Fresh Flesh (19 page)

Yet she had no clue where they were now. It
seemed like after the attack Richard had given up the idea of
heading to the caves.

They were in another swampy section of the
island. Damp, mucky, muddy and thickly wooded. Crooked trees
surrounded them, branches reached out like needy fingers. It was
one of the few level spots on the island.

After a series of being unable to catch his
breath, one of the few times she'd seen Richard tired, he said,
"We're about a mile and a half northwest of the east beach."

"Still part of their side of the island?" She
hoped not.

Another pant. "—Yes, we're still on the east
side."

Jessica looked down at her hands and upon
sight of blood she knew was not hers, she started vomiting. With
each violent thrust she was trying to puke away the vision of the
horrible act she'd committed. She couldn't get the image of shoving
a knife inside another human being out of her head.

"Are you okay?"

She shook her head, wiping remnant bile from
her face. She tried to fight back crying. She couldn't break down
and be weak. She needed to be strong.

"I killed another human being. I. .
.killed."

She spat in her hands and wiped blood on her
faded-red blouse. She rubbed, spat, rubbed, spat, but the blood
would not come off. Back in a world that seemed as far away as an
alien planet she never would have spit on herself.

She put her bloodstained hands to her face
and struggled against the urge to cry.

She felt warm fingers pull one of her hands
away. She opened her eyes slowly and saw Richard's hopeful
face.

"We'll make it," he said. "I won't let them
take you."

She flashed him with a solemn, watery-eyed
expression.

"That's better. You're too pretty for that
crying stuff." Richard tried to smile but it came out
pained-looking. "I'm starting to believe in something. Ever since
they tossed me here I haven't had anything to believe in. Only
survival. But now that you've come into my life I have something
and someone to believe in. Thank you."

She wanted to smile back but the image of the
knife and Bat Jackson's stomach spoiled the moment. Instead, she
wiped away the dampness from her eyes. They stayed in this spot for
a long time, holding each other.

Richard spent the major of the hour talking
down her fears, comforting her best as he could. But even after an
hour had passed and they needed to move on, she could not imagine
ever being the same way again.

She was terrified of what the island was
doing to her. She didn't belong here and yet the longer she stayed,
the more the island had begun to welcome her.

"Before it gets dark again, we need to see
what numbers we're up against, Jessica."

Jessica knew where Richard wanted to go. It
was the last place on the island she ever wanted to see. The place
Richard had told her to avoid since she washed ashore. How had he
put it?

There are some wild animals on the east side
of the island.

They headed toward the east camp.

Seth Everson's one eye picked them up halfway
to their destination.

His eye had been watching the invisible path
of the wind, fervently hoping that it would lead him to them.
Seth's father had once told him that if you could see the wind you
could see anything. Seth had always thought his father was a corny
bastard, and felt no pity when his father ran off to the west coast
with his dim-witted mistress. And consequently, one month later,
when he received news his father had frozen to death in a skiing
mishap outside of Boulder, Colorado. But there was some truth to
his father's quote. There must have been, because it was the wind
that had led his eye to them.

The wind that was no longer invisible.

Since Roberts had ordered his eye poked out,
Seth's sight had changed. Seth had been suicidal all last night,
trying to figure out the ideal way to end his shattered life. Seth
had gone through life with one true love—his eyes—and his love had
been maimed. He wasn't sure if he could ever be the same. But
somehow the longest night Seth experienced ended and he woke up
changed.

He could see things with one eye that he
could never see with two. He could see the wind's ethereal breath
racing across the clear blue sky, smoothly swooping down upon the
island. The wind's path moved like apparitions through a haunted
house. Fluid motion gliding through the trees, squeezing through
the shrubbery, crisscrossing to avoid jagged rocks and seeking the
warmth of human flesh.

That seemed to be the wind's sole purpose,
Seth decided, to touch humans. To touch the living was the dead's
ultimate prospect.

Yes, the wind with all its mystery and
splendor was dead. It had to be, because it had led Seth's one eye
to two bodies that the wind knew well enough to be its own
kind.

Two dead bloody bodies lying on the
beach.

The wind had been fooled by the absence of
life, a clever imitation of its own kind. Then it searched, hungry
and rampant for human warmth.

For the one thing it was forever denied. And
everywhere it searched, Seth's eye merrily followed.

Following led Seth to them.

They were moving at a slow pace through the
ravine. The man from the west side of the island Seth barely knew
over the years moved slower now. Richard Templin. He'd never much
cared for Templin.

Sar liked Templin.

Burieibu
.

Late Summer 1994
.

"Templin is brave," Sar said in Japanese, if
Seth's translation was correct. Sar repeated the word that meant
brave in Japanese: "
Burieibu
."

"Brave?" Seth repeated the word, this time in
Japanese. "
Burieibu
. But is it brave or selfish to stay
separate from our group?"

Ever the wiser man, Sar offered Seth a carrot
to eat, a carrot he'd picked from the clearing near the cave where
Templin lived alone. Sar said something loosely translated to mean
"carrots are good for your eyes."

Seth was new to the island and Sar was one of
the few to be nice to him. Kyle Roberts was sometimes too, but he
was moody. He was the most organized and knowledgeable in the
group. Seth felt comfortable going to Roberts when he had
questions. Most in the group did. When Roberts realized Seth could
speak a little Japanese, Kyle warmed up to him even more.

Sar was one of the few cons sent to the
island that nobody knew exactly what crimes he'd committed. Murder
was assumed. Most of the convicts were convicted murderers, but who
had Sar murdered, if anyone? Seth had asked but Sar never wanted to
talk about it. Sar was bothered talking about the past. About the
only history he would talk about was living on the Izu islands and
farming.

Sar enjoyed taking Seth to the clearing,
kneeling and showing him the tilled dirt with a wide grin. He'd say
odd things about the dirt being the life of the island. Other men
enjoyed tanning by the ocean or playing sand baseball while Sar
enjoyed visiting the clearing and talking about the dirt.

Dirt was all Seth could see, but to Sar it
meant much more. Seth couldn't explain—nobody could—how he had
grown vegetables in the clearing without seeds. Most believed that
Sar had somehow smuggled in seeds. That had to be what
happened.

Seth didn't realize this would be the last
carrot anybody ever enjoyed from Sar's clearing.

Perhaps during the last conflict Templin had
hurt himself? The woman stayed close to Templin with the wind at
her back.

She can feel the wind too.

Or maybe she sensed Seth's one naked eye
following the wind?

No
. She was blind to the power of his
eye. She neither understood or appreciated this power. It was his
eye.

Seth jumped down from his twelve-feet hiding
spot in the tree to the muddy ground. His bare feet stuck slightly.
He loosened them.

"Not yet," he told the greedy earth. "More
for me to do."

He started after them, quietly humming an old
nursery rhyme.

Someone in his life had sung that rhyme to
him. It was a warm, pleasant voice in another place and time. He
liked the song and it calmed him at night. He would think of the
nursery rhyme before going to sleep.

But the peaceful, kind thoughts would turn
dark. They always did.

They reached Roberts camp twenty minutes
later. Jessica could feel the race of anticipation and fear
nibbling at her arms. Richard made sure everything was clear, and
led her into the place the death row convicts had called home.

Robert's camp was a clearing on the island
approximately 200x150. Scattered among the clearing were many
ramshackle tree-branch forts, small 8x8 lairs with only enough room
to keep out of the rain and feel the warmth of the campfire.

Stacked at one end of the camp were a bunch
of green crates. The same type crates she'd seen that day being
dropped from the sky. She did a quick scan and counted thirteen. So
in eleven years the government had made a little more one drop per
year.

In the center there was a huge fort, made
mostly with large, thick tree branches, insulated by palm fronds.
It had to be Kyle Kollector Roberts' lair, for there were even
makeshift holes for windows. Roberts' lair was perhaps five times
the size as the other small dwellings, the most luxurious in a
Gilligan's Island meets Adams Family structure way. Next to the
cave, no other place on the island was better. Their campfire was a
huge circle of rocks set up about ten feet from Roberts' lair.

There was something disgusting, something
which might have been a human at one time, charred and black laying
among the ashes.

"We'll start with the first lair," Richard
took her hand, leading her through the camp.

The first lair was about twenty feet away and
looked as empty as the whole camp. Richard was the first to kneel
down and peer inside the home which reminded Jessica of a Boy Scout
survival tent. After he took a look, it was her turn.

She quickly wished she hadn't.

The owner was still inside sleeping.

No, not sleeping. Dead.

A closer inspection revealed a knife pinning
him to the ground, like an insect mounted on a board. His face had
already begun to rot and decay, holes in his flesh like cigarette
burns in cloth, displaying the corpse's internal tissues and
organs.

Jessica became violently ill.

Richard dragged her, gagging and choking, out
of the fort.

When she was able to go on, they went to the
next one. And found another rotting, decaying convict. This one had
a knife in his throat pinning him to the earth.

But worse, much worse were the black
bugs—

(
And now, here they are, BOBBY AND THE
CRAWLERS!
)

—crawling in and out of chew holes in the
man's cold, yellowing flesh.

Jessica started screaming, backpedaling out
of the camp, screaming, falling to her knees, screaming.

Richard grabbed her mouth and silenced her.
"No, Jessica, you'll tell the whole damn island we're here."

"I can't. Do. This." She shook her head.
Trembling. Feeling ravenous black bugs lurking beneath her
skin.

Richard grabbed her shoulders. "You don't
have to look, but I must. We need to know what were up
against."

We're up against hell.

"Wait here," he said. "I'll check the rest of
the camp. Please don't scream any more though. You scream and we'll
have company. We're back in here in part because this is the last
place I figured they'd expect us to be."

"Y—Yes."

"I'll be right back."

"Please don't leave me in this terrible
place." Jessica reached after him.

"I won't be long."

She didn't take her eyes off him as he
searched the other forts. She counted them one at a time, up to
seventeen total, including Roberts' fort. He returned with a
disturbed look on his face. Whatever he'd seen wasn't expected.

"I'm going to leave something for Roberts and
then we need to leave."

"This feels very wrong here. Please hurry."
Jessica could taste bile in her throat.

Richard entered Roberts' lair while she
waited outside, eyes darting around at all angles of the camp. It
seemed like a cloud of evil floating outside the doorway to Kyle
Kollector Roberts' island home.

"Hurry, Richard, please. I don't like it
here." She was fearful that any second Roberts and more of his east
island cohorts would be taking a lunch break at home. "Hurry."

Richard emerged with the disturbed look still
on his face. He took her hand and they darted from the camp.

The wind and the shadow with one eye
followed.

About fifteen minutes later, Richard decided
they'd put enough distance between them and the Roberts' camp. They
were in a heavily wooded area with a vast amount of over and
undergrowth.

"What's going on back there?" Jessica said,
shivering.

"Roberts lied to us."

"About?"

"There aren't ten of them. . .anymore," he
said with a deliberate, sullen tone. "Only five left."

"Five?"

"And I'm thinking two of those five are now
lying dead on the northeast beach. So three of them left now, I
think."

"I don't ever want to go back there."

"We won't." Richard gave a small, but
unconvincing nod. "I promise we won't."

They both knew there were some promises that
couldn't be kept.

Sweat streamed like tears down Kyle Roberts
cheeks as he dragged the second body, Bat Jackson, into camp.