Vacation to Die For

by Josie Brown

  Not much of the beach is sand because the mountain’s gentle rise seems to start almost at the water’s edge. The mountainside is blanketed in a thick carpet of trees, vines, and pungent flowers. Running water can be heard if not seen, in both directions. It’s dark enough that we’re wearing our night-vision goggles.

  “Mandrake’s GPS signal is coming in weakly,” Arnie mutters in our earbuds. “He’s somewhere between the hill, and the beach.”

  “If past experience is any indication, the hillside may be dotted with caves. I wouldn’t be surprised if the surf has carved one or two of them within the inlets along the bay. He could be in any one of them,” I say. “And since his MO is to stay near water, why don’t we break up into teams?”

  Jack nods in agreement. “Abu and I will follow the spring, up the hill. Donna, you and Dominic can follow the shoreline.”

  I’m glad he finally realizes this pairing gives him nothing to worry about.

  Dominic grabs me by the hand and practically drags me after him. “Let’s go, ducky. The sooner we find the bloody wanker, the sooner we get off this Godforsaken island. Back in London at Boodle’s, there’s a martini with my name on it.”

  “You don’t say? And all this time I had you pegged as a Groucho man.”

  “Ouch! You do know how to hurt a bloke, with or without a gun…Oh my dear, watch out for that vine there. It seems to be moving. Ah, I see why now. It’s really a green tree pit viper…Donna? Slow up! My God, woman, I do believe your 400 meter sprint is worthy of an Olympic Gold Medal!”

  Dominic and I have been traipsing along the shore for at least an hour now when suddenly Arnie gives a low whistle in my ear. “Donna, Mandrake’s GPS signal indicates that he’s just a few feet from you.”

  “In which direction?” I mutter.

  “Ahead, and to the right,” he answers.

  Dominic points to a mound of branches and brush beneath a stone outcropping, right at the water’s edge. The mound is tall enough to form a wall. The leaves and vines above it create a natural canopy.

  I put a finger to my lips, and indicate that we should approach slowly. Dominic signals back to allow him to go first, and to cover him. I nod.

  He steps closer slowly, then motions me to do the same. The sand is soft and wet around us, so, we aren’t making any sound as we inch closer to this natural fortress. If we’re lucky, Mandrake will be in there, possibly sleeping or injured, and his capture will be a piece of cake.

  Oh hell. Hell oh hell. No, Mandrake isn’t there.

  Just a crocodile. She is protecting several dozen eggs.

  Make that two crocodiles. Her hubby is there, too, on the far side of the nest.

  Realizing this, Dominic takes one step back—

  And cracks a branch.

  Daddy Croc looks up. Its eyes narrow. Mommy Croc shows her fear with a high-pitch scream. Not Daddy Croc. Its large, pointed snout opens, revealing sharp jagged teeth. It hisses and bellows and lunges towards us, lifting so far off its front legs that it looks as if it’s walking toward us.

  We’re out of there, in a flash.

  It follows, and it’s just as fast. No, it’s faster. With each stride, it gains more ground.

  Instinctively I run the way we came. Dominic is on my heels—

  Until I trip over a log. As I fall down, he stumbles over me, flipping onto his back in the wet sand.

  The air has been knocked out of him. He is left gasping.

  The croc weighs his options. I’m punier, and obviously weaker than Dominic. But he’s immobilized.

  In the wink of an eye, the croc is sidling toward Dominic.

  The log that tripped me up is about four feet long, and around a foot in diameter. It’s also heavy, like petrified wood, but I pick it up anyway, and run after the crocodile.

  He’s no more than six feet from Dominic when I slap it down onto his tail.

  Yep, that got his attention. At this very moment I feel like a dog chasing a car. What am I going to do, now that I’ve caught it?

  His thunderous howl echoes up the mountainside, frightening the wild parrots out of their perches. They fill the air, frantically circling over us. Their shrill screeches mimic the crocodile’s surprise.

  The croc whips around, mouth open wide. Those sharp teeth are bared in a ghoulish grin, as if it’s about to let me in on some gut-busting joke.

  I have no intention of being the butt of it.

  When his jaws swing open wide and around for me, I cram the log between them with both hands.

  Try as he might, the crocodile can’t close his mouth.

  I don’t want to wait around to see how long the croc takes to snap the log into bits, or to choke it down. I help Dominic stagger to his feet, and we run back down the path. To play it safe, Dominic detours onto the higher road, in the hope that it takes us out of croc country.

  I pray he’s right.

  In my earbud I hear Jack’s voice. “Donna, I need you to see something—now.”

  “What? No ‘Hey honey, sorry I couldn’t be there with you, in your hour of need?’” My words come out in fits and spurts because I’m huffing as we run uphill now.

  “We’ll commiserate when you get here. Arnie, send her my coordinates.”

  This doesn’t sound good.

  But seriously, can it be any worse than what we’re running away from?

  Chapter 12

  Death Takes a Holiday

  Admit it: you work too damn hard.

  Someday, you’ll regret it.

  Yes, you will curse all those workaholic weekends, when you should have been going to your son’s ball games, or your daughter’s piano recitals.

  You’ll kick yourself for having allowed your vacation time to accrue over several years, only to lose it because you didn’t use it.

  You’ll rue the day you worked through the occasional three-day holiday. Just who were you trying to impress—your boss? Well, guess what? He didn’t notice. He was having too much fun on vacation.

  Then there were all those times your spouse said, “Hey, take it easy, slow down,” and you’d answer, “There’s plenty of time to do that when I’m dead.”

  Really? Is that what you think?

  I’ll let you in on a few secrets. Hell may be hot, but it ain’t no tropical vacation.

  As for Purgatory, think of it as getting stuck at Newark airport in a snowstorm: no food, no toilet paper, and lots of people whining about their plans being cancelled.

  Even if Heaven is paradise, will you still think so if the one you love most never makes it there?

  Life is a one-way ticket, so enjoy those wonderful vacation days while you can. And the cost of making special memories? Priceless.

  Jack and Abu are snapping photos of bodies in a mass gravesite.

  There are at least sixteen of them. But between insects, parasites and scavengers, there isn’t much left of the corpses, so it’s hard to tell. They must have been dug up by wild animals, which is why Jack and Abu were able to find them.

  The skulls and bones are all sizes, so apparently the victims weren’t uniquely adult males.

  I pick up one of the smaller skulls. “Could this have belonged to a child, or one of the pygmy tribesmen who attacked us?”

  “Based on this charm bracelet, I’d say no.” Very gently with a stick, Jack prods aside a fallen leaf, exposing the skeleton’s radius bone, which is still attached to a half-eaten hand.

  Around the wrist is a link chain bearing charms that spell out AWESOMESAUCE.

  “Could this body have belonged to one of Jonah Breck’s sex slaves?” Emma asks over our earbuds. I hear Morton shouting in the background. Emma covers her headset, but her muffled threat to him—that he better shut the heck up or else she’ll give him a Vulcan mind probe and leave him outside in his underwear—is followed by dead silence.

  That’s my girl.

  “Good question,” I respond. “My guess is no. There’s still too much skin, hair and clothing on at least this
particular body.”

  “This is a mass grave, but all of these bodies are in various states of decomposition,” Jack points out. “Apparently this is some sort of dumping ground.”

  Everyone goes silent. All around us are sounds of the jungle—rustling leaves, bird whistles, and faraway howls.

  I bend beside another body. The head is no longer attached, but there is still skin on its bones. I shiver, but at least I can hold down the bile trying to climb up my throat. “Everyone, grab bone and skin samples from each of the bodies, and then let’s get out of here. Tomorrow we’ll ship them off to Ryan so that Acme can do a DNA test and some carbon-dating…Oh my God!” I cover my eyes with my hands.

  Jack puts his arms around me. “Donna, what is it?”

  I point to the backside of the body. It has a tattoo of a tiny airplane.

  “She was the flight attendant on our plane!” I grab Dominic and shove him toward the remains. “Do you recognize that?”

  Dominic stares down at it then nods slowly. “Unfortunately, yes, from…well, from our quickie, as one would say. In hindsight I’m not at all surprised she ended up this way.”

  I can’t believe my ears. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “If her questions to some of the other men she met on Fantasy Air were half as pointed as the ones she asked me, the wrong sort of fellow might not appreciate it.” He shakes his head sadly. “I warned her that might be the case.”

  When I bumped into her, she was certainly upset and frustrated. At least now I know the real reason why.

  I don’t like her being exposed like this, with her skirt hiked up around her waist. But when I reach down to cover her up, Jack stops me. “For all we know, she—and some of the others here, too—were victims of Mandrake’s bacteria plague.”

  Good point.

  Abu, ever at the ready for any occasion, hands out surgical gloves, along with a bunch of small portable plastic bags. The others follow my lead as I put on a surgical mask.

  Jack picks up a jawbone with teeth. Dominic bags a skull with patches of scalp and hair.

  For me, it’s a manicured finger from the hand of AWESOMESAUCE.

  Whomever it belongs to it was once somebody’s baby. Are they sick with worry, wondering what may have happened to her?

  Suddenly I long to hold Mary. To talk to Trisha. To hear Jeff chatter on aimlessly about sports, or Iron Man, or how much he hates all the girls in his class.

  I could tell him that hate is a pretty cruel word—that it should be reserved for those people who kill and maim, and for those who have too much anger buried inside themselves. Now that he’s almost eleven, I think he’d understand that words can hurt others, or instill shame, or motivate retaliation.

  Whoever did this to these people deserves my hate, and my retribution.

  But right now I need to feel love, and to be loved.

  I keep thinking of how much I want to call the girls. It’ll be the first thing I do when I get back.

  Make that the second. First, I’ll cuddle Jeff, even though it may embarrass him in front of his friends. Every hug may be the last.

  When we get home, the boys are already asleep.

  “They went to bed early. I guess they were worn out,” Emma explains.

  Arnie is there, too. He takes his toxicity tester and runs it over all of us: Jack, Dominic, Abu and me. Then he does the same to the bags of bones.

  “Looks like everything is in the clear.”

  “Ryan will certainly be happy to hear that.”

  “Good, then it’s tea time!” Dominic beams and glances around. Where do you keep your martini shaker?”

  Before Jack can answer him crudely, I interject, “Sorry, old chap! You’ll have to hit the bar at Eden Key. I’ve got three boys here, who know how to stay in trouble while sober. No need to keep liquid incentive lying around.”

  “Ah, righto! Boys will be boys, eh? And men will be men. Being one of the naughtier ones, I’m off to the Hunt Club, where the women are easy and the bartender now has my martini down pat.”

  “Speaking of business, Dominic, your next task is to get as close to Chiffray as possible. The fact that the representative of Boarke’s largest investor is on the island the same time as Mandrake may not just be a coincidence. Make it your primary objective.”

  He winks at me. “I won’t surface until I’ve got the goods.”

  “Or Chlamydia,” Jack mutters.

  While Abu and Dominic take off, Emma and Arnie open the bone bags and begin the process of sorting and cataloging the samples by text and photo. The bones will be put in a Fantasy Island souvenir box addressed to a safe house owned by Acme, but marked HOLD AT AIRPORT, where Ryan will retrieve it so that the Acme labs can do a full analysis.

  While Arnie packs the samples, he looks over at me. “Dominic and you were right next to Mandrake. Why didn’t you grab him when you had the chance?”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “Excuse me? The only things in our path were two crocodiles—one of which chased us halfway through the jungle.”

  Arnie stares down at his iPad. “No way!”

  I stare him down. “Way.”

  He frowns and fingers open a new screen on his tablet. “Look, I wasn’t seeing things. Here’s a replay of your GPS coordinates and Mandrake’s, after you split from Abu and Jack.”

  My dot is pink, whereas Dominic’s is purple. Mandrake’s is flashing gold. The video tracks us moving west before coming to a standstill.

  Suddenly our dots backtrack on the path. The gold dot follows, but then slows along with ours, which I presume is the place where Dominic fell.

  “Look!” Jack points to the screen. “Your dot and Mandrake’s are almost together.”

  “But how can that be?” I ask.

  “Maybe living with prehistoric reptiles is his idea of fun,” Emma mutters.

  Jack shrugs. “Yeah, he’s a regular Crocodile Dundee.”

  Emma’s eyes narrow in confusion. “Who?”

  “Never mind. It’s a pre-Gen Y reference.” He hits the replay button, and we all watch again.

  And again.

  Finally Jack says, “Could he have been running after you, to help?”

  I shake my head. “If so, he never showed himself.”

  “Maybe he was there, but you just weren’t looking for him,” Arnie chimes in.

  “In any event, he stayed with the croc, as opposed to following you and Dominic back to the bone yard,” Jack points out.

  “Won’t it be sick if he needs the crocs to test the plague bacteria?” Emma wonders out loud. “And maybe the fact that their eggs are about to hatch has something to do with it, too.”

  “Yeah, ‘sick’ is the right word for it.” Fear and fatigue weigh on my eyelids. I don’t know what Mandrake is up to, but I do know one thing: it’s dangerous for everyone here on Fantasy Island.

  Once again I’m hit with the urge to hug a child.

  I open the door to the boys’ bedroom. It’s such a warm night that I’m surprised to see they have the blankets up over their heads. I’m walking toward Jeff’s bed to make sure he’s not too hot when my cell phone chirps.

  Damn it.

  So as not to wake them, I scurry out of the room and shut the door behind me.

  The Caller ID reads CAMP INCH. Mary must finally be missing me as much as I miss her, and decided to call. “Hello? Mary?”

  “No, Mrs. Stone, this is not your daughter. It’s Rebecca Granger, the lead counselor of Camp Inch. We’ve been calling your house all day—”

  “Oh my God! Is Mary alright?”

  “The only thing hurt may be her pride. You see, she and her cabin mates, Midge and Babs, are no longer welcomed at Camp Inch.”

  I go into my bedroom and close the door behind me before sitting down on the bed. “Ms. Granger, what happened?”

  “Last night Mary and her friends were caught with boys in their cabin, playing Spin-the-Bottle. As you know, the camp has very strict rules about
that sort of thing.”

  “I have strict rules for my daughter, too. Apparently she chose to disobey both of us.” As relieved as I am that Mary is okay, I’m certainly disappointed in her, especially after the talk we had. I guess it’s time for another.

  “The parents of the other girls have already retrieved them. I presume we can expect you some time tomorrow?”

  “I…I can’t! I’m out of town.”

  “Oh, I see.” Ms. Granger’s tone reeks of accusation—that I’m the worst mother in the world.

  No, I’m just the mom of a boy-crazy ’tween girl who just so happens to be several thousand miles away and needs me now, more than ever.

  “I’ll send her Aunt Phyllis to pick her up. She can be there by eight in the morning.”

  Ms. Granger sighs condescendingly. “Our rules specifically state that a suspended camper can only be released into the custody of her parents. Since you’re out of town, I’ll make an exception, but just this once.”

  She hangs up before I have a chance to point out to her that there will be no “next time,” since this was to have been Mary’s last year, anyway. I guess this blows it for Trisha, too, when she’s old enough to go.

  Jack peeks through our bedroom door. Seeing that I’m off the cell, he enters the bedroom and flops down beside me. “Who was that?”

  “Camp Inch. Mary got kicked out. I’ve got to call Aunt Phyllis to pick her up. I don’t think Mary will be too happy with that arrangement.”

  “Certainly not when she finds out Jeff is down here with us.” Jack smiles. “Hey, why not have Phyllis bring her to Fantasy Island? Phyllis can hang here, too, with the kids. That way, Emma is freed up to do her work from Eden Key.”

  “Are you crazy? I don’t want Mary here for the same reason I’d like to see Jeff and his pals and the rest of us get off this wretched rock! There may be a mad scientist on the loose, the place is crawling with pygmies who shoot poison darts—and let’s not forget that we don’t know what kind of wild animals are roaming around for those gun nuts in the Hunt Club! Oh, and did I mention that Dominic and I almost got eaten by a crocodile?”