“Oh,
that’s crap.
You really are crazy.
How do you know, anyway?”
“I
shared a cell with Stein in prison for eight years, until our great escape.”
Roxie’s
eyes were as big as saucers as she stared in disbelief at
Milas
.
Could what he say be the truth?
She grabbed her clothes, putting them on as
she escaped through the opposite side of the tree house.
Milas
waited for several minutes before opening the door.
“Stein?”
A
breeze was blowing through the open window and a sleeping Stein was being
rocked back and forth on the hammock.
Milas
sighed heavily.
This will buy the girl some much needed time.
The breeze blew the scent of
Milas
into Stein’s consciousness and he awoke instantly.
“Where
is the girl?”
“Sleeping,”
Milas
lied.
“You
left her alone?”
Not waiting for a reply
from his former cellmate, Stein pushed him aside and stormed into the room
where
Milas
had gotten his fill of Roxie.
“She’s gone, but she won’t get far.”
Milas
was
powerless to stop him.
He could only
hope that Roxie had taken off at a dead run and that Stein was slow to pick up
her scent.
But
Milas
was no fool when it came to Stein.
He
had saved his ass many times with his keen scent and it had never failed
him.
He waited anxiously for the sound
that he feared.
Life out of prison had
not changed the man who
Milas
knew as a cold blooded
killer.
When the familiar blood curdling
screams did not shatter the stillness of the night,
Milas
stood at the top of the steps that had been nailed to the tree and looked out
into the night.
He whistled the secret bird
call that he and Stein had perfected during their years behind bars and a few
seconds later the same call was returned.
Minutes
later Stein returned, but there was no sign of conquer on his face.
There was no blood on his hands and no
remnants of flesh at the corners of his mouth.
“Stein!”
He
looked up at
Milas
with glazed eyes.
“What
have you done, Stein?
Did you find her?”
Stein
was a big man and his footsteps seemed to shake the trees as he made his way to
the tree house.
Milas
stepped aside and Stein slumped down onto the floor.
“You
should have seen it,
Milas
.
All I could do was watch through the tree
branch that snapped like a twig as I pushed it aside.”
“What
did you see?”
Milas
had never seen Stein act this way.
The
man so sure of himself was now shaking before his eyes.
“Get a grip, man.
What the fuck is out there?”
Milas
slapped his
friend hard across the face and Stein looked up at him with blank eyes.
“Flesh
eating flesh.”
“What?”
“We’re
not alone on this island.
There are
others.”
“Snap
out of it, man.
You and I have been on
this island for years.
It’s just us.”
Stein
grabbed the slender arms of his friend and gripped him tightly, nearly lifting
him off the floor.
“No, I saw them…their
shadows.
There was no mercy, no easy
death for Roxie.
With a twist of her
neck, her limbs dangling from her body, the struggle was over.”
Milas
thought he was going to vomit.
Was Stein
insane?
“Have you gone mad?”
“No,
Milas
.
We must
find a way to leave this island.”
“No way.
You and I are wanted men.
Have you forgotten the jump, the plunge to
our presumed deaths,
the
last minute pull of our
chutes?”
He broke free from the tight
hold of Stein and began to pace back and forth across the wooden floor.
“That’s it!
As far as anyone knows, we’re dead.
We can go
anywhere,
maybe change our appearance
on the off chance that someone believes we survived.
Stein, you’re a genius!”
Stein
glared at his friend.
“There is no way
off of this island, you fool.”
“The
boat, remember the boat?
We’ll salvage
it, shore it up, and be out of here in days.”
“I’m
not sure we have days,
Milas
.
You didn’t see what I did.
They are hungry…greedy…no mercy.”
Milas
had
little experience with cannibalism, except for his buddy Stein.
Stein had admitted his hidden desire…his
propensity toward biting a little too hard during the throes of passion.
The salty taste of human flesh and the scent
of healthy sweat were sometimes too powerful to resist.
A wild man in bed, Stein’s passion was too great
for most women.
Gnawing on raw animal
flesh was as far as he had gone, though he feared the man who may be hidden
deep within him.
Milas
had assured him that he was no cannibal, but he often questioned his own
words.
There was one thing about Stein
that
Milas
knew for certain.
He never lied.
He was blunt to the point of being rude, but
he was no liar.
If he said that he had
witnessed Roxie’s grotesque demise, then that is what he witnessed.
The look in his eyes was that of a frightened
wild animal.
“Let’s
go, buddy.
We’ll work all night if we
have to.”
With
a loaded backpack for each of them, the two men spent the night at the water’s
edge, wishing they had not tried to sink the vessel that had brought Roxie to
their island.
Years of labor in the
prison yard had made the men strong and they were accustomed to little sleep,
so the work went quickly and the great vessel was sturdy enough to set sail.
The
seafaring vessel was larger than they had remembered and the two men slowly
made their way out to sea.
Searching the
ship for anything salvageable, the two men uncovered a hidden safe.
“Ah, ha!”
“Pry
‘
er
open, Stein.”
It
took the big man only a few minutes with a screwdriver to open the cast iron
safe.
“Damn.
It’s filled with gold.”
He bit down on one of the coins.
“It’s real.
Gotta be millions in here.”
A few of the cargo ship’s toys were on the
floor of the vessel.
They were torn and
soaked with sea water, and
Milas
tossed them into the
ocean.
After
a slow start and testing the ship’s engine, they were steaming full force to a
destination unknown.
“Who
you think put it here?”
“Can’t say, Stein.
Must have been
someone who wanted to get rid of it fast or get it to the
U.S.
without
anyone knowing about it.
But I know one
thing.
It’s ours now.”
The
two prisoners made themselves comfortable as they tried to figure out how to
steer the huge ship.
Wishing it would
move along a little faster, they tested the engine a little more.
At top speed the heavy machine felt as if it
were sitting still.
Milas
leaned back and thought about the shadows that Stein had seen on the island.
“What
did they look like?”
“Who?”
“The cannibals.”
Stein’s
face grew solemn.
“They were big and
they were naked or next to it, as far as I could tell.”
“You
think they knew about us?”
“Can’t say,
Milas
.
We sure as
hell didn’t know about them.”
“Where
you think we’re headed?”
“Wherever this fine ocean going vessel will take us.
Think of us as
the Skipper and Gilligan.
Our very own
Gilligan’s
Island
is out there just waiting
for us to discover it.”
“Stein,
cut the shit.
We had our island and now
we’re just a couple of men adrift on the ocean.”
“That’s
where you’re wrong,
Milas
.
That never was our island.
Our island will be grand and we will no
longer have to forage for food.”
“A
real Club Med, right?”
“That’s
right,
Milas
, my man.”
When
night fell, the only light the two man team had was what radiated from the moon
and the stars, so they slept, soundly now that they could no longer see the
island in the distance.
On
the third night out
Milas
awoke to the sound of a
bullhorn.
“What the fuck!”
Stein
was snoring not too far from him and
Milas
roused him
with a hand to his chest.
The giant of a
man responded as he usually did…with a tight grip on the wrist of his
assailant.
“What?”
“You
hear that?”
Stein
turned his ear to the sky and waited impatiently for what
Milas
had heard.
“No.
I don’t hear anything.”
Giving
Milas
a
stern look, he lay back down, but when the horn sounded again he drew his
pistol to his side.
It was dark out on
the open water, the only light coming from
Milas
’
flashlight.
The big man’s mind searched
for the right words.
“What
is it, man?”
“I
swear it sounds like the damned horn from the yard.”
“You’re
dreamin
’, man.
We’re in the middle of the ocean.”
Stein’s
look of uneasiness was unsettling to
Milas
.
Stein was never wrong about these things.
He could sense evil.
“Where’s it coming from?”
Stein
listened for a long time, the gentle waves splashing against the side of the
ship the only sound in the dark stillness.
“That way,” he said, pointing to the east.
“How far?”
“Can’t say.
Those horns can be carried a long way on the
open seas.”
Milas
had
often wondered about Stein’s past before he became his cellmate, but he had
never asked.
He wasn’t certain that he
wanted to know the entire life history of his cellmate.
They killed the engine and allowed the big
ship to drift.
The last thing they
needed was to announce their arrival.
Stein was unusually quiet as he contemplated what was on the mysterious
island.
“We’re
drifting toward the island, aren’t we, Stein?”
The wide eyed
Milas
was afraid, though he
would never show it in the presence of the man who had always had his
back.
“Where the
fuck
are
we, Stein?
It’s getting
warmer.”
A
huge sigh from the big man had meant only one thing over the years.
They were headed for trouble.
When the first signs of dawn could be seen,
Milas
noticed the small dot of land that became larger and
larger.
They were drifting toward an
island as if being pulled by some unknown force.
“Stein, any idea where we might be?”
“Not
a clue.”
All
was quiet on the island as the ship met the shore.
The two men looked at each other with
confusion.
They tossed the anchor over
the side this time, unwilling to let their only means of escape drift
away.
The thick foliage was difficult to
manipulate as the men crept slowly inward.
A putrid scent hung in the air, and
Milas
tried not to gag.
Stein’s keen sense of
smell never failed him and he stopped in his tracks.