Richard Laymon - Island

“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.