Island

What Happened with the Dinghy

Here’s what happened.

Some-time during the night—we don’t know whose watch it was—he got the dinghy.

No big trick. Though we’d kept it beached above the high-tide line, it wasn’t close enough to keep an eye on. For one thing, the beach had a slight downward slope from where we camped. For another, the area where we left it was beyond the reach of the firelight.

Nobody was really paying attention to it, anyway. We were worried about each other, not the boat.

What he must’ve done was sneak in from a side, staying close to the shore, and drag the dinghy into the water. Then he probably swam away, towing it by the bow line.

Connie and I started our watch at four in the morning. We sat so we faced each other across the fire. That way, between the two of us, we had a 360-degree view and nobody could approach without one or the other of us spotting him.

It was Connie who suggested our positions. Not only were we beyond touching distance, but we couldn’t carry on a conversation without raising our voices. So we stayed silent, for the most part. Fine with me.

Even though we just sat there, looking around and not talking, neither of us noticed anything wrong. Maybe the dinghy was already gone by then.

An hour or so into our watch, I got up from the fire and went over to the rocks and took a leak. I must’ve walked within twenty feet of where the dinghy was supposed to be. I don’t recall seeing it, but I don’t recall not seeing it. More than likely, it had already been taken. But I can’t swear to that.

A little later, Connie headed toward the same area—for the same reason I’d gone there. I started to get up and go with her, but she said, “I don’t need an audience, thanks all the same. Anyway, I can take care of myself.” She was holding one of the spears, and gave it a shake. “You just stay here and mind your own business.”

So I stood with my back to the fire and watched her. After she left the firelight behind, she was just a dim shape. All I could see was her T-shirt, because it was white. It seemed to float above the beach as she walked. Then it started to rise, which meant she was climbing the rocks. When she got up into them, the T-shirt sank out of sight.

At the time, I thought how it would’ve served her right if she’d gotten nailed right then and there.

She didn’t, though.

Pretty soon, she came back.

“Real nice,” I congratulated her.

“Sorry. I’m sure you would’ve loved to watch.”

“Guess who would’ve gotten the blame if our resident Thuggee had taken the opportunity to kill your ass while you were over there? Me, that’s who. Your dad thinks I’m worthless, as it is. There’d be no living with him if I let you get killed.”

“Ha ha ha. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind, otherwise.”

“You think I want you to get killed?”

She let out a huff. “You wouldn’t exactly consider it a great loss. All you care about is my mom—and Kimberly. I don’t exactly stack up, do I?”

“Well, no.”

“See?”

“That doesn’t mean I’d like you to get killed. What I’d really like is if, by some miracle, you stopped being such a bitch all the time.”

She gave me a sneer and said, “Oh, isn’t that cute.” Then she strutted over to her side of the fire. She sat down, crossed her legs, and lay the spear across her thighs. “Don’t even look at me,” she said.

So I didn’t look at her.

Not for about half an hour, anyway.

But she drew attention to herself by raising the spear overhead. Just as I turned my eyes to her, she threw it.

At me.

It flew over the top of the fire, its whittled point coming straight for my face. I whipped an arm up just in time, and knocked the spear aside.

“Real nice!” I told her. “Shit! You could’ve hurt me with that thing!”

“That was the general idea.”

“Try it again some time, and maybe I’ll forget to be a gentleman and shove it…”

“Fuck you.”

“Just shut up before we wake everybody up,” I said. Then I muttered, mostly to myself, something about her being a “crazy fucking bitch.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Shut up, okay? We’re supposed to be keeping watch.”

Oddly enough, our quarrel didn’t wake anybody up. At any rate, nobody yelled at us to knock it off.

Connie and I didn’t say anything to each other for the rest of the night. I tried not to look at her again, but couldn’t help it. I had to make sure she wasn’t about to hurl a weapon at me. Whenever our eyes met, she never failed to give me a dirty look.

Dawn finally came.

Andrew woke up and came over to the fire. He was shirtless, barefoot, and wearing his khaki shorts. He said, “Lovely morning, eh, kids?” Then he did a couple of quick knee-bends, arms forward for balance. Then he rubbed his hands together. “How was the watch? No trouble, I take it?”

“What’re you so peppy for?” Connie said.

“Ah, the child’s in a snit, and it’s barely sun-up. Lover’s quarrel?” he asked.

“Give me a break.”

“Tell you what, a good brisk swim oughta set things right. I’ll race the both of you.” Grinning and rubbing his hands together, he looked toward the inlet. “We’ll make it a race to the…” His face changed. Something was wrong. As I stood up to see what it was, he said, “What’s that doing out there?”

A boat was floating on the water, maybe four hundred yards out. For a second, I thought that rescuers might be on the way. But then I checked the beach and saw that our dinghy wasn’t where it ought to be.

Connie stood up, too. She studied the situation, then made a face.

Andrew turned on me. “What do you know about this?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Connie?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“You two were supposed to be keeping watch.”

“We didn’t notice anything unusual,” I said.

“Well something unusual sure as hell happened. That dinghy didn’t just get up and walk off the beach.”

“No, sir.”

As if the three of us all wondered the same thing at once, we turned suddenly toward the sleeping areas. Billie, Kimberly and Thelma were where they ought to be: none of them had snuck past us and taken the boat out for an early-morning excursion.

“And you are sure you two don’t know anything about it?” Andrew asked Connie and me.

We both shook our heads.

“We obviously had a visitor last night,” Andrew said. “He slipped right past you and set our boat adrift. Did you fall asleep?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“You?” he snapped at Connie.

“No.”

“Mess around?”

“With him?” She wrinkled her nose. “Get real.”

“We didn’t do anything,” I said.

“Apparently, that includes keeping watch. Good thing our friend didn’t decide to slit a few throats while he was in the neighborhood.”

Connie cringed and looked a little sick.

“A couple of terrific sentries you two are,” he said.

I considered pointing out that the visit might’ve occurred during someone else’s watch—even his—but decided not to bother. After all, we should’ve at least noticed that the dinghy was missing.

Connie didn’t try to give the skipper any excuses, either. The way she looked, I bet she was thinking about how she’d gone over to the rocks, all by herself, to take her leak last night. I bet she was wondering where the killer might’ve been while she was there.

“What’s all the fussing about?” The question came from Billie. We looked over at her. She lay on her side, propped up on one elbow. Her upper breast seemed about ready to fall out of her bikini, but so far it was staying put.

“Our friend,” Andrew explained, “snuck in here last night right under the noses of our two sharp-eyed sentries and set the dinghy adrift.”

Frowning, Billie thrust herself up to a sitting position. She was wonderful to watch—all that shifting flesh barely contained by her black bikini. Nothing came loose, though. Once she was on her feet, she took a few moments to adjust her top and bottom. While she fiddled with the bikini, she frowned out at the dinghy.

“Maybe a wave just came in and took it off,” she suggested.

“Not a chance,” Andrew said. “This was done on purpose. By a person. By the man who murdered Keith, more than likely.”

“What’ll we do?” Billie asked. “We aren’t going to just let it go, are we? What if we decide we want it? Even if you don’t think we should try for another island…”

“It isn’t going anywhere,” Andrew said.

“It’s almost gone now.”

“I’m going out to get it.”

She looked at him. She gazed at the boat. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You can’t swim that far.”

“Of course I can.”

“I don’t mean you can’t. I mean you’re not going to. You’re sixty years old, for Godsake.”

“Don’t give me that age crap. I can outswim anyone here.”

I raised my hand a little—like a schoolkid who thinks he might know the answer but isn’t quite sure. “I’ll swim out and bring it back,” I offered.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Andrew said. “I’ve seen you swim—if one can call it that.”

“Maybe we should just let it go,” Billie said. “It’s not worth…”

“No!” Connie blurted. “It’s our only way out of here! We’ve got to get it back!”

“She’s right,” Andrew said. He unbuckled his belt.

Billie put a hand on his shoulder. “No. Come on, now. Kimberly’s the swimmer of the family. She should be the one to go, if anyone.”

Kimberly appeared to be asleep. She was face down in her nest of rags, sprawled limp, one leg out to the side and bent at the knee. One arm was under her face. The other stretched away from her as if she were reaching for something.

Maybe reaching for Keith.

She still had his Hawaiian shirt on. The gaudy fabric rippled in the breeze. The shirt had gotten mussed in her sleep, so it let some of her back show above her bikini pants.

Man, she looked great.

“I’m not going to wake her up for this,” Andrew said. “No, sir. Not me.” He took off his khaki shorts, handed them to Billie, and stood in front of us wearing nothing except his white briefs. They were sagging a bit, so he tugged them up. (Like Thelma, Andrew had come to the picnic with no intention of swimming. They both left their suits on the boat.) Billie was frowning. “Andrew,” she said. “Don’t…”

“For Godsake, woman.”

“Don’t make me a widow,” she told him.

He narrowed an eye at her. “The day I can’t swim out as far as that dinghy, I might as well be dead.” He winked, then grabbed her upper arms, pulled her against him and planted a big kiss on her mouth. “That’ll have to last you till I get back.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go.”

“Christ, now, you’re gonna jinx me!” He smacked her on the rump.

Hard enough to make her flinch and wince.

“Back in a flash,” he said.

Then he whirled around and marched with a jaunty swagger toward the water.

“The idiot,” Billie muttered. Even though she was annoyed, she seemed proud of him.

“He’ll be all right,” Connie said. “He can swim that far without even getting winded.”

“He is in great shape,” Billie admitted.

The way he was wading through the knee-deep water, I thought he looked rather like an old, bow-legged monkey. But I kept the observation to myself.

“Should I go with him?” I asked Billie.

“Get real,” Connie said.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“He wouldn’t like it,” Billie told me, not taking her eyes off Andrew. “He thinks he’s perfectly capable of doing everything.”

“Made me climb the tree and cut down Keith yesterday,” I said.

Billie shook her head. “Did he? He isn’t fond of heights.”

“Dad’ll be fine in the water,” Connie said.

The water of the inlet was very shallow. Andrew waded out nearly as far as the point before he began to swim. Because of the reef, there was no real surf. Just small, calm waves that shouldn’t give a swimmer any trouble at all. He moved along smoothly, taking his time. The dinghy kept drifting farther away, but he was slowly gaining on it.

The next thing I knew, Kimberly stood beside me.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“Your father’s swimming out to get the dinghy.”

“That’s our dinghy out mere?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d it get away?”

“We don’t know,” I said.

Billie joined in, saying, “Andrew thinks the killer snuck in and set it adrift last night.”

“Jesus,” Kimberly muttered. She put a hand against her brow to shade her eyes. “It sure is far out there.”

“We were going to have you go for it,” Billie said, “but your father insisted on doing it himself.”

“He didn’t want to wake you up,” I added.

“Figures,” Kimberly said. Then, without asking for advice or permission, she flung off Keith’s shirt and bolted for the water. She didn’t jog, she sprinted. It was great to watch. She dashed over the beach, shiny black hair flowing behind her, arms swinging, long legs striding out, feet kicking up sand, then water. The water flew as she splashed forward. It sparkled in the sunlight. It gleamed on her dark shoulders and back and legs.

“He doesn’t need her,” Connie whined. “God! She always has to butt in and take over.”

“It’s fine,” Billie said.

“Yeah, sure. What’s the point, anyhow? She isn’t even gonna catch up to htm in time.”

I’d been watching Kimberly splash through the water, but now I looked past her. It took a few seconds to spot the dinghy. And there was Andrew, closing in on it.

I got my eyes back to Kimberly in time to watch her dive. She vanished under the waves for a few moments, then surfaced and began to swim with quick, sharp strokes.

Man, she was fast!

Not fast enough, though.

She was only about halfway there when Andrew arrived at the dinghy.

“He made it,” Billie said.

Way off in the distance, he reached up out of the water with both hands. He grabbed a gunnel near the bow. Then someone stood up in the dinghy.

I thought I’d have a heart attack.

Connie made a gasp.

Billie cried out, “My God!”

We couldn’t see who it was. We couldn’t even see whether it was a man or woman. Just that it was a person, and that it came up suddenly out of the bottom of the boat and raised an object overhead with both hands.

The object looked like an ax.

It swung down and appeared to strike Andrew on top of his head. He let go of the gunnel.

He vanished under the water.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.

Connie went nuts. She started shrieking, “Dad! Dad!”

But Billie kept her head. Like me, she must’ve known it was a waste of time to cry out for Andrew. If we’d seen things right, he was past help.

Kimberly was the one in danger, now.

She was still swimming toward the dinghy. Hadn’t she seen? Maybe she had seen, and planned to do something about it.

Billie shouted, “Kim! Kim! Watch out! Get back here!”

“What’s happening?” Thelma called. I glanced around and saw her staggering toward us.

Billie ignored her and kept yelling at Kimberly.

Connie was on her hands and knees, head up, staring out toward the scene of the murder, shrieking, “Dad!”

I flung my shoes away and hit the water at a run.

God only knows what I hoped to accomplish.

Save Kimberly, I guess.

As I splashed my way forward, I heard the sound of a motor. So I stopped running. In water up to my thighs, I saw the dinghy start moving away to the right. The killer sat hunched over low at the stern, steering.

Maybe it was Wesley.

Could’ve been almost anyone.

The boat picked up speed.

Kimberly kept swimming, but the boat was long gone by the time she reached the place where it had been.

Three Down, One to Go

I’m the only guy left. On the surface, that might be an enviable position. Here I am, the lone male marooned on a tropical island with four women.

There’s one big drawback, though.

The other three males have been killed in quick succession. (That’s if you include Wesley, who is dead unless he’s the killer.)

The women are still here, intact.

Makes me think it isn’t safe to be a man on this island.

In other words, guess who’s next?

I’m not sure what to do about it. I can’t exactly leave—the killer made off with our dinghy. No telling where it might be, by now. The last I saw, it was heading toward the north end of the island. Kimberly and I had just dragged Andrew’s body onto the rocks around the end of the point. (About where Billie and I did the dishes last night.) Now that I’ve seen the wound, there’s no doubt that the weapon was an ax. It chopped Andrew’s head pretty much in half all the way down to his jaw. The back of his head was still intact, sort of. But the front was split open wide—including his face. Bloody yuck was slopping out when we pulled him onto the rocks. I’ve never seen such an awful mess in my life. You wouldn’t even know who he was, if all you had to go by was his face.

It was terrible for Kimberly to see her father that way. Ironic, too. He’d tried like mad, yesterday, to protect her from the shock of seeing Keith’s body. Now here he was, ruined a lot worse than Keith—and he couldn’t do anything about it.

I threw up.

Not Kimberly, though. After we hauled him out of the water, she sat on the rocks with her back to both of us. She was facing out to sea, her legs bent, her arms around her shins. It was the same way she’d sat for a long time yesterday on the beach after she’d finished with Keith’s body.

The dinghy, by then, was almost out of sight.

I thought about sitting down with Kimberly and maybe putting an arm around her. I sure wanted to do that. Comfort her. But it might look as if I was trying to put moves on her, so I gave up the notion.

After a while, I said, “What should we do?”

She shook her head.

“We don’t want the others to see him like this,” I said, figuring that’s what Andrew would’ve said if he’d been able to talk.

She just sat there, staring out to sea.

“Maybe I should go and get a blanket or something,” I suggested.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Will you be all right out here?”

She nodded.

But when I turned to go, she said, “No, wait.” Then she got to her feet and turned around. She was crying softly. She wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Just a second, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be all right… just a second.”

I tried not to stare at her. It made me feel guilty, because a guy shouldn’t be paying attention to how great someone looks in her bikini—not when her father is sprawled on the rocks three feet away with his head hacked open.

She wiped her eyes again. Then she said, “Thanks for helping, Rupert.”

I shrugged.

“You’re right, what you said. About how he shouldn’t be seen this way. God knows, I wish I hadn’t… He’d want to be remembered the way he was. You know?”

“That’s why I thought I’d go back and get something. To cover him with.”

“I’m going to tow him out beyond the reef.”

“What?”

“Bury him at sea. That’s what he always wanted.”

“Don’t you think we should, maybe, put him over with Keith? So we can take him back with us when we’re rescued?”

Kimberly shook her head. “It’s different with Keith. Dad would want it this way.”

“Shouldn’t Billie have a say?”

“Bring her out here. Connie and Thelma, too. Have them all come out. I’ll wait with Dad in the water.”

“Do you want a hand?”

“No, go on back.”

I had a choice of swimming, or walking along the rocks. Since I was shoeless, I swam. Billie and Connie were still sitting on the beach, Billie with an arm around her daughter. Thelma stood nearby, watching me and shaking her head and sobbing.

Nobody objected to Kimberly’s plan. Apparently, Andrew had made it quite clear to Billie and his daughters that he desired to be buried at sea.

I put on my shoes, and the four of us made our way out along the rocks to the point.

Kimberly hadn’t gone far. She was treading water, thirty or forty feet away. Andrew’s body floated beside her. In spite of the water being crystal-clear, you couldn’t see what a mess he was in. There was the distance. Also, Kimberly had him face down. The main thing, though, was probably the way the sunlight glittered on the water’s surface—it was almost blinding. All you could see really well was Andrew’s gray, furry back. And his right arm.

The arm was stretched across the water because Kimberly had it by the hand.

“I’m going to tow Dad out,” she said. “Is that all right with everyone?”

Connie and Thelma were both sobbing like crazy.

Billie wiped her eyes, then said, “I want to come, too.” Then she stepped down off the rocks into the water and swam out to Kimberly and Andrew. She went to the other side of Andrew, and came up with his left arm.

They both started swimming away, towing him between them.

It was a hell of a thing to watch. I ended up crying, myself—and I never even liked the guy very much.

That was a couple of hours ago. We all returned to the beach after the “burial at sea.”

It’s mighty gloomy around here.

Billie, Kimberly and Thelma have all lost their husbands (one way or another) since we came to this island a couple of days ago. If that isn’t bad enough, Kimberly, Thelma and Connie lost their father today.

I’m the only one who hasn’t lost one or two loved ones, and I’m worried about the killer coining for me next.

I’ve been writing in the journal, here on the beach. It doesn’t exactly take my mind off our plight, but at least it gives me a chance to think about something other than how much danger I’m in.

There’s no doubt that I’m next on the hit list, is there?

He kills me, then there won’t be any more men to stand in the way.

In the way of what?

The women.

He wants the women.

We’d better figure out something before it’s too late.

We Hatch a Plan

It was only mid-morning, but I was feeling hungry by the time I finished catching up with my journal. Nobody else had eaten any sort of breakfast. The way things looked, it might be a while before they got around to thoughts of food.

It seemed like bad castaway etiquette to eat by myself—which might be looked upon as trying to sneak more than my share. I didn’t want to bother any of the women, though. They were busy mourning.

I felt like more of an outsider than ever, since I was the only person who hadn’t lost a husband or father (or both). I hadn’t lost anyone I really cared much about. They were going through these huge, awful changes, while I was unseamed.

I actually resented it, to some extent. Maybe because I was keenly aware that I might be the next person to get killed. Also, because I was hungry and they seemed too wrapped up in moping around to care.

As far as they were concerned, I didn’t even exist. That’s how I saw it, anyway.

I figured nobody would miss me anyway, so why not take a hike? I’d been wanting to see the lagoon—and swim in it—ever since hearing about it from Keith and Kimberly. Now seemed like a good time to visit the place. So I put the book bag on my back, picked up one of the spears, and started striding toward the jungle.

I was fearless.

If any jungle creatures came after me, they’d better watch out.

As for the killer—I counted on him being too far away to nail me. Even though I had no idea how large the island might be, and he’d had about three hours to make his comeback, I was convinced that he must still be miles away.

Anyway, he was bound to kill me sooner or later.

And nobody would likely give a damn, anyhow.

I was still on my way through the sand, striding with bitterness and determination toward the place where the stream entered the jungle, when Kimberly called out from behind me, “Rupert! What are you doing?”

I glanced back. “Just thought I’d check out the lagoon.”

“Are you nuts? Get back here.”

“I won’t be long.” I started walking backward. All four of the gals were looking at me.

“Rupert!” Billie yelled.

“You can’t go off by yourself,” Kimberly called to me. “If you have to go to the lagoon, we’ll all go.”

“I don’t have to.” I suddenly felt a little bit like a jerk. Pleased that somebody cared, after all—but a jerk for being so self-centered and making myself a nuisance.

“I think we all oughta have something to eat,” Thelma said. “What do the rest of you think? Cause, I mean, I’m kind of starving here.”

“Good idea,” I said.

As soon as I started back, all the gals quit paying attention except for Kimberly. She didn’t take her eyes off me. I pretty much kept my eyes on her, too.

She stood in the sand with her feet apart, her Hawaiian shirt blowing behind her in the breeze, her hair blowing, too. Her left hand was planted on her hip, which was bare except for the thin band of her bikini pants. Her right hand held a spear. With its end in the sand by her foot, the spear was higher than her head.

I wish I could’ve taken a picture of her.

Andrew did bring a camera with him. (Which I’d forgotten about until seeing Kimberly in such an awesome pose.) It should be in the picnic basket. As far as I know, nobody has taken it out since the boat exploded. I guess I’ll leave it there. For one thing, the camera doesn’t belong to me. For another, I’d look pretty creepy trotting around shooting snapshots on a day like this.

We should’ve taken photos of the bodies.

Nobody thought of it. Everyone else must’ve forgotten about the camera, the same as me.

Photographs would’ve been a really good way to show the authorities how Keith and Andrew were killed. (Andrew is out to sea, but we could still unearth Keith and get some shots. I’m not about to suggest it, though.) Anyway, my mood underwent a major change because of Kimberly calling me back—not to mention the way she looked.

We gathered at the supply pile (preferring to avoid the campfire with its heat), and sat on the sand around it. As usual, Billie took charge of the food. We ate crackers and cheese left over from the picnic. There was sharp, Swiss cheese, and smoked Edam. She sliced the cheeses with Andrew’s Swiss Army knife. She also popped open a bottle of wine that Keith had brought up from the bottom of the inlet. It was a Glen Ellen Cabernet Sauvignon. Though warm, it tasted awfully good. We passed it around, and took sips while we ate our cheese and crackers—and talked.

There was “small talk” at first. About the food and wine and weather. Like everyone wanted to avoid mentioning the nasty stuff. After about ten minutes of that, Kimberly said, “I saw who did it.”

Wham.

Silence.

Everybody stopped chewing and stared at her.

We knew she meant the killer.

She’d been swimming out toward the dinghy with her head down, most of the time, so I think the rest of us assumed she hadn’t gotten a look at him.

We waited for her to say the killer’s name.

But her face told us who she’d seen.

Thelma said, “No.”

“I’m sorry,” Kimberly said. She looked terribly solemn.

“Wesley’s dead!”

“He isn’t. I saw him plain as day.”

“No, you didn’t!”

“I’m sorry, Thelma. It was him. He’s the one I saw. He’s the one who murdered Dad.”

“You’re lying!”

Kimberly shook her head. “I thought long and hard about whether I should tell. I almost decided to pretend I hadn’t seen who did it. Pretending wouldn’t do us any good, though. I know it’s tough, but you’ve got to face it. Wesley’s alive, and he’s killing us.”

“No!” Thelma blurted. “It’s a lie!” She started to blubber. She still held a half-eaten cracker with a slab of half-eaten cheese on top. I expected her to throw it. Instead, she shoved it into her mouth. Then she flopped over and scurried away from us on her hands and knees. When she was clear of the group, she staggered to her feet and trotted away.

Kimberly started to get up.

Billie raised a hand and shook her head slightly. “We’ve gotta make some plans. She’ll be all right.”

Kimberly stayed.

Thelma stopped just short of the water’s edge, then sat down on the sand, her back to us.

With Thelma out of earshot, a change came over Kimberly. She let her anger out. “The dirty bastard. I knew it had to be him. He’s gotta be the one who killed Keith, too.”

“He probably plans to kill us all,” Billie said.

“Guys first,” I added.

“What’re we gonna do?” Connie asked. She seemed more frightened than her mother or Kimberly.

“We can’t just sit around and wait for him to make the next move,” Billie said.

“That’d be me,” I said.

Though Billie nodded in agreement, she said, “It might just be the next person he happens to catch off guard. I realize he started with Keith, then got Andrew, but… he couldn’t possibly have known who’d be going after the dinghy this morning.” She hesitated. “When I think how close we came to letting it go…”

“If I’d kept my big mouth shut,” Connie said.

“It wasn’t that,” I told her. “Andrew wasn’t about to let it go.”

“I could’ve stopped him,” Billie said.

“Nobody’s to blame,” Kimberly said. “Nobody but Wesley.”

“He’s awfully damn sneaky,” I said. “We’ll really have to watch ourselves.”

“We’ll have to do more than that,” Billie said.

Kimberly nodded. “We need a plan of action.”

“I still think we oughta get off the island.” That was Connie, of course.

“No,” Billie said. “Your dad was absolutely right about that: we’ve got food and water here. We can survive indefinitely.”

“Yeah, right. Look what happened to him.”

“Wesley did that,” Kimberly said. “What we’ve gotta do is eliminate Wesley.”

“Or eliminate ourselves,” I suggested.

Billie asked, “What do you mean?”

“He can’t kill us if he can’t find us.”

“You mean we should try to hide?”

“It’s just a thought. The thing is, we’d have to find him before we could do anything to put him out of action. That might be a pretty good trick. But he knows exactly where we are. We’re almost always in plain right, here on the beach. All he has to do is hang back in the jungle and spy on us till he spots an opportunity to strike. But what if he comes looking for us and we aren’t here?”

“He’d find us,” Connie said. Always the optimist.

“Not necessarily.”

Frowning, Kimberly said, “I’m not too crazy about playing hide and seek with the bastard. I want to take him out. Hunt him down and kill him.”

“Why not draw him in and kill him?” Billie suggested.

“How would we do that?” Kimberly asked.

“Pull a disappearing act,” Billie explained, giving me a nod. “Lure him in and ambush him.”

I liked the sound of that.

From the look on Kimberly’s face, so did she. “How would we pull it off?” she asked.

Billie shrugged. “We’ll have to figure something out.”

So we sat there talking about it, tossing schemes back and forth as we passed around the bottle of wine. We were in agreement on the general principle of the thing, but kept running into the same snag; we had to figure that Wesley might already be watching us. How could we possibly pull off a vanishing act (especially one that would allow us to hide nearby and attack him), right in front of his eyes?

Even in the middle of the night, with the fire out, the beach wouldn’t be dark enough to completely hide our activities. The sand was too pale, and too much light came from the moon and stars.

“We need to keep the fire going,” Billie said. “It’ll screw up his night vision.”

“But if we don’t put it out,” Kimberly said, “he’ll be able to see us in the firelight.”

“Maybe we can figure a way to make that work for us,” I suggested. “You know? Make him see what we want him to see. And while he’s watching that, the rest of us might be sneaking to our positions.”

Billie nodded. “Distract him.”

“Right,” I said. “If, say, one of us creates a diversion he can’t take his eyes off of, the rest of us could do just about anything.”

“What sort of diversion do you have in mind?” Connie asked. From the look on her face, she must’ve already suspected what I had in mind.

I shrugged and said, “I don’t know. We could stage a fight, maybe.”

Not what I really had in mind, but I would not be the one to suggest a striptease.

“A fight would take at least two people,” Billie pointed out. That only leaves three to maneuver around and jump him.”

“It’s just the first thing that came into my head,” I explained.

Right.

“Three could be enough,” Kimberly pointed out. “I want to be one of them, that’s all.”

“Connie and Rupert,” Billie said. She glanced at each of us, then met Kimberly’s eyes. “They can have a quarrel during their watch tonight.”

Typecasting.

Billie didn’t stop there. “A real knock-down drag-out fight.”

“A quiet one,” Kimberly added. “They don’t want to wake us up.”

“Right. And while they’re at it, we’ll slip out of our beds and hide.”

“Hide where?” Connie asked.

“You’ll be out in the open, fighting with Rupert.”

“I don’t mean me. Where’ll you go, where Wesley won’t be able to see you? The rocks are too for away.”

“We’ll do some digging this afternoon,” Kimberly said. “Make ourselves a hidey-hole or…”

“He’ll think we’re digging a latrine,” Billie said.

“So,” I said, “Connie and I get his attention by having a big fight. You guys sneak over to your ambush positions. But how do we get Wesley to come out of the jungle?”

“You and Connie split up,” Billie suggested.

“She runs off,” Kimberly elaborated.

These two women made quite a team.

“She runs to the water to get away from you,” Kimberly continued.

“Leaving you alone and upset by the fire,” Billie added.

“We should have him walk toward the jungle,” Kimberly said to Billie.

“Right. After all, he’s the one Wesley probably really wants to kill next.”

“Let’s not make it too easy for him,” I suggested.

“Don’t worry,” Kimberly told me. “We’ll be right there, just out of sight. When he comes for you, we attack.”

“What if he’s got that ax?”

“He won’t get a chance to use it,” Kimberly said.

“We’ll kill him before he gets close enough,” Billie said.

Connie raised her hand. She had a bit of a smirk on her face.

Our plotting sure had pulled these gals out of the doldrums. They were acting as if they’d forgotten all about Keith and Andrew being dead. Apparently, scheming vengeance is a great cure for the blues.

Anyway, Connie had a little problem with our plan. “What makes you so sure Wesley’s gonna be in the jungle while all this is going on? I mean, I’m supposed to go running down to the water, right? Just suppose that’s where he is? And there I am, all by myself, while you guys are waiting for him all hell and gone over here.”

Billie grimaced. “You’re right.”

“Why does she have to leave the fire?” I asked.

“So you’ll be alone,” Kimberly said.

“I’ll be alone, anyway, when I walk to the jungle.”

“Connie can’t be watching,” Kimberly explained, “or Wesley won’t make a try for you. He’ll be afraid she might see what’s going on and raise the alarm.”

“He’ll be thinking the rest of us are asleep in our usual places,” Billie said. “If Connie yells and wakes us up, we might come running to help you. He doesn’t want that.”

“He has to think he’s got you alone,” Kimberly added.

Connie started up again. “If you think I’m gonna go running off by myself…”

“Wesley’ll probably be in the jungle,” Kimberly said.

“Like last night when he took off with the dinghy?”

“I know how we can do it,” I said, meeting Connie’s frown. “We’re having our big fight by the fire, okay? Now, suppose I really land one, and knock you out?”

“Oh, terrific,” she said.

“It’s pretend,” I told her. “I wouldn’t actually hit you, but you’d go down and stay down. Like you’re unconscious. That way, you’ll be safe and sound by the fire, in plenty of light and not very far from help. But you’ll be out of the picture, as far as Wesley knows.”

“Sounds good to me,” Billie said.

“Yeah,” said Kimberly. “I don’t see any problem with that.”

Connie wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know,” she muttered.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“It seems… kind of corny.”

“Corny?” I asked. “This guy killed your father.”

Wrong thing to say.

“You think I don’t know that? Fuck you!” She flung a handful of sand at me.

At least it wasn’t a spear, this time.

I turned my head away, shutting my eyes and mouth. The grains of sand stung my cheek. They got in my ear, too.

“That’s enough, Connie,” Billie told her.

“He’s such a creep!”

“Just calm down, honey. The thing is, we’ve got to do whatever we can—whether it’s corny or not. It isn’t just that he killed your dad and Keith; he’ll kill us all if we don’t stop him.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

I said, “Maybe everything’ll turn out wonderful, and he’ll stop after he nails my butt.”

Connie glared at me. “Yeah, maybe so.”

A smile actually lifted the comers of Kimberly’s mouth. “You guys oughta be able to pull off a very convincing fight.”

“Only why don’t you save it for tonight?” Billie suggested.

Connie was sort of snarling. “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. Then she turned her head and looked over at Thelma. “What about her?”

We had a brief discussion about that. The upshot was, we decided to keep the plot to ourselves. For one thing, Thelma wasn’t in good enough physical shape to be much help in eliminating Wesley. For another, she’s his wife. She apparently loves him, even if he did chop her father’s head in half.

After deciding to leave her in the dark, we figured out where to construct our ambush site.

The “latrine” would go about two-thirds of the distance from our campfire to the edge of the jungle, then off quite a way to the south of the stream that cuts down through the middle of the beach. (The route to be taken by Kimberly and Billie shouldn’t cross the fire. Diversion or no diversion, we don’t want them backlit as they sneak to their position.) For the next couple of hours, we dug in the sand with our hands, with our spears, and with cups and pots. Thelma wondered what we were doing. We explained that we were making a latrine so that we wouldn’t have to risk our lives by going into the jungle. She seemed to think that was a good idea, and she even helped.

While digging, we came up with the idea of adding an enclosure. So we made a couple of frameworks out of branches, then went to the edge of the jungle and gathered foliage. When we were done, we had a double-sided stall with two walls about four feet high. They ran parallel to the edge of the jungle, so Wesley wouldn’t be able to see in—not if he was watching from the general area where we expected him to be.

The make-believe latrine should provide a great hiding place for Kimberly and Billie, if they could just get to it without being spotted.

A problem came up, though, a while after we finished. Thelma wanted to use it.

I had already started to write, but I was sitting within earshot. Kimberly intercepted her. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Well, what do you think?” Thelma said.

“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t use it.”

“I helped build it.” She was indignant. “What’re you talking about?”

“Nobody can use it till tomorrow.”

“Why on earth not?”

“It has to set,” Kimberly explained.

Thelma frowned and looked confused. “What?”

“The sand needs time to set. Otherwise, it’ll all fall in and fill up the hole.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No, it’s true.”

She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“It’s true,” I chimed in. “You never use a sand latrine the first day. I thought everyone knew that.”

Thelma wrinkled her face. She looked quite perplexed, and vaguely suspicious.

“Where am I supposed to go, then?” she asked her sister.

“The same place as always.” She nodded toward the jungle. “I’ll get Billie and Connie. We’ll all go together, from now on.”

“What about me?” I asked.

Thelma narrowed her eyes at me. Kimberly, though, is always a sport. She knew I was mostly kidding. “I think you’ll be fine right here. We won’t go far.”

“Don’t you think you might need a guy along for protection?” I asked.

“We’ll be fine, Rupert.”

“Have it your way.”

So all the gals went trooping off into the bush without me. I stayed where I was, but quit working on the journal for a while. I didn’t want any distractions, in case Wesley might pop up out of nowhere and make a try for me.

Even though I felt vulnerable, I was fairly safe. I was surrounded by stretches of sand, for one thing. For another, I was fairly well armed—a spear, a club and a selection of rocks within easy reach.

Also, the gals never went very far. They only pushed into the jungle far enough so I wouldn’t be able to see them. I could hear their voices, though, so I knew they’d be able to hear me if I had to yell for help.

Nothing happened.

It’s been pretty uneventful, since then. I’ve just kept working on the journal here, taking my time, keeping an eye on the gals. Kimberly and Billie went in swimming for a while. Connie went for a climb on the rocks, but never wandered out of sight. Thelma has mostly just sat around and napped.

I’ll probably try to take a nap, myself.

It may turn out to be a long night.