On This Island, I Make the Rules

Chapter 002

When Ethan woke, the sun was burning his face and something heavy was lying across him.

Brooke.

He shifted beneath her, trying to get his bearings. One arm was trapped under her body; his other hand had landed against her hip.

She coughed and opened her eyes.

“Get your hands off me, Leech!”

Her palm struck his face before he could move.

Leech. That was what she called him. To her, he was the unwanted boy who lived off her father's generosity, and she had spent years making sure he never forgot it.

Ethan pushed her away and sat up.

Water stretched to the horizon.

They were on a beach, on an island whose size he couldn't even begin to guess. Beyond the sand stood a wall of dense green forest.

The plane had gone down.

His phone was gone. So was everything else he had brought. There was no wreckage nearby, no sign of the other passengers, nothing to tell him where they were.

“Where are we?” Brooke asked.

She struggled to her feet and stared out across the ocean. There wasn't even a gull in sight.

“I don't know.”

“Well, go find somebody! Do I have to tell you everything?”

Ethan swallowed his anger and headed inland.

He hadn't taken ten steps before she called after him.

“Half an hour! Then get back here. Don't make me come looking for you!”

“Fine,” he muttered.

David's daughter. Whatever else she was, she was David's daughter.

He couldn't leave her.

But he found no one. In the area he searched, he barely saw anything alive at all.

Three days passed.

No other survivors. No boats. No helicopters.

The jungle was too dense to see far ahead. Ethan ventured a few hundred yards into it but didn't dare go farther.

They survived on crabs and shellfish scavenged along the shore. By the third day, he could hardly bear the thought of eating another one.

His clothes clung to his skin. Salt and sweat had worked their way into every seam. Brooke spent most of the time telling him what to do, even demanding fresh water for a bath.

When he couldn't produce it, she screamed at him.

“You're useless, Ethan! I don't want another crab. I want real meat!”

She slapped him again and again.

“It's a deserted island,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “We're lucky we've found anything to eat. Where am I supposed to get you a steak?”

Three days without rescue. With every hour, his hope grew a little thinner.

“I don't care. I'm not eating any more of that stuff.”

Brooke dropped onto the sand in a furious heap. Her white dress was stained and stiff with salt, and she seemed determined to blame him for that too.

“Let's worry about getting off this island first.”

“Then I'll find something myself. I don't need you, Leech.”

She got up and stormed toward the trees.

“It's dangerous in there!”

She ignored him.

“Fine. Don't listen.”

He was too tired to chase her. She would get scared and come back soon enough.

Less than five minutes later, a scream came from the forest.

“A snake!”

Ethan was running before he had time to think.

He couldn't let David's daughter die.

“Don't move!”

He burst through the undergrowth and saw a snake reared in front of her, its hood spread. It looked like a cobra.

All he could think was that they had no hospital, no medicine, no way to call for help.

But Brooke had already snatched up a fallen stick.

She swung.

The snake slipped past it, struck her leg, and vanished into the undergrowth.

Brooke crumpled. She clutched the bite, her face draining of color.

“Stay still,” Ethan said. “Please. Stop moving.”

Panic crowded out everything except the need to do something. He pulled a lace from his shoe and tied it high around her leg, reaching for scraps of half-remembered advice.

“Ethan, I don't want to die.”

Her fingers dug into his arm.

“I won't let you.”

He wanted desperately to make the promise true.

He moved the hem of her dress aside to reach the wound.

“What are you doing?” she demanded weakly. “Don't you dare—”

“I'm trying to help.”

He attempted to draw blood from the bite, spitting it out between frantic breaths. He had no way of knowing whether it was doing any good.

When he finally pulled back, he was shaking.

“I'll find something for the wound.”

Before his father's death, Ethan had spent countless weekends learning the outdoor skills his dad had brought home from the Army. His father had taken him camping, made him practice, insisted that knowing what to do mattered more than simply remembering what someone had said.

Back then, Ethan had wondered why any of it was necessary.

Now he wished he remembered more.

He found a bitter-leaved plant he thought he recognized and made a crude dressing from its leaves. It was another desperate improvisation, nothing he could be certain would help.

He gave Brooke some of their collected rainwater. After a while, she seemed a little more responsive.

Eventually, exhaustion dragged them both into sleep.

Thunder woke him in the middle of the night.

Rain hammered the palm leaves overhead. Their makeshift shelter did almost nothing to keep it out.

“Of course,” Ethan muttered. “Now it rains.”

Getting wet was the least of his own problems. Brooke's condition worried him much more.

“Water,” she murmured. “Please...”

He couldn't see her clearly, but something in her voice made him reach for her forehead.

She was burning up.

He had to find a way to cool her down.

Earlier, he had noticed a pale mineral deposit around a large rock near their shelter. He thought it might be saltpeter. Now, with no better idea, he stumbled into the rain and scraped some loose with a branch.

Back under the leaking roof, he gathered the bottles and containers they had salvaged from the beach. He mixed the mineral into water in a large container, then set a smaller one inside it.

He remembered hearing that the process could produce ice. Whether the material was what he thought it was or the mixture would grow cold enough, he couldn't be sure. He kept working, praying for anything that might help.

Brooke's fever frightened him more with every passing minute.

“I have to keep you alive,” he whispered.

He loosened her soaked clothing and began trying to cool her with the water.