Survival

A month was a long time to be on an island without a hope of rescue. Two was pushing it, but six was killer. There was no longer the A-List and the B-List between the remaining six people on the island, just a group of friends who were trapped in a world that they had made on their own.



Nate and Clara had a relationship blossom between them within a month of Vicky’s death, as did Gabe and Abby. Alex and Isis couldn’t help but think this could be the easiest way to live with friends who were falling more in love which each other everyday. Though Alex and Isis themselves had never utter those three magic words to each other. Even in the throws of passion, they would not utter those words.



They had managed to make their little cavern a home, but had soon realized, with the blossoming of the new couples, that they needed more solitary places. Alex, Isis, Gabe, and Nate had spent an entire day building ‘look out posts’ on opposite sides of the island, one for Nate and Clara and another for Gabe and Abby. Alex and Isis remained in the cavern as the basis of operations.



They had long given up on rescue, but had found ways to make life on the little island bearable. They had a system of running water that went all across the island, caring fresh water to both look out points as well as inside the little cave behind the island. Isis, using skills she learned from her father, had managed to make Gabe a working guitar and they all gathered around a fire on the beach, by Ryley’s grave, and listened to him sing every night.



It was their own Utopian society, but each missed aspects of their old lives. Alex missed the high school boys he saw everyday, as did Nate and Abby. Clara missed her patients, Gabe missed his fans, and Isis missed her friends in the Bureau. People were the main point of what they missed. They could do without technology, even going so far as putting the guns away to save in case they saw another ship, replacing them with spears. Electricity had been a luxury that they now lived without, using torches instead.



One particular night, as they sat around the fire, laughing at stories about Ryley, as had become a common practice because they could never run out of stories about him, they began to talk about the more trying aspects of life in the Real World.



“I loved my job, but sometimes I really hated those kids. They were so disobedient.” Nate shook his head and smiled wide. “Now I know why none of my teachers liked me in high school.”



Everyone laughed and then Clara spoke from where she sat leaning against Nate’s legs. “Death. I hated having to tell people that they were going to die. It was the one thing about being a doctor that I never quite was able to do right.”



Isis sighed, looking at her hands. “And mine is the complete opposite. I miss the death. I know it’s weird, but when you spend ten years killing for a living, death becomes a natural part of life. I hated hearing the words ‘bring them back alive’, because all I knew was shoot or be shot.”



“The road, I hated spending months out of the year on the road. Me, Ryley, and two other guys crammed in this stuffy bus for six months was not my idea of fun.” Gabe shuddered slightly and shrugged. “But Ryley always did make it fun for all of us.”



“I think the part I found hardest was talking to parents about why their kids couldn’t play on the soccer team because of bad grades. The disappointment on their faces always made me want to take it back.” Alex wrapped his arms tighter around Isis as they all looked at Abby, who had sighed while looking into the fire.



She looked up and around the group, shaking her head, red hair flying as she did so. “I hated being there. I always wanted to do something else besides teach. I only went because Nate was there. Now, that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason. If we get off this island, I’m going to go pursue a career in acting, like I wanted.”



“Good, Abby. I think we all need to take what time we have here and really think about what we really accomplished in life back home. I mean, what made you all happy there?” Isis looked at everyone in turn, even turning to look at Alex. “What made you happy there, Alex?”



“Psychologist much, Isis?” Clara smiled at the glare her friend gave her, but allowed Alex time to answer Isis’s question.



“Playing soccer with the boys, teaching them all I knew, it was what got me through the day, but now it seems so irrelevant.”



“And you, Nate? Teaching made you happy too, but were you really truly happy?” Isis was in psychologist mode, as Clara had pointed out, but it was relevant to what she had in mind.



“Not really, no. I was always living with the knowledge that I could have done better, that I didn’t do as well I should have in life.” Nate frowned and looked at Isis. “You’re going somewhere with this, aren’t you?”



“Were any of you truly happy where you were in your old life?” Everyone seemed to think about it a minute and then shook their heads no. “What about now? Here, stranded on an island away from the world we once knew, are you happy?”



They all looked at each other and smiled, nodding. Isis smiled and cuddled back against Alex. “That’s what I thought. Why would we want to leave a place where we’re truly happy? Let’s make a pact, here and now. If we ever get off this island, we’ll continue to remain together, all six of us, so that we can be happy all the time.”



“Um, Clara and I plan on getting married when we get off this island.” Everyone turned to Nate as he spoke, smiling wide. “We think I might have knocked her up.”



Everyone died laughing at the look on his face. Alex fell off the stump he was sitting on into the sand, leaving Isis to fall against the wood, only making her laugh harder.



When she finally gained enough air to speak, she had a faux motherly tone to her voice. “It’s all that unprotected sex you’ve been having, young lady. That’s what gets you into these situations.”



“You were the one who started it by sneaking out at night to do Lord knows what with Alex.” Clara stuck her tongue out playfully at Isis.



“But the difference between me and you, Clara, is that you can get pregnant, I can’t.” Isis moved so that Alex could get back on his stump, leaning back against him again. “So we’re good.”



“What do you mean when you say you can’t get pregnant, Isis?” Alex moved so that he could see her face as he asked the question. “Do you have that like two year birth control plant or something?”



Isis frowned and looked down at her hands. “No, I just don’t have the parts to get pregnant.”



Clara frowned and moved toward Isis, touching her hand. “What happened?”



Isis was hoping never to have to bring up this subject to her friends, but with her lover sitting behind her and Clara looking so understanding, she couldn’t just clam up like she would have normally done. “About four years ago, I was sent through Interpol on a mission to Germany. There were rumors of some Nazi uprising that I was asked to sort out. I can’t go into great details about it, but in the end, I found the Nazis and they took me back to their headquarters, thinking I wanted to join them.”



She stopped, shuddering slightly at the memory and found Alex’s arms wrapped around her shoulders. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a little squeeze. “Keep going, Isis. It’s alright.”



Isis took a deep breath and looked down at her hands again, not wanting to look into Clara’s eyes as she spoke. “I tried to talk their leader into stopping the rebellion before they were killed and he had them tie me to a table where they tortured me as they would have done the Jews during WWII. They took everything out and fed it to the dogs they kept in the back. I barely managed to escape.”



She felt the tears flow down her eyes, but not for the pain she suffered, but the loss of all the children she would have had. She had had her eggs frozen before she had went, so that was still a possibility, but she couldn’t bear to think of another woman carrying her child.



She felt Clara’s arms join Alex’s and the tears began to flow freely. She collapsed in their arms, crying as she hadn’t cried since Ryley’s death. She had lost all hope of having children, finding a man who could love her because of that, and rescue from this accursed island, but she still had friends she could rely on.



When she was calm again, she pulled back from them all, looking at everyone in turn. Their faces all held pity and remorse for her loss. Most of them knew of her youthful dream to have a houseful of kids, but now that would never happen. “I had never told anyone that.”



“What happens on the island, that isn’t directly related to amazing sex, stays on the island, Isis.” Nate smiled as he said this, winking at Clara playfully.



She hit him and then turned to Isis. “We won’t tell anyone unless you tell us we can, Isis. You know that. Besides, who are we going to tell? The hog family we see every day? I don’t think they’ll tell anyone if we do tell them.”



Isis laughed and nodded, but stopped, tilting her head to the side. She stood abruptly and looked out at sea. “Do you guys hear that?” Everyone grew silent, the only sound the sound of the fire and the ocean waves.



“It sounds like … music! Oh my God! Real music!” Isis didn’t even waste a minute, running as fast as she could through the woods to the cave to grab a gun. She turned around and booked it back to the shore, looking back out at the ocean. “Tell me when you see the ship and I’ll fire a round into the air.”



The music began to fade, but the ship was seen in the distance. It was a cruise liner, like they had been on, but it must have veered off course. She aimed the gun into the air and fired a single shot. They couldn’t waste more than that in case the ship didn’t see them, but it was close enough it should have at least heard them.



“Make the fire bigger.” Isis was in rescue mode, wanting nothing more than to get off this island, if not for anything else but a real bed and warm water.



They did as she said, but the ship continued sailing away. Sighing, she sat back on the ground and sighed. “Ship number fifty-two, failure. Maybe by the time we hit a hundred we’ll be seen.”



“Maybe, but for now, we should head to bed. Save our energy for tomorrow.” Alex pulled Isis to her feet as Gabe and Nate did the same for Clara and Abby. “Good night, guys.”



They heard Gabe and Nate putting the fire out as they headed back to their cavern. Isis walked into the room and sighed, knowing that what came now was the one on one talk where he fussed at her about not telling him about her condition. Or maybe that wouldn’t even happen. Maybe he would just tell her he couldn’t be with her knowing that she wasn’t a complete woman.



What she saw when she turned to look at him wasn’t repulsion, but something completely different. “Clothes off now, Isis.”



Isis felt her heart flutter as he looked at her with a type of longing she hadn’t seen in his eyes before. Was he seeing that now that he knew that he could do whatever he wanted to her without repercussions? Or was he just trying to show her that it didn’t matter? “Why, Alex?”



Alex walked over to her, pulling his shirt over his head. He lifted her head when he got to her and kissed her gently. “We’ve been on this island six months. Isn’t it obvious by now? I don’t care about what body parts you have or don’t have, Isis? I don’t want your body, I want you.”



Isis shuddered as his fingers slipped into her shirt, pulling it over her head. His bare fingers played along her skin as he slipped the shorts from her body, leaving her standing in front of him as nude as the day she was born.



He lost his own shorts quickly, kissing her as he lowered her to the pad they shared on the floor. He kissed her gently as he pushed his hard erection as deep inside her as he could get without injuring her. She gasped, as she always did, but didn’t tell him to stop as he began to pull himself out of her, just to ram himself into her harder than the time before.



The rhythm held something different than it had before, harder and more violent, but she liked this better than she had the gentleness he had used on her before. She found herself digging her nails into his back as he plowed into her, harder and harder. She came screaming, nails going deep enough into his back to draw blood.



She collapsed with him on top of her and, when she had enough air, she voiced what she was thinking. “Damn, Alex, you’ve been holding back.”



“I just didn’t think you would appreciate us only being together for a few months and me showing you just what it was like with me. Disappointed any?” Alex leaned up on his elbows, pulling himself out of her gently.



“Hell no. If anything, I’m much appreciative. If you give that to me every night we’re on this island, I might have to rethink wanting to get out of here.”



Alex smiled, leaning down to kiss her. “I will give that to you as many times a day as you can handle it and still be able to walk.”



Isis laughed and shook her head. “That’s a double-edged sword there, Alex. I can take it many times a day, but I don’t think I could keep the energy up enough to do it more than once. I’m exhausted.”



Alex smiled and wrapped his arms around her, spooning her gently. “Then go to sleep, Isis. I need to as well. We have hunting duty tomorrow.”



Isis yawned and nodded. “I forgot about that.”



“Isis?”



“Yes?” Isis was half-asleep, but was still attentive as he spoke to her.



“There’s one more thing.”



Isis rolled over onto her other side and woke up a little to look at him. He looked so serious, she was afraid he was going to tell her something she didn’t like. “What is it?”



“I’ve fallen in love with you.”



Isis felt her heart leap and smiled, kissing him gently. “You had me so worried there for a moment, Alex. I thought you were going to tell me something horrible.”



“Isn’t that horrible? We’ve been sleeping together for months and yet, I haven’t even began to tell you how I feel. Gabe told me that you don’t like the L-word, so I never used it for fear that you wouldn’t want to be with me anymore.”



He looked like a little kid who had just been told that there was no such thing as Santa Clause. It broke Isis’s heart and she sighed, laying her forehead against his. “I hate the L-word, simply because of a bad relationship our junior year of high school. Then another one my senior year of college. I never thought, after that year, I would ever hear those words and be happy.”



“Are you happy to hear them now?”



Again, that hurt look that made her heart break. She didn’t respond at first, thinking seriously about what she was feeling in that moment. She felt joy, but more than anything, she felt the overwhelming urge to wipe that sadness from his face. She didn’t want to see him look that way because of something she said ever again.



She leaned into him and kissed him with all the feeling she could, pulling back enough to whisper against his lips. “I’ve fallen in love with you too, Alex.” She kissed him again, but this time she felt his response in his lips.



She pulled back and wrapped her arms around his waist, laying her head on his shoulder. “Now for sleep before I pass out from sexual exhaustion. Same time tomorrow night, lover?”



Alex laughed that laugh that only men can do just after their girlfriends make a comment about how good the sex was. “Don’t you know it.”



There was a moment of silence before Isis whispered against Alex’s chest, half-asleep. “Alex?”



“Hm?”



“I love you.”



“I love you too, I.” Isis smiled and fell into a fit sleep, listening to Alex’s breathing even out as he too fell asleep. This time on the island wasn’t turning out as bad as she had originally thought it was going to be. It could only get better from here.