The Island Ch. 02

"No, I feel fine," I shook my head. "Actually, I feel better than fine...." A frown started to weigh on my eyebrows. "I feel..."

"Great." Ray finished for me, both of us pausing mid-step to look at each other nervously. "Yeah, I feel better than I have done since boarding the flight. That is... Strange."

"Fuck." I groaned. The pair of us were making light work of the wreckage, both of us having boundless levels of energy that was, only an hour ago, completely drained. "We have to tell them."

Ray furrowed his brow and thought for a moment. "We can't," he finally said. "If we start making a big deal about something being wrong with the food here, we may freak them out, and they may refuse to eat or drink at all. This may not be great, but it's a damned side better than one of them starving or dehydrating to death. There are other fruits for them to eat, but the Doc is right; coconuts are our only real source of hydration for the time being."

"And it may only be until Elizabeth comes back," I added. "If she has found fresh water, we can stop drinking from the coconuts entirely."

"Right." Ray nodded. "I mean, assuming that the coconuts are the problem."

"You don't think they are?"

"Shit, I don't know, man." He sighed. "I'm inclined to side with you and say that they are. But how do we explain the Doc and the others not being affected? We all ate the same stuff. Hell, we all ate the same amount of the same stuff. There has to be another variable."

We pondered in silence for a few moments as we dragged the sheet of metal and plastic onto the beach, tossed it onto the pile, and then headed back to the water. Neither of us wanted to speak anymore until we were back out of earshot of the group. "So what do we do?" Ray finally asked.

"You're asking me?"

"Tom doesn't seem to be affected, so it looks like you and I are in this together," He sighed. "But those girls were making some pretty explicit plans before we left. If they decide to act on them...." He let the sentence die in the air. "Look, I am a nice guy. I would never take advantage of something like this back home, but it didn't sound like I would be given much of a choice in the matter."

I cast a look back up the beach, dragging a hand over my mouth as I thought about it. "I'm not going to lie. If one of those two threw themselves at me, I'm not sure I have it in me to refuse, let alone both of them."

"Same here."

"Okay, here's the deal," I said after a little more thought as I grabbed a handle of a case floating next to me. "We do nothing, we don't encourage them, we don't act like we would be receptive...."

"Even though we are."

"Right... But they don't need to know that. If they make a move and act like they are in their right minds, we are not going to get pissed at each other for... helping them out... despite it possibly being a case of taking advantage of them. Which we may have to do because telling them about potentially tainted food may do more harm than good."

Ray paused for a moment. "You know, there are probably guys all over the world who would sell major body parts to be in this position."

"What, trapped on a deserted island with a bunch of... Yeah, okay, you may have a point."

Ray chuckled. "Alright, let's get this stuff to the beach. Do you really think all this shit will be useful?"

I shrugged, scooping up another case and hooking it under my arm. "I doubt it, but some of it might be. Who knows what is in these cases, even if it's just clothes to protect us from the sun? I don't know about you, but I'm not looking forward to traipsing through the jungle with bare feet, so shoes would be nice."

Ray nodded, grabbing a case of his own and reaching for another one. We were interrupted by shouts and screams coming from the beach. We both turned around to see what the commotion was about. The entire group, save Tom, was running towards us, waving and pointing frantically to something behind us and to our left. We both turned to see what they were yelling about.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day," Ray muttered.

About a hundred feet from us and in slightly deeper water, the hulking, unmistakable fin of a shark sliced through the surface, aiming for one of the cases. In only a few seconds, it had covered the distance and, with a foaming splash, burst from the waves and clamped its massive jaws down onto the grayish-looking case. The luggage was torn apart as the shark thrashed its head back and forth. I turned and started to run back to the beach before Ray shot out a hand to grab me. "Run, and you're dead," He whispered. "There is no way on God's green earth you are going to outrun that thing and trying is only going to draw its attention to you."

I gulped and froze, watching as the shark released its polyester prize and lazily started circling.

"That's a tiger shark." he hissed. "They are nasty and very dangerous. But they don't attack humans... unless they mistake them for something else."

"Like a suitcase?" I whispered back.

"In shallow water, with limited vertical vision, it's anyone's guess. My point is they respond very aggressively to splashing. To them, it is like a bird or something struggling in the water. If we run, he might think we are something worth chasing."

"So... what? We stand here and wait for it to go away?"

"Ideally, yes." He said quietly, holding up his hand to gesture to the group on the beach that we were okay. "But who knows how long that is going to take? We need to back away, very slowly, very calmly, and try not to disturb the water."

"And if we do?"

"Throw the cases at him and run like hell."

"But you just said... You haven't done this before, have you?"

"Dealt with a fifteen-foot Tiger shark on the beach of a deserted tropical island while holding a suitcase in each hand? No, this would be a first for me."

We started moving backward, one very careful and deliberate step at a time. Neither of us lifted our feet more than a few inches off the ground before moving them and putting them back down. Contrary to the massive amounts of adrenaline in my system and the heart pounding fearfully at my chest, Ray appeared to be the picture of composure. The shark seemed blissfully unaware of our presence as the water grew steadily shallower around our legs. The waves were lapping just below our knees when Ray's foot caught on a rock that was jutting out of the sand. He flailed briefly, his arms looking for something to catch onto, but being full of suitcase handles, they failed miserably, and he fell backward into the water.

The response from the apex predator was immediate and explosive. It spun around and launched itself toward us. It covered half of the area between us in only a few seconds. I wheeled around, hurling one case towards it as hard as I could and dropping the others. I reached down, grabbed Ray by the scruff of his collar, and started to run towards the beach as fast as my legs would carry me. Ray stumbled forward a few times, his feet trying desperately to find purchase beneath him as we both looked back at the shark.

The case sailed through the air and landed just in front of the shark, as the shallow water forced the enormous carnivore to breach the surface. A mighty splash erupted around the case as the Shark's terrifying jaws clamped down on it. Shards of broken plastic and uninflated beach toys were thrown into the air as the predator thrashed its head from side to side. By the time he realized that it was not the meal he had been hoping for, we were in water far too shallow for him to follow.

Ray and I collapsed in an adrenaline-filled heap on the sand a few seconds later, as the rest of the group rushed over to us. Both of us were panting, wheezing, and quite surprised to still be in one piece. Unsurprisingly, Hayley and Katie were practically on top of me in seconds, checking me over to make sure I wasn't hurt. Fawning and cooing about how scared they were and how brave we had both been. Ray was receiving the same treatment from Zoe and Caroline.

"You okay, Man?" I called over to him.

"No, I stubbed my fucking toe!" He laughed back. "That shit hurt!"

I cast a look back over to him. "There was a kid in every class who ate glue. That was you, wasn't it?"

He laughed and held out a hand, clenching his fist. I bumped mine against it with a chuckle. "Okay, new rule." He shouted out over the commotion. "Nobody goes into the water!"

**********

"Am I the only one who is grateful that big fucker wasn't around when we were all dragging the raft ashore?" I asked a few hours later. All of us were sitting next to the debris pile, watching the shark still circling out in the shallows. It seemed to have given up on the suitcases, having chewed up another three of them since our escape to the beach. The adrenaline had fled my body, and I was close to something able to be called calm now. The Shark was now just swimming in large, lazy circles. For a while, we had thought he was waiting for us. But every now and then, he would dart beneath the waves, and a portion of the crystal-clear water would turn red for a few moments.

"He's hungry." Ray nodded. "Shallow water, lots of big fish. It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet out there for him."

"Do you think he would have eaten you?" Zoe, or maybe Caroline, asked with a gasp.

"No," Ray shook his head with a reassuring smile. "Sharks don't really have much of a taste for humans. He would have taken one bite, realized he didn't like us, and then let us go...."

"Those looked like pretty nasty bites, man," I added.

"Yeah, usually one bite is all it takes. Especially with no trauma centers around."

"So, what are we going to do about the rest of the debris out there?" Caroline, or maybe Zoe, asked.

"While he is out there? Fuckin' nothing!" Ray laughed.

Caroline/Zoe slapped his arm playfully. "I meant when he goes."

Ray pondered for a few moments. "Hopefully, most of it will wash ashore. But even when he is gone, I don't like the idea of anyone being more than knee-deep out there. If that means we lose things that could be useful, so be it. It's better than one of us losing a leg. Until further notice, we need to act like we are in the middle of a shark's feeding area... it is not a good idea to be wet in one of those." He looked over at me, and I nodded in agreement. Getting the debris had been my idea, but there was nothing out there worth that kind of risk.

We sat in silence for a little longer before a rustling in the trees behind us drew our attention from the water. Elizabeth and Hannah stepped out into the clearing, and, with broad, happy smiles on their faces, walked onto the beach and towards us. "See, I told you it was this way," Liz called teasingly over her shoulder to Hannah.

"Yes, Yes, we have established that your sense of direction is freakishly good!" Hannah chuckled back before her grin spread wider, and she jogged over to where I was sitting with Hayley and Katie. The redheaded stewardess squealed, jumped up, and met her halfway, hugging her friend tightly.

Liz smiled and made her way toward the rest of us. "Welcome back. Want a coconut?" Amy offered with a warm smile.

"No, I'm good, thank you," Liz said as she dropped down onto the sand. "We found plenty of food and water. There is a small waterfall just a few hundred yards that way," She pointed back the way they had come. "It flows out over there somewhere...." A point down the beach to our left. "...which is why we didn't see it, but it's fresh, clean, and surrounded by fruit trees." She beamed happily. Ray and I shot each other something of a relieved-looking glance before joining in with the cheers and congratulations of the rest of the crowd.

Hayley reclaimed her spot next to me, and Hannah dropped onto the sand next to my feet. "Oh, God, I had this Mango that was almost the size of my head," she groaned. "It was the nicest thing I have ever tasted!"

"We had coconuts." Hayley grinned.

"Urgh, I don't like coconut," Hannah replied with a frown and Scrunching up her face. She looked confusedly at the giggles coming from Hayley and Katie, and their glances at me.

"Anyway," Liz went on. "We got to the peak and scouted the.... Is that a fucking shark?"

"Yeah, we met him earlier. He's friendly enough unless you are in the water." Ray replied with a glance toward the ocean and a shrug. "I vote we call him Steve."

"Sooo, we are staying out of the water?" Liz asked, frowning in the direction of the Ocean. The entire group just looked up at her. "Yeah, that sounded like a pretty stupid question before it had left my mouth."

A spattering of chuckles rippled around the group. Liz dropped down onto her knees and smoothed over a large section of sand, just as Tom had done the day before, and started drawing.

"Alright. I have some good news, and I have some bad news...." she started.

For the sake of expediency, I will paraphrase the explanation that took Liz and Hannah a few hours to give. Partly because I kept being distracted by the less-than-subtle, and more-than-arousing touches and caresses from Hayley and Katie. Both of whom had resumed their position pressed into either side of me.

The Pacific Ocean, as you may have heard, is big. I'm not sure many people realize just how big it really is, though. That is mainly to do with how maps work. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, with international trade and exploration becoming more and more common, maps started to become standardized. London, due to its status as the capital of the British Empire, and its position on the zero-degree longitude, was placed in the center, and everything else was spread out around it. This meant that the Pacific had to be split over the edges of the map. It's very hard to judge the scale of something, when it has been cut in half, and those two halves separated.

Secondly, and contrary to what the idiots out there may believe, the Earth is, in fact, a sphere. A map, however, is not. Trying to represent a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional plane has the effect of making the countries closer to the North Pole look larger than they actually are. It would apply equally to the South Pole too, but somebody had the genius idea that Antarctica was basically an inconvenience and cut off the vast majority of its land mass. It is a simple optical illusion. Efforts have been made in more modern times to correct this, but the older maps that most of us had grown up with are grossly inaccurate. The effect of this becomes relevant when you think of scale.

The UK, for example, despite its prominence on the map, is actually geographically smaller than New Zealand. Canada is almost triple the size of the mainland US, and Florida is more or less the same size as Wisconsin. Both of those states sit in the middle of a list of states organized in order of size. And despite each being more than 54,000 square miles in area, either of them could be completely lost in the vastness of the Pacific. But looking at the older maps, you would think that they are substantially bigger than they are; and, by comparison, the Pacific much smaller. You could literally pick up Florida, drop it a few thousand miles south of Hawaii, and provided you avoided the major air or shipping lanes, nobody would know it was there.

Yes, okay, you could make the arguments about satellites finding it, and you would be right. But in terms of planes and ships wandering around looking for it, as we hoped they were doing for us, it would be extremely easy for them to miss.

This became important when Liz told us how large the island actually was.

I didn't know about the others in the group, but I had sort of assumed that the mountain growing out of the trees a few hundred yards away from the beach was pretty much the extent of the island. The peak of some enormous underwater mountain, with a bit of sand wrapped around it. But as Liz scratched out a rough map of the island, talking us through the things she had seen, it became very clear that I had been wrong. The island was much bigger than I had thought, but in comparison to the Pacific in which it sat, it was barely a molehill.

Liz and Hannah, who she had taken to calling 'her lovely assistant,' had left the camp when most of us had still been asleep. They had only walked for about 15 minutes when the unmistakable roar of a waterfall started to drift through the trees, and they had switched directions to find it. Stepping out into the clearing a little while later, they were met by a cliff face about 50 feet high, with a broad cascading waterfall flowing over its edge, and into a broad, sparkling, glass-clear basin. Fruit trees, including the aforementioned head-sized-mango trees, lined both banks, and flocks of brightly colored tropical birds had unceremoniously ignored them from their places in the branches.

Despite being fairly deep where the waterfall had carved out the bottom of the small lake, the basin was mostly only about waist deep. Liz had assumed, based on the climate, that the lake would have been home to crocodiles, alligators, water snakes, or any number of other semi-aquatic dangers. But despite looking very carefully, she couldn't find a single sign of anything like that. In fact, aside from a brief sighting of something that looked like a burrowing rodent, they hadn't seen any evidence of land-based fauna on their mission at all.

It had been Hannah's eagle eyes that had spotted a deformation in the cliff, a natural path that would allow them to scale to the top, and both women had waded into the water to cross.

"Oh, my God, it was amazing!" Hannah gushed. "It was so cool and fresh. A few mouthfuls and I felt better than I had in days! And it felt sooo good on my skin."

Liz just nodded. "The water was remarkably fresh." She agreed. "With most freshwater rivers, you have some sort of sediment in there. You also have the remains of animals pissing and shitting in them or close to them, not to mention dying in them further upstream. There is nothing that can be done about that, and it's usually not harmful, but this water was exceptionally clean and refreshing. I have a theory about that, but I will get to that later."

"I could have stayed in there all day!" Hannah purred, leaning back against my legs. "But the slave driver wanted to climb the big ass mountain." There was a smirk on her lips as she sighed at the memory.

"I can go back to calling you my sidekick if you like." Liz grinned

"Noooo. I like being your lovely assistant. It makes it sound like you are a magician, and I am wearing something sparkly," Hannah giggled.

Liz squinted her eyes, shook her head with another smile, and carried on with her story.

The path up the cliff had been fairly easy, albeit not, as Hannah added, something you would ever want to do in heels. The climb eventually led up to the small plateau between the winding river, and the base of the mountain it curled around. The relatively thick forest at the base of the cliff, had given way to an area much more open. The ground here seemed to be covered by thigh-high grass, waist-high ferns, and the occasional copse of varying species of tree, each of them full of birds. Flowing from the mountain were dozens of small tributary streams that fed into the river. Still being wary of insects or snakes in the long grass, Liz had decided to follow one of these streams up the slope. Keeping their feet in the water, rather than risk stepping on something that could bite.

From this newer angle, it had become clear that the mountain was not just a single peak. But appeared to be part of a ridgeline, with a series of lower and thinner caps running away from the mountain. Even so, the pair had ignored these and kept aiming for the highest point. It had taken them most of the day to finally make it to the top.