Christie said, “I think I remember there being five tribes of Otters at the trade village.”
Allie said, “Not Otters. Others.”
Christie said, “Otters? What are you talking about?”
Allie said, “You said, Otters.”
Christie said, “No I didn’t. Hurry. It’s going to rain. Five tribes at the trade village. Um, I’d say, 7, 19, 12, 20, and 23.”
Allie said, “Not anymore. Coach Brown lost five. So, 7, 19, 12, 20, and 18. That’s 76. And Them. Three tribes. Um, um, 5, um, 10, and um, 6. That’s 21. I don’t know how many breeders.”
Christie said, “I think maybe 30 altogether. And then Vegetables.”
Allie said, “Let’s go inside. Or on the porch. It’s going to be a hard rain. I’m suddenly tired of it. Wait…OK, 97 plus 30 breeders, plus Vegetables. Come on.”
The three of us jumped up and ran the short distance to the house and got under cover just before a torrential rain started again. We sat on the floor of the porch with our backs against the wall and the girls continued their tally.
Allie said, “So, Christie, remember 97 plus 30. There’s no Vegetable tribe. And no way to count them. We didn’t tell our names and we mostly stayed away and tried not to be noticed. I’d guess maybe 3 to 5 now. Most got mushed already. They leave you alone as long as they don’t feel like being mean and you don’t act uppity. Maybe 3 to 5. Why were we trying to figure that out?”
I remembered exactly why but tried to deflect the conversation by saying, “I don’t remember. It wasn’t really important. Oh no, that’s right, I just asked how many people there are now. I was just curious. So, about 130. Good to know.”
Christie looked puzzled for a second and then said, “Oh, no, I remember. We said we need a six-girl team, plus Florin as the coach. I mean, husband.”
Allie said, “That’s right. A six-girl squad and Florin is our husband. It makes sense.”
I said, “Does it? I’m not sure it does.”
Christie said, “Of course it does, and you know it. We need a strong tribe. Seven is stronger than three. And we will have more food and more workers.”
Allie said, “And it isn’t more people, it’s just more girls, so it’s the same as us.”
I thought, “Does that make any sense at all?”
Christie said, “Yeah. But it’s maybe not exactly six. It’s only Vegetables, right? No Others, for sure. No Breeders. And none of Them. That just leaves Vegetables.”
Allie said, “Except if they were mushed. If they were mushed, it doesn’t matter what they were before. But not boys. Just girls.”
Christie put her hand on my arm and said, “But we don’t hurry.”
Allie said, “No. We take who we are supposed to take. I don’t know anyone right now that we have to take. We had to take you because I knew that we did but I don’t know who else we have to take.”
Christie said, “We’ll know if we know.”
Allie said, “It’s going to rain for a long time. It’s going to be bad. I’m not going to like it. I didn’t care before. Florin, you had a plan. For moving inside.”
I said, “Yeah. We still have a lot of daylight. We should gather palm branches. As many as we can. But don’t cut all of them from one tree. Cut the lower ones. And take the ones on the ground.”
Allie said, “Christie, let’s do that now, before it gets worse. It’s going to get a lot worse. I can climb in this rain. I’ll climb. Give me a knife. Christie, you go find branches that fell down already. Florin, maybe you could stay with me in case I fall or something. I won’t but maybe just in case.”
I agreed and the three of us moved out to get to work.
CHAPTER Fifteen - Muffling
Allie said, “Work fast.”
I said, “Christie, drag what you can onto the porch. No, on second thought, take them all the way into the house.”
The three of us rushed to work. Christie ran around the house in widening circles, collecting branches from the ground. Allie and I went to a tree far enough from the house that it didn’t provide any shelter and started to cut the lowest branches. While she cut from the tree, I collected what fell and anything else on the ground and piled it up so that Christie could carry it to the house without having to hunt for the branches.
We worked for at least two hours and then changed our focus. We had several large piles of palm branches now and the plan was to stack as many as possible on the roof. I climbed up the ladder at the side of the house and carefully climbed onto the roof. Allie climbed half way up the ladder and Christie handed branches up, and Allie piled them at the edge where I could get to them. For an hour, I stacked the branches all over the surface, several layers deep. At the end, there was about a foot of loose plant material between the rain drops and the ceramic tiles. We wouldn’t have any solar energy collection this way, but we didn’t need any right now.
After that, we took the rest of our branches into the house itself. It was noticeably quieter already. We didn’t have a way to attach the leaves to the ceiling, so the best we could do was to stack them along the walls just to help reduce any sound bouncing off the vertical surfaces of the room. The end result wasn’t bad. The rain wasn’t thundering off the roof and we could be comfortable inside the house, finally. The majority of the noise was now coming through the windows and door and was certainly less inside than outside.
We rested for a few minutes, smiling at each other and to ourselves at how successful we had been. We were tired but in high spirits. The girls wanted to continue working if there was something that they could do, so I showed them how to strip the green leaves from the branches and how to start weaving them into mats. Allie used a knife to strip the branches and we had plenty in a very short time. We sat on the floor, working together happily for maybe another two hours, taking a break for a meal in the middle. The first mats that we made were fairly small, about two feet on each side. As we finished them, we arranged them on the floor as a carpet and the sound of the rain was decreased even farther.
Christie said, “We have electricity for lights, don’t we? How long will the batteries last?”
I told her that I thought that we’d have lights for maybe three days, running off batteries.
She said, “Then we could make mats for the windows and the door. And we should really hang mats on the walls instead of stacking the branches like we did.”
It was a good idea.
I said, “Christie, that’s a really good thought. We have a lot of work to do. We have to sleep inside tonight because you did such a great job gathering wood under the house this morning. There’s no room to sleep there now.”
Allie smiled as she worked and said, “This isn’t hard. It’s fun. We’re making things. I bet we could trade these.”
I said, “Ah, trading. Yeah, I think that we need a saw and a pair of scissors. An ax would OK, but a saw would be faster for cutting small branches for fire wood.”
Allie said, “I’ve seen saws and scissors. The Others have some. And They have some scissors. They still cut their hair, not with a knife.”
I said, “Actually, haircuts were exactly what I was thinking about. You girls are both beautiful, but…”
Christie said, “Oh my gosh! My hair must be atrocious! Allie looks OK, her hair is long and beautiful but mine must be horrid.”
Allie grinned, and said, “Well, kind of. It looks like it got caught in a blender. If we get scissors, I’ll see what I can do. We can trade some mats if we work hard. Nobody works anymore. Not to make things or make things better. Just to fish or get food.”
I asked, “So, what do they trade?”
Allie said, “Um, fish. Mostly. Or things that they find. Oysters. Not much really.”
I said, “I can show you how to weave lots of things from the palm leaves. Mats, baskets, hats, even rope. We could even make fish-traps. We’ll need a lot of rope for ourselves. When we can, when the rain stops for a day or so, we should clean the tiles on th
e roof. We won’t want branches covering the house if we can work out something else. Or maybe we have big mats that we put on just for big storms.”
Christie worked on her next mat, and said, “It’s good. Like a whole new life. Finally. We’re totally naked.”
Allie said, “Yeah. It’s funny. Before, we didn’t know that we were. Today, I know that we are, but I like it. Like now we have a choice. We could make grass skirts now if we wanted to, but I don’t want to. It’s just us. Here on an island with no one around. Florin, you know what? I want to make a promise. I promise that tomorrow, I won’t forget you. I just know that I won’t.”
We sat quietly for a minute or two and then Allie said, “Florin, did you like it? Having sex? With girls?”
I looked up and said, “I did. I loved it. I mean, it was wonderful. You know, I didn’t know what it would be like. I never thought that much about it. Not until I met you, anyway. I really liked it. Um, was it OK?”
Allie grinned and said, “Hell yeah! It was amazing!”
Christie said, “Yeah. I liked it too. I guess that you guys did more than I got to do. What else can we do? Like blow-jobs and…I don’t know, other stuff.”
Allie said, “I remember like things called doggy-style and cowgirls and sixty-nines. I don’t really know.”
Christie said, “I guess we have to discover it again. Like making mats from leaves. Florin will show us what he knows and the rest we’ll discover for ourselves together.”
We stopped for another meal and when it was dark, we lay down together to sleep. The storm was bad outside, but our house was a comfortable haven. There wasn’t any wind, just rain. Lots and lots of rain.
For the next few days, we worked in the rain. Allie and Christie caught us fish and we practiced weaving mats. And every morning, Allie remembered exactly who I was and what had happened the day before. It seemed like things were going well. We made excursions outside to collect more palm leaves when we needed them.
We kept busy and we got to know each other. I told the girls as much as I could about my family, our history, our lives before the cataclysm, and some of what had happened in the eighteen years since. Allie and Christie talked about growing up and school and what they had planned to be. They were from different parts of the country but became friends in the first days after the plane crash. They had no way to estimate time and neither of them knew at what point Christie had been mushed or how long she had been that way. It had happened and then I came, and things changed. Neither of them could talk much about the past 18 years because they couldn’t remember any significant events. They told me in general about the decline of civilization after the crash but even that was pretty sketchy.
I thought about where we were as far as the neighbors were concerned. There had been probably 400 or more on the plane. Now there were five small tribes of men, three small tribes of women, one group of about 30 “breeders”, and less than 10 of the “Vegetable Women”. The population, rather than expanding, had declined from more than 400 to just 130 now. The girls estimated that about one or two died every month or so at this point. They did have a sense of a lunar month but didn’t bother to count them to know when a year was over. At this rate, the population would all die out, except for the last one standing, in about eight to ten more years. But the rate was sure to change as conditions changed. Either the death-rate would accelerate because the tribes continued to weaken to the point where they couldn’t protect themselves; it would decline because those left were increasingly adapted to survive here; or it would decrease because the population would be so sparse that they had very little contact and therefore little need to kill each other. My expectation was that the death-rate would increase as they became more ruthless, more insane, and less likely to feel a need for each other. My theories would be confirmed a few days later.
We wove our mats, we ate our meals, and we slept comfortably on the floor of our little house. We bathed in the ocean, and sometimes before we fell asleep, we made love. It wasn’t epic; it was nice. It wasn’t feverish and it wasn’t prolonged. It was something that we enjoyed for a little while at the end of the day.
The rain stopped on what I thought to be the 18th day since I had arrived.
CHAPTER Sixteen - Visitors and Neighbors
On the 18th day, as far as I could estimate, as we sat on the beach eating grapes and fish for breakfast, we spotted a canoe far out in the atoll heading toward us. I felt no cause for alarm. A single canoe would hold no more than five people. I’d wait and see what they wanted. We had an agreement: I left them alone if they left me alone. That was what the coach had told everyone, and I expected that his word was pretty much law.
As the canoe got close enough to see it better, Allie said, “It’s girls. Five of them.”
The canoe approached within fifty feet of the beach and one of the women stood up in the front of the boat and yelled, “Parlay! We want to talk! Just talk!”
I looked at the two girls with me and we decided that there was no reason not to.
I yelled, “OK. Let’s talk! Come on up!”
The woman dove off the front of the boat and swam toward us while the other four kept the canoe offshore where it was. When she walked out of the water, she held up her right hand and came up slowly.
She stepped onto the sand and waited. The girls and I stayed seated on the sand facing her.
The woman was stunning. She was tan and tall. Maybe five-foot-nine. And she was definitely a leader. You could see it in her walk. Her hips flared out from her waist and her breasts, which were somewhat larger than Allie or Christie’s, were magnificent. I only had my moms and my grandmothers, and of course, some of the local women who lived near my old home, to compare her to but my relatives were a little older. Maybe this was what they looked like when they were younger. I had heard the term, “Centerfold” before, as in “She’s as beautiful as a Centerfold”, and I figured that Allie, Christie, and now this girl probably fit the definition.
She stopped about 20 feet away and waited without speaking.
Finally, she said, “Parlay?”
I said, “Parlay? Like pirates? You mean you want to talk, and we don’t fight until we have heard what each other has to say?”
She said, “Um, yeah. Like that. Um, I don’t want to fight. Just talk.”
I said, “Great. I don’t want to fight either. Allie, do you want to run up and get another mat for our guest to sit on?”
Allie jumped to her feet and said, “Hi Bebe,” and walked up to the house.
The woman said, “Hey, Lana,” and waited.
Allie came back with one of our woven mats and put it on the ground just four feet in front of us and I motioned for the woman, Bebe, to make herself comfortable if she wanted to.
When she was seated, she took a deep breath and said, “Um, hi. Yeah. Hi Christie. You got mushed though, right?”
Christie smiled and said, “Maybe. But I’m not mushed now.”
Bebe said, “Um, good. Look, I want to talk. So, I’m, well, you don’t know me, so…”
I said, “Bebe, my name is Florin. I’m happy to meet you. You are safe here. We’re neighbors. This is my family. Get it? Not Others. Not They. Not breeders. Not Vegetables. Me and Allie and Christie. Family.”
Bebe said, “Allie. Was that your name? From before?”
Allie said, “Yeah. The Others called me Lana. My name is Allison. Allie.”
Bebe said, “Um, cool. Cool, cool. Allie. Look, um, Florin, um, they call you Kong. Anyway, yeah, so, here you are. Cool. We want to talk.”
I said, “Bebe, do your friends want to bring the boat up and sit with us? We have some grapes and fresh water. You’re welcome to have some.”
Bebe’s eyes went wide and she said, “Fresh water?”
Christie ran to the house and brought back a coconut shell filled with fresh rainwater. Bebe drank it and handed the shell back to Christie.
She said, “Well, thank you. I don’t know how t
his works anymore.”
I said, “What about your friends?”
Bebe said, “Oh. Um, no. They will stay where they are. They didn’t want to come. I thought we should. Things are going to be different now. I can feel it. So, I guess that’s it. Cool.”
I said, “Bebe, you haven’t told me what you want to talk about.”
Bebe looked around like she might be pounced on by a tiger at any moment but then took a breath and calmed herself.
She said, “So, OK, here, so Coach Brown is dead.”
I waited.
She said, “Um, Coach Brown. You talked to him. He was the big coach. He’s dead. We don’t know how but we saw his body. Dead. And maybe eight more. So, his tribe dropped to like 11 and he wasn’t the biggest anymore, and the next biggest tribe took over. And in the last couple of days, maybe two die every day. Nobody gets mushed. Just killed. They stay out of it. It’s like a war between the Others.”
I said, “Who stays out of it?”
Bebe said, “Oh, the girls. Like me. And the Vegetables. The Breeders are acting weird and are sticking to their own island. For now.”
I said, “Thank you for telling me. I probably want to stay out of it too.”
She looked frantic suddenly, and said, “No. Um, no. That’s why we need to talk. I think it’s going to get bad. Like a war. Things were kind of worked out. It was crap but we understood the rules. Um, and, well, you can’t stay out of it because they’ll come for you. That’s what they say. Parlay, right? So what’s the plan? There’s no rules again.”
I said, “Bebe, is that why you’re here? So that I can tell you what the plan is?”
Bebe said, “Yeah. Look, you just got here but you came for a reason, right? You got Lana and Christie and you can un-mush girls, right? So, you’re going to take over, right?”
The Dark Atoll: The Castaways: Book 1 Page 15