Savage

The storm had been the most terrifying experience in your life, and you had been convinced it would be the last. Your boat had been capsized in the complete darkness of the early morning hours.

You wake up completely disoriented. The last thing you remember is being thrown around in the waves, the storm roaring around you. It takes a few moments for you to register your surroundings.

You are lying face down. Your entire body aches and feels as heavy as lead. Your back is burning, but your legs are cold. Your shoes are gone, and the front of your body is suddenly coming alive with dozens of sharp pains.

You struggle to prop yourself up and see that you are on a rocky beach. Your shoes and your shirt are gone--you have only your shorts on. Your legs are being lapped by the waves--now calm and cheery--but your back is burned from the sun. You look down at yourself and see the imprints of the craggy rocks all over your body. Miraculously you have only a few scrapes that seem now to have scabbed over, and suddenly you have a vague memory of being thrown around in the water, feeling solid ground beneath you, and fighting your way up out of the water to...

Here. Where was here? You look around. The sun is blazing overhead, and about fifty yards away you can see trees and dense vegetation. You know that you were nowhere near any major landmass when the storm hit, and you realize that you can only be on some little island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, possibly one that is completely uncharted.

Your mind drags up memories of movies you've seen in which shipwreck victims build fires or lay out wreckage to try to gain the attention of passing ships or planes, but at the moment you can't possibly think about that. Your throat is dry and your stomach, despite feeling bruised and battered, is growling.

You struggle to your feet, looking toward the jungle. Is there food there? Water? You need to find out, and soon.

Your eyes scan back and forth along the green jungles, and you raise a hand to block the sun. It is then that you finally see him.

There at the edge of the jungle, not straight ahead of you but in the distance to your right, maybe one or two hundred yards away, stands a man.

"Hey!" you call, waving your arms, startled at the raw, weak quality of your voice. "Hey!" you call again, stumbling toward the man.

He makes no move in response, and you wonder if you are imagining his presence, but as you close the gap to about 50 yards, you see that it is definitely a very real man standing there.

A man, you realize, whose appearance must mean he is as stranded on this island as you are. He is a large man--at least four or five inches taller than you--and broad-shouldered, with thick muscles. He has a mane of unruly straw-blond hair, and a beard that is nearly as long and unkempt as his hair. Were it not for his deeply bronzed skin and the fact that he was standing at the edge of a jungle on a tropical island, it would be quite easy to believe he was some Norse god standing there in the flesh.

And in the flesh, in more ways than one. The man is completely naked. You are close enough now to see that this is not the most troubling thing. He has a glaring scowl on his face, and his shoulders are tensed, his arms pulled back, his fists clenched. His eyes are locked on you.

"Hey!" you call again. "I was on a boat, on my way..." You trail off. He does not appear to understand anything you are saying, and suddenly he gives you something much more serious to worry about.

With a guttural roar, he is suddenly charging toward you at breakneck speed. There is no question at all that his intentions are aggressive and hostile. He looks, for all the world, like a powerful male lion charging you, with his blond hair flying around his snarling face, and his taut muscles rippling under his tawny flesh.

Your options are limited, and you have very little time to choose one. You know that even if you weren't exhausted and battered, you would have no chance at fighting this beast of a man, but maybe if you make a stand and put up enough of a fight, he'll back down. You could run, but you really have nowhere to go, and he would almost certainly catch you within a few seconds anyway. The only other option you can see is to throw yourself down on the ground in abject submission to him and hope he will not tear you to pieces.