When a plane crashes on an uninhabited Caribbean island, a young man does what he can to help the other survivors. This one goes into some pretty dark places and gets a bit graphic, so be warned.
 

Survival and Sacrifice
By Jennifer Brock

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(Special thanks to Bree for help with the logistics.)
 
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. We had a week between the end of the semester and our lease ran out, so I thought it would be great to take Julia on a nice romantic vacation. We’d spend a week alone in a nice tropical resort before having to spend the summer apart. It would have been great! I had a nice surprise planned for her, too. But then my roommates found out about my plans and decided to go too. I figured, “Rick and Pete are my best friends. It might be cool to bring them along, for when Julia's tired or whatever.”

I really couldn’t stop them from coming along, so I tried to just have fun with it. At least there where two of them, so I could make them go do stuff together when I wanted to be alone with Julia. And for the first couple of days everything was cool. The beach was beautiful, the people were friendly. We were having a blast.

But on our third day there, I thought we should go check out the casino that the bartender had recommended, but she said she wanted to stay in; she’d had too much sun. I said I was cool with hanging out at the hotel with her, but she made me go to the casino without her, and I could tell her if I thought she’d want to go the next day. My friends were going to come along, so at least I wouldn’t be alone.

But when I got to the lobby to meet them, Pete was there by himself, and he told me Rick had met a hottie in the bar, and he was more interested in getting laid than going gambling. Typical Rick. So Pete and I caught a cab and headed over to the casino.

It looked like a pretty swanky place. I half expected to see James Bond playing at one of the tables. We had to wander around a little before we found a game we could afford, and I was getting all ready to buy a chip for the roulette table, and then I realized that I’d left my wallet back at the hotel.

I was going to leave Pete at the casino, but he insisted on coming along, and I should have gotten a hint that something was up when he spent the whole cab ride complaining about paying extra to give his phone international service but it still couldn’t get a signal. But since I’m the biggest chump on the planet I didn’t figure it out.

It was my own room, so I didn’t knock or anything. I was even trying to be considerate in case Julia had gone to bed early, so I ran my keycard and opened the door as quietly as I could. I went in and got the shock of my life. Julia had indeed gone to bed early, but she wasn’t sleeping. She was lying there naked, moaning softly, and my missing buddy Rick was right there on top of her, naked as well.

Pete was standing in the doorway making an apology, but not to me. He said that he’d tried to stop me, but it didn’t work. She saw me and got an angry expression on her face, like she was mad at me for interrupting her. Rick just had a shit-eating grin on his face, and he probably wouldn’t even have stopped fucking her in front of me if she hadn’t pulled up a sheet to cover herself.

I didn’t say a word to any of them. I pulled my suitcase off the shelf in the closet, making sure I got my wallet off the nightstand this time, then ran through all the drawers and packed up my stuff, grabbed my toiletries from the bathroom, and got the hell out of there. I went to the front desk and told them I was checking out, and had them call me a cab for the airport.
 

***
 

It was kind of late when I got there, and the attendant at the desk was almost ready to go home. I gave her my ticket and she said I was there on the wrong day. I said I wanted to trade it for an earlier flight. She pointed out some fine print on my ticket that said “No exchanges.” I’d been fucked over by my so-called friends, and now I was getting screwed by the airline, too.

No way did I have enough money for another ticket. I begged with her to change my ticket but she said it was out of her hands; the computer just wouldn’t allow it. I think she was about to go into full-on Customer Service Bitch mode, but then I just plain broke down. I started crying right there at her desk. I told her the whole story, about how my romantic getaway had turned into the worst day of my life. I’d caught my girlfriend cheating on me with my best friend, and I just wanted to get back to my own country. I even unzipped my carry-on bag, pulled out the little box I’d hidden there, and showed her the ring.

That’s right — the high point of this trip was supposed to involve me popping the question to my girl, and giving her the shiny rock that was the reason why there was no room on my credit card for another ticket home. My story somehow did the trick. She actually turned back into a human being, and said she was sorry there was nothing she could do for me.

But she did direct me to a regional airline that I might be able to afford. They wouldn’t be able to fly me all the way home, but they could get me to Miami. That would get me back to my own country, and maybe then I could get my folks to buy me a ticket home or something. She even gave me a tissue to clean up my face. I thanked her and headed over to the other counter.

The other counter wasn’t in as nice a shape. The company sign was missing a couple letters, their flight info was written on a chalkboard rather than a TV screen, the uniform on the ancient worker behind the counter looked stained and frayed, and she was doing everything manually instead of typing at a computer. It didn’t look great, but beggars can’t be choosers. Famous last words.

I was able to get a ticket for that night, on their last flight. Fortunately for me, (or so I thought) they were running a little late due to weather. I made my way to the gate, such as it was. It was furnished with plastic chairs stamped with a Pan Am logo that were probably modern and futuristic once upon a time, but now were just uncomfortable and weird-smelling. I didn’t want to sit down anyway, so I just kind of paced around near the window.

I looked around the space to see who my fellow travelers were going to be. The waiting area was dominated by a group of nine old ladies talking so loudly that it was impossible not to eavesdrop. They were headed home to Boca Raton, and most agreed that they never should have let Miriam’s nephew arrange their trip, even though he did get them a bargain price. Their hotel had been a disaster! There was a young girl, probably around nine or ten, sitting a few seats away trying to appear not to be with them, but every so often her grandmother would shout over, “Becky, don’t wander off!” It seemed that one of their original members was recovering from hip surgery and had to back out of the trip, so Esther paid to bring her granddaughter along in Sophie’s place. Why she thought a girl her age would have had fun being dragged around with a pack of seniors is beyond me. I tried to make eye contact with Becky, to let her know that she wasn’t the only one having a crappy vacation, but she never looked up from her magazine.

A trio of sophisticated-looking women, who looked to be in their thirties but may have been well-maintained forties were over in the smoking section having a conversation in that was a little two fast for my high school French to follow.

An older man came up near me, introducing himself as Gus Nelson, a retired engineer from Iowa. He figured he’d talk to me since we were the only ones who seemed to be traveling alone. His excuse was that just like me he’d visited the casino, but he got too caught up in a game of blackjack and had to cash in his plane ticket. His wife was sore at him, but he and Irene had been married for 40 years, so he was sure she’d forgive him eventually, especially since he hadn’t lost her ticket, too.

Gus cocked his head to get me to look over in the corner where a pair of newlyweds was necking. He thought it was hilarious, but it was too painful for me to watch so I excused myself and went to the restroom to splash some water on my face. That should have been me and Julia!

By the time I came back, Gus had moved on to bothering Becky. I took a book out of my bag and sat down to pretend to read. Across from me were these two sharply-dressed Latino guys that I think were gay were looking in my direction and laughing, and at first I was uncomfortable and thought they were checking me out, but it turned out that they were trying to get the attention of some people sitting behind me. It was a pair of couples in their mid-twenties, who’d been staying at their same hotel.

I needed to find a new spot to get out of the middle of their conversation, but there weren’t that many empty chairs available. One was next to a nun, who was engrossed in reading her bible. At the time I took it as a good luck charm. It would have to be a safe flight with one of God’s own operatives on board, right? But I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t try to talk to me to save my soul or whatever, so I didn’t sit there.

The only other free seat was near these two mousy-looking women who could have been librarians. As I approached, they seemed to recoil in fear. I wondered how virginal and uptight they must be to see a guy like me as a threat, but then I saw that another group of tourists had just shown up looking for a place to sit down.

This one guy was huge, he must have been six and a half feet tall, and probably half that across. His tropical print shirt was just a little too tight for his muscular torso. A tiny blonde with an annoyingly high-pitched squeal of a laugh clung to him. Their traveling companions were a wiry red-haired guy covered in freckles, and a short squat bald man with a broken nose. This group seemed to radiate an aura of danger, and the librarians vacated their chairs for them without even being asked to.

I stopped looking for a vacant seat after that, and went back to pacing and staring out the window. After what was probably an hour but felt like a week, our plane arrived. It was an old propeller job, a tiny thing. I doubted that all the people waiting with me would be able to fit inside. The haggard woman who was our gate agent set up a velvet rope by the door and got on the tinny intercom to tell us all to remain seated while the arriving passengers deplaned.

A couple guys pushed a rolling stairway over next to the plane, and then the door opened and the passengers started spilling out. They walked down the steps and across the blacktop to the door in our gate, where the agent bid them a stale welcome. After the passengers, the pilot and the stewardess came out and then the gate agent shut the door and went over some paperwork with them. The three of them had disappeared when I looked back over after watching two guys with a baggage cart unloading the plane.

Just after the gas truck refueled the old bird, the agent came back on the intercom to tell us we’d be boarding soon. What seemed to be that same pilot and stewardess returned from wherever they’d gone and the pilot walked out to the plane. The agent told us that the plane was not equipped to handle carry-on luggage, so any bags we had with us would need to be checked into the cargo compartment. The stewardess circulated among us, and handed out tags to attach to our bags, tearing off a stub for us to hang onto with our claim numbers.

The big scary guy didn’t want to have to give up his bag, but she told him that there was just no place inside the plane where it could go. They were fully booked, so he couldn’t even put it on an empty seat. He reluctantly obeyed, but swore he’d make somebody sorry if anything happened to his stuff. I felt bad for the stewardess; she was only trying to do her job, but he’d made her visibly unnerved. I tried to give her a reassuring smile when it was my turn to hand her my carry-on, but she was still pretty frazzled.

Then the gate agent got on the intercom and started boarding the plane, starting from the back since there was no first class. I was in the second group that was called. It felt weird to be walking across pavement to get to the plane, like something out of a bygone era. At the bottom of the stairs, we handed our bags to the two guys who’d driven the cart before, and they carried them over to the cargo hatch.

The inside of the plane looked more like a bus. There weren’t any of the fancy gizmos you see in modern jets. I guess that’s what all plane interiors used to look like. About the only good thing was that the seats weren’t quite as tiny as some of the coach class seats I’d flown in.

I ended up being seated next to one of the French ladies. Her name was Jeanne-Marie. Even though she probably had at least ten years on me, she was smoking hot! As we shared some small talk, (her English was much better than my French) I had to concentrate on not staring into her cleavage. Her breasts were very impressive, and her blouse seemed designed to show them off. I tried to focus on her beautiful green eyes.

When everyone had boarded, the stewardess closed the door and introduced herself to us as Dolores. She ran through the seatbelt instructions and did the old double-finger point at the emergency exits, and told us about oxygen masks. It was pretty much the same routine you get on the big planes. She told us that once we were airborne she would be passing out water bottles and bags of peanuts. It was kind of cool that she explained everything in English, Spanish, and French.

The pilot came on the intercom and told her to take her seat to prepare for takeoff. His name was Capt. Bill Cavanaugh, and said that we’d be going through and around some weather so there was a chance the seatbelt sign might not get turned off, but that our flight time was just under a couple hours, so it shouldn’t be too uncomfortable.
 

***
 

It’s easy not to be afraid to fly when you’re in a smooth, modern jet, but the noises the plane made as we taxied to the runway and took off were different than you get in a bigger one. I could feel the vibration through my seat, and it made the whole thing seem even more primitive and old-fashioned. It seemed like the bucket of bolts could collapse at any time, and I had a tinge of regret right before the sudden jolt of acceleration when he left the ground.

It was a pretty choppy flight, with a lot of ups and downs and tilting turns. To take my mind off how scary it was I struck up a conversation with Jeanne-Marie. I learned that she and her friends were going home from a vacation. They all worked in Miami in the fashion business. I asked if they were models, and she laughed at me for such obvious flattery, but admitted that she used to be one. She asked me if I’d been vacationing too and why I was traveling alone, and I gave her the short version of things, that I’d had to cut my trip short when my companions turned out not to be who I’d thought they were.

I guess she read it in my face or something, because she said “Your girlfriend let you down? That is a shame,” and then swore in French. I just nodded, and she leaned over and gave me half a hug, pressing one of those magnificent boobs up against me, and a kiss on the cheek.

Since she lived there, I asked her if she knew how far the bus station was from the airport in Miami, so I could see about trying to find a way to get home to Portland. She sighed and said she didn’t know, but since we’d be getting into the airport so late she offered to drive me back to her place for a place to sleep and freshen up, and then take me to the bus station in the morning. I thanked her for her generosity, and my imagination wandered, trying to decide whether she was offering me her couch or a space in her bed.

That moment of fantasizing was cut short when there was a sudden bright flash outside, and the cabin lights went out for a couple seconds. Jeanne-Marie grabbed my arm and squeezed so tightly her nails made dents. Capt. Cavanaugh came on the sound system and told us that the plane had been struck by lightning, but it was nothing to worry about. It was a property of metal containers that any electrical charge always goes to the outside, so we were perfectly safe.

One of his instruments was acting a little funny, but he reassured us that he’d flown this route hundreds of times and didn’t really need an electronic box to keep him on course. He was going to take us up and over the storm clouds, so they shouldn’t be bothering us for much longer. I tried to feel reassured, but it was really just too scary. I did my best to fake it to try to keep Jeanne-Marie from panicking, or maybe it was just so I wouldn’t look like too big a chicken in front of her.

The plane climbed at a fairly steep angle for a while, but we were still stuck in the cloud. The captain apologized to us, but this storm seemed higher than usual. Our cabin wasn’t pressurized, so we were getting close to the maximum safe altitude. He’d have to try a different maneuver to get out of the path of the storm. He swung the plane around in a sharp bank, and after a while we were flying level again. Everyone cheered and applauded, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

We were flying along decently for a few minutes, and Dolores was about to get up and start passing out snacks when our pilot came on. With a little bit of a tremor in his voice, he said that we were a little off of our scheduled flight plan, and he wasn’t exactly sure where we were, but we were out of the storm and there was a shortage of landmarks. He didn’t think we had enough fuel to make Miami and we’d need to make an emergency landing.

He said he could see an island ahead that looked like it had a nice beach. He’d done this sort of thing before, and it was nothing to worry about. He’d dump most of the remaining fuel, so there would be little chance of any kind of fire. Once the plane was on the ground, he could fix the problem the radio was having with its antenna, and he was sure it wouldn’t be long before a rescue craft of some sort would arrive, and we’d all have an adventure we could tell the folks back home about.

But first he wanted Dolores to make sure we all properly got into crash positions. She went around and showed us how to cross our arms in front of us and lean forward. Jeanne-Marie reached over and grabbed my hand in hers, and her face showed that she was absolutely terrified. Somewhere up front, Sister Maria started praying in Latin, and one member of the pack of old Jewish ladies even told her to do it louder.

With everyone in position, the pilot called for Dolores to come up front to be a second set of eyes in the cockpit. Most of us were freaking out at this point so there wasn’t a lot she could have done, but it still felt like she was abandoning us. I didn’t know if I was going to live or die, and I really didn’t care one way or the other. I said my own silent prayer that I wanted Julia and Rick and even Pete to feel guilty that their actions drove me to get on a crashing plane. I wanted to my death to haunt them forever.

The plane did a steep bank and started descending, just like when you land at a real airport. We all braced ourselves, and could feel our wheels hit, but we bounced and hit air again. The pilot tried to level us out, but we were really wobbling. Then it wobbled too much, and there was a horrendous noise of wrenching metal, and the plane was tipped up almost on its side. Loose things that people had brought on board were flying everywhere — someone’s camera hit Jeanne-Marie in the side of the head. Most of the ladies were screaming. We all could tell that we weren’t slowing down enough.

The plane rolled so it was completely upside-down and it still was sliding forward, making an awful scraping noise, and then we stopped short with a loud smack! We’d apparently hit the water, because it was starting to flow into the cabin, and as it flowed in, the front of the plane started tipping down. We were sinking.

People started unclicking their seatbelts and trying to get out. Most of them didn’t have the sense to realize that would make them immediately fall to the ceiling. A lot of folks hit their heads. I carefully hung onto the halves of my belt when I unbuckled, and lowered myself down. Jeanne-Marie was unconscious, but she had a strong pulse. I got her belt off and slowly brought her down.
 

***
 

The plane kept lurching forward. The cockpit door opened, and the captain came out. He told us that we were hanging on the edge of a sheer drop, and everybody needed to move to the back of the plane, to shift the center of weight, and then we could one by one go out one of the emergency exits.

The big scary guy that I’d noticed in the airport said “Fuck that! I’m getting out now.” He rushed toward the exit that would have been over the left wing if we were rightside-up, pushing people out of his way. His blonde was still hanging buckled into her chair, but he was clearly ignoring her, and so were the two guys that followed in his wake.

They muscled their way to the exit and forced it open. Gus was at the exit row, and when he got in their way the giant grabbed his arm and twisted it, and I heard a snap. The captain ran to try to stop them, but the big guy just clocked him one upside the head and he went down. He tried to get up again, but this time a massive hand grabbed him by the throat. “You’re not in charge any more. I am. And I say I get to leave now.” He squeezed the captain’s throat until he passed out, and then the three thugs went out the exit.

The plane was tipping even worse. Dolores was leaning in the cockpit doorway, holding a wound in her shoulder that was badly bleeding. She tried to direct people to calm down and get to the back of the plane. We were slipping forward and water was rushing in. I said I was a med student and worked my way over to Gus. His ulna was definitely broken, but he was still trying to help Becky get her grandmother down from her seat. He needed to get out of there, so I passed Jeanne-Marie to him and told him to get her to shore then come back for the next one, and I’d go help Becky. He reluctantly agreed, and they went out.

The water was coming way too fast, and the exit got blocked when three people tried to use it at the same time. Becky and I had gotten the old ladies unbuckled, but they’d lost consciousness. The plane got struck by a wave or something, and it rolled again and started sinking very quickly. I grabbed Becky’s hand and dove down for the front door of the plane. The lock almost got stuck, but a little extra leverage from my foot and I had the door open. I pulled Becky through the opening, and swam for the surface.

I was so relieved to hear her coughing as our faces hit air. I told her to swim to shore and I’d go back down to get someone else. She said that she couldn’t swim, so I had to bring her. There was just enough moonlight that I could see which way to go. I had her hang onto me tightly and did my best crawl stroke in. I turned to look back every so often, and when the tail of the plane disappeared into the water I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go back for anyone else, and if no one had followed me out of the plane yet they weren’t going to.

The shore was more of a rocky shelf than a sandy beach, which might have explained why our crash landing was more of a crash than a landing. It was easy to see where our plane had struck. There was a big scrape along the rocks, and about half of a wing was lying there. Some pieces of luggage were strewn about, and the three selfish assholes that had made the accident worse by not cooperating were checking each bag to see if it was theirs, and what was in it if it wasn’t.

Gus had placed Jeanne-Marie on the ground and was checking to make sure she was still breathing. We went over there and looked at his arm. I needed to splint it, so I went looking for a couple of sticks. Becky was still in shock, and didn’t want to get too far away from me, so I asked her to look too. She actually was useful, and got a couple pieces of driftwood that would do the trick, and I tied it off with a couple pieces of cloth torn from a shirt that had fallen out of a suitcase that had popped open, and then rigged a sling to hold his arm up from the rest of the shirt.

I was pissed off, and wanted to go complain to the enormous guy, even though he could snap me like a twig. But I’d been in a horrible mood before I got on the plane, and knowing that there was nothing I could do to save any more of those people just made me angrier at my own powerlessness. But this guy made a convenient target to vent at.

I didn’t want Becky tagging along, so I told her to watch the wounded people for me, and I could tell she didn’t want me to go but knew that I was asking her to do something important. I placed her hand on Jeanne-Marie’s diaphragm, and said that she should call out to me if she stopped breathing. It was around then that I realized I’d never introduced myself. I said “Hi, I’m Wayne. Just shout my name if you need me for anything.”

I worked my way over to where the three thugs were beachcombing, and said, “Okay, seeing as how you lost us the plane, and we don’t have any radio or signal beacon or anything to get rescued with, and we don’t have any fresh water or food or anything, what is your plan for keeping us alive and getting out of here?”

The giant guy just laughed. “The way I see it, the first thing we ought to do is find out if anybody lives on this island; that would be the easiest way to get rescued. But it’s night, and wandering around in the dark isn’t smart, so we’d better throw together some kind of shelter and get some sleep. So I’ve got my boys looking through these cases for something to use as a blanket. You got a better idea, Gilligan?”

I had to sheepishly agree that he was right. We could probably wait until morning to find food or water, but a good sheltered place to sleep was a priority. I turned to go back to the others, and he threw a backhanded compliment my way, “I’m not sure about the kid or the old man with the bum wing, but you did good there saving the chick with the big tits. I call dibs.” He truly disgusted me.

I asked him if they’d seen anything in the bags they searched that would be useful for making a fire, because we really needed to get dry. The shortest of the three men handed me a disposable lighter and nodded, like he also knew that fire was probably more important than shelter.

I set Becky to work gathering more driftwood, and looked around for the best spot to make my fire. I wasn’t sure if doing it on the rocky beach was a good idea, since I didn’t know how high the tide got, but I ran into some thick brush fairly quickly going inland. I settled on a spot as high up in the rocks as I could get.

We got the fire going and stood around it to dry off. I was worried that Jeanne-Marie was still unconscious, and couldn’t get dry like the rest of us, but we had found a beach towel that would work. I brought Becky with me to rummage for clothes that might fit, Jeanne-Marie and had her help me undress her, dry her off, and get her dressed again.

The big guy was watching us the whole time, leering. I said “Excuse me, Mr…?”

He snarled. “Call me Frank.”

“Okay, Frank. Could you give me a hand carrying her over near the fire?” He looked at me for a second, and decided that I wasn’t asking too much. He very easily picked her up and carried her over to where the others had already arranged themselves. At first he wanted to put Jeanne-Marie over next to the spot where he was going to sleep, but I told him I’d need to check her vitals every so often and wanted her near me. He shot me a look for defying his authority, but he did as I asked anyway.
 

***
 

In the morning, Frank and the other two guys, whose names I learned were Rocco and Fitz, went off exploring. They were going to keep to the shore and try to walk the perimeter of the island, and see how far it went, and look for signs of civilization. They planned to turn around if they didn’t find anything by nightfall. The rest of us stayed behind to try to make our camp more livable.

Gus proved to be very handy. He did a few calculations in the sand, and came up with a plan for how we could make a lean-to shelter using our broken wing as a roof, and prop it up against a couple of palm trees for support.

He started by reaching in there and yanking out some of the wires and cables and hydraulic tubes to make it lighter, and we used some of those cables as ropes to pull it. It was a tough job, especially with Gus having only one good arm, but Becky and I pulled as hard as we could and got it up into place. Then he rigged up a kind of pulley in the tree and hauled it up and had me climb up and tie it off in place. With a pile of rocks under the tip of the wing, and the wider end lashed up in the tree, we had the start of a decent shelter.

He was a little worried that tying the wing to the tree wouldn’t be strong enough, so he worked with some scrap metal that he heated in the fire and pounded it with rocks like a blacksmith. He made a kind of bracket that would keep the wing from falling; gravity actually made it hold tighter.

We used lengths of wire and mostly muumuus and hung curtains down along the long side of the wing. Those old ladies had a lot of muumuus. It was tough on Becky when she realized her grandmother and her friends were all gone, but we told her that her grandmother would probably have wanted her to use her things, if it meant Becky would have shelter. We hung more curtains to section off the space under the wing, so everyone would have their own private “tent” of sorts.
 

***
 

Gus’s other great project was the construction of a still. He hammered out a cooking pot from a piece of crumpled aluminum, but he needed to cut a glass bottle and asked if I’d seen any diamond jewelry in my scavenging of people’s luggage. I said I hadn’t, but I pulled the ring box out of my pocket and handed it to him. He eventually got my whole story, but that time all he did was thank me and get to work. By cutting and melting bottles, he’d built a thing where he could boil seawater over the fire, catch the vapors, and create a bottle of clean water for drinking. It was slow, but by running it constantly all day we were able to make enough water for us all to stay hydrated and still stockpile some extra bottles. It was a good thing, since Frank and the boys had taken all the water bottles we’d found from the plane with them on their exploration mission.

Gus and I tried to catch a fish, but Becky was the one who actually found us something to eat. She noticed that some of our palm trees had coconuts in them, and we were able to get one to fall by throwing rocks at it. It wasn’t great, but it was food. I wished there was a way I could give some to Jeanne-Marie, but she still hadn’t regained consciousness. I hoped the knock in her head hadn’t damaged her so much that she’d fallen into a coma; we didn’t have what it would take to treat that.

In the evening when the explorers returned, they told us the bad news. They’d gone part of the way around the island, and had to return. Not only hadn’t they found signs of civilization, they’d literally found a sign that there definitely wasn’t any to be found. They’d only gone a few miles when they’d seen a large signpost out in the water, and had to wade out to be able to read the other side. It was an announcement that the island was a protected wildlife preserve, for the study of seabirds. Trespassing was prohibited. The announcement was in several languages, so they couldn’t tell what country we were in.

If the island was for studying birds, maybe there were some scientists currently working on it somewhere, so Frank planned to go out on a more complete circuit in a couple days. On the plus side, once they knew there were birds on the island, they went hunting and managed to bring down a couple. He handed me a couple of dead birds that looked like small gulls and said, “Here, Gilligan. Find a way to cook these.”

I brought them over to the fire and started plucking feathers. Once the birds were dressed I took a knife (There had been a couple of decent pocket knives in the luggage) and gutted and cleaned them. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep an even enough temperature to roast them, so I filtered some sea water through a t-shirt to get rid of sand and stuff, and then cut it with some of Gus’s fresh water so it wouldn’t be too salty, threw in some of the tastier leaves I’d tried from all the plants around, and boiled up the birds until the meat was falling off the bones.

I served the resulting stew to everyone and it was a hit. Frank declared me the official designated cook from then on. “Maybe I should call you Mary Ann instead of Gilligan. But we’ve already got a Mary Ann over here.” He pointed at Becky. “Maybe if Ginger doesn’t wake up, Mary Ann will have to be our new Ginger and you can be our new Mary Ann.” He laughed at his own joke. I just glared at him powerlessly. “Anyway, the Professor here has built some pretty incredible stuff for us. That still you were showing us before, can it be used to make booze?”
 

***
 

Gus said he thought it could, and then went into an explanation for how. I didn’t feel like a lecture and excused myself to go check on Jeanne-Marie. I said I thought it would be a good idea to go through the suitcases we’d found and take an inventory of any prescription medicines they had. Maybe there would be something that could help Jeanne-Marie, and also we’d be a little more prepared in case any of the rest of us got injured or sick.

Fitz volunteered to help me with that, and I couldn’t think of a way to tell him not to. He was useful, but he kept stopping to read labels whenever he found a little orange bottle. I asked if he was looking for something in particular, and he got a terrible glint in his eye. “You find any Oxy, you give it to me. You don’t tell Frank; you don’t tell anybody. You just give it to me. I find out you got any and didn’t give it to me, I’ll cut you in your sleep!”

So one of the killers I was stranded in the middle of nowhere with was also an addict. Fortunately, there weren’t any bottles clearly labeled Oxycontin, so I didn’t have to feed his addiction. I did find Ten Percocet tablets in a “days of the week” pill box that probably belonged to one of the old ladies. I kept Fitz from noticing them and hid them in a vitamin bottle when he wasn’t looking.

I got him to leave me alone by suggesting that maybe if Gus could distill some strong liquor, it might be what he needed to soothe his nerves. I hated to do that to Gus, but it really wasn’t an unreasonable prescription. Besides, I knew that Gus had already started trying to figure out what stuff we had that would ferment.

Our island pharmacy ended up containing three different antibiotics, a couple of antidepressants, a couple of mild painkillers as well as the Percocet I kept hidden, (Secretly I planned that if it got too unbearable I’d just take them all and go for a swim) a half-used wheel of birth control pills, a good supply of various vitamins, an empty insulin syringe, an allergy shot pen, and a fairly large amount of estrogen supplements ready in case any of us went into menopause. All in all it was fairly disappointing. I had nothing that would help me get Jeanne-Marie to wake up. I just had to wait.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to wait long. The next morning, she woke up. But her brain had clearly been damaged. She barely understood French, let alone English. But she was able to finally eat and drink something, so I didn’t need to worry about her dying of dehydration.

But she did need constant supervision. She was roughly equivalent to a giant baby, including the need to wear a diaper. I tried having Becky watch her, but that didn’t work out too well. Jeanne-Marie got mad at her and slapped her so hard it left a mark. Frank stepped up and started keeping an eye on her, and he really was the best one of us to do it. If she wandered off somewhere dangerous, he could pick her up and carry her back.

I was trying to help Gus with his latest project. I tried to assist him as well as I could when something needed doing that took two hands. He’d scavenged all the broken electronic devices we had, and assembled a radio transmitter, but it didn’t have a lot of range. He needed more power and wasn’t sure where to get it. He’d rigged up this little crank-powered dynamo generator that could charge a capacitor, but it wouldn’t hold a charge for very long. Once he was able to get a phone to come on, but it couldn’t find any signal. He was getting very frustrated.

We were doing fine for a few days when I saw something I wished I hadn’t. I was looking around inland for edible plants and happened upon Frank and Jeanne-Marie. At first I thought she was just lying in the grass to get her diaper changed, but then he opened his pants and got on top of her. In her current mental state, that could only be a rape - no way could she consent! I screamed at him to stop, and he just looked at me and grinned. He said she liked it and he liked it, and he figured he might as well get some use out of her.

I was livid, and ran back to camp to try to come up with some kind of plan. I ran into Gus, and told him what I’d seen. He wasn’t as shocked as I’d expected, and admitted that he knew what Frank had been doing with her. I was hurt, and asked him why he hadn’t told me. He said, “Because I knew how you’d react. You’d want to find some way to save her, to stop him. And there just isn’t a way. Frank is bigger, stronger, and tougher than you or me, and he’s got his two thugs backing him up. You saw what he did to the captain back on the plane, and what he did to me. I’m pretty sure he’s killed people before, and felt no remorse about it. He’s not a human being; he’s a monster.”

I could feel hot tears flowing down my cheeks. “But he needs to be stopped.”

“I don’t disagree, but there’s nothing we can do to stop him. You get in his way, he’ll kill you.” He put his hand on my shoulder to hold me back.

I shrugged him off. “So what if he does? At least I’ll have tried. Maybe I’ll beat those million-to-one odds and stop him.”

“You won’t win. The odds are zero to one. He’ll kill you, and then what will happen to Becky?” He pointed a finger in my face.

I had no clue what he was talking about. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it. You’ve got to know that you’re the only thing that girl’s got left. You’re the hero who saved her from certain death. She idolizes you, and if you let Frank destroy you, I think she’d lose the will to keep going.” He put his hands on his hips and rested his case.

He hadn’t completely convinced me, but I agreed to sit on my hands and keep from directly confronting Frank.
 

***
 

But the days passed and he was sexually assaulting Jeanne-Marie more overtly. He’d taken to dressing her in loose dresses, so he could just reach in and grab her breast any time he wanted to. I wished for the strength to stop him, or a brilliant idea on how I could save her. A dark thought crossed my mind, and I considered that he’d have to stop if she died, and at least her soul would be at rest. But I was too scared to try anything. There was still a chance she wasn’t permanently damaged, and if we ever did make it back to civilization, maybe a neurosurgeon could fix her.

Maybe Fate heard my prayers, or just wasn’t as big a chicken as me. One afternoon Frank came and got me and said that she’d just stopped moving when they were in the middle of what they usually did. He brought me to her and I checked her vitals. She had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. I made an attempt at CPR, but she was gone.

He at least let me cover her up before fetching the others to give her a decent burial. We read some Bible passages, sang a couple lines from Amazing Grace, and put her in a hole. Becky cried the whole time, and I told her she didn’t need to stay to watch us shovel all the dirt back in, but she wanted to be there. I think she was symbolically grieving for everyone that had died on the plane.
 

***
 

It was only a couple days before Frank started looking at Becky in a very uncomfortable way. That was what finally made me go to him. I said, “Frank, you’re not going to do anything to Becky, are you?”

He smirked. “Well, Gilligan, real men like me have needs. And one of those needs is regular pussy. And now that Ginger’s dead, Mary Ann’s the only slit we’ve got.” He knew how much I hated his stupid nicknames, and kept it up.

“You are not going to touch Becky.” I tried to sound forceful, but my voice betrayed me and cracked.

He just laughed. “Look, now that my main reason for hanging out around here is gone, me and my boys are going to finally going to do that hike all the way around the island to try to find some bird scientists or look for a boat or whatever. My best guess is that it’ll take us a couple to three weeks, just going by how far we’ve gone already and how big this place seems. When we get back, I’m going to get laid. You spend that time preparing your little girl, but don’t you dare pop her cherry! That’s my privilege.”

My mind raced for a solution, and I thought about the bottles of hormones back in the first aid kit. I tried a bluff. “What if I could get you some other woman to ‘meet your needs,’ would you agree to leave Becky alone?”

“And how would you go about that?”

“We recovered a whole lot of estrogen from the plane. What if I took enough to give myself the sexy, feminine figure you desire? If I became your sex slave, would you declare Becky off limits?” My lack of strong masculine features probably helped me for the first time in my life, as I swallowed my bile and tried to look flirtatious.

Frank shook his head. “I’m no fag, so I won’t agree to stay away from the girl if all you’re offering me is a guy in a dress. But if you really can turn yourself into a real woman all the way, and do a good enough job that my dick believes it, sure. I’ll leave the kid alone. I mean, she hasn’t even got tits yet. You’ll have them, right?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely.” There was no way hormones would work that quickly, but there were other ways.

“All right then. Consider it a deal. If you can become a hot-looking chick, with tits and all, I’ll fuck you instead of the kid.” He reached out and shook my hand. “But if I stick my hand in your panties and find something that shouldn’t be there, the deal’s off. Got it?”

I nodded my head, realizing exactly what I was promising, and hoping to God that it worked.
 

***
 

The next morning, Frank looked at me over breakfast and I could feel him trying to figure out what kind of woman I’d look like. I really didn’t want Becky to turn into his sexual plaything, so I put every effort into trying to sit in as girlish a manner as possible. I needed him to believe that I truly could become his new girlfriend. I didn’t stick around to see them off, and instead spent the morning searching through the extra clothes we had that no one wanted to wear. It was the first phase of my plan.

I knew that breasts were a very important part of what Frank looked for in a woman. I had an idea on how to make it work, and snuck off to do the shameful deed alone. I’d seen the scars. I knew Jeanne-Marie’s endowments weren’t entirely natural. I just wasn’t sure if France switched to saline across the board when the US did. It was a long shot, but it was really the only hope that I or Becky had. I was glad we hadn’t buried her that deeply, and it didn’t exhaust me to dig her up. She was already decaying, but she still seemed beautiful in a way. I asked her forgiveness and got the knife to mutilate her corpse.

I recovered her implants and was relieved to discover that they were indeed silicone; this ghoulish business hadn’t been for naught. I borrowed Gus’s still to boil some water and get them as sterile as possible, and then took them to my tent. I’d stockpiled all the bras I could find from the luggage, and had already checked which ones seemed to fit me. All I had to do next was figure out which one had the right cup size for my new breasts. I almost laughed at the silliness of sitting there trying on bras and stuffing them with blobby balloons, but it really was very serious business.

When I’d tracked down the best fit, I put it on as tightly as possible, and pulled what little flesh I had on my chest into the cups. I paused for a moment and asked myself if I was really sure I wanted to do this, and my brain conjured an image of Frank brutally violating Becky. I really didn’t care if Frank killed me, but she deserved to get out of this alive and still innocent.

I was resolved to do it. I stuck the syringe into the implant and filled it with silicone gel. I slipped my shoulder strap down and stuck the needle in behind my nipple. I repeated the process, making a spiraling pattern all the way around, slipping the strap back up into place every so often, to check that I was making the right shape.

The implant held around 400 cc’s of saline, and my syringe only held 3. I had to stab myself 129 times in order to fill out the breast. I knew that loose silicone gel in my chest could probably kill me over time, but I figured I’d live long enough to keep Frank satisfied until we were rescued.

The right side was a little more difficult to do. For one thing, I wasn’t left-handed, and for another, my arm kept bumping my new sore left breast. But I was pleased with my results; they seemed symmetrical and filled the cups nicely. I kept my bra on and slept on my back, after taking a couple of my hidden Percocets.
 

***
 

In the morning, I slipped on the dress I’d picked out for my unveiling, and went out to tell Becky and Gus what I’d done. I found them by the cooking fire having some breakfast. I’d never had a really deep voice, so it was easy for me to pitch my voice up into a Marilyn Monroe-style breathy whisper. I said “I’ve decided to become a woman. This island has really brought out my feminine side.” They laughed and what they assumed was a joke, but then I unbuttoned the top of my dress. The sheerness of my bra showed that I was not using any kind of external padding to make my breasts. “I already started my transformation. What do you think?”

Becky wanted to touch me to make sure they were real, and I let her, trying not to wince too noticeably. Gus shot me a confused look, and I tried to make eye contact to let him know I’d explain later. I asked Becky if she’d help me figure out how to make my hair look more girlish, and sent her to go see if we had any magazines with pictures of pretty women in short hairstyles.

When she was gone, I explained to Gus what was really up, and that Frank had given me three weeks to turn into a woman, or else he was going to rape Becky. I had to become the sexiest, sluttiest bimbo possible and meet all of his needs or he’d probably go after Becky anyway. And I would need Gus’s help for the worst part. I spent the day working with him on sewing, ostensibly doing alterations on some things that didn’t fit the new me quite as well as I’d like.

Our only mirror was kind of small but I think the haircut Becky gave me was a cute one, a sexy pixie style with long bangs on my forehead. She had fun showing me how to wear hairpins and ribbons and things in it. I think she saw me as a giant doll.

While Becky was working on brewing the stew for dinner, Gus came into my tent with me to go over the routine one more time. He thought it was crazy, and wondered if we could just hide things instead of cutting them off, but I said I didn’t think Frank would say that met the terms of our agreement.

At night by the fire, after Becky had gone to bed, I took a couple more Percocets. Using the straightest length of straight wire Gus had and a little bit of coconut oil, I gave myself a urethral sounding. Then I tied a tourniquet at the base of my penis and a second around my scrotum, and waited for everything to go numb. While waiting, I drilled Gus on the steps to take in my castration, in case I passed out before I was able to finish. He was really shaky and needed to take a shot of moonshine to calm his nerves. We were about to do a horrible thing, but what Frank would do to Becky if we didn’t would be even more horrible.

We cut off my penis, and then Gus brought over the red-hot tip of a metal rod that had been in the fire, and touched it to the exposed blood vessels to cauterize them. It smelled like cooking meat, and felt like my spine had been struck by lightning, but I willed myself to stay awake and aware. After letting it cool for a minute, Gus used a needle from a sewing kit and a length of silk thread I’d unraveled from a scarf, to sew the edges of my stump in tightly around my urethra. Then we slipped a plastic straw around the sounding and slid it down in there and pulled the sounding out. The straw would serve as a catheter so I could still urinate as it healed. We trimmed it down so it only stuck out an inch or so from my body, a mockery of the spout that we’d just removed.

Gus had to take a break to go vomit before we continued, and I didn’t blame him. But I wanted to get the next part over with as quickly as possible, so when he got back, I’d already cut my sac open and severed the connections to the testes. All he needed to do was bring the hot poker over again, and then sew me up down the middle to make two little flaps to resemble labia. Somewhere in there I passed out, and woke up a while later in my tent. He’d cleaned me up and thrown all the waste into the fire, and brought me to bed.

I was sore for a few days, and didn’t do much except lie in my tent and take drugs. I was on antibiotics, but only as a precaution. There didn’t seem to be much sign of infection. I tried to ration my painkillers, and supplemented them with some of Gus’s homebrew. I also decided to start taking hormones, even though they wouldn’t be making noticeable changes to my body before Frank came back. I thought they might help rewire my brain. Becky brought me food and water, and assisted me in getting up when I had to squat over the coconut shell that served as my improvised bedpan. She was fascinated by how natural I looked down there.
 

***
 

We had some salvaged razors, but I foolishly thought shaving wouldn’t be sexy enough, and worked with Gus to invent a way to use tree sap to wax my legs. I’d say it hurt worse than cutting off my genitals, but you probably wouldn’t believe me. Gus and Becky even waxed my bikini area, being careful to stay clear of my stitches. They even took turns tweezing individual hairs from around my anus. I’m just glad I was never a particularly hairy guy.

I was unsure what to do about my facial hair, when Becky remembered that one of the old ladies in her group had a thing for plucking her moustache hairs, and she went looking through our inventory to see if we had recovered it. We did. It was a sort of battery-powered electrolysis device. Gus didn’t think it had enough juice to do anything useful, and rigged it up to his generator/capacitor thing.

He was able to crank it up and zap each of the little hairs above and below my lip, and they just fell out one by one. He could only get a few hairs per cranking, but it worked, and Becky did her share, too. I couldn’t do any of the plucking, but I did do some cranking when they got tired. I’d always been annoyed that I could never grow a full beard, but now I was grateful for it.

My face was red for a couple days, but after that I was smooth everywhere that I needed to be. I grew stronger and was able to do more things for myself. I was nervous about what I’d have to let Frank do to me, so I started practicing with some sticks the right size and a lot of coconut oil. I also started trying to get into the right mindset. I kept repeating to myself, “I’m a dirty slut,” to try to reprogram my brain.

I tried flirting with Gus, but he’d get really uncomfortable and need to turn away. One afternoon when I was working on poses to show off my breasts I caught him looking and he got really embarrassed. I think I saw a reaction in his shorts, but he turned away too quickly.

Becky helped me work on my appearance. She pierced my ears for me, helped me file my nails to a more feminine shape and polished them a sexy shade of red, along with my toenails, which also needed to be trimmed and shaped. We worked together going through magazines and trying to figure out how to best use the bits of makeup we had to make me my prettiest. We also spent a lot of time putting together my wardrobe, seeing what fit and also looked good on me.
 

***
 

Just two days after my stitches came out, Frank and his boys returned to camp. Their journey had been totally fruitless, and they were in a sour mood. I hid in the tent and waited until they were all gathered for lunch before I came out. I’d put on a pretty tropical-print sundress with a halter neckline that revealed a lot of cleavage, and a pair of sandals with high wedge heels that were just a little tight on me. I had gold bracelets on my right wrist, a twinkly necklace dancing between my breasts, a chain around my leftt ankle, and dangling earrings that jingled when I turned my head.

My eyelashes were long and lush, my eyelids were deep blue and smoky, and my lips were full, red and glistening. I wiggled my way over to Frank and let him breathe in my perfume. I purred, “Welcome home,” and gave him a deep kiss on the lips. My lips parted and I was not surprised when his tongue pushed into my mouth. I sucked as hard as I could and broke the kiss, as I felt his massive hand cup my behind. I concentrated on my inner mantra to keep from being disgusted. I’m a dirty slut. I leaned back into his hand, and pressed my breasts against him before backing away.

Next, I gave a little speech that Gus had helped me work on. We’d prearranged a signal so Becky would slip away and leave the grownups alone. I stood up facing Frank and untied my dress, retrieving the ring that I’d hidden there as they all watched my dress fall to the ground. I was completely naked, and he could see that there was nothing male left of me whatsoever. “Just like back home, I’d like to be able to show everyone who I am. If you like what you see and want to claim me, put this ring on my left hand so these guys know I belong to you, and they can’t touch me without your permission. If you don’t want me, I’ll have to find someone else who can appreciate all of this.” I struck my best pose and did a slow spin, showing off all my sexy parts. I’m a dirty slut. “So, what do you think, Frank?” I stood before him, my left hand out with the palm down, and my right hand out palm up, with the ring inside it.

Frank wasted no time. He snatched up the ring and slid it onto my finger. “Wow, Gilligan. You’ve outdone yourself. If you fuck anywhere near as good as you look, I’ll hold up my end of the deal.”

I sat on his lap and kissed him again. I’m a dirty slut. “Now, unfortunately we just didn’t have the tools to make me a sweet pussy like you deserve.” I rolled my hips against his growing hardness. I’m a dirty slut. “But I have got the sweetest piece of ass around; I’m tight, wet, and eager for you to fuck me senseless. You want to go to the tent and get in bed, or would you rather start right here with a blowjob?” I’m a dirty slut. I slid down his lap onto my knees, and stopped with my hand resting on his fly. “But whichever you want to do, I’m sick of that nickname. Call me Julia.” I’m a dirty slut.

He scooped me up and carried me off to what from that point on became our tent. I squealed and wiggled in his arms playfully. As soon as the curtain was closed, he had his pants off and me on all fours. Frank wasn’t much for foreplay. It was a good thing I’d thoroughly lubricated myself ahead of time. Since so much of him was so large, I’d feared the worst, but he turned out to have a rather average-sized package, which seemed quite small compared to the rest of him. He gave me six fake orgasms, and one that came close to being real before he finally got off. As a lover, he wasn’t as rough as I was expecting, although I did need to ask him to be a little gentler with my boobs a couple of times; they were still new and fragile.

He did make me clean him off after he fell out of me, and so dirty slut that I was I diligently used my mouth to lick every nook and cranny free of his juices. That got him extremely turned on, so I was rewarded for my efforts with a mouthful of fresh sperm. I swallowed every drop, licked my lips hungrily, and thanked him for the yummy snack. I’m a dirty slut.
 

***
 

It was an adjustment, but constantly reminding myself who and what I was helped me stay in character. I played the dutiful little sexpot housewife, and my role was to dedicate myself to the service of all my man’s needs. For the most part, it was fairly easy keeping him satiated. The only times I really hated were the days when Rocco and Fitz had done a good job hunting or whatever and Frank rewarded them by lending me to them. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t insisted on taking me at the same time. They called it a “spit roast” and I didn’t much care for it, but I’m a dirty slut, so I had to be game for anything.

I encouraged Becky to be more of a tomboy, cutting her hair short so it wouldn’t be as difficult to manage, keeping her in jeans and loose shorts instead of skirts, and letting her spend time with Gus building and exploring instead of hanging out at the cooking fire with me. The less female the men saw her as, the better. I would frequently parade around camp in my skimpy bikini, but I made her change out of hers immediately whenever she was done swimming. I think she might have understood some of my reasons, but it didn’t stop her from complaining. I really didn’t want them to notice her budding figure.

We started falling into a routine. The men would go off hunting or fishing, I’d turn it into something tasty, and then I’d give my man his favorite dessert. I’m a dirty slut. At night I’d work on trying to make a sexy outfit out of pieces of some frumpy old lady’s collection, and spend the night wrapped in the arms of my snuggle muffin, after exhausting him repeatedly in a wide variety of positions. I’m a dirty slut. There was a morning when I caught him watching me before I woke up, and he lightly kissed me and said he could hardly remember what I used to look like. He thought he’d broken me, but that was the moment I realized that I had won. I was really the one in charge of our relationship. He was letting me lead him around by his convenient handle, and he didn’t even realize it.

Gus had tried another experiment, and ran a long wire up the highest spot on our island to serve as an antenna. He got his radio working, and for just a second he was able to send a simple Morse Code SOS signal, but then Frank thought it would be funny to kick his radio and throw it into the ocean. He said he didn’t want a message getting out to just anyone; there were certain countries where he was a wanted man and he didn’t want them finding him first. He told Gus that he should start building a boat instead of a radio; it would give us a better chance of picking the country that saved us.
 

***
 

He’d told Gus that the boat didn’t need to hold more than three people, so that night I pouted and asked him why he didn’t want to take me with him when he left. He tickled me and said that I was one of the three who’d be going; he never trusted Fitz and was planning to leave him behind. I was his girl, and he wasn’t about to throw me away — I was wearing his ring, wasn’t I? I gave him some of my best work out of “gratitude” and he snored off.

A couple weeks later, I gave Gus the signal. It was time to put the plan into motion. After dinner, he took Fitz off to the still to show him the latest batch of his brew. A while back he’d caught a puffer fish in one of his traps, and had worked at seeing if he could distill the toxin from it. Tests on birds seemed to show he had the right stuff, but he mixed it up with a batch of 180 proof moonshine and one or the other ingredients was bound to take him out.

I took Frank back to our tent for some incredible sex, but about twenty minutes later I came running out in my filmy negligee, tears running down my face. I grabbed Rocco and told him that something had happened to Frank; he was bleeding from his ears and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He went in and leaned down to check Frank, and sure enough he was bleeding from where I’d stabbed the sharpened knitting needle through each ear and into his brain, for good measure. He hadn’t seen it coming, and actually seemed surprised when I told him to go to hell. I struck when he was the most vulnerable, right in the post-coital moment when his body was spent. It was a shame it killed him so quickly. Frank deserved a slow death.

Anyway, While Rocco was leaning over the body, I stabbed the syringe of Gus’s potion into the back of his neck, but his muscles were so thick I think I missed the vein. He spun around, and said “You shouldn’t have done that, Girly. He drew a nasty-looking knife and came at me.

I heard a shout from up above. “Julie, get back!” Becky had climbed up the tree. I did as she’d asked, but Rocco turned to look and when she pulled the bracket pin out, the heavy metal wing that was our roof came swinging down and hit him squarely in the head. I think that only knocked him out, but it gave the poison enough time to work on him.

I was sad that Becky’s innocence had been lost, but she hugged me and said that I’d saved her life before, so she was happy to return the favor. I’d become a sort of mother figure in her life, even before my change.
 

***
 

We thought about finishing the boat and heading to sea just the three of us, but Gus’s arm had never healed properly, and Becky and I were so full of estrogen that we had no upper body strength. We didn’t think we’d be able to sail it. We dragged the partial hull down to the shore, loaded the thugs into it, and set it adrift. Jeanne-Marie didn’t deserve to have to share her cemetery with scum like them.

We also felt like our home had picked up some bad vibes from the two guys who died there, so Gus took some of the techniques he’d been working on for making the raft and applied them to creating a new treehouse for us. We didn’t need as many privacy curtains this time. We usually slept together in one big pile, all three of us. A couple of times I tried to show Gus some of the tricks I’d learned, but he wanted to remain true to his wife. I honored his wishes. I wasn’t a dirty slut, after all.

We were living there for eight months by our reckoning, when it happened. I was just lying in the hammock watching my family. Becky was giving Gus a hand at his latest project, glassblowing. He thought we could use some better windows for the next rainy season. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but he’d done the impossible so many times before.

Two well-tanned people in matching khaki shorts and shirts came walking out of the trees and drew handguns, and told us to freeze. They said we were trespassing on government land, and camping wasn’t allowed. I carefully put my hands up in as nonthreatening a way as possible, and swung my legs around to get out of the hammock. I explained that we weren’t there by choice; we’d been in a plane crash some months previously.

They put their guns away and listened to the rest of our story. We brought them down to where we’d left the wing, and that was enough proof. They were scientists who’d come to monitor the birds, and had seen the smoke from our fire, and thought we were tourists. When their seaplane returned for them three days later, we were allowed to go with them.

Gus missed his wife, and Becky missed her folks, so they were both grateful to go home to be reunited with their families. But I had no one I missed, and nowhere to return to. So that’s why I want to change my major to ornithology, so I’ll be allowed to return to the only place that feels like home to me.