by Todd Russell
* * *
Richard dove for the knife lying in the sand. He landed with a jolt to his ribs which re-aggravated Jackson's blows. His hand touched the hilt of the knife.
Safety.
He turned, the knife in hand, only to see that Butch Smith was also diving.
Except Smith wasn't diving for the knife in his hands, he already had one.
And it was aimed at Richard's heart.
"RICHARD!" Jessica screamed again and started forward.
Time slowed down so much it almost stopped. Butch Jackson was flying through the air like the huge birds in his dream. The knife was just one of its talons. The expression on Butch Smith's face overflowed with fury.
The frame moved ahead. Butch Jackson flying closer. The knife, closer. The impact, closer.
Richard brought his own knife around attempting to create a stake for Butch Smith to impale himself upon. At least then Richard wouldn't go down alone.
The frame moved ahead. Butch Smith closer, knife closer, impact closer. Richard's knife was past his armpit, sticking out like an evil extra limb.
The heart, cover the heart! THE HEART.
The frame moved once more and the impact came. The sun briefly darkened and the sounds of the crashing tides were replaced with the sound of Butch Smith's knife sticking into . . .
Something.
Pain. Waiting for the pain.
The heart. Cover the heart. COVER THE FUCKING HEART. It was too late.
It took a long second to register what flesh Butch Smith's knife had violated. A long second for Richard and Smith to realize what happened. Both of their hot, sticky breaths followed the line of light the knife had carved to its destination; the sunlight's shiny reflection on the silver blade.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Richard realized something warm was dripping on him before he saw where Smith's knife had struck. Something warm and slick. Something like blood. At last they both saw where the knife had landed. Sixteen inches from its intended destination. Sixteen inches from Richard's heart, over the small hump of his left breast, and into—into—into—
Into the sand between Richard's arm and side. Drip, drip, drip, drip. The warm drip became a warm ooze.
Both sets of eyes turned to register the path of the other knife.
The other knife, the knife Richard had held, had struck its target.
It had struck, pierced, and lodged itself permanently in Butch Smith's right breast.
The warm oozing of Smith's blood started flowing and then spurting. Butch Smith's surprise transformed to shock.
Followed by horror.
A puddle of Smith's blood collected on Richard before he found the ability to do anything. He pushed Smith's shoulder. He shoved and rolled Smith's spurting bloody body off him.
* * *
Helpless, Butch Smith laid in a puddle of his own gore, blood running from the knife slot in his body.
He had failed the second crossing.
Or had he?
The second crossing had not been murder, it had been truth, and now the truth was finally clear.
Butch would never see his wife and child again because they had never disappeared. He saw them now, appearing in the dimming light.
They had been the first ones he'd killed. As the darkness seized him, they waved goodbye.
* * *
Richard's corpse. At first Jessica thought Butch Smith's knife had kept to its path but then she realized that it was Smith instead, who had become the corpse. Butch Smith had been killed.
Frigid hands grabbed and forced her around.
She stood staring at the picture-perfect face of a thousand nightmare boogies.
Jumping Bat Jackson was back.
* * *
The Fearless Forenza had taken the coward's cheap shot way, and then pinned his tag-team partner while Bat went down from the foul. The son of a bitch, cheating bastard. The crowd was chanting Forenza's name. Why were they doing that? The crowd sounded like a loud wind. Couldn't the crowd see who had cheated? Were they that fucking blind?
And now he had the Fearless one's tag-team partner. He had the woman between his hands like a plastic model. He could snap her so easily.
The commissioner wants her alive. The commissioner.
Bat Jackson's remaining mind began to crumble and implode. The woman in front of him warped into a stranger. Someone he felt like he knew from somewhere before. Not a stranger. Someone he knew, not stranger, someone he knew, stranger, not stranger, knew, stranger, knew stranger—
"Who are you?" he asked the woman.
She brought the knife from her side and thrust it in his stomach.
"AHHHHHHHHHH!" He recoiled as she twisted the knife into his stomach, ripping flesh and intestines. He watched, astonished, too shocked to protect himself.
Blood started to pour from his innards, he felt the sharpest blow he'd ever been dealt pinch every pain nerve in his body. Incredible forces of pain from Forenza—
(No, no, no! It wasn't Forenza.)
It was Bat Jackson, this time, who howled in pain.
He staggered away from her, wailing, grasping at the knife with spasmodic hands, his blood making a dotted, red trail through the sand as his intestines started to unravel from his body.
He fell to his trembling knees, his blood flowing out of the gaping, torn hole. He put his hands on the hilt and tried to pull.
Wouldn't budge.
Bat looked down at his hands and saw they were freshly-painted red. He felt burning sensations all over his body. The white-hot pain of the knife was the center of the inferno.
He tried to speak something intelligible, but it came out as a garbled moan. A whimper filled with pain.
Jumping Bat Jackson's eyes darted in fear, as reality returned to him.
His wrestling days were long over. He was supposed to die, supposed to be killed by the government for his flesh crimes. Instead they sent him to this island prison where he could only wrestle in his mind.
He accepted the darkness. They'd been waiting for each other too long.
* * *
Jessica watched Bat Jackson topple to the beach, still holding his bleeding stomach. He looked up, sand clinging to his sweaty brow, and moaned one last time.
She left Bat and found Richard, also lying in pain, five feet from the Butch Smith's body. She knelt down and took his hand.
"Richard?"
His eyes fluttered. "Jessica."
"Are you all right? Anything broken?"
He started to force himself to his feet. Jessica guided him. He looked around, dizzy.
"I'm OK, bumps and bruises." He looked down at Jackson, shaking his head. "I don't think anything is broken."
"Jackson?" he asked. She led his eyes to the spot ten feet away where Bat Jackson lay dead.
"Oh my, what about you? How are you?"
"Physically I'm ok but I—" She started realizing what she had just done. It was at the corner of her mind that she'd stuck a knife in another human being.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Richard said.
Richard took her hand and pointed to the ravine ahead.
She nodded, and they were on the run again. Very soon the sun began to bake the blood on the two convicts like some sinister batch of cookies.
CHAPTER 24
"We can stop now."
They had run through the ravine for ten minutes with Jessica failing to keep track which direction Richard led her. It began to seem like they were running in circles, a maze of green, brown, sand, rocks and dirt. She was comforted that Richard's knowledge of the side of the island had them moving somewhere with purpose.
Yet she had no clue where they were now. It seemed like after the attack Richard had given up the idea of heading to the caves.
They were in another swampy section of the island. Damp, mucky, muddy and thickly wooded. Crooked trees surrounded them, branches reached out like needy fingers. It was one of the few level spots on the island.
After a series
of being unable to catch his breath, one of the few times she'd seen Richard tired, he said, "We're about a mile and a half northwest of the east beach."
"Still part of their side of the island?" She hoped not.
Another pant. "—Yes, we're still on the east side."
Jessica looked down at her hands and upon sight of blood she knew was not hers, she started vomiting. With each violent thrust she was trying to puke away the vision of the horrible act she'd committed. She couldn't get the image of shoving a knife inside another human being out of her head.
"Are you okay?"
She shook her head, wiping remnant bile from her face. She tried to fight back crying. She couldn't break down and be weak. She needed to be strong.
"I killed another human being. I. . .killed."
She spat in her hands and wiped blood on her faded-red blouse. She rubbed, spat, rubbed, spat, but the blood would not come off. Back in a world that seemed as far away as an alien planet she never would have spit on herself.
She put her bloodstained hands to her face and struggled against the urge to cry.
She felt warm fingers pull one of her hands away. She opened her eyes slowly and saw Richard's hopeful face.
"We'll make it," he said. "I won't let them take you."
She flashed him with a solemn, watery-eyed expression.
"That's better. You're too pretty for that crying stuff." Richard tried to smile but it came out pained-looking. "I'm starting to believe in something. Ever since they tossed me here I haven't had anything to believe in. Only survival. But now that you've come into my life I have something and someone to believe in. Thank you."
She wanted to smile back but the image of the knife and Bat Jackson's stomach spoiled the moment. Instead, she wiped away the dampness from her eyes. They stayed in this spot for a long time, holding each other.
Richard spent the major of the hour talking down her fears, comforting her best as he could. But even after an hour had passed and they needed to move on, she could not imagine ever being the same way again.
She was terrified of what the island was doing to her. She didn't belong here and yet the longer she stayed, the more the island had begun to welcome her.
"Before it gets dark again, we need to see what numbers we're up against, Jessica."
Jessica knew where Richard wanted to go. It was the last place on the island she ever wanted to see. The place Richard had told her to avoid since she washed ashore. How had he put it?
There are some wild animals on the east side of the island.
They headed toward the east camp.
CHAPTER 25
Seth Everson's one eye picked them up halfway to their destination.
His eye had been watching the invisible path of the wind, fervently hoping that it would lead him to them. Seth's father had once told him that if you could see the wind you could see anything. Seth had always thought his father was a corny bastard, and felt no pity when his father ran off to the west coast with his dim-witted mistress. And consequently, one month later, when he received news his father had frozen to death in a skiing mishap outside of Boulder, Colorado. But there was some truth to his father's quote. There must have been, because it was the wind that had led his eye to them.
The wind that was no longer invisible.
Since Roberts had ordered his eye poked out, Seth's sight had changed. Seth had been suicidal all last night, trying to figure out the ideal way to end his shattered life. Seth had gone through life with one true love—his eyes—and his love had been maimed. He wasn't sure if he could ever be the same. But somehow the longest night Seth experienced ended and he woke up changed.
He could see things with one eye that he could never see with two. He could see the wind's ethereal breath racing across the clear blue sky, smoothly swooping down upon the island. The wind's path moved like apparitions through a haunted house. Fluid motion gliding through the trees, squeezing through the shrubbery, crisscrossing to avoid jagged rocks and seeking the warmth of human flesh.
That seemed to be the wind's sole purpose, Seth decided, to touch humans. To touch the living was the dead's ultimate prospect.
Yes, the wind with all its mystery and splendor was dead. It had to be, because it had led Seth's one eye to two bodies that the wind knew well enough to be its own kind.
Two dead bloody bodies lying on the beach.
The wind had been fooled by the absence of life, a clever imitation of its own kind. Then it searched, hungry and rampant for human warmth.
For the one thing it was forever denied. And everywhere it searched, Seth's eye merrily followed.
Following led Seth to them.
They were moving at a slow pace through the ravine. The man from the west side of the island Seth barely knew over the years moved slower now. Richard Templin. He'd never much cared for Templin.
Sar liked Templin.
Burieibu.
* * *
Late Summer 1994.
"Templin is brave," Sar said in Japanese, if Seth's translation was correct. Sar repeated the word that meant brave in Japanese: "Burieibu."
"Brave?" Seth repeated the word, this time in Japanese. "Burieibu. But is it brave or selfish to stay separate from our group?"
Ever the wiser man, Sar offered Seth a carrot to eat, a carrot he'd picked from the clearing near the cave where Templin lived alone. Sar said something loosely translated to mean "carrots are good for your eyes."
Seth was new to the island and Sar was one of the few to be nice to him. Kyle Roberts was sometimes too, but he was moody. He was the most organized and knowledgeable in the group. Seth felt comfortable going to Roberts when he had questions. Most in the group did. When Roberts realized Seth could speak a little Japanese, Kyle warmed up to him even more.
Sar was one of the few cons sent to the island that nobody knew exactly what crimes he'd committed. Murder was assumed. Most of the convicts were convicted murderers, but who had Sar murdered, if anyone? Seth had asked but Sar never wanted to talk about it. Sar was bothered talking about the past. About the only history he would talk about was living on the Izu islands and farming.
Sar enjoyed taking Seth to the clearing, kneeling and showing him the tilled dirt with a wide grin. He'd say odd things about the dirt being the life of the island. Other men enjoyed tanning by the ocean or playing sand baseball while Sar enjoyed visiting the clearing and talking about the dirt.
Dirt was all Seth could see, but to Sar it meant much more. Seth couldn't explain—nobody could—how he had grown vegetables in the clearing without seeds. Most believed that Sar had somehow smuggled in seeds. That had to be what happened.
Seth didn't realize this would be the last carrot anybody ever enjoyed from Sar's clearing.
* * *
Perhaps during the last conflict Templin had hurt himself? The woman stayed close to Templin with the wind at her back.
She can feel the wind too.
Or maybe she sensed Seth's one naked eye following the wind?
No. She was blind to the power of his eye. She neither understood or appreciated this power. It was his eye.
Seth jumped down from his twelve-feet hiding spot in the tree to the muddy ground. His bare feet stuck slightly. He loosened them.
"Not yet," he told the greedy earth. "More for me to do."
He started after them, quietly humming an old nursery rhyme.
Someone in his life had sung that rhyme to him. It was a warm, pleasant voice in another place and time. He liked the song and it calmed him at night. He would think of the nursery rhyme before going to sleep.
But the peaceful, kind thoughts would turn dark. They always did.
* * *
They reached Roberts camp twenty minutes later. Jessica could feel the race of anticipation and fear nibbling at her arms. Richard made sure everything was clear, and led her into the place the death row convicts had called home.
Robert's camp was a clearing on the island approximately 200x
150. Scattered among the clearing were many ramshackle tree-branch forts, small 8x8 lairs with only enough room to keep out of the rain and feel the warmth of the campfire.
Stacked at one end of the camp were a bunch of green crates. The same type crates she'd seen that day being dropped from the sky. She did a quick scan and counted thirteen. So in eleven years the government had made a little more one drop per year.
In the center there was a huge fort, made mostly with large, thick tree branches, insulated by palm fronds. It had to be Kyle Kollector Roberts' lair, for there were even makeshift holes for windows. Roberts' lair was perhaps five times the size as the other small dwellings, the most luxurious in a Gilligan's Island meets Adams Family structure way. Next to the cave, no other place on the island was better. Their campfire was a huge circle of rocks set up about ten feet from Roberts' lair.
There was something disgusting, something which might have been a human at one time, charred and black laying among the ashes.
"We'll start with the first lair," Richard took her hand, leading her through the camp.
The first lair was about twenty feet away and looked as empty as the whole camp. Richard was the first to kneel down and peer inside the home which reminded Jessica of a Boy Scout survival tent. After he took a look, it was her turn.
She quickly wished she hadn't.
The owner was still inside sleeping.
No, not sleeping. Dead.
A closer inspection revealed a knife pinning him to the ground, like an insect mounted on a board. His face had already begun to rot and decay, holes in his flesh like cigarette burns in cloth, displaying the corpse's internal tissues and organs.
Jessica became violently ill.
Richard dragged her, gagging and choking, out of the fort.