The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth)

The Island

by

Michael Stark

PUBLISHED BY: Michael Stark on Kindle

The Island

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Stark

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the author’s written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. 

Forward:

This is Part 2 of the Island. If you’ve not read Part 1, go back and read it first. This part, like the previous, should be free. If not, visit my website at www.michael.stark.com to see where you find it without cost.

MS

Chapter VI - Stranded

I brought
Angel
in and tied her alongside the dock. Fears of tour boats running over her had faded with news of the ban. Any craft within miles would be headed to a real port: Ocracoke, Hatteras or south maybe, to Wilmington.  With fenders in place to keep her from rubbing against the heavy wooden pilings, I set about getting ready for nightfall.

Elsie and Daniel had bunks aboard the boat.
“Bunk” might have been an exaggerated term for what amounted to four inches of foam rubber laid over plywood. I doubted either would be complaining by morning. I knew what it felt like to sleep aboard with water lapping at the sides and
Angel
rocking gently. The effect went beyond soothing and ventured into the land of the comatose. I’d probably have to drag them both out come daylight.

I stretched a tarp across the cockpit, using the boom to make a tent over the exposed seats. The skies looked clear enough. The wind had picked up a bit too, meaning no dew-covered seats to dry with the backside of my pants. Not that I made a habit of drying seats that way. It’s just the way life worked. No matter how much I dried them with something else, within minutes of plopping down in the pilot’s seat my rear would be cold and wet. The tarp would rectify that problem before it became a problem. The makeshift shelter would also act as a wind-break and keep the cabin a bit warmer.

Once I had the boat secure, I dug the tent from a locker and headed for the shore. A quick search along the undergrowth at the edge of the beach revealed the small opening that Joshua and the girl had used earlier. I eyed the break suspiciously and poked around the twisted mass of dead wood and weeds. The entire shoreline looked like a perfect haven for rattlesnakes and copperheads. I might have come to the island expecting to die, but I didn’t want to do it with a pair of holes gouged into my leg and my skin rotting off.

Inside, the path led through a thicket of brush and pine, rising gently for about twenty yards. Thick, hairy vines wrapped around many of the trees. The same plant, poison ivy, also grew as a shrub underfoot. I gritted my teeth and stepped inside, edging along a tiny walkway that was more game-trail than footpath.

I emerged into a long, wide clearing, ringed by trees and carpeted with grass that looked more like a lawn than a field. Here and there aggressive and fast-growing weeds popped up a thin, reedy heads, but for the most part, the grass rose only a few inches high. Had anyone asked me to describe the place with one word, I’d have chosen glade. Most of the clearing lay in cool shade with the dying sun dappling the far end in wide swaths of golden light. Trees loomed again in the distance, but spaced far apart and devoid of the tangled growth along the beach. Nestled in a little green nook on the left side, gravestones cast long thin shadows across the grass. Unlike modern cemeteries where the tombstones stood in perfectly aligned rows, these rose like old and crooked teeth. A few looked to have given in to time and wind and collapsed. Others leaned at crazy angles as if threatening to join their fallen brothers.

Like the town, the graveyard had been abandoned, and it showed.

Wonderful.

Not only did I get to sleep on the ground. I’d have the pleasure of sleeping next to the dead. 

The thought of having dinner near the old cemetery had even less appeal. I had no idea where the center of the old town might be, but given the size of the island, it couldn’t be far.

I made short work of the tent, placing it at the edge of the sandy soil between grass and tree line and set about gathering firewood. The task proved easy enough. A past storm or series of them had washed tons of debris and dead wood up into the twisted tangle of trees and vines just up from the shore. I
dragged in large branches, even parts of trees snapped in half by wind or water.

By the time I had finished, the sun had drifted low on the western horizon. Cool air settled in as the shadows grew. The bite in the wind carried the promise of a chilly, if not cold night to come. Elsie and Daniel passed by at one point, on their way across the opening to the graveyard. I let them go and worked on clearing debris away from a sandy spot I intended to use for the fire. Half an hour later when they cam
e strolling back, I had a small but warm blaze crackling and popping. Both looked cold. I waved an invitation toward the fire, but the old woman declined with a shake of her head.

When the flames died down, I scooped sand over the coals to keep them from blowing sparks into the nearby brush and to keep them smoldering. After the meeting, I’d rake the sand away, toss on a new batch of firewood and have a roaring fire going in a fraction of the time it would take to build a new one from scratch. Satisfied that the camp was as secure and comfortable as I could make it, I headed back to the dock to both hunt out a jacket and gather up Elsie and Daniel.

To my surprise, Elsie had put together a veritable feast, with the left-over ham from lunch serving as the main course. She had stirred up a huge bowl of potato salad to go with it. A pot full of green beans sat next to it. Behind the ham lay a plastic grocery bag half full of freshly baked bread.

I looked at the pile of food sitting in the cockpit and grinned.

“I had more down there than you thought, didn’t I?”

She snorted.

“You got a mess down there is what you have. I’ve never seen stuff thrown around with such carelessness. One thing you are not, Hill William, is organized.”

I ignored the comment and pointed to the bread.

“Never mind where you found the stuff to make that.
How
did you make it? The whole cooking arrangement on this boat is a two-burner stove.”

She rolled her eyes.

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Do you even know what a Dutch oven is?”

“A big pot with three legs,” I countered.

“Do you know how to use one?”

I scratched my head. She had me there, even though I didn’t want to admit it.

A grin of triumph slid across her face, but it didn’t last long. A scowl slid in to replace it. She wagged a bony finger at me. 

“You need to do something about your bathroom facilities.”

The last word came out in exaggerated syllables like fa-cil-i-ties, all of them delivered with Elsie’s gray eyes glaring at me over the edge of her spectacles.

“I quit squattin’ a long time ago, Mr. Hill.”

“I wasn’t expecting anyone on this trip to be squatting anywhere,” I shot back.

“That’s cause you’re a man,” she said smugly. “Men never t
hink of anyone but themselves--like this ham. You might be fine sitting around a fire gorging on a piece of meat, but most people want a bit of fixins. And most of them don’t want to crawl in a little corner to do their business either.”

I opened my mouth and then promptly closed it. I’d seen how Elsie had stood up to Dwight Little, using nothing more than that little finger and sharp tongue to turn a monster of a man shaking with anger into one chastised and sulking. I had no desire to end up feeling like a schoolboy again.

Daniel stood behind her. He actually looked like he might grin. I wrinkled my nose at him and gathered up as much of the food as I could carry. Ham in one hand, potato salad and bread in the other, I glanced at the boy and motioned toward the seat locker next to me.

“Grab a flashlight out of there. We’ll need it coming back.”

I led them up the path, through the thicket and past my camp. Elsie noted the huge pile of wood I had dragged in next to the tent and smoking coals.

“It sure looks like
someone
is planning on staying warm tonight,” she said and shot me another glaring look.

I took a deep breath, looked up at a star forming in the darkening sky, and wondered what I’d done to get on her bad side.

Finding the others proved easy. One of them had built a huge fire in the middle of what turned out to be little more than a loose collection of buildings. Calling the place a town implied streets, sidewalks, signs--at least in my mind it did. Calling it a ghost town drew those same thoughts into images straight out of TV westerns. I half expected to see hitching rails, a saloon with a weather-beaten sign creaking in the wind, even sage brush rolling down a dusty road.

In that manner, Portsmouth came off a bit disappointing. The buildings were spaced a good
distance from each other. Hard-packed, sandy lanes ran between them. Too narrow to call streets, too wide to call paths, they stood out like white veins against a wide open expanse of carefully clipped grass and trees so evenly spaced and healthy that the entire area carried a landscaped feel to it. Aside from architecture a century old, the structures stood straighter and probably cleaner than the days when Portsmouth actually had residents.

The place looked like a museum, which it was. The Park Service and local historic groups not only did the maintenance, but also watched over the old village during the summer months. The town even carried what had to be the only ban on the entire island. Campers could set up a tent virtually anywhere on Portsmouth except here, among houses built in an era when people lived simply and the ocean both gave and took life.

I winced when I saw the fire. Any other time, any other night, the meeting might conjure up a park ranger with a scowl on his face and a ticket book in hand. Hell, he might have even brought handcuffs.

Nine figures moved behind the dancing flames. In the dwindling light, it took a bit to find the familiar faces of the two who had greeted me at the beach. Joshua and the girl stood on the opposite side of the fire. Both had donned heavier, warmer clothing.

Although the meeting had evidently been planned as a
social gathering, the people attending stood out in two obvious groups. Joshua and the girl had two other couples close by. Several feet away, two men and a woman sat in camp chairs pulled up close together. Looking at them, I felt old. While forty-two wasn’t exactly over the hill, neither group had anyone who appeared even close to thirty. I glanced at Elsie, wondering if she felt like a school teacher greeting her new kindergarten class.

Joshua waved. He seemed big on waving. I decided to humor him and waved back. He detached himself from his group and came around the fire. I introduced him to Elsie and Daniel.

She took one look at him and put her hands on her hips. “Joshua, now that’s a fine Bible name. But I have to say, you look more like Moses to me.”

He laughed and began his own introductions.

The girl who had been with him at the beach still wore her ponytail. She was pretty in a hard kind of way. I don’t mean that as jaded. The woman had virtually no extra weight on her, leaving her face angular instead of rounded. She reminded me of a workout and diet guru, the kind of person who always fussed over extra calories and needed to lose another ten pounds.  Her name turned out to be Denise Marten.

The two men with them were as different as two people could be. One was short, thin enough to be anorexic, and had the kind of feature
s a graphic artist would love--high cheekbones and a nose carved so sharp that half his face glowed in the firelight while the other half dwelt in the land of shadows. His name was Devon.