Island

by Richard Laymon

  Which, we all agreed, would be ridiculous.

  We decided to let the fire burn out.

  Anyway, we still had Andrew’s lighter.

  Billie went over to her sleeping area and looked for it. She found Andrew’s khaki shorts, picked them up, and searched the pockets. She emptied them as she went along, pulling out such things as his pipe, tobacco pouch, billfold, keys, and the white handkerchief that he had placed over Keith’s dead face. Soon, she came hurrying back with the shorts in one hand, the lighter in the other.

  She tested the lighter. A flick, and the flame leaped up.

  She had brought the khaki shorts over to us because she thought someone ought to wear them. ‘They’ve got such great, deep pockets,’ she explained.

  Obviously, we could use something for carrying odds and ends.

  Aside from Andrew’s shorts, the only pocket in sight was the one on the chest of Kimberly’s Hawaiian shirt - a pocket so loose and flimsy that she didn’t even trust her Swiss Army knife to it.

  There was my bag, of course. I’d hidden it under some rags over at my sleeping place, for safe keeping. I planned to leave it there, because I sure didn’t want to spend the day hiking through the jungle with that on my back. (It’s the home of my journal, which is a big thick spiral notebook - probably weighs at least two pounds.)

  ‘Who wants to wear them?’ Billie asked, holding up Andrew’s shorts.

  Nobody volunteered.

  Probably because the shorts would be too bulky and heavy and hot, especially for gals who were used to going around in scanty bikinis.

  ‘You wear ’em,‘ Connie told me. ’They’re men’s shorts, and you’re the only guy around here.‘

  ‘I don’t want to wear them,’ I said. I remembered how Andrew had taken them off and spread them over the lower parts of Keith - who’d been naked down there and dead at the time.

  ‘Just put ’em on over your trunks,‘ Connie said.

  ‘That’d be too hot.’

  ‘I’ll wear them,’ Kimberly offered.

  She didn’t sound eager, and I didn’t like the idea. In fact, I didn’t want to see anybody wearing them - but especially not any of the gals. ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll put ’em on.‘

  I took them from Billie, bent over, and raised a foot to step into them.

  ‘No,’ Billie said. ‘Get your trunks off, first. You’d smother in all that. Besides, your trunks are a mess.’

  They aren’t a mess. I’d gotten most of the blood off them, so they were only a little bit gory.

  I looked around for a place to change.

  ‘Just do it here,’ Kimberly said. She was pretty matter-of-fact about it.

  I shook my head. ‘I can go over to the rocks ...’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Billie said. ‘Just do it here. We won’tpeek.‘

  Connie smirked. ‘Who’d want to?’

  I sighed. Then I said, ‘Well, okay.’

  After their backs were turned, I pulled my trunks down and got them off. It felt weird. I was naked on a beach in broad daylight, and the three gals were almost near enough to touch. They weren’t wearing much, themselves - but more than me.

  I got enormous, all of a sudden. I stepped into Andrew’s shorts and pulled them up as fast as I could.

  ‘You decent?’ Billie asked.

  ‘Almost.’

  I shoved myself inside the fly and got the zipper shut. The shorts were big and loose, drooping well below my waist. But I hitched them higher and got the belt cinched.

  ‘All set?’ Billie asked.

  ‘Uh, yeah.’

  She turned around. They all did.

  I bent down fast and picked up my trunks. When I straightened up, I held them in front of me.

  Connie said, ‘Good God, Rupert.’

  I shook my head. I felt as if my face might burst into flame. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  Big mistake.

  ‘Your hard-on’s the matter, you fucking degenerate.’

  ‘Connie!’ Billie blurted.

  ‘Well, look at him!’

  ‘He doesn’t need you pointing it out to everyone,’ Billie scolded her.

  ‘It’s already pointing out to everyone,’ Kimberly said, smiling.

  I think I moaned. I think I muttered something like, ‘Oh, man.’

  In the meantime, Kimberly’s comment had cracked Billie up. Even Connie was laughing about it.

  The object of their amusement, meanwhile, was shrinking like an icicle in Hell.

  I stopped trying to hide behind my trunks. ‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘These things happen, you know?’

  ‘Happen to you all the time,’ Connie said.

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ Billie told me, being sort of solemn now that she’d finished laughing. ‘Don’t worry about it, honey.’

  Honey?

  Kimberly said, ‘Looks like the big fella’s out of commission, anyway.’

  ‘Do we have to talk about it?’ I asked, feeling awfully squirmy inside.

  ‘You’re the one who brought it up,’ Kimberly said. She gave me that smile again. That spectacular smile.

  I actually laughed, myself.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said. ‘Now, can we get on with things?’

  ‘Here.’ Billie tossed me Andrew’s lighter. ‘You’ve got the pockets.’

  I dropped it into a front pocket of my shorts, and felt it way down against my thigh. ‘How about the knife?’ I asked Kimberly.

  Normally, I avoided looking at it.

  This gave me an excuse, though.

  It was tucked into the front of her bikini pants. The thickness of the plastic handle made the flimsy white triangle purse out. I could see bare skin down there.

  Kimberly’s open right hand suddenly covered it all.

  Patted it.

  ‘I’ll hang on to the knife. It has an appointment to keep with Wesley.’

  Over at the supply pile, we gathered a few items so that we’d have something to snack on. The food went into the pockets of Andrew’s shorts. (My shorts, now.) Then we gathered our weapons.

  I volunteered to carry the ax.

  ‘It’s awfully heavy,’ Kimberly said.

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘Let’s take turns.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘You start out with it, if you want. Just let me know when you get tired.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The ax required two hands. I wanted to have a back-up weapon, though, so I loosened my belt enough to slip a tomahawk under it, by my right hip.

  Billie watched me do that, then pushed her tomahawk down the side of her pants. The waistband couldn’t take the weight. ‘Woops!’ The pants were at about a forty-five-degree angle by the time she grabbed the weapon.

  ‘Mom!’ Connie blurted. ‘For Godsake!’

  ‘Oh, calm down.’ She pulled out the weapon, hooked a finger under her waistband, and corrected the slant.

  ‘You did that on purpose.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  At that, Connie glared at me as if I were somehow to blame.

  I just gave her a goony look and shrugged. ‘I wasn’t even looking,’ I said. Which was a lie, and she knew it.

  Billie, still determined not to carry the tomahawk in her hand, came up with the section of rope that had been around Keith’s neck. Someone had untied the hangman’s noose, so she had four or five feet of rope to work with. As all of us watched, she knotted the ends together and made a sling for her tomahawk. She slipped the loop over her head and put her right arm through it, then adjusted the rig so that the rope crossed her chest like a bandolier, the weapon hanging at her hip.

  ‘I oughta do that,’ Kimberly said.

  As it turned out, Kimberly and Connie both did it. They used sections cut from the main length of the hanging rope, which we’d kept coiled with the rest of our supplies.

  It took a few minutes. Worth the wait, though. They each had a spear. Would’ve t
aken both hands just to carry their weapons if they didn’t have the tomahawks suspended by the rope slings.

  We didn’t burden ourselves with water bottles. For one thing, we wanted to travel fast and light. For another, we figured that we would never stray very far from the stream.

  At last, we were ready.

  Kimberly led the way. I went second. Connie followed me, and Billie took the rear.

  We left the beach behind at the place where Wesley and Thelma had escaped into the jungle.

  The Hunt

  At first, we tried to follow the trail of Wesley’s blood. Kimberly moved slowly through the bushes, often stopping, sometimes crouching for a closer inspection.

  Even though Wesley must’ve bled plenty from his chest and buttock wounds, it wasn’t easy to find the places where he’d left dabs of it behind. The jungle was so dense, in most places, that you couldn’t see for more than a few feet in any direction. Also, not a lot of sunlight made it down to our level. We spent most of our time trudging through deep, murky shadows.

  We probably would’ve had no luck at all finding traces of Wesley’s blood, if Kimberly hadn’t been so persistent. Or talented. Or psychic. She often seemed to know, by instinct, where to look.

  Maybe it’s the Sioux in her genes.

  In spite of her uncanny abilities in the tracking department, we eventually lost all trace of the blood. By then, however, Kimberly had determined the general direction of his travels.

  ‘He’s going for the stream,’ she whispered to us.

  ‘That makes sense,’ I said. ‘He’s gotta have fresh water.’

  ‘Why didn’t we go there in the first place?’ Connie said. ‘We could’ve skipped all this. This place blows.’ With that, she smacked a mosquito that had landed on the side of her neck. She said, ‘Yuh!’

  Today was the worst mosquito trouble we’d had so far. They’d mostly left us alone, on the beach. They hadn’t even been a major nuisance during the few times I’d ventured into the jungle.

  But today they were awful.

  We had no 6-12, no Cutter‘s, no Off!, no nothing. The insect repellents had come on the sea voyage with us, but had been left aboard the yacht when we set out on our picnic. An oversight that we paid for today.

  We’d been slapping mosquitoes ever since leaving the beach.

  Some of us had been, that is.

  Kimberly didn’t let them bother her. Basically, she ignored them.

  I tried to follow her example, but couldn’t stand the way the little monsters hummed around my ears and the way they tickled wherever they landed. They seemed especially fond of the injured area on the side of my face and on my ear. (Apparently, they dig scabs.) I was very glad that I’d worn my shirt - the pink blouse on loan from Billie. Also, Andrew’s big old shorts probably gave me more protection than I would’ve gotten from my swimming trunks.

  Connie was wearing her usual T-shirt, but it was so thin and clingy that the mosquitoes nailed her right through the cloth. Her only safe areas were those protected by her bikini. If I haven’t mentioned it before, hers is the skimpiest of the three. (Why Connie, who likes to act the prude, would wear such a revealing swimsuit is beyond me. But then, when it comes to Connie, what isn’t? Maybe the T-shirt is her way of maintaining an appearance of decency.) Anyway, the top of her bikini consists of twin orange triangles and a few thin cords. Its bottom is what they call a ‘thong’ - with a slightly wider strip in front than the one that goes up her rear. In other words, only a few very private inches of her body were safe from the attacking mosquitoes.

  Billie, as usual, wore only her bikini. No shirt, and the swimsuit didn’t cover much. Even though hers had at least three times the fabric of Connie‘s, there’s a lot more flesh to Billie. She seemed to have acres of bare skin, all of it shiny and dripping with sweat. She looked like a wonderful hot meal for the little bastards. But they left her alone.

  I noticed this when we stopped in a sunny clearing to rest on our way to the stream.

  ‘Aren’t they eating you alive?’ I asked her.

  ‘Nope. They never do.’

  ‘What’s your secret?’

  ‘When I was about five, I saved a mosquito’s life. Word got around. They haven’t touched me ever since.’

  ‘She told me that story when I was five,’ Connie said. ‘It’s such bullshit.’

  Billie gave her daughter a big understanding smile. ‘Think what you like, dear.’

  ‘I think they leave you alone ’cause they don’t like your smell.‘

  ‘You’re such a sweetheart.’

  ‘You smell fine,’ I told her.

  Hell, I thought she smelled great.

  ‘Thank you, Rupert,’ she said.

  ‘Whatever your secret is, I wish I had it. These things are driving me nuts.’

  ‘All they want,’ Kimberly said, ‘is a little of your blood. They aren’t asking much.’

  ‘I’d just as soon keep my blood,’ I told her. ‘You’re just letting them have at you?’

  ‘Trying to fight them off is a losing battle. I accept what I can’t change.’

  Connie smirked. ‘The bullshit’s thicker than the mosquitoes around here.’

  I smacked a mosquito on my forehead.

  After a while, we got moving again and came to the stream. We gathered along its shore, and looked both ways as if we’d come to a highway and were worried about getting struck down by a speeding truck.

  No sign of Wesley or Thelma or anyone.

  The stream flowed along at a pretty good clip, splashing over rocks, coming down from the high ground to our right. Looking to my left, I saw it running downhill toward our beach. I couldn’t see our beach, though. Or the ocean. Just trees and bushes and hanging vines - and birds swooping here and there. Not much of the stream was visible, either. About thirty feet away, it curved out of sight.

  ‘Hold this for me,’ Connie said. She thrust her spear into her mother’s free hand, then climbed down into the stream. She knelt, bent over, and cupped some water into her mouth. Then she started splashing and rubbing herself, apparently to soothe the itch of her mosquito bites.

  The way she acted, it must’ve felt really good.

  The rest of us still stood on the bank.

  ‘How are you doing with that ax?’ Kimberly asked me.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Want me to take it for a while?’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure we’re just below the lagoon.’ She stepped down into the water. Billie and I did the same. ‘It’ll be an easy hike from here,’ Kimberly said, ‘but we’d better keep our eyes open.’

  We crouched and took drinks, then just stood in the stream to wait for Connie to finish. I sort of felt like rolling in the water and rubbing my itches, too. But it was only a few inches deep here. I preferred to wait for the lagoon.

  Connie took her time, as if she enjoyed making us wait. I didn’t mind much. It was just fine with me, watching her flop around all shiny and wet in her transparent T-shirt and her feeble excuse for a bikini.

  Finally, she stood up. Billie returned her spear, and we got moving again.

  We made our way single file up the stream bed. Sometimes we walked in the water, sometimes on dry rocks alongside it. It was much easier than trekking through the jungle. As we went along, though, the terrain got steeper. The stream tumbled down, loud and frothy. We had to climb, and sometimes leap from rock to rock. Luckily, things never got so steep that we needed our hands.

  Kimberly had said it would be ‘an easy hike’ to the lagoon.

  For her, I suppose it was.

  The rest of us had to stop a few times along the way.

  Our last halt was called by Kimberly, which surprised me. Had she finally gotten worn out enough to need a rest?

  Nope.

  She sat on a rock. As she waited for the rest of us, she set her spear aside, took off the tomahawk hanging by her hip, and slipped out of Keith’s gaudy shirt. When we arrived, s
he said, ‘We’re just about there. I’ll go on up. You guys wait here, okay? I want to take a look around.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go alone,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be in plain sight. Just up there.’ She turned her head and nodded toward the higher rocks. ‘I want to make sure the coast is clear.’

  We agreed to stay behind.

  Kimberly climbed the rocks to the right of the stream. Just below the top, she scurried part way up the face of a large slab that was at about a forty-five-degree angle. Then she sank to her belly and squirmed the rest of the way.

  She lay flat, her head up. For a long time, she didn’t seem to move at all. Then her head made small, slow turns from one side to the other.

  The three of us watched her from below, and said nothing for a long time.

  After maybe ten minutes, though, Connie muttered, ‘What the hell’s taking her so long?’

  ‘Maybe she sees something,’ Billie said.

  ‘Maybe she just wants to make sure nobody’s there,’ I suggested.

  ‘This is stupid, waiting around.’

  ‘A few more minutes won’t hurt anything,’ Billie told her. All patience and calm. ‘Just relax.’

  A few more minutes passed. Connie spent them sighing and shaking her head and rolling her eyes upward.

  It annoyed me. ‘You late for an appointment?’ I finally asked.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Billie said softly, ‘Cut it out, Connie.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to be such a fucking wise-ass all the time.’

  ‘Would you please watch your language?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Take his side, why don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not taking any sides. I just think you should settle down, all right? You’re not improving the situation. And it seems like all I’ve been hearing out of you lately is “fuck” this and “fuck” that. You wouldn’t be talking that way if your father was around.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t.’ She said that in a very snotty fashion.

  ‘No, he isn’t.’ Billie said that in a sad way that made me get tight in my throat.

  And Connie suddenly started to cry.

  Her mother tried to put an arm around her, but Connie shoved it away and blurted, ‘Don’t touch me. Leave me alone.’ She turned her back on both of us, and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t make much noise with her crying - just a gasp or sniffle now and then. But she was crying pretty good. I could tell by the way her back and shoulders kept jumping.