The Dark Atoll

by Marilyn Foxworthy

  I said quietly, “Allie, is that what Mushing is? They torture and rape and humiliate you until your soul dies?”

  Allie started to cry as she sat facing away from me in the boat and nodded her head. I didn’t ask her any more about it.

  We kept paddling south, several hundred yards away from the coastlines. I sat in the back of the canoe. I’d spent plenty of time in canoes. Probably more than Allie. She had lived here a long time but as part of the “Vegetable” class, she probably didn’t have access to a canoe of her own. My black-haired beauty sat at the front, pulling us along with her paddle, and the blank-souled blond sat in the middle between us.

  The canoe that we had been given was long and would seat six comfortably enough. It had to have been left over from the resort that had been here at one time. It was probably made from fiberglass and it had outriggers on both sides for stability. Most canoes would only have one outboard stabilizing float but given the extreme weather now, two would be a big help. It would be almost impossible to turn over, no matter how big the seas got.

  We’d been going for about two hours, according to what I could see of the sun, when Christie leaned back and lay down. This put her head about a foot and a half in front of my feet and I could see her face and body for the first time. I hadn’t paid attention when we got into the canoe, and since then all I could see was her back.

  Christie had short blond hair, cut very crudely, probably with a dull knife. I didn’t see any scars or even bruises on her body. She seemed well-fed and healthy, except for the blank look in her eyes. She really did look like a dead-woman. She might be just a little shorter than Allie but built very much the same. Slim waist, toned and muscled thighs and calves, and a flat stomach. Her breasts were large and firm, even lying on her back like she was. I had no idea what we were going to do with her. I wondered if Allie did. Christie had been her friend and Allie wanted to take her away from whatever she had been subjected to. The fact that she seemed physically fit, in spite of her absolutely broken emotional and psychological state, gave me some hope that at least she could feed herself. The fact that she was fit probably meant that she was active and worked doing something, even if she had to be told to do it. I wanted to try an experiment and try to talk to her, but I was afraid that Allie might be against it. I decided to ask.

  I said, “Allie, can we stop and eat something and have some water or grapes for a few minutes?”

  Allie stopped paddling and set her oar across the sides of the canoe in front of her. She hung her head and took a breath. She nodded and we headed for the nearest beach. It turned out to be just a sandbar, no more than thirty feet across with no vegetation. We pulled the canoe up onto the sand and I decided to try something.

  As Allie stood just staring at the water I went to the side of the canoe and said as gently as I could, “Christie, you’re safe now. Come sit up and we can have something to eat.”

  My tone of voice was meant to communicate to Allie more than Christie that I was going to be tender with the broken girl and that Allie could trust me with her. The battle that we had been in earlier had been brutal but now I was in a very different role. A little while ago I was an angel of death; now I needed to be an angel of life, if possible.

  At my prompting, Christie sat up and I took her hand gently as she stepped out of the canoe onto the sand. She didn’t flinch at my touch; any fear of being touched had already been driven away by how she had been treated. Except for the fact that she showed no recognition that I was even there with her, and the look of death in her expression, she was lovely. But she had the look of a good piece of fruit that had started to go bad. Part of her looked great but there were spots where decay had started to set in. It was only her face though.

  I led the girl by the hand farther from the water and when I stopped, she just stared off in the direction that she happened to be facing at the time.

  I said very gently, “Christie, turn this way. OK, now sit down.”

  The girl did as I told her, and I sat down next to her on the sand. Allie was crying as she joined us. I could tell that asking Christie what she wanted to do or giving her choices right now would be meaningless. She didn’t have the ability to think about what she wanted now. She wasn’t a blank slate though. She was filled with something, and that was the problem. It wasn’t that there was nothing in there, it was that she was full and nothing more could get in. Her torment had become so complete that she couldn’t take any more into herself, not even a new idea about what she might want. Asking her if she wanted a grape would be too much and she wouldn’t even understand what she was being asked to do by making a decision. At least that was my theory. I’d work on that premise and see what happened and adjust as necessary. One thing that I was sure of though, was that as much experience as Allie had on this atoll, she wouldn’t have any effective way of really helping her friend now. We’d start by just being safe.

  I said, “Allie, would you get us all something to eat?”

  She looked at me and said, “A fish?”

  I said, “I was thinking maybe some fruit or something.”

  She said, “Oh,” and went to the canoe and got something that we could have for lunch. When she came back, Christie and I were sitting just where we had been. Nothing had changed while Allie’s back was turned, and that was entirely intentional.

  I smiled and said, “Now we’re going to have some nice fruit and…”

  I let my voice trail off suddenly. This was a mine field. Anything that I said could be disastrous if my words triggered something that I wasn’t aware of. If I said that we’d get to know each other, what implications would that have for them? Had Christie or Allie ever been told that someone was going to “get to know them” in a way that wasn’t as pure as what I had in mind? The most innocuous comment could be taken very wrong in this situation, just like when I had offered Allie my shirt that first day.

  Allie brought us a bunch of grapes and some dried fish. I stripped off my vest to use as a little picnic table.

  I said, “Allie, thank you. You didn’t have to do that. I appreciate you taking care of us like that. Christie, it would be good for us if you would eat something. Here, eat this grape.”

  I knew that for now I would have to tell her exactly what to do and not offer her choices or suggestions. Not yet. I handed the girl the tiny fruit and she put it in her mouth and chewed it slowly. When she was done, I tore off a tiny bit of fish and held it out to her.

  I said, “Now, eat a little fish. It will help you feel better.”

  It had taken me several seconds to decide how I would word that. I wasn’t confident of the response that I would trigger if I said that it would be good for her. She might have been told that several horrid things were “good for her” or “for her own good”. I hoped that the idea that she could feel better would be something that she could receive without painful conditioning taking over.

  When she had finished the bit of fish, I tried something bolder. I set one grape and one bite of fish in front of her and made sure that she watched what I was doing. That in itself seemed like a big step, that fact that she had showed some interest in what I was doing, even just watching me put down a grape.

  This didn’t have to take months. If I could do this without any serious mistakes, we could make progress quickly. Behavioral analysis and operant conditioning had been part of my education. There had been three reasons for it: to understand myself, to be able to train animals, and to gain cooperation and heal trauma. Christie was exactly the reason that I had been given that training. It had already come into play in my interactions with Allie in getting her to accept and trust me. There was no manipulative motivation in it. It was all based on offering free choices and reinforcing healthy behavior through positive consequences. Basically, kindness on my part increased the chances of a more positive relationship. It was the same with a parrot or a monkey or an iguana or a person, or even myself.

  Kindness wasn’t going to work
with Irene or the guys that had needed to fight me, but it could work for Christie. With the guys at the trade village, I had taken the opposite approach, but the goal was the same: condition them to respond in a helpful way. To overcome their previous patterns and behaviors and replace them with something that would be better for all of us. At first that meant replacing their pattern of forcing their will on everyone with a pattern of leaving me alone. I had set up consequences for the old behavior and they were free to choose their own actions.

  I didn’t know how much change we could really get with Christie, and there was every possibility that she would never be “normal”; but we would help her to be as happy as we could.

  I said, “Christie, thank you for coming with us. Allie and I want you to be safe and for no one to ever hurt you anymore.”

  I had almost said something like, “we want you to be happy,” but again, I had no idea what that would mean to her now. I hoped that the word “safe” was a safe word to use. I was sure that I should stay away from phrases like “for your own good” or “this will be good for you”. I also wanted to avoid something like, “I like you.”

  I went on, “Christie, you can eat both of those. Take the one you like most, first.”

  Christie stared at the two morsels and then tentatively reached for the grape. When she didn’t get scolded for making a choice, she slowly put it to her mouth and started to chew. And when she did, I took another grape and showed it to her as I set it down where the first one had been. When she had swallowed what she had in her mouth, I told her again that she should eat something, but she could take whichever one of the two things in front of her that she wanted. Christie went for the grape again and I replaced it with another. We continued like this for several more repetitions, and on each one, she got slightly more confident but always took the grape.

  After we had done this about half a dozen times, on the next opportunity, she hesitated and froze with her hand hovering a foot above the food in front of her. She grimaced and then set her hand on the fish and waited. When nothing happened, she looked at me for the first time and raised the bit of meat to her mouth and ate it. And I smiled kindly and put another piece of fish down to replace the one that she had taken and then looked away.

  Christie had taken a bold step. She had been reinforced for eating grapes, but she decided for herself to see what the consequences would be if she “rebelled” and took the fish instead. She discovered that if she ate grapes, she was given more grapes and if she ate fish, she was given more fish. There was no wrong answer. I didn’t look at her at all anymore but when she took a bite of either thing, I put another one in front of her. Sometimes she ate the grape, and sometimes it was the fish, and each time I gave her another one so that she had another choice for the next bite. We sat for about 30 minutes this way.

  Afterward I said, “Allie, how much farther to where we’re going?”

  I instantly regretted the question; Allie's answer would be as useless as ever in estimating time or distance.

  She said, “Coach said it was about twenty miles. I’d say we have been going maybe four miles an hour, but I recognize this place, and from here there’s another long island, then three small ones, then the one we are going to with the house on it. I’d say we’ll be there in a little while, before it gets dark.”

  I was shocked. That actually sounded well thought out and reasonable.

  I said, “Well, let’s move on. I want to see our new house. Christie, Allie and I are going to get in the canoe and go to our new house where you can live with us if you want to. Or, you can go stay here and we won’t bother you. It’s up to you. Either one is fine. Come live with us or stay here.”

  I turned to walk across the sand to the canoe and Allie tried to protest at letting Christie stay here but I whispered for her to wait and see what happened. I had no intention of leaving Christie behind and Allie needed to trust me for a minute.

  A second later, Christie was a step behind us, and I turned and smiled gently. I felt like I needed to be as careful with the expression on my face as I was trying to be with my words. When I smiled, it needed to be reassuring, not pleased with myself, or even that I was pleased with her. I needed to show that I accepted her, not for what she did but because I accepted who she was, even in the state she was in.

  We paddled for at least an hour and Allie headed us for a beach on a little island with trees and a small jungle.

  There had been three paddles in the canoe and just after we left our lunch spot, I asked Christie to take one and to help us paddle. She did as she was asked, and after a few minutes I told her thank you and that she could stop if she wanted to. I told her what to do but then gave her a choice to stop. She kept paddling and a few seconds later started paddling even harder. A while later it seemed like she was working with us, not for us. I couldn’t say exactly what gave me that impression, but it was how I felt about it.

  When we beached the boat, we all pulled it as high onto the sand as we could and gathered our things. I was still wearing my clothes.

  The little house was right at the tree-line, visible from the water and built on stilts about four feet off the ground.

  I knew that these islands had been abandoned about two years before the cataclysm. There had only been a hundred people left here at the time and the resorts were closed down already due to a severe decline in tourism to this part of the world. I knew that because my grandfather had felt that no one here would survive what was going to happen and he had bought the property cheap and moved everyone to a safer location. I knew more about this place and its history than any of the current inhabitants. By all rights, I owned the whole place. At least my family did. That wasn’t going to help me with the new native population though. It seemed best up to this point to have kept that bit a secret. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t give me any authority and it didn’t make me rich. It was funny though that the knives and house and canoe that I’d been “given” were already mine.

  It was unfortunate that Pops hadn’t put an underwater survival bunker or a nuclear-powered submarine, or a anything like that here but this wasn’t an investment in property, just the human lives that would have been lost if they had stayed here during those years. I guess that we had been wrong: it would have been possible to survive the first years of the cataclysm; the people from Allie’s plane had. Whether the people who had been evacuated would have survived the first few years after the Others came was doubtful. We probably did save their lives and their sanity. I wondered if I had ever met whoever used to own this house.

  When we got out of the boat, Christie followed us without being asked or told.

  The house was actually kind of nice. It was late afternoon and there wasn’t much time for real exploration. It would be dark again soon enough. The place had been looted years ago but overall it wasn’t too bad for a house that had been pretty much empty for 20 years. It wasn’t really very old. It was probably at least 60 years old, but it had solar electricity and modern plumbing. Water came from a rain collector on the roof. The water tank was certainly full now, given the storm that we had endured for the past several days.

  After a quick survey outside, Allie and I decided that we didn’t really want to work, or even look inside, until at least tomorrow. Darkness was coming quickly, and our immediate need was a place to sleep. We didn’t need to hide now, so we would sleep on the sand.

  When we sat down for dinner, I didn’t give Christie any instructions at all. Allie set leaves out for us to eat off of and she and I took turns putting new bites in front of Christie every time the girl chose something to eat. When we lay down to sleep, Allie lay on my shoulder, beside me. She wanted to tell Christie to do the same, but I encouraged her to let Christie try to make her own choices. Christie lay down on the sand a few feet away. Just three feet. Not far but not with us.

  At some point during the night, I woke up and Christie was kneeling beside me, looking at me.

  When she s
aw her there, I opened my eyes, she whispered, “Cold,” and I held my arm out to let her lie down with me if she wanted to. Christie lay down against my body with her head on my chest. I could feel the tension of the muscles in her body as she lay there, trying to get warm but staying alert in case she needed to jump out of the way. Eventually she relaxed and fell asleep in my arms.

  CHAPTER Nine - Resurrection

  The next morning, we slept surprisingly late. All of us. It was probably at least two hours past dawn and all three of us were still lying together on the sand, Allie on my right and Christie on my left. Things were still a bit somber this morning, but I hoped that would change before the day was over. We might be castaway on a south Pacific island chain, but I was going to make the best of it.

  I had slept naked, like the girls, last night. The temperature never went below about 72 degrees Fahrenheit here now, but the days didn’t get much warmer than that either.

  Allie woke up and sat next to me and looked at my face. Then she looked at Christie, still sleeping against my side.

  Allie said, “She’s awake,” and smiled a little bit.

  I turned my head and tried to look at Christie and said, “Christie, are you awake?”