The Island Rewrite. 02

Chapter 2

The next morning was just as visually stunning as the previous day had been. If there were ever a question as to where you would want to be stranded with little hope for rescue, this would be close to the top of the list. The island, or the little I had seen of it, was paradise. The pure, fine, white sandy beaches. The tall, fruit-laden palm trees that rocked lazily in the gentle breeze. The air was pleasantly warm, heated by the tropical sun and cooled by the crystal-clear turquoise waters. The sounds of tropical birds mixed with the soft wind. Looking up at the mountain, the mists were starting to drift upwards, like a ghost being released from its prison out of the tree canopy and into the clear blue skies.

It was perfect.

Of course, none of us were thinking of that.

The discovery of Ellie the Elephant had shaken me to my core. The bottom had fallen out of my world, and I had collapsed under the emotional weight of the preceding twenty-four hours. Hayley and Hannah had seen me fall and had both rushed over, quickly followed by Amy, the doctor, and the rest of the group. The two stewardesses had recognized the toy immediately, and with it, the implied connotation that little Jonny, along with his mother, had been lost in the crash. The only thought that seemed willing to stay for more than a few moments in my mind was simply to ask why them? Why did I survive when they could have lived instead? What kind of God ended the lives of a young boy and his mother, only to spare a man in his mid-thirties with almost nothing to live for?

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

My breakdown had a profound impact on the group. As if we were all collectively holding it together, for the sake of the others, the first of us to break gave everyone else permission to let their own bottled-up feelings finally escape.

The group gathered around me, sitting or kneeling in the lapping waves, all of us holding everyone else, and we just sobbed... all of us. Even Tom, whose condition stereotypically robbed him of the ability to express emotion, cried and wailed along with everyone else.

Somehow, over the course of hours, and long after the sun had gone down, we dragged ourselves back up onto the beach closer to the swaying palm trees, curled up into one large pile, and, for the most part, we passed out.

The day had been exhausting to a degree that most people will never experience in their lifetimes. They should be grateful for that. But the only thing worse than that level of tiredness was feeling it and still not being able to sleep. With Hayley curled up on one side of me, and Hannah on the other, both sleeping peacefully, I just lay there, staring up at an endless star-lit sky.

By morning, most of us had recovered, and I was feeling okay. A lot more okay than I expected to.

Actually, now that I thought about it, I felt fine. Like, properly, actually fine.

Even though it had probably been a little more than a day since the plane went down, it felt like it had happened a lifetime ago... to someone else. Part of me knew I should still be heartbroken over Little Johnny and his mother, I should still be freaked out by the near-escape from death.

I just wasn't.

That seemed odd.

I didn't dwell on it for too long, though.

The catharsis of getting those emotions out seemed to pull everyone out of their stupor. Even Louisa, the Latino-looking woman around my age whose husband had gone down with the plane, was working to keep herself busy.

Over the course of the night, the tides had changed, and, as Ray had predicted, the luggage and wreckage from the crash were starting to wash up on shore. So, with the exception of Lizzy and Hannah--who started making their way towards the mountain not long after daybreak--and Tom and Louisa--who were trying to knock coconuts from the trees and open them without spilling their milk--the remainder of the group waded into the water, or scoured the beach, pulling every case and every piece of debris we could find to a central point on the sand.

In a moment of unexpected clarity, I had realized that everything would need to be saved, as much of it as we could. We had no idea which piece of scrap or seemingly worthless item in a case might be useful days, weeks, or even months from now. Ray, for example, had decided that despite the low chance of it being spotted by rescue aircraft, we would need to build a fire. Even if we didn't light it until we spotted something worth lighting it for.

But aside from a few dried-out palm leaves, there was nothing to burn. That would mean we would need to cut down a tree, and contrary to what Minecraft may have taught you, you can't do that by simply punching it. Somewhere in these cases or piles of twisted metal may have been something that could form part of an ax or a saw. Or if there wasn't, maybe there was something that could help us make one some other way.

Hell, maybe one of those cases had a lighter because I sure as shit didn't know how to light a fire without one.

Nobody seemed particularly invested in the idea, though. Not in cutting down trees. Not in starting fires. And not in spending inordinate amounts of time staring out to sea for ships or planes.

"This is going to have to be something of a regular job for us as well," Ray said as he dropped one of those reinforced plastic suitcases onto the pile. "Something like ninety percent of all goods on earth are still transported by sea, and you would be amazed at what falls off those container ships. You never know what could wash up here."

With my eyelids being held open by less than a few hours of sleep, I just nodded and carried on dragging part of what looked like a plane door further up the beach.

Time is an odd thing. Five minutes of overtime in the Super Bowl goes by in the blink of an eye; five minutes hopping from one foot to the other outside an occupied bathroom feels substantially longer. With no means of accurately measuring its passing, aside from the general movement of the sun, it had become impossible to tell how long even the simplest of tasks had taken. All I knew was that the sun had been fairly low in the sky when we had started and was now beating down on us from close to its apex. But it was mid-summer at a latitude that I was unfamiliar with, so that could have been two or three hours. It could have been six. Either could have been true, but it was also true that all of us, despite not wanting to say it aloud, were waiting for Liz and Hannah to return. That waiting was dragging out this seemingly simple task into eternity.

On their shoulders rested the fate of our group. Food was already looking bountiful. Trees heavy with all manner of fruit could be found only a few dozen yards into the tree line. Coconuts, bananas, mangoes, and citrus trees laden with oranges and limes. Not to mention the immeasurable numbers of fish swimming around our feet when we waded into the water. All of these added up to the realization that nobody was in danger of starving on this island. No, what really mattered was fresh water. The only person capable of reliably finding it was now several long hours into an expedition with no means of communication with the rest of us if something went wrong.

For all we knew, the two of them could have been hurt and unable to call for help. They could have gotten lost. None of us had really considered the possibilities of predators on the island either, poisonous insects... the list of things that could have happened to them was long. Nobody wanted to be the first to voice those concerns, but there were plenty of nervous, anticipatory glances into the trees as we worked.

It was Amy who finally called a halt to the afternoon's labors. "Alright, everyone out of the sun!" She shouted over the beach as she watched Louisa and Tom drop armfuls of coconuts onto the sand beneath the shade of the trees.

"No, there is still too much left to do," Ray grumbled, looking back at the volumes of debris still bobbing in the shallows. "Anything we miss could end up floating away."

"Yes, I know. But none of us has had anything to drink since the plane. Dehydration is a very real danger until we find water, so until then, you are going to need to take it easy."

"But..."

"Listen..." Amy rounded on him. "You're a military man, Coast Guard, right?" She waited for him to nod before continuing. "Who is the highest authority on a ship at sea?"

"The captain," he said with a confused look on his face.

"Wrong, it's the doctor. Doctors are the only ones able to supersede a captain's orders." She answered back, smiling but clearly tolerating no question of who was in charge at this moment. "Now, I need you to stop, take a break, cool down, and get something liquid into you. Because I don't feel like losing any more people, least of all on the first day here. And if you pass out, I don't have an IV or fluids to bring you back. Understood?"

Ray sighed but nodded in acquiescence. "Yes, Ma'am."

I had to admit, casting a look back to the sea and then up and down the beach, I had started the conversation agreeing with Ray. The tides that had washed us here seemed to have finally brought every piece of luggage and cargo on the flight here, not to mention a large portion of the actual wreckage.

It was kinda weird that Ellie the Elephant had arrived around the time we had, especially considering we had swam to drag the raft the last few miles to shore... but whatever, what did I know?

The bits that had already washed onto the beach were safe. They were going nowhere. But the pieces still floating in the water could be taken out of reach by the smallest gusts of wind. It was only as Amy pointed out the risks of dehydration that I allowed myself to feel it. The headache stomping through my brain would have put the worst hangover in history to shame. My muscles seemed to be on the verge of cramping constantly, and there was a definite shake in my hand as I dropped the aircraft door onto the pile.

Hayley was still sticking close, not quite clinging onto me as she had done the day before and throughout the night. But she seemed to be making a point of staying within view of me. She and one of the other girls, a high school teacher in her late twenties called Katie, seemed to have struck up something of a friendship. The pair of them were chatting happily as I joined the group and flopped down onto the sand. Hayley had a glint in her eyes and a hungry look on her face as I brushed the sand from my sweat-sheened body and reached for a coconut. Katie giggled a little and whispered something to her. A grin curled onto the redheaded stewardess's face as I examined the brown, hairy fruit and arched an eyebrow at Tom.

I should point out here that "beggars can't be choosers" is about as close to gospel as a group of starving, dehydrated island survivors is going to find. I don't like coconut. I have never liked coconut; not coconut milk, not even coconut-flavored candy. It just wasn't my thing. It was, perhaps, for that reason that I had never dedicated a single moment of thought to how exactly you open one.

The answer, as it turned out, was 'carefully.'

Tom, it would seem, loved coconuts and had devised a system of opening them involving a few carefully chosen rocks. Without even realizing he was demonstrating to the less coconut-oriented members of the group, he took a long, pointed rock, pressed it against the shell, and then used another larger rock to hammer it in. He then drank the coconut water straight from the hole, smashed the rest of the fruit open on a larger rock, and pulled the flesh from inside the shell with his fingers. Some of the others seemed to be trying to pull the hair off them, apparently taking issue with drinking the milk through the fibers of the coconuts' outer shells.

Tom, apparently, couldn't have cared less.

"Alright, people, no more than two each," Amy said, wiping a dribble of coconut off her chin with a gesture that, under any other circumstances, would have looked downright pornographic.

Katie frowned, looking over her shoulders at the countless palm trees, most of them heavy with fruit. "Why? It's not like we have to ration. There must be thousands of them."

"Coconuts are a natural laxative," Amy replied with a grunt, smashing hers open on a rock by her knees and collecting the shell halves before they got covered in sand. "They are great for rehydrating you, but too much, too soon could give you a nasty case of diarrhea. At this point, having the shits would be worse for you than drinking nothing."

I'm not sure why I laughed, but having a medical professional referring to a potentially life-threatening condition as "the shits" just tickled me. The laughter was instantly cut off by the full-body shudder that ran through me as I swallowed down the first mouthful of coconut water. I eyeballed the hole in the top of my fruit uneasily as Hayley and Katie giggled louder.

"Looks like someone doesn't like coconut." Hayley laughed.

"I would rather be eating anything else... literally," I chuckled back.

"Anything, huh?" She smirked back. "I may hold you to that."

"Get your coat, Hayls," Katie giggled. "Looks like you've scored."

"Finally!" Hayley grinned, pulling another bout of giggles from the pair. Even Amy joined in, her cheeks flushing as the two younger women bantered teasingly. Looking around, almost all of the girls, with the exception of Louisa, were following the conversation with a blush on their cheeks. My eyes finally caught Ray's, the only other guy in the group who was paying attention--Tom was too busy playing with his nuts. He arched an eyebrow and shrugged. Apparently, as confused as I was about this sudden shift in mood. Neither of us had failed to notice that Zoe and Caroline had both shuffled a little closer to him, either.

My headache was fading quickly, the vile-tasting water clearly doing its job. But following the doctor's orders, I cracked open the coconut, scooped out the flesh, and forced it down my throat. The look on my face was drawing more and more giggles from the stewardess and the chestnut-haired teacher. "Mmmmm, my, what big, strong fingers you have," Katie grinned teasingly. Even Amy snorted a laugh at that.

I eyeballed the coconut again. The women were acting like a bunch of sorority girls with a few too many drinks in them.

I was fairly certain that naturally occurring alcoholic fruit was not a thing, so I decided to just shrug off the playful banter as just that. I turned my attention back to the two giggling ladies. "Look, draining the water out of a hairy, wrinkly ball is not how I enjoy getting my meals," I smirked, joining in with the innuendo. "Jamming a spike into them and then smashing them open isn't something I like to think too much about either," Both women erupted into fits of laughter.

"Aww, do you not like swallowing the water from those big, hairy balls, Dan?" Hayley grinned between giggles. "That's okay. I love to swallow!" She licked some water off her lips and winked.

"Oh, me too!" Katie grinned, nudging an elbow into Hayley but letting her eyes wander adventurously over my half-naked body.

The rest of the group was laughing along now. Ray just shook his head and laughed, gesturing for me to just go with the flow. It was probably nothing more than steam being blown off after a stressful few days. Whatever the cause of the sudden mood shift was, it had done a great job of easing the tension of waiting for Liz and Hannah to return. He didn't seem to mind having Zoe and Caroline moving even closer to him, either. Although I still couldn't tell which one was which.

"We're only playing." Hayley cooed as her giggles died down, reaching over to grab my wrist and pulling me between them on the log they were sitting on. "Well, mostly." She finished, albeit a little quieter. She leaned her head to the side and rested it on my shoulder, taking in a deep breath.

Her head shot up suddenly, her face turning to mine, and her eyes dilated to the size of saucers. She leaned in again, taking another deep breath. I was suddenly very aware that I had been sweating profusely since landing on the beach. But the look in Hayley's eyes was the sort of gaze a hungry lioness would give a wounded gazelle. "Oh God, you smell good!" she whispered breathlessly.

Katie, the only one to have heard her, the rest of the group having fallen back into their own conversations, frowned a little and leaned into me, taking a deep breath of her own. Her whole body shuddered before her eyes flicked over to Hayley. "Holy Fuck!" She whispered.

"Oh God, that is not normal," Hayley purred. "But Jesus, I've never smelt anything so... alluring... In my entire life!"

"No wonder you don't want to be far from him!" Katie whispered again.

"He didn't smell like that last night! Fuck, I would have been on top of him in a heartbeat in the dark," She giggled again, then groaned deeply as she inhaled one more time.

"Umm... I'm right here." I smirked, my head turning to watch the back and forth.

"And you are going nowhere!" Hayley purred, nuzzling back against me.

"Damn straight." Katie echoed in my other ear.

I was never a guy to be fawned over by anyone, nor was I the kind of guy to look a gift horse in the mouth; but something strange was clearly going on. I quietly finished the rest of my coconut. I was already feeling much better and much more energized than I had earlier, and was cautiously enjoying the company of the group... two of them in particular.

Ray also seemed to be the recipient of Zoe and Caroline's sensory attention. He flicked a nervous-looking glance up at me as he downed the last of his coconut. He nodded back to the beach, gesturing for me to join him.

I pulled myself to my feet, to the whines and groans of the two girls beside me. "It's okay, ladies," I said with a smile as Ray also stood, getting the same reaction. "You stay here and relax. Doc, that coconut water really hit the spot. We are just going to grab a few promising-looking things from the water, and then we will relax for the rest of the morning."

"I'm going to hold you to that," Amy said with an acquiescing smile. "Any headaches or lethargy, and you get yourselves back here. Got it?"

"Got it." Ray and I said in unison before making our way down toward the surf.

**********

We were waist-deep in the water, a hundred yards or so from the group, when he spoke. "What. The fuck. Just happened?" He asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'm not the only one who thought that was weird, right?"

I shook my head. "You don't think it was the coconuts, do you?" I cast a glance back up the beach. Amy, Tom, Louisa, and the other girl--whose name I still couldn't remember--seemed to be acting fairly normal. But the four others, Hayley and Katie on my side and Zoe and Caroline on Ray's, had their eyes firmly fixed on us. "The others seem to be okay, and I feel fine."

Ray followed my look back up the beach, his frown growing deeper. "Dan, they said I smelled good. I absolutely don't smell good. I fucking reek! But one of them fucking licked me!"

"They all seemed normal before we had the coconuts," I nodded. "At least, I think they were."

"It can't be the coconuts." He shook his head, both of us reaching down to take hold of a large chunk of what had formerly been the plane's fuselage and starting to drag it to the beach. We needed to look busy. "If it were, the others would be acting weird too. Hell, we would be acting weird. Do you feel weird?"

"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 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 were, 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 sight 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 Liz 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 that the Doc and the others aren't 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'm a nice guy. I'd never take advantage of something like this back home, but..." Ray dragged a hand over his wet hair. "Jesus Christ, man, if one of those girls climbed into my lap right now, I honestly don't know if I'd stop her."

I glanced back toward the beach. Hayley was still watching me. Katie was, too.

"Yeah," I admitted quietly. "Same."

Ray let out a humorless laugh. "This place is seriously starting to freak me out."

I nodded slowly.

The strange thing was... I wasn't feeling freaked out.

Confused? Yeah. A little overwhelmed? Definitely.

But not scared.

Women had never acted like this around me before. Not even close. Ray was a decent-looking guy. He'd probably had women flirt with him plenty of times over the years.

Me?

I was the guy women forgot was standing there once someone better-looking walked into the room. Women liked me after they 'got to know me.' Never an instant attraction... or at least nobody had ever acted on it if there was.

So when Hayley and Katie started fawning over me, I mostly just thought it was surreal.

Weird.

Exciting.

But the idea of saying no to either of them--even if I couldn't explain what the hell was happening to them--hadn't really crossed my mind.

When it probably really should have.

I mean, they were gorgeous, they were obviously willing... Why would I say no?

Oh, right, yeah, the coconut thing.

I frowned. It was kinda hard to concentrate on this while I watched Hayley drag her tongue over her lips as she maintained perfect eye contact with me. But I forced myself to focus.

For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.

"Okay," I finally said. "Here's the deal. We don't push anything. We don't encourage it. We don't start acting like a pair of horny idiots just because a few girls suddenly started looking at us differently."

"Even though they obviously are."

"Right. But they don't need to know that."

I adjusted my grip on the floating case beside me before continuing.

"If one of them makes a move... if they seem happy, if they seem like they know what they're doing..." I hesitated. "I'm not promising I'll say no."

Ray was quiet for a moment before nodding slowly.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Me neither."

Another silence.

"You really think something's wrong?" I asked.

"I think something on this island is messing with people," Ray answered carefully, "and until we know what the hell it is, I don't think telling everyone they might be drugged is gonna help."

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's 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 some shoes would be nice."

Ray nodded, grabbing a case of his own and reaching for another one.

We were suddenly 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 shark thrashed its head back and forth, tearing the luggage apart. 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're nasty and very dangerous. But they don't attack humans... unless they mistake them for something else."

"Like luggage?" 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's like a bird or something struggling in the water. If we run, he might think we're 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's 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."

I mean... Touche

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 I had thrown 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 violent 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." Amy nodded.

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

"While he's 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's 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's 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. Liz 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.

"Yeah, yeah, we've 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's a fresh waterfall just a few hundred yards that way," She pointed back the way they had come. "It flows out over there somewhere...." A nod 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've 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're in there with him." Ray replied with a glance toward the ocean and a shrug. "I vote we call him Steve."

"Steve the shark," I pondered thoughtfully. "Yeah, it works. I like it."

"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 Liz and Hannah took about an hour to give, partly because I kept getting 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, as international trade and exploration became more and more common, maps began to be 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 makes 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 recent times to correct this, but the older maps most of us grew 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 three times the size of the US mainland, Australia is comically massive, 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 by 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 looks 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 argument that satellites would find 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, whom 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 fifteen minutes when the unmistakable roar of a waterfall started to drift through the trees, and they switched directions to find it. Stepping out into the clearing a little while later, they were met by a cliff face about fifty feet high, with a wide, 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, given 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 anyone can do about that, and it's usually not harmful, but this water was exceptionally clean and refreshing. I have a theory about that, but I'll 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'm 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 a much more open area. 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 reach the top.

Liz tapped her stick against the marking in the sand for the south of the island. "So this is where we are..." She then moved the stick, illustrating where they had ended up, "and we made it to here, the highest point on the island. Directly across from us were another two peaks, and all of them seemed connected by a circle of smaller ridges, with a bit of a depression in the land between them all. It is hard to be accurate, but I would say it was about two miles from that peak to either of the others, and those two were about a mile apart."

I tilted my head to the side. The angle I was looking from gave the formation a very distinctive shape. "Is that what I think it is?" I asked with a concerned-looking frown.

"That would depend on what you think it is." She grinned back up at me.

"I think that it looks a lot like a volcano."

"Then yes, it is what you think it is."

A cacophony of gasps and worried murmurs rose from the group before she held her hand up to calm everyone down. "But... It looks to me like it is a very, very old one."

"So it's dormant?" Katie asked from her place next to me.

"Probably even older than that. Dormant means sleeping and could potentially wake up. I'd say this volcano is entirely extinct... as in dead."

"How can you tell?" Ray asked with a cough as Zoe nuzzled into his ear... or maybe it was Caroline.

"The shape of the mountains," Liz answered back simply. "You see, when this thing last blew, however many thousands of years ago that may have been, it would have left the ridge fairly even, like the tops of most volcanoes. But over the centuries, the wind and rain have worn down most of the sides, eroding away the volcanic crater's edge where it was weakest. I imagine the only reason the three peaks have remained as defined as they are is that they are made up of harder rock. More than that, we were up there for a while, and I didn't see any evidence of any seismic or volcanological activity whatsoever."

"So you think it's safe?" Katie asked again.

"I'm certain of it." Liz grinned. "Plus, this works to our benefit."

"Does it?" Ray asked, looking thoroughly confused and equally distracted, now that both girls were purring and nuzzling against him. Liz hadn't seemed to notice. In fact, now that I thought about it, the behavior of all four affected women hadn't been mentioned by anybody aside from Ray and me.

"Oh yes, absolutely. Volcanic soil is extremely fertile." She explained. "If we were to collect the seeds from fruit we are eating and are here for long enough to benefit from planting them, it wouldn't be particularly hard for new trees to grow. Same with any seeds or nuts, or whatever, that we find in those cases." She nodded towards the pile. "If we were going to land on any island, this is about as good as they come."

"Cool." Katie shrugged and then, taking a page from Zoe and Caroline, started purring and nuzzling into my throat. Hayley, however, looked like she was paying real attention.

"What else could you see?" She asked.

"Well..." Liz turned her attention back to the map, moving her stick a little north of the volcano to a triangular-shaped patch of land. "... Whenever this bad boy last erupted, it looks like the lava flow went that way rather than down here onto the beach. The lava would have built up and cooled, and it's formed this area here," she tapped the stick again. "Then there is a thin land-bridge, where the water narrows the land in two sweeping bays... and then there is another arrowhead-shaped piece of land. All of that is overgrown by trees, though, I couldn't make out much detail."

"It looks like a wonky figure of eight," Amy said, tilting her head to the side. "It's a lot bigger than I thought it would be."

I nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, it's hard to judge size without a reference point. But I would guess the whole island is about eight to ten miles long, at its longest point, and maybe three or four at its widest."

"So, what was the bad news?" I asked when it became clear nobody else had anything to say

"Huh?"

"At the beginning, you said you had some good news and some bad news."

"Oh, right, yes. Okay, bad news first. There doesn't seem to be any sign of other islands in any direction."

"Uh... Did we think there were?"

"Island chains are more likely to be mapped," Tom said without taking his eyes off the drawing. "If they see a mapped island close to the crash site, they may check there as a matter of course. A single island is less likely to be known about, especially one this small."

"Small? It's a lot bigger than what I was thinking. Hell, it's the size of a large town." Ray scoffed.

"Yes, but remember that in relation to the size of the search area I told you about yesterday," Tom replied, his focus still not moving.

"Ah, shit... Yeah."

"And the good news?" I asked again.

"Well, aside from the waterfall, the fruit trees, the fertile soil, and the fact that the volcano doesn't look like it is going to explode anytime soon? There seemed to be a lot of good land for a... base, or settlement, or whatever we're gonna call it, in the crater. There's lots of water too, most of it flowing off the mountains and into that river. It's impossible to know what the land on the other side of the mountain range is like. It's too far away to see clearly, and the forests are too thick. But here and up there..." She nodded towards the mountain. "... I think they're good places to set up camp."

I was about to say something in agreement, that really was good news, when a movement from Hannah caught my eye. She had turned a little in her spot, her head resting on my leg and breathing in deeply. Her eyes had that same dilated look that Hayley and Katie had shared earlier, and her chest was rising and falling heavily. There was a flush on her cheeks, one that spread down onto her bountiful chest, as her eyes flicked to mine and then to Hayley. The redhead spotted her too, grinned wickedly, and nodded, whispering, "I know, right?" Before both of them joined Katie in nuzzling against me like a trio of overly affectionate cats.

I flicked a look up to Ray; he had spotted it too. He just pinched the bridge of his nose and shrugged. Hannah had neither been here when we ate the coconuts, nor had she had any since she returned. Whatever was causing this strange behavior looked less and less like it was the coconuts.

"What did you say about your theory about the water?" He asked, trying to change the subject.

"Oh yes, I'd forgotten about that," Liz smiled and leaned back on the warm, comfortable sand. "All of this water is being filtered through volcanic rock. Just like the mineral water that's sold in ridiculously priced bottles back home. But with a lack of animals here to take the nutrients and minerals out of the soil and the plant life, I think it's being washed into the river."

"Animals do that?" Amy asked with a frown.

"Over a long enough period of time, yes," Liz nodded. "Animals eat the plants; the plants regrow, and that takes more nutrients out of the soil. In places like the Serengeti or the Great Plains, that's offset by the fact that the animals tend to crap not far from where they ate--geographically speaking--so the nutrients go back into the soil. But here, the short distance to the sea means that their shit would just be washed out into the ocean before it had a chance to soak back into the soil. That's why you don't often see lots of wild grazing animals close to the sea. That, along with salt content from sea spray and high winds, stops things from being able to grow."

"But not here," I asked, not really following.

"Exactly. No animals means the plants grow, and instead of being grazed by animals, and those nutrients being used to regrow them, they are all washed into the river, over the waterfall, and out to sea."

"So that lake is like its own little health spa?" Hayley asked

"Pretty much, yes," Liz answered with a smile.

"Cool," was the reply from the red-haired stewardess, before she gave up on the conversation and joined her two friends in their nuzzling of me.

"So, what's the plan?" I asked. Clearing my throat and trying to change the subject, before their attention caused too much of a tent in the remains of my pants.

"If we are all suitably fed and watered," Amy answered. "I say we start working our way through those cases. Let's see if there is anything in there we can use. I don't know about all of you, but I feel a little overdressed for the beach." She looked down at the remains of her pantsuit.

"I could so use something to wear on my feet," Hayley added.

"Says the girl wearing a man's shirt, a pair of lace panties, and nothing else." Hannah giggled.

"Ooh, I bet there are some bikinis in there." Katie purred. Her head shot up as if that was the best-sounding idea she had ever come up with.

All five affected girls--along with Louisa, Liz, and the last girl whose name I couldn't remember--jumped to their feet and ran over to the pile. Each grabbed a case, opened it, and started to rummage through its contents. Amy, Ray, Tom, and I all just looked at each other, shrugged, and wandered over to join them.

**********

This was probably the closest thing to "never get between a woman and her shopping" that island life was ever going to bring. Amy, despite not sharing the younger girls' enthusiasm, had joined in the rifling through the cases. All of them were cooing, oohing, and aahing as they pulled out various items of clothing as Ray and I watched. After a while, we started picking up the cases the girls had identified as men's clothes, and looking to see if there was anything of use in them... Tom was collecting bottles. He had announced that these would be essential for transporting water, even the shampoo and alcohol bottles... he wanted them all.

Amy decided almost immediately that the alcohol would be rationed heavily.

A few of the bottles were worth keeping. High-proof spirits could still be useful for cleaning wounds, disinfecting tools, or--if things got desperate enough--dulling pain.

But as far as drinking it went? She shut that idea down fast.

Dehydration, heatstroke, impaired judgment, bad decisions... The last thing she wanted was a group of exhausted crash survivors getting drunk on a tropical island. So the significant amount of wine and beer we found was poured straight into the sea, while the vodka, tequila, rum, and whiskey were stacked under the shade of the trees for later use.

Ray and I couldn't help but cringe as a torrent of booze was emptied into the ocean. I just hoped that Steve liked the taste of beer.

Heh, I wonder what kind of drunk Steve would be.

Bottles containing non-alcoholic drinks were kept, though. So was every other type of bottle. With current flight restrictions dictating that anything larger than 100ml had to be put into suitcases, there was more shampoo, conditioner, and body wash than our entire group combined could hope to use in five lifetimes. A lot of that was emptied out, too, and handed over to Tom.

The girls, for their part, kept looking. Most of what they had found was your standard vacation wear: short shorts and tank tops, but there was no shortage of more normal clothing and footwear. Amy and Louisa were curvier than the others, and Hannah was easily the bustiest of the rest. But aside from that, most of the girls were oddly similar in terms of dress size. In another massive coincidence, the cases that had been brought ashore seemed to have belonged to people whose sizes and tastes exactly matched our group's. There was even one that seemed to hold clothes perfectly made for Ray, Tom, and me. Eventually, the girls found what they were looking for and giggled maniacally as they held increasingly revealing bikinis against their bodies. Modeling them for the rest of the group, to the cheers and whistles of the others.

I didn't have long to dwell on the sheer scale of the coincidence, though. Just as I was pulling out a pair of beige cargo shorts, complete with leg pockets, and a white T from one of the cases, Hayley seemed to strike gold. At least as far as she was concerned. Grinning and giggling like a giddy schoolgirl, she stood up and started tossing out pieces of downright pornographic-looking lingerie to the others.

I just chuckled and was about to head towards the trees to change when Hayley sauntered up to me. She hooked her hand into the waistband of my pants and dragged me after her as she headed toward the top of the beach. There was no mistaking the sway of her hips or the look in her eyes. Her legs crossed over each other with every step, accentuating the sashay of her ass, and the smoky look she cast over her shoulder to me could have melted steel.

She was making her move, and the chorus of whoops and catcalls echoing from behind us told me that the other girls in our group fully endorsed her decision.

A few minutes later, we were in the trees and out of sight of the beach. She shoved my back into one of them, purring deeply as she pressed herself against me and kissed me hard. That faint shred of resistance, the one that had argued the morality of all of this, was nowhere to be found.

My hands grabbed hold of her ass, a gloriously shapely cheek in each palm. My fingers flexed hungrily as my tongue plunged into her mouth to do battle with hers. This wanton display of arousal from her had been going on for hours, and I couldn't hold myself back anymore. She moaned louder into my lips, grinding herself against the achingly hard bulge in what remained of my pants.

Suddenly, she broke off, putting a hand on my chest to hold me to the tree as she stepped away. It was the first time I noticed the flimsy garments in her other hand. "Don't move. I want to thank you properly for saving my life." She purred, almost a feral growl behind her words, before she ducked off behind a thicket of bushes and out of sight.

Time did that thing again. Those few minutes stretched into a mind-shattering length. I was panting, breathing hard, frantically trying to regain control of the hammering in my chest. Sarah had been able to get me pretty worked up. There had also been a few girls through college who got my engines running. But this was something else entirely. This was... this was animal.

Finally, she stepped out from behind the bushes. My eyes flashed to her for a single moment before my breath caught in my throat.

Holy fucking shit!!

Hayley's shapely legs ground together as she stood there for my inspection, leading up and flaring into a pair of thrust-out hips that were barely wrapped in a pair of sheer black panties. I could see the puffy swell of her soaked, hairless pussy lips through the material. Her hand was on her hip, and the other was hanging loosely at her side next to her toned stomach. Her chest was rising and falling at a furious rate. She was breathing as if she had just run a marathon, and her breasts pressed tightly against the matching demi-bra that was struggling to contain them. A pair of darker, diamond-hard nipples pressed against the material, contrasting the pale, freckled, and flushed skin of her chest.

My lingering, hungry gaze didn't reach her face until she started to step forward, her hips swaying seductively again as she moved. Her tongue darted out to wet her plump lips, her cheeks flushed the same hue as her chest and slender throat. But it was her eyes that broke any memory of resistance. They were dilated, locked onto me with a needy desire that stole the breath right out of me. This was a woman who wanted me with every single fiber of her being.

The hunger between us as our lips crushed back together was as indescribable as it was immeasurable. I took a step forward to meet her as she practically pounced on me, spinning her around and pushing her back to the tree with a grunted thud before pressing all of me against her. The frantic growls, the lustful moans, and the desperate whimpers, all of them escaped her lips as I freed the impulse that had been growing in me all day.

There was a part of me that screamed to the inside of my head that something was wrong, or at least that something wasn't right. I had never been particularly dominant in the bedroom, not submissive, just... ordinary. Vanilla.

Normal.

There was nothing normal about how I was feeling now; this was different. Hayley had thrown down the gauntlet. She had laid out the challenge. Anything less than completely answering it felt like a weakness. In that moment--and for the first time in my life--I felt like the Alpha. It was like something old and territorial was unfurling in my chest. Something that needed to claim, and own, and mark... and keep. I don't know how I knew, but I could almost sense that Hayley wanted the same... Either way, I was going to feed the hunger inside me.

She felt it too; there was no mistaking it in the look in her eyes. The parted lips, and eyes so dilated that her irises were almost swallowed up by her pupils, the heavy panted breaths... but it was more than that. I could... I could almost taste her arousal in the air--the scent of her passion, of her desire. As soon as I found it, it was all my senses could see.

With a rough, primal jerk, my hand ripped her bra from her body. The tattered remains of the shredded garment fluttered to the ground; forsaken and forgotten, sacrificed to the inevitability of this moment. The growling moan that fell from her lips was enough to send a shiver up the spine of the most dangerous forest predator, as she realized that I had joined her in this frenzied passion. She pressed forward, not even bothering to try to work the button on my pants loose. Instead, she just yanked them down hard, letting my hips and the power of her hands rip the button out of its mooring, and flick off somewhere to join the remains of the bra in obscurity. My boxers went down with them, and I shoved her back into the tree as I stepped out of them both.

Her panties, as blood-boiling as they had been, as much as I would give to see her in them again, were ripped off her body before her ass was back in my hands. Her feet were lifted from the ground, her back was rammed harder into the tree, and then her entire soul was consumed as I impaled her on my tumescence. The howl that escaped her lips was more wild animal than it was human. I didn't care; the loud, primal grunts that were being knocked out of my lungs were no more articulate as I started to rut up into her.

Her legs swung up to wrap around my waist, locking me into her as much as helping to support her weight. But with the load loosened in my hands, one of them shot up, grabbed both of her wrists, and pinned them to the tree above her. She threw back her head and screamed as her body weight was forced down, and my cock was shoved harder and deeper into her. Her throat exposed itself to me, and I wasted no time sealing my lips onto it, sucking, licking, and dragging my teeth over her sweaty, divine-tasting skin.

I was marking her. I was making her mine and making sure everyone else would know it as soon as they saw her.

"Oh Fuck yes! That's it, baby. Take me, take what is yours!" She screamed. They were the first words that had left her lips since before she changed. It was like instinct. It was like she knew exactly what to say, to get my blood to a full boil. "Oh my fucking GOD! Yes, just like that, fuck me harder on that big dick, you magnificent man! You saved my fucking life, and now it's yours! You own it! You own ME! I am fucking yours... now fuck the pussy that belongs to you until you fill it with your seed!!"

These were words that would sound cheesy in a low-budget porn film, but in that moment, she meant every single one of them. I don't know how I knew, but I knew. There was nothing controlled or measured about this rutting. It was carnal, it was primal, both of us were operating on base instinct, and driven to lustful madness by whatever the fuck was happening to us... and I couldn't have cared less.

Our scents mingled on the breeze, as my precum mixed with her flowing, dripping juices. She was straightening the natural arch of her back as much as she could, thrusting her ass downwards and angling her pussy towards me. I hammered in with brutal, dominant thrusts, dragging her hard, bouncing nipples through the hairs on my chest and my solid cock over her inner walls and every single nerve ending in them. I crushed her G-spot against my pistoning shaft and thumped my crown harder and harder into her. The molten silk of her core was wrapped around me and clenching in just the right way to drive me wild. Despite the submissiveness and vulnerability of her position, the power I had over her, and the force I was burying into her core with every driving thrust, one thing was clear: she was milking me.

"Yes, baby, you know what I want. You know I want to be filled with you. My pussy flooded, my womb overflowing with your seed. An animal taking his bitch in heat, and your bitch wants every drop of what you have to give her! I am going to cum! Oh, Fuck! I am going to cum all over your cock... Fuck me, fuck me harder, push me over the edge, make me fucking CUM!" Every word was getting more and more frantic, more and more breathless, more and more desperate and urgent. And every one of them was having more and more of an effect on me. With each high-pitched, screamed-out expletive, I lost more and more of my control.

She shattered around me.

The shriek that exploded from her lips sounded like it should have come from a wounded animal. Ear-splitting, hoarse, and raw. Her sex clamped down onto my pistoning cock like a vise as her muscles clenched and released around me, rippling along the full length of my granite-hard length. No man, alive or dead, could have lasted long under that kind of phallic assault. My balls drew up and tightened as they swung beneath me. Her pleading screams grew louder and shriller as my cock swelled inside her. Thickening, strengthening, and hardening, stretching her even tighter around my hammering, rampant, frantic thrusts. Her eyes shot open and locked onto mine! "Do it! Cum for me."

The roar that echoed into the late afternoon sky was somehow even more animal than hers had been. The treetops erupted into a mass of fleeing birds who had all seemed perfectly happy to sit and watch our mating a few moments before. I arched my back and dropped her weight, feeling the contractions of her walls against the flaring crown of my cock before I exploded.

I didn't cum.

At least not in the way I had done for the entire thirty-five years of my life before that.

There was no spurting, no feeling of release, not at first. It was like someone had punched a hole into the top of an overpressurized can. The seed that shot into her came out like a geyser, a concentrated spray of my potent essence, hosing down her walls and flooding her cervix. For several long moments, I just held her still. Her head was thrown back, screaming. My eyes rolled into the back of my skull as I flooded her in a way that I had never felt before. I wasn't just cumming inside her, I was claiming her, I was marking her, I was imprinting her to me. This wasn't hours of languorous acrobatic lovemaking. This was basic. I was making her mine.

Only then, when my cum was already starting to leak out of her, did I start to spurt. I blasted rope after powerful rope of my hot, thick spunk into her with the power of a small detonation. Stars went off behind my eyes, and I was vaguely aware of a series of echoing, loud, carnal grunts that coincided with every rope shot into her. It took a few moments for me to realize that the sounds were coming from both of us; the first from me as I released into her and the second from her as she felt each one hitting her spasming inner walls.

And through all of it, her muscles never stopped milking me.

Reality wobbled, the ground beneath me shifted, and something soft hit my back. It was only her cooing giggles and mewling purrs of thanks and encouragement that finally brought me to my senses. I was flat on my back, Hayley perched on top of me, and my still-solid cock was still buried inside her.

"Oh my god, that was amazing! You are amazing! I have never been fucked like that before. Shit, I don't think anyone has been fucked like that before!" She giggled again. "Holy shit, I am so full!"

I swallowed hard.

I was suddenly very thirsty.

As my mind cleared, I became increasingly aware that what had just happened was not normal. Not in a bad way. But certainly not something that could be considered an everyday occurrence. Imagine winning the lottery, then waking up a week later to find that you had won it again. You wouldn't be complaining about it, but you would be acutely aware that it was not something that had happened every day.

"That was, by far, the best fuck I've ever had," she went on, purring deeply, nuzzling her cheek to the top of my chest, and tickling my chin with her hair. I could only groan and flex my cock inside her, bouncing it off her g-spot and pulling another sharp gasp, and another purring groan from her, before she ground her hips back down onto me.

We were interrupted by a rustle in the bushes in the direction of the beach, and we twisted our heads toward the disturbance. Through the foliage, and sucking some very wet fingers into her mouth, was Hannah, her face flushed, and her eyes locked squarely onto us.

"Oh wow! You two are so fucking hot together. I don't know who to be more jealous of," She grinned as she stepped through the bushes and toward us.

Hayley looked down at me and winked before pulling herself off my slick cock, and cupping a hand over her sodden, leaking pussy before pulling herself to her feet. "C'mon, you two, let's go check out this waterfall. You know the way, don't you, Han?" She eyeballed the girl with a seductive smile and another wink.

Hannah clearly understood the connotation better than I did, because she nodded enthusiastically and stepped closer to us. Both ladies helped me to my feet, then Hayley and I followed Hannah towards the sound of the roaring water. After only a few minutes of walking, we stepped out of the trees and into paradise. Liz would never be accused of being inarticulate, but not even her description could do justice to the staggering beauty of the scene before us.

Fruit trees of every description surrounded the crystal-clear lake and the cascading waterfall. A carpet of strange-looking but intricately beautiful red flowers blanketed the ground. Bird song that had been drowned out by the water only a few yards earlier now filled the air, and a soft, gentle, cooling breeze kissed the skin of my naked chest. The scents of the flowers, the freshness of the water spray in the air, all of it mixed to produce an effect that was as mesmerizing as it was beautiful. Even the colors seemed to be richer. The water of the sea was as clear and turquoise as anything that had ever graced the front of a postcard, but here, the water seemed almost unreal. The greens of the grasses looked greener, the blue of the sky was deeper, even the pale sand on the floor of the basin seemed to twinkle in the perfectly bright light.

It was paradise.

I stopped for a few moments to take it in. My mind still hadn't quite reconciled with the concept of being marooned here. With no immediate desire to return home or to the life I had left there, I seemed to be a little behind the curve in identifying the island as a place we were trapped in. To everyone else, it was a prison; to me, it was a refuge. I liked it here; I liked the calm pace of life, I liked working towards goals, and I liked being valuable to the society we were slowly building. If we were to be stuck here for the next decade or two, I was okay with that.

This was somewhere I could learn to call home.

The view in front of me was just another reason to fall in love with the place. I couldn't think of anything that could make the scenery any better.

I was almost immediately proved wrong, as a still naked and fuck-flushed Hayley walked forward through the sea of red flowers and stepped into the water. She took a few strides deeper before sitting on a rock and turning to face us. She grinned seductively at the slack-jawed Hannah and me before curling her finger at us to join her.

Hannah moved first as if there were some unspoken, extrasensory understanding between them. I followed only a few steps behind, sinking into the waist-deep water until I was sitting on the floor of the basin. I could only watch and groan loudly as Hannah sashayed closer to Hayley, ducked her head low as the redhead pulled her hand away from her pussy, and guided Hannah's purring lips between her legs.

I could only sit there and watch as each of them moaned out one climax after another. Hayley from Hannah's apparently skilled mouth, and Hannah from the simple taste of my seed mixed with Hayley's juices on her tongue.

**********

An hour or so later, Ray stepped out of the tree line wearing a new pair of shorts and holding up a very satisfied-looking and weak-kneed Zoe, although it could have been Caroline. Whichever of the two that wasn't on Ray's arm stepped out a few moments later and seemed to wipe something wet off her chin with a giggle.

Both of them were completely naked.

I remembered thinking that they were both stunningly good-looking and seeing them in their naked glory should have caused at least a little bit of a twitch under the water. But there was nothing. I glanced over to Hayley and Hannah, both of whom had moved from the rock when my lover had decided she was suitably clean. They were chatting quietly in the deeper water on the opposite bank. They had spent the last hour talking, giggling, and casting the odd flirtatious look over toward me, but had otherwise left me to relax. Looking at them now, and then flicking my eyes back to the two short-haired brunettes being helped into the water by Ray, I couldn't help but think that Zoe and Caroline somehow looked... less.

Equally surprising, given the abjectly scandalous behavior of all four girls over the past few hours, was that Hayley and Hannah didn't seem to give Ray a second look. Nor did Zoe or Caroline afford me more than a cursory glance. I could only frown as I looked at the nakedness of two objectively stunning women, and my only thoughts toward them were purely platonic.

In the time since Hayley had finished generously sharing my offering with Hannah, I had moved into the shallows. Sitting in the soft lakebed sand and leaning back against a rock, close to where the lake filtered into its draining river. Zoe and Caroline immediately waded over toward the two stewardesses, while Ray dropped into the water next to me and leaned his back against the rock next to mine.

"You too, huh?" he sighed in exhaustion.

"Yeeeaahhh," I drawled back. "I'm not sure those coconuts are the issue."

"Nope," He agreed. "I'm not sure we are fine either."

I nodded, pondering for a few moments. "Are we considering this a problem?"

"Not. Even. A little bit. At least not right now, I don't."

"Oh, good. It's not just me, then."

He snorted out a laugh before sinking deeper into the water. "Holy shit, man. I think those two are going to be the death of me. I don't know how you are going to manage. You've got three of them after you."

"Weird personal question," I said after a laugh of my own. "But was that... Um... different... How was it with other girls back home for you?"

"You mean that feeling like a feral animal in my chest was trying to fuck its way out of me?"

"Yes, that."

"Nah, I get that all the time."

"Really?"

"No! Of course not! That was fucking insane!"

"The coconuts, you think?" I asked after a few quiet moments. Both of us were watching the giggling, gossiping girls, and both of us were the recipients of more than a few amorous looks. "Or whatever it is causing this."

"It's gotta be... Fuckin' coconuts!" he muttered with a smirk.

"I know, right? I love 'em too."

He held up another fist, and I bumped it with mine, both of us chuckling tiredly, and neither one of us showing even a hint of the caution we had discussed only a few hours earlier.

"Jeez, this water is amazing. I'm starting to feel better already!" Ray groaned after another few minutes of quiet.

"I know. It's pretty crazy. I've been in here for an hour and feel pretty much normal. I'm not advertising that just yet, though."

He laughed again. "God, no. You will be dragged off and fucked to death again. Hannah is looking at you like you are a piece of prime steak."

He wasn't wrong.

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the group. Amy, Katie, Louisa, Liz, and the other girl stepped out of the trees to our left and waved to us. Tom stepped out a little way behind them and immediately took an interest in the flowers. All the women were sporting new bikinis, and each looked stunning. "So, this is where you all snuck off to," Liz called out with a smirk.

The four naked girls in the deeper part of the lake all squealed with excitement as their friends joined them. It didn't go unnoticed that Katie immediately fell into a group with Hayley and Hannah. All of them glancing back in my direction as, no doubt, the newcomer was regaled with the story of what had happened. By the end of it, Katie was blushing brightly, but was staring at me with an intensity that I doubt I will ever be able to describe accurately. Hayley and Hannah were giggling loudly. The nameless girl joined them a few minutes later, and the whole process started over again.

Oh, for fuck sake, this was getting ridiculous.

"Ray, I am useless with names, I forget them instantly!" I said quietly.

He snorted back at me, "My old man was like that. It used to drive my mother nuts."

"What the fuck is her name? The one with Hayley, Hannah, and Katie."

He laughed again. "That's Robyn."

"Robyn, yes. Fuck! That has been driving me crazy since yesterday!"

"Any other names you are forgetting?"

"Not really, although I do keep getting Zoe and Caroline mixed up, though. I can never tell which one is which."

Ray looked at me with an arched eyebrow and a grimace.

"You mix them up as well, don't you?" I smirked at him.

He nodded with a wince. We both fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

It was several hours later, just as the last of the sun's light was fading from the sky, that we decided to head back to the beach. I don't think any of us were too eager to leave the beauty of this waterfall. But it had been reluctantly agreed that, for the next few days at least, we would sleep on the beach. The reasoning was that we would be able to spot searchlights in the distance more easily from there and, hopefully, find a way to signal them if that happened. Tom, who had been so cold and calculating with his assessment of our chances of being rescued, had simply pointed out that despite the obscene odds he gave us of being found, there was always that one small chance to consider.

The others were pulling themselves from the water when I remembered that my clothes were still somewhere in the forest. More than that, I doubted I could find my way back to that tree if I tried, let alone find my clothes in the dark. Hayley seemed to spot my discomfort and correctly guessed its source before sauntering over in her full naked beauty. She leaned down and pressed a searing, passionate kiss to my lips, to the whoops and hollers of the other girls on the bank. She pointed to a pile of clothes next to the tree line. "You really were out of it, weren't you?" She grinned. "You must have pumped all your brain power into me." She finished with her voice barely above a whisper.

"You are amazing." I grinned back, looked over to where one of them had left my clothes, then stood and walked over to them, pulled them on. I didn't fail to notice the panting lips or the hungry, dilated looks in the eyes of Hannah, Katie, and now, Robyn as I strode naked across the lake. Nor did I miss the indifferent glances of Zoe and Caroline. But it was the wolf-whistles and giggles from Amy and Liz that made me chuckle.

With all of us ready, and with Hayley, Hannah, Zoe, and Caroline all dressed--my two lovers in skin-tight and utterly delicious bikinis, Ray's girls in... something similar, I assume--we made our way back to the beach.

By the time we got there, it was dark, and our group automatically split into four distinct cliques. I lay on my back with Hayley tucked under one arm and Hannah under the other. Katie was pressed in behind Hannah, and our newest addition, Robyn, was nuzzling in happily behind Hayley. Ray was a dozen or so feet away, flanked by Zoe and Caroline. Amy, Liz, and Louisa were in a less-intimate group a little closer to the sea. Tom was on his own, tucked up against a tree.

I cast a look over to the youngest of our group. Tom had been the quietest of all of us. If he hadn't been explaining something, he generally didn't make a sound. At least not that I had heard. He seemed completely oblivious to the nakedness and raw sexual energy going on around him, and appeared to be extraordinarily interested in things that the rest of us barely even considered. I could never claim to be an expert in his condition. But I knew enough about autism to understand his mind simply worked differently from everyone else's.

I imagined that his life had been a life of strict, self-imposed routine. Not necessarily planning his days out to the minute, as the stereotype goes. But even simple things, like the order in which he washed himself in the shower or the route he took to work each day, were the anchors he used to regulate himself in a world that must have always seemed utterly baffling to him and usually quite terrifying. The fact that he was coping so well in our current situation was, when I thought about it, truly astonishing.

He didn't join in with the group. He helped in ways that he thought were important. He avoided conversation, and if he felt forced into one, he would simply ignore you and walk away. There were probably people all over the world who would have considered him rude, to say the least. But although he may not have joined in with the group, he was never far away from it. The ways that he thought he should be helping had, so far, been much more important than what we were thinking about. And walking away from a conversation may have seemed rude and abrupt, but it was probably the only way he could cope with being stuck in a semi-confined space with twelve strangers talking at him.

The more I thought about it, the more impressed I was with this man's fortitude. I decided to try my best to look out for Tom in the least condescending way I could.

He was glancing around the group, always watching, before his eyes found mine in the pale light. He held them for a moment, gave the smallest of smiles, and then let his eyes move on.

Mine closed of their own accord, and I drifted off into a deep, peaceful, and thoroughly well-earned sleep.

********

That deep and peaceful sleep was interrupted a short while later by the feeling of my shorts being popped open, and a delicate hand reaching inside them to pull out my length. I peeked open an eye, but in the darkness, it was impossible to tell who it was. Hannah seemed to have rolled off my arm. There was still a body there, but I couldn't tell if it was her or if she had moved, and that body belonged to Katie. Hayley hadn't moved an inch, which ruled her out, but which of the other three was slowly lowering her head to take me in was anyone's guess.

I stifled a groan as the wet heat engulfed me. The arm released by Hannah's extrication seemed to move of its own accord, reaching down to run my fingers through the girl's hair. She froze for a moment at the touch, then purred deeply and redoubled her efforts.

Her tongue lashed energetically against my frenulum, and another deep moan vibrated through my shaft as a large glob of precum smeared onto it. Her head started to bob, not necessarily faster, but certainly deeper. She seemed intent on getting as much of me into her throat as she could. There was a steady stream of glicks and gag noises coming from her mouth, as my crown brushed against the opening to her throat, but with a hard swallow and a push downwards, another few inches disappeared into her.

Hot breath washed out of her nose and over my skin as she brought a hand up to cup my balls. Gently rolling and massaging them as she bobbed her head harder, adding more and more suction and tightening the seal of her lips. Her hair teased over my bare thighs, and there was the unmistakable sound of her fingers working into herself below her.

I had no idea how long I'd had to recover, I could have been asleep for an hour or for most of the night, but this girl was making short work of me. My back started arching, pushing more of myself into her mouth. Sensing the urgency in my breathing, which was now panting and heavy, her head started bobbing faster. Her fingers on my balls were squeezing a little tighter and twisting a bit, using every trick she knew to bring my climax on faster. Her teeth raked featherlight up my shaft, a dangerous maneuver at the best of times, but one that she executed perfectly before she hummed.

The vibrations sent me over the edge.

With a gasp and a deep, guttural groan, I spilled into her mouth. This was not the eruption I had experienced earlier with Hayley. This was gentler, more relaxing. She had wanted to drain me, and that is precisely what she had done. What surprised me most was that she pulled her head to my tip, her hand leaving my balls and wrapping around my shaft, stroking me hard and making sure that every powerful spurt was milked into her mouth. Shots splashed off the back of her throat, some splashed off the roof of her mouth, or the hollow of her cheeks, but all of it pooled onto her swirling tongue.

She held it there. She wanted to taste me. She was relishing it as a series of deep, satisfied purrs vibrated my head still between her lips. Only then did she swallow.

I was already feeling sleep closing in on me fast, as she crawled up me and whispered into my ear. "I told you that I love to swallow. I hope I get to join you in the forest, too, next time," she finished with a swipe of her tongue over my earlobe.

"You can count on it, Katie," I whispered back with a grin.

********

Our first full day on the island had been, in all honesty, recovering from the night that had brought us here, and coming to terms with the fact that we were stuck. The second had been a little more explorative, but we had found two of the three basics needed for survival here, food and water. Liz had also given us a much better idea of the layout of the island, and, let's call a spade a spade here, I'd gotten laid. It had been a good day. The third day, however, would be the one where we got down to work.

The morning dawned bright and annoyingly early. With no shade to be found on the sand where our group had chosen to sleep. The light of the dazzling tropical sun seemed intent on finding its way right into my eyeballs. It didn't matter which way I turned or how tightly I squeezed my eyelids closed, the sunshine didn't have the common decency to leave me the hell alone. I gave up with a loud, annoyed grumble and got up.

Yeah, Fuck you, too, daylight.

I would normally comment on how stunning the morning was, or how breathtakingly beautiful our surroundings were. But it was far too early for me to be cheery or optimistic about anything.

I dragged myself into the shade of the trees and pulled a Mango out of a pile that someone had gathered, then dropped to the ground. Taking a long draw of surprisingly cool water out of a bottle that had once held shampoo, I sulked about not being still asleep.

Ray dropped onto the floor next to me. "Morning," I grumbled at him.

"Mornings can kiss my ass!" he groaned back, taking a large sip out of what had previously been a bottle of pinot grigio and chewing on a banana.

"Oh, thank God," I sighed.

"What?"

"If you were a morning person, I may have had to feed you to Steve."

He snorted a single breath laugh, and we both went back to hating mornings in silence. For about three minutes, when Hayley bounced out of the bushes with Tom, both of them carrying armloads of freshly filled bottles. "Baby, you're awake," she beamed, dropping her payload with the rest of the bottles before she skipped over to us--literally skipping!--leaned over and kissed my cheek. "Tom and I have been up for hours. We have collected food and refilled most of the bottles," She grinned. "The other girls have been up for a while too."

I glowered at her.

"You don't like mornings, do you?" she asked with a giggle. "I quite like them."

"I'm filing for divorce immediately. Irreconcilable differences." I grumbled back, failing to hide the small smirk on my lips.

"You can't divorce me. You haven't married me... yet." She grinned with a wink, blew a kiss to me, and skipped off to the beach to find some of the other girls. I couldn't help but groan, as I tilted my head to watch her in that gorgeous emerald green bikini.

"Dan, we need to talk about some sort of shelter, man," Ray grumbled next to me. "No pressure or anything, but I don't function well at this time of the morning. I need shade from this damned sun."

"I hear you," I nodded. "And wholeheartedly agree. I'll get started on it today, it will take a few days to get something up, but we should be able to use the raft until...."

I froze.

Ray froze as well.

We both looked at each other, then looked at the raft, and then back to each other again with a loud groan.

"The dead guy's still in there, isn't he?" He grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Yup"

"I wonder if Steve is still hungry."

"... Dude..."

"I know, proper burial and all that... But have you ever seen what happens to a body after three days in the heat? That is going to be... unpleasant. Shit, it's hardly a walk in the park back home with full protective gear... Besides, it will be a burial at sea."

"How bad are we talking?"

Ray shrugged. "There will be bloating, the decomposition process will already have begun, bodily fluids will be leaking out, skin and tissue will start to come away under your hands... And that smell will cling to you for weeks. It gets into your pores, man."

"Alright, I get it... What's your suggestion?"

Ray seemed to think for a moment. "If we can find something sharp, we can cut the bottom out of the raft, wrap him up in it, and then just... sort of float him out to sea. Someone can say a few words if it helps."

"I swear to God, if someone starts singing We are Sailing as he floats off, I'm gonna lose it."

"Aww, c'mon, man, that's not cool!" Ray groaned. "Now that song is gonna be stuck in my head as we do it!" We both chuckled a little, lightening the tension.

"Did anyone get his name or anything?"

"I don't think so. It sounded like they pulled him out of the water like that. There was nothing Amy could have done. Not that she will accept that."

"I know. This all just seems a little cold." I said with a sigh, taking another deep draw of my water.

"It is cold," Ray said with a soft nod. "But the longer we leave it, the more chance of disease and so on. Hell, for all we know, the bodily fluids could have been running into the sea, and that is what has Steve all worked up and rowdy."

I nodded.

"Hey, Tom!" Ray called over his shoulder and waited for Tom to appear before continuing. "When you were going through the bottles yesterday, you didn't happen to find any bottles of perfume or cologne, did you?"

"Mmm, yes." Tom nodded, his eyes firmly fixed on the pile of mangoes by his feet. "They were too small to be used for water. I put them all in the blue case."

"Oh, that's excellent! Tom, you are my new favorite person."

Tom smiled brightly before heading off to resume whatever it was he had been doing. I gave Ray a quizzical look and arched an eyebrow. "Trust me on this. We are going to need them!" With that, he got up and headed over to the debris pile. Rummaging through the discarded cases that were full of things the women of our group had deemed useless, or at least not immediately useful.

I took a deep breath, once again alone with my thoughts.

For the first time since we had crashed, my mind drifted back to Sarah and Lewis. When I'd bought the ticket that put me on the doomed flight, I'd been asked to provide a home address. Not thinking much of it at the time, I had given the address of the house that I had shared with Sarah. It had been three days since the discovery of her infidelity, and two and a half since I boarded the flight. It wasn't hard to imagine that some representative of the airline had made contact with her by now.

My mind played out the scenario in my head. Her denying I was on the flight--she had, in fact, no idea that I had gone to the airport immediately after decking Lewis. Her being shown a copy of my passport that she probably hadn't realized I had packed. The realization that I had always wanted to travel, whereas she was never a comfortable flier. The last part of my last message to her...

I am going away for a while, I will be back to finalize the divorce.

After that point, I couldn't be sure. A week ago, I would have imagined her collapsing in grief. But my estimations and overall thoughts of Sarah, had been smashed into nothingness in the time since then. Would she play the grieving widow? I had no doubt that enough of her friends and family knew of her affair by now to see through that display of amateur dramatics, but I was under no illusions that it would stop her from trying. Would the first person she called be Lewis? Would they fall into bed together, would my newly homeless former friend move in?

In a profound moment of self-awareness, the last question I thought to ask myself popped into my head: Did I even care?

The simple answer was yes, obviously. But not as much as I thought I would. I wasn't shallow enough to think that the attention of Hayley for half a day was enough to override my half-decade relationship with Sarah. Sarah had managed to do that on her own. Things were very black and white in my mind. I don't know if it was some sort of stunted emotional development or if this was something that a lot of people thought without ever saying. But she had shown me her true colors. She had shown me the real her. The more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder if the Sarah I had fallen in love with was just an act. A persona designed to look like a decent person to the rest of society. The real Sarah, the one who had been so deceitful, the one who had gone out of her way to maintain an illicit relationship with a man she knew to be my best friend, the one whose face was rapidly starting to fade from my mind and whose laugh was already gone--good riddance--was someone I had no desire to keep in my life. That Sarah had smashed any illusions I may have had of her.

If it was a drunken one-night thing that she had owned up to immediately, had asked for forgiveness for... I still probably wouldn't have forgiven her. I would have been heartbroken, and I still would have divorced her--lost trust was impossible to rebuild--but I wouldn't have dwelled on it. This wasn't that, though. It was an insidious, calculated, deliberate, and prolonged betrayal, and with the one man on earth that I should have been able to trust. Another person who had shown me their true self. The real Sarah would have been someone I avoided like the plague if I had known at the beginning of our relationship, and the real Lewis was someone I should have beaten the crap out of years ago.

With that in mind, it was like my own brain refused to allow me to grieve the end of a marriage and a friendship that had never been real to start with. It seemed far more interested in making me feel stupid for not seeing it earlier than letting me mourn the relationship itself. But that yawning, aching feeling of loss that I had expected to crash down on me... just didn't. It seemed perfectly content to just skip the entire "feeling sorry for myself" phase of this breakup and move on to what came next. The realization that this was a possible home that had flicked through my mind earlier now came crashing back.

I was happy I was here.

And that should have bothered me a hell of a lot more than it did.

My marriage had ended less than three days ago.

A man had died.

I was stranded on a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific with no realistic chance of rescue anytime soon.

Yet somehow, the strongest emotion I could summon was a vague sense of relief.

Relief that I didn't have to go back.

Relief that Sarah was gone.

Relief that, for the first time in years, my life actually felt like it was moving toward something instead of slowly collapsing in on itself.

So I just... let myself be relieved. The warm breeze drifting down from the jungle carried that same faint floral scent again.

Sweet.

Calming.

Distracting.

I breathed it in deeply and felt myself relax a little more. The air here really was perfect. But more than that, the ideas of home--or at least my former home--seemed a little further away with each lungful of it that I took. The anger, the pain, the sense of betrayal, the lingering hatred that I felt toward the people in my old life... all of it just felt... muted now. Like it was far away and someone else's problem.

Fine. Let that someone deal with it. I was happy where I was.

Nothing at all was wrong in the world. There was a niggling little voice at the back of my mind telling me that there was, in fact, a fucking shit load wrong with it. I just couldn't bring myself to care.

Instead, I lifted my gaze to the warmth, noise, laughter, and distractions waiting back on the beach

My eyes settled happily on the bikini-clad figures.

All of them were running, chasing each other barefoot around the sand, the squeals and giggles and laughter echoing across the sand like they didn't have a care in the world.

I tilted my head to the side.

"Oh God," I groaned to myself as the start of a smile pulled at my lips. One of them had found a beach ball.

I chuckled to myself and got back to work, sorting through the case at my feet.

There were more kids' clothes in this one, a young girl's by the looks of it. More sunscreen, more inflatable toys--the plastic from which could be laid out to gather rainwater or perhaps be used in the construction of a water-tight roof. There was an iPad in there, too, but the electronics had been fucked by the case's time in the sea. I doubted they were salvageable, not without the right tools, but I wasn't willing to throw anything away. It was weird to think that the parent packing this case had taken great care to wrap the tablet safely, treating it as the most valuable thing inside it, and now here I was, tossing it aside as nothing more than a glorified paperweight. Nope, the sunscreen and cheap, pool worthy clothes that cost a fraction of the iPad were vastly more important here.

I glanced back up as another burst of laughter echoed through the air.

Hayley and Katie were chasing each other around, trying to tickle each other. Robyn was lying back on the sand, giggling as she watched. Amy was jumping up and down to get the beachball out of Liz's hands--something that was doing some very interesting things to her chest... god, I could only imagine what Hannah's tits would look like doing that.

Jesus, that girl was gorgeous.

I chuckled to myself.

I was watching the girls frolicking about on the sand, giggling playfully as they tossed the beach ball back and forth, wrestling it from one another. Under normal circumstances, I would have been enthralled.. It was like a scene out of an adult film that would have had any hot-blooded male frothing at the lips, but there was something missing...

No, not something... SomeONE!

As if on cue, the bushes behind me rustled, and Hannah stepped out of them, a sling under her arm fashioned from a few tied-together shirts almost overflowing with mangoes. Her face looked up to mine, a happy smile on her lips and that mischievous glint in her eye, the same one I had seen yesterday when she had watched me mate so furiously with Hayley.

It hit me all at once.

I inhaled deeply. The taste of her on the air was suddenly the only thing I could think of. Not the crude aroma of her molten sex, well, not only that but the simple presence of her. The glistening perspiration on her skin sent a jolt through my instantly hardening tumescence, and I was somehow aware of the rise of my own pheromones in the air. She froze on the spot and sucked in a deep breath.

With a totally unexpected grace of movement, I was on my feet.

As soon as her eyes met mine, the look on her face changed. Gone was the happy, easy smile. In its place was a look of pure wanton desire, a lustful hunger that I immediately knew I was mirroring back at her. Her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, her nipples hardened, and their outlines pressed tantalizingly against the fabric of her white bikini.

She dropped the sling. I was halfway across the ground between us before the mangoes had finished falling from it. I grabbed her wrist and yanked her after me as I quick-marched us into the trees. A gasp escaped her lips, not one of pain from the pressure of my grip, nor was it one of fear or even apprehension at the sudden change in me; It was a gasp of pure, undiluted arousal.

She knew what was coming and wholeheartedly endorsed the plan.

********

Ray cast me a sly, knowing look as I stepped back onto the beach twenty or so minutes later. The weak-kneed and bow-legged Hannah had been helped back as far as the log I had spent the morning on and then left there, giggling like a drunken sorority girl and cooing happily.

"Not a word," I smirked at him as he opened his mouth to speak.

He laughed, holding up his hands before glancing around the beach. More than one of the other girls was looking enviously over at Hannah before casting demure looks back at us. Ray smirked a little wider. "Well, if you can't beat 'em...." With that, he stood from the case he was rifling through, walked purposefully over to Zoe, or Caroline, or whichever of the two had been wiping her lips on entering the lake the day before, scooped her into his arms, and then carried the squealing beauty into the trees.

A few minutes later, the groans and high-pitched grunts started reverberating out of the greenery, to the giggles of the rest of the women. "You were louder!" Hayley called over to the still-sitting Hannah.

"I'm not surprised," she yelled back. "He fucked the shit out of me!"

I chuckled, opened one of the cases, and started to rummage through it as the girls kept teasing each other. "I wonder who he is going to take next," Hayley shouted back, casting a smirking glance at me, doing her best to draw me into the banter. "None of the others have had any."

"Not true." Quipped Katie. The rest of the girls, with the exception of Zoe, Caroline, or whichever of the two hadn't been dragged off into the trees by Ray, turned on the grinning Katie. "I had a nice mouthful last night. A very nice mouthful." Another round of giggles echoed over the sand as the chestnut-haired young high school teacher comically licked the tips of her fingers.

"I call dibs!" Robyn chirped up, purring in my direction while still holding the beach ball.

"Whadya think, Dan?" Hayley called over to me. "Fancy a piece of Robyn?"

The twinge itched behind my eyes again, that need to claim and possess the woman in front of me. It had been mere minutes since I had returned with Hannah, yet, already, the tent was starting to grow in my shorts. "Nope," I called back, my gaze holding firmly on Robyn. "Not a piece, but I am happy to take all of her."

There was a round of "oooohs" and giggles as Robyn blushed brightly.

Something in the back of my mind that wondered how everyone was acting so normally, especially Robyn--whose sister had gone down with the plane--and the equally happy-looking Louisa--whose husband had also been killed in the crash. Both of those two women, in particular, should have been inconsolable under the circumstances, but both seemed to be acting as if nothing had happened.

Louisa, to be fair, was much quieter than the others, markedly so. But as she moved away from the rest of the group to sit by Tom, she hardly looked sad.

I had no real experience with grief, I had no measure by which to judge the girl's reactions. I could tell that their behavior was not, strictly speaking, normal, but it had only been a few days, and most of that time had been filled with the task of surviving. I shrugged it off and went back to rummaging while the girls returned to their vigorous and bouncy beach ball-tossing game.

It wasn't long later, maybe half an hour, that Ray returned to the debris pile. Taking deep, thirsty draws from his vodka bottle of water, he had left his lover on the log next to Hannah and had rejoined me, flush and breathing heavily.

"You alright there, man?" I asked with a chuckle.

"No! Fuck, I'm 52. She is literally half my age... and there are two of them! I swear to Christ, my ticker is gonna give out at this rate. Urgh, Holy shit... I think she pulled my back out!" He groaned and arched his back backward, trying to stretch it out, groaning a little louder as a few pops came from his spine.

"Gotta take care of those old bones," I smirked at him.

"You don't need to worry about my bones," he laughed back.

"That's what she said," I laughed a little louder than I meant to. "Do I need to have a chat with them, ask them to take it easy on you, old man?"

"Not unless you want to be violently reintroduced to Steve," he chuckled back. "Now stop messing around. We have a dead dude to get rid of."

"Yeah yeah," I nodded. "But unless we find something sharp in this lot..." I gestured to the pile of cases, "... We're going to have to make our own blade out of some broken, jagged metal. That's not going to be fun." Ray grunted his agreement and dropped down next to a case, and opened it.

I rolled my neck and looked around the beach. Today was the first day that I had really noticed the heat. It wasn't oppressively hot, it wasn't even particularly uncomfortable. It was just at that point where you felt it on the exposed parts of your skin if you stayed still for too long. And then only enough to make you wonder if it was a good time to put on some sunscreen. Sunscreen, along with some of the alcohol Amy had told us to keep for medical and disinfecting purposes, was something we had in ready supply.

Looking around the beach, I was aware that I was the most dressed out of everyone. All of the girls were wearing bikinis; Louisa's and Amy's were more modest than the others, but there was still more than enough skin on show. Liz's, on the other hand, was downright scandalous. Ray had been wearing a button-down shirt before he had vanished into the woods, and it hadn't made the return journey with him. I was still wearing mine. Tom hadn't worn a shirt since the day before and was now chatting to Louisa while banging smaller rocks against a partially buried boulder.

Tossing one case of useless items aside and dragging out another one, I cast another look back up the beach towards the youngest member of our group. Autism is a curious condition, and no two people with it are exactly the same. Tom, for example, seemed utterly oblivious to the sexual energy running through the group. That is not to say that he was incapable of sexuality at all, quite the opposite, if the subtle glances he was casting at Louisa were anything to go by. It was more like he could only really comprehend it on a one-on-one basis. The energy, the feelings, and the atmosphere were not the issue; the fact that it was displayed by a group, and not by any one individual, was.

The same seemed to go for communication. He could talk to pretty much anyone, provided it was a conversation he felt he could be a part of. But when he needed to address more than one person, as he had with his explanation of the chances of our rescue, he didn't actually speak to us. He had focused his eyes on his drawing on the sand and spoken to that. We had all just happened to be listening. If one person asked a question, he could answer it as well as anybody else, if not better, but then he was talking to that person, still not to the group. It was very clearly a coping mechanism and a very effective one at that. If he was oblivious to the sexual energy of the group, I would imagine that the same would apply to our anger, frustration, happiness, or pretty much any other emotion.

Tom didn't do crowds. I could hardly blame him on that front.

At that moment, he seemed to be in something of a casual, perhaps even flirty, conversation with Louisa and seemed perfectly happy in doing so. His continued clanging of the rocks, a rhythmic knocking sound, echoed around the beach. "What's Tom doing?" I asked Ray.

"I'm not sure," Ray said after a few moments, straightening himself and looking up at the young man. "He was peeling a tree earlier."

"He was what?"

"Hey, I'm not questioning it, man." Ray chuckled as he turned to face me. "I've got a nephew who is autistic, Kid is a fucking genius! If Tom thinks breaking rocks or peeling trees is a good idea, then it's a good idea. I would bet body parts that he is going to stroll over later, and will have done something with them that none of us had even thought of, and we are all going to feel like idiots for not thinking of it first."

"You mean like knowing how to open coconuts?"

"Exactly.... Fuckin' coconuts!"

"Fuckin coconuts!" I concurred with a chuckle and dragged open the zipper on the case in front of me.

I lifted the lid of the case and started pulling things out, it was mainly filled with children's clothes. The clothing was relatively useless, but the cloth they were made out of could be torn apart for other, more useful things later. A memory of little Johnny briefly flashed through my head again, and I cast a quick glance over to the area we had all wordlessly agreed was our sleeping spot. Ellie the Elephant was still sitting on the rock where I had left her. I could still remember every feature of his face as if it had been etched into my brain. His mother was a little vaguer, though. I could remember her smile, but everything else about her seemed to have been lost in the preceeding events. The first inklings that I was nowhere near as devastated by their loss as I had been on our first night started to pull a frown onto my brow.

"Oh, Jackpot!" Ray suddenly announced, pulling my attention back to the task at hand. He grinned happily as he pulled a box of condoms out of one of the cases. "These are going to be vital!"

"How many are in there?"

He opened the box and peered inside. "Oh... four."

"Excellent. At this rate, we are safe until lunchtime." I snorted.

"Fuck, little Rays running around the island, playing tag with all the little Dans." He shuddered visibly.

I cast a glance over to the crowd of women. "Would that be such a..." I stopped myself mid-sentence.

Would that be such a bad thing? What the fuck!... Ray either didn't hear me or had chosen to ignore such a ridiculous idea. I cleared my throat and made another attempt at saying something sensible. "Yeah, we should probably talk to them about that."

"Oh, hey, I found a lighter!" Ray suddenly announced. "Condom guy is on a roll! What else does he have in here?" He started pulling armloads of clothes out of the case, rummaging around for more. "Holy shit! Hey Amy!" He called over to the group of women. "Would this be of any use to you?" He had pulled out a green first aid box and was waving it in the air.

"Oh my god! YES!" the Doc replied, instantly forgetting the game she was playing with the others and running over. She dropped onto the sand and excitedly took the kit, opening it up and checking the contents. "Phew," she breathed happily after a few minutes. "Okay, so this isn't going to do much if someone gets seriously hurt, but smaller things? I think we're covered."

"Does that mean we get to drink the alcohol?" Ray grinned back.

"Not unless you want this jammed into a very intimate area." Amy chuckled back, pulling out a pair of medical, needle-pointed scissors and waving them menacingly at him.

Ray and I both blinked, then groaned loudly.

"What?" Amy asked in confusion.

Ray slowly reached over and took the scissors out of her hand. "We needed something sharp to deal with dead dude."

"Who?" Amy frowned, the confused look staying firmly in place.

"Uh... the guy in the life raft?" He said, a frown of his own pulling at his brow.

Amy turned around and looked over her shoulder at the raft. It hadn't moved from its spot further up the beach since we had pulled it ashore. "Ohhhhh. I'd forgotten about him." Amy shook her head and chuckled. "Well, okay, I'm going to put this somewhere safe," with that, she got up and skipped almost giddily toward the trees.

Ray and I just sat there for a few moments, the scissors still in Ray's hand.

"That was weird, right?" he asked.

"The Doctor who was heartbroken about not being able to save a man's life, forgetting his body was still in the life raft?" I replied. "Yeah, just a little."

"Hmmm. We may have a bigger problem than we thought." He nodded.

"Yeah. Fuckin coconuts!"

"Fuckin coconuts," he agreed. "Okay, I need you to rip some of those useless clothes into face masks. Make sure they cover our noses and mouths. I need to find the blue case where Tom put all the perfumes."

********

A little while later, maybe an hour or so, we were ready. The still shirtless Ray had the remains of a little girl's bright pink t-shirt strapped over his face. A 'My Little Pony' displayed prominently on the front. I could try to tell you that this was a complete accident and a byproduct of the system I used to make it... But that would be a lie.

My face mask was green.

The women were all sitting around watching us, all of them giggling at how we looked. I'm pretty sure that Ray and I would have cast more than a few concerned looks at each other at their simple incomprehension of the task we were undertaking, but both of us were barely able to see through the tears in our eyes. The amount of cologne and perfume Ray had soaked into the facecloths was overpowering.

Whatever was happening to them wasn't turning them into mindless bimbos. Amy had proven that with her immediate professionalism over the first aid kit. It was more like they were forgetting about things a little too easily, and that only seemed to apply to things that would sour their mood. Amy and most of the others had only remembered the body of the man in the raft when they had been reminded of it and forced to confront it. Robyn and Louisa hadn't remembered him at all. It was not lost on either Ray or me that these were the two women who should be grieving the most.

The issue I had was that I never really knew any of them before our arrival on the Island, meaning I had no idea how much of the way they were acting was the real them and how much was an effect of whatever was happening to them. I would need to make a conscious effort to learn as much about them as I could. More than just getting to know them, but seeing if I could get some sort of history or backstory by which to measure their current demeanor.

They were more than a little amused by our appearance, but the reason for its necessity--the decomposition of the body and so on--seemed to be lost on all of them except Amy. They just shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

"Alright," Ray coughed. "We go in, we cut around the sides, we fold the bottom of the raft over the body, and then lift the rest of it away."

"Got it." I nodded.

He cast a look my way. Or at least I think he did, it was hard to tell through the blurred vision of my tearing eyes. Breathing through the fumes of the cologne was hard enough; seeing through it was almost impossible. "Take a deep breath." He said somberly. "This is going to suck!"

With a deep and held breath, he stepped forward, opened the flap, and started to step inside. Only a few seconds later, even before I could reach the flap, he came stumbling back out again. Coughing, spluttering, gagging, and wrenching. "Nope. Fuck that! The crabs have found him! Holy shit, that is not something I am going to forget any time soon." He shuddered almost violently, stooping down to rest his hands on his knees. I looked towards the flap again; we all know what they say about curiosity and cats. "Don't do it, man. Just... Don't. Trust me on this. That shit is..." He didn't get to finish his sentence as he deposited his last few meals onto the sand.

The girls had all stopped giggling and were now looking on with concern.

Zoe and Caroline had jumped to their feet and were running toward Ray; Amy wasn't far behind them. Ray waved them back, gesturing to keep away as he managed to straighten himself up. The opening of the flap had released some of the smell from inside, I could taste it even through the overpowering amounts of perfume. I could feel my stomach starting to turn. The girls, still a dozen or more feet away, all stopped, lifting their hands to cover their mouths and deciding that Ray may be onto something when telling them to keep their distance.

"Alright, new plan," Ray finally said after managing to compose himself. He stood back up straight and looked at the raft.

"I'm listening," I said after a suitable amount of silent seconds.

"Oh, I don't have one. I was just saying we need a new one."

"Ah."

We stared at the raft for a little while longer.

"Okay, how about this..." I started slowly, already wondering how much of this was a good idea with Steve still around. "... We lift up the sides and cut about half of the bottom away from beneath."

"Go on," Ray said after a pause.

"Then we push the whole raft into the water, as deep as we are able without pissing off our friendly neighborhood shark, and let the raft fill with water. The weight of the water should push the hole open, and Dead Dude should just... kinda float or sink out of it."

"Will that work? Won't he just sort of float around inside there?"

"It shouldn't matter," I said after a little thought. "If we lift the raft as we are pulling it back, it would lift the edges over him. Once part of him is out, we can just pull the raft over the rest of him. Plus, dragging it into the water with a hole in the bottom should scoop a fair bit of sand into it. That would weigh down the bottom and help him slide out."

"What about Steve?" Ray asked. Both of us looked out at the ocean, but the dark and dangerous-looking fin was nowhere to be seen. That didn't necessarily mean he was gone; he could have just been fully submerged in deeper water, and we had all seen how fast he could move if he thought there was a meal nearby... which he absolutely would do as soon as the bodily fluids around the dead dude leaked into the water.

"Yes, Steve would be a problem." I nodded. "Unless..." I stepped closer to the raft, kneeling to study the thin rope attached to its circumference. It had been what we had gripped onto to pull the raft when we had been swimming towards the Island. "Hand me the scissors."

A little while later, we were ready. The rope had been cut and attached to one of the fastening rings beneath the entrance flap, and the bottom section of the raft floor had been cut away on the opposite half of the circular-shaped craft. With a shove, we pushed it into the water and followed it in. The rope would let us stay out of the deeper, more dangerous Steve-infested water, but it wasn't long enough to let us stay on the beach. We were hoping that the dead body in the raft would keep him busy if he turned up.

We stopped before the water reached our knees, Ray on one side of the rope, me on the other, and we let the waves wash the raft and its cargo, further and further away from us. Finally, the rope was stretched out to its full length, and we held. "Now what?" Ray asked.

"Not a clue. This is as far ahead as I..."

The entire raft seemed to jump a few feet out of the water, and an enormous splash exploded from beneath it. The patch of crystal-clear water around the craft slowly started to tinge with red. I sighed deeply. "Never mind, Steve is here."

"Hi, Steve."

"Did you want to say a few words or anything?"

Ray smirked at me.

"Don't do it, man."

Ray grinned a little wider before he started to sing. "We are sailing...."

********

A little while later, all of us--with the exception of Tom and Louisa--were sitting on the log at the top of the beach. The reality of the scene in front of them at the raft had snapped the girls out of their giggly distraction, but it hadn't lasted.

In fact, it was almost strange how fast the atmosphere recovered afterward.

An hour earlier we had watched a man's body disappear beneath the waves and into the jaws of a perpetually hungry Steve.

Now Katie was laughing at something Hayley had said while Amy argued with Ray over supplies.

Nobody looked devastated anymore.

Nobody even really seemed particularly sad.

And the strangest part?

I wasn't sure I did either.

Liz was the only one who was looking serious, but even then, not for the reasons she should have. "We need some shelter," she stated simply, after looking for a while up toward the trees.. "We have food, we have water, but eventually the weather is going to turn, and if we don't have any...."

"We are at risk of succumbing to exposure," Amy finished for her, her composure instantly becoming as serious as Liz's.

"The raft is going to need a few days, minimum, to be aired out before it can be used for anything," Ray added.

"And we are going to need tools to actually build something, something sturdy enough to be useful, anyway. The raft will do in a pinch, but a strong gust of wind, and it's gonna be useless." I chipped in. "We need to think of it as a glorified sunshade. Not as a shelter. Real shelter is going to need to be built from scratch... That's going to take tools... and time."

"And there's nothing useful in the cases?" Hayley asked, leaning into the side of me.

"Not yet." My arm wrapped comfortably around her waist, and my fingers were tenderly and familiarly stroking over the skin of her hip. "But I don't think we've checked more than a third of the cases. We may still get lucky."

There was a series of nods. "Okay, I'm going to say it," Robyn spoke up. "What if we aren't lucky?"

"We don't have to worry about that," Louisa said, beaming as she and Tom approached the rest of the group. Tom stepped forward and, while maintaining perfect eye contact, handed me something.

It took me a few moments to realize what I was looking at. "Holy fucking Shit, Tom! You made this?" Tom nodded as I held it up for the rest of the group to see.

In my hand was a fairly thick but almost perfectly straight branch. The branch didn't look like it came from any of the trees close to the beach, so he had clearly gone hunting for it while the rest of us had been busy. But what was truly remarkable about the stick was that it had what looked like a Stone Age-style ax-head attached to one end of it. The stone had been smashed and shaped in a way that made one side of it into a perfect ax shape, while the other had been tapered off into almost a point, which had been worked through the branch. The whole thing had been tied off by what looked like the fibrous skins on the palm trees.

Tom, from banging stones together for god knew how many hours, and even more hours before that, literally peeling trees, had fashioned a crude but apparently effective ax.

"Called it." Ray laughed.

I looked down, my jaw opened in disbelief, before I managed to pull my eyes back up to Tom. "You... Jesus, I don't know what to say... You may have just saved everyone's life... Thank you."

Tom beamed proudly, his eye contact faltering at the praise. "Mmmmm, you are welcome."

"Well, okay. Thanks to Tom here, I get to be a lumberjack for the rest of the day. Who wants to help?" Hayley, Hannah, Katie, and Robyn all threw their hands into the air as I ran my thumb over the surprisingly sharp edge of the blade. It wasn't sharp enough to draw blood, but it was more than enough to fell trees.

"That looks about fair." Amy nodded with a smile. "The rest of us can go through as many cases as we can to see what else is there."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Ray said, clapping Tom on the arm.

With a few more words of goodbye and good luck, we parted into our work groups and went our separate ways. Hayley hooked her arm onto one side of me, Robyn on the other.

"You do realize something," Robyn purred into my ear as we headed into the trees and towards the waterfall. "You're probably not gonna be allowed to leave this forest until you've fucked my brains out too."

I just laughed. Hayley, who had heard the whole thing, giggled too.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

********