Richard Laymon - Island

One more glance around, then I started to go.

It promised to be a long one.

Which didn’t thrill me. I wanted to get it done with and amscray back to the beach.

Also, I wasn’t thrilled by the noise I was making. A loud, papery, splattery sound. Obviously, I was hitting leaves or some other variety of foliage. It’s damn near impossible to take a silent leak in a jungle. I tried swiveling from side to side. The noise changed directions, but not volume.

It was just starting to taper off when I heard someone take a step. At first, I didn’t know it was a footstep. I didn’t know for sure until I heard the second one.

Then came the third, closer to me than the others.

By that time, I had shut down my irrigation project and stowed the equipment.

I switched the tomahawk to my right hand.

Then I stood still and held my breath.

And wished to God I had stayed on the beach where I belonged.

The footsteps stopped.

Maybe two yards away?

I strained my eyes to see who was there, but all I could make out were different shades of dark gray—and a lot of black.

It’s probably Kimberly, I told myself.

But what if it isn’t?

I knew, really, that it had to be her. She’d heard me and started to come toward me, then stopped, afraid I might be Wesley.

We were both standing there, trying to convince ourselves that the other person wasn’t Wesley.

Suddenly, I had a bad thought.

What if she decides I’m Wesley, and attacks me?

She wouldn’t do that. After all, I was supposed to come out here and act as bait. She was expecting me.

But she also expected Wesley to show up.

It was actually possible that she might goof and kill me by mistake.

Anyway, we couldn’t just stand here all night.

In a quiet voice, I said, “Kimberly? It’s me. Rupert.”

The voice came back, “Rupert? It’s me. Wesley.”

Wesley, being the asshole that he is, apparently couldn’t resist the chance to scare the hell out of me. If he’d just kept his mouth shut and snuck in closer and used his ax, I’d be a dead boy right now.

But he had to answer me back.

My reactions surprised me.

I didn’t scream and whirl around and make a mad dash for the beach. Which is what I would’ve guessed I’d do, if anyone had asked.

Maybe everyone isn’t like this, but I seem to have at least two different people inside of me: one is timid and plays by the rules; the other is a little nuts—and the nut pops up at odd, unexpected times.

I was standing there, scared half to death even before Wesley answered—my knees shaking, my heart slugging. Then he said, “Rupert? It’s me. Wesley.”

Instead of having a panic attack, I heard myself greet the guy. “Hey, Wesley, how’s it going?”

“Having a ball.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“What was this supposed to be, tonight? Some sort of trap?”

“Yep.”

“Guess who got caught in it?”

“You tell me.”

I hoped to God he wasn’t about to say, “Kimberly.”

Wesley said, “You.”

“Sure thing,” I said.

He laughed.

I threw my tomahawk at the sound. Threw it hard. It went smashing through bushes. I didn’t wait for the outcome, but made a one-eighty and ran.

Behind me, Wesley let out a yell. He sounded more angry than hurt.

Then I heard him come charging after me.

I dodged between a couple of tree trunks, rammed my way through a bush, and raced onto the beach.

I almost collided with Kimberly.

What a sight! I’ll never forget it as long as I live. She stood only a few strides in front of me, bare and dark except for the white of her bikini. (Not wearing Keith’s Hawaiian shirt, for a change.) Her feet were planted in the sand, legs apart and slightly bent, one foot forward. Her left arm was stretched out toward me, her right arm cocked back near her ear—the spear all set to throw.

“Hit the deck!” she commanded me in a quick, loud whisper.

I dived for the sand, pounded against it chest first and slid toward Kimberly’s bare legs. About to plow into them, I threw myself sideways. Did a half-roll and looked up just as she hurled her spear.

It shot straight forward.

Snapping my head around, I kept track of it.

The spear raced toward Wesley as he came charging out of the jungle.

This was the first I’d seen of him since the explosion.

He appeared to be stark naked. His skin gleamed black in the moonlight—some son of camouflage, I guess, for sneaking around at night. (He hadn’t put the stuff on his backside, I discovered pretty soon.) He held his ax in both hands, raised high over his left shoulder, ready to split me like a log.

His grin was big and white.

The grin went away when he saw Kimberly—and the spear speeding at him.

His mouth opened wide.

He yelled, “YAAAH!” and tried to dodge the spear, giving himself an awkward half-twist to the left in the moments before it struck.

The whittled point of Kimberly’s spear caught him in the chest area. He was a husky guy, and he had pretty good boobs on him. The spear hit him in the left one. He was partly turned away, though, so all it did was poke through one side of his tit and come out the other side, just behind his nipple and maybe half an inch under his skin.

He squealed. Dropping the ax behind him, he grabbed the shaft of the spear with both hands and stumbled and fell to his knees. Though he clutched the spear, he didn’t try to pull it out.

I think he was afraid to pull it out.

Afraid of the pain.

He held on to it the way he did, I think, to keep the weight of the spear from dragging open his wound. If he’d just let go, it probably would have split the front of his boob wide open from one side to the other.

Anyway, I scurried over to where the ax had fallen.

While I did that, Kimberly rushed Wesley and reached for her spear.

“No!” he cried out. “Don’t touch it!”

Kimberly touched it, all right.

She grabbed its end and tugged. On its way out, it must’ve hurt him pretty good. He screamed so hard I thought my ears might bleed.

He fell onto his side and curled up and squirmed and whimpered.

I picked up the ax.

When I looked at Wesley again, he was on his hands and knees. Trying to crawl away.

Kimberly rammed the spear into his bare ass.

It missed his anus (the likely target), but jabbed into his right buttock. He squealed again, and flopped down flat.

Kimberly pulled out her spear and planted it in the sand by her feet. Then she pulled her father’s Swiss Army knife out of her bikini pants. She flung a leg over Wesley and sat down in the middle of his back. With both hands, she worked on prying open one of the knife blades.

“Look out!” Billie yelled from a distance. “Watch it! Thelma!”

We both turned our heads and saw Thelma coming at us. Billie was chasing her. (Connie stood by the fire, watching. She’d put her T-shirt back on. She hugged her chest and rubbed her upper arms as if she had a chill.) Billie was faster than Thelma, but Thelma must’ve had a good headstart. Too good a headstart. Billie wasn’t likely to catch her in time.

“Don’t let her interfere,” Kimberly told me. “I’ve gotta finish him off.”

Thelma must’ve heard that. She cried out, “No! Don’t you dare! Leave him be! Kimberly, leave him be, damn it!”

Kimberly muttered, “Yeah, right.”

I put myself in Thelma’s way, the ax at port-arms. I had no intention of hurting her, of course. I planned to block her, that’s all, and give Kimberly the time she needed.

Coming at me, growling, stocky as a bulldog, she gave me a bad case of the creeps. This woman, normally so plain and innocuous and rather dumpy, had somehow changed into a raving lunatic.