Survival Island: Last Man Standing

by Anya Merchant

  “The two of you seem close,” said Amy, her words a little guarded.

  “We were pretty close,” said Cyrus. “Through Darius, of course.”

  He exhaled slowly, keeping Darius’s memory where it was for the moment.

  It won’t do me any good to get worked up every time I think of him.

  “Is she just looking out for you, then?” asked Amy, her voice a little suggestive.

  “She… was kind of like an older sister to me,” he said. “Most of the time.”

  Cyrus scrubbed his hands and face off as best as he could in the shower, annoyed at how easily the smell of smoke seemed to stick to them. It wasn’t just weed smoke this time, either. Jackson had been having a bit of a party when he’d come through earlier, and everything from crack to meth to other, experimental drugs had been in the air.

  He scowled at the shower curtain as the water ran across his shoulders and back. It’d been four days since he’d last seen his mom. Not a huge amount of time for her to be out and about, all things considered, but after last time, he didn’t expect her back for at least another three, and there was no food left in the house. No money for him to buy food with, either, at least not until he moved some of the product Jackson had fronted him.

  As always, Jackson had been polite and personable. That’s how he was when Cyrus was dealing with him directly. It was his friends and lackeys who did the dirty work. This time, Jackson had even introduced Cyrus to Krysta, one of the girls that frequented his little shop. A very attractive girl, who seemed eager to hang out with Cyrus, pull him deeper into the lifestyle, and keep him under Jackson’s thumb

  He sighed, trying not to think about how nice the girl’s breasts had looked in the tight tube top she’d had on, and finished his shower. He grabbed his towel, dried off, and hung it around his waist for the walk back to his room.

  It wasn’t until Cyrus actually entered in his room that he realized that someone was already in it. He jumped in surprise, knocking loose the towel and revealing himself… to Maggie, who sat on what had been Darius’s old bed, reading a book.

  “Cyrus!” She blushed deeply and immediately stood up. “I’m so sorry!”

  “Jesus, Maggie!” Cyrus bent down to pick up the towel, dropping it a second time as he tried to stand back up. “Did you ever hear of knocking?”

  He was still aroused, the thoughts of Krysta and her cleavage now blending forward into the current moment. Maggie was wearing yoga pants and a loose, sleeveless workout top. She looked really, really good, and Cyrus felt horrible for noticing.

  “I just stopped by to check in on you…” Maggie made an attempt at looking away for a second, and then turned back to look at him, her eyes flicking down to Cyrus’s hard, unmissable erection.

  “Well, here I am,” said Cyrus, gritting his teeth. He made one last attempt at getting the towel into place, finally getting it wrapped. It didn’t do much to hide his arousal, which bulged out against the white, absorbent fabric.

  “Your room,” said Maggie. “It smells like-“

  “Weed,” he said, cutting her off. “I know.”

  He smiled bitterly and started walking toward his dresser. Maggie also walked forward, getting in between him and his destination.

  “You don’t have any food in your kitchen, either,” she said, softly.

  “And?” snapped Cyrus. “What’s your point? And what are you doing here?”

  Maggie looked away from him, pushing a few strands of brunette hair out of her face.

  “Your brother doesn’t see it, by I do,” she said. “You’re struggling, Cyrus. You need someone looking out for you.”

  “I’m doing just fine on my own,” he said.

  Maggie stared at him for a second, not saying anything. She was so pretty, and it was torture for Cyrus to look at her in his current state. She stepped a little closer, shifting her gaze down to his bare chest.

  “You’re strong, Cyrus,” she said. “But not strong enough to go it alone. Let me cook you dinner tonight.”

  Cyrus opened his mouth to tell her off and then stopped, a painful moment of self-awareness settling over him.

  “…Sure,” he said. “That… I’d like that.”

  Maggie smiled warmly.

  “Okay,” she said. “See, that wasn’t so hard!”

  She stepped forward and pulled him into a hug, seemingly forgetting how naked he was. Cyrus felt her body against his and felt ashamed. He’d never wanted sex so badly before in his life, and he wanted it from her, from Maggie, his brother’s long term girlfriend.

  His hard cock poked into her stomach as though trying to burn a hole through the towel and the fabric of her shirt. He felt her breasts against his chest, soft and each just enough to be a solid handful. He could smell her hair, her perfume, her perfect, feminine scent.

  “I’ll go pick up supplies and be back in a little bit.” Maggie pulled away, smiled at him as though nothing had just happened, and left the room.

  Cyrus collapsed on his bed, sliding the towel out to the side where it could shield his sheets from what he was about to do. All he could think about was Maggie.

  Cyrus and Amy made four trips in total, carefully delivering enough water to the camp so that each of the survivors could have a cup or so along with dinner. It was late afternoon, and most of them were retiring from their work for the day.

  Aiden had made a significant amount of progress on making the camp more comfortable, collecting enough leaves to make several large, naturally woven carpets. They were spread out around where the fire had been, and while there weren’t quite enough for everyone to have one of their own to sleep on, Cyrus was still excited at the prospect of not having to spend another night rolling around in the sand.

  Kyoko and Tamyra had spent most of the day gathering food, mostly berries and coconuts. Cyrus’s stomach began to ache as he looked at it, his hunger coming back in full force after having been mostly forgotten in the stress of the previous day.

  “Do you know if those are safe to eat, though?” Cyrus asked Kyoko, who’d used a few broken coconut shells as bowls to hold the berries.

  “There’s an old trick I learned back l used to be interested in through hiking,” she said. She took one of the berries and squeezed a few drops of its juice onto the back of her hand. “You start with this test. If it doesn’t leave a rash, you taste it. And if it tastes alright, you eat a couple and wait and see.”

  Kyoko popped the ripe, red berry into her mouth slowly, her lips forming into a suggestive shape as they accepted it. She smiled coyly at Cyrus and held his gaze for a second. He was about to say something else when Amy grabbed his hand and gave it a sharp tug.

  “Candace still isn’t back,” she said. “Aiden said she went out looking for branches to use for a shelter. She hasn’t seen her for almost an hour.”

  “That’s not very long,” said Cyrus. “We were probably out for a couple of hours on our own. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Peter isn’t back either, yet.”

  Amy frowned at him and squeezed his hand. Cyrus squeezed back, hoping that he was right.

  CHAPTER 14

  Peter was grinning from ear to ear when he returned to the camp. Cyrus had expected him to be ravaged by hunger and thirst, but his movements were calm as he sipped from one of the coconut cups, and he made no move to eat any of the food the others had been munching on.

  “Everyone,” he said, in a loud and somewhat boisterous voice. “There’s something that I need to show you!”

  Cyrus raised an eyebrow. Some of the girls were already standing up and heading to follow him. Cyrus dusted sand off his butt as he stood up and nodded to Maggie and Amy, walking alongside them a short distance behind the rest of the group.

  “I spent all day working on it,” said Peter. “It won’t be ready for a while, but there’s enough wood to work with, and we’ve got nothing but time.”

  Just around the bend from the beach camp was where Peter had been constructing his raft. It wa
s still just bare framework, but it was larger than Cyrus had been expecting, close to fifteen feet on each side. Peter had found a couple of fallen palm trunks and used jungle vines to tie them solidly together. It was a good start, but as he’d said, it was nowhere close to being finished.

  “Great, Peter,” said Cyrus. “For the record, we found a proper source of freshwater today, along with edible berries. The island can support us, at least for a time.”

  “Sure, of course,” said Peter. “But now, we have hope! Hope… that’s what I’ve decided to call her.”

  He set a hand down on the edge of the raft’s frame and rubbed appreciatively. Cyrus held his tongue, knowing that it wasn’t the time to question his friend’s plan.

  But I do have questions, he thought. Questions about the basic premise of being able to cross the Pacific Ocean on a tiny fucking raft.

  “Come on,” said Cyrus. “Let’s head back to the camp and get the fire started. We can relax and have dinner, and worry about what comes next tomorrow.”

  Cyrus had half hoped that Candace would be waiting for them when they arrived back, but she was nowhere in sight. He pulled Darius’s lighter out of his pocket and set to work starting the campfire, grateful for the firewood that Aiden and some of the other girls had gathered during the day.

  “It’s going to be getting dark soon,” said Amy. “She’s still not back.”

  “I know,” said Cyrus. “I’ll go looking for her if she still isn’t here when the sun sets.”

  Maggie walked up to Cyrus, putting a hand on his shoulder and leaning slightly against his side. They hadn’t talked much that afternoon, and she seemed to have something on her mind as she looked at him.

  “What?” Cyrus couldn’t stop a smirk from spreading across his face as he looked at her. “What is it?”

  Maggie shrugged and smiled.

  “You’re just doing such a good job,” she said.

  “Of what?”

  “Of keeping us together,” said Maggie. “Keeping us organized. I can’t help but notice that kind of thing.”

  “I’m just doing what anyone would do, in my situation,” said Cyrus.

  Maggie’s smile slackened a bit, but the warmth held in her eyes.

  “You’re doing what he would have done.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “What Darius would have done.”

  Cyrus took a deep breath and pulled her into a side hug against him. Maggie was warm and soft, and she had such elegance about her. He saw what his brother had seen in her, maybe even something more than that.

  He felt an uncomfortable hot sensation spreading through him as he thought about sleeping near her, maybe even next to her, that night. It would feel so nice to have her that close at night, with everyone else asleep, alone in the darkness.

  What the hell am I thinking? She’s Darius’s girlfriend…

  “She still isn’t back!” Amy walked back over to Cyrus, glaring openly at Maggie until he pulled away from her. “Cyrus, I can’t just wait here! We need to-”

  A sinister growl came from the jungle, resonating in a deep, throaty pitch. It was immediately followed by several others, the calls louder than anything Cyrus had heard in the time since the crash had happened. The horizon was in the process of cutting off the last of the sun’s rays, and it almost seemed as though whatever creatures had made the calls were heralding the return of the moon.

  “Cyrus!” cried Amy. “What the hell was that?”

  Cyrus shook his head. He still didn’t have the fire going yet, and was torn between trying to calm the group down and continuing.

  “Jesus fuck,” muttered Peter. “We’re not alone here, are we?”

  “Where can we go?” said Aiden, her voice shaky and unnerved. “What are we supposed to do?”

  Cyrus finally managed to get the scraps of tinder he’d been working on to take flame. He carefully moved them into the center of the dry wood in the burn pit and began gently using his breath to coax the wood into flame. The sun was setting, but in its place, he gave them a fire, which quickly grew into a roaring blaze.

  “We’re okay,” said Cyrus. “Don’t worry. Whatever is out there is probably as scared of us as we are of it.”

  Something moved in the bushes along the section of jungle nearest to them. Several of the girls screamed and ran to the far side of the fire, putting the ocean to their backs.

  “Cyrus!” shouted Peter. “We need weapons, or, or… something!”

  A heavy, primal growl came from the jungle, just beyond the beach. The sound was aggressive and loud, with such weight to it that Cyrus couldn’t even guess at the size of the creature it came from.

  Tamyra was the only one of them that seemed entirely unfazed by whatever awaited them. She walked over to the stack of firewood and picked out a long piece of driftwood about as thick as her wrist. Tearing a section off one of the leaf mats, she wrapped it around the stick’s head and then dipped it into the flame, creating a serviceable torch.

  The light from Tamyra’s torch illuminated her face, showcasing the resolve and determination in her expression. There was no fear in her eyes, and something about the set of her jaw and lips was both arousing and terrifying for Cyrus to observe.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing another piece of firewood and following her example.

  Peter hesitated for a moment, and then made a torch of his own. The creature, whatever it had been, had stopped making noise for the moment.

  “That way.” Tamyra spoke in a quiet, slightly accented voice, looking at Cyrus and nodding toward one end of the beach. He nodded back and held his torch out in front of him, keeping a few paces between him and the tree line as he walked along the beach.

  “You stay here,” said Tamyra, pointing at Peter. He looked like he was considering objecting, but ended up following her lead after taking a look at the rest of their group, and all of their terrified expressions.

  Cyrus felt that same fear as he slowly moved along the beach, his eyes constantly flicking from tree to tree, bush to bush. They weren’t alone on the island, and that changed everything. And Candace…

  Candace is still out there. We can’t just leave her in the jungle with those… things, on the loose.

  Cyrus looked back toward the campfire, seeing the light of Peter’s torch nearby and not much else. It seemed calm enough, or at least not currently under attack. Tamyra’s torch wasn’t visible to him anymore, meaning she’d either gone around the bend of the beach or headed into the jungle.

  A noise came from the trees to his right, away from the camp. Two large palms grew in a way that left them leaning toward each other, making the space in between seem almost like a natural doorway. Cyrus heard the noise again, the sound of something shuffling, possibly feet.

  “Candace?” He called in a voice loud enough to carry no more than ten, maybe fifteen feet. There was no response.

  He took a deep breath and summoned all of the courage he had, stepping forward with the torch held in a double grip, as though it were a flaming sword. The light from it illuminated bushes and trees and nothing else, at least at first.

  Cyrus saw Candace, or more accurately, what was left of her. The body was mangled beyond recognition, missing all of its limbs and most of the soft flesh of its face. It looked more like what an ancient barbarian army might toss over the wall of besieged city to intimidate the populace, rather than anything that could be called human remains. He only managed to identify her by hair color, and it sickened him to have to look that closely.

  A thin trail of red crimson led off deeper into the jungle, along with several unbelievably large paw prints. Cyrus felt his hands begin to tremble as he looked at them, unable to remember ever seeing such a frightening sight in his entire life. A wolf, or a dog, didn’t have footprints this big. Each one was at least five or six inches across, with thick, sharp lines above the imprint of each knuckle that could only have been made by giant claws.

  He slowly stepped out of the jungle and bac
k onto the beach without turning his back to the scene. Another primal roar echoed through the air, coming from deep within the jungle, but closer than the one before.

  Cyrus turned around and sprinted back to the camp, unsure of whether he was more afraid for himself or for his friends.

  CHAPTER 15

  “She’s dead,” he said, without preamble. “Candace is dead.”

  The hush that fell over the group surrounding the campfire left a tension in its wake. Peter took a slow, audible breath and fidgeted where he stood.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  Cyrus nodded.

  “Aiden, Amy… I’m so sorry.” He frowned as he watched the two of them comforting each other, crying silent tears as though still too afraid of whatever was in the jungle to make noise.

  Tamyra arrived back at the beach camp just after he did, her face a neutral, unreadable mask. She didn’t say anything when Cyrus told her, only nodding and snuffing her torch out in the sand.

  “We’ll need to keep someone on watch tonight,” said Cyrus. “I… I know how bad this situation looks. But we can make it through this. We can.”

  “If we had focused on making the raft today, we could be off this island already,” said Peter. “Candace might still be alive.”

  “Peter!” Maggie’s rebuke was sharp enough to make him turn away. Amy was hugging Aiden, but she shot an unsure glance in Peter’s direction, as if she couldn’t decide whether to be offended or to agree with him.

  “I’ll take the first watch,” said Cyrus, getting them back on point. “Peter, can you take the second? I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours.”

  Peter nodded. He walked over and collapsed on one of the leaf mats. A couple of the other survivors also settled in for tonight, everyone except for Tamyra, who seemed to have decided to maintain her own guard a short distance up the beach from the camp.

  Cyrus kept his torch with him, though he’d already snuffed it out. It was heavy wood, solid enough to do some damage if he swung it with both hands and struck true.