Page 5

Chapter four

Bower

“ B e honest, King. How screwed are we?” I ask as we carefully push our way through the jungle. We had run out of beach and hit a large cliff, giving us no choice but to cut through the jungle as we made our way around the island.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he asks, pausing to look down at his shoes before he continues walking.

I cringe, looking at his mud caked shoes.

He had a bit of an addiction to footwear, and although I doubt he’ll actually complain out loud, I’m sure seeing his shoes in that state is killing him a little on the inside.

“Lay it on me,” I answer, bracing myself for the inevitable.

“The good news is there’s life here, we saw those lemurs. That means there is food and fresh water… somewhere. The bad news—”

He pauses as we push out of the jungle and back to the beach. Ahead, I see the bright yellow of our raft, making that small ball of hope in my chest shatter.

“The bad news is, our cell phones are broken and I’m pretty sure we’ve landed ourselves on a deserted island. ”

“Fuck,” I swear, realizing we’ve made our way around the entire island now.

“Yeah. Fuck, indeed,” he grumbles as we walk towards our raft. “We need water, and soon.”

As we get back to the raft and I spot our backpacks, I realize we were stupid to leave them here. Animals could have got into them, and the stuff in there is all we have.

“Hey, look!” I exclaim, pointing at the two coconuts sitting on the sand right beside our raft. Glancing up, the nearest palm tree seems a couple feet too far away from them to have dropped from there.

“They must have rolled down here,” King says, obviously having the same train of thought as me. We both reach down and pick one up, turning it over in our hands. “This will have water inside we can drink. We need to crack it open.”

“Wish I had a knife,” I grumble.

“Me too. We’ll have to find a sharp rock to hit it with, or to hit it on, let’s look.” We skim the tree line until we find a large boulder. We take turns trying to crack our coconuts open by slamming it down on the surface, but it just results in us exhausting ourselves.

“We need a sharp edge,” he tells me, walking around the boulder to see if there’s a better spot.

“Eep!”

“Fuck!” I jump back and fall on my ass as a damn lemur jumps down onto the boulder in front of me.

King chuckles at my expense. “Did the little lemur scare you?”

“I was just startled!” I say in defense as I get to my feet, carefully watching the little guy. He tilts his head, then lifts up something towards me. “Is that a… ro ck?”

He pushes his hand closer to me, and I frown.

“I think he wants you to take it,” King says calmly.

“Oooookaaaaay,” I say, dragging out the word as I try to figure out what he wants from me. I slowly reach forward and take the rock from him. He lets out a little trill and jumps on the spot, like he’s happy. But when I just stare at him, he grunts.

Before I know what’s happening, he leaps towards me and I scream, sure he’s about to rip my throat out for taking his precious rock. But when I don’t feel any pain, I slowly lower my arms from where they’re covering my head, and glance at the lemur perched on my shoulder.

“Eep!”

King bursts out laughing, and I turn my glare to him.

“Eep!”

I turn back to my new friend. “You’re not so scary, are you?”

“Actually, he seems extremely easy going around us. Makes you wonder if he’s seen humans before?”

“There might not be any real threats for him here, so he doesn't know to be scared?” I suggest.

“Yeah, that’s possible,” he agrees.

The little guy grunts, pointing at the coconut I dropped. I gently bend down to pick it up, being careful not to dislodge my new friend. When I look back at him, he grunts again, then points to my other hand still holding the rock.

“Holy shit, I think he’s telling you to use that rock to open the coconut!” King says with wide eyes. I examine the rock and see it has a sharp edge .

“I didn’t know lemurs were that smart, did you?” I ask as I set down the coconut, wedging it between a fallen tree trunk and the boulder so it won’t move.

“Not that smart, no. I wouldn’t think lemurs were strong enough to open coconuts that way. But what do I know? I also thought they only lived on Madagascar, and we clearly aren’t there.”

I kneel down to get myself in a good position to strike the coconut and the lemur jumps from my shoulder to sit on the boulder and watch.

After about a dozen hits, it finally cracks open.

“Fuck, yes!” I exclaim, tilting it up and letting some of the water quench my parched throat.

I pass it over to King, and he takes his fair share, then we pass it back and forth until it’s empty.

He takes a turn cracking open the second coconut, and we take turns drinking until there’s only a little left.

“Okay, well, at least we know we can get water that way, even if it is a lot of work,” King says as I take a seat on the boulder beside my new friend.

“You want some, little buddy?” I ask, holding the coconut up.

He tries to take it, but it’s clearly too big for him, so I help him by tilting it up and he greedily drinks the rest of it.

When it’s drained, he jumps on my shoulder, startling me.

He rubs his head into my neck, then immediately runs back into the jungle.

I stare in the direction he went with wide eyes. I can hear him chattering away in there, like he’s talking to his little friends, telling them all about what happened.

“He’s an affectionate little thing, isn’t he?” King asks with a smile.

“Yeah. That was… nuts,” I say, scratching the back of my neck and thinking how strange that whole thing seemed .

“Let’s see what we have in our bags,” King suggests. We move over to the raft and when I unzip my bag and find two granola bars on top, I cheer loudly. “Fuck, yes!”

“Awesome, thanks!” he says when I toss him one. We eat them quickly, it’s been hours since we ate in the Perth airport in Australia.

“The sun’s setting quickly now,” I say, noticing the sky changing color.

“You’re right. I think we should camp here for the night. I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly ready to sleep in the middle of a jungle where something could sneak up on us from any angle.”

“Good point. Are those rain clouds?” I ask, noticing the gray sky to the west.

“Fuck, I think they’re coming this way, too. We might be in for a wet night.” He looks around the beach and seems to come up with an idea. “Why don’t we flip the raft? We can prop one end up towards the ocean, so we can see and keep the air flowing.”

“Less likely anything will attack from the side, too,” I say in agreement. It doesn’t take us long to get the raft flipped over, but we decide that a strong wind could blow it away or turn it over, so we look for ways to anchor it.

“We need something to sink into the sand, to tie the ropes to,” I say, looking up and down the beach.

“What about something heavy, like a piece of driftwood or a fallen trunk? We could push it through part of the rope if it’s thin enough,” he suggests, and I quickly agree.

The sky starts getting darker quickly now. A combination of the incoming rain and nighttime. We scour the treeline and beach but can’t seem to find anything the right size .

“Shit, we don’t have much time left before it’s here,” King says right as a couple drops of rain land on my head.

A loud thump makes us jump and we whip our heads around, looking for what made the noise. “What was that?” I whisper.

“I have no idea,” he whispers back. We slowly walk side by side towards where we think the noise came from.

“Hey, look, these are perfect!” I exclaim, bending down to grab two thick branches.

“They’re just lying on the ground right here? I swear I checked this area,” he says, scratching his chin as he frowns at them.

“Just help me, it’s already starting to rain.

” I pass him a branch and we’re able to make quick work of weaving them through the rope on either side of the raft to help anchor it.

They’re decently heavy enough, only a really strong wind would flip it now.

We shove a pile of small branches we gathered under the side facing the ocean and climb underneath, laying on our stomachs as we stare out at the sea.

The sun finally sets and the heavens open up, the rain pouring down around us. Thankfully, the raft seems to be keeping us completely dry and there are no heavy winds. I let out a deep breath as we silently watch the rain.

“Do you think he knows yet?” I ask, staring out at the ocean.

“Yeah. I bet he knew before we even made it to shore. You know what he’s like,” King says, sounding worried.

He had a right to be concerned. I wasn’t sure Reece could survive losing us, not with his past. “It’s gonna be okay, Bower.

You know he’ll never stop looking. He’ll find us. We just have to stay alive.”

“What about Weston?” I ask, a knot forming in my chest at the thought of our pilot. “I—Did we make the wrong call?” I ask, remembering how we shoved the only parachute onto him and basically tossed him from the plane. In our defense, the plane was going down and we didn’t think we’d survive.

Luckily, King’s quick thinking had the two of us strapping into the back row, and we survived the crash with only a few minor cuts and bruises.

“We didn’t know. We’re lucky to have survived that.”

“Where do you think he is?” I ask, knowing we were nowhere near any other land mass.

Hell, even this island shouldn’t be here according to the maps we’d looked at before taking off.

It was a weird habit, but something Reece always forced us to do.

He said we needed to know exactly where we were going and our path there.

“West? I dunno, but I’m sure he’s alive.”

“He would have landed in the ocean, where would he go? There’s nothing around,” I say, worry for him making my gut clench. We didn’t know him well, but he’d flown us a bunch of times and was always busting our chops about flying in his plane instead of some fancy first class jet.

“His pack had an inflatable raft in it. Maybe he’ll end up here, too.”

“That means he’s out there in this storm,” I say, watching the rain pour down outside our dry little cave.

“I know, Bower. I know. There’s nothing we can do for him now. We did what we thought would give him the best chance of survival, so try to get some sleep while we can.” He rolls to his side, using his bag as a pillow.

I do the same, but can’t stop from thinking about what happened today. It was no accident we crashed, but it seemed King didn’t want to talk about it anymore than I did.