by M H Ryan
The sea cat rubbed against my leg and looked up at me. I bent over and patted the clean part of its head and took a step back from the cat. I didn’t need any more of that black stuff on me.
“What do you have in mind? A new camp?” Aubrey asked.
“Guys,” Sherri said.
“I don’t know, there is another place I saw on Food Island that—” I said.
“Guys!” Sherri said, pointing to the horizon. “I see smoke.”
Chapter 18
Smoke trailed up into the sky and spread out, creating a thin, gray cloud.
We had walked to the back side of the island and stood on the beach, staring at the trail of smoke rising from the horizon. I looked through the scope and identified the source, another island. I could see bare sticks poking up from the island, maybe burned trees or another strange variation on a palm tree, but the tops were bare. It was too far away to see anything else.
“Let’s do a gear check one more time,” I said.
Aubrey sighed and pulled a bag closer to herself.
Most of it never left the raft from our last excursion, but I wanted to make sure nothing was missing. The birds were at our camp while we were in the forest. Thankfully, the contents were intact.
“You sure we shouldn’t just wait through the night and reassess in the morning?” Aubrey asked. “We can’t make it there and back with any daylight left.”
“We’ll probably have to stay the night there,” I said. “But if there is a fire, there could be a person, another castaway. We can’t risk assuming they can make it through the night. They could need us right now.”
“This island has everything we need,” Aubrey said. “We keep leaving it, though. We keep rolling the dice.”
“I’m going,” I said. “If you want to stay here, that’s okay.”
“I’m going too,” Sherri said. “What would we be doing here? Sitting on this island, making a new camp? We could be traveling across the shark-infested waters to rescue someone! It could be awesome!”
“I’m with you, Jack,” Benji said. “We have to help if we can, and if that means staying the night at some new island, then so be it.”
“There ya go, girl,” Sherri said, giving Benji a high five. “Better to keep moving forward. This has already been beyond awesome.”
“Really?” Aubrey said. “You liked the dead body on Goo Island?”
“Goo Island,” Sherri repeated with a snicker. “The possibility of death is what makes this all the more intense. There are no safety straps, no guard rails, no spotters, no foam pit below to save us from our falls, no referee blowing the whistle. We could die out here at any second, and I have never felt so alive in my life. Didn’t you see what we did to those birds?”
“How can you be the oldest of us all and be so immature?” Aubrey asked.
“Me? Immature? I’ve felt like life has been a lie, and this feels like the truth, and you call me immature. Look at you, you can’t even accept that we are somewhere out of this world. Everything about this place is wrong and right. I feel it in me, and I know you do, too. Do you really want this to end quickly?”
“Yes, because I want to live. I don’t have these dead dad regrets to make this some fairytale adventure.”
“Uh, dead dad regrets?” Sherri grabbed her spear. “Are you serious?”
“Stop it,” I said, moving in between them. “We have no chance of living out here if we start fighting with each other.”
“Please, just stop it, both of you,” Benji begged.
“I’m not the one swinging below the belt,” Sherri said with tears building in her eyes. “Yeah, my dad would love this place, but he also would be terrified for us. You think I’m blind. I just choose to love you all enough to know we can conquer anything out here together, and here you are, trying to break me, to break us down.”
“I’m not trying—” Aubrey started and then buried her face in her hands. “Shit, I just can’t stop being an asshole, can I?” Aubrey muttered. “Come here.”
Aubrey stepped over to Sherri with arms out wide, and they hugged. I breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was a divide in our group. It was something I wouldn’t allow, because it would spread through all of us like a cancer.
“I’m sorry,” Aubrey said, taking a step back from Sherri. “It’s not even…”
“What?” Sherri asked.
“I don’t know,” Aubrey wailed, and now tears were building in her eyes.
“You don’t want to leave this island?” I said.
“Yes…I don’t. It feels good on this island, and the island you found me on. But that last island…it felt wrong. Bad. As if we shouldn’t have been on there. I think that’s what happened to Frank. The island, it just got to him,” Aubrey said, and there was a pause from all of us. “Say I’m crazy, I dare you. You’ve all felt it, I know, and now we’re going to another unknown, and the possibility of being there through the night. What if it’s like Goo Island or even worse?”
“Then we’ll deal with it, together,” Sherri said. “Nothing can touch us if we’re together.”
Aubrey hugged Sherri again. “I hope you’re right.”
“I know I am,” Sherri said. “Plus, we have Jack.”
“Jack’s our hero,” Benji said.
“Okay, well, umm, it’s going to be getting dark soon, so we better get going,” I said, feeling awkward.
The sun was already low in the sky. We were running out of daylight, and the island with the smoke trail looked further away than any other island we’d been to.
In a few minutes, we floated the raft along the beach to the back side of the island, giving our little sea cat buddy a free ride. Aubrey had run to the forest edge, grabbing leaves from what she called soap bushes. She plopped the pile of green leaves on the raft and then helped us push it the rest of the way.
We got the raft positioned, and I helped the girls climb on. I jumped on the back, with Sherri’s helping hand, and took my position. The girls did the same, with Benji near the front, Sherri to the right, and Aubrey to the left.
“Okay, here we go,” I said and pushed off the white, sandy beach with my pole.
The girls paddled hard, and we made it over the smalls waves near the beach and into the open ocean.
“Shark!” Benji said.
“Already?” Aubrey groaned.
“It’s fine, the goo keeps them back,” I reminded them.
“It was probably waiting for us,” Aubrey said. “I swear, when I get back to civ, I’m going to buy the biggest gun and the biggest boat and go on the longest hunt.”
“I just hope they keep staying back,” Benji said. “This one’s getting closer.”
“That’s the large male mako from before,” Sherri said. “I can tell by the coloring on his fin.”
“Yeah, thought so,” Benji said. “Should I stick him?”
“No, let’s just keep paddling, and we won’t start anything unless he does,” I said.
Over the next ten minutes, we made good time over the ocean, until my pole could no longer reach the bottom. I pulled it up and set it on the raft.
“Just paddle power now,” I said, and moved next to Aubrey.
“I can take over paddling for a bit if you want to see what you can do about our dirty friend.”
Aubrey looked at me sideways. “Are you trying to keep your hands clean for me?”
“Maybe…” I said carefully.
She handed me her paddle and crawled up next to the tarred cat and started dipping the soap bush leaves in the water. She rubbed them together in her hands and soon she had a white, foamy lather that she applied to the receptive sea cat.
After a while, Aubrey had much of the cat clean. She absently rubbed the cat as she watched the shark.
I used Aubrey’s paddle, trying to keep pace with Sherri. I quickly remembered how damn hard it was to paddle and it took a lot of energy to maintain Sherri’s speed. These girls didn’t even look that tired.
They were truly amazing women.
“Another shark,” Benji said. “A bigger one.”
“Bigger than the mako?” Aubrey said, looking ahead.
The mako jerked in the water, whipping its tail out and splashing the water before diving deeper. The larger shark didn’t swim fast or have quick moves; it swam in a straight line to within about fifteen feet of our raft. It moved slow and steady across our bow, and then around the raft to the back before circling all the way to the front once more.
Its thick fin sliced through the water, staying out in front of us by about twenty feet.
“Great white?” Benji asked.
“No,” Sherri said. “I’m not sure what it is.”
Its fin stuck a good three feet out of the water and curved back to a point. Most of the fin was gray, but the back edge darkened to near black. I reached out for it and felt a calm steadiness. This shark had age on it and patience. Its emotions felt like a flat line, or a slightly off-white color. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s what popped into my mind when I felt it.
“It’s huge,” Benji said, touching the bow on her back.
“Same plan here. We won’t start anything, and hopefully it won’t either,” I said.
If that shark wanted to start something, I had a bad feeling there would be little we could do about it. It looked to be twenty-five feet long, and if it rammed us or breached onto our raft, we’d be nothing more than human meatballs on bamboo toothpicks.
I glanced back, and we were past the halfway point. No going back. Only going forward, just like Sherri had said.
Another twenty minutes passed, and the big shark seemed to be more curious about us than aggressive. We made good time on the calm waters. The cat had even started walking around on the raft. The little guy meowed and hissed at the shark beyond us, giving us a good laugh, and the shark dipped under the water, disappearing.
“That’s right, you tell him,” Sherri said.
If nothing more, the water cat was good for morale.
“We’re not far now,” Benji said, pointing the island ahead.
Our destination island wasn’t that big, somewhere between the water island and the one Benji and I landed on, maybe the size of football field. The ocean breeze brought the scent of smoke with it. It had that wood-burning smell, like a campfire, but from looking at the island’s trees, it appeared there had been a massive fire on it at some point. Almost every tree on the island was a black stick, charred by fire and void of any greens. Somewhere near the middle of the island was the source of the smoke, but there was a haze over the whole island that made it difficult to see.
I used the scope, hoping to see someone there, but the smoke obscured too much of the island to be sure.
The raft bumped to the right, and I went to one knee, stabilizing myself. A second massive shark with the curved back fin was swimming away from the boat, having apparently given us a test bump. Benji had an arrow nocked in less than a second, but I put my hand on her arm, and she lowered her bow.
“It rammed us,” Aubrey said.
“Not good,” Sherri said. “If they get comfortable with the boat, their fears might go away. They might—”
“I know, but we are only minutes from the island. Let’s just get there, and we can reapply some of the black stuff on the boat,” I said and went back to paddling, maybe a little harder.
The girls went back to it as well, and as we neared the beach, I scanned the island for signs of life. I still didn’t see a soul, and my heart pounded at the thought of finding another dead body.
We glided the boat up onto the beach, and I kept a wary eye on the two sharks loitering just fifteen feet behind us. Half of me wanted to jump off the back of the raft and deal with them right then.
I took the first step off the boat and landed in the shallow water covering the white sand. The smoke on the island was bad, but bearable. It gave the whole island a haze much like the minutes following the geyser on Water Island.
“Hello?” Benji called out.
Chapter 19
I helped Benji off the raft first and then Sherri and Aubrey. I could see the nervous looks they exchanged as they scanned the burned forest.
“We should find the source of the smoke,” I said. “Something must still be burning here.”
Aubrey took a step near a blackened tree and held her hand over her heart. “This isn’t a good island, Jack. I can just feel it in the air.”
“That’s the smoke,” Sherri said.
“I bet an evil witch lives here,” Benji said.
“What?” Aubrey asked.
“This just seems like a place an evil witch would live. She probably lives in a hollowed-out tree, waiting for people like us to fall into her trap.”
“Wow,” Aubrey said. “Are we in the land of Oz?”
“You thought about that too?” Benji asked.
“No, I was just…we aren’t in Oz,” Aubrey said with a sideways look at Benji.
“What are you smiling at, Jack?” Sherri asked.
“Just…nothing. Let’s search the island and keep an eye out for flying monkeys,” I said.
“Or lions, or tigers, or bears,” Aubrey said.
“Oh my!” Sherri added.
“See, I knew you knew movie quotes,” Benji said.
Aubrey groaned. “Let’s just get this over with. There obviously isn’t anyone here, maybe we can get back to our island before nightfall.”
There was a slim chance of that. The sky had the orange haze of a sunset, and I had already started taking an inventory of the stuff we could do to make a shelter for the night. Those damned birds annihilated two of our emergency blankets. We still had more, but I knew it was just a taste of what was to come as our factory-made supplies got used or destroyed.
I led the walk into the blackened forest. The ground crunched beneath our feet and each step sent up puffs of smoke and ash. Under the gray layer of ash, I felt sand. I knew this place was an island, and probably a tropical one at that, but the trees were now black sticks darting up out of what looked like the surface of the moon. The color palette only consisted of black and gray. I glanced back at the women, struck by their full brilliance against the drab surroundings.
“This place is awful,” Aubrey said, carrying her spear, her red top bikini standing out like a light bulb in the dark.
“Hello!” I yelled out as we got closer to the source of the smoke. “Anyone here?”
No one responded, but I heard the crackling of burning wood and spotted the source of the smoke trail.
About thirty feet ahead of us, a tree had split in two, and the middle of the tree was burning, a crackling, red fire that spouted out smoke and the occasional burst of flames. As we got closer, I felt the heat from it, and even the forest floor felt hot under my bare feet.
“What happened?” Sherri asked.
“It looks like it burned from the inside out,” Benji said, getting a closer look at the tree.
“Lightning, I bet,” Aubrey said. “I saw a tree get hit by a bolt one time. Severed a portion of the tree right off and caught it on fire.”
“It’s burning from underneath,” Sherri said, putting a hand on the soil near the base of the tree. “This whole place is hot. Feel the ground.”
“Like…volcanic?” Benji asked, voice wavering.
“More like a thermal pocket. Where the magma from under us gets too close to the surface. Some of it might have gotten so hot that it set this place on fire,” Sherri said and got back up.
“Oh my God,” Aubrey said. “Do we need any more reasons to not be here? No one set this fire. It was…natural.”
I dug into the sand with my feet, feeling the warmth below. Usually warmth brought comfort and home, but this warmth felt draining, as if it was my own foot providing the heat for the sand and it wanted more. Was it nighttime already? I looked again at the smoke trail leading up into the orange sky.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, not really caring if w
e found someone at the moment. For the first time I could ever remember, I wanted to be alone. “We should split up, cover the rest of the ground.”
“Okay, anything to get this over with quickly,” Aubrey said and then shivered as if she had the chills and started walking toward the back of the island.
“Be careful,” I said and started heading toward a small rock pile on the right side of the island.
“Okay if I tag along?” Benji said.
“Sure,” I said, but I had this urge to be alone.
I don’t know, maybe Aubrey had a point about this island. I stared at a rock pile near the burning tree and wondered if I could get into those rocks and just curl up in a hole and wait this whole thing out.
“You okay?” Benji asked.
“Yeah,” I lied. “You okay?”
“No, I want to walk right into the ocean,” Benji said flatly.
“What?” The statement shocked me from the pile of stones.
“I know it’s stupid, but I just have this urge to walk into the ocean and never stop. It’s why I wanted to stay with you. We should leave this place, Jack, now.”
Her words scared me, but the look on her face spoke even more. Benji had seen sharks, killer boars, and crocs. A smoky island should be far down on the list of thing that would scare her but she looked white with fear. A moment of clarity hit me hard.
“Wait!” I yelled out. Sherri and Aubrey stopped in their tracks. “Gather back up, we need to stick together.”
“Damn right we do,” Aubrey said.
“Yeah,” Benji said. “I’m with Aubrey on this one. What the hell are we doing here? No one’s here, and it just feels wrong.”
“We have to do at least one sweep of this island before I’m comfortable saying there’s no one here,” I said. “And then we’re gone.”
I led the way through the island, and we didn’t talk much as we passed by piles of blackened, twisted branches that were once a bush, or the fallen trees that looked like two black lines lying on the dove gray ashes. We reached the end of the island, and it felt good to have the ocean air blowing in our faces. It felt clean and crisp in comparison.