Survival Island: Last Man Standing Read online

  Survival Island: Last Man Standing

  By

  Anya Merchant

  Copyright © 2016 by Anya Merchant

  All rights reserved

  Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. This work is intended for adults only. It contains substantial sexually explicit language and scenes that may be considered offensive by some readers. None of the characters engaging in sexual conduct in this work of fiction are under the age of 18, legally unable to give consent, or related by blood.

  Contents

  Survival Island: Last Man Standing

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 1

  Flying was one of the few things that made Cyrus uncomfortable to an extent that bordered on being an outright phobia. It wasn’t an issue for him often, having only flown once two years prior at the age of 16, but the ordeal of it had left him a new, mostly irrational trigger for his anxiety.

  Which is why this time, before the first leg of the longest plane trip he’d ever been on, Cyrus had been sensible and taken a couple of sleeping pills before settling into his seat. His brother Darius had teased him about it, while his friend Peter had only asked if he had any to spare, which he hadn’t.

  I can’t breathe, he thought.

  Cyrus twisted his upper body and neck around, feeling the familiar wet, weightless sensation of being underwater. His first instinct was to pump his arms and pull himself to the surface, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember which way was up.

  After several terrifying seconds of panicked flailing, he caught sight of the bright, unobscured sun in the sky beyond, glinting off waves of the ocean and creating shifting patterns of reflected light. Cyrus kicked hard as his lungs burned, gasping as he broke through to the surface and took that first, sweet gulp of air.

  He didn’t do anything other than tread water for several long seconds, unsure of whether or not he was in the middle of a dream. The weight of his clothes, soaked through completely with heavy salt water, made the situation feel real, regardless of whether it was or not, and Cyrus knew that he needed to do something.

  “Darius!” he shouted. “Peter! Amy!”

  We were all on the plane together, he thought. I remember taking off, and then I fell asleep…

  And now, he was in the water. If he assumed that he was truly awake, it left him with only one or two logical conclusions. The plane had crashed, or at least suffered damage bad enough to fling him free of the passenger compartment. He’d probably fallen from low altitude, or somehow had an ungodly amount of luck on the landing, given that he couldn’t feel any serious injuries in his body.

  But Cyrus’s arms were getting tired. He could see a small beach, spanning less than a few degrees of the horizon, and began swimming toward it. A surge of energy went through him now that he had a goal, even if it was only short term, and he put all of his body to work pulling him forward to the shore.

  The distance was much further than it looked. Cyrus had no idea how long he’d been swimming for when he made it close enough to see the details of individual waves crashing against the surf. He grimaced as he realized that his very un-waterproof phone was in his pocket, along with his wallet, passport, and keys.

  His body felt like it was laden with lead weights for the last stretch. Cyrus kicked his feet downward, finally finding that the water was shallow enough for him to stand. He breathed heavily and took only a couple of steps before stepping into an underwater sinkhole.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, trying to pull his foot loose. It was stuck in something thick and viscous, mud or possibly clay, and as he stepped out of it, his sneaker slipped off completely.

  Cyrus swore under his breath and sank underwater, trying and failing to recover the lost shoe. He gritted his teeth and slapped an arm across the water. The sneakers had been a gift from Darius, given to him after his older brother had stopped by a couple of months earlier and made a few choice comments about the stench of his old, beaten up Nikes.

  He tried again to find the lost sneaker, writing it off as a lost cause after a minute or so. Cyrus stumbled the rest of the way to the beach, sinking to his knees on the hot sand and doing his best to get a grip on the situation. He tried to stay somewhat positive, focusing on the fact that he was still alive and still uninjured, and safe on an island. It was no small miracle after a plane crash several hours out over the Pacific Ocean.

  At least I’m off the plane, now. I guess my fear of flying was founded, after all.

  His thoughts almost immediately turned to the people he’d been with, and he felt concern stab into his chest, pushing out his water logged fatigue.

  “Darius!” he shouted, standing up. “Amy! Maggie!”

  The group of them had been on their way to Fiji, eight of them in total. Cyrus, his best friend Peter, his neighbor Amy, his older brother Darius and Darius’s girlfriend Maggie, along with a few other assorted friends of friends not invited by Cyrus directly. Most of them were in college, or like Cyrus, newly graduated from high school.

  And as far as Cyrus knew, the island that he was currently on could very well be Fiji or some other inhabited tropical locale. The beach surrounding him was certainly picturesque, and he had no way of knowing just how long the plane had been in the air before the accident.

  “Hello?” he shouted, straining his vocal cords. “Can anybody hear me? Hey!”

  He took a step along the beach, and then frowned and turned around to look behind him. The ordeal in the water had left him with no real sense of direction. Cyrus couldn’t see any nearby houses or lakeside properties, but that didn’t mean that there couldn’t be any, maybe just past the deep green of the tropical jungle tree line.

  He spent a couple of minutes tracing his way along a stretch of about a hundred feet, looking for any paths through the foliage, poking his head through bushes and tall grass. There was nothing that suggested the touch of civilization.

  Cyrus felt a rising sense of unease, almost panic, forming in his solar plexus. He muttered to himself, musing about where the sun was in the sky, which direction was probably west, and what that meant. It was all nonsense, and he had enough self-awareness to know that he was probably in a state of shock.

  “Darius…” he said out loud. “Darius will know what to do. I’ll see if I can find Darius.”

  He ran a hand through his curly black hair, cut short more out of convenience than style, and smelt something odd. It reminded him of the smell of a charcoal barbecue grill, but before any meat had been tossed onto the grill.

  Cyrus looked away from the beach, taking a couple of steps back and standing on his toes to see the island better. Beyond the jungle, near what looked like the center, was a black stone mound of relatively high height. A smal
l plume of smoke, faint and insignificant against the blue sky, trailed upward from it, toward the wispy white clouds above.

  He was tired, but not so tired that he couldn’t make sense of it. Smoke was a good sign, and probably meant people and industry.

  Or it means fire, he thought. Maybe even volcanic activity.

  A sinking feeling came over him as a couple of dark possibilities elbowed their way into his thoughts. He took a deep breath and started down the beach, resolving to find his friends and worry about the rest later.

  CHAPTER 2

  Cyrus followed the beach for a few hundred meters, curving with it as it turned around the edge of the island. The evidence, at least from what he could see, was building in support of him not being on Fiji, or any other nearby inhabited area. The island seemed as though it was very small, certainly not large enough to support much of a tourist community.

  He spotted someone sprawled on the surf ahead, a girl wearing jean shorts and a loose white top over a swim suit. Cyrus recognized her almost immediately as his friend Amy and felt his heart sink. She wasn’t moving, and her body was at a strange angle.

  “Amy!” he shouted, rushing over. He turned Amy onto her back and felt for a pulse. It was there, but only just barely, and he couldn’t tell whether or not she was breathing.

  Cyrus shook her shoulders lightly to no avail. He brushed sand off her face, and then, lacking any better options, leaned forward to give her the kiss of life.

  Out first kiss, he thought. We never really saw each other like that, but I get the feeling she’d find this pretty funny.

  He alternated between breathing into her mouth and pushing down hard on her sternum, feeling more than a little foolish for never taking the free CPR class Weston High School had been offering all of its students at the start of each year. Time seemed to stretch out, and Cyrus felt himself losing hope.

  And then her eyes blinked open, and Amy let out a terrified scream.

  Cyrus weaved back and forth, dribbling the ball in circles with his feet on the grass. It was tiny lawn, only a few hundred feet square, and he had never been good at soccer. He’d be a high school freshman in less than a month, however, and he needed something to occupy himself afterschool, like Peter had with the track team, but for him.

  He tripped over an uneven patch of ground and kicked the soccer ball a little harder than he should have. It bounced into the street, rolling in front of a large moving truck. The driver honked his horn, and Cyrus jogged over to recover it.

  The moving truck only drove for another couple of feet, coming to a stop in the driveway of the house next door to Cyrus and his mom’s tiny two bedroom place. The house next door was large, almost a mansion, built back when the property values in the neighborhood were still high, and taken care of by a sweet old woman who’d passed away two years earlier.

  An entire family climbed out of the moving van, a mother, father, and two sisters. One of them was probably closer to Darius’s age than Cyrus’s, in her early 20s at least. She had brown hair and a somewhat mousey look to her, cute, but only just barely.

  The other was probably a high schooler, like him, though it was hard to tell how old exactly given the variance in the appearance of teenagers. She had fine blonde hair which she kept cut short, only falling just past her ears. Her eyes were true blue, like the color of deep water, and her face was beautiful, with the sharp angles and perfect symmetry of a supermodel.

  Cyrus made himself start walking over before his mind managed to trick him into being more nervous than he already was. The girl was standing a bit away from the rest of her family, who were busy beginning the final stages of the move.

  “You’re moving in?” asked Cyrus.

  The girl just stared at him.

  “Yes,” she said. “Obviously.”

  Cyrus smiled reflexively. Her tone was bored and a little haughty, but something else mixed in with it, a hint of sensitivity with a dash of insecurity. He was fascinated by her.

  “Me and my brother never thought anybody would buy this place,” said Cyrus. “It’s been empty for almost two years now. Too expensive for most people in Weston, I guess.”

  “Don’t hit on me.” The girl turned to look at him as she spoke, seriously meeting his gaze for the first time.

  “What?”

  “I’m really sick of being hit on,” said the girl. “All of the guys at my old school hit on me constantly.”

  Cyrus opened his mouth, and then closed it. A silent moment passed.

  “That’s… a shame?” said Cyrus, trying to defuse.

  The girl frowned at him slightly, an odd blush spreading across her cheeks.

  “I mean… they made weird comments and stuff,” she said. “It’s just because I got my boobs early.”

  It took every ounce of Cyrus’s willpower to keep his eyes from flicking down to her breasts, but somehow, he managed it.

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

  “I… I’m just getting things straight,” she said. “I don’t want things to be awkward.”

  From the inside of Cyrus’s house came the sound of angry, stomping footsteps. The front door swung open, snapping audibly as it reached the end of its range of movement. Laura Smith, Cyrus’s mother, took a step out onto the porch, staggering as she walked.

  “Where is it?” she shouted, looking at Cyrus.

  Cyrus put a hand on his forehead, looking toward the street strategically, away from his mom and toward the girl.

  “Mom,” he said. “Please. Let’s talk about this after.”

  “This can’t wait,” said Laura, stepping out onto the lawn. “It’s not as though… money just mysteriously disappears on its own.”

  Cyrus turned around.

  “There’s nothing mysterious about it.” Cyrus gritted his teeth, hating everything about the situation. “Mom… please, can we talk about this after?”

  “Cyrus, where the fuck is the money I had in my wallet?”

  “Safe!” Cyrus felt his hand ball into a fist even as he lowered his gaze, unable to meet her eye. “It’s safe. I put it somewhere that you won’t find it, so it will still be there tomorrow, and the day after, or whenever I can get around to buying us some more groceries.”

  He set his hands on his hips, smiling incongruously as anger roared through his chest.

  “It’s safe, mom,” he said. “You need to get some help.”

  Laura stood watching him for a moment, wearing her own anger openly. Cyrus felt so frustrated, so very frustrated. Eventually, she shook her head and turned away and headed inside. Cyrus waited until the door was closed before turning back to the girl.

  “Awkward enough for you?” He forced a halfhearted grin onto his face. The girl smiled back a little, and reached out her hand.

  “I’m Amy.”

  He nodded.

  “Cyrus.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, I got you. You’re safe.”

  Cyrus cradled Amy in his arms, rocking her back and forth, and side to side. She’d already vomited up a bit of seawater onto him, but his relief over having found someone else alive and unharmed far outweighed any concern he had for his plain black t-shirt and heavily worn cargo shorts.

  Amy made a gasping noise, her blue eyes slowly focusing on him, confusion evident on her face.

  “…Cyrus?” She shivered slightly and shook her head. “The plane… No!”

  “Hey, relax,” he said. “Just take a deep breath. You’re okay.”

  “This can’t be happening!” shouted Amy. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, her loose, low cut t-shirt shifting slightly and offering him a view of cleavage that seemed wasted on their situation.

  “We’re on an island, Amy,” said Cyrus. “Everything is going to be just fine.”

  Amy had been the first person Cyrus had invited to come with him on the trip after Darius had pitched the idea of a tropical vacation. Though he’d never been as close to her as he’d
been to his brother or to Peter, the past month had been complicated, connecting them through strange and unexpected circumstances.

  They had a lot in common, though at the same time, they’d inhabited completely different ends of the high school spectrum. Amy was 18, the same age as Cyrus, and they were still next door neighbors. However, Amy’s perfect grades, perfect attendance record, and popular social status were the polar opposite of Cyrus’s troubled circumstances.

  At least, that’s what I’d always thought.

  “The water.” Amy coughed and shook her head. “I… I almost drowned!”

  “What?” Cyrus grinned at her. “I thought you liked swimming?”

  The remark earned him an exaggerated glare, and Cyrus reached out his hand to help her to her feet. Amy was barefoot, her flip-flops presumably lost in the chaos. Cyrus felt foolish wearing only one sneaker, so he slipped it off and stuffed both of his socks into it, setting it aside on the beach in case, for whatever reason, he needed it later.

  “What do we do?” asked Amy. “Is there… are people here to rescue us yet?”

  Cyrus frowned, glancing out at the empty blue ocean, beautifully daunting in its expansiveness.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I’m sure it won’t be long, though. They’ll have information on where the plane was headed and what happened, I’m sure. Speaking of which, do you remember what-”

  “Oh god!” Amy shouted, cutting him off. She pointed her hand at something further down the beach. Cyrus looked over and saw a person, or rather, a body, lying in the surf, limbs twisted at odd angles, blood dripping from an obvious head wound.

  He walked over slowly, dropping to one knee to examine their injuries as he had with Amy. It only took a moment. The person was a man in their mid to late fifties, loose tufts of grey hair, tanned skin. He was very much dead.

  “Cyrus, this is too much,” cried Amy. “I can’t do this…”

  “Just… breathe,” he said, pulling her into a hug. “Just focus on breathing.”