Dark Island Book 1 (Complete)

Chapter 20

Four days has passed since we’ve been shipwrecked on this island. We have survived forty-foot waves, a sinking and wrecked ship. We have travelled through dense vegetation and fought spiders as big as basketballs. Now we face our greatest challenge so far.
Hunger.
A coconut had fallen off a tall palm tree, missing Ronnie’s ear by inches. We had put nothing but rainwater and boiled water from the streams in our stomachs for three long days, therefore it represented what we needed the most: food.
I turned it over in my hands. “Where’s the opener on this thing?”
“What do you expect?” Ronnie shot back. “A pull tab?”
It was a joke, but it underscored the tension and fear of us all. We had to be stranded on an island. But how big an island? And where? It was anybody’s guess.
Be grateful, I reminded myself. We found another beach, and we are still alive, maybe rescue will find us here. But I was not grateful. Joe Franklin is still missing. My wife, my son. I felt their absence in every breath, an overwhelming sadness that weighed on me as heavily as exhaustion. The hunger felt more powerful than death. Forget hunger pains. I hadn’t felt those in days. Instead, there was a grinding hollow emptiness where my stomach should have been. The sensation was so intense that it seemed to go outside the limits of my skin. With it came a nervous trembling weakness that was only going to get worse.
And here was the coconut.
“You have to break it,” explained Harold while looking at Ronnie. “You did it before.”
Ronnie grabbed the coconut from my hands and started banging it on the damp ground impatiently.
“Not like this, it will never break...”
“If you’ve remembered correctly, the last time there were sharp pieces of rock on the other beach. Here is only small flat surfaces and round.”
He snatched up a rock and began bashing it against the greenish shell. “It takes patience!” he yelled. He picked it up and hurled it at a tree. “Open, you miserable, rotten-“
It bounced off with a thwack and hit the ground, unbroken.
“It’s like starving to death at Thanksgiving dinner!” I moaned. I picked up the fallen coconut, spun it around, and hurled it like a discus into the jungle.
Crack!
“It broke!” explained Harold. “I heard it!”
We rushed into the dense trees, but our coconut was nowhere to be seen. Vines and underbrush snatched at our legs.
Ronnie grabbed a branch and began hacking away at the tangle. The coconut! The food! It had to be down here somewhere! He then began to flail wildly, like a crazed golfer in knee-deep rough. He roared in anger; it was stupid, he knew- a waste of valuable energy when there was so little left. But his frustration mixed with his hunger, and he didn’t care, couldn’t help himself, I thought.
“Ronnie!” I grabbed his shirt from behind. “Stop it! It’s only a coconut.”
“Guys!” came Harold’s excited voice. “Over here!”
We followed his call to a small grove of leafy tropical trees and shrubs. There we saw Harold gathering an armload of strange green fruits that had fallen to the ground. I wrinkled my nose. Trying to figure out the smell.
“What is that smell?” I asked.
“These are Syrians,” Harold explained breathlessly.
“They have a strong odor, but they’re food.” He broke one open against the tree trunk and handed half to Ronnie. The powerful smell tripled.
Ronnie just stared at it. “You’re kidding right?”
The thick skin was covered in spikes. It looked more like a deadly weapon than fruit. I accepted a piece from Harold as he handed it to me, handling it as if it might explode. “But- how do we know it isn’t poison?”
Harold plucked out a gigantic seed and began to eat the grayish mush around it. “There was this documentary on TV-” he began, mouth full.
Ronnie and I locked eyes. We had learned from experience that Harold was never wrong about something like this. His stockpile of knowledge had saved our lives more than once on this island. We fell on the offering like starving sharks. It wasn’t good, I reflected. It was not even acceptable. But in my voracious hunger, I barely noticed, gorging myself on fruit, the consistency of gritty pudding, but with an odd garlicky flavor. Back home, I wouldn’t have given this stuff table room. But here I ate greedily, even crunching the rock-hard seeds because Harold said that we needed the protein.
The feast soon turned into a frenzy. After no food for so long, once we started eating, we couldn’t stop ourselves. I started stumbling around the grove in a fever of appetite, tripping and falling over the dozens of discarded rinds even, as I rushed to break open new fruit. I could barely hear Harold as he said that he was going back to camp to stockpile our food supply. The rough spikes scratched my knees and shins, yet I didn’t feel a sting. Nothing mattered, nothing but the breathless race to get on the outside of as much nourishment as humanly possible.
While stuffing myself, I could feel my stomach again, back where it belonged and comfortably full. The sensation came along with something unexpected- sudden, overpowering sleepiness. All at once, my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn’t keep them from closing. Drowsy panic. Did I just poison myself?
Ronnie and Harold must have experienced it too, I thought to myself.
I started losing my consciousness.
“Fuck! What did we eat? I can’t stay awake!” said Ronnie stumbling to the ground.
I saw Ronnie lying motionless. The remnants of his feast still scattered around him.
My heart started to thump as I dropped to the ground. My vision blurred and my mind running with fear as the thought of dying came running through. Is this it?
Am I...dying?