Chapter 39 Marooned
Edited by Euphonemes
John hacked up spit and sand as the surf washed over him, bathing him in salty foam. The fox coughed violently, clawing his way up the beach inch by inch. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he kissed the ground.
Land...how he missed it.
He had become used to being aboard ships, the rocking, swaying motion calming him while the miles of endless blue was a perpetual delight. Yet that was before he had his ship sunk beneath his paws and was put to the mercy of ceaseless waves. Before the blue ocean had been colored red by the blood of hundreds of mammals. Before the Concepción became a flaming hulk of wood and waste, slipping beneath the waves in a bubbling froth, its slide into Davy Jones' Locker accompanied by the screams of the dying.
That was days ago. How many he wasn't sure. The explosion on the main gun deck that threw him off the deck of his ship and into the briny drink spread within seconds to the powder rooms below. He had barely broken the surface of the water, flailing limbs searching for anything to grab, when a secondary explosion sent a ringing through his ears and a concussive wall of sound and fire billowing over him.
John had watched in stunned horror as the ship he had grown to love, as well as all the mammals he had served with, sink into the abyss, until nothing but flotsam and jetsam was left bobbing on the waves.
His entire life...gone.
He'd swum over to a piece of debris, what looked like part of the outer hull at some point, and clung to it in sheer desperation. The bits of wood were barely large enough to hold the desperate fox as he struggled to stay afloat, petrified of the fins circling the water around him. The sharks that followed his ship, fed by the refuse the sailors tossed overboard, found a new food source in the floundering mammals.
Sharks had no qualms about biting the paws that fed them.
The sloshing waves thankfully carried him further and further away from the carnage and final resting place of the two ships and their crews until they seemed but distant memories. It was that first nightfall spent alone with only his thoughts and the endless sea of stars above when he ascribed himself lucky to have survived. John would mourn his friends, but there was no use in weeping for the dead. He was in waters frequently patrolled by ships of the Spanish fleet...he'd be rescued shortly. Certainly someone would have seen the dual plumes of smoke that had billowed into the sky during the battle, and he'd be able to go back to his duties aboard another ship.
Right?
The warm sand beneath his paws reminded him of where he was, jogging him from his thoughts of the first few days drifting aimlessly. As John rolled onto his back on the damp sand, he found himself unable to recall the memories of the past few days after that…
A week? Maybe?
It had rained once, the only reason he could say he was alive as the otherwise merciless sun and brine would have done him in. He'd managed to catch one fish at some point, but after the storm, he found his memory sparse.
He licked his lips, the taste of salt and blood from his cracked skin begging for good water and food.
It took him what felt like ages to be able to move again. Bringing himself to wobbly feet, he finally took in the area around him. A few trees swayed in the breeze, the palms' fronds rustling in the wind. His stumbling towards the grove, which was no more than thirty meters away, sapped most of his remaining energy.
Yet he pushed on, his seeking eyes targeting five large, brown spheres laying on the ground beneath the nearest trees.
He licked his lips again.
One more meter...one more meter...It became his mantra, repeated in his mind as he came closer and closer...
One more meter…
One more meter…
One...more...
John's sight went black as he slumped into the sand.
John awoke, minutes or hours later, he couldn't tell. Once up, he saw the distance to the trees: barely ten meters left. Yet it had taken until the sun was low on the horizon to reach his current position. It wasn't until the sun had nearly set, bathing the island in a twinkling darkness lit by millions of stars above, when he grabbed his first prize.
It took him a while to crack open the husk, idly wishing for his sword that lay on the raft. It was his only possession left in the world, but he didn't feel he could spend the energy to trudge to it, let alone swing it.
Gnawing it is...John thought, and tore into the husk with his teeth.
The fox wasn't sure how long it took him to open it, but as he did, he learned his first valuable lesson of survival: don't drink the water inside. The bit of pungent liquid he had in his stomach soon found itself disgorged onto the grassy knoll he knelt upon. Thankfully the flesh sat better in his stomach, and it wasn't long until he was licking the shell clean.
His stomach churned once more at the veritable feast, yet he managed to keep its contents down. Another lengthy period of time and the second coconut was equally devoured.
Eating left him surprisingly exhausted, whether it be from the exertion of first chewing on the coconuts' husks and then beating them open with a rock, or just moving in general. The tod soon found himself leaning against the palm tree, blessing the heavens above for sparing his life.
John frowned.
Why had he been spared when everyone else had been lost? Were they not just as good, or more worthy than he was to survive? Did Harold, the ship's bespectacled rabbit navigator, deserve to never return home to his aging mother? What about the Captain, or Henry, or a hundred other faces of mammals he'd never see again?
Why was he so lucky?
His ship now sat leagues under the ocean, swallowed into Davy Jones' Locker along with his crewmates. Yet he was spared their fate. Gazing out upon the ocean, he crossed, the worry and anxiousness of those questions tormenting him until he passed out beneath a blanket of stars.
As John woke the following day, blinking sleep from his eyes and dusting sand off his salt-stained uniform, he faced several decisions. He could stay on the beach, build a shelter and wait for help, or explore the island and see if there was already a ship on the other side. He knew that the area his ship had been patrolling held several islands, yet after thinking of how long he was adrift, as well as his direction, it could have placed him on any of nearly a half dozen islands at this point.
And none of them were anywhere near the coast of Zootopia.
They had been sailing off the coast of Baja Califurnia, far enough away that the only way to see land would be to crawl to the tip of the crow's nest and hope for a large swell. He had viewed enough maps in his time at sea to hopefully recognize the island he was on by its shape, but that was a haphazard guess at best.
After consuming a third coconut, finding the water much easier on his stomach this time around than before, John set out deeper into the island. His first thoughts were to try and find water. The fruit of the coconuts may have been moist and wetted his tongue, and the water within barely satisfying and terrible on an empty stomach, but he knew the temporary relief would not last long in the heat bearing down on him.
And so began his reconnaissance of the island. As he pushed inland, the small slopes near the beach gradually grew into much steeper terrain, and the dense palm forest from his landing changed into a lush pine forest. His ears perked towards the gentle bubbling of water nearby. Upon following the noise, again he offered praise above as he stumbled across a trickling stream and pond.
John plunged in headfirst, not caring about the depth or safety, lapping up as much of the heavenly liquid as he could manage.
His waterlogged uniform dripped as John continued his trek forward, the trees gradually petering out until only smaller shrubs remained. It was upon a slight rise, still nowhere near the top of the hill he was climbing, where he beheld a view of the whole island.
"Guadalupe..." he murmured, his whisper softer than the gentle breeze ruffling his fur. One of the largest islands off the coast of Mexicow, known for its vibrant flora and…
KARAAAAAAA!
John dove to the ground, a whooshing and flapping sound coming from directly above him.
"Filthy Caracara…" the fox growled, ducking again when the bird swooped down, attempting to peck at his ears. John bolted towards the treeline on all fours, the angry fowl swooping at him again and again, actually nipping his right ear once. He was far down the hill and safely within the confines of the forest before he paused to catch his breath.
His captain...late captain, he thought with a heavy sigh, was right about those raptors of the sky. He remembered several of the stories told while at sea, as he walked back down towards the beach, the worst describing the Devils of Guadalupe lifting young mammals out of their parents paws.
John brushed past a large fern as he closed back in on the beach, the sound of the ocean waves calming his nerves. Even with what had happened, his ship exploding, his marooning on this island...he would never give up his love of the wide expanse of blue before him.
"Even if I may be here for some time…" he thought with a huff. The fox was no stranger to marooned sailors, as his ship had picked up their fair share, though most mammals they found adrift at sea had long since perished. The few they had found alive always had set up some type of signal to be found, whether it was polished metal glinting in the eyes of the crew of the ship or a fire belching smoke up to the heavens.
"Just hope I don't end up like Robinson Bearusoe Chuck Zooland," he quipped aloud to a hearty laugh and shake of his head. When they had found the poor bear, he had been adrift at sea for over a week, and that only after being marooned on an island for almost a year before building the raft he'd been found upon. John bent down to pick up a gnarled stick as he remembered seeing the poor black bear, his fur mottled and mind half gone from talking to a pinecone with a face drawn on it for over half a year.
Why would he name it Wilson of all names...John wondered as looked around for a suitable place to build a shelter.
KARAAAAAAAA!
His eyes flitted to the beachline, stick held like a sword at the angry cry of a caracara. Several of them could be seen flapping errantly over a pile of driftwood a hundred yards off, the birds snapping their beaks at a piece of fluffy...red…
"Is that a tail?" he wondered, though not for long. Spurred into action, John sprinted down the beach, sand spraying behind his fast feet. He picked up the few rocks he found along the way, pelting the birds as soon as he closed in enough. One gave a startled cry as a rock hit its wing, and it flew off down the beach, away from the oncoming mammal. A second soon followed, while the third, pecking at a prone figure on the ground, met its death at John's paw as a stone hit it square in the head, a snapping sound signaling its instantaneous demise.
"Filthy devils," he spat, throwing one last rock for good measure at the fleeing birds before kneeling next to the figure.
Another fox…
He felt for a pulse on their neck, letting out a held breath as he felt a weak but steady heartbeat. John felt the need to cross himself as he glanced over the mammal who lay atop a crude patchwork of timbers. Their clothes were patched and worn, several red gashes marking where the birds had cut them. A canteen lay across one shoulder while a wide-brimmed hat covered the back of their head.
"At least you had a canteen, you lucky bloke." After checking the wounds and finding them mostly superficial, John gently pulled the mammal from the raft and carefully flipped him over…
Then fell back onto his paws in a start.
"You're no bloke," he muttered incredulously, as he looked down upon the most welcome and breathtaking sight he'd seen on the oceans.
A vixen, who even with her parched lips and salt crusted fur portrayed a beauty that he hadn't seen before. Either that or just seeing another mammal, and a fox at that, was a heavenly sight to the waylaid sailor.
Tentatively, he reached out, pressing his palm to her forehead before pulling it back swiftly. That isn't good… No care left for decorum, John pulled and hefted the unconscious vixen upon his shoulder and began hurrying into the woods towards the spring.
It took four days. Four agonizing days for her fever to break, and through all that time, John barely left her side. His sleeves were gone, the left torn off to become a poultice for her wounds and the right to cool her fevered mind. In the evening of the second day, as he sat next to a crackling fire, she had made her first sounds, a low moan, and he was next to her in a flash, nearly tripping into the fire in his haste. Her eyes flickered open briefly, and for a quickest moment, John caught a pair of emerald eyes staring into his own before she passed out once more.
By the third day, she had awakened enough for him to get her to eat on her own, in between incoherent babblings. It wasn't the best cuisine: smashed grubs turned paste, then mixed with water to be drinkable. But it was the most he thought she'd be able to stomach.
Well, after the third bout of retching, it was.
After that, though, she eagerly drank the mixture, giving John hope for her recovery.
But it was on the fourth day, the one that John would remember forever, a fateful memory that was seared into his mind…
It was the day she nearly killed him.
AN: First off, congratulations to DrummerMax64 for being the 1000th review for this story. Holy mutton chops! I hadn't even realized we were so close until I was checking this today before posting and saw that huge number on there. Thank you guys so much for the support on this story, even with how long its taken to get a chapter out there at times… ^^;
Now for the facts of the case…
I did quite a bit of research to make this chapter a bit fuller, so to speak, and will be doing that in the following chapters. It is something I've wanted to do, but haven't had enough time to devote to it as the "What if…?" collab was in full swing. Now that it is winding down, I can fully devote my time to Masked Fox. :)
The island John lands on is based off the real life island of Guadalupe off the coast of Baja Mexico. Since Zootopia is placed between San Francisco and Los Angeles, it would be natural for the ship John is on to patrol the waters around Mexico's Baja pennisula. Though the island in this story is a bit different from the island you'd be visiting today.
In the 1700's and 1800's, the island was overrun by goats, which sailors had placed on the island as then when they passed by, they'd have an easy source of food on their travels. As there are no people, and goats are sentient, the purpose for the island would be mute and left unihabited. As a result, the Guadalupe Caracara, which was hunted to extinction by those goat farmers, would still exist as well as all the island's natural flora.
Coconut water is safe to drink, however, its sweetness on an empty stomach can cause one to retch as shown by John's reaction here. Drinking stream water will make you sick though, so don't do that. I had a bit of creative licensing that if their 'savage' ancestors drank stream water, they developed an immunity to those diseases long before.
Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. These should come out faster now that I have the time to devote to them. So hopefully in two weeks you'll see another chapter on the horizon.