Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Tell me about the village… what you know of it,” she called out as they continued toward the black beach.

He was some ten feet ahead of her now, his form a large shadow, his profile a silhouette against the gray-green foliage.

She checked cautiously for her footing now each step of the way. It was treacherous. “Fifteen yards or so more now,” he called back, having not understood her, his voice seemingly out of place in this wild land of sea and jungle. She could see that he'd reached a leveling-off point now ahead, laying down all the equipment he'd hauled. He then rushed back up toward her.

He'd taken the big knife from its scabbard and he held it high over his head now, and she felt her heart rise in her chest as the blade came down, tearing and hacking at some entangling branches that crossed the trail.

“ Man, this stuff has no respect for people,” he joked.

She breathed deeply and brought up a lopsided grin, feeling foolish, but not daring to tell him why. He sank the long knife into the earth and lifted the air tank from her, returning to the black sand and the other equipment, and there he gently placed it. He turned to find her twirling about the diamond-studded black beach, her shoes torn off.

“ Owww! Ouch! Oh, I cut my foot, damnit.” She was hobbling a bit now. “I wanted to feel it, but it's so coarse. Why didn't you warn me? I expected it to be like a white sand beach, but it isn't.”

The beach glittered beneath them. “It's made of obsidian volcanic glass, for God's sake, not sand pebbles or granules, sweetheart. I was gonna warn you, but you're too fast for me, I guess.”

“ Don't explain too much; you'll spoil the fun.”

“ You did well getting down, Jess. Look, you get set up here, rest that foot, and I'll return for all the rest of our equipment.”

“ No way,” she disagreed.

He stared into her eyes a moment, seeing some hint of her earlier fear.

“ There's nobody here but us, Jess. I promise you.”

Nobody but us, she thought, so why've I developed such a massive case of the creeps? Can't stand isolation because I've never had it before? Need my city lights, hum of a million volts around me, what? Is it the graveyard and encampment above, the dead? Such places don't normally scare me…

She saw that Jim was staring, waiting. Finally, she said, “All the same with you, Jim, I… I'd prefer we stay together.”

“ Fine, fine.” He nodded. “Sure, just as well.”

He started back up. “Wait,” she called after him, trying to get her shoes back onto her feet, the cut stinging and dripping blood on the onyx beach.

Jessica was exhausted by the second trip down to the lovely beach, after which Jim proposed a romantic interlude coupled with some serious business the following morning, the dive below the Spout. As for the romance, he'd thought of everything, including a tent, which he efficiently assembled. Very soon they had a fire going, and the enormity of the sky and ocean seemed closed out for a time by the circle of their flames, which sent little fireflies off in the trade winds which slapped at the tent continuously, the noise adding to that of the nearby geyser and the ocean's music.

She'd made coffee and warmed some of the canned food he'd brought, hash and beans, and they ate hungrily from tinware with small camping utensils. Nearby their diving gear and tanks stood silent sentinel to their camp. “Jesus, it's like beyond Deliverance here,” she softly complained. “So what's really going down here, Parry?” she asked firmly, after finishing her meal.

“ Just a little excursion, so to speak.”

“ Unauthorized?”

He frowned and looked out to sea, his thoughts seeming to go in and out with the tide. He looked a bit annoyed that his ruse hadn't lasted any longer than it had.

She got up, walked to the nearby water's edge and said, “Great to have a ready-made sink to clean up in.” She dipped her utensils and tin dish under the current, getting her feet and pants leg wet in the bargain, a little unnerved by the black emptiness of the water below her. Given the color of the bottom, the bay here was its own controlled little abyss.

“ Leave it to you to call the Pacific Ocean a sink,” he called out.

“ Well, for our purposes, for the moment, that's what it is,” she playfully parried, splashing water in his direction, sending it cascading skyward from her tin.

“ Hey, cut it out!”

“ So, you going to come clean, Parry? I'm here, I'm with you, I'm on your side, and I've been known to disobey authority on occasion.”

He hesitated.

“ You can trust me.”

“ I pitched the dive to D.C. and given the limited success of the Navy dive in Oahu, they passed on it. Didn't want to hear any objections from me either. Said in effect that your time and your life-and mine, they were kind enough to add-were more valuable than to go wasting either on what was termed an unlikely prospect in a risky environ.”

“ Sounds like Zanek's term for a wild-goose chase.”

“ Zanek and a team of think-tankers in D.C. that don't know shit about what we're faced with here. I mean if we don't nail this butchering-wacko-sonofabitch six ways to Sunday, if we don't have him on every count, and he gets some deal cut… well, we'll be facing some kind of race riot over in Honolulu.”

“ Something new for the tourists,” she said.

“ This isn't a laughing matter, Jess.”

“ I realize that. Come on, loosen up. We're here.”

“ Yeah, we're here, but I left out the fact Zanek kinda… well, he…”

“ Out with it, Jim.”

“ He ordered you back…”

She'd been returning from the ocean edge when this news stopped her in her tracks.

“ Are you saying… didn't you think… what were you thinking, Jim?”

“ I wanted this time with you.”

She considered this. “Well, Zanek's got a hell of a nerve ordering me back when I didn't get half my leave. Christ, the more I think about it, the hotter I get.”

“ Something about a Green River-type bizarre killing spree in the Northwest.”

“ Northwest, huh?”

“ Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.”

“ There're other people he can call in, you know.”

“ Said it was right for you.”

“ Right for me. Some rep, I've got, huh, Jim?” She sat alongside him once more, sighing heavily. The meal and the campfire reminded her of hundreds of excursions she might've gone on if she'd found a man like Parry before, a man secure enough to ask her.

Here the palms and fragrance of the exotic jungle surrounded them on all sides save the sea, acting as its own aphrodisiac in delightful addition. On one side of them lay the dense gray shadow of an ohia forest where the ieie vines with their big, sweet almond-colored flowers were in full bloom. From her reading of Hawaiian folklore, she recalled that the ieie plant was offered to Laka, goddess of dance.

Staring out at the flaming, pink and salmon-colored flowers of the forest, Jessica once again marveled at the interplay of what seemed a purely Hawaiian phenomena, light even in darkness, created of color. All Hawaiian life and culture seemed perched on a balance beam between childlike ebullience, innocence and warmth on the one side, and lethargy, cynicism and a stoic, dark sorrow like the carved wooden images of the island gods on the other. Not unlike the world at large, she thought. The lava rock thrown up about the cliffs here looked like the jagged edges of flames in silhouette. In another direction her eyes took in the source of the winds hurtling down from the world's largest crater, sweeping a fierce course along the ancient path of the lava that'd created the beach. Parry, watching her, now stared at the broad face of the ascending mountain at their backs. “Makaniloa,” he said.