FULL MOON ISLAND

by Terry Yates

  “Take us down, Lieutenant…”

  “Colonel, it’s too dangerous! There still may be…”

  Potts pulled back the hammer and applied more pressure to Dorsey’s chin.

  “I’m not going to tell you again, Lieutenant.”

  Dorsey looked into the colonel’s angry eye and saw that the man meant business. He looked around to see his soldiers with their guns drawn and aimed at Potts, but he also saw the serious looks on the faces of the refugees. The doctor, the kid, the woman private…all of them looked at him as if they knew what the man was capable of.

  “Take her down!” Dorsey screamed toward the cockpit as he motioned for his men to lower their rifles.

  As the chopper landed on the ground, Potts jumped out of the doorway and called the dog to him. Joe, almost completely covered with blood, limped his way to Potts who stuck out his hand for the dog to smell. Instead, of smelling it though, the dog licked it.

  Kyler watched as one old soldier, bad shoulder and all, picked up another old soldier and began to carry him back to the helicopter. Dorsey was looking around nervously for another one of those things to come back as Potts reached the doorway and set Joe down inside it. A private reached out his hand as Potts began to get in, but Potts ignored it and climbed in on his own.

  “All right, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “Now, you may take her up.”

  Dorsey gave the thumbs up and the rescue chopper began to rise up into the air once again. Kyler watched as the private closed the doorway and moved to his seat. Potts stayed seated on the floor, while Joe made his way over to Lauren, who kept her face buried in Michael’s chest. As tired and exhausted as the survivors were, they all, with the exception of Lauren, reached out and gave him a pet. They all tried to find one of the few spots left on him that wasn’t red with matted blood.

  Kyler was looking out the window again as he felt Zora squeeze his hand. He squeezed back, but not as hard. Where to now, he wondered, seeing nothing but darkness below him. His only thoughts for the last four days had been of getting off the island, and now he was doing just that, but he felt strange. He looked over at the rest of the group who all seemed to be having the same feelings that he was having. Michael, with his arm around the crying Lauren stared straight ahead as did Sam who now had his arm around Zack, who was gently sobbing into his hands. The reality of where they were and what they had been through had finally come crashing down and the teenager had decided to let it all go. FranAnne still held onto the baby. She was smiling down at Kayla while she gently rocked her, but it was a weak smile. Potts still sat on the floor with his back against the door. His head was tilted up toward the ceiling. Kyler couldn’t see his face well enough to tell whether his good eye was open or closed.

  Lastly, he looked at Zora, who was looking back into his eyes. The guilt in them spoke volumes. She had deceived him and knew it. Kyler was a little angry about feeling duped, but he had his own guilt to deal with. He had also duped everyone and it had cost lives. He gave her a soft smile before leaning his head against the window and closing his eyes, the whirring sound of the blades making him drowsy.

  Before he fell asleep, he began to wonder what life was going to be like from now on…not just for himself, but for all of them. None of them would ever be the same again. Sure, they would all be happy again one day…hopefully. Zack, Lauren, little Kayla, and possibly Michael were now left without families. How would they get along? Where would they go? How would all of this affect them as adults? How would this affect all of the adults? An old adage that he’d heard a thousand times in his life was starting to make sense to him now. It was true…you can’t go home again.

  As the chopper flew across the black unseen ocean to a destination or fate that was, at that moment, unfathomable to him, he gave Zora’s hand one final squeeze before succumbing to sleep.

  EPILOGUE:

  Kyler put the paper down on the table and looked out the window. It was a perfect day outside. It was sunny, but with just a hint of a breeze. The sky was full of white, fluffy, billowy clouds. He was looking forward to lunchtime when he could join the others.

  It had been ten days since they had left the island. In some ways, it seemed like ten years ago, but in others, it seemed like no more than ten minutes. They had been brought to a makeshift military camp near Tallahassee. Lieutenant Dorsey had been right. Nearly half of Florida had disappeared into the ocean because of the hurricanes. The first one had caused major damage, but it was the second one that had sent Miami, St. Augustine, and Orlando to oblivion. It had brought with it two tidal waves and a tsunami. Over two hundred thousand people had been killed or were missing. The southern tips of Alabama and Mississippi were gone as well.

  The survivors of No Name Island had been treated fairly well since they had returned. Kyler had half expected it to be like it was in the movies when people stumbled across a secret military outpost. Constant interrogations, lack of sleep, sodium pentothal, and then disposal of all witnesses. But it hadn’t been that way at all. The commandant, a Gen. Mueller, had been more than kind to them. The doctors weren’t keeping any real secrets from them as to what they were doing…well, from him anyway, since he was a doctor. They were told that they’d all be allowed to go home in probably another week or so, if they chose to do so. In the meantime, his lodgings weren’t great, but he’d had worse. He had a small cot with a small table and a small table lamp next to him. All he had in the way of furniture was a card sized table with two chairs, but it was all he needed. The only time he had visitors was when a doctor or the general came calling.

  Between them, the group had decided to tell everything that happened from the plane crash to the werewolves and they did, holding nothing back. What seemed strange to Kyler was the fact that no one seemed really surprised by anything that they told them. The only real downer was that they had to stay in their rooms most of the time, but they were allowed rec and mealtimes together. Like any good debriefing, they needed to keep them apart to make sure that all of the stories were the same. Kyler hadn’t seen the others for the last few days, because there had been a full moon the last three nights and, because of the bite little Oliver Dixon had given him when he had been in the lair. The doctors and scientists wanted to make sure that the bite had been superficial. They’d put him in a steel room with food, water, and facilities, of course, and he’d simply sat there all night, or read, or watched a little TV, which was mostly news about the hurricanes that was going to change things forever.

  One day at lunch, he had overheard several scientists or astronomers, or someone talking about the strangeness of having a full moon so many nights in a row when they weren’t expecting one till the end of the month. Hmm…things must be changing, he thought.

  He looked out the window and saw Joe being walked on a leash by an MP. Jeez, it must be good to be the king. He had worried about their hero from the minute they separated him from the rest of them, but there he was, squatting down on his haunches and letting one out extremely close to the MP’s shoe. He was also allowed to eat with them and spend rec time with them. Of course, Lauren wasn’t having much to do with him at the moment. She still felt like he hadn’t been there when she needed him to save her mother or her father, and that was understandable. The dog seemed to know it, too. He simply sat by her until he was sure that she wanted nothing to do with him, then moved down to Michael or Zack, or Sam, or any number of the refugee children who had been brought to the camp after the hurricane. Someone was always good for a scratch behind his notched ear or the full belly rub.

  Michael was in a cast now and that was a relief to Kyler. He wasn’t sure how the leg would heal after all that the boy had been through for four days, but the doctors had assured him that he would be fine. He still hadn’t heard from his parents, but there were thousands who hadn’t heard from theirs either. For the moment though, he seemed happy to be with the family that he’d made it off the island with.

  Kyler wasn’t sure, but he was
pretty positive that Kayla Dixon had been claimed by a grandparent from Memphis who had come and found her and took her away to begin a new life. As for Zora, they still made small talk and held hands once in a while, but he still hadn’t asked her about who she had been looking for on the island. The only thing that she told the army was that she was supposed to be an intern to one Locklear O’Hearley who was working on some astrophysics thing-a-ma-bob, but she hadn’t been told exactly what she would be doing.

  After the debriefing, Potts and FranAnne would more than likely stay there and help with the emergency relief. These people needed a Potts if they were ever going to get anything done.

  As for Kyler, well…another couple of days, and he would be on his own. They had asked him if he would stay and help since he was a doctor and naturally he said that he would. Besides, he had nowhere else to go at that moment. Might as well do some good where he could.

  Kyler kept all of the newspapers that were given to him and found himself looking for any clues as to what had happened to No Name Island. The military couldn’t completely ignore it, because many civilians had lived on the island and wanted to know about their homes and businesses. There had only been one small article about the island, which stated that all businesses were completely destroyed, and that there were about thirty people believed to be dead or missing. It was then that Kyler really understood what statistics told a person. They were just numbers. People were just numbers. The only names mentioned were Model Samantha Gould, her husband, and a photographer. There was no mention of Locklear and Ariella O’Hearley, Opal and Wilbur Munn, the Olsen’s or Mrs. Rogerson, Burt and Martin Burns, Nurse Walling, Sgt. Cohen, or Marcus, Shelly, and Oliver Dixon. Complete families wiped out with no mention of names, hometowns, or anything.

  Kyler had also wondered about Nicholas Klefka. He didn’t feel so confident that the special bullets had done away with him. He had survived for over five centuries and Kyler had a feeling that it would take more than a few grains of dog spit or some mercury to keep him down. And what about the other werewolves? He knew that Samantha Gould was dead, because he had seen her body after she had turned back to her human form, but he hadn’t seen Klefka, Shelly, or Marcus’ bodies turn after they had fallen…and he hadn’t seen Oliver at all after Joe had chased him away.

  He hadn’t really thought of any of this until the day before when he had read an article in the New York Times. It was just a small box, probably no more than a hundred words that stated that a group of hunters in Mexico had all been mauled and eaten by what they had at first thought to be bears, but according to the tracks that the animals made, it might’ve been done by wolves. It distinctly said, that they believed it to be a family of three lobos, because there were only three sets of tracks. An extremely large pair, a medium sized pair, and a set of pup tracks. Kyler’s blood had frozen after reading the article.

  Kyler heard a noise outside and looked out the window. He saw several soldiers standing in front of a military truck. Two privates opened the doors as several soldiers lead four hand and leg cuffed prisoners into it. There were three men and a woman all wearing blue, one-piece uniforms and wearing baseball caps. It was the people who had come to kill them. I guess there were only four of them left now after the Massacre at Werewolf Island. Kyler had wondered what they had been doing there and whom they had worked for. He couldn’t help but remember the torn and shredded bodies of the ones he’d seen down in the Dixon’s lair. There had been at least fifteen to twenty of them in there.

  He continued to watch as the large commander began to walk up the little stairs. He seemed to be in good shape for someone who’d had Potts work over his face like he was tenderizing an extra thick steak. Kyler had also seen Oliver Dixon take a few nips out of the back of his leg ten nights ago, but here he was, his nose normal again, and walking as straight as a person whose legs were cuffed could.

  Before the man reached the top of the six steps, he stopped and turned around as if he knew someone was looking at him. He turned his head to the sky and took in a deep breath as if he were sniffing something. Even though he had his sunglasses on, Kyler was willing to swear that he was looking right at him. The man seemed to be smiling at him. It was impossible, he knew, because he was at least fifty yards away from him. Still looking his direction and smiling the man held up the back of his leg and shook it as if to say…”Hey, I’m all healed now” and then touched his nose to show him that his nose…that should’ve been caved in and covered with bandages, looked even better than it had before. Instead of a smile, the man broke into a big grin and gave him the thumbs up sign before a soldier prodded him to keep moving. The man disappeared into the truck, as did the other three prisoners and several soldiers. All Kyler could do was watch as the two privates closed the doors, slapped their hands against the side of the truck, and stood there as it drove out of the gate.

  “What now,” he muttered softly.

  THE END

  PART II: FULL MOON COUNTRY

  About the Author:

  Terry Yates is an author, screenwriter, actor, and comic living in Dallas, Tx.

  437