The Island of Devils Rain: The Beach
A joint project between Lykos Bane and myself that has been delayed indefinitely. I started it last year, waiting for Lykos to finish up with his next series, Rabies. Be warned that the first and only part to this aborted series is heavy on setup and lean on Yiff. In my eyes at least, its still a fun bit of fiction, so I'm going to throw it up while penning the sequel series to Moral Obsolescence and Motor Oil. Feel free to taunt this droning tease of an exposition, just not HappyFunBall(tm).
The Island of Devils Rain
The Beach
2007 by Eldyran
Time: 65 million years ago. Location: High Earth Orbit, Above Present Day Yucatan.
Aside from a few specks of brilliant fusion and grains of mineral, space was desolate and cold. Or so it seemed. Below this particular vantage point of vacuous expanse, an entire lush green and liquid blue sphere twirled on its axis. It teemed with highly evolved organisms, which raped and consumed each other throughout the planet's ageless epoch. Intense radiation from the closest celestial furnace swathed it in an almost limitless energy source, fueling the endless, ravenous drive of evolution. In turn, the planet below whipped around the incandescent nuclear furnace for countless millennium.
The harbinger of the planet's doom, as galactic scale went, was minute and infinitesimal. The sun's fury bounced off the highly processed black metallic outer surface and its sharp, triangular angles. The blinding rays twinkled back into the black abyss as the pyramid shaped object spun and wobbled erratically toward the thriving planet below. No trace of ionized plasma tailed behind the distressed craft, its mode of locomotion alien to the rudimentary physics of this primitive, young galaxy. Already caught in the deep gravity well below it, the craft spun into the viscous breath of the planet. Tendrils of flame lapped at its rough edges and wedge shaped, fractal design.
As the ship plunged toward the surface, something dislodged from what could be arbitrarily considered its belly and spun away. The energy core pulsed with a sizzling thrum, ionizing the air around it with streams of lightning. As the two alien objects spun away from each other, their divergent trajectories smashed them into the surface several thousands of kilometers apart. The power core slammed into the ocean a few hundred miles south of the north western continent's great inland sea, and billions of liters of water and millions of metric tons of rock vaporized instantly in the resulting matter / anti-matter inversion.
On the atomic level, density changes in terrestrial mineral metamorphosed common clay into iridium, defying all known chemical laws. On the planetary level, the shock wave set off massive earthquakes across the surface, and the resulting thermal inversion sparked off an atmospheric firestorm. In those brief moments, the once green, lush surface of the planet blazed a deep red cinder.
It almost extinguished the tenuous process called Life on this planet.
And yet, the greatest danger to life on this world came not from the planet shattering physics of an unknown form of energy, but the innocuous, infinitesimally small triple helix contained within the confines of the celestial craft, which plunged miraculously into a portion of crust a few hundred feet below the ocean's blue waves. There the relatively untouched craft lay dormant for millions of years, even as unstoppable geological pressures pushed that exact portion of crust to the surface ...
* * * * *
Date: 05/16/2007. Time: 2300 hours Atlantic Standard Time. Location: Brazilian Cargo Vessel 'Venture', current coordinates: Latitude = 15.623, Longitude = -66.182, Two Nautical Miles NW off 'Ilha de Diabos Chuva'.
Captain Dekar loomed over an instrument panel, the iridescent green lights of its many gauges and readouts bathing his muzzle in a eerie, ghostlike glow. The jaguar seemed on edge as he peered over his only eyes and ears, the tempest outside battering his ship back and forth with massive Atlantic swells.
"Mr. Arothes, compass heading?" The captain called out, trying to hide his growing nervousness from his first mate. Mr. Arothes peered over the helm controls to take a look at the final resort of any blind ship, its compass. The simple magnetic compass had been required standard naval navigation equipment on ocean going vessels for hundreds of years now, and never seemed to fail, even when all other advanced electrical powered shipboard electronics sputtered out. The first mate fell silent for a few long moments, the roar of the massive waves crashing on deck outside the bridge only adding to the wordless tension growing between them.
"Sir! The compass ... she be spinning! Heading unknown!" The Marajó short-tailed opossum cried out. "What does the GPS say, Sir?"
"Digital Compass and GPS are showing nothing but static ... as if ..." The jaguar rapped his claws against the instrument panel, trying to clear the static from his screens. He looked up to the shadow standing off in the corner with its arms folded. Even over the pitch and roll of the bridge deck, the figure made no effort to steady itself, a strange feat in itself.
"Do you believe the legend now, Mr. Cross?" The jaguar said, squinting to the dark figure.
"If you're asking if I believe in the myths about 'Ilha de Diabos Chuva', then the answer is no ..."
"Then why are my instruments frizzing out? Where did this blasted squall come from?" The Brazilian captain hissed back. The large black wolf stepped out of shadow, his massive paws gripping the edge of the instrument panel. Their claws looked like luminescent razors in the green glow.
"Instruments fail. Storms appear. But unless you feel this charter is not worth PenTex's time or money, I suggest you grow some balls, captain." The black wolf's yellow eyes locked on the jaguars green ones, before the feline dropped them back to the instrument panel.
"Do you really think your company's research team is still on the island?" The first mate asked, trying to break the tension between the two clashing males.
"Thats why we are here," Cross stated flatly, eyes watching the ship's bow pitch and roll with the storm, "Research teams don't just stop working like cheap instruments." The wolf nodded towards the instrument panel where the captain continued his work. "It's been three weeks since we lost contact with them, but for all we know it could be a simple downed radio transmitter." The was silence on the bridge for a few moments, the three males peering with anxious looks to the front of the ship, past the curtain of rain and rolling waves.
"Wha ... what do they call this island again?" the first mate asked, his voice hitching with restrained fear.
"Ilha de Diabos Chuva," the captain said, staring dead ahead into the tempest, before a bolt of jagged lightning flashed in the ebony, swirling sky in front of them. It lit up his haggard muzzle like a strobe. His jade eyes still danced with the ghostly green static of his dead instruments.
"The Island of Devils Rain ..."
* * * * *
Below decks, Sara Cross lurched into a bulkhead when the deck abruptly tilted to stern, her gray lupine paws snatching the edge before her furry forehead could bash against the reinforced steel. She took a few hesitant steps down the corridor, then snarled out as the ship tilted the other way, her hind feet off balance again. A door opened up in front of her, and a shirtless male cougar with crisp new blue jeans tumbled out, one paw to his muzzle.
"Petie, are you ...?" Sara didn't have time to finish as the field medic heaved a bit, brown eyes stricken, then tore down the corridor to the head. Sara's ears flattened a bit in disgust to the viscous splash in the toilet, but two crewmen pushed past her in the narrow corridor, their paws on the steel walls for support.
"What's going on? Why is the ship ...?" Sara barked out to the crewman, who turned around a bend in the corridor, more important things on their agenda at the moment. Sara growled out after them and continued to make her uneasy way to the stairway leading to the upper decks. In the junction ahead of her, she watched the electronics tech, Irem, stumble past, eyes locked on some electronic device in his paws.
"Irem! What the hell is going on?" The slim coyote in khakis looked up and caught himself as the deck tilted underneath him. He waited for Sara to catch up to him, and sighed deep to himself.
"I don't know whats going on Sara," the coyote replied, "but it isn't good. I just lost the ship's satellite connection on my portable AVAPS Dropsonde Receiving System. Last readings I got indicated that a category two hurricane just formed off our northwest." Sara frowned, her muzzle curling in a snarl. Irem stared at the infuriated female wolf, who retucked the bottom of her denim shirt into her cargo pants, and stormed to the stairs leading to the upper decks. "Sara! Where you going?"
"To get some answers!"
"I don't think your husband ..." The stern alpha female shot him back a dirty look, and the coyote corrected himself, "I mean your ex-husband ... has any more answers than you do."
"No," she growled back, "but whenever the shit maelstrom starts flying, hes always at the center of it. We'll this time ... hes not going to come out of this so clean ..."
She shot up the stairs, trying to compensate for the roll of the ship. The coyote shrugged before moving on, still troubleshooting the source of the unusual interference. While absorbed in his work, his body collided with someone, and he looked up to see Joseph. The otter's eyes, now only an inch away, narrowed a bit; the military training in them unmistakable.
"Joseph I'm sorry! I ..." Irem couldn't take his amber eyes off the otter's icy blue ones, and for a fleeting moment, the coyote thought his inner feelings towards the mustelid betrayed him. The ex-navy seal didn't seem to notice, or at least didn't care. He pushed the coyote aside if he were made of paper mache, the large biceps in his arms bulging slightly.
After he stepped past, the canine shivered a bit, and couldn't help but stare at the rippling muscles just under the fur. The otter wore a pair of skintight diving shorts, a bandoleer across his ripped chest, but other than a waterproofed glock in its sidearm hostler, nothing else covered his short, stocky, well defined body. The otter looked out a porthole to the turbulent ocean around them and shook his head.
"The direction of the swells are changing. We're being pushed toward the shore." The coyote just stared at him.
"Doesn't the captain know that?" Irem asked as he flashed a look on concern over to the handsome otter.
"If his gauges are acting up like yours," smirked the otter, nodding to the buzzing hiss of static from the electrical device in the coyote's paws, "Then hes running blind." He paused and walked down the corridor, compensating easily to the ship's sudden rock to port. The light bulbs above them in the steel grating flickered off for a second, the ominous warning sending a clear message to the lanky canine.
"If I were you," Joseph said before turning a corner, "I'd brace for impact." He headed to his bunk, undeterred. If the captain was worth his weight in salt then he'd figure out what was happening. If not then they were all dead. If he stormed onto the bridge and threatened the captain, he could only make a tenuous situation worse.
As he passed a room, he heard soft giggling and quiet moans coming from within. He banged on the bulkhead outside their door with a meaty fist.
"Hold on to something, kids, the ride is about to get real bumpy ..."
"We plan on it!" Two younger voices giggled out in unison. Joseph just shook his head and moved on, letting the two young lovers find out the hard way. Inside the room, a male ocelot and a female raccoon rolled around in one of the bunks attached to the wall in tandem to the random pitch and yaw of the ship. Their paws roamed across their clothed forms, teasing, before the ocelot's nimble fingers unsnapped her bra from under her shirt.
The raccoon shot him a mock look of disapproval before she climbed on top of him, her thick thighs straddling his slimmer ones. With a lustful gleam in her brown eyes, she pulled her shirt off over her head, exposing her ample furry breasts. With a deep groan of excitement, the ocelot ran both his paws up her chest, his fingers squeezing the soft flesh of her bosom. As the two undergraduates continued their amorous romp, their groans and squeals of delight illicited a series of thumps from the quarters above them.
Laura slammed her hind paw down on the floor again; the vixen computer tech hoping that got the pair's attention. She growled out, leaned back into her hard bunk, and went back to fixing her laptop. She couldn't believe that the two below were actually making out in this situation. What if the ship sprung a leak? Or even ... sank?
The aggravated vixen wanted to get paid for her contract and return in-one-piece-thank-you-very-much. She slapped a paw against her notebook. Her clandestine splice into the ship's satellite communications array just went down, and right in the middle of downloading updated orders from her real employer.
Oh yeah, PenTex offered her a lucrative contract to troubleshoot any hardware problems they might find on the island, but when their main competitor, Worthington Research Conglomerate, discreetly contacted her and offered double PenTex's initial bid to play a bit corporate dagger fall, how could she say no? Besides being one sexy bitch, and being versed in multiple encryptions schemes, including fractal base, she was also quite skilled at getting dirty-deeds-done-not-so-dirt-cheap.
Her hind paw nudged her baggage on the floor, which concealed a bit of garrote wire, a taser, and all sorts of naughty goodness. She did notice the ex-seal among the crew. He might prose a problem. The vixen gave a dark smile, confident that if her feminine wiles wouldn't catch him off guard, then maybe a well planned out booby trap would. This contract was going to go slicker than shit.
The sudden blare of warning klaxon disputed that claim.
"Oh hell no...." The vixen started, just as all hell broke loose.
* * * * *
Just as Joseph gave his ominous prediction to Irem, on the bridge, the captain tried to make sense of their exact location. A sudden gush of strong wind and ocean spray blew into the bridge, and all three males turned to the open doorway. A drenched chinchilla slammed the door shut with much effort, his poncho flapping in the last of the gale. The second mate addressed the captain.
"Sir! I thought you might need some help up here, it's looking worse out ..."
"Duly noted, Sarse, take navigation." The jaguar ordered, and made his way up to the front of the bridge, his muzzle almost pressed up against the glass, trying to read the waves through the torrent of rain and ocean spray. "Sarse, give me floodlights, 45 degrees stern and port, 15 degrees declination ..." Twin beams of intense light bore through the tempest, and the captain grimaced at what he saw.
"Mr. Arothes, bring us to bearing 270. One third ahead." The captain put his paw up to the window, his hot, anxious breath fogging up the glass in front of him. The first mate spun the wheel, and once he brought the bow around, pulled back on the throttle stick twice, then set it in accordance to the captain's orders, the double rings alerting those in the engine room of the throttle change.
"What is it Dekar?" Mr. Cross asked as the unease in the captain sent an foreboding chill up from the base of his tail all the way up to his spine.
"The swells got behind us. If we don't bring the bow into them, a squall might ..."
"Sir! Our Echosound just came back online!" The second mate interjected "Sonar detects a massive return just below us ... it's ... a shipwreck!" The other three spun around, their faces dawning with the realization of their perilous situation, almost in unison. "Sir! Soundings report ground fifty feet under our keel!"
The captain turned to the side windows, the spotlights catching the ghostly outline of jagged rock spikes moving past them to the ship's bow.
From the aft, behind them.
"All ahead full!" The jaguar roared out as he spun back around and gripped the navigation console, abject terror projecting from his jade eyes.
"Too late!" The first mate cried out, his outstretched paw pointing to a massive, crashing wave. The wall of water swept over the deck of the bow, hurling the vessel into an outcropping of jagged rock.
"Sound for collision!" the captain bellowed, and the second mate had just enough time to sound the klaxon before the ship slammed to the right, tilting crazily. The collision hurled the four furs on the bridge to the deck as the green lights of the panels flickered and died, the screech and groan of compromised metal joining their screams ...
* * * * *
Sara looked up as klaxon sounded, and out of instinct, gripped the stairway railing with both paws. The stairwell slammed, tilted to the right. She cried out, falling to her knees as the ship shuttered and groaned around her. The lights blinked out, bathing her in total darkness as her grip failed. She tumbled back down the stairs, barking with each hard bounce.
Petie heard some type of alarm go off as he flushed the toilet, and was vaguely taken off guard when his forehead decided to slam itself into the toilet's porcelain rim. Darkness overcame him. He was hoping for more sleep anyway.
Irem, aware of the unusual changes of the ship's rocking, hid under the bunk of his quarters. When the ship careened, his heavy luggage came crashing down from the stow away above him. Had he been in his bunk at the time, he would have most likely been killed. It wouldn't be the last time the coyote danced the fine razor's edge between cowardice and acute survival instinct.
When Jospeh's head snapped hard to the left, he awoke from his nap to utter darkness and the shrill sound of compromised hull. He listened intently, and after a quick assessment, found no inner hull breech. The otter went back to sleep, his body safely harnessed down to his bunk.
Joana rocked her bare hips in tandem to the swell and rock of the ship, Erek's stiff, thick cock sliding in and out of her puffy sex with each thrust. The two furs groaned out, their furry naked forms rocking against each other each time the raccoon bucked up and down on the ocelot. Her large, furred breast bounced up and down with each down thrust, and her swollen, pink nipples proclaimed her approaching climax.
Erek's paw reached up and grasped at one of the tantalizing, giggling bits of eye candy, the thumb of his other paw running up and down her slick slit till his rough paw pad found her engorged clit. She squealed, eyes now closed, her sex quivering around his length. An alarm blared throughout the ship, and Erek sat up.
"What was that?" the ocelot asked, his green eyes shooting around their quarters in concern.
"Don't you dare stop!" the licentious raccoon cried out, her paws shoving his shoulders back down to the bunk. Her hips arched again into his, her cries of climax only cut off when they found themselves flying through darkness.
"Oh hell no ..." Laura started, when the rest of her quarters rushed past her. The laptop in her paws broke her impact on the far wall, the plastic device containing all her espionage contact's info shattering from the tremendous force. Before she fainted from a severely sprained wrist, her pain hazed mind already started to formulate three distinct backup plans.
* * * * *
Back on the off-kilter bridge, red emergency lighting came on as groans of pain filled the control room. The captain was the first to get up, clutching a control panel for support, and his paw snatched the microphone for the ship wide intercom.
"Damage crews to station!" The echo of the captain's throaty growl bounced around the bridge as the intercom broadcast his orders throughout every room on his ship. "Repeat: Damage crews to station!" The first mate climbed his way back up to his post slowly, groaning out from several severe cuts and bruises.
"Helm not responding Sir!"
"Get to navigation then. I want a damage report!" Dekar snarled, and the first mate hobbled to the navigation console and stooped over the flickering, barely functional displays.
"GPS functional! Sir, we have run aground!"
Mr. Cross picked himself up off the titled deck, a line of thick blood dripping into his left eye from a nasty split in his scalp fur. Despite the perception of the swaying floor, he fought to remain conscious and stay well out of the way of the chaos erupting around him. His ears snatched the weak groan of the second mate, and Mr. Cross grimaced when he put his weight on his left ankle.
He stumbled over past the helm controls, past the communications console, and found the lower half of the second mate bent over the top it, his upper body somewhere on the other side. As the black wolf got closer, he noticed the dull red pouring from one of his legs did not come from the dim emergency lightning. The second mates right leg twisted askew, the white gleam of his snapped femur sticking out of his thigh like a broken chicken wing.
"Get Petie up here!" Mr. Cross barked out, "You've got a casualty over here!"
The stern door to the bridge swung open, and out of the dark, swirling gale and roar of crashing waves on the ship's open deck, a drenched female lupine stumbled through, the door still wide open.
"What the hell just happened?" Sara howled out over the roar of the tempest behind her, "Did we just hit something?"
"Engine room reports several injuries, minor flooding."
"I want an assessment on the condition of the inner hull ASAP. Get a medic to the bridge, contact infirmary!"
"Damage crews on station, sealing off emergency bulkheads. Infirmary not responding Sir!"
"Is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?" Sara growled out as Mr. Cross started to lurch toward her, favoring his left ankle. The captain hissed out at the ocean spray and rain that came in through the open doorway.
"I want this bridge cleared of non essential personnel. NOW," He yowled out, and shot a enraged look at the large black wolf, "Mr. Cross, I want that bitch off my bridge." Sara's muzzle parted in a look of outrage before her ex-husband pushed her back through the hatchway. Over the roar of the tropical storm and crash of waves, Mr. Cross couldn't make out what Sara was screaming at him.
Thank goodness for small miracles.
With herculean effort, he sealed the bridge door behind, the shrill gale whipping past his drenched, furry ears. As the tempest pelted him with stinging rain, he clutched the deck rails and forced his way through the storm to the lower decks below. Once sheltered from the storm, he headed to his quarters, and Sara's booming voice took up assaulting his senses instead.
"You have exactly five seconds to fill me in on whats going on ..."
"What do you think just happened, Thundercunt," the black wolf growled, and stooped to clear a broken pipe hissing steam in the utility conduit above them, "We just shipwrecked on a remote island in the Atlantic. You want me to scribble up a diagram? Now, if you don't mind, I have to see if everyone on my team is okay."
"No one is going to be okay." Sara said, the gray female wolf getting in front of the larger male, poking his broad, soaked chest with two stubby pawtips. "I bet you're not even going to tell them about 'Ilha de Diabos Chuva', are you?" He shoved her aside and continued on down the tilted corridor, still favoring his left ankle.
"You're the last individual I would expect to give into primitive superstition," he spurned back as he turned a corner, "You are ... at least were ... a female of science."
"Thats right, and science is based on research," she hissed back, still following close behind him, "You want to know what I found out? This isn't the first time an entire group has disappeared on this pathetic little shit hole of a rock. A British steamer dropped off a team in 1883 to forage for fresh supplies. When the boat came back a week later, there was no trace of the foraging party ... at ... fucking ... all.
"They probably swam back to Britain." Two crew members from damage control ran past them in the empty corridor, paws clutching huge toolboxes.
"What about in 1932? Several families from Brazil set up a deep sea fishing village here on the island. Later that year the boat that came by every week to pick up their catch to bring back to the mainland reported the village deserted, but found entire evening dinners untouched, uneaten." Mr. Cross stepped over some broken deck grating, letting the gray wolf behind him trip over it with a slight bark. He smiled.
"And what about the ancient sacrificial ruins found on the island, lending proof to the legends spanning back over thousands of years?" Sara rambled on. Mr. Cross snorted and shoved open the heavy steel door to his quarters, peering inside. Most of his luggage was strewn about; his corporate belongings tossed to and fro. He stepped inside and attempted to slam the door in Sara's face. The shorter lupine stuck her hind foot in the steel door and fought to keep it open with her paws.
"And what about the hundreds of others who have visited this island without a problem," the black wolf growled out, "I haven't heard them complaining that they disappeared."
"For fucks sake Curt" she snarled back, fangs bared, "Phillip was on that research team you sent in. For all I know he could be dead."
Curt groaned out. "So this is what it's all about, your little boy toy." His yellow eyes lit up, and his claws tightened on the frame of the steel door, "Give me a break Sara, first you have an affair with your assistant, and now your acting like this is all my fault."
"You fucking prick, you're the one who assigned him to this excavation." she shot back, fangs only inches away from his dark muzzle.
"Because he was the best, most reliable biologist we had, as his whore of a supervisor was too busy trying to find Nessie and get his tail up her loose twat."
"So that gave you the right to cut my funding?"
"So that in turn gave you the right to illegally stow away on a privately chartered cargo vessel? You're lucky the captain didn't throw your hussy tail over the side, according to maritime law ..." he started, his large frame trembling with anger.
"You can cram maritime law up your tail hole for all I care ..." The snarky look on her muzzle was adamant, absolute.
"Tell me Sara," Curt growled back, his yellow eyes narrowing, "Just how many years exactly of strict discipline does it take to become an iron clad bitch?
The sharp crack of her backhand reached his ears before he even felt the hot sting settle into his fury left cheek. Sara suddenly fell to the floor on her tail, her head snapping back hard to the right. Curt glanced down at her as his right fist drew back from the blow, his eyes cold and hard. She looked up at him, the swelling flesh around her right eye already turning black and blue under the fur there. They looked at each other for a brief moment, no words exchanged.
Curt slammed his door shut.
* * * * *
The next morning the search and party gathered in the hold for their mission briefing, and to get an update on the status of the ship. Clumps of furs sat around on wooden crates or relaxed in some of the rope netting hanging from the ceiling of the hold. The hold was abuzz of speculation and rumor while some of the ship's crew toiled endlessly around them to load their provisions and equipment on the deck above.
Irem and Petie stood off in a corner of the hold talking to the two undergraduate lovers, Joana and Erek, mostly about their collective close calls last night. The only fur not sporting bandages or bruises from that group was Irem, who bore a lot of good humored ribbing from the other three.
Joseph sat alone, going through his personal belongings from a huge duffel, checking and then double checking his own personal survival gear. He seemed to shake his compass, and then threw it back into his duffel with a simple shrug.
Sara leaned back on a stack of wooden pallets, watching everyone else around her. She made no attempt to talk to anyone, but instead kept her eyes on a vixen she didn't know flutter about, being a bit too social, and that rubbed Sara the wrong way for some odd reason.
Laura milled around and took turns talking to a few others: a female doe in utility overalls with various tools in the pockets, a male merrkat in dress khakis and reading glasses, and a male jackal in blaze orange nylon coast guard attire sporting a pair of polarized sunglasses. While Laura adjusted the tight wraps around her right wrist, jotting some notes down on a PDA, the other three made light conversation with each other, but otherwise stood silent, waiting.
A chinchilla, a tapir, and two hedgehogs, all very robust males, lounged around on stacks of crates, off from everyone else. While they waited for the briefing to begin, they caroused around with each other in Portuguese, their laughs echoing throughout the cavernous steel hold. After a few long minutes of waiting, Curt walked into the hold, Captain Dekar following close behind. The two made their way to the center of the group, and after a few seconds, everyone stopped talking, the clatter and bang of moving crates and equipment filling the ensuing silence.
"Alright everyone listen up," Mr. Cross began, adjusting his causal corporate attire, "Captain Dekar here is going to give you a brief status update on the condition of this ship and its crew, and then we will begin our mission briefing. We'll hold off on questions until that point." The beefy lupine turned to the jaguar, who stepped up to address the search and rescue team.
"I am happy to report that through the quick actions of my crew, the ship escaped major damage with only a few ruptures of her outer hull." Jospeh narrowed his eyes a bit, but otherwise said nothing. Dekar continued.
"Aside from a few serious injuries, most of my crew received only minor lacerations and contusions. My second mate however, is among the more grievously injured, and as fate would have it, one of the outer hull ruptures flooded our infirmary. After talking to your field medic at length earlier this morning, he has decided to take him with your party on the island, as the research team had set up a makeshift trauma station in base camp." The captain took a deep breath, trying to realize things could have been worse.
Much worse.
"We are currently grounded on a line of rocks, nine hundred feet from shore, and listing twenty degrees to port. The good news is that once we enact repairs and bilge out the extra ballast, we can limp our way back to port. The bad news is that most of the ruptures are below our hull's waterline, and my crew doesn't have the underwater welding equipment necessary to enact repairs."
The search and rescue team exchanged worried glances.
"However, during times of the nightly low tide, we should have access to the damaged portions of the hull. We estimate five to seven days to enact temporary repairs. That is all." Captain Dekar nodded to Mr. Cross before leaving for the bridge. The black wolf took a glance at a clipboard he was holding, and spoke again.
"All right ladies and gentlemen, listen up. We don't have a lot of time here, so were going to run the quick and nasty on this. First of all introductions. I know most you have worked together for my company before, or have talked a bit during the voyage here, so I'm just going to point you out and list off your area of expertise for those who may not know." Curt pointed a claw to Irem, starting with him.
"Irem Rhinehold, electronics technician. Pete Berqast, field medic. Joseph Hall, tropical survival specialist." Curt paused slightly, and with a slight smile, pointed to the younger ocelot and the raccoon. "Most of you have probably seen this pair, or at least have _heard_them during the trip here. Allow me to introduce two of PenTex's latest research interns, Joanna Brisby and Erek Worthington."
Laura jerked a bit when she heard the ocelot's last name called out. It couldn't be simple coincidence ... could it? A cold sweat washed over the vixen, and she questioned just what her updated orders from Worthington might have contained. Too bad her laptop, which up until last night had been the only way to get a hold of him, was now so much plastic art deco on her quarter's wall. She gritted her teeth and thought of one of her three backup plans, and started to modify it. Meanwhile Mr. Cross continued to introduce the two undergraduates.
"Both are undergraduates of my old alma matter CAL-Tech. Mr. Worthington's field of study is in Geology, and Ms. Brisby's is in Physics. Try not to give them as much crap as I will. We won't be cracking the whip on them just yet until we reach base camp sometime tomorrow."
Curt sighed and pointed to the clump of four who didn't seem to know each other. "I'll make more detailed introductions to those specialists we just picked up two days ago at last port." He pointed to the vixen. "Everyone, this is Laura Devenson, she's an outside contractor, and will be troubleshooting any computer related problems we may find at the research camp. Ms. Devenson, do you have anything to add?"
"Yeah Mr. Cross," Laura chirped with a obviously faux southern bell accent, "I hear ya all have a guided tour of the island on this here vacation package?" While Curt shot her a frown, just every other male in the hold cracked up laughing. The only one who didn't was Irem, who looked unamused. No one else noticed this but the female doe, who titled her head curiously and tightened her grip on her tool belt. Curt snorted and moved on.
"The doe standing next to her is Thera Demeter. Don't let her thin build fool you, I saw her at work on a dock back in Rio Grande do Sul, and her skill with an arc welder will put any male on this tub to shame. She'll be our mechanical technician on this party, so treat her nice. Those pipe wrenches hit hard. Thera, you have anything to say?"
"Permission to stay aboard and help with the welds to the waterline, Mr. Cross," The slim doe said as she adjusted her stance and crossed her arms, "The hull ruptures have left a lot of metal stress on the rivets close to them, and a spotty braze weld won't hold a day at sea under those conditions."
"Dully noted," Mr. Cross replied, frowning "And request denied. We're here for one reason, and one reason only. I need you with us to get my research team located and their base camp back up running ASAP. All other concerns are secondary." Some of the group blinked at this, but otherwise said nothing. Curt continued on, pointing to the merrkat.
"This is Dr. Yohance Vance, a doctor of psychology specializing in incident trauma. He's had a lot of experience in West Africa as of late, particularly in Darfur. Doctor, do you have anything to add?" The merrkat adjusted his glasses a bit.
"Mr. Cross, has Dekar commented on the morale of his crew since last night's incident?"
"He hasn't made a comment to me," Curt said, using the clipboard in his paws to scratch behind his black ears, "Why do you ask?"
"It's probably nothing, Mr. Cross. I understand that the research team consisted entirely of civilian corporate and scientific employees of PenTex, is that correct?" Mr. Cross looked at the merrkat with a pointed expression.
"Yes."
"Then I have nothing further to add." Everyone looked at the merrkat, and back to each other, some sensing something was up. Mr. Cross looked back down at his clipboard and continued, nodding to the jackal in blaze orange nylon.
"When you are not listening to me, or Mr. Hall, you will following Mr. Paterson's orders. He's had three tours of duty with the U.S. coast guard, and is trained in advanced search and rescue techniques. Mr. Paterson?" The jackal stepped forward, his polarized sunglasses glinting in what little sunlight came from the open upper deck doors of the cargo hold.
"As Mr. Cross has stated, when your not listening to him, or the survival expert, I will be in charge. Listen carefully, as I may not get a chance to repeat myself twice. Lives may be on the line even as we speak, and so time is not a luxury. You follow my rules, or others might die, yourself included." Everyone nodded, except for the four males in the corner, who glanced among themselves with a sly smile and a wink.
"First rule. Once we are on the island, no one is to go off on their own. Mr. Cross will form groups after I'm done talking, and within those groups, you will buddy up. Never loose your buddy. You are fifteen times more likely to die alone than if someone is near you."
"Second rule. Always carry one of these." The jackal held up a rather heavy and bulky two way radio. "Always make sure it has charge, and that you carry your spare battery around. This ties into rule number three."
"Rule number three. Never loose contact with the search and rescue party. If you start to loose contact due to interference or lack of charge, stay where you are. Report your position."
"Rule number four. When in contact, report anything unusual. If you come across a survivor, or a casualty, contact the rest of the team immediately." The jackal took a breath and relaxed, clearly on edge.
"Those are the most important rules. This is our tentative strategy. The base camp is located on South West portion of the island, near the shore, in what used to be a fishing village. While we could take boats to that side of the island, we just happen to wreck on the most dangerous part of this island's shoals, and the surf would be too dangerous to navigate. Therefore, we will make landfall to the shore closest to us, and hike through the jungle, as that appears to be the shortest path ..." Joseph raised a paw.
"Yes, Mr. Hall."
"Excuse me for asking such a dumb question, Mr. Paterson," Joseph began, a placid, emotionless look on his muzzle, "But are we even sure this is the right island?"
"Its a perfectly valid question, Mr. Hall," the jackal smiled, "And one that you won't like my answer to. To put it bluntly, we don't. And since the ships satellite communications array seems to have been damaged in the storm, we have no way of checking orbital recon. According to sexton readings, we probably are in the right place, although as most of you know, that type of measurement leaves a lot of room for doubt."
Joseph nodded, and was content the jackal didn't try feeding the party a particularity tasty line of bullshit.
"Until we find out more information, our only logical course of action is to proceed as planned." The jackal crossed his arms. "Once at the research base camp, we will investigate and decide further course of action from there. Any further questions?"
The jackal looked around, found none, and stepped back, gesturing to Mr. Cross. The black wolf stepped up and tapped his clipboard.
"All right everyone listen up, I'm assigning four groups, designated Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Omega. Alpha will form command, Beta will form search and rescue, Gamma will fill support functions, and Omega will perform all other non-vital aspects of our mission. Alpha will consist of Mr. Hall, Mr. Paterson, and myself. Beta will consist of Mr. Berqast, Mr. Yohance, Ms. Brisby, and Mr. Worthington. Gamma will consist of Mr. Rhinehold, Ms. Deverson, Ms. Demeter." Mr. Cross looked at his watch, trying to hurry this along.
"Omega will consist of our four porters, the four males in the corner over there. Meet Andre, Migel, Carlos, and Filipe. Their English is about as rusty as my Portuguese, so that ought to make things interesting. That wolf there leaning up against the crate with the chip on her shoulder will be joining them ..."
"We aren't allowed the pleasantry of an introduction?" the psych doctor asked, curious. Mr. Cross shot the merrkat a dirty look. The shrink was already asking way too many poignant questions. Maybe he was the corporate spy his moles in Worthington Research had warned him about. He continued on, teeth gritting slightly in his clenched muzzle.
"Her name ... is Sara Cross. While she isn't a formal member of this charter, Dekar has ... requested ... that she leave his ship. While she is trained in the biological sciences, I don't think we need her services while on the island." The black wolf and the merrkat locked glances, tension already broiling between them. Mr. Cross made a faux cough and wrapped up the briefing.
"Alright. Meet back on deck at eleven hundred with a small duffel of any personal belonging you wish to bring," Mr Cross smiled at the two undergraduates, "Thats 11 am for all you fresh meat." He exhaled and looked over his team, a momentary wave of concern washing over him.
'Ilha de Diabos Chuva' his furry ass.
"Dismissed."
* * * * *
Two hours later the group amassed on deck to watch the crew inflate four orange rubber life rafts, the strong ocean wind whipping their clothing around them. As the deck crew attached small electric motors to the backs of the blaze orange rafts, Sara noticed Joseph talking to the first mate. The otter wasn't known for his desire to socialize, so that struck the female lupine as odd in and of itself. No one else seemed to notice, as everyone else watched Petie administer another dose of morphine to the crippled chinchillan second mate, Sarse, who's backboard was then safely secured down to Beta group's raft for transit.
With some difficulty, the deck crew managed to lower each raft down to the turbulent surf below, thick, salty ocean spray lightly soaking everyone in the process. A few clicks of the motors, and the sea foamed at the back of each raft, ushering them at a cautious pace to the distant shore. The bright sun beat down on them from above in a clear, cloudless light blue sky. Aside from the gloomy tropical island in front of them, and the wrecked ship to their rear, it was hard to tell where the waters of the Atlantic ended and the sky began. All traces of civilization existed now only as a memory in their minds, for it was just them, their ship, and the island in this desolate, pocket universe.
As the lead raft containing Alpha group weaved to and fro to avoid rocks, back in Omega's raft Sara noticed that the otter, Joseph, seemed to be peering at a massive, dark shadow deep under the foamy surface of the surf. She glanced over to her raft mates, who stared at the looming, ominous island in front of them.
For once, they were dead silent.
"Ilha de Diabos Chuva" Sara said in a soft tone, the sound barley audible over the soft splash of surf against the raft. The porters looked at her, eyes trembling slightly. Despite the inexplicable history about this isle being mere local legend, these men were afraid. Deathly afraid.
Did they have a reason to be?
Over on Gamma raft, Irem stared longingly at Joseph, the infatuated coyote watching the otter deftly maneuver his charges around the lethal, jagged rock shoals. Irem gawked as the ocean spray ruffled the silky fur of the otter's pelt, the toned muscles of his mustelid body flexing to keep control of his raft's methodical course.
"Like what you see?" Irem jumped and looked over to Thera, who leaned back and smiled at him, one arm piloting their raft. A deep blush washed over the coyote's features and he gave a small, bashful nodded. "Then why don't you tell him?" The canid shook his head.
"He's not like that. I think anyway. Its hard to tell what he thinks sometimes. Anyway I'm sure the Seals put a lot of ideas into his head." Irem looked away.
"You never know," the doe said, giving another small grin at the timid coyote, "I could help you if you wanted ..."
"No ... I ... not on the mission anyway," he said, shrugging, "Lives could be at stake for all we know, and the last thing I should be doing is ..."
"... falling for him?" the doe finished for him. Irem turned back to her and smiled.
"Yeah."
Back on Alpha raft the jackal and the black wolf were going over some last minute exchanges of information.
"So were looking for a group of twenty you say Mr. Cross?" Mr. Paterson inquired, his polarized sunglasses hiding any trace of emotion that his otherwise stoic features gave.
"Yes. We could start at base camp, but they may have taken shelter from the tropical storm in the series of underground caves that riddle this island." Mr. Cross gripped the edge of the raft as the ex seal floored the motor and ran their raft aground on the sandy beach. They leapt out and helped Joseph drag it out of the surf, and within minutes all four life rafts made land fall. As the porters started to unload their gear, a strong wind tore over them, the lonely sheik wailing in the dead quiet on the beach.
While the rest of the team unpacked and talked amongst themselves, Sara turned to the line of palm trees making the edge of the thick tropical jungle. She stood there, listening, unmoving. Joseph walked up next to her, his blue eyes also locked on the deceptively gentle sway of the foliage in the wind. The otter was the first to speak.
"You notice it too?" Joseph asked the biologist.
"Yeah," the lupine scientist replied, her voice chilled, "No bird song. No call of insects. Nothing."
There was a brief moment of silence between the two. The jungle swayed before them, eager to open wide and swallow them all. After a moment Sara frowned, the unsettling feeling forming in the pit of her stomach caused her fangs to bare slightly.
"This island is death."
Meanwhile, from the concealment of dense tropical foliage, a pair reptilian eyes stared back at the two on the beach, the slitted pupils glinting with a ravenous, malicious intelligence. A second pair of mammalian eyes just below the first set turned from the pool of standing water at its six taloned feet to the new arrivals.
It hungered.
~FIN~