I said, “Allie, how much farther to the village we are going to?”
She smiled and said, “Oh, maybe three or four days.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was. When we had started out, at least a week ago, it had been a three-or-four-day trip. Now, after traveling what must have been more than 50 to 70 miles, it was still three or four days. But how would Allie know the difference? Did she even know where we were?
I sighed and said, “Oh good. Um, what direction is it in?”
Allie pointed in the same direction that we’d been traveling all along, thank goodness, and said, “Over there. Four more islands and then we get to the place where there will be more of Them and the Others. Then two islands and walk half way. But we should swim. When you fight, can you wear your clothes?”
I said, “My clothes? Why? I mean, yes, I can. It would be better for fighting if I can wear my clothes.”
She said, “I thought it might be. If you wear your clothes, they will have heard of you and they will know what you are.”
I was actually really glad that Allie thought that I should wear my clothes. The safety vest was a lightweight body armor and would stop a knife thrust at my chest or stomach. My boots would let me perform kicks that couldn’t be done with bare feet. Even my jumpsuit would provide good protection from scratches and bites. I didn’t need the clothes, but it would make things easier. The fact that I would win regardless made me feel confident that I wasn’t somehow cheating by wearing clothes. Of course, if I did have something that would give me an unfair advantage, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it anyway. This wasn’t a game. This was a fight to the death, and I didn’t intend to die. I did want it to be over though.
I estimated the distance that Allie had indicated to be about a three to four-hour journey. After we ate, we started swimming.
We passed by the first little island but as we approached the second, while we were still in the water, three people walked out of the brush and stood on the beach. They saw us before we noticed them, and they called out.
Allie whispered, “We can go to them. They won’t hurt us. They have seen us already, so we can talk to them.
We swam to the beach and walked out onto the sand where the three naked women stood waiting for us. They all carried spears and wore a small skirt of leaves that didn’t really hide their bodies at all; it was more like a belt than a skirt. They were all very pretty, somewhat like Allie. Oh, they must have been part of the athletic team that had crashed here. Yeah, they’d all be fairly fit. None of them were as beautiful as Allie in my opinion, though.
One of them said, “Lana, welcome. The Others will Mush you for sure. You made them very angry by escaping and not making the new one fall in the pit. Where are you going? You can’t live with us.”
Allie, who they still called Lana, said, “Going to trade day. My boyfriend will fight.”
The woman raised an eyebrow and said, “Boyfriend? That’s too bad. If you are going to trade day, let us take you,” and she smiled.
Allie said, “Good. Take us. We’re in a hurry.”
The three laughed and the woman said, “A hurry? So, you’re tired of living? You want to be mushed?”
Allie said defiantly, “My boyfriend can’t be mushed.”
The woman shrugged and said, “Then he’ll be killed. He’s pretty. Too bad.”
Then, after looking us over for another few seconds, she said, “We’ll take you. We have to go tell the Others that we saw you anyway, so you should come and make it easy. Come and we’ll get the canoes.”
Allie said, “We’ll wait here for the canoes.”
The woman said, “If you run away it won’t matter.”
Allie said, “I told you, we go to trade day. Take us or don’t.”
The woman shrugged again and said, “OK, we’ll get canoes. Be here or not.”
When the three had turned, laughing, and walked away, Allie said, “Put on your clothes now.”
I hurried into my clothes and said, “Allie, can we trust them?”
Allie said, “We can trust them to do what they do. They don’t need to lie to us. They will be given food for bringing us to the Others.”
That was essentially what Allie had told me before. That we could trust them to do what they’d do. If we had no expectations that they would do something else, then yes, we could trust them to act according to their nature. You can trust a liar to lie and you can trust a thief to steal. Allie believed that we could trust these women to report back to the Others and to take us to them if we went willingly.
A few minutes later, two canoes came down the beach. The women insisted that I get in one and Allie in the other. I told them that wasn’t an option and if they didn’t put us both in the same boat that we’d make it to the trade village on our own. Eventually, the leader of their little group shrugged her shoulders and relented.
The trip was actually fairly short. It took us about an hour. We stayed away from the other islands until we were directly in from of a point about halfway down the largest island I had seen so far and then turned inward. As we headed for the beach, and the collection of buildings there, the second canoe, the one that Allie and I were not in, raced ahead and beached itself in time to make some explanation about our arrival to the locals. Our canoe took its time and went slowly, giving the Others plenty of time to prepare for us.
When we did make it to the beach, I jumped out and was about to help Allie, but she was already marching up to the small crowd that had started to gather.
A man started to say, “Lana, you…,” but Allie cut him off quickly
She yelled, “Shut up! I don’t belong to you! We came for rights. This new man belongs to me and you can fight him if you want to. If not, never bother my family. We will trade with you if you don’t bother us.”
The man started to slap Allie and I started to jump forward to stop him, but he saw me coming and held back at the last minute.
He huffed and said, “Lana, why are you like this. Get mushed or die.”
Allie said, “Or, my boyfriend kills you and you leave us alone.”
The man said, “He’ll fight for you and for himself? He won’t win. It will make it harder on you.”
Allie said, “Do it.”
He grinned and said, “OK. I don’t care. We’ll fight.”
Allie said, “Not here. In the circle.”
The man frowned and turned and walked away from the beach. The “circle” turned out to be what was probably once the driveway of a hotel here. It had probably been abandoned about 50 years ago, but I could see the remnants of the pavement. The man pointed and I went and stood in the center.
He sighed and said, “This is a bother.”
Allie said, “Coach, you are a bother.”
The man said, “Fine. We’ll do it. Stranger, Lana has done all the talking so far. What do you say? She’ll be mushed, but…”
Allie screamed, “You can’t Mush me now! I belong to my family!”
The coach said, “You might be right. OK, man, if you fight, you’ll be killed. If you aren’t killed, someone else can fight you until you are killed. If no more want to fight you, you get a pass. After that, we don’t bother you anymore and you can trade with us. But you are going to die. If you don’t fight, you might be mushed. You might find someone who wants you. Um, that’s it. Killed, mushed, or belong to someone. What do you say?”
I took a breath and looked at the coach.
He saw my eyes and said, “OK, not mushed. I can see that. Then killed or belong?”
I said, “Or I fight and several of your people die and I walk away with my girl and you don’t bother us, and we find a way to trade in peace.”
He said, “Um, yeah, sure. That could happen. And maybe the sun will come out and we’ll have a tea party and The Lost Grendels Band will land on the island and we’ll have a music festival while unicorns fly out of your ass.”
Everyone laughed except me and Allie.
/>
Then he said, “I’m tired of this crap. Why did it have to get like this? I feel like I’m getting old.”
A younger man standing near him said, “Let me do it Coach.”
I said quickly, “Allie, remember, I have to do this. It’s going to be bad.”
The coach nodded and the younger man stepped forward.
The coach said, “OK. No rules. No weapons. I guess your clothes are OK. After Jack kills you, he gets to keep them. Blah blah. Go on.”
The guy that I now knew was called Jack grinned and stepped forward. I didn’t move. When he was close enough, he smiled even wider and took a swing at me with his right fist. It wasn’t a very good swing. Just as he cocked his arm, I let fly with a front-kick, straight into his stomach. As he doubled over unable to breathe, I grabbed his head and turned it slightly to the side and brought my left knee up as hard as I could into the side of his jaw. His neck snapped with a pop and I dropped his body to the ground.
There was a momentary pause as everyone took in what had just happened and then another man screamed as if I had just killed someone he dearly loved. He rushed straight at me and tried to grab me with both hands aimed at my throat. He never reached me. As he came close, I held my hands out with my fingers pointed at his ears and my thumbs pointed straight into his eye sockets. The momentum of his charge buried my thumbs as far as they would go into the front part of his brain. It didn’t kill him immediately, but it left him blinded and missing his eyes. I stepped aside and let him thrash about in the circle, screaming.
I let that go on for a few seconds and then stuck out my leg and pushed him backward so that he fell across my thigh. On his way down, I took hold of his face and smashed the back of his head into the pavement. He’d never get up.
I stood and waited as the shock of what was happening passed over the crowd of onlookers.
The coach looked horrified and said, “What the hell? Why did you do that?”
I said simply, “Because you told me you wanted a fight to the death. You didn’t think I was going to let me be the dead one, did you? This is your game, not mine.”
He just said, “Well, then game on. Who’s next? Are you sure you don’t want to just give up?”
I said, “You tell me when you’re beaten. I walk away when you leave the field. But the trophy stays with me.”
Coach didn’t sigh this time. He said, “Boys, are we going to let this out of town shit talk to us like that?”
There was a yell, “Hell no, Coach!” and another man stepped up.
This time, as his first swing missed my head, I stepped in and grabbed his wrist and pulled him to where I was mostly behind him and drove the palm of my left hand up into his armpit, dislocating his shoulder badly and throwing him forward so that he was almost ten feet away before he turned around. He came at me again and when he was close, I spun sideways and shattered his knee with a kick to the inside of his leg. He could no longer use his right arm or his right leg and couldn’t do anything but hop. And now he was insane. These guys had no concept of defeat and couldn’t accept what was happening. This man was beaten but he didn’t know that. Even unable to walk, he still seemed to think that if he just got mad enough that he could still kill me. I stepped behind him and choked him out with my arm around his neck. He lost consciousness quickly as blood no longer flowed to his brain, but I held my forearm crushing his windpipe until he quit breathing.
The fourth guy to come at me got his arm broken at the elbow so that the bones stuck out of his flesh uselessly. I snapped his neck from the front.
Then a fifth man came out. This guy was big. At least six-foot-five and muscled like none of the others. I could see the muscles because, like everyone but me, he was absolutely naked. He didn’t rush me like the others.
He stepped up slowly and said, “You shoulda listened to Coach. Kinda too bad you gotta die.”
I said, “What’s to bad is that you think that you can be the one to kill me. Nice penis, by the way.”
It really wasn’t. I just said that. But the guy laughed and tossed his head back slightly and I crushed his testicles with the reinforced toe of my boot. I mean I kicked him hard. I’m sure his balls exploded in their sack. If he wasn’t the village eunuch before, he was now. Not that he’d live long. Or on second thought, maybe he would.
The guy doubled over, clutching his ruined manhood with both hands and bawling. He fell to his knees and then to his side, lying in a ball on the ground.
I stepped back and left him where he was. Everyone watched in silence.
Finally, the guy opened his eyes enough to see what was happening around him and a terrified look came over his face.
He yelled, “No, Coach, come on. No! At least kill me. You owe me, Coach. Kill me at least!”
Then, looking at me, he tried to struggle to his feet, but I could tell it was only so that he could prolong the fight long enough for me to help him avoid what he viewed as a fate worse than death at the hands of his “friends”. He made it to his knees. I stepped slowly behind him and he didn’t even try to hit me. He just knelt there on the ground as I put my arm around his neck and repeated what I had done earlier, first making him pass out and then waiting until he stopped breathing. He was the only one that I had shown any mercy to.
Everyone still alive stood silently looking at the coach now.
The man said solemnly, “Yeah, that’s enough. No more. He can trade. Nobody bothers him. I know I won’t. Bring his stuff,” and he closed his eyes and stood there, defeated.
After a minute he said, “What’s your name?”
I said, “I am Florin Jensen.”
He said, “Um, I kind of owe you an apology, don’t I. This was my fault. Not all my fault but I didn’t stop it and I went along with it. Not just now but before, when we crashed here. I let them kill the pilot and do what they wanted with the stewardesses. I’m not that old, you know. But I feel old. Now more than ever. Look, Florin, um, you get what these three, oh crap, no these five had. It’s probably not very useful to you. How about this. Let’s trade. We give you a canoe and there’s a place about twenty miles south. Nobody’s there. You take the canoe and some food, and the place down there is yours. Nobody bothers you. Come trade when you want, safe and dry. Canoe, house, and island, and we leave you alone. Lana, know where I mean, right?”
Allie said vehemently, “I want Christie!”
Coach frowned and said, “Um, OK. Somebody go bring Christie. You know, the blond? Go on, yeah, the blond, with the big knockers! Get her.”
I said, “I need some good knives.”
He sighed and said, “How many?”
I said, “Three.”
Coach took a knife from his own belt and dropped it in front of me and then pointed and a man ran off to find more. He told someone else to go get some bags of food.
Coach was beaten. He looked at me and said, “Dude, I’m actually sorry now. Um, someday I might come to your place, and I might ask you to do me a favor. Like you did for Bubba. I don’t remember his real name. I might come and ask you to send me on my way. I’ll be going to hell. I don’t deserve mercy. Neither did Bubba. None of us do. This is so crap!”
Someone ran back and cautiously handed me four knives wrapped with a vine. A minute later, we had two bundles of fruit and dried fish. Coach told three of the men to go get a canoe for us and have it ready on the beach.
He said, “Well, I guess that’s it. You can go. I guess we’ll see you around. I got a lot to think about.”
Allie yelled, “I want Christie!”
Coach said quietly, “Lana, Christie will be in the canoe.”
Allie scowled and took my hand and said, “I belong to him. Christie does too!” and she started walking us back toward the water.
Coach said, “By law, such as they are, you’re free to come trade. We won’t bother you. Um, please don’t bother us. I’m sorry, I guess. But that isn’t your problem. I should have fought you. It would have been easier than
this. Things have changed, haven’t they? Bye.”
When we got to the beach, there was a large canoe and the men near it ran from it as if they were afraid to touch it now that it belonged to me. Allie and I took our newly won provisions and laid them in the front of the craft. Allie didn’t speak to the blond girl seated in the center, staring blankly into space. No one spoke until we had pushed out into the water and were paddling away.
CHAPTER Eight - Christie
When we were at least 200 yards out, and still none of us had spoken, I said, “Allie, is Christie OK?”
Allie said harshly, “No! She isn’t. She’s dead!”
I said, “Dead?”
Allie said, “Does she look like she’s alive to you? I’m so glad you killed those crap-weasels. They deserved worse. We’re going home and then we’re coming back and killing every damn one of them!”
I said gently, “Um, no we aren’t.”
We rowed on in silence for an hour at least.
Finally, Allie said, “We’ll do what you think is best. Thank you for changing everything.”
I said, “What has changed?”
She said, “It’s all changed. The Others know that they can be beaten. Their coach knows that you beat them. I can’t be mushed. Everyone knows that now.”
She was probably right, things had changed. Had I changed? I’d never killed anyone before. Not except for some of the Norgs, in practice, and that didn’t really hurt them at all, since it was just practice. I’d certainly never been splashed with blood and had eyes and brains under my fingernails before. Had that been necessary? Allie certainly felt that it wasn’t only necessary but entirely justified. What would have happened if I’d handled that some other way? Simple: they would have killed me. Maybe tortured me and then killed me…and made Allie watch. Or made me watch as they raped and tortured and finally killed Allie. And from what I’d seen, the torture that they subjected me to would have included rape as well. And every one of them would have taken part in it. There was a story about a town like that in the old Bible. And in that case, they were judged to be unredeemable. Who knows? Maybe the Coach would try to be a better person. It would be hard for him, still living in that environment. He probably would show up someday and force me to kill him, just to put him out of his misery. Would I do it?
The Dark Atoll Page 7