Island Jumper: An Archipelago Series

by M H Ryan

  “Drink some water first,” I said. “The water in the plastic bags has been filtered already.”

  One of the things I did overnight was to filter the water with the purification tablets we had. I had to use eight purification tablets on the couple of gallons of water we had left. I wasn’t sure how pure the water was coming from the spring, and if any of us got some waterborne illness out here, it could be deadly. Better to play it safe while we could.

  The tablets were just another item we had limited supplies of, and the truth was, the items were a comfort for us—things that we didn’t have to make, like rope, duct tape, and even the emergency blankets. The blankets were made of a sturdy material, but they weren’t meant to be used as a permanent shelter. The wind was already starting to widen the tears in them, and it wouldn’t be long before they were nothing more than tattered pieces. The same went with the rest of the supplies. They were limited and irreplaceable. We’d have to start thinking of the short and long term.

  “You okay?” Benji asked, putting a hand on the back of my arm.

  “Yeah, just running through what we need to do in my head,” I said.

  “You have one of those thinking faces,” Benji said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I can see you thinking on your face. It looks like you’re squinting at something, but you’re just concentrating. My dad was kind of like that. It took me a long time to understand he wasn’t an angry man, just thoughtful.”

  “Is your dad still…”

  “Yeah, he’s alive. He left my mom and me when I was thirteen. Haven’t really heard much from him since. I think he lives in Vegas now.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. The reason I grew to like his thinking face was that it wasn’t anything like his face when he was actually angry. There was no confusing that one.”

  “Waffles,” Aubrey said and jumped off the platform. “Eggs and bacon. I can just smell it.”

  Sherri took out two MRE bars and stared at their shiny wrappers. “These are the last two.”

  “That’s the last of our food?” Aubrey asked.

  “Stinking crocs took out all the mangos,” Benji said, shaking a fist. “If we had those, I could make us this nice mango breakfast pudding.”

  “Mango pudding?” Aubrey asked. “With what, mangos and magic?”

  “Hey, you’d be surprised what I can do with a mango.”

  “Yeah, stupid crocs,” I said. “But we have a good water source, and believe me, that’s more important right now. We can go a couple weeks without food if we have to, but we can’t go more than a few days without water.”

  “A couple weeks?” Aubrey said. “We could go back to the island I was on. I had plenty of food on it. I think I saw some onion plants as well and other stuff.”

  “Mangos!” Benji said. “We should go back there now and just get mangos this time.”

  “We’re not going back there just for your mango obsession,” Aubrey said.

  “It’s not an obsession,” Benji said defensively.

  “Really?” Aubrey said. “Remember when we put you in charge of snack for a mixer, and you made twelve different mango salsas and dips?”

  “There were twelve of us, and I thought of each person’s personality like a mango recipe. It was fun,” Benji said.

  “Wait, you made me some mango and jalapeno puree,” Aubrey said.

  “Because you’re sweet and spicy,” Benji said.

  “Oh my God,” Aubrey said, rolling her eyes.

  “I don’t remember mine,” Sherri said.

  “It was a mango cream cheese,” Benji said, looking at the ground.

  “What’s that represent?” Sherri asked. “My cheesy sweetness?”

  “It’s a recipe I created for my mom, the day after my dad left us,” Benji said. “Sherri, you seemed sad that week. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew that no one could be sad eating mango cream cheese spread over a cracker.”

  “Oh, wow, I’m sorry,” Sherri said. “I don’t think I even tried it, and now I want it more than anything in the world.”

  “If we get the chance, I’ll make it for you again,” Benji said.

  “Thank you,” Sherri said. “You’re an awesome friend, Benji, and I don’t think I told you that enough back at the house, but you’re one of my favorite people.”

  “Thanks,” Benji said.

  For a few minutes, we all focused on dividing the bars and eating them slowly. It was a comfortable silence that gave me time to come up with a plan to get mangos for Benji.

  “Aubrey, you see anything edible on this island?” Sherri asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Aubrey said. “The plants here are completely different. It’s freaking weird.”

  “Maybe because of the geyser,” Sherri said.

  “Could be, but the strange thing is, I haven’t seen one edible plant on this island yet. Even the palms aren’t the type that produces anything. The only thing I’ve seen is that slug Benji found.”

  “I’d rather die,” Sherri said.

  “This island has water, but I don’t see any food,” Aubrey said.

  “Well, Jack said that water is the most important thing, so we’re lucky to have found it,” Benji said.

  “That’s actually something I wanted to talk about this morning,” I said. “I think we should make this place our permanent home…you know, until we’re rescued. Nothing is more important than water, and this island is the only one that seems to have it in abundance. It also has wood and decent cover from the sun.”

  “No argument here,” Sherri said. “I wasn’t looking to be some island nomad.”

  Aubrey laughed. “Same here. The last thing I want to do is go back out on that water.”

  “Yeah,” I said faintly, stabbing the sand with my spear and looking out to the sea.

  “What is it?” Sherri asked.

  I sighed. “I think we should search for more people.”

  “What?” Aubrey exclaimed. “You want to go back into those waters? Are you crazy?”

  “We’ve been on three islands, and all three of them have held at least one of us. What’s to say these other islands don’t have more of your sisters on them?” I said.

  “I didn’t see anyone else on any of the other islands,” Aubrey said.

  “Yeah, but what if Sherri had been on the other side of this island, stuck in a tree we couldn’t see? She’d still be alone.”

  “That would have sucked,” Sherri said.

  “We are just finding a place we can be safe for rescue, and you want to go back on the waters, with sharks, crocs, freaking water pigs and who knows what else? We are safe here, Jack,” Aubrey said. “We can wait out the rescue here, build the search fire, and…”

  “Don’t you get it?” Sherri said. “We are the rescue team out here. Jack’s right; we have to at least try. Our sisters could be out there, alone.”

  “You don’t think I want to help them?” Aubrey said. “But it’s suicide. Every time we go out there, we get attacked. It’s rolling the dice with our lives. It’s insanity to go back out there; we’re going to die.”

  “Aubrey, stop it,” Benji said, sounding as if she was the edge of tears. “We’ve been on those waters twice and lived. Jack won’t let us die, and if there is a chance of finding others, we should take it.”

  “I’m with Benji,” Sherri said. “Sitting on this island doesn’t sound like the kind of adventure my dad would take.”

  “You can’t even swim, Benji! And Sherri, your dad is dead and isn’t coming back, and no adventuring or risk-taking is going to bring him back. He’d want you to live more than anything else, I guarantee,” Aubrey snapped. “This is so stupid.”

  “Bitch,” Sherri said.

  “I just can’t with this.” Aubrey grabbed a spear and stormed into the forest.

  “I’ll get her,” Benji said.

  “No, I got it,” I said.

  I grabbed my knife and
spear and headed after her. She hadn’t made it too far into the forest by the time I caught up with her. We were closer to the geyser, and everything felt wetter, warmer, and thicker there. Ferns and bushes covered much of the forest floor, and they felt soft and pleasant against my bare feet.

  Aubrey stood in the middle of a fern patch with her back to me, her face buried in her hands. The spear rested on her shoulder, anchored in the ground in front of her. She shook with muffled cries as I approached.

  She glanced back at me with red eyes. I stopped a few feet from her, searching for the words. She let the spear fall from her shoulder, and it hit the ground. She rushed to me, hugging me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she buried her face against my chest.

  I patted her shoulder and touched the back of her head with gentle strokes.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said.

  “They’re dead, Jack. They’re all dead.”

  I didn’t respond, just continued to hold her. After a minute, she let go of me and wiped her eyes.

  “I won’t pretend to know if there is anyone else out there. It’d be a miracle if there were, but we are miracles. What are the chances that we four would find each other out here?” I said.

  She looked up at me with a furrowed brow. Her hair had finally started showing some wear out in the woods. The curls of her brown hair had begun to flatten, and the shine had dimmed. The makeup on her face was gone, and her eyes were red and puffy. The scattered flecks of glitter on her neck were one of the few self-inflicted embellishments left on her. The sunlight danced through the leaves of the trees, lighting her face and body. She stood in stark contrast among the greenery behind her. I took a second to drink her beauty in. She didn’t need the makeup or the body polish or the done-up hair. She was a natural beauty that I had trouble not staring at.

  “We are miracles,” she said, but seemed to want to say more.

  “We’re here. We’re together, and we’re going to figure this out, but we have to stick together out here. If we fall apart, we’ve lost before we’ve started,” I said.

  “I’ll apologize to Sherri and Benji. It’s just…I don’t know. I had this nightmare last night that I woke up and the whole beach was nothing but dead bodies. You, Sherri, Benji and everyone else on that ship was dead and…”

  “What?”

  “They were eating the bodies. Creatures of…nightmares. The crunching of bones and…”

  I knew that sound. I’d heard it when the crocs took on the boars. I was sure this was what had stuck in her mind, manifesting into her nightmare.

  “I’m here now, with you. I won’t let anything happen to you or them.”

  “It was my fault, you know. I was the one that signed us up for the ship. It was half the price of the other charters. Some of the girls argued with me. They wanted a party boat, but I was the one that convinced everyone that we could spend more when we got to the island.” She sobbed and sucked in a breath through her nose. “Don’t you see? Everyone died because of me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Aubrey, but this isn’t your fault.” I hugged her tighter.

  If anything, it was mine. I knew Rebecca was on some mission in the seas. I never knew what, but I was pretty sure this was it. She wanted to find these islands. I just had no idea why or how we got here.

  I just stood there holding Aubrey for a minute, hearing her breathing slow and her body relaxing against mine. She let go and looked up at me. Her eyes glistened, and there was something in them I hadn’t really seen before—hope.

  “Do you really think there’s more of my sisters out there?”

  “I really don’t know, but if we made it here, then there has to be a chance others did as well. And maybe someone will know what’s going on out here.”

  “That’s another thing bothering me about this place. It seems off to me, and I know you all feel the same way. And it isn’t just the plants I’m noticing, but the creatures—even the air here is different. I can almost feel the air, like it has a weight to it. And the water…the fresh water…it’s sweeter and better and it makes me want to…” She looked away, turning a shade of red.

  “What?”

  “I want you, Jack. Like all the time out here,” she said, and her piercing gaze stopped whatever words I had in me. “I’m not normally like this but…I see the way you look at me. I see the way you look at all of us. You have the same…extra desires here. I haven’t stopped thinking of us under the waterfall and what we didn’t get to finish.”

  I couldn’t deny it, but I didn’t need any island explanations of why I felt the way I did. These women were amazing and in more ways than just looks. They worked hard, they had fun, they were good people, and each one of them I felt myself falling for in different ways. The waterfall time would be something I’d never forget in my life, but neither would a conversation about mangos.

  “I have the same feelings for you,” I said.

  She moved toward me, and I met her in the middle. She slid her arms over my shoulders and stopped just short of kissing me. I ran my hands over the small of her back, feeling her soft skin just above her shorts.

  She leaned back, pulling me with her like a dancer dipping his partner. I held onto her, guiding her slowly down to the bed of ferns below us. I knelt down between her legs and was glad to feel the forest floor was soft.

  Her hair spread out in a halo around her as she lay on her back. Her large breasts moved up and to the sides as her bikini top kept them from being fully exposed. I rubbed her smooth legs while taking in the sight that was Aubrey. She wrapped her legs around the small of my back and pulled me forward. I fell onto her, planting my hands on each side of her head.

  She leaned up, and I came down. We met lips as her hands ran up my back and through my hair as we kissed deeply. In a few seconds, I felt her hands at my chest, unbuttoning my shirt. After a couple of buttons were undone, I pulled the shirt over my head and tossed it to the side.

  I wasn’t sure who had their shorts off first, but in a few quick motions, both of ours were off. She pulled down the top of her bikini, exposing her breasts for me. I paused again at the sight of her, almost entirely naked. She was beyond stunning. A numb feeling ran over me, and my heart felt as if it might explode.

  I leaned over her, my privates grazing the soft, shaven skin above hers. She reached down, taking me in her hand, and pushed my manhood down along the seam of her sex. She let out a breath as we met, and I knew then how much she was ready for me. I began slow, enjoying every inch of her.

  The sex partners I’d had before this could be counted on one hand, and before these islands, they were stick drawings compared to the masterpiece before me.

  Each moan I produced from her sent me further to the edge. She moved with me, raising her hips in motion with me. She moaned louder and pulled me down on top of her, chest to chest. She cried out against my ear as I increased the intensity, thrusting harder. Her tongue slid along my neck, and as I pushed deeper into her, she bit down on my neck with a deep moan.

  The noise, the feeling of her, and just how damn sexy she was, brought me to the brink of the finish line. I slowed down.

  “No, don’t stop!” She used her hip and pushed against me. “Keep fucking me.”

  “I’m going to—”

  She moaned in my ear, gripping me tightly with her arms as I kept moving with her.

  “Finish in me,” she cried out. “I’m about to…”

  She moaned loudly, and I could feel her tightening around me in ecstasy. No thoughts of baseball or long division was going to stop this. The coaster was on the back end of the hill, and I was just along for the ride at this point.

  I moved quicker and pressed against her, feeling her sweat against mine and kissed her neck as she moaned loudly into my ear. We finished together, and it was the best feeling I had ever had in my life.

  “Thank you,” she whispered in between panted breaths.

  I chuckled and said, “You’re welcome.�
�

  I got up to my knees and just stared at her naked, sweaty body. Her skin was flushed, and I admired her, thinking I’d like to have a round two with her.

  Then the geyser exploded, the actual island geyser. I jumped at the sound and looked up.

  “We should be far away enough to be fine,” I said, not entirely convincing even myself.

  She smiled and pulled me back down on top of her. “We’ll be fine.”

  In a few seconds, the water hit the trees, making splattering sounds all around us. The hot liquid dripped from the trees down onto us. Soon, it was raining down. I covered Aubrey as best I could, but it was as if being in a rainstorm. The drops pelted my back, feeling like hot wax. The water poured over my body and onto her. She laughed and held her hands out, capturing it on her palms.

  The drips stopped after a minute, and the steam began to rise from the forest. A blanket of fog moved around us, thick and hot. She kissed me again, and I kissed her back. We didn’t have sex but just enjoyed each other for a few minutes as a blanket of fog lay over us.

  After a breeze carried much of it away, our wet bodies began to chill.

  Aubrey laughed as I got to my feet with a shiver. I reached down and pulled her up to her feet. She hugged me again, and it just felt right having her in my arms. We tugged our clothes on, and I couldn’t stop smiling. She seemed to be in a rather good mood as well.

  “Jack?” Aubrey said.

  “Yes?”

  “If you think we can find my sisters, then we have to at least try.”

  I nodded as I buttoned up my shirt. “Good, because we’re going to have to build a better raft, and I’m going to need your help. Did I tell you today what an amazing person you are?”

  She smiled. “Don’t try buttering me up, you already have me.”

  I took her in a firm embrace and kissed her.

  “You are amazing, and we need you. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found the three of you.”

  “I know. I see the way you look at them as well.”

  “I…”

  “It’s okay, Jack, really. We’re sisters, and we share more than just glitter lotion, but I just hope you’re up for the task. I know Sherri is on the hunt for you.”