She jumps in to help

What the fuck am I doing?? Jade thinks to herself, too late to stop from leaping out from her hiding place and sliding down the short slope to stand facing the man in the open, her stick held at the ready... a stick which suddenly seems pitifully small and worthless as a defense against a man who has to be a good foot and a half taller than herself, and well over a hundred pounds heavier - all of it muscle.

He looks surprised at her for a moment, but then snorts derisively. "You can just wait your turn, Red," he says to her. "I got enough for you, too. And you ain't gonna even tickle me with that twig, so put it away before I shove it up your cunt."

"I shove mine up your asshole, mee-cheen-nom," Kayo says as she jumps down next to Jade.

The big man looks at her, then back at Jade, and at the girl who's getting up off the ground in front of him - she's picked up a good-sized rock to brandish before her.

"You think you can take four of us, you just make your move," says the other sister. She's climbed to the top of the large stone she'd been leaning against a moment ago, and holds a stick of her own.

The man backs up a couple of steps, in the only direction he has left. "Hey, I got what I came here for, all right? Let's just take it easy. You," he says, looking at the one on the rock, "you offered it up, I didn't make you do anything. You got nothin' to be all pissed at me about, and I ain't done nothin' to the rest of you. But if you all like it rough, bring it on. There's four of you and one of me, but you all know I'll take at least two of you down with me if anyone takes a swing."

"But you'll still go down," Jade says. "Unless you want to leave some teeth behind here, walk away. And leave the pack behind."

"Fuck that, bitch!"

"One shot to the nuts, and you're toast," says the sister with the rock in her hand. "Your call."

"We've been running scared on this fucking island for over a day now." Jade says, daring to take a step closer. "There's fifty men out there trying to rape us, and we can't do anything about it... until now. Do you really want to find out what four sufficiently pissed-off women can do to a guy like you?"

The man looks at her, then at the others, and his pack on the ground. "If I leave my pager behind, I'm disqualified," he says quietly. "That means I get nothin'. I'd rather take my chances with you bitches than that."

"Once you're twenty feet in that direction, we'll throw you the pager," Jade says. "We don't need that. You've got five seconds to start moving."

The man takes one last look at all of them, then backs away. Once he's a few paces away, the sister with the rock drops it, picks up the bag, and pulls out the pager, tossing it to him.

"You girls better hope I don't find any of you again," he says as he picks it up and turns to walk away into the woods.

Once he's gone, the tension remains. The four girls look at each other uneasily.

"Um... thanks for the help," the sister with the pack says.

"You're welcome," Jade replies.

"I guess you're going to want to share this pack, then."

"Seems fair, doesn't it?"

"I'm Eve."

"I'm Fox. This is Kayo."

"Anna," says the girl climbing down from the rock. "You two are together?"

"We've made a deal," Jade says. "We're helping each other out."

"You didn't make any deal with us," Anna says. "Why are you helping us out?"

"To tell you the truth, I don't really know," Jade says, lowering her stick to rest on its end. "I was thinking we could get past you while that guy was busy with both of you... and then I just jumped out. Kind of a stupid thing to do, in hindsight."

"We should share this with them," Eve says quietly. "If they hadn't come by, we'd be in real trouble now."

Anna glares momentarily at her sister, then her eyes soften. "You're right, of course," she acknowledges. "But listen, I'm the one who had to take that guy's cock up my pussy, so what I say goes, all right? I don't want to fight you girls over this, but I will if we have to."

"Sounds fair, as long as you divide it up fair," Jade says. "We should move, though - that guy's bound to come back with a few more men to try and get his stuff back."

"I'm not letting you carry it," Anna says with a dark frown.

"Fine," Jade says. "You carry the pack. Kayo will walk with you, and I'll walk a few yards behind you with Eve. I'm guessing you won't run off with it and leave your sister behind; you'll just have to take my word for it that Kayo's just as important to me."

Anna hesitates for a moment, but she obviously knows they don't have much time. "All right, you've got a deal. Come on, there's a cave this way, five minutes' walk. It's not a safe house, but I'm pretty sure there's none of those around here, so it'll have to do."

She hefts the larger pack and sets off, with Kayo just behind her. Jade and Eve follow a few paces after them.

"I'm really very grateful to you," Eve whispers to Jade as they proceed into the woods. "One of the men caught me earlier, and... well, I don't want it to happen again. Anna's upset because she feels like it was her fault, even though she was trying to help me."

Jade nods, and they proceed in silence after that. Soon, they come to the base of the high hill, and behind a stagnant pond is a cave, with a thin trickle of water dripping down from a channel above it which clearly once contained a larger stream.

It must have been cut by a waterfall, Jade thinks. Too bad it's not there anymore, I could use a shower like nobody's business!

"Make sure nobody's watching," Anna cautions, pausing at the entrance. "There's no other way out, we'll be trapped in there if someone sees us go in."

"Okay, so we've got one map - a better one than ours. A larger water bottle, six food bars, and a first-aid kit just like we've all got, except it has a bottle of Viagra pills. There's three of these little packages which we don't know what they are. And, then there's this thing." She points to a device which looks like a bulky cell phone with some large buttons.

"We don't need the food bars, we grabbed a bunch from the last safe house we were at," Jade says. "And my first-aid kit is still fully-stocked."

"Eve lost her water bottle, she gets that," Anna says, moving that item over to one side along with the food. "We can split the first-aid supplies evenly. These little packages, you'll get one and we get two. The big items are the map and the phone thing."

Jade sits back slightly. "Seems fair that you guys get one and we get the other."

"This doesn't even seem to work," Kayo points out, picking up the electronic device and turning it over in her hands. "The buttons do nothing, there is no switch. Is it broken?"

"Maybe it's a way the producers can communicate with the men," Eve suggests. "It would only work when they make a call to it."

"How about this," Jade says. "You guys get the map and we get the device. But I want to be able to look at that map for five minutes, compare it to the ones we were given so I can mark where they're different."

"You might as well have the map, then," Anna says angrily.

"Fine, we'll take the map and you take the worthless thing that doesn't work. I was being generous."

"Come on, Anna," Eve says. "We wouldn't have this stuff at all without them."

Anna grumbles a bit, then nods. "All right, fine then. But we get the bag itself."

"Deal," Jade says, and offers her hand to shake on it. Anna reciprocates, and it's done.

"Here's the map," Anna says, offering it to Jade. "You've got five minutes. Don't even think of trying to run off with it."

"Fox is a woman of honor," Kayo says, her eyes narrowing. "Do not question it again."

"On this island, I trust myself and I trust my sister," Anna says. "Everyone else is someone in the way of us winning the prize. Five minutes."

Jade looks at Kayo, gives her a small smile and a nod by way of thanks, and then begins studying the map. I was right, that IS a zipline, she thinks. And this map is printed as a mirror-image of ours, that's the final confirmation. I don't have anything to write with, I'll have to just poke holes in our map with a splinter or something to mark the important parts. Hang on... what's that?

She looks closely at the final safe house, on the north shore of the island. It's showing a smaller building next to it, she realizes, and it's the smaller one which has the star on it! That's the REAL final safe house, not the big one that everyone will assume is the right one! I wish there was some way I could cover that up, make it so Anna and Eve don't see it; but there's no way to do that, not here and now, and besides... I'm a "woman of honor."

What else... those two safehouses are connected by a line. Is there a passage between them? Maybe a tunnel or something? It could be... that second one isn't even on my map, so I'll bet the first one isn't really a safe house at all, it's actually a trap! Poke two holes in that one, to be sure we don't go there. The main thing we're going to run out of is water, so I should mark all those spots. I guess that's about it.

"I'm done," Jade says, handing the map back.

"Okay then," Anna says, snatching the map back. "Come on, Eve, let's get packed and be on our way."

Eve hefts her back and her new, larger water bottle, but hesitates. "Anna," she says, "you know the only reason we were able to scare that man off is because there were four of us."

"I thanked them for it. I'm not giving them a medal, too. Come on, let's go!"

"I just thought... maybe, we should stick together. Just for a little while longer!"

"I'll tell you the same thing I told Kayo," Jade says. "I'm in this to win, and I have my reasons for needing to win at just about any cost. If it comes down to the wire, and I can win by pushing both of you aside, that's what I'm going to do - no regrets."

"And what's your story?" Anna asks Kayo. "You're okay with that?"

"I do not need to win; I just want to get home," Kayo says quietly. "Fox has promised to protect me, and in return I will help her to win. She will not need to push me aside at the end; I will gladly step aside and allow her the prize."

"If you want to come with us, I'll sign on for that," Jade says to Anna. "But we can't be arguing with each other out there; one of us calls the shots. As far as I'm concerned, that's me. If you don't like the way I do things, you and your sister can go your own way."

"And why are you in charge?" Anna asked.

"For one thing, I'm better at this than either of you," Jade says. "After all, none of the men have fucked me yet."