He was the only one who wasn’t intimidated by me.

We met at the new recruits social and he was instantly easy and warm with me, and we chatted like we had known each other forever. He told me about flunking out of school, about his mom, about wanting to run away from it all. We had laughed and drunk more and then I had put my hand on his knee and he just left it there. He didn’t say anything, he just let it rest there. And I don’t know how it happened or why, but the next thing I knew we were at his place, and his shirt was off and I wanted to compose ballads about how glorious it felt to run my hands all up and down that rock hard chest of his…

He said it was his first time. I didn’t believe him. But it was my first time too. It didn’t hurt, the first time he lay himself over me and pushed inside. I remember how he tried to put all his weight in his arms so he didn’t squash me. I remember how he whispered into my ear and kept saying, are you OK? Is this OK? And it was more than OK. It only took a few minutes. We were done so quickly, he pulled out, handed me a towel he found on the floor and came to snuggle next to me again. Under the blanket, we smelt like sweat and breath and cum and it was the most beautiful moment of my life.

He fell asleep against me; his soft dick nestled against the fur between my legs, his arms still around my shoulders, holding me against him, naked skin to naked skin. In the morning I told him I wanted to see him again, to go with him to the state fair that was happening that weekend, to get some breakfast. I told him I hadn’t had so much fun in a long time, with anybody.

He told me he had made a mistake.

Well, it wasn’t a mistake. I had been there. I had seen the look in his eyes. I had felt the way he touched me and heard that secret abandon in the muffled sound he made when he came. He was just scared, that’s all. He didn’t want to start training with the extra complication of a girlfriend, I got that. He didn’t want to make things complicated. I was ambitious too. I really did understand his hesitation. So, I decided I’d give him as much time as he needed. I wouldn’t push him, wouldn’t be the needy girl always begging for attention.

But I hadn’t backed off from him for so long just to make room for some fat bitch to muscle her way in with her damsel in distress routine. If anyone had Todd, I was the one. Todd needed a strong woman. Someone who was his equal. Todd needed me.

I kicked up dry plumes of sand as I walked, trying to put all that out of my head while I thought of what to do next. We had been training to within an inch of our lives for weeks, and yet I felt utterly hopeless now. I hated feeling hopeless. Nobody got to tell me what I could and couldn’t do, especially some lame ass island.

The first thing would be to find fresh water, and the next thing to find was food. After that, we could think about a makeshift shelter – this place looked like it could easily switch weather-wise after evening fell and I didn’t feel like another night of being pummeled by water.

I searched around, pressing further and further into the gnarled vegetation. There had to be some sort of underground spring, some brook or something. If not, we could use the canvas from the raft to collect rainwater and dew and hope that kept us going.

As I bent down to examine some roots that might be edible, I pricked my ears to hear distant shouts and a scream. I stood, dropped the plants in my hands, and ran over back to the shoreline. What I saw froze me in my tracks.

Other people. We weren’t alone!

I quickly raced over and soon understood that a fight had broken out, but I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I found Todd standing between Ellie and some guy I didn’t recognize, his hands outstretched and his chest heaving. Two other people, a middle-aged man and woman, were running quickly towards them from the other direction.

“I’ll fucking kill you, do you hear me?”

The guy screaming was red in the face, and looked just about ready to tear Todd limb from limb. The fat girl was crying, again, and struggling not to flop to the ground like the weakling she was. The other three people looked at me as I approached, looked at the debacle unfolding before us and then at me again. I didn’t know who was more surprised.

“Can you fucking calm down man? Can’t you see she’s hurt?” Todd yelled. The girl was sobbing, her head in her hands, and seemed not to know what to do with herself.

“And just who the fuck do you think you are? Back off. Let her speak. Ellie, who the hell is this guy?”

Ellie could do nothing but sniffle and cry some more, her face twisted in pain as she tried to balance on her busted leg. It was an infuriating thing to witness. This must be her fiancé, back from the dead. And that was good news for me, at least. Very good news.

“Todd, just get out of here, OK?” I said and marched forward, shoved him aside roughly and grabbed the girl to help her to her feet. Stunned, she stopped crying and looked at me as I bent down to pick her up before walking over to her fiancé.

“Just take her,” I said.

He obeyed.

She folded down into his arms, her stupid leg still bound up with half of my jeans. For long lost lovers, they sure as hell didn’t seem all that excited to see one another, but I couldn’t care less at that moment. None of my business. I looked at the expectant faces all around me. As usual, it would fall on me to take charge of the fucking mess. Again.

“I’m Charlie, by the way,” I said curtly and nodded at him.

“Anthony. Anthony Coates,” he mumbled.

“Great. That over there is Todd, and I see you and your, uh, fiancé, already know each other. We came in on an emergency raft last night after the ship went down. We didn’t think there were any other survivors.”

They all just stared at me.

“Now, I don’t mean to be funny, but today is going to fly by, and if we don’t start looking for a smart way out of this mess, we’re all going to die here. If you assholes could hold off on trying to kill each other for a minute, that would probably help.”

A small, wiry looking guy stepped forward.

“My name is Carl and this is my wife Livvy.”

He was covered in aging tribal tattoos on his arms, had a soft little pot belly and a serious shirt tan. The woman waved her hand timidly and made eye contact with everyone else.

Great. By the looks of them two it meant that Todd and I were the only two truly capable adults here and it would be up to us to sort this shit out. Too bad Todd was so distracted.

“Are there any more of you?” I said.

They all looked at the ground.

“We also came in on a raft, just us, but we had another guy with us, a younger guy,” the woman said to the sand between her toes.

“And…?”

“Unfortunately he didn’t make it,” Anthony said quietly, and I thought it so strange how hard he was trying not to look down at that fat cow he was miraculously holding up.

I shrugged and tried to think.

It was sad, but I don’t think it had escaped anyone’s attention that basically nobody on the ship had ‘made it’ either. Hundreds of people, gone. And only we remained. Fine, I could handle that. Out the corner of my eye I noticed more black and green clouds growing far on the horizon, threatening to overtake the current blue.

“OK, well, six is a good number. We can make this work. Our best bet for fresh water is to look in the interior – who still has shoes?”

I looked down at Carl’s beat-up flip-flops.

“OK, you and you wife can go into the forest and start looking for fresh water or at least some tubers. Don’t be too fussy, though, we’ll need every calorie we can get our hands on.”

I turned to Anthony. He didn’t look like he was in the best physical condition of his life but at least he stood tall, was paying attention and didn’t cower like those other two.

“Anthony, can you fish? Are you a good swimmer?”

He puffed his chest up and nodded. “I can check out the coast all around the island and see if I can find some food. With rocks like this, there’s a good chance of mussels or maybe snails. I’ll try and get a sense of how big this place is while I’m at it.”

“Good man, that’s good,” I said, pleased that at least someone else had their head in the right damn place.

I turned to look at Todd, who stood a little back from the group, chewing on his lips.

“Todd, you and I should get to work on building a shelter. It’s probably going to storm again tonight, if those clouds are anything to go by. I sure hope you were paying attention in training, because I’m going to need you to magic up some fire out of thin air, OK?”

He said nothing but I knew he was onboard. He had to be, it was the most sensible plan. It was the only plan. The couple seemed a little hesitant, like they didn’t appreciate a strong woman taking charge of the situation. But fuck ‘em. It wasn’t my goal to win friends and influence people. It was to survive. If they wanted to die three days from now, that was their prerogative.

“What about me? What can I do?” Ellie said, and she flashed those big Bambi eyes my way.

I smirked.

“I don’t know, what can you do?” I said.

Maybe in some prehistoric times a chunky bitch like her would have stayed home as the village brood mare. Maybe she had the genes for basket weaving or some shit. But right now, she just looked like a big, fat liability to me.

“I can, uh… I can’t move much but I can …dig!” she said. She tried to wriggle down from Anthony’s arms.

“Dig?”

“Yeah, dig. I can stay here with you guys and dig a nice, deep hole that we can cover over with sticks and fronds, and that’ll make a nice shelter. Going underground a little will help keep us cool as well.”

She was at least trying to make herself useful, I’d give her credit for that. I looked down at her pink nail polish and pointy nails.

“And what are you going to dig with?”

“That’s my problem to solve, isn’t it?”

“OK, fine. I won’t stop you. But if you can cover up a little and stop stirring up drama, that’d be great too,” I said and gestured towards her bare cleavage.

She looked mortified. Good.

I glared at the couple and they quickly sprang to action and walked off towards the center of the island. I watched as Anthony carried Ellie off a few feet, gently placed her down and exchanged a few hurried whispers with her. They both looked so tense. Almost embarrassed about something. She was doing everything she could to avoid eye contact with him. Interesting. Then he stood, leant forward to kiss her brow and disappeared off towards the ocean, not giving Todd or I a second glance.

“I’ll be back to check up on you in an hour,” Anthony yelled after her.

Water, food, shelter, warmth. We had less than 24 hours to secure all of life’s essentials. And just as soon as we did, I had another plan.

Todd.

It was a bit of a joke, really. Something you’d never imagine would happen. The middle-aged woman was married and didn’t count, and as long as her fiancé was around, that bitch Ellie didn’t count either. In effect, I was literally the last female alive for Todd. And it was just a matter of time before he realized that he wanted the same thing that I wanted.