Left on Paradise (2 page)

The sergeant and lieutenant shook their heads before giving instructions to two privates and then leaving the captive with the two guards—at which time one of the Marines threw a folded knife and a food ration to the stranger.

“After you eat, use it to shave your head,” the Marine said. "We don’t need no fleas in our camp.”

“Lice,” the second Marine explained. “You need to shave your head to get rid of the lice. Sergeant Abbott is sending back some clothes too. They probably won’t fit, but they’ll be clean. You’ll feel better after you wash up. Then I’ll help you shave your head. It’s not easy the first time. With a knife, I mean.”

The stranger nodded.

“It’s called a MRE,” the Marine said as he pointed to plastic-wrapped block the size of a large brick. “That stands for Meal Ready to Eat. Instructions are on the plastic.”

“I’ve had plenty,” the captive said as he sliced the thick plastic open like a veteran. Ten minutes later the MRE was reduced to a pile of scraps and discarded remnants littering the ground. After he finished eating, the stranger approached the mannerly private to have his head shaved. Though the haircut wasn’t one of the most stylish to have adorned the stranger’s head, it did the job.

“Thanks,” the prisoner said to the soft-spoken private, “for your kindness. It’s been a long time since ... Well, what’s your name, soldier?”

“Ron, sir. PFC Ronald Reagan Shoemaker.”

After Captain Bradford heard a prisoner was captured, he ordered Lieutenant Howard to hold his position until reinforced and to secure a base camp for the night. The subordinate did as told, though he soon radioed that Sergeant Abbott had detained a second prisoner—a Latino woman who surrendered without trouble. In the meantime, the captain pushed his troops forward as the whining scream and thumping blades of helicopters filled the tropical sky and forward observers scoured for signs of the missing Americans. Aircraft hovered over nearby islets looking for survivors and airlifted a group of refugees to an aircraft carrier. But on the main island, no movement was observed—with pilots reporting only smoldering flames, blackened ruins, and dead bodies.

Their observations were confirmed on the ground.

Lieutenant Diaz was leading First Squad when the Marines came to the rubble of a burned village along the north shore. A destroyed fiberglass boat had been dragged across the sand to the trees, holes burned through its hull and the motor also burned beyond repair. Two charred buildings and several torn tents were located west of a stream fifty yards inland and a wooden pole—little more than a sapling stripped of its bark and branches—was posted nearby. A crossbar was nailed to it and a middle-aged Latino woman was nailed to the bar, her shoulders and head slumped forward and her face covered by blood-caked strands of graying hair. The woman’s stiffened hips and legs hung moribund above the ground, slightly bent at the knees, and her chest and back were scarred by the cuts of a lash. Her legs were chewed up and bloodied by some animal: the tendons of both legs chewed to the bone. All of the woman’s toes were missing.

Nearby, the head of an open-eyed teenager—also Latino—was stuck on a stake. Her eye sockets were empty, face bruised, and torso altogether missing. Several feet away, a half-eaten light-skinned woman was lying close to the stiff carcasses of two dark-skinned aborigines who’d been dead for days.

The camp looked like a garbage dump. Worn clothing, pieces of wood, half-rotted books, and even rusted tools were scattered from one end to the other. The tents weren’t much better inside. Several reeked of a penetrating, clinging stench and two Marines who peered inside were afterwards on their knees vomiting. The odor smelled of spoiled food, burnt flesh, and decaying refuse left to percolate in the tropical heat. Flies swarmed to the dead flesh and birds picked what was soft. An open latrine was no more than an infested cesspool, filled with piss and shit and every human waste—and thousands of vile-smelling maggots. The whole village was an environmental disaster. What stood was falling down, what fell was returning to earth, and what returned to dust was no more. Only what had been burned to ashes was no longer repulsive.

Lieutenant Diaz marked the position of the bodies with a bright tape wrapped around nearby trees and radioed to Captain Bradford for body bags. Then he left a squad to secure the position and sanitize the area while he marched the rest of the platoon around the northern tip of the island and then south for hours—the men burdened with sixty-pound backpacks and slowed by tactical formation, rough terrain, and the frequent need to rehydrate.

Three more villages were discovered during their sweep, none containing a living inhabitant. The bodies of a tall black woman and a short Asian man were found near a village on the west side, along with two white men—one of them still clutching a charred spear with burned fingers. The smell of singed flesh and burned gasoline was strong. Further south, shredded tents were discovered near a small grave likely dug for a child—the shallow grave only two feet long and marked with an uncut granite stone. A fourth village located on the east side of the island was scouted late in the afternoon, though every building in the village had been burned to the ground. The remains of one unidentifiable man and two Polynesian women were found along a path to this eastern village: one of them a girl whose spine was severed and the other an old woman missing her arms and eyes. What struck Captain Bradford about the natives was less their small stature than their tight lips and bad teeth. They looked starved—their paucity accentuated by the torn flesh and teeth marks left by some indigenous scavenger. The captain warned his men to watch for predators. Scouts also found four bodies washed ashore near ship wreckage consisting of bottles, clothes, coolers, and chairs. All four bodies were swollen and half-eaten by crabs.

After the Marines circled the island, they bedded down for the night, most of them sleeping atop bedrolls under open sky near the remnants of the village closest to the landing zone. Before retiring, some enlisted men bathed in the surf while others searched the trees for fresh fruit. A corporal found an old steel helmet lying near a main path and stuffed it in his backpack as a souvenir. Several Marines took their pictures atop a half-sunken World War Two-era LCVP landing craft washed ashore by the tide—the boat painted with a rainbow and political slogans and symbols and showing no sign of rust, though its ramp was dropped and its cab burned out. Lights out was ordered two hours before midnight and sentries were posted with loaded weapons.

The Marines woke before dawn and ate MREs for a cold breakfast. More fortunate Marines found their plastic-wrapped meals stocked with beef or pork while the timid or unlucky ate vegetarian meals smothered in Tabasco sauce. Only sergeants and officers didn’t complain, though even they groaned as they opened their breakfast—most of them too young to console themselves with memories of C-rations. By first light, the company was on the march, backpacks stacked at the beach and Marines deployed with a day’s rations stowed in their fatigues and full canteens clipped to their belts. Platoons moved in formation up the island’s main hill, splitting the slopes to either side of its peak. A recon patrol reported activity near the summit, as well as a deserted fortress and mass casualties. Thereafter, the Marines marched even more cautiously, weapons at the ready. Scouts advanced to look for ambushes, but reported only dead bodies. The hill was a steep climb for Marines moving in tactical formation and weighed down with rucksacks and it was midmorning before the troops reached the top.

Lieutenant Howard was twenty yards to the rear when his point man stopped. He motioned to Sergeant Abbott.

“Sergeant. Find out why that man stopped.”

“Moving now,” Abbott said as he jumped over a fallen tree and trotted forward, his rifle carried barrel up.

When Sergeant Abbott arrived forward, his stomach turned. Eleven corpses, ash-colored and bloated, were lined in a row—some were men and others were women. There was one youth and a small baby. All of the dead rested side by side across a trail overgrown with foliage: its green vines already beginning to creep over the human remains. The baby’s face was partially covered with an exotic white flower and a woman’s bent and stiffened legs provided the mount for the fresh shoots of a climbing vine. And though the thick canopy had cloaked the site from overhead observation, wild animals had sniffed out their prey. Two of the bodies were partially eaten and all of the eye sockets of the dead were reduced to hollow indentations—presumed feasts for island birds. The breasts of one woman were gone, as were the arms of a small child. A middle-aged man with long hair was chewed open from kidney to crotch.

The sergeant signaled four men to follow as he advanced toward a rudimentary bunker. A wall of felled logs and bermed earth was near the hill’s crest, though the logs didn’t fit well and it was clear they’d been constructed in haste. After the squad maneuvered toward the fort, Sergeant Abbott himself entered—having positioned one team for fire support before motioning for a second team to follow. The Marines moved tactically toward defensive positions and it took them little time to secure the fort.

Inside, every man among them went pale. A hastily raised gibbet stood before them, its wood stained with dried blood, and a human head had been discarded a few feet away. One of the Marines rolled over the head with the tip of his rifle—only to find the dead eyes of a young girl staring through him. He gasped, turned his face away, and stepped back before finding himself compelled to take a second look at the straight teeth and long hair of the bodiless head. As soon as he did so, his stomach churned, bile came to his throat, and his face drained of blood. Swallowing the vomit that rose in his throat, the Marine struggled to retain his composure.

“Sergeant,” the Marine said with dry voice that didn’t carry far, “can you come over here?”

Sergeant Abbott jogged to the pale-faced Marine. “Private Shoemaker,” the sergeant asked, “are you okay?”

“Look at this, Sergeant Abbott,” the Marine said, waving his rifle toward the severed head.

Sergeant Abbott looked at the dead girl’s face and turned white. “Damned barbarians,” he whispered, his finger moving from the frame of his weapon before being pulled back by deliberate force of will and habit of training.

“Yeah,” Shoemaker replied with a slow, deliberate choice of his words. “I ain’t ever voting Democrat again. No matter what my granddad says.”

The Marine’s stomach quivered and he fell to his knees, throwing up until little more than a soupy, brown bile dripped down his chin. Afterwards, he wiped his mouth on a bared wrist and looked for the sergeant. He nodded without speaking when Sergeant Abbott told him to take point when he could.

Already, a dozen Marines passed by and it took Shoemaker a minute to weave though them as he jogged toward the point position.

2

Imagining Paradise

A new world was conceived on December 13, 2000—as soon as the United States Supreme Court cast its lot with Republicans in the disputed presidential election. Ryan Godson’s jaw dropped as reporters announced the Florida State Supreme Court’s effort to secure an impartial election was suspended and the ballots of thousands of Democratic voters wouldn’t be recounted. Ten minutes later, the actor told his wife—actress Kit Fairchild—that a whiff of fascism had been legalized and it was time to emigrate: just as he’d threatened throughout the campaign. Ryan refused to be played as another Hollywood liberal standing as a stooge on stage for whoever might come to power. He wouldn’t play the part of court jester. For her part, Kit agreed to go with her husband of seven years, saying they could manage careers from abroad as well as from California. Ryan observed Roman Polanski did quite well from Europe—though Kit said she didn’t want anything to do with the convicted rapist of a teenaged girl.

By midafternoon, Ryan contracted an apartment in Geneva and booked an international moving company to ship the couple’s possessions. Thereafter, he and Kit spent the evening telephoning family and friends to explain their decision to leave the United States and even organized a farewell banquet for those who lived nearby—at which the couple announced that they planned an imminent departure. Ryan expressed his intent to move abroad long before Bush was sworn into office as the country’s first illegitimate President.

Two days later, Ryan canceled the lease and forfeited his deposit. Having watched a public television documentary about Russian noble émigrés, he realized life abroad would be an endless parade of caviar and cigars, parties and affairs, love and leisure. Ryan had freed himself from the glamour of Hollywood by political activism during the Gore campaign and knew it wouldn’t do to fall back into the spoils of pleasure while others suffered the ravages of conservatism. Mere escape wouldn’t make an impact.

A better path was needed—a truer realization of the ideal. Acquiescence wouldn’t suffice and neither would Hollywood grandstanding. Someone needed to effect change and Ryan wanted to be the one. Why else did he double major in political science and theater arts at USC and star in so many historical epics? What could he accomplish with his talents and resources? For what great purpose had he been given his good looks and fame?

A few days before Christmas, Ryan lounged beneath palm trees in his Beverly Hills backyard. There, an idea—a revelation—was given to him. As if inspired from heaven, he decided that he no longer would preach like a priest or lecture like a professor, but must plan like a politician and paint like an artist. He must make things that weren’t become things that were and create a new society ex nihilo. Like-minded and good-willed people had labored under utterly impossible circumstances far too long. The intrigues and interests of slavery and racism, nationalism and militarism, capitalism and individualism, conservatism and pietism so distorted the body politic that every honest effort to implement social justice was doomed from the start. Shiny schools were built in urban slums too dangerous for gentrification and national parks carved from natural wastes too remote for exploitation (though even bare tundra was coveted by conservatives eager to squeeze every drop of profit from the earth). The welfare state served as little more than a sales tax on the leftovers of unrestrained greed and NRA gunmen shot up any effort to keep children from pistols and rifles alike. Even female suffrage often empowered narrow-minded housewives and miserly old women to outvote thoughtful feminists.

“How could we ever expect,” Ryan explained to friend and family alike, “progressive ideas to work here? We’re pouring new wine into recycled bottles capped with used corks and then act surprised when the wine leaks and spoils. Jesus had it right: we need to start from scratch. To lay a new foundation before we build. You can’t construct skyscrapers on prairie sod.”

Fortunately Ryan was between sets, so the next day he called his agent to search for land and sent Kit to visit family in Manhattan while he locked himself inside his Bel Air mansion for a fortnight: his phone line disconnected and cell coverage suspended. Security guards were given strict orders under pain of dismissal to let no one through the gate and even his mail was held at the post office. Two weeks later, Ryan emerged from his Hollywood manor—famished by his long fast on home-cooked meals and domestic wine—with a plan to make a new society. He reconnected his phones, picked up his mail, and told Kit to hurry home.

It didn’t take Ryan long to work out the parameters of a new world. Population size and composition were easy to set, apportioned according to a generous relationship of square acreage to living humans. The technical arrangements also were easy to engineer: medical, mechanical, and educational demands for a modest number of emigrants. It was a little more difficult to calculate the little things: the nuts and bolts and tools and tonnage necessary to supply a population with its daily bread. But several excellent software programs and two cutting-edge computer simulations enabled the actor to calculate in a week what an ancient king might have needed a court of royal officials to decide. An upgrade of the popular game
Simulation Civilization
proved particularly helpful, showing Ryan what physical and social systems needed to be accommodated—even delineating some of the cultural and moral controversies that might come into play. Ryan also drew from his movie-making experience, extensive travels, and progressive education. In any event, he determined the types of goods needed for the first several months, then compiled a purchase list and estimated costs. A wholesaler promised to prepare the goods for shipping in a matter of weeks, assuming a new land was discovered—a task that was delegated to Joshua Steinberg, Ryan’s long-time agent and confidante.

On New Year’s Eve, Steinberg paged Ryan with an important message. He had spied land up for sale: a crescent-shaped South Pacific island southeast of the Marquesas Isles and north of Easter Island. The island was the dominant isle in a tiny archipelago too small and isolated to be of strategic value during the age of competition and possessed no navigable harbors to make it commercially productive even today. The main island was less than four miles long and two miles wide—while a spine of broken ridges over nine hundred feet high traversed the length of the island, sloping almost to the shores, except for a few isolated patches of flat ground. The island was ringed by a coral reef, though a dozen motu rose from the sea to its west—with the largest of these being no more than a block-sized covering of thin soil and coconut trees and the smaller ones little more than clumps of palms and pandanus fruit protruding from the lagoon. Islets east of the atoll were eroded by surf and tide and remained only as submerged reefs that rendered the archipelago too dangerous for deep-draughted ships. Like a submerged fortress, the reef protected the island from commercialization and exploitation.

What Ryan liked best was that the islands were claimed by Russia based on a landing by Siberian settlers who’d sailed south from Alaska to establish a permanent colony. Though some land was cleared for fruit and nut orchards, the colony became untenable after the sale of Alaska to the Republican Secretary of State William Seward in 1867 for millions of dollars that otherwise might have been spent on the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands or similar poor relief efforts. Indeed, the Republican administration purchased the territory for nearly two cents per acre with the objective of profiting from the immoral and obscene seal fisheries. Recognizing both that their colony was even more isolated than a similar Russian enterprise that previously had failed in Hawaii and that the liquidation of the Russian-American Company had disrupted financial backing for the colony, Russian settlers burned their cabins and sailed back to Vladivostok. Colonial records were lost at sea during a squall that sank one of two ships returning to Russia and the few colonists who survived the abortive expedition lived out their days as laborers and farmhands who left few records of life on the island they once called Novi Mir.

Now the island was unpopulated and available for purchase at twenty million American dollars. Godson hired an international property attorney to finalize the deal both in a Russian court and an international panel—both of which recognized the leasing of the island for ninety-nine years or as long as the atoll remained demilitarized. Keen to collect Hollywood cash without arousing domestic opposition, the Russians kept negotiations secret and a newly-established multinational corporation named New World Inc
®
was established to govern the island as an autonomous state entity recognized under international law and guaranteed its legitimacy as long as the provisions of its contract remained inviolate. In particular, it was stressed by Russian magistrates that the importation of any organized military force to the archipelago nullified the contract—with immediate forfeiture of the purchase price. Putin didn’t want Godson’s enterprise to function as a covert arm of American diplomacy.

The United States Department of State, which was eager to keep the islands from potential Chinese acquisition, surreptitiously approved the deal as Ryan sped negotiations through The Hague with well-placed gifts to Russian diplomats and well-timed phone calls to the White House. Even in his final days, President Clinton didn’t forget his friends from Hollywood and sent the Secretary of State to negotiate terms. The contract was signed hours before George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43
rd
President of the United States of America (with Grover Cleveland counted twice)—somewhere between the pardoning of Marc Rich and the federalization of Utah’s forests.

Six weeks later, Ryan and Kit began interviews and continued them through March as applicants sought the right to emigrate. Word was circulated discreetly through contacts in the progressive community that a hundred colonists were needed to establish an eco-colony dedicated to preserving a tract of Brazilian rainforest and implementing multicultural mores (somewhat like the
Ecosphere 4
project in New Mexico). While Ryan sent his agent on a public trip to Rio de Janeiro to negotiate the down payment on a 65,000-acre preserve as a decoy, applicants flew to Los Angeles at their own expense (where they met Ryan and Kit in a Burbank high-rise office). Many were called, but few were chosen—and Ryan himself numbered the elect.

“Kit, who’s next?”

Kit reclined against a blue velvet love seat, her legs crossed and hands folded at her knees. She wore a black satin dress with a slit that exposed her right thigh. The sparkle of diamonds gleamed from her ears and a garland of pearls graced her neck. Every word from her lips was articulated with propriety and polish, as if rehearsed.

“Alan and Steve Lovejoy.”

Ryan watched from behind a large oak desk: a pile of marked manila folders stacked on it. He wore a brown sport jacket, his black hair combed behind his ears and lightly distinguished with gray streaks.

“Brothers?”

“Newlyweds,” Kit said, “married in Vermont a couple months ago.”

“That’s right,” Ryan said as he pushed a button on his intercom. “Miss Sayers, please send in the Lovejoys.”

The door opened and a slender receptionist with short hair and dark glasses escorted two middle-aged men into the office and made introductions. The men were offered coffee after being led to a blue couch opposite Kit’s love seat and made themselves comfortable without fanfare.

“So,” Ryan began, “you were just married?”

“Yes,” Steve said, “we’re from Las Vegas, but we married in Vermont on vacation.”

“It was a lovely wedding,” Alan said, “just the two of us and a justice of the peace.”

“Ours was a little bigger,” Kit said with a smile.

“About a hundred grand bigger,” Ryan laughed. “Eloping’s not a bad idea.”

“We didn’t have much choice,” Alan said. “Our ...”

“That,” Ryan interrupted, “brings us to the topic at hand.”

Alan fell silent.

“We want,” Ryan said, “to make a world where love is never a controversy. We want to make a place where every family is free to decide its own rules. And we want to help create a society completely free of stereotypes and prejudices.”

“Sounds great,” Alan said.

Ryan pulled forms from a dark folder and glanced at a note card with a few handwritten notes before turning back to the two men.

“I see from your resumes,” Ryan said, “you studied horticulture at the University of Nevada.”

“We own a greenery near Las Vegas,” Steve said. “We supply plants to thirty flower shops and two university labs.”

“Very useful. Do you know anything about tropical plants?”

“We have plenty in our greenhouse, including fruit trees.”

“Very, very good,” Ryan said. “Your credentials are strong.”

As Ryan shuffled through a few more papers, he turned slightly toward Kit and asked if she had any questions. Though she had none at present, she reserved the right to question the men later.

“Looking at your application,” Ryan said after a moment, “I see you have no immediate family to speak of.”

“That’s not exactly what it says,” Alan said. “It says that we have no one we’re close to. Most of our relatives are bigots—I mean Baptists—and our recent marriage just made our situation worse.”

“We’re not going to miss the States,” Steve added, “if that’s what you want to know.”