

  The boar leaped to the side, trying to get around my spear, but in one quick motion, I stuck it, ending its life. I pulled the spear out of its body and then scanned the forest for more of them.

  “You okay?” I called to Sherri as I scanned the forest.

  She stood on the branch, looking horrified at the carnage below. “What the hell is going on here?”

  She looked pale, her eyes rolled back, and she wobbled on the branch.

  “Oh shit,” I said as I ran to her.

  She crumbled down onto the branch, grabbing it loosely with her hands and then slipped off the side. I held out my arms like a basket and caught her, sending me to my ass on the sand, but I held her tight and regained my balance enough to keep her from touching the ground. She moved her head around and blinked a few times. She had the longest eyelashes I think I’d ever seen.

  “What happened?” Sherri said softly.

  “It’s okay, I got you,” I said.

  She looked up at me with slow blinks, as if she was coming out of a dream.

  “Did I fall?”

  “Yeah, I caught you. You okay?”

  “I think so,” she glanced up at me with these deep, grayish colored eyes that I felt I could drown in. “You saved me. Thank you!” She wrapped her arms behind my neck and hugged me.

  “You think you can stand?”

  She nodded and I lowered my arm, setting her feet on the sand. I kept a hand on her, making sure she was steady. She swayed and gripped my hand. I held her firm until I felt her get her feet back. It also gave me a chance to take her in. She was probably slightly older than Benji and Sherri, and she too had an athletic build, but would probably never be a gymnast with her large breasts and larger frame. She was nearly as tall as me, about six feet in height. Most of the height came from her incredibly long legs. They seemed to glow in the sun as if she had polished them. She also was no stranger to the sun, with a dark tan. Much like Aubrey, though, she looked almost too good. Not that I was complaining. Each of these women could have been pulled straight out of a video game fantasy, and I was alone, with three of them.

  “Sherri!” Benji and Aubrey said, running through the water to her.

  The three girls hugged each other, and I could see the love they held for one another. It warmed me and got my mind off the hate in the deep blue surrounding us.

  After a few seconds, they all turned to me. “Get in here,” Benji said.

  I joined in, and I didn’t need any sixth sense to feel the energy and love from them as we all embraced.

  “What happened?” Sherri said, taking a step back. “The ship crashed or something?”

  Over the next few minutes, we found out Sherri had woken up on the beach right under the tree we found her in, and a pack of boars had attacked her. She climbed the tree and had been there all day. Benji and I shared looks. How could two people now have missed an entire day? One was a fluke, but two was a trend. I didn’t know what it meant, but I didn’t like it.

  “Well, you know what?” Sherri said with a big smile. “Who gives a shit? I mean, come on, this place is amazing! We have friends and a hot guy with us. I was looking for an adventure, and now, we are on the craziest adventure ever! We’re like freaking castaways. This could be the coolest thing we do our whole lives!”

  She was bouncing with excitement, then she swayed again, but Benji held her up on her feet. She brushed it off and kept smiling. I didn’t fail to notice the mention of me as the hot guy, either.

  “Yeah, maybe if I had my cell phone and a swim-up bar, and a room to go back to,” Aubrey said. “But we are in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the ocean, and we don’t even know how we got here. Plus, these two have been here for two days, and not one ship or plane…nothing. We could die out here, Sherri, and you think it’s awesome?”

  “Jack won’t let us die,” Benji said. “He’s helped us get this far. He’s rescued our friend and fought off beasts of land and water. Now, with Sherri here, I think we have even a better chance of making it.”

  “Yeah,” Sherri said. “Fuck the rescue ship. I hope they don’t come here for days. I say we explore this island and make it our bitch.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “First, we need to make some more weapons. We don’t know if there are more boars in there or not.”

  “Yes, weapons,” Sherri said. “You guys were amazing with those spears and arrows. How the heck did you make a bow and arrow, Benji?”

  “Just something I learned from archery camp.”

  “This one time in archery camp…” Sherri said and then snickered.

  Benji laughed and said, “There was actually this one girl who was the loudest masturbator. I’m not sure what she had under her sheets, but she moaned loud enough to make half the cabin go into a fit of giggles.”

  “Fucking archery camp,” Sherri said. “I knew you girls were freaky out there. Makes me wish I took up the bow instead of track.”

  “Oh, you’re in track as well?” I asked Sherri and motioned to Aubrey.

  “Yeah, I’m not some all-around awesomeness like Aubrey here. I’m a jumper.”

  “Like long jump and triple jump?”

  “Pretty much,” Sherri said. “At least I won’t have to hear Coach O’Brien rail at us on Monday about drinking too much and ruining our muscle mass.”

  “Spend the first hour in the muscle rehabilitation center,” Aubrey said in an Irish accent.

  Sherri laughed and put a hand on Aubrey’s shoulder.

  “But really, guys, we’re lucky,” Sherri said. “I say we make this most of this place and try to have fun with it. This is the kind of shit you tell your grandkids about.”

  You had to love Sherri and her optimism. She just had that magnetism that drew you to her, and it wasn’t just her looks but everything about her. I was glad she was on the team.

  “Something’s in the water,” Benji said, pointing at the waves.

  I grabbed my knife off the sand and looked into blue. The small waves rolled onto the shore with some white foam moving around, and then I spotted what Benji had seen. The top of a gator’s head. It floated in the shallow water, watching us as it bobbed up and down with the gentle waves. A few seconds later, another joined it.

  In the next minute, a dozen more appeared, bobbing up and down in the small waves. My knowledge on gators extended to a half-dozen episodes of Steve Irwin and a few GIFs of gators grabbing gazelles from a drinking hole. These guys were large and watching us, but I didn’t feel the anger from them like the sharks and boars. These guys needed something…a strong desire pulsed from them.

  “Alligators? For real?” Aubrey whined. “What the hell is next?”

  “Those are crocodiles,” Sherri said. “Gators are freshwater.”

  “Oh yeah, weren’t you studying oceanography,” Aubrey asked.

  “Yeah, sort of,” Sherri said. “I think they want the pigs we slaughtered.”

  “Oh, that’s what it is,” I said, thinking of their desire—they wanted the food.

  “What, what is?” Sherri asked.

  “Nothing, just a feeling I had,” I said.

  We backed up near the forest edge. I handed my spear
to Sherri and then gripped the knife in my hand.

  “We need to get to the raft,” I said, thinking of the knots I used to tie the bags to the raft.

  The raft floated in the shallows as the small waves rolled under it, sending fruit and coconuts careening off the edges of the boat. A coconut floated between a pair of crocs, but they weren’t after our produce.

  “There’s too many of them,” Benji said as another half-dozen had appeared.

  “And their skin is tough. I’m not sure this spear will penetrate it,” Sherri said, looking at the dull tip on it.

  “Can’t this damn place give us a break?” Aubrey said.

  “We need to make a run for the raft and grab the supplies. Even if they are only after these boars, with that many of them, they could destroy our supplies just by trampling alone,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Benji said.

  “You guys,” Aubrey said. “This isn’t worth it. One bite from those things, and you’re done.”

  “The bite isn’t the worst of it,” Sherri said. “They bite, latch on, and then twist their bodies around, dragging you into the water, breaking all the bones of whatever they’ve grabbed. They call it a death roll.”

  “We can’t lose those supplies,” I said. “You ready, Benji?”

  “Yes,” Benji said.

  “Okay, now!”

  Chapter 10

  I took a few rushed steps to the raft and began untying the bags. Splashes from the water drew my attention to a rather hungry croc. Our actions had been taken as aggressive, and now they were going to attack. I wasn’t sure how I knew this, but I just felt it. The big-mouthed reptile was smaller than the one I’d seen in that cave next to Mount Baldy, but once it got moving through the water, its friends joined the party. Now we had a group of crocs, and I wondered if there was some quirky name for that—a flock of ravens was a murder, tigers came in an ambush, and a group of owls were a parliament, perhaps they were a croc pot.

  “They’re coming!” I said, shaking myself from my random, useless thoughts.

  Sherri and Aubrey were standing right next to us with their spears.

  “Just keep untying,” I told Benji as she stared at the incoming crocs.

  She nodded and pulled the first bag free. I was right behind her and yanked mine loose. The crocs were close now, and I didn’t even need to look. They had a hunger that felt palpable. Some hadn’t eaten in months, while others were jumping in for an easy meal. I wasn’t sure if they considered us on the menu or not. The raft lifted up as a croc tried to climb onto the back of it. It had its long snout and scaly two front feet on the edge of the raft. Its greater weight pushed our end of the raft up in the air like a seesaw. Our harvest rolled off the back and into the water, giving the croc a cover of mangos and oranges.

  “Shit! Our food,” Benji said, moving toward it.

  “Forget it, just get the next bag,” I said. We could always get more fruit, but there wasn’t any way we were going to find a duct tape tree.

  Aubrey, right behind us, yelled out a battle cry and thrust her spear at the croc. The tip hit the scaly hide of the croc but slid off the thick skin. The croc did stop its advance, though, and hung on the edge of the raft like a person might on the edge of a pool.

  I pulled my second bag free just as Benji did the same.

  “Go!” I yelled, pushing the girls away from the water.

  We ran through the shallows, kicking up a flurry of water as we high-stepped to the sandy shore. Sherri and Aubrey ran in front while Benji and I were right behind them. We stopped behind a thatch of short, green bushes that offered good cover but were low enough we could peek over the tops of them.

  The crocs ignored the raft and swam to the shore. They seemed graceful and fluid in the water, but as they emerged from their liquid habitat, they took on a geriatric act, each hobbling step loaded with effort. They descended upon the dead hogs, showing us just how deadly those elongated mouths were. Benji groaned, and Sherri laughed as the crocs feasted on the first hog. Their big jaws smashed the bones in loud cracks. It must have been an orchestra of dinner bells to the other crocs, because the ones getting out from the water moved much quicker to the other dead boars.

  The crocs were huge and terrifying, with those dinosaur-looking legs and a mouth that would fit over my whole torso. One of the crocs chomped down on one of the hogs, thrashed, and ripped a chunk off, gulping it down in a few bites before going back to its meal. Another croc approached and clamped onto the hog, pulling it with ease into the water, leaving a trail of blood over the sand.

  Now there were half a dozen crocs on the beach, each vying for the next boar. The arguments about who got what seemed to be settled quickly as the crocs pulled and yanked at the boars, breaking free large chunks of meat and bone in the process. Each bite sent the sounds of bones crushing and liquids spilling to us. A gruesome display, even for a deckhand that had seen many fish slaughtered on the boat when the captain rented the space to fisherman. I just hoped the easy meal was all they were after.

  Thankfully, with the last boar pulled into the waters, the crocs retreated, and soon, once again, the ocean looked peaceful and normal. Well, except for the food we had gathered. It now bobbed out further from the shore, being carried by a current out to the sea. In any other waters, I would have just started swimming out after it, but the number of warning signs needed to display the hazards of swimming in these waters would have blocked off the beach like a border wall.

  We stood for a minute, watching the waves wash over the leftover bits and pieces of their meal, looking like some grim aftermath of a Thanksgiving dinner table. Each wave pulled with it more of the gore and blood, and soon only a single bloody streak was left on the sand.

  “Well, I guess we aren’t eating bacon tonight,” Aubrey said.

  I chuckled and looked to each of them, making sure they were okay.

  “Dang,” Sherri said, out of breath. “That was intense.” A smile spread over her face, and she yelled out in joy. “And fucking awesome. Oh my God, I feel like I haven’t lived yet. I mean, this is life or death shit out here…” She looked to be almost in ecstasy as her hands slid down her stomach. She touched the edge of her bikini bottoms, rolling down the top a quarter inch before releasing a long breath and letting go.

  I swallowed hard, and my voice cracked as I said, “There doesn’t seem to be a boring moment here, that’s for sure.”

  Sherri licked her lips as she stared at me. I averted my eyes and decided to take an interest in the forest around us. The forest was much denser than the one on the big island, and everything seemed wet and lush, green with thick ferns and plants with huge leaves. Aubrey seemed to take an interest in one leaf in particular, rubbing it between her fingers and turning it over. One thing it seemed to be missing was the fruits and coconuts of the bigger island, but if the island had fresh water, that’d be the first major step of survival.

  “How about we do a bit of exploring,” I said. “See if we can’t find a water source here.”

  “Aye aye, captain,” Benji said with a smile.

  “I’ve been stuck in a damn tree all day, so stretching my legs out sounds like a great idea,” Sherri said.

  Not twenty feet into the forest, Aubrey stopped next to a cleared spot on the forest floor about three feet around. I’d seen about a half a dozen of them since we ran into the woods. I thought they were just spots that hadn’t been overgrown yet, but that seemed impossible in the middle of the forest like this.

  “Croc nursery,” Sherri said. “I bet if you dug down, you’d find crocodile eggs. They dig a hole and can lay dozens in them.”

  “Are you telling me there are dozens of those things under our feet?” Benji said, tiptoeing back from the clearing.

  “Hundreds,” I said. “I saw a bunch of these coming in.”

  “Me too,” Sherri said. “But it’s not like a little baby croc can hurt us. Plus, crocs aren’t really the best parents. They don’t care for th
eir young. They’re left on their own from birth. Well, normally.”

  “Nothing is the norm out here,” Benji said. “They could be pissed off we’re stomping around on their babies right now. They could be coming back here to protect them and eat us.” She glanced back at the beach.

  “I doubt it,” Sherri said. “Crocs don’t eat very often, and I bet they just got their fill.”

  Aubrey bent down and inspected another plant, turning its leaves around and getting close to the ground.

  “What you looking for, girl? Or you just showing off that ass of yours?” Sherri said.

  Aubrey got up and wiped her hands off on her jean shorts. “You notice the lack of insects out here?” Sherri said. “A place like this should be swarming with them, but I haven’t seen so much as a fly.”

  I hadn’t thought of it, but she was right. On all three islands, we hadn’t encountered the small stuff. No crickets, spiders, or sand flies. The only thing we’d encountered was the large, predator type. But if there was a food chain on these islands, and there had to be, then the bottom was as vital as anything to the top. I mean, there can’t be a food chain without the bottom.

  “Look, I think I found your insects,” Benji said, lifting a large green leaf up.

  Under the leaf was what looked like a slug. It hung onto the bottom of the leaf as it nudged closer to Benji.

  “It’s gross,” Benji said as Aubrey inspected it.

  “The soil’s probably filled with worms and such,” Aubrey said. “And the flowers need something to pollinate them, so there has to be some kind of flying insect. We just haven’t seen them yet.”

  “I, for one,” Benji said as she took a big step over a fern, “am glad we don’t have a bunch of bugs bugging us. We get attacked enough as is. Don’t need some creepy critters to add to the mix.”

  “See! Another reason this is going to be awesome,” Sherri said. “We don’t have to worry about creepy critters here.”

  “Yeah, just mutant crocs, boars, and sharks. Oh, and we have no water left and our food is taking sailing lessons. Yeah, it’s just awesome here,” Aubrey said.