Page 11

Chapter ten

Bower

S tanding in the middle of the beach, I take a slice of guava from West, my eyes scanning the trees in front of us.

“Why are we out here?” I ask around a mouthful of fruit.

“For one, we should keep an eye out for a plane or ship. And two, out here we know for certain we can’t be overheard,” West tells us, nodding to the jungle that’s thirty feet away. “I saw someone.”

King and I whip our gazes to him in surprise.

“What?”

“Who?”

“I didn’t get a good look. But I saw their eyes… in the trees.”

My shoulders drop. “It was probably just a lemur.”

He quickly shakes his head. “No. When I was getting out of the water, I noticed a bunch of mud around the edge, and I saw human footprints in it. Footprints, not shoe prints. I followed it and it ended at a tree across the clearing. When I looked up, I saw the whites of two eyes, human eyes, looking back at me. I couldn’t see anything else, and when I took a step closer, he took off.

I followed briefly, but he moved fast and I lost him instantly.

Besides, I’d just got out of the water and had no shoes or clothes. ”

“Didn’t want to get your dong scratched up?” I ask, unable to help myself. He gives me a humorless glare and I shrug my shoulders. If you couldn’t laugh at a time like this, then you’d probably go mad.

“So we aren’t alone. Do you think there is more than one person out there?” King asks, watching the jungle with trepidation.

“Probably. I think it'd be difficult to survive here on your own, especially for an extended period of time. But considering he was in a tree, he’s probably native to this island.”

“So, what do we do now?” I ask, not sure what to do with that information.

“We have to draw him out. Maybe set a trap of sorts. Leave out fruit for him.”

“I doubt he’ll respond to that if he’s the one that left it for us that first morning,” Kings says, and I agree.

“And why do we want to draw him out? If he leaves us alone, we’ll leave him alone,” I say with a shrug.

“I—” West starts then stops, frowning at the jungle as he considers his next words. “They could be a native, upset we took their home… But what if they’re not? That grave didn’t have a very native feel to it.”

“No, it didn’t,” King agrees. “And leaving us food doesn’t seem like something a hostile native would do.”

“There could be someone on the island who doesn’t belong here, like us. Maybe they’re just scared?”

“Why would a human, who isn’t a native, be scared of us?” I ask, looking back and forth between King and West. Sure, we were big guys, with a few tattoos between us, and I suppose we could look intimidating, but that couldn’t be worse than being alone on a deserted island, could it?

“I don’t know, but we need to lure them out with something,” West says.

“We can’t try to trap him. They haven't done anything wrong and that might make them angry,” King says, shaking his head.

“Fine, no trapping, but we should still try to lure them out into the open. Best to know who we are dealing with.”

“Well, we can’t use fruit as bait, he clearly already knows how to find that,” I say, considering our options. “Oh! What about soap? Or shoes? You said he was barefoot, right?”

“Yeah, he was, but I don’t have a spare pair, do either of you?

” We both shake our heads. “But soap is a good idea. If he’s been here a while, I bet it’ll be hard to resist some home comforts.

Let’s go back to camp and see what we can find.

We’ll need to be quiet so let’s do it without mentioning what we’re doing.

We’ll leave it in the middle of camp, on the log by the firepit.

Then we split up. I’ll go up to the main hut and watch from there.

Bower, you stand in the path that leads to camp, try and keep out of sight.

And King, you hide in the trees on the opposite side of camp. ”

“What do we do when we see him?” I ask, unsure what our plan is here.

“We’ll just talk to him calmly, and try not to spook him, see if he talks back. He might not even speak English. I speak a few words of Japanese and Spanish, what about you two?”

“Only English for me.”

“I can do a couple words in Spanish and Italian,” King adds.

“Alright. Let’s hope he speaks English then. Ready? ”

We both nod and silently follow him back to camp.

As he instructed, we quietly climb up to the main hut where our bags are and search through them for anything we can use to bribe them out.

I hold out a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo.

King adds a pair of socks and some face moisturizer.

West surprises me by pulling out a silver necklace with a seashell on it.

“Where’d that come from? You got a girlfriend back home, West?” I ask in surprise. He’s never mentioned a girl before, I assumed he was single since he flew around so much.

“No,” he says, staring down at the necklace in his hand while he rubs the back of his neck, looking embarrassed.

“I, uh… When we were in Perth, I was grabbing some snacks and it caught my eye. I don’t know why I bought it, to be honest. I just thought it was pretty, and kinda wished I had someone to buy it for.

” He looks up at us with a grimace on his face before looking back down at it again.

“Man, this is fucking embarrassing.” He lets out a deep breath. “The store owner saw me looking at it and said something about how my girl would love it. I didn’t want to admit I was looking at it when I was single, so I bought it.” He drops his hand and shakes his head. “Pathetic, right?”

“Awe, hey man, I think that’s sweet!” I tell him honestly.

He looks up at me, searching my face for the truth with a doubtful look on his face.

“Really,” I say, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “You bought it for a future girlfriend, there’s nothing weird about that. She’d probably love that story, too.”

“Thanks, I guess. I thought it might work to…” he trails off, his eyes looking up, even though we’re inside, and we nod .

“Good idea, who knows what will work,” King says, gathering all the items as he exits the hut and moves across to the other one, pushing the door open with his shoulder.

“Hey! There’s another waterskin here now!” West and I quickly move to follow him, and sure enough, a third waterskin is on the same table where we had found the first two.

“I’ll be damned!” I say with a smile. Our native is definitely not upset at us. Unless they just wanted us to lower our guard.

King passes the waterskin to West then places all the items he’s holding on the table. He starts to look around and quickly finds what he’s looking for… a bag.

“Good idea,” I say, as he hooks it over his head so the shoulder bag sits at his side, then he stuffs the items inside. This way, we’ll have our hands free to climb down. Plus, the bag would be useful in the future. In fact… I look around, pleased when I find another spare bag.

“There’s a lot of stuff in here,” West says, looking around.

“We figure it’s stuff the previous inhabitant made. The other hut has even more, but everything looks much older, like it was the trial run stuff. This stuff is much better quality.”

“Fuck, whoever did all this has been here for a while,” West mumbles, following King back out to the skywalk.

I close the door behind me and make my way down the ladder, leaving West to watch from the main hut. King starts to place the bait near the fire and I casually stroll out of camp to my assigned spot.

Eventually, I decide to take a seat, finding a spot where I can just barely see the bottle of shampoo. And I wait… and wait… and wait .

After what feels like a few hours, West calls my name. I stand and stretch as I head back into camp, seeing all the items still sitting there, with West and King frowning down at them.

“Nothing?” I ask, and they both shake their heads.

“I need some water and something to eat, why don’t two of us go get some fruit and refill our waterskins, and one person can stay here and watch?” West suggests.

“Yeah, I just emptied mine and I’m starving. I’ll stay and watch, if you want?” I ask, looking between them. They both agree and I hand them my waterskin and climb up the ladder, deciding to find a spot where I can sit on the deck and lean against the hut for some support as I watch the bait.

The heat of the jungle and lack of stimulation make me yawn as my eyelids grow heavy. I’m determined to keep my eyes open, but the next thing I know, I’m jerking awake, looking around me for threats.

How long was I asleep? What woke me? I notice a coconut sitting beside me and frown as I pick it up. “You weren’t here before,” I mumble. Turning it, I realize it’s been cracked open. I shake it and hear the liquid sloshing around inside.

I lick my lips. I am really thirsty. How much do I trust that this is safe to drink?

It’s not like they have access to drugs on this island, right?

Knowing what the other two would say, but too thirsty to care, I tip it up and let the coconut water quench my thirst. We probably weren’t drinking enough.

With this kind of heat, we should’ve been hydrating way more than we had been.

Lowering the coconut, my eyes move down to our bait. The soap, shampoo, socks and… “What the hell?” I whisper, dropping the coconut and quickly climbing down the ladder .

I stare down at the items and scan them, making sure nothing is missing before leaning down and picking up the rock that’s now sitting in the middle of them.

My eyes scan my surroundings before I flip the rock over and read the name engraved on it. “Steve.”