Survive

“Skylar?” Penny asks. I can tell by her voice that something is wrong. I just hope it’s not something too bad.

I look up at her. I have finished with Liv, or as best I could.

“Where’s my bag?” Liv asks. She looks around and continues to ask everyone. She tries to stand but I hold her down. Some of the other girls take over with looking for her bag and holding her down so I see what Penny wants.

Penny points off into the tree line. A large liger is eating one of the dead bodies. I can see that it has an arm in its mouth and is busy chewing on it.

And then the first girl screams. I should have seen it coming. I should have been able to stop it.
The liger looks up and sees us all standing around. It smiles. Is that possible for an animal? It begins to slowly walk towards us.

The girls are freaking out. The conscious ones are beginning to drag the unconscious ones away, toward the water. Smart. Cats hate water, but a hungry liger will get its prey. So I have to stop it.

I begin waving my arms and running the opposite direction of the girls, toward the jungle. I start screaming too, trying to cover up the girls’ noises. It works…a little.

The liger is getting confused. It slowly moves towards me, probably thinks I’m easier since I’m alone. Boy is it wrong.

I have only seven small knives. Better than nothing but not great. The liger is fully grown, not something that is easy to take down with seven knives…not easy to take down period. But I have to.

I turn and throw the first knife. It sails through the air and slices from forehead to cheek, catching one of the eyes as well. It roars and lunges for me.

I run a little farther. I don’t get far. My ankle gives out on me and I crash to the ground. I flip onto my back and watch as the liger closes the distance between us.

There is literally no way I will make it out unharmed…if I even live through this. At least a 700 pound liger jumping on me is not easy to survive. And it’s not only the weight, it’s also the jaws.
I hold up my last knife, the other knives fell while I was running, with both hands. The liger leaps into the air and I see my life flash before my eyes.

And suddenly I hear a cry and I feel the liger land on me. It moves around in anguish before it stills. I push it off of me and look at it. My knife is lodged under its rib, thrust up into its lung. There was little blood but some still got on my clothes and mixed with some of my own.

“Skylar?” a girl cries.

I sit up and look for the girls. “I’m here,” I cry.

I see Penny, Mac, Quinn, and Kay run over to me. They help me up and all begin talking at once. They ask if I’m alright, if I killed it, how I killed it, and again if I’m alright.

“I’m fine,” I say, “yes I killed it. It attacked me and I thrust the knife into it and it died.”
The girls look at it with fear in their eyes. If I can do that, what else can I do?

“Anyone hungry?” I ask with a small laugh. I pull my knife from the liger and clean it on my pants.

“Will you help me drag it over by that rock? It will be safer from other animals and we will be able to get it later.” The girls and I begin to drag it over to the rock. When we finish we make our way back to the other girls.

“Skylar,” some of the girls call. I smile and accept hugs when they are given.

After it is all over we sit down again. I see that Liv is clutching a small bag to her chest. Tori is seating by her sister’s side, trying to calm her down again. I don’t know why the bag is so important. What could possibly be important enough to try to stand with no foot?

“Like Skylar said earlier, we need food, water, and shelter,” Tori finally says.

“I think shelter is the most important right now. We can eat the liger and then we can figure out what to do for water. It looks like it might rain soon so we need to find a spot and get off this beach,” I say. I stand up, grunting a little from the effort. I have been doing so much in so little time that I didn’t realize how much my body aches. And my head is killing me. I wonder how all the other girls are.

Claire must have woken up while I was gone because she is sitting up and talking with Riley. Mila is still not awake but I still think it’s for the best that she doesn’t wake up for a while.

“We should split into a three groups. One group can search for shelter, a cave would be best. Another group can look for water. And the last group can stay behind to rest and watch Mila,” I wait for someone to volunteer for any of the groups. No one says anything. “So which group does everyone want?” Still nothing.

“Okay how about,” I look at the girls and who they are sitting by. “Lucy and Leah stay since Lucy can’t walk. Liv also has to stay because she can’t walk either and Tori should stay too. Penny, Mac, Quinn, and Kay can all look for shelter, you should probably split into two groups so you can cover more ground. Claire, Riley, Brooke, and Anna can look for water, splitting up might be beneficial too,” I say. Again…nothing.

“Just make sure you stick with at least one other person and scream if you need help. Here,” I say as I hand out my knives. I give two to each group and then have one left over for me.

“Stay within shouting distance so that we can get back quick if we need to.” I look around at all of them, most of them still in shock.

“Move,” I say as I limp back to the liger. I inspect it before I begin to cut away the parts that you can’t eat. We need to build a fire so that I can cook this and we need shelter and water. I honestly don’t know how long we’ll be able to survive out here.

I place the good meat in one of the bags I emptied out. It can’t close but it did make it easier to carry around. I put it back by the other girls.

I make my way to the jungle edge. I pick a tall tree and I begin to climb it. Harder than it looks with a hurt ankle, achy body, and a pounding headache. When I reach the top, I look around.
I see the other girls walking around. Many of them look scared, clutching each other, or tired, barely walking upright.

I also see a cave, right as Penny and Kay find it. They turn around and Penny spots me. She waves her arm and points to the cave. I nod and hold up a finger to tell them to wait.

I climb down as quickly as I can, not that fast. I go and find the cave and see the girls again, now with Mac and Quinn too.

“We need to check if it’s safe in there,” I say.

“But it’s too dark to see far in,” Penny says as she tries to look in again. I peek in and see that past three feet is complete darkness. It would be good for us if it’s safe.

“Then we need a light, don’t we?” I ask them. Of course they look confused.

I grab a branch from the ground. I rip some hanging moss from one of the trees next to me. Super handy dandy out here. I wrap it around a few times before I give it to one of the girls. I make two more before I squat and look for rocks. Of course…I can’t find any good ones. So instead I try to make a fire with some dead wood on the ground by trees. I use my knife to make an indent in the wood so that I can get a stick in it and start to try to create enough friction for heat.

It takes a while but I eventually get a small flame.

“Give me one of the touches,” I say. I hold it over the fire until it catches. The moss lights up quickly and I move onto the other two. I stand up and hold the touch to the entrance to try to look in it.

“Let’s find out if it’s safe,” I say before walking in. The girls follow along and we check the cave out.

It looks fine. It’s big, at least 50 years from the entrance to the back of the cave. It veers off to the left and creates a small room of to the side of the cave. It could work well for us, especially with the storm coming.

“Let’s go find the other girls and get them here,” I say. “We can build a fire, cook the liger, and then we should have food and water.”

“Okay,” Quinn says. The other girls begin to walk to the exit.

“Wait,” Penny says, “maybe some of us should stay and start on the fire and stuff so that we can see when we come back.”

“Okay, I’ll stay,” I volunteer. Mac and Kay also volunteer to stay and help me.

We gather lots of wood. We make a pile of it close to the entrance but not close enough that it will get wet. I build two fires, one in the main room and one in the side one.

The girls come back a few minutes later. Penny and Quinn are looking for the girls who went for some water. When they come back they don’t have any water.

“We’ll cook the liger and then we can look for water again,” I say. We grab sticks and roast the liger. No one really wants to be the first person to try it so I take a huge bite and tell them how good it is. It kind of tastes like chicken.

“Let’s split into groups again,” I say after we all finish our food.

We split into groups of three with a knife each. I tell them not to go too far.

I head back to the beach to look at the plane again and see if we can find anything useful.

Notes

Hope you liked it! Happy Reading!