Island Jumper 3

by M H Ryan

  “Yeah,” Sherri said, looking around the craft. “At least we have some kick-ass walls now.”

  “This bitch is ready for those jumping sharks next time,” Aubrey said, pushing hard against the wall.

  “Lunch is ready,” Benji called out.

  “Oh, hell yeah,” Aubrey said, running to the front of the boat.

  “Coming,” Sherri said.

  Sherri and Aubrey got into a shoving match about who could get there fastest. They wrestled as they neared the bow, but Sherri shoved Aubrey and jumped off the boat first.

  “You pulled my hair!” Aubrey yelled indignantly as if some rule had been broken.

  I walked with Kara and Eliza at my side. Kara took my hand in hers and swung it back and forth as we walked to the bow. Eliza jumped over the wall first, and Kara stepped in front of me. Her hands moved to my back as she hugged me in a tight embrace.

  It was abrupt, but not unwelcome. She held me and leaned back, staring at me with those big ocean eyes. She grabbed my ass, and I bent down to kiss her. I felt her body tremble as our tongues met. A soft moan escaped and her hand moved to the top of her black bikini. She pulled down the front, exposing a nipple for me. I moved to her neck and then to her chest, cupping and then licking her small but perfect tits.

  She stepped back and covered her breast. “Just a taste,” she said. “I want the full meal, though, and soon, Jack.”

  “Okay by me,” I muttered.

  Kara stepped over the wall and hopped onto the sand. What the hell just happened? I licked my lips and adjusted my shorts while taking a deep breath. I wanted Kara, probably more than she wanted me, but living with so many dangers didn’t exactly make for a lot of sexy time moments. Maybe that was why she grabbed this bit of time.

  I remembered the last time Kara and I had been alone. It was in the cave where she had turned from the demure to the aggressive. I wanted to explore that side of her, get to know the wonderful woman in complete detail.

  Taking a deep calming breath, I jumped over the front wall of the boat.

  We all gathered around the palm trees that Benji and I had spent a night in. The small fire we made gave off some heat and produced a nice place for us to sit in a circle around as we ate. Most of the girls were already sitting and holding the large leaves we brought as plates.

  Utensils hadn’t been on the to-do-list of mine, but I knew Aubrey and Kara hated eating with their hands. It wouldn’t take too much effort to whittle something out of wood, if I could find the right type of hardwood.

  “How the frick does shark taste like chicken?” Aubrey asked with a full mouth.

  “It does,” Sherri said, looking surprised. “A bit chewier, though.”

  I picked off a chunk of the meat and ate it. It did taste kind of like chicken. There was a gamey hint to it, as well. I dipped the next bite into a mango glaze that Benji made. That made the second bite much better.

  “Nicely done, Benji,” I said, raising my chunk of fish to her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Could use some more spices,” Cass said.

  The group groaned.

  “What?” Cass asked.

  “You know,” Sherri said. “We don’t have the room for much more bamboo, but what if we used the second boat and pulled it along like a trailer behind us? We could fit a lot of supplies in there, out of the way.”

  I stopped chewing. “That’s brilliant.”

  We had put the raft in the shack on the boat. The purpose of bringing it had been as a backup lifeboat, in case something catastrophic happened. I quickly stuffed the last of the shark in my mouth with a good scooping of the mango glaze and got to my feet.

  I took a second to swallow and then said, “Can someone help me get the lifeboat out, please?”

  All the girls moved, but Aubrey got up the quickest, eating as she jogged with me to the craft. In a minute, we had the lifeboat out of the shack and onto the sand near the fire. We rolled it open and found the manual air pump. Thankfully the pump was a double-articulating canister type that pushed in a lot of air in both directions you pumped.

  I connected the pump and began moving my arms up and down the shaft rapidly. After a few minutes, some sweat dripped from me. I was glad I kept my shirt off. In that short amount of time, I had already filled it the raft about halfway.

  “Don’t stop,” Kara said, eyeing me over her leaf of food.

  “This is like dinner theater during lunch,” Sherri said.

  I caught Eliza’s stare, and suddenly she became interested in the sky.

  “Few more minutes and I should be finished,” I said.

  “Take your time,” Kara said.

  “Anyone else want to pump?” I offered.

  “No,” they all said with shakes of their heads.

  After a few more minutes, I got all the chambers filled while the girls finished their lunch. I took my shirt hanging from the palm tree and was happy to see it nearly dry.

  “You shouldn’t put that back on—” Kara said.

  “Yeah, you’ll just get it sweaty again,” Sherri added.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said, holding the shirt in my hand. “I think we should collect about half of the bamboo cluster and load it onto the raft. We’ll just need to make sure there aren’t any sharp ends on the bamboo that will puncture the boat. After that, I’d like to get going while we still have some daylight.”

  Sherri got to her feet first and brushed off the sand from her body. I watched as she bent over. Her large girls were barely contained in the top. I didn’t have to imagine much to recall what she looked naked and against my body. I had my face and other stuff between those twins of perfection. Maybe Kara was right—I shouldn’t wait much longer.

  The rest of the girls got up, and there was some cleanup that Benji and Cass did—mostly just Benji—while the rest of us went to the bamboo cluster nearby.

  The first time I’d been there, I had a small knife to cut the bamboo. Now, I had a bigger knife and an ax. With all of us working around the cluster, we made quick work of it.

  In an hour, we had a pile of bamboo on the sand near the raft. We guided the lifeboat to the shallow waters, and I spotted a small shark swimming near us. It was probably the same bastard that launched at Benji and me on day one.

  I grabbed a stick of bamboo and swung it down over the shark. It slapped the water hard and might have grazed the shark. The combination of the noise and the attack scared the shark enough that it swam away.

  With the minor danger gone, we loaded the lifeboat up and tied it off to the back of the raft.

  Thankfully, the tide had come in some, and the boat rocked as the waves rolled under it. All of us gathered at the front of the boat and pushed, getting it off the sand and into the water. When we reached buoyancy, the girls jumped up onto the raft. I helped Eliza up onto the craft and then climbed aboard myself.

  I searched for the makos or anything else out there, and the static came back to me. I searched through the white noise and didn’t find any large predators. Good, they had left for something easier to kill. I used a pole and pushed off away from the island and the shallows.

  Benji stood next to me, watching the island.

  “I’m happy we started here together,” Benji said, gazing at our tiny island.

  “Me too,” I said. “I’m not sure what I would have done without you.”

  “We’re good for each other,” Benji said.

  “I agree.”

  She gave me a hug and kissed my cheek.

  “What was that for?” I asked.

  “Just for being a great guy, for all of us.”

  “Hey, I’m the lucky one here.”

  She glanced back at the ladies on the boat. “Yeah, you are and we are as well.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Sherri.”

  “Hey, it’s not so bad out here.”

  The girls raised the jib and got to their spots, testing the walls they’d shored up. We’d ha
ve to deal with walking over the bamboo braces now, but it was better than another shark flopping onto the deck.

  “Okay, Eliza,” I said. “Point us in the direction.”

  She pointed to the horizon, and that’s the direction we headed.

  Chapter 9

  I glanced back from where we’d come from. The islands had fallen out of view a couple hours ago. The remaining visible signpost back home was a trail of black smoke leading high into the sky from the burning ship on tar island. A black smear on the horizon. It gave me comfort that we could at least rely on that.

  Behind us, we towed the raft. Some of the bamboos poked through the door. It slowed us some, but not much. A steady breeze pushed us along.

  The large sail stood stiff in the wind and carried us further away from our home island than we’d ever been. The waters around us had grown darker, and the rolling waves were larger. We floated over them in an up and down motion.

  The girls were at their stations, for the most part. I had sent Sherri up to the front with the telescope. I needed her to watch the waters and keep an eye out for the island.

  “I’m climbing up to get a better look,” Sherri said.

  “Be careful,” Benji said.

  “You sure?” I asked, not that comfortable with her being up there.

  “I can’t see very far down here,” she said, and she stuffed the scope between her boobs.

  She climbed up the ladder going up the mast. I tried to steer into the smaller waves, but each bump and swell we met, made me cringe. Sherri, however, had no problem on the ladder and got to the top. We built a chair up there with another chunk of wood in front of it. She sat on the chair and grabbed the wood, then pulled the scope out.

  We all watched her as she scanned the horizon.

  Something bumped into the bottom of the boat and lifted it up half a foot. The girls on deck crouched lower for better balance as the raft plopped back down onto the ocean. I reached out and felt the creatures around us. They were huge, and, to my surprise, didn’t want to kill us.

  I glanced up at Sherri to make sure she was okay. She was looking down at the waters around the boat, the same as us.

  A massive shadow in the water moved to our port side; the girls had their spears and axes at the ready. It breached with its head first but in a slow, easy way. From its face, I knew it was a shark, but the thing was twice as long as the boat. It could have been sixty feet long. Its body was a dark green, with lighter-colored spots. It had ridges along its back with large spikes. That was one shark I was not jumping on the back of.

  Another one breached on the starboard side and then several more came up around them.

  “Whale sharks,” Sherri yelled from the crow's nest.

  “Are they dangerous?” Benji yelled back.

  “No. Well, not typically. They have baleen and eat krill and stuff like that.”

  I closed my eyes and reached out to the giants in the water. They felt old and gentle, with an underlying curiosity about us and our ship. Probably the reason one of them gave it a bump. There had to be a dozen of the immense creatures around us.

  Their leader was a female and the eldest among them. How I knew these things, I didn’t know—I just did. They were as easy to learn from as breathing. I reached out to her individually and sent her nice thoughts about us and that we liked her family.

  I braced myself, waiting for the wall of static to slap me upside the head, but this time I felt a response of sorts. It was as if she understood what I was and seemed pleased about it. The mother of many lifted her tail and slapped the water. Then she dove, her family following her to depths beyond the reach of anything. They wanted to hunt for plankton and other things. I saw the picture of their prey in my head, but didn’t know what they were.

  Were the shark and I sharing thoughts?

  I opened my eyes and hunched over the rudder.

  “You okay?” Kara asked.

  “Yeah, guess I’m still getting my sea legs,” I said, trying not to grab for my head.

  “I see it!” Sherri said, yelling and pointing ahead. “The island.”

  She went back to looking through the scope.

  “Is that the island?” I asked Eliza.

  She looked at the deck of the boat. “It’s the first one.”

  “There’s more than one?” I asked.

  “Yes, there is another one, past this one. But I have a feeling we need to stop at this one first.”

  “Sherri, you see anyone on the island?”

  “Or things, like tigers?” Aubrey added.

  Sherri went back to the scope. “I don’t see anything, but I’ll keep looking.”

  Over the next ten minutes, she kept updating us about the island. It was on the smaller side, with tall palms and a grouping of smaller, green trees on the island. As the island comes into view for all of us, Sherri climbed back down the mast and walked back to me.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “It looks empty,” she said. “What do you feel?”

  I reached out toward the island and felt the static of the ocean and what I thought might have been the whale shark deep below us. Wow, we were in much deeper waters out here.

  “Nothing, but it could be that we’re still too far away.”

  We sailed for another fifteen minutes until we were close enough to start thinking about slowing down. We pulled up the mainsail as we neared the shore, and that’s when I noticed three letters written with black stones over the white sands. Three simple letters that meant a million things.

  “There’s an SOS on the beach,” Benji said, jumping up and down. “Hello, we’re here!”

  Chapter 10

  No one came running out from behind the trees. No one called back to Benji, but the SOS was a sign of life—past or present, though? I didn’t feel much on the island, but there were some smaller critters there. Not that it mattered much as my extra sense couldn’t detect women. There could be a group of them hiding in the forest and I wouldn’t know.

  We’d seen many new islands up to this point but the feeling of wonder never lessened. Even a simple looking one as this still brought us all to the edge of the boat as we stared at this new place, eyes wide and ready.

  We sailed the last hundred feet on momentum.

  I wasn’t just looking for a friendly face to rescue; I watched for the dangerous as well. If these islands had taught us anything, it was that they should never be underestimated.

  The towering palms were evenly spaced over the island like a row of palms along a Florida highway. There was a small forest of green trees clustered along the center of the island as well. The size of the island was about a football field or so across and shaped in a wide oval. The white sand along the beach took on a browner tone in the middle of the island and under the trees.

  The raft slid onto the sand, and Aubrey threw the anchor into the shallow water.

  The girls rushed to the front of the craft, looking excited to find another one of their sisters. I was, too, but if she was here, where was she, and why wasn’t she coming out?

  “Hello?” Benji yelled out, her hands cupped around her mouth.

  “We’ll spread out and do a quick sweep of the island,” I said. “If she’s here, we’ll find her. And stay away from the water.”

  The girls climbed over the front of the raft, landing on the sand below and spreading out in all directions. I jumped over the wall and landed on the soft sand. A soft breeze blew through the island, stirring the leaves in the trees.

  Kara and Eliza stuck behind with me, and I waited for Kara to do her island analysis. She knelt on the sand and rubbed it, letting it sift through her fingers.

  “This is a good island,” she said with a smile. “Looks like we’re on a roll.”

  “Good to hear,” I said, letting out a breath. “What about you, Eliza? What are you feeling here?”

  She shook her head, looking confused. “I don’t know. I know we’re supposed to be here, but I
don’t know why. I don’t think there’s anyone here.”

  “Someone was here,” Kara said, walking next to the SOS in the sand.

  “Yeah, and there’s an arrow here,” Eliza said.

  I walked over for a better look. Sure enough—it was half covered in sand, but definitely an arrow. We all looked out into the ocean and the direction it pointed.

  “What do you think it means?” Eliza asked.

  “I think it means she isn’t here anymore,” I said. “Benji and I left a similar message on Tiny Island, but it must have gotten washed away.”

  With the island being small, it didn’t take long for the first person to come running back to us. Aubrey, breathing hard, bent over and then looked back at Sherri running up behind her.

  “Told you, you couldn’t beat me across the island and back,” Aubrey said, smiling.

  “Yeah, well, while you were beating me, I found her camp,” Sherri said. “Benji and Cass are already there.”

  We jogged through the cluster of trees that had green fruit hanging from the lower branches. Past the trees, Benji and Cass were standing next to a fire ring. Near the fire ring was an A-frame shelter positioned next to a large tree.

  A pile of crab shells was stacked near the fire.

  “Someone was here,” Benji said. “There were footprints around this camp as well. So she had to have been here recently.”

  “Good observation. I doubt a footprint in the sand would last more than a day or two,” I said.

  “You think we’re too late?” Benji asked.

  “Eliza?” I asked, looking to her.

  “I think she’s still alive, but she needs us soon,” Eliza said, looking at the ground. “Sorry, I can’t be more precise.”

  “Hey,” I said. “You got us here. You’re doing great.”

  I glanced at the setting sun. The thin clouds on the horizon had turned into fantastic streaks of orange and red hues.

  “I think we should camp here tonight,” I said. “Kara said this island is a good place, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to be out in this deep ocean in the dark.”

  “Spooker wookers,” Aubrey said. “I hate the night ocean, so I’m all good staying here tonight.”