Darren’s camp blazed behind him, lighting his way through the night as he sprinted to Samantha’s camp on the other side of the waterfall and pool.

  A dozen of Wilson’s armed and angry tribal cousins were hot on his heels, screaming unintelligibly. He could definitely hear the relation between them and Wilson…

  At Samantha’s camp, Wilson and Samantha both burst into motion, a cutlass appeared in Samantha’s hand, and Wilson levitated a burning log from the fire. He hurled it at the coconuts behind Darren.

  Darren raised a hand as he ran, and his Summoned Swivel Gun, configured for single shot, blinked into existence in a clear patch to the side of Samantha’s camp, aimed towards the coconuts.

  He didn’t expect to hit any with single shot activated, but he didn’t want to risk clipping Samantha or Wilson in combat with buckshot. Maybe the cannonballs would scatter them, though. Darren set it to autofire, and thunderous booms rocked the night.

  Pain seared his shoulder, and he yelped, his health bar flashing.

  Without breaking stride, he reached to his back and yanked out a spear.

  He whimpered, his health bar dropping again. Dumb move.

  Never pull out the weapon, numnuts.

  His right arm tingled. Fingers going slack around his axe. He switched it to his left hand, wishing he were ambidextrous.

  “Get down!” Samantha yelled when Darren was barely a handful of metres from them.

  Darren dove.

  Coconuts continued to scream bloody murder behind him.

  Darren turned the dive into a roll and came up beside Wilson and Samantha. He spun.

  Just in time to see a lit grenade get knocked back by Wilson’s levitating log and fly towards the coconuts.

  “Suck on that, you degenerate primates!” Wilson yelled.

  The grenade landed amidst the coconuts.

  Boom!

  The ground shuddered beneath Darren’s feet as dirt and chunks of coconut filled the night, stinging Darren’s skin as he staggered from the shockwave.

  For the second time in as many minutes, Darren was blinded.

  So he kept the swivel gun firing as he blinked rapidly.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Evidently, Samantha had protected her eyes, because he could hear her footsteps as she raced toward the oncoming army of nutjobs.

  “Aim the gun away!” she yelled as she passed him.

  He stopped the gun firing as she entered the fray. Instead, he tried to focus on the vague shapes he could see.

  Using Twist of Fate, Darren focused on a coconut, seeing the ghostly blue outline of one of them despite the white after-images still clouding his vision. He was grateful his HUD and abilities weren’t impacted.

  He groped his way to the gun, listening to Samantha swearing up a storm. The thunk of her blade against coconuts. The chittering and yelling of coconuts.

  His hand hit the swivel gun, and he stood. His vision finally started to clear as he faced the fray. The cocotribesman he’d focused on was a distant outline—apparently, Samantha had punted it into the jungle.

  Darren refocused on a closer coconut, one trying to flank Samantha. He swung the gun around while simultaneously triggering its charged shot. Then he cast Twist of Fate on the creature.

  It froze.

  He fired.

  It exploded. Like, proper exploded. Coconut shrapnel cut through the battlefield, while blue guts rained down like confetti, splatting on the dirt with wet pitter-patters. Evidently, the coconut exterior was just that, an exterior. The little snots still had internals of some kind that weren’t fluffy white and tasty.

  Darren grinned at the carnage and started firing wholesale at the edge of combat. His uncharged shots didn’t kill the coconuts, but they sure as hell sent them flying.

  Samantha was the true damage dealer, all 17 of her levels coming into play as she twirled amongst the cocotribesman, every strike dropping a health bar to zero.

  They fell. One after another. Unable to withstand the focused onslaught of the two humans. And a friendly coconut.

  Less than a minute later, the cocotribesman were all dead. Samantha’s health was down barely 15% from a slew of tiny scratches on her legs. She wiped her blade in the grass, then sheathed it as she walked back to her camp. “I was worried this island might be populated.”

  “A heads up would have been nice,” Darren said as he closed down notifications of XP gains from the fight.

  The old pirate captain placed her hands in the small of her back and arched, her spine going off like popcorn. She groaned then sank cross-legged in front of her fire. “I assumed you were smart enough to work it out yourself.”

  Darren scowled, opening his mouth to retort—

  —A blood-curdling scream cut through the night like a chainsaw through a pig carcass.

  “Anything else you’d like to share ’bout this island?” Wilson asked, his cockney drawl only slightly panicked.

  Darren looked at Samanatha, noting the ever-so-slight pallor to her tanned and weathered cheeks in the firelight. Uh oh…

  “I think maybe leaving tonight would be best after all…” she said, standing.

  Another scream—closer to a banshee than any living thing Darren had ever heard—echoed through the jungle, this one closer.

  “You know what that thing is?” Darren asked, his hand tightening around the shaft of his axe.

  “Not a clue,” Samantha said as she swiftly gathered a few things from her tent. “I’m not thrilled about finding out, either.”

  “We’re all in the same… boat then on that,” Darren said, lifting Wilson to his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” said Wilson.

  Together, they broke into a jog, smoothly avoiding roots and snags by the light of the moon.

  Darren could count at least three creatures after them, one directly behind, and two moving up on the sides. Whatever they were, they made no pretence of stealth, seeming to prefer terrifying their prey with their bone-chilling screams.

  The three survivors were all panting as they plunged recklessly through the jungle, their footfalls heavy on the dry undergrowth while dappled moonlight cast long shadows around them.

  They were nearly to the beach when whatever hunted them went silent as ghosts.

  “Ah, poopsicles,” Darren said. “That can’t be good.”

  They broke onto the beach. The same time that three massive, midnight black figures materialised out of the jungle, descending on the trio.