Island Page 15

  Unless, as Billie might see it, this was Connie’s bizarre method of trying to seduce me. Fat chance of that, in my opinion.

  Since Connie had her eyes shut, I moved closer to her.

  I watched how the water slid down her chest and the tops of her breasts. Her breasts were about half the size of Billie’s. Each was partly covered by a clinging orange triangle, pulled taut by thin strips of elastic.

  Her nipples were sticking out big and hard against the flimsy triangles.

  Maybe Billie was right about her motives.

  After all, Connie knew I hadn’t gone away, knew I was standing close enough to touch her, knew I must be giving her a close-up inspection, knew what I was seeing and the effect it would have on me.

  I suddenly wondered if she wanted me to touch her.

  Maybe pull her against me and kiss her.

  Prove to her that she’s the one I care about - not Billie or Kimberly.

  We used to kiss, back before we embarked on this excursion that somehow turned her into a monster. Kissing was all we used to do in the sex department. Hug and kiss, but no feelies below the waist, front or back, and her chest area was totally off limits. It got to be enormously frustrating and annoying.

  I’d been all set to dump her, but then she’d invited me on the trip.

  Now, she seemed to be waiting for me to do something.

  Frankly, I didn’t much want to kiss her.

  You have to like somebody for that to be any good.

  What I wanted to do was hook my fingertips under each of her breasts and give the elastic strip a big tug toward the sky so they’d leap out like they did by the campfire the night of the ambush.

  With or without Billie watching, I couldn’t pull a stunt like that.

  Connie opened one eye slightly, to see what I was doing.

  I said, ‘See ya,’ and started to back away.

  Both eyes open, she took a small step forward and muttered, ‘Yeah, go on and run away like a ...’

  ‘I’m just fucking off. Isn’t that ... ?’

  ‘LOOK OUT!’ Billie shouted.

  The Hunt (Part Three)

  As Billie shouted her warning, a rock the size of a coconut came straight down as if carried over the falls by the stream’s current. I saw it an instant before it hit Connie. It struck the side of her head, then crashed onto her left shoulder.

  The way her head jerked when the rock hit it, you’d think she’d been swatted by a baseball bat. Her hair flew. Her face shook. When the rock pounded her shoulder, she was knocked to the left. Half a second later, she dropped under water.

  Billie and Kimberly were both yelling, but I’m not sure what they said.

  I ducked and grabbed Connie under the armpits and hauled her up. She felt limp. Her head lolled sideways and water slopped out of her mouth. Her eyes were open, but rolled upward so that only the whites showed, mostly. Blood mixed in with the water running down the left side of her head.

  I dragged her through the water, over to the place where she’d put her T-shirt. Then I thrust her up and backward, trying to sit her on the slab of rock. I couldn’t get her high enough for that. But she started to slump backward, so I let go of her sides and hugged her around the thighs and hoisted her again. This time, I got her rump up there.

  Kimberly arrived. ‘Stay with her,’ she gasped, then hurled herself out of the water and went scurrying up the rocks. She rushed for the top of the falls.

  She didn’t have a weapon.

  I stood in the water, holding Connie by the legs so she wouldn’t slide back into the lagoon. Before I had a chance to think about what to do next, Billie showed up. She brushed past me and climbed onto the slab. Kneeling by Connie’s side, she leaned over and pinned her down by the shoulders. ‘Got her,’ she gasped.

  Kimberly, near the top of the falls, raced out of sight.

  I boosted myself onto the rock.

  Kneeling on both sides of Connie, her mother and I lifted and dragged her until she was flat on her back. ‘That’s fine, that’s fine,’ Billie said. She sounded almost calm. ‘You’re gonna be fine, honey. Everything’s fine.’

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  Connie was out cold, and bleeding from the side of her head. She was alive, though. Breathing. With so much bare skin showing, you couldn’t miss all the parts of her that rose and fell. Here and there - at the side of her neck, just under her sternum—I could even see her skin throb with her heartbeat.

  ‘What’ll we do about her head?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s her shirt.’

  I was almost kneeling on it. I snatched up the sopping T-shirt, folded it into a big, thick pad, and pressed it against the bloody side of Connie’s head.

  She moaned and started to turn her head away.

  Billie put a hand against the other side to hold it steady. ‘That’s all right, honey,’ she said. She began crying softly. With relief, I guess, because Connie had moaned - a good sign. ‘You’ll be fine, honey.’ She sniffed a couple of times. ‘You had an accident, but you’ll be fine.’ With the hand that wasn’t holding Connie’s head, she wiped her eyes. She said to me, ‘Do you think her shoulder’s broken?’

  The top of Connie’s shoulder had a nasty abrasion. She looked as if she’d skidded across a sidewalk on it, rubbing it raw. The shoulder didn’t appear to be swollen much, though, or knocked out of shape.

  ‘I don’t think it’s broken,’ I said. ‘Not that I’ve had that much experience with broken bones.’

  Connie squeezed her eyes tight and bared her teeth and moaned again.

  Billie clutched the girl’s good shoulder. ‘You’re gonna be fine, honey.’ To me, she said, ‘Thank God you were with her. She might’ve drowned.’

  I shook my head. ‘That rock was just there, all of a sudden,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have time to do anything about it. If I could’ve pushed her out of the way, or something ... I just stood there like a jerk.’

  ‘You were great,’ Billie said. ‘It happened too fast, that’s all.’

  ‘Did it just fall, or what?’ I asked her. ‘Did you see?’

  ‘It rolled off the edge of the falls.’

  ‘By itself?’ I asked.

  ‘Not hardly. I don’t think so, anyway. I think somebody threw it - or rolled it. Somebody up at the top of the falls, but far enough back to stay out of sight.’

  ‘Wesley or Thelma.’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘How is she?’ At the sound of Kimberly’s voice, I raised my head and saw her trotting down the slope.

  ‘She’s banged up pretty good,’ I said. ‘She’s coming around, though.’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ Billie said.

  ‘What’d you find up there?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ Kimberly squatted down for a better look at Connie, and her bare arm rubbed against mine. ‘How are you doing, Con?’

  The answer she got was a groan of pain.

  ‘She’s so thick-headed,’ Kimberly said, ‘the rock probably didn’t even dent her.’

  Connie murmured, ‘Fuck you.’

  With that, I’m sure we all figured Connie was well on her way to recovery.

  ‘You didn’t find anything up there?’ Billie asked.

  Kimberly shook her head. ‘I didn’t do much searching, though. Just took a quick look around, then tried to see if I could find any footprints. Nothing. I wanted to get back and see how Connie was doing. And I didn’t want to get myself jumped. There must be about a million hiding places up there. I didn’t have anyone to watch my back, so it didn’t seem smart to hang around.’

  ‘I could go up with you,’ I offered. ‘The two of us could do a search.’

  ‘Not gonna leave Billie and Con. Anyway, all our weapons are over there.’ She nodded toward the other side of the lagoon. ‘We’ve taken enough casualties for one day. What we’ve gotta do now is get ourselves back to the beach.’

  Which is what we did.

  We waited a few minutes for
Connie to recover some more. Then we helped her sit up. We needed a way to keep the bandage (her folded T-shirt) in place against the side of her head, so Billie volunteered my belt. While I held the bandage against the wound, Kimberly wrapped the belt around Connie’s head - making passes over the top and under the chin, then fastening the buckle.

  Then we lowered Connie into the water. We floated her across the lagoon on her back, and helped her out on the other side.

  I was only half a help; my belt being otherwise occupied, I needed one hand to keep my shorts from falling off.

  We found our stuff where we’d left it. I removed one of the tomahawks from its sling, and used the rope as a belt for my shorts. Then I refilled my pockets. (We hadn’t touched the food yet, but nobody wanted any.)

  It was agreed that Billie and I would work together on helping Connie back to camp, and Kimberly would take care of whatever weapons we couldn’t manage. I put on my pink shirt, and stuck a tomahawk down the side of my rope belt.

  Kimberly ended up in her Hawaiian shirt, with her chest crossed by rope slings, a tomahawk at each hip, her Swiss Army knife tucked down the front of her bikini pants, four spears hugged against her side with her left arm, and the ax in her right hand.

  I took one side of Connie; Billie took the other. We held her by the arms.

  With Kimberly in the lead, we started downstream.

  Connie whimpered and groaned and sometimes cried. With Billie and I holding her steady, though, she was able to stay on her feet and support her own weight, most of the time. Every now and then, she sagged and we had to struggle to keep her from going down.

  We stuck to the stream; it was easier going than the jungle, and seemed like the most direct route back to the beach.

  Sometimes, the stream was too narrow for the three of us to walk side by side. We always managed to keep Connie up, through places like that.

  We only had real trouble once. That happened when we were making our way down a fairly easy slope. We would’ve been fine, but some damn bird suddenly flapped up out of nowhere and crossed right in front of us. It startled the hell out of us. Billie yelped. All three of us, I think, flinched and jumped. But then Billie had a foot slip out from under her. We tried to hold each other up, but we all fell down, splashing in the shallow water and landing on the rocks of the stream bed.

  Only Kimberly, a few strides ahead of us, got away unscathed.

  The rest of us weren’t scathed in any major way - not from that. It just added several new sore places to each of us.

  Soon after that stupid fall, we hobbled out of the jungle and onto the clear, bright sand of our beach.

  The big hunt was over.

  We hadn’t found our prey, but we’d been preyed upon.

  Connie is mighty damn lucky to be alive.

  All that was yesterday.

  Andrew’s lighter, in my pocket at the time of our fall into the stream, got soaked and stopped working. This had us very worried. A couple of hours in the sunlight yesterday afternoon dried it out, though, so we were able to get our campfire going again.

  Connie is doing fairly well. The gash on the side of her head isn’t large. It bled a lot for a while, then clotted and hasn’t reopened. She’s got quite a lump there, under her hair. She complains of fierce headaches and shoulder pains, but nothing serious has happened so far. I mean, she hasn’t fainted or had dizzy spells or blurred vision.

  We think she’ll probably make a full recovery.

  Agony, by the way, has improved her personality; she’s in too much pain most of the time to be a bitch.

  Also, she seems to be busy feeling sorry for herself and wanting everyone’s sympathy. At least when she’s awake.

  She didn’t have to do any guard duty last night. Kimberly, Billie and I took turns, with me taking the morning shift so I could work on my journal here.

  Been writing like a madman, ever since dawn.

  A while ago, Kimberly woke up. She came over to the fire and we said ‘Good morning’ to each other. She asked how the journal’s coming along. I said, ’Fine. I’m just about caught up.‘

  ‘I hope you’re making it clear that Wesley’s behind all this,’ she said. ‘Wesley Duncan Beaverton the third. So there won’t be any doubt about who murdered Keith and Dad.’

  ‘It’s all here,’ I said.

  ‘And he’s probably the one who dropped that rock on Connie yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You got that?’

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘Good.’ She shook her head. ‘I’d sure hate for him to get away with this. If he ends up killing all of us, maybe that diary of yours’ll be the only way anybody ever finds out the truth.’

  ‘My God, I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  ‘It probably won’t,‘ Kimberly said. ’Anyway, I’m going in for a swim. Can you hold down the fort for another ten or fifteen minutes?‘

  ‘Sure.’

  So then she jogged down to the shore and charged into the water.

  She came out of it a few minutes ago. When she first came out, she did some push-ups on the beach. Then sit-ups, knee-bends, etc. She just now walked over for the ax. I guess she plans to swing it around, the way she did yesterday. I’m going to watch. So long for now.

  Thelma’s Story

  And who should wander out of the jungle this afternoon but Thelma?

  At the time she put in her appearance, nobody was actually keeping watch.

  Billie and Kimberly were out in the water, trying to spear some fish for supper. Kimberly was going after them with Connie’s special spear, while Billie stood by with the pot. They’d just finished nailing their second fish when Thelma came toward our campsite.

  Connie was asleep under one of the shelters. We’d let her drink a few slugs of bourbon after lunch to ease her aches and pains. It must’ve helped considerably, because she zonked out. She’d been snoozing for a couple of hours by the time Thelma showed up.

  I was stretched out on my back beneath the leafy roof of the other sun shelter, my head propped up by a mound of sand, my paperback held above my face with both hands. I’d been reading, watching Kimberly and Billie, reading a bit more ...

  Thelma’s shout of ‘Help!’ startled me so much that I flinched and the book jumped out of my hands.

  I flipped over onto my belly.

  The paperback had landed in the sand about four feet away.

  Thelma was about fifty feet away, walking slowly toward me. More of a stagger than a walk, actually. Small, stiff steps. She was bent over a little, as if cramped. Her arms hardly moved at all. She carried herself like someone who’d recently fallen down the cellar stairs, or something.

  She had some pretty good damage to her face, including a shiner and a fat lip.

  One sleeve was missing entirely from her blouse, leaving her right arm bare to the shoulder. The blouse was filthy, spotted with blood, and untucked so it hung down in front of her shorts.

  Even though her blouse was buttoned up, I saw right away that she’d lost her bra. You couldn’t miss it. She has large breasts. Un-leashed, they swayed and bounced, making the front of her blouse leap around as if she had a couple of wild animals trapped inside.

  One bare knee had an abrasion similar to the one on Connie’s shoulder.

  Her hands were empty.

  There was no sign of Wesley. I figured he might be nearby, though, using Thelma as a diversion while he snuck in.

  Also, Thelma had given us a taste of how dangerous she could be without any help from Wesley.

  I reached out and grabbed the ax. Hanging on to it, I crawled out from under the shelter and stood up.

  She raised an open hand.

  I twisted around. Kimberly and Billie were still busy fishing. Apparently, they hadn’t heard the shout.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘Billie! Kimberly!’

  Their heads turned. Because of the slope of the beach, I doubted that they could see Thelma. They could see me, though. I gestur
ed for them to come out, and added, ‘Hurry! Thelma’s here!’

  I looked over at Connie. She was curled on her right side, the same as before, to keep the pressure off her wounds. The shouting must’ve woken her up. Her eyes were open, watching me.

  ‘Thelma’s here,’ I told her, even though I was repeating myself.

  She didn’t say anything. She barely moved. But her upper lip twitched slightly.

  Kimberly and Billie were sloshing toward shore.

  For at least a while, it would be just Thelma and me. And Wesley, if he was trying to pull off a sneak attack.

  Thelma was still coming.

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Don’t take another step.’

  She stopped.

  ‘Put both your hands up. Put ’em on top of your head.‘

  She obeyed. Her breasts lifted. So did her entire blouse, a little bit.

  I thought about frisking her.

  Not just so I could feel her up, either: the way her blouse hung down, big and loose, there was plenty of room for hiding weapons.

  The other two gals would be here soon, though, so I gave up the idea of checking her.

  ‘Do you have any weapons?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she muttered. She had a dull, sullen look in her eyes. ‘I didn’t come here to cause any ...’

  ‘Thelma!’ Kimberly blurted. I looked back and saw her break into a run. Billie hurried after her. Over at her shelter, Connie didn’t want to miss out. She was getting to her hands and knees.

  Kimberly raced past me, then slowed, then stopped a few strides from her sister.

  Thelma started to lower her hands.

  ‘Don’t.’ Kimberly jabbed out with the spear, prodding her in the ribs.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Stay put.’ She held the spear in both hands, its point an inch or so away from Thelma’s chest.

  Billie arrived. Both of us moved in and stood with Kimberly.

  ‘Can I put my hands down, now?’ Thelma asked.