by Paul Draker
JT crossed his thick arms, refusing to look at Travis.
Julian returned to the screen. “Folks, Año Nuevo is a nature preserve. My earlier instructions not to harm the wildlife were quite clear.
“But now we can move on to the next step together. It’s a cooperative activity, not a competitive one. No points are at stake here. Think of it as a team-building exercise.”
From the screen, he waved a hand to indicate the rooms around them. “Your new accommodations are now vacant, but they lack curb appeal—they’re the ultimate fixer-uppers.”
Camilla’s jaw dropped. Accommodations? She mouthed the word silently at Jordan.
“In the storage shed behind these buildings,” Julian said, “you will find tools, lumber, and rolls of plastic sheeting. Most importantly, you’ll find two high-pressure washers with plenty of fuel. These buildings will be your homes for the next couple of weeks. Let’s get them cleaned up, weatherproof, and animal proof so we can move in.”
CHAPTER 29
Camilla swiped an arm across her sweaty, filthy forehead, and put down the wrench. She grinned at Jordan. “That’s the last one!” she shouted over the deafening roar of the pressure washer next door.
Together, they looked at the metal cot frame they had assembled: angle-steel beams held together by four-inch bolts, an open grid of spring-mounted wire on the top to support a mattress. It was cheap stuff—something you’d see in a dormitory or institution… or a residential youth group home, Camilla thought, suppressing a shiver.
The two women stood in an upstairs bedroom of the Greek Revival house, which their blue team had cleared of seals. The red team had taken over the many-dormered Victorian structure next door.
Camilla looked up at a ceiling corner, where eight inches of sky showed through a ragged hole in the naked wood lathing.
“Looks like my room comes with air-conditioning.” She had to shout to be heard over the pressure washer.
Jordan unrolled the khaki-colored mattress pad she held, and tossed it on top of the cot. “Feels like I’m back at Camp Karolyi.”
“What?”
“Gymnastics summer camp.” A shadow crossed her face. “Never mind.”
After several hours of the motor’s rattling roar, Camilla was dying to give her ears a break. “So you’re a journalist,” she shouted. “How about we go do some investigative reporting?”
On their way out, Camilla looked in at Brent next door, braced against the back pressure as he aimed the nozzle of the heavy power washer around the corners of the room. For an older guy, the big, blocky doctor looked strong and vigorous. She felt a tug of affection, watching him tirelessly blast away the mud and animal filth with a firehose-thick stream of water. The whole house smelled like the sea now—salty, fishy, and wet—but it was a huge improvement over the earlier rotting-zoo miasma.
She headed down the stairs with Jordan, avoiding as best she could the filthy river pouring down the steps alongside them. The torrent of brown slurry had a hazy white surface sheen that made Camilla pause. Kneeling, she dipped a couple of fingers into it and held them to her nose, smelling only seawater.
“Slippery,” she said, rubbing her fingers together. “I don’t know… With all the wildlife, are we sure it’s okay to use this detergent stuff in the washers?”
Jordan giggled. “It’s biodegradable and biosafe, according to the label. You actually think they’d allow us to spray something harmful here?”
Ten minutes later, the two of them stood in front of the first warehouse building. Seals and disgruntled seabirds moved around at their feet, ignoring the muted roar of the power washers in the distance. Waves crashed behind the concrete seawall on their left.
Camilla rattled the door of the first building. “Locked. Figures. But Julian and the others are in there. See?” She slid a hand along the slick, wet siding, then wiped her slippery palm off on her thigh. “Same stuff. They washed these three buildings yesterday for the camera crew to use.”
Jordan nodded. “Let’s find another door or some windows. It must be afternoon by now. I’m getting really hungry and thirsty.”
There were no nests underfoot to watch out for here; the warehouses sat on a hard section of yellowed limestone. Camilla took a step back and looked over the three A-frame structures. They all were connected. Two single-story buildings in front backed onto a larger two-story building that loomed like a factory. Unlike the two mansions, they had been built simply, with shiplap siding that still retained most of its gray paint. Someone had boarded up the square window frames from the inside, so she couldn’t see in.
“What’s that?” Jordan pointed at a thick pipe, almost three feet in diameter, which poked straight out at ground level from the wall of the largest building. It extended fifteen feet inland before disappearing under the rising slope of dirt and rock.
“No clue,” Camilla said. “It’s too thick to be a water or sewer line.”
What kind of factory had this been? Her eyes traced the path of the underground culvert, following it uphill. It rose to the surface again in places, forming a broken ridge like a backbone before ending in a pile of concrete rubble at the top of the hill, alongside the fallen lighthouse tower.
She pursed her lips, thinking. “Maybe some kind of gas vent?”
Whatever it was, it hadn’t been used in a very long time. In places, the ten-foot sections were misaligned after years of neglect, leaving crescent-shaped openings that gaped black in the rocky dirt of the hill. Camilla watched a seal crawl into one of the gaps. A big, ungainly-looking bird—some kind of petrel, maybe?—popped out of another. The underground segments would be clogged with debris and nests.
Jordan shook her head. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
They cut between the buildings and the seawall, which deflected the rougher waves from the open ocean, visible in bursts of white spray above the concrete edge.
“It’s a little creepy the way the show’s crew is hiding from us,” Camilla said. “Do you think we’re on camera right now?”
“Bet on it,” Jordan said.
They circled all three buildings. Every window was boarded up from the inside. The other two doors were also locked.
Camilla slipped around the corner where they had started—and froze. Right in front of the door she had rattled earlier lay a plastic shrink-wrapped bundle. The ground where the bundle now sat had been bare only five minutes ago.
She grabbed Jordan’s arm. “Is that what I think it is?”
Jordan laughed and clapped in delight. She rushed forward, teetering on her wrecked high-heels, and knelt to rip the plastic off a twelve-pack of plastic water bottles. Tossing one to Camilla, she twisted the cap off another for herself and glugged down half.
Camilla took a gulp from her own, gasping with relief as the water hit her parched throat. “I was starting to worry,” she said. She leaned against the door, trying it again. Locked. “So that’s how this is going to work…”
Jordan swigged again, wiped a forearm across her mouth, and grinned. “Julian Claus and his invisible little elves.”
Camilla tucked the twelve-pack under her arm. “We’re about to be the most popular girls at the party.”
“Let’s get the lay of the land first.” Jordan high-stepped around a cluster of sea lions and started uphill. “The others can wait.”
• • •
The slope was gentle, but the seals and ground-nesting seabirds made it difficult going. Camilla actually had to step over the backs of juvenile seals at times. She pointed at the crumbling concrete dome as they passed it on their way up. “What do you think that was?”
The rim rose above their heads, ten feet high at least and open at the top. A sunken area of cracked concrete bigger than a basketball court sloped downhill above it.
“An old water cistern.” Jordan didn’t seem very interested. “Whenever it rained, the water would run down this catchment basin and collect inside.”
Camilla wrinkled her nose
at the mess the seals and birds had made amid the broken concrete slabs. A rotten, mildewy odor wafted from the cistern dome—sickly sweet, even fouler than the sharp zoo smell that permeated the rest of the island. She gagged, squeezing the bundle of water bottles tighter under her arm. “At least Julian’s giving us water,” she said. “I’d hate to have to drink out of that—it smells like something died in there.”
“It’d probably kill us, too,” Jordan said. “Don’t get too comfy about the water situation, though. I shouldn’t have chugged mine.”
Camilla groaned. “He’s going to make us work for every sip, isn’t he?”
They passed the last manmade structure on the island: a small concrete blockhouse the size of a two-car garage. It stood on its own, a couple of hundred feet from the warehouse buildings and set at an oblique angle to them—an outcast exiled to live in disgrace. With no windows, it looked like a miniature prison.
“If anyone misbehaves, that’s where we stick ‘em,” Camilla said.
“A 2012 Zimbardo experiment?”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s locked, anyway.” Jordan pointed at a bright new steel padlock hanging from the door of the concrete blockhouse.
A few minutes later, they reached the highest point on the small island. Standing next to the legs of the fallen tower, Camilla raised a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes. She turned in a complete circle, seeing the entirety of Año Nuevo Island for the first time. Her original impression had been correct: it was tiny.
Shaped sort of like a seahorse which had turned its back on the mainland, the island was maybe a quarter-mile long and two hundred yards across at its widest point. Projecting from the seahorse’s lower belly, the dock where they had spent last night pointed toward open ocean. The three factory or warehouse buildings sat on the edge of the upper belly, protected by two hundred feet of curving concrete seawall.
Closer to the seahorse’s narrow neck, the concrete blockhouse also sat on the open-ocean side of the island. Farther inland lay the dome of the ruined cistern.
On the opposite side of the island, along the seahorse’s back, a wide swath of beach faced the California coast. Vertical bluffs twenty feet high dropped from the main body of the island to the sand, which was dense with sleeping sea lions and seals. A concentration of larger, darker shapes covered the beach’s northern end.
Camilla pointed them out to Jordan. “That must be the main elephant seal rookery. Those really huge monsters—the alpha bulls—see how each has his own territory?”
Each of the immense bulls lay at the center of its own separate group, surrounded by dozens of smaller elephant seals. Yards of empty beach isolated the sprawling groups from each other.
At the shoreline, a solitary giant emerged from the waves. An even larger bull raised its head from the center of one of the groups. It bellowed a challenge at the newcomer.
“Harems,” Jordan said. “That’s what they’re fighting over. It’s about females, not territory.”
“I’m glad they don’t come up here much,” Camilla said. “It looks like they mostly stay on the beaches.”
The steep bluffs continued along the back of the seahorse’s half-coiled tail, around the south end of the island. Halfway down the tail, huge fans of filthy water ran from the many doors of both houses and spread across the rocky ground. Both teams were making great progress toward getting their houses habitable. Hanging out of an upper window at the back of each house, thick intake hoses trailed a short distance across the open ground before dropping over the edge of the bluff to suck up seawater from the ocean fifteen feet below.
Lauren hung out of an upper window of the Victorian, gripping the upper sill with one hand. She had the nozzle braced under her other arm, blasting decades of filth and old nests away from the windowsills, chimneys, and roofline. It looked dangerous, but she seemed very much in control, navigating the window ledges with confident ease.
In the foreground, Juan and JT were rebuilding the seal barricade.
“JT’s even stronger than he looks,” Camilla said. But she was actually watching Juan. He held the end of a heavy log while JT hefted it into place and then leaned against it, swinging a hammer to nail it against the uprights.
“JT’s smart,” Jordan said. “But he hides it.”
“I guess this is the part where we talk about the other contestants,” Camilla said.
Jordan laughed. “What’s there to say, really?”
“Juan… I’m so curious. On the ship, what happened between the two of you?”
“Don’t ask.” Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “Sometimes people aren’t who you think they are.” She looked back toward the houses. “As far as I’m concerned, Juan is right where he belongs: on a team full of losers. And the hell away from us.”
Camilla followed her gaze. Juan’s black clothes made him stand out against the island’s chalky gray-brown soil. Maybe Jordan was overreacting. Maybe she had misunderstood whatever Juan had said. Camilla found it hard to believe anything bad about someone she had seen save a child’s life. Most men she knew would be telling that story over and over again—maybe playing it up with fake modesty, but still milking it for all it was worth. But Juan had simply shrugged, given her the okay sign, and ridden away. She needed to talk to him, but she felt torn by her loyalty to Jordan, who would be disappointed in her if she did.
She was here to win, though. Her kids were counting on her. And the last thing she could afford was to drive a wedge between herself and the team captain she had selected. Reluctantly she shifted her gaze.
In the distance, Veronica and Mason came around the corner of the plainer of the two houses—the Greek Revival, now the blue team’s quarters. Mason held a roll of clear plastic tarp under one arm. He gestured with his other hand, as if he was explaining something. Even at this distance, Veronica’s impatient stride made it clear she had no interest in what he was saying. She held something shiny—a staple gun—which she used to staple the clear plastic that Mason held across the empty window frames.
“Why does Veronica dislike me so much?” Camilla asked Jordan. “To be honest, I’m not really used to getting that from people.”
“I don’t think she knows, herself.” Jordan grinned. “But I do. She’s intimidated by you.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
“You really can’t see it, can you?” Jordan put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “That’s why I like you so much, sister. But if Julian asked me to pick the one person here that I thought could give me a real run for the money, I’d have to say it’s you.”
She hugged Jordan back, and the two women stood there for a moment, looking toward the mainland.
Camilla’s vision blurred a little. Jordan always called her “sister.” She had never had a real sister, but if she had, this was exactly who she would have wanted her to be.
Jordan let go of her and started back toward the houses with brisk, wobbling steps. “Let’s go finish helping our team before we get accused of social loafing.”
“I’ll be right there.” Camilla needed a minute to herself first. Then, nestling the bundle of water bottles under her arm, she turned to follow—and noticed the bird.
It lurched across the open ground, a large gray auklet, its entire breast soaked in crimson. The bird stumbled forward in hopping steps, moving slowly but with clear purpose. A terrible injury gouged its upper chest; bright blood soaked its downy gray-white feathers and coated its feet.
Camilla exhaled sharply. What could she do? She stared after Jordan, who was already a hundred yards away, too far to help.
She stepped closer and squatted next to the hurt bird. The wound looked like a dog bite—it must have gotten too close to a seal. She reached for it. Then she stopped.
There was nothing she could do for it.
The auklet ignored her and staggered steadily along, leaving a trail of blood. It was on its way somewhere—back to a nest, to its chicks, maybe. Camilla’s
throat locked up and she had to look away.
The bird didn’t understand what was happening to it, even now.
It didn’t realize it was going to die.
CHAPTER 30
Natalie stood at the edge of the bluff, her back to the two houses, and watched the surging crowds of elephant seals and sea lions on the beach twenty feet below her. Wooden steps angled down the bluff, ending in a rickety span of elevated walkway six feet above the sand. From the bottom of the steps, the narrow walkway projected straight out from the bluff, supported by old creosoted log piers, to split in a Y after fifty feet. One leg of the Y continued past the surf line, extending another thirty feet over the water.
The rickety walkway had no handrails. It didn’t look safe at all. Boards were missing, leaving gaps you could drop a foot through, breaking your ankle.
The bigger elephant seals had to duck to pass beneath it.
Natalie’s skin crawled—a nasty, unpleasant sensation that told her someone was watching her from nearby. Too close.
Careful not to move her body, she slowly turned her head to scan the open ground to her right.
Travis leaned against the back of the chicken coop, ten feet away, hidden from the houses by its weathered plywood wall.
Surprise made her clamp her thighs together, but she kept still. How had he gotten so close without her noticing?
“Natalie,” he said. “Come over here for a minute.”
She stayed put and watched his eyes, seeing what he was. Knowing it.
“I just want to ask you something,” he said.
Natalie turned and walked back toward the houses, keeping the chicken coop—and Travis—in her peripheral vision the entire way.
CHAPTER 31
A blurry orange sunset shone through the plastic tarp covering the windows. The room felt damp and smelled like seawater. Camilla sat on the floor with her back against the wall, eyes shut, listening to the muted conversations around her, and the crinkle of plastic water bottles. She knew she should go back to her own building and change out of her filthy clothes, but she was tired. Jordan had left a couple of minutes ago to change shoes—the straps on her designer high heels had finally broken, and she couldn’t walk in them anymore.