by Robert Lyon
Tammy responded, “We have more fish back at our camp.”
Smity noticed this and in a hush said, “Lyon, disloyalty to the captain now might get you killed.” I replied, “Don’t go completely crazy on us now dude, I can’t guaranty we’ll be getting this many fish every week.” Smity said, “Just be careful, where are you getting the water from.” Jennifer replied, “We have to evaporate the sea water in the boilers we made.” Smity smiled a delirious smiled and asked me if that were true and I said, “Yes, they’re mad from mud, like a ceramic, so don’t get too excited.” Smity said loud enough to be overheard, “So your
T.A.D. that’s good, see you again soon Lyon.” We headed back and Tammy, Megan, and Michelle sat talking and eating. Mitch watched and eavesdropped with an occasional chuckle.
Michelle said, “Rob, Tammy said the captain has mentioned cannibalism so many times they think he is planning on it but doesn’t seem to want to be the first…” Tammy interjected, “I think they’re going to kill the first person that goes cannibal and then all eat both of them. But now there’s the fish.” Michelle added, “But that’s how damn crazy they are now and they keep getting asked who’s still loyal to the captain.” I responded, “Ya, one of the gunner’s mates mentioned that, we may need a security post soon.” Mitch said, “I’ve been feeling like someone’s been watching us.” Mike Elper blurted out,
“Definitely dude” Michael added, “We were hoping that was just the pigs.” Michelle said, “Me, Ebony, and Mike should take the watches, you others just keep up the fish and water.” I replied, “Tomorrow I’ll work on arrows and a sling.”
At the landing Artimus was interviewing Koleson. Artimus said. “Well quartermaster, you up to these tasks?” Koleson replied, “We going to get off this island sir?” Artimus responded, “One thing at a time. The operational demands of the navy have slowed their response time, the nation’s security maybe at risk.” Koleson replied, “Ya, so are we getting off this island sir?” Artimus leaned in and said, “Look you dumb ass we have to maintain order around here. I know what a fag you are, but you I know well from our bridge watches together. So pull your bitch ass together and just do and say what I tell you to.”
Koleson replied, “Then what the fuck are we even talking about? Is there some other captain around here?” Artimus replied, “You know…just go get Petty officer Smity for me and relax, okay?” Koleson looked around and called out, “Hey,
Smity…you fuck, get over here.”
Smity came over and glanced at the captain then back at
Koleson and asked, “What!?” Koleson replied, “He wants to talk to you.” Smity smugly responded, “That is the Captain. A ‘He’ is what you suck.” Koleson grabbed Smity’s genitals and gave them a two shake then walked off. Smity yelled at him as he walked away, “Fucking fag!” then turned to the captain and with all the politeness of a waiter at an upscale restaurant asked, “Can
I get you something captain?” Artimus replied, “No, bitch boy just clued me in on something…for many of these kids, I’m the only captain here and not having a captain is something they wouldn’t understand. Adjust your screenings appropriately”.
Smity said without a flinch, “Aye, Aye captain” and returned to
his patrolling the groups like campus security at a nineteen sixties sit in. They all sat eating the fish that had been delivered and Smity was playing the politician with the exception of his mocking gestures and verbal abuse to anyone complaining, he made sure everyone expressed some gratitude toward the captain for the food they had received. But those that knew the people that had delivered it understood that the captain had nothing to do with the food or water they had been receiving and they were coming to resent the ‘pentagon’.
As Smity strolled the landing camp he said to himself, “Idle hands are the devils best friend” which was overheard by Rick
Broden and Sam Tomley. Sam asked Rick, “What the hell does he expect us to be doing?” Rick sat there in the sand with Sam broken and disillusioned he took up a large pinch of sand and tossed it into the air and said, “D.C. – P.M.S., waxing a passageway…painting something, he doesn’t understand where the hell we are.” Smity stopped cold in his tracks and played frozen statue for a moment then turn to look at them, he now realized his misunderstanding as to the natives and the phrase
‘going native’ but considered maybe they still had the misconception. He then replied, “This is a savage island. There are threats everywhere, and it’s not a drill. Maybe you guys would like to stand a watch or two.” Smity pointed at the dried mud walls of the pentagon and continued, “those walls won’t offer much protection if we were attacked, and honestly some of the officers are concerned with the possibility if mass hysteria.
So, find a heavy rock and set a post.” As they got up to find a heavy rock to use as a defensive weapon and a heavier rock to use as a barrier, Rick blurted out, “Idle hands are the devils workshop, not the devils best friend.” Smity smirked and
replied, “That is how that goes, and you two will be the watch captains.”
With that it was done, the first positions had been assigned and their loyalty to the captain hinged on a simple point of purpose and identity…Rick Broden and Sam Tomley would be the watch captains, the authority that would bring them and the sense of security it afforded would be something they would not easily relinquish and would maintain under threat of subjugation to someone else notion of what their purpose should be.
Posts had been set around the landing as sunset approached.
While over at the boiler site, inspection and repair of our fishing net was our top priority aside from gathering wood for running our distillation boilers. Michael said, “It’s getting colder.” and he shivered a little. Michelle replied, “Ya, the wind picked up again” Mike put down his work and said, “Well I’m headed inside” he smiled as he went into the cabana. Mike stood there in the cabana and looked around then ask, “Why is it again that these don’t have walls?” Jennifer responded, “Were going to make tent like curtains for it. Mike smiled a big smile and scoffed, “That’ll help…well, I’ll work on that…inside!”
All the plant material we had gathered to use for the net making was lying nearby and now we were making the curtains for the cabana. The increase in wind was chilling at first but as we huddled together and back to back we realized it wasn’t that bad. The work went fairly quickly as we joked about our love lives and how drunk we would get as soon as we returned. As night finally fell, we had so much work done it was nearly three separate blankets we shared.
Michelle nuzzled my back and Athena elbowed me in the face, over the course of the night they had both kneed me in the groin, I came to believe this is why men are supposed to be on
top. Michael only got kneed in the groin once by Jennifer, and
Mitch only had to take Dave’s hands out of his crotch once.
Tammy woke up in the middle of the night and squatted for a piss in the sand way too close to camp, between the moonlight and the boiler fires she was highly visible, the guys joked that they had never found that particular fetish exciting before, but there was something about the way tammy squatted with the firelight reflecting off her rump and the blue moonlight shading the rest of her body, that was just inspiring.
The next day I woke up and my upper lip was itching, I never liked having a mustache, I sat up and glanced around for anything that I might be able to shave with. I walked the beach picking up shells and found one as thick and ridged that it needed to be to handle any type of sharpening, and used a stone and sand to gently grind away the sides of the edge, being careful not to cause jagged points. I tried scrapping at my beard stubble with it be it may as well been a butter knife. Everyone had woken up and sat giggling at me trying to shave with a shell, so I took a smoldering stick out of one of the boiler fireboxes and singed the stubble and scrapped it off with the shell. When it came to my upper lip I was a little more concerned with burns, but the itch
ing drove me nuts it must have taken over an hour but much of the stubble did scrape off.
After I had finished I walked back over to Mike, Athena, and Michelle sitting in the cabana, they had resumed work on the curtain. Tommi, Mitch, and Dave went fishing and everyone else was still milling about. Michelle grabbed my face asking,
“Did it work?” as she leaned in inspecting my face. She added,
“You actually got some of it off, you’re totally going to have to do my legs for me.” As she laughed pulling up her pant leg and showing the hair on her legs. Athena blurted out, “That’s
nothing, close your eyes Rob.” I closed my eyes and felt the stubble on Athena’s calf brushing up against my cheek. I opened my eyes and she rested her leg on my shoulder continuing to rub her calf against my cheek. She looked at me intensely asking,
“When do you want to start?” I replied, “Let’s find some more food first.”
At the landing Artimus stood outside his pentagon fort calling out names for morning muster, “Clarkson, Spayner,
Swishzer, Brosuer, Casius, Deckly, and Wildly. Morning quarters for you will be held in the pentagon. The following people will be present as master at arms; Smity, Broden,
Tomely, Dragie, and Casley.” Master chief Hauldbalm uttered to
McCree, “I guess he doesn’t need me anymore…too bad he didn’t need that ship anymore we might’a gotten home somehow.” Charlie McCree sighed, “I’ll ask him.” As Charlie walked over to Artimus she said, “Captain…” Atimus interjected, “The rest of you will get your instructions once we’re done.” Charlie blurted out as Artimus walked to the pentagon entrance, “And the Master Chief?” Artimus replied, “I don’t have anything for him.”
Wildly followed the group in with a degree of anxiety and uncertainty he had been called in not as a master at arms but among the officers and chiefs, he had only been a third class mess specialtist. As they entered Artimus said, “First things first…” Clarkson interjected, “Find the water and food?”
Artimus looked at her with a subtle hint of dismay and corrected her, “Burial detail. Mormus has been asleep for going on three days mumbling about how he needed his hat…the ship is going down, and there is something vital he can’t forget…his hat. And he fared better than several others.”
Clarkson did a bizarre facial expression of a quick dismissive smirk, almost as though it were just an involuntary twitch, and rolled her eyes. Swishzer started to cry and Wildly suddenly found himself out of breath. The majority of the briefing was on how to conceal this from the survivors they were attempting to convince were still very much a crew under the captains command.
Sitting out at the posts stationed around the pentagon were a series of human maladies given a disgraceful unshapely form that being ‘sailors’. Gunners mate guns third class petty officer
Eric Milson stood up and stretched his legs and looking at his former zombie crew, pasty white and in a malaise from lack of food and low water intake. Eric decided to go for a walk. He headed to a cluster of trees and decided to see where it went.
Eric climbed that tree like a half monkey half lumber jack and lumber he did right up the tree. Eric Milson had been a clumsy guy a little taller than was comfortable on a destroyer. He actually reached the top and noticed all he could really see was the same as before, an ocean and trees. The smaller trees were hard to disguise between a tree and a bush, there were also flares of yellow flora from what seemed to be bamboo. With his legs wrapped around the tree trunk he extended his arms like wings and rocked to and fro. He decided to build a tree house, and
‘screw everyone else.’
With some effort Eric realized the reeds he had found were absolutely not bamboo, it lacked rigidity and strength, there were short sections strong enough but nothing really wide. He thought maybe just a net then glanced around for rope and saw nothing but twigs. So, Eric lay down beneath the tree looking at the bright blue sky and fantasized about his tree house and all his friends celebrating his accomplishment. They would pass
around beers and toast Eric’s strength and fidelity to his friends, he would barbeque chicken and ribs as well as hotdogs and hamburgers for the kids. And Eric would have kids, with his wife Fiona Apple .
Back at the boiler site we toiled away, fishing and making our curtain. David Miles called over to me, “We’re testing the sun dial. What time is it?” I looked back at him in a daze and waited for him to realize the impossibility of his question. He looked over at me and gestured with the shaking of his hands then looked down at his wrist and then shook his hands again.
Finally in defeat he asked, “Well, what time is it?” I said,
“That’s why we need a sun dial.” at exactly the same time
Michelle replied, “Time for all of us to get a new watch.” David looked back at us and slumped his shoulders down a little, he pointed at the shadow of the stick we had placed in the sand and said, “That’s what time it is…I guess no one knows.” There was a whimper in the latter half of his statement as though those words ‘…I guess no one knows’ actually pertained to us being lost at sea and had nothing to do with the sun dial or the time.
Chapter Seven
A lost frontier
It had been a couple of days on the island and survival was all we had attended to, which did however triggers some lustful drives in us but at the same time we were too focused on saving each other to chase that horse too far.
We had two cabanas, with a cobble stone courtyard, four ceramic boilers used as stills, a make shift fishing ‘boat’, a few small ropes, a fishing net, and some clothe curtains that may one day be sails though they were too shear for that. As the day
passed it began to feel routine already. I expected couples to start forming but it seems the women were smarter than that. I would have to tend to their shaving until they caught the knack and we all served as bed warmers. As our hunger was satiated, we became bland and lacking any vision of escape and dwelled, now even within our dreams, on the island. Tammy’s ass exposed as she urinated in the sand in the moonlight, Michelle scrubbing her toe nails with sand, Jennifer scratching at her crotch, Tommi trying to keep her hair from knotting, and Athena dealing with her cleavage were my distraction and it came to seem as though their distractions were intentional and was making sure no one guy leaned toward any one girl too much.
Eric Milson over at the landing had gathered twigs and brush and was doing his best weaving, occasionally glancing up at the trees his tree house would span across. Atrisia sat in her panties in the wet sand cooling her feet watching him in astonishment. Artimus stood staring at her and the look on her face wondering if she was going to sprout a fish’s tail and swim away as the mermaid that lead the ship to its doom. But staring at her panties was much like staring at a pot waiting for water to boil it just seems nothing’s going on there at all.
At the boiler Joseph Leos had just dropped off more wood for the boiler fires and flex for the cheering girls, he noticed
Tommi actually blushed and Tammy didn’t seem interested at all. Megan was speaking to mike about the animal prints in the soil, mike came off as a little bit on the red neck side and she assumed he would know how to hunt, he seemed to take this as a matter of him being a man and would certainly know how to hunt but knew very little about tracking, hunting, or cleaning a kill.
I was going to refine our boat and had been working on burning logs to split them and sand them to form instead it was another boat entirely, not as ambitious as it would need to be to hold the necessary previsions for a transpacific sail back to the continent which it seemed would have to have been south
America then to somewhere civilized enough that there would be phones and A.T.M.s as well as airports but honestly the insecurity we were suffering conjured fantasies of sailing up the coastline to California, rather than offloading in south America and waiting for pick up or just taking a commercial airline back home.
Aritmus had finally achieved some modi
cum of order he had his ‘in crowd’ that he believed would stick with him regardless of what developed, in retrospect I believe his concern of cannibalism was driven by sleep deprivation, dehydration, or perhaps malnutrition. He was significantly older than the rest of the crew he and the master chief were both more than forty years old and the week on the water may have brought them closer to being a dying animal then the rest of us, for me it was like a week of hard sleep with a sever flu.
Artimus had patrols formed which circled the landing site and went just past the ridge establishing a ‘comfort zone for the troops’. We, at the boiler site had left even before the chaos had set in and a few more had joined us once their groups had ostracized them had been labeled ‘the natives’. He warned the rest that leaving camp without permission would constitute desertion and any fraternization with the natives would constitute insurrection. Artimus tried to emulate a southern
Baptist preacher he had seen on television as he spoke to the crew, “This is going to be our home for a week or two and this is where we are safe.” He paused and smiled. He turned and
looked to his left and speaking with hand gestures intended to objectify his speech there by distancing himself and his audience from the realities of which he spoke, “I will not have anyone endangering our safe heaven, we have worked too hard to survive to this point and to maintain any promise of surviving longer.” Artimus actually strut his way over to the vases which still contained some water and continued, “So long as the natives still bring us tribute or water and fish we will not encroach upon their land. They seem happy in their way of life and we will leave them to it.” Artimus looked down at the sand beneath his feet and kicked up a handful of sand as he said, “We need to establish our buying power, to show them we do have some influence in what it is we get, their tributes are certainly enough to keep us alive but we may want some extra. So I need to take a collection of money from you. You will be compensated or reimbursed upon our rescue.” and with that the king headed into his castle.