Death Island

by Joan Conning Afman

  Danny was deep into the woods now, approaching each hulking boulder with caution but growing more confident as he sensed no other human presence. The lay of the land went gradually upward; the red cliffs were almost directly above him now. There was a sort of path winding gradually up toward the summit. Was it made by animals, Danny wondered, or—scary thought—by those diabolical minds who had conceived this island prison?

  It seemed almost predestined that as he rounded a twist in the trail, he happened upon the little cave in the face of the cliff.

  Well, isn’t this convenient,” he said to himself. Halfway to the top of the cliff, and night’s coming on. He noticed the light beginning to fade, and he for sure didn’t want to be caught in the dark without shelter, a place to sleep—if he were able to sleep. He couldn’t risk going on in the dark. His stomach, although he was used to ignoring its signals, was protesting the lack of food, and he was beginning to feel tired. At the same time, his sixth sense warned him that this shelter was a setup, this cave with its welcome splash of water that fell from the cliff beside it. It was the perfect place to sit down and rest, and watch for the approach of anyone else. He decided to play the game and oblige the cameras. He wondered, just for a second of two, if Charlie Adjavon was watching him at this very moment.

  A small flat rock at the entrance of the cave provided a convenient seat. He fished around in his backpack and fished out two nutrition bars. It felt good to sit down and get the thing off his back. He munched silently, looking around, keeping his facial expressions in check. He hoped the viewing public would become bored with him and change the channel.

  Twilight descended and Danny entered the cave, as he knew he was expected to. He even lit a fire, hoping to make them believe he intended to spend the night. He had changed his mind about the darkness. It might hold enemies, yes, but it might also prove his best friend. The fire, started with kindling scattered on the cave floor and matches from his backpack, settled into a warm glow. Danny lay back to wait, his arms beneath his head. After an hour, the sounds of night began in earnest, and blackness stretched like a black velvet mask across the distant horizon. Danny dozed a little, like a cat, with one eye open and one ear cocked. Finally, in the silent, all-pervading darkness, he rose.

  He made no sound as he left the cave. His feet found the convenient path again, and he began climbing toward the jagged cliffs, rising jet black against a Van Gogh star-studded sky.

  Chapter Two

  Tom Koranda fainted on the drop to the ground. He was vaguely aware that his chute had opened. Just as he passed out, he felt an unreasoning gratitude to the two officers for taking charge of pulling the cord. He knew he couldn’t have done it. He had never been so petrified in his life.

  When he came to, it was if he had taken a short nap. He lay, belly down, his face turned to the left, as if he had been sunbathing. His parachute covered him like a blanket. He was quite comfortable—until he opened his eyes and suddenly remembered where he was.

  It came flooding back like a nasty toothache, but wasn’t a toothache, or even a nightmare that would vanish with the dawn. It was a real, live bad dream, and it wasn’t going away.

  He sat up carefully, testing for broken anything, and concluded he was still all in one piece. He ached all over, especially his left shoulder and all along that side.

  “Guess that’s where I hit the ground,” he groaned, then looked around in all directions, terrified that someone might have heard him. He fully expected a vicious killer to be lurking behind the nearest tree. After all, that’s who was here, wasn’t it? Three hundred of the nation’s most violent killers—and he, Tom Koranda, whose worst crime was only greed. He admitted that he had ruined a number of peoples’ lives, but that was just financial; people could recover from that. It wasn’t murder.

  He stood up, testing his aches. Not too bad, considering. He was grateful for once for the extra pounds on his body that had cushioned his fall.

  Tom clambered to his feet and made a slow, circular turn-around. His first priority was to get himself out of sight of whoever might be watching. He might be greedy, but he wasn’t stupid, by any means. He had to make himself invisible.

  He knew, of course, that at this very moment he might be on television. Millions of people could be—and probably were—watching him right now, sitting on their over-stuffed sofas and feeding their over-stuffed faces, and betting that he wouldn’t last the night.

  Just like he used to do. He had to admit he had been addicted to the show, wouldn’t miss an episode of Death Island on a bet. Man, that had been a kick when Myron Saddles had bought the farm, however it had happened.

  Tom struggled out of his parachute. Heaving and twisting, he adjusted his backpack. Dragging the parachute, he walked as fast as he could toward the trees, where they were the thickest and would provide the most cover. It was only one hundred feet or so, but he panted like a dog as he waddled along in the broiling sun. He reached the tree line and stepped into its merciful shade. As he wiped his brow, a flutter of white caught his attention. He looked up, froze in horror, and heard his own scream of terror echo through the woods. He clapped a hand over his mouth but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the horrible sight above him. High in a tree was the remains of a bedraggled parachute, and beside it, caught by the neck and swinging slowly back and forth was a skeleton. Its bones were bleached starkly white and—as if in defiant contrast—a large black bird sat on its skull, cocking its head from side to side as it glared down at him.

  His scream faded away, leaving the woods quieter than before. The birds began their chatter again, as if to pass on the message that someone had invaded their territory. Tom, listening, heard small disturbances in the brush, like minute animals moving around, but there seemed to be nothing of a threatening nature. He let out a long sigh of relief.

  “Whew! That was a scare, but looks like everything’s okay—” He broke off, chiding himself. “You have to stop talking to yourself out loud, Tom. When you live by yourself, it gets to be a habit, but you can’t do it here.”

  He stuffed the parachute into the low branches of a tree. Right now he couldn’t think of a need for it, and he had to find a safe place to spend the night. He wondered where that picturesque cave was, the one he had seen on the program. Maybe he could find that and spend the night there. Danny might even be there.

  With that encouraging thought, he began to thread his way through the trees. His eyes darted everywhere, looking for every speck of movement or color that seemed out of place. He stopped abruptly when he came to what looked like a narrow path. Was it a path, or wasn’t it? It wasn’t a cleared path, but it was definitely a way through the trees and brush—maybe something the animals used. He took it.

  After an hour, Tom felt the first pangs of hunger. A fat log invited him to sit down and rest. An oversized red and black spotted ladybug sat on the far end of the log and refused to fly away when he swatted at it. It fixed him with a glittery black eye.

  “Go away!” he said, taking another pass at it. It didn’t move. He leaned in closer. “Are you dead?” he asked. “You don’t look dead.” The bug didn’t respond.

  Tom reached over and touched it with a finger. No response.

  “Aaah.” Tom knew what it was, then, one of those effin’ little cameras they disguised as other things, planted all over the island. He set his backpack down on top of it, but even closing that camera off, he was sure there were others recording his every move.

  Tom sat for a while, trying to assess his situation, while he ate a couple of granola bars and chewed on some dried meat. “Tastes like dead meat,” he said, then silently cursed himself as he realized he’d spoken aloud again. “Bad habit, have to stop that.”

  He stood up and groaned as he adjusted his backpack. Everything seemed to hurt more than it had a couple of hours ago. He set off down the path. Plodding onward, he began to feel apprehensive as the sun continued its westward descent toward the horizon.

  A
s he rounded a bend in the trail, he felt thirsty, and as in answer, he heard a faint sound of water trickling. Did he feel thirsty because, even before he consciously heard the water running, his subconscious had registered it? Boy, these bastards were brilliant, the way they designed this island to lead the prisoners where they wanted them to go, without their having a clue that they were being manipulated.

  He turned off the trail toward the water sound and pushed his way through thirty feet of dense brush. He emerged from the bushes to find himself on the pebbled bank of a brook, not more than five feet wide, and shallow.

  “Fish in there, without a doubt,” he muttered.

  He let the backpack fall from his shoulders, and with some effort lowered himself to his knees and scooped up the water with his hands. It was cold and refreshing, and tasted better than the French bottled water he bought at the supermarket. There were indeed fish, and they darted away, slivers of bright colors, from his hands, but not too far. He could weave a net from reeds, he thought, and catch them easily. He didn’t know if he could build a fire, but if he got hungry enough he could eat them raw. He wouldn’t starve in this God-forsaken place, but he’d most likely trim down at last. If he lived long enough.

  Looking around for a likely space to raise his tent, he became aware of a large tangled thicket of brambles that seemed to have a clear spot in the center. That might be better, he reasoned. What if he settled in there for the night? He would be hidden from sight and protected by the thorns.

  Many scratches later, Tom lay invisible to the world around him, more or less comfortable on a mattress of branches and leaves. The feather-weight blanket from his knapsack was ample covering. He nibbled on another health bar. The woods swallowed up the remaining sunlight, and Tom began to feel sleepy. As if on cue, a gray owl emerged from his home in a tree above him, tilted its head so that its huge yellow eyes looked directly at Tom, and began a series of mournful cries.

  Tom shivered as total darkness enveloped him, and the final realization of where he was hit him anew. He, Tom Koranda, of all men, was ill-equipped to survive here, yet survive by his own wits he must.

  As sleep failed to come, Tom tried some of the mental relaxation exercises he had used at home. He was jolted back to wakefulness at each snap of a twig, each rustle in the brush. Once, when he had almost dozed off, he awoke with a shriek, thinking he saw the skeleton in the tree dancing in the air above him. He tossed and turned for hours, exhausted but unable to sleep, until finally, curled up in the fetal position, he gave way to his despair and blubbered like a baby until dawn.

  Chapter Three

  “Did I tell you that I ran into him in the hardware store once?” Charlie asked.

  “Ran into whom?” Mindy Stuart adjusted several plump pillows behind her, as she settled her petite frame into the deep folds of Charlie’s blue leather sofa.

  Charlie Adjavon regarded her best friend with good-natured disgust. “Danny Manning, that’s who.”

  Mindy was tiny and blonde like Charlie herself, and Charlie often thought the two of them could have been sisters. “I just told you that the other day when we were shopping for shoes.”

  “Then why are you telling me again?” Mindy asked, laughing. “Of course I had just found that awesome pair of brown leather boots … did you speak to him?”

  “Of course she did,” broke in Heather Waverly, the third member of the foursome who met regularly at Charlie’s to watch Death Island. “You know Charlie is famous for speaking to everyone—the perfect minister’s wife.” Heather, tall and ash-blond with a sharp-planed face, was slowly losing the battle of the bulge. Charlie wondered fleetingly if she should have cut up some celery for the dip for Heather, but that might have been seen as an insult, so she hadn’t. Heather shifted in her seat and crossed and uncrossed her long, not-so-slim legs several times, as if trying to get comfortable.

  Charlie laughed. “About the ‘perfect’ thing,” she said, “I do my best. About the Danny thing, of course I spoke to him. He had just been over to talk to Paul about renovations for the church kitchen. I asked him if he’d found everything he needed.”

  Sarah Bishop giggled. She pushed back her long, lustrous black hair with a quick hand and remarked, “I bet he said he’d just had his axe sharpened.”

  “As a matter of fact, he did,” Charlie acknowledged, “and then, just out of the blue, he asked me what ‘Charlie’ stood for. I told him ‘Charlotte,’ and he grinned and said he was always amused when he heard the minister and his wife referred to as ‘Paul and Charlie.’ ”

  “Any man’s name coupled with ‘Charlie’ would still sound like a gay couple,” Heather observed.

  “Guess so,” Charlie agreed. “And then, know what else he said?”

  There was a chorus of “what’s?” as everyone leaned into the circle toward Charlie. She picked up the bowl of dip and passed it to Sarah on her left, then handed the basket of corn chips to Heather on her right, hoping she would just pass them on, which she didn’t.

  “He said,” she continued, “in just a bit of a flirty little way, that I must have gotten my slanty green eyes from some Asian ancestor, maybe some Chinese Shar’Pei.”

  Mindy gasped, Heather smiled, and Sarah’s deep, throaty laugh boomed across the room. “Sounds like a dog,” Sarah observed.

  Charlie glanced at her, peeved. It hadn’t been necessary for her to add that. “I looked it up,” she said. “It’s a Chinese girls’ name. Means ‘to walk in beauty.’ ”

  “What was he doing when he said that?” Mindy asked.

  “Just leaning on the counter looking down at me,” Charlie replied. “He really was—is—quite an attractive man, you know,” Her mind obligingly conjured up an image of Danny, real as a photograph. Tall, but not too tall. Not as tall as Paul, but more muscular than her husband, who was on the thin side. Danny had sandy hair worn a little longer than usual. It curled up just below his ears, and Charlie remembered how she had clutched the strap of her shoulder bag with both hands, resisting the itch to reach up and twist one of those little tendrils around her finger. After all, the little voice inside reminded her, you already have the perfect life. Don’t mess it up.

  The other women looked at her, waiting. She brought herself back to the moment. Sarah took advantage of Charlie’s pensive mood to tease, half-seriously, “You sound like you were experiencing some kind of instant attraction to him, Charlie. You’re not in the middle of the seven year itch, are you? Looking for a little extra-marital action?”

  “Of course not!” Charlie replied, a sharp edge to her voice. “And I’ve been married twelve years, thank you very much. I would never, ever have an affair!”

  She softened her expression and threw Sarah a little grin. “But just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu.”

  “Amen,” Sarah agreed, gazing down into her wine, “especially when life offers such a banquet.”

  It broke the tension, and everyone laughed, although, Charlie observed, Heather did not look at her, and her response seemed a little forced.

  “Wouldn’t you, Charlie?” Sarah asked. “Under any circumstances?”

  “I certainly would try not to,” Charlie replied. “I can’t believe adultery is right under any circumstances, and I would never want to be responsible for hurting another woman like that. I’ve seen too many women—and men—devastated by their mates’ infidelity.”

  Changing the subject, Heather asked, “Did he seem like a—you know, an evil, threatening person to you, Charlie?”

  Charlie knew what an effort Heather had made to belong to their little group. It was sometimes daunting to be too friendly with the minister’s wife, who was supposed to be equally friendly with everyone, but Charlie had always felt a need for close friends. She and Mindy had clicked immediately. Sarah was Mindy’s close friend, and Charlie had come to know Heather well because their nine-year-old daughters were best friends. She glanced over at Heather. “Not at all,” she said. “And I
didn’t think for one second that he was the serial killer. I didn’t suspect that at all—until …”

  “Until they found his wife,” Mindy concluded, “practically in your backyard.”

  “Our houses are close,” Charlie agreed. She glanced toward the window at the Mannings house, but there was nothing to see in the darkness, because no one lived there now. And no one seemed to want to buy the house where Northington’s infamous axe murderer had lived. It was already looking shabby, as if ashamed of its former owner.

  “It’s on—turn up the volume,” Sarah noted, glancing at her watch.

  Charlie fiddled with the remote, and Death Island rose out of the mist. Green and lush, it looked like a paradise, the kind of place you might take your family for an unspoiled, tourist-free vacation. But it was no paradise for the several hundred men sent there for life. How many still survived was anybody’s guess.

  The host of the show, suave, sophisticated Pierre LeGrande—stolen from WHIT, Wichita, Kansas—swiveled toward them in his armchair. He was ostensibly reading a book, but obviously it was just a device to get his points across.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “As you all know, two more convicted felons were dropped off on Death Island just yesterday. One of them, Tom Koranda, tried to bilk the United States government out of more than forty billion dollars. Billion, ladies and gents.” He waggled a finger at the audience. “Now, you just don’t do that to our fine government, so the Death Island Commission made an exception for old Tom. Instead of five hundred years in prison, he gets life on Death Island. Fair, don’t you think?” He looked off into space for a few seconds before glancing down at the book spread across his knees. He traced a few sentences with his finger, as if finding a point the wished to make.