The name of T. Briar is fictitious. A variation of another pseudonym for a South Georgia born writer with twelve published books to his credit. But you’re not wanting to hear about Thomas or those other books, are you? No, I didn’t think so. Not if you’re specifically looking for a suspenseful, sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat action thriller novel.
That’s T. Briar’s chosen genre, by the way. Having spent his formative years immersed in the treacherous worlds of The Savage Sword of Conan, The Warlord, and Jonah Hex comics, writing action stories was always in the back of his mind. It just took him a little while before getting around to it.
Isle of Savages is T. Briar’s first published novel.
Description
On July 20, 20— a charter school’s sponsored sail from San Diego to Hawaii hits a reef during a violent storm. Sixteen souls abandon ship. Nine students, along with the hated captain and first mate, wash up on what they believe is a deserted island.
Separated into three groups by circumstance and mutual distrust, treachery and death lurks for all. Over the course of a single day, one student betrays all the others. Another drowns. Two others get ambushed by a great white shark. And, like falling dominoes, the captain, first mate, and six students fall prey to a tribe of blood thirsty cannibals.
In the face of almost certain death, who will escape from the isle of savages to tell the tale?
Genre: YA Suspense Thriller Action
Release: June 2017
Tags: Shipwreck, survival, sharks, deserted island, cannibals, savages, jungle, sub-human, mercenaries, human trafficking, pirates, sailing
Excerpt
Date: July 20, 20—
General Location: Pacific Ocean
Definitive Longitude and Latitude: Unknown
Through strangled, sputtering coughs, Eric Kovac’s eyelids flickered open to stark darkness. He lay face down in receding wave-wash, naked except for a pair of board shorts, drenched to the bone. A tortuous grittiness seared the tender linings of his mouth, nose, and throat; pain wracked his body, inside and out. As he struggled to make sense of his peril, the sound of crashing waves thundered. A sudden rush of warm saltwater buried him underwater.
Choking and coughing violently, he forced himself up onto his hands and knees, stomach clenching in excruciating spasms as he vomited up great bouts of saltwater. Although the purging left him weak—on the verge of blacking out—it cleared the irritating sand from his breathing passages. Survival instinct, more than cognizant reasoning, sent him crawling further up the shoreline. After only a few feet, his battered body could go no further and he collapsed onto wet sand while his feet and legs still lay in the incoming tide.
The sound of crashing waves slowly returned, and with it, the recognition of something new. Wind buffeted his body from all directions…storm-washed, freshly cleansed wind. Beneath the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him, he had only one coherent thought.
What happened to me?
For the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he’d come to be on this beach, hurting and possibly grievously injured. Despite the horrendous pain, he rolled over onto his side to lift himself on an elbow and scan the darkness for clues.
In the edge of the surf, a dark silhouette resembling the shape of a human body floated, the incoming and outgoing surf pushing and pulling at it. It was a tossup as to which would win the tug of war.
Instantly, the memory of the ship’s boom careening into his forehead materialized out of nowhere. In something akin to shock, distorted memories of the chain of events leading up to the blow that had laid him low flitted through his mind…
The storm had come out of the northwest late yesterday evening, the leading edge blue-black and roiling. It’d chased after them relentlessly, finally howling down on their sixty-foot blue water cruiser in the middle of the night, crackling long streaks of lightening that were blinding in their frequency and intensity. Fierce winds and towering waves tossed the yacht to and fro as if it were a toy. Deafening claps of thunder reverberated through the vessel to drown out the terrified shrieks of the sixteen students cowering below deck. Then, without warning, when only the tiniest tendril of hope remained, the yacht ran into something, cementing their fate—
That’s right! We’d run from the storm well into the night, hoping to angle out of its path to safety. But we hit something…
Snapshots flashed through his mind, one after the other in quick succession: the sickening crunch of fiberglass shattering; the non-stop rush of water breaching the hull; the ear-splitting cries of his classmates’ despair; the captain ordering everyone from below deck to abandon ship; the screeching wind and stinging rain above deck merciless; brilliant veins of lightening illuminating the pitch blackness to reveal the shoreline of an island; so much water in the air, breathing seemed almost impossible; a boy and a girl at the very end of the line of joined hands snatched up like kites and flung out into darkness; the terrifying fear that the rest of the line would quickly follow; the glassy, shock-stricken stares of his classmates waiting their turn to be helped over the side into the life raft; the white boom breaking loose from its mooring and whipping toward him; trying to duck and almost making it; total blackness…
Eric, trembling in the aftershock of surviving the impossible and being grateful simply to be alive, remembered something else…there had been a girl he was intent upon saving…and one of her friends. He’d helped them into the raft right before his accident. But what were their names? Who were they to him?
He concentrated on summoning their faces, unable to shake the feeling they had been his close friends, or perhaps, one of them had been more than a friend.
Slowly, like gooey fluid forced through a half-clogged strainer, the image of a dark-haired girl—seventeen years old and of Asian-American descent—with a beautiful oval face, olive skin, and dark eyes took form in his mind’s eye. The face of a pretty, blue-eyed blonde with curly, shoulder-length hair quickly followed.
Mia! I was trying to save Mia Miller! And her best friend, Keri Shaw!
Peering at the floating body again, a burst of adrenaline coursed through his veins, energizing him into action. The sickening hollowness in his stomach and the aches in his body disappeared. He flipped back over onto hands and knees to scramble toward the dark silhouette in the white surf. As of yet, he couldn’t tell if the body was male or female.
Please don’t let it be Mia. Please, anyone but her.
His eyes made out what he thought looked like the muscled back and arms of a young man and his fear receded…somewhat. Grasping the corpse by the hair of its head, he lifted the face out of the water to ascertain that it wasn’t Mia—instead was Charles Darry, a Low Country kid from South Carolina. He’d been the only other Southern student on their cruise of horrors, which had given Eric and him something singularly in common, although they had never become what one would call friends. He released Charles, frantically glancing around the darkness.
“Mia!” he attempted to yell, but the name came out strangled and weak. He tried again and it came out clearer and louder this time.
“Eric!” answered a frightened, high-pitched voice. “I’m over here!”