Chapter 6: Starting Over

Perdition Island: Day 1

Blaine Murdock POV:

The ride to Perdition Island was wild! Imagine a ride at Disneyland where you flew through the galaxy in a boat! The sights were vivid and surreal. It seemed like we were in a glass tube of some kind and were moving super-fast. Except, there was no wind in our faces?

My boat had me, Naomi, Meredith and Steve Fitzhugh in it. Naomi and I were in front and Meredith and Steve in the back. Ahead of us, we could see a light, that got bigger the further we went. Behind us, we could see the other boat with George, Ruthie, Wayne and Margo.

They seemed to be a long ways behind us.

The weird thing was, when I tried talking to Naomi, she couldn’t hear me! AND, when I tried to put my arm around her, it was like she wasn’t even there! She appeared to be frightened, but, thankfully she was somewhat able to read my lips. She got the idea that I was just as nervous about everything as she was.

That calmed her down a bit. Especially when I blew her a kiss! (Which she enthusiastically returned.) Naomi felt like she was becoming my ‘woman’, not in the clingy sense, but somehow, we just seemed to click. Mere and Steve were getting like that, too, hence our current seating arrangement. They were two of the oldest of the four girls at 21 and 22 respectively. (Margo was also 21 and Ruthie was the youngest at 19.)

As I noticed the light at the end of the tunnel getting bigger, I could make out the features of a beach and shoreline. It only felt like about 6 minutes had passed when suddenly our boat was resting right on the beach, about 15’ from the water.

Not being sure if the other boat might not land on us, we quickly grabbed the gunwales and tried to move the boat out of the way.

That’s when I got my first surprise.

The boat felt extremely light! The four of us easily picked it up, even though we still had our 8 fully loaded duffle bags and 4 backpacks in it!

This was very strange, since it seemed the weight of just the duffels should have been more than what the whole thing felt like it weighed.

I looked over toward the forest and saw a rise of about 7 or 8 feet with a flat grassy area just beyond it. We carried the boat up there and set it down.

Steve chuckled, “Wow! Either these ladies are very strong or we’re Supermen?”

I shook my head, “I think it’s this planet. Remember Ibera telling us this planet is much smaller than Earth? Well, it could be that the gravity here is also much less. That’s the only thing that makes sense. Naomi, see how high you can jump!?”

She giggled, “I’m not much of an athlete, I probably can’t jump much higher than about a foot!”

Then she leapt straight up and her feet cleared nearly four feet above the ground! “Wow! That was fun, let me try that again ... it felt like I was flying!” The next time she cleared nearly 6 feet and we all started doing it.

I was able to long jump clean over the boat which was nearly 20’ long! In High School, my best running long jump was just barely 10½ feet. When I tried jumping straight up, with all my strength, it felt like I was airborne! I also felt no strain on my joints when I landed flat-footed, either. Steve said I’d jumped better than 8’ straight up.

That’s why the boat felt so light.

We must have been quite a sight when George, Ruthie, Wayne and Margo showed up and saw our ‘leap-a-thon’ going on. We yelled at them to get their boat up here.

When Wayne asked if we were going to give them a hand, Steve and I started clapping!

“Come on you weaklings, give it a try!” Steve challenged, jokingly.

Unaware of the gravity difference, when they pulled up on their boat, it nearly flew out of their hands!

George yelled, “What the hell? This thing feels like it’s made out of balsa wood.”

Wayne was grinning, “We don’t need no stinking help! Come on guys, we got this.” Even Ruthie was still giggling as they quickly deposited their boat right next to ours.

They also leapt a few times, then, we all began scouting around the immediate area.

About 50 feet south of where we set the boats, almost directly in line with where we got dropped off, was a wide sandy trail heading straight into the woods. I was hesitant about going too deep into the woods without our machetes and survival knives.

Because of the extreme width of this trail however, (30’+), Steve volunteered to go with me to see how far it led.

I wasn’t surprised that Naomi also wanted to go with us.

When I explained my hesitancy about going in very deep, she just chuckled, “I used to go hunting with my dad before he died! I probably know more about exploring in the woods than you guys do.”

I swatted her cute little behind, “Fine by me. Let’s see how you act when we see our first big snake?”

She was still taunting me as we briskly started walking up the middle of the path. We could see quite a ways in and the further we walked, the more it dawned on me that this was probably a wash as opposed to a trail. The middle was considerably lower than either of the two sides, suggesting it may dead end at a stream or pond of some kind. My hunch was that this could be the overflow route of either of those.

The trail made a slight bend to the south (left), then straightened out again. I was pacing, counting my steps, to get a rough idea of how far we had walked.

The bend was at about a quarter of a mile and about half a mile later we came upon a small pond.

Just as I’d guessed, this was the overflow route for that pond.

It was also the end of our wide pathway.

We were now deep in the woods and the tree canopy was blocking out much of the sunlight. As we looked around, further to the south, we could see a nicely lit area, suggesting a meadow or other type of opening. Since the pond seemed like it had been a while since it last overflowed, we decided to take a chance and follow the bank around to see if we could find the stream that may have fed it.

The bank was hard packed clay and was probably five or six feet wide. As I looked for tracks, I did notice a few small footprints. They appeared to be possibly made by a squirrel or maybe something as large as a small fox. We were almost halfway around the pond when we saw the stream that was flowing into it.

The bank of the stream was narrow, but still afforded us about a three-foot walkway.

Feeling adventurous, we decided to see where this might lead.

About 100 yards off we saw that it branched into another small stream heading back toward the beach at about a 45-degree angle to the northeast. We looked around the area and decided to follow the stream that went further inland. We’d gone about another 300 yards when we heard a waterfall!

That could only mean one thing.

We were nearly running as we headed toward the falls and discovered what might be our ideal campsite. On one side, or just to the south of the falls, was a large and deep overhang in the side of the mountain.

Underneath the overhang was about a 12-foot-deep hollow or cavern-like area. A little further south of that we discovered a rather large cave opening. We decided not to investigate at this time, not sure whether or not some animal had already claimed that for his home. Since we didn’t have any flashlights with us or our machetes we decided to head back to the beach to let everyone know what we found.

As far as I was concerned, this would be a great area to set up camp.

On our way back we paused to take a drink from the stream. The water was delightfully cool and tasted great. I figured the water coming off the mountain would be even cooler and certainly very convenient.

I kept thinking that with this being a tropical area, as scenic as building a shelter on the beach might be, I remembered what happened to Chen. Fishing and bringing our catch back to camp would involve about a mile’s walk each way.

That would be about the biggest drawback of using that grotto by the waterfall for our camp. That is until I remembered we had four very full and heavy toolkits and all our baggage that would have to be brought back here.

At least with the gravity thing helping us, it might not be too terrible.

When we got back to the beach the first two toolkits had arrived and Wayne and George were grinning, saying that they were much lighter than they thought they would be.

Just as I was wondering when the last two would get here, three more crates showed up!

And one had a bunch of one-inch holes drilled in it!

The girls all started giggling and immediately ran over to it.

I looked at Steve, Wayne and George, wondering, ‘what the hell’?

The girls quickly flipped open the clasps and two little heads popped out and started yapping and licking the four girls as they showed us Ibera’s ‘special gift’.

It was two young Chihuahuas!

My first thought was just what the hell are we going to do with two little dogs!? The girls were obviously over the moon, but I was thinking that this would just be a hassle. Not to mention, two more mouths to feed! They were so small, they certainly wouldn’t offer any ‘protection’ from predators, human or otherwise.

I might have been happier if they’d been German Shepherds or even Border Collies.

When I voiced my thoughts Wayne chuckled, “Hey, maybe they won’t terrify our adversaries, they also won’t let them sneak up on us, either! My sister has Chihuahuas and these little buggers hear EVERYTHING! Once they get used to us, they get very territorial and won’t let ANYTHING invade their (our) turf without going nuts! They’re also fearless. I think they might be fun and far more useful than you think!”

Ruthie was holding a note from Ibera. She said that Ibera wrote that these two (a male and a female) were extremely intelligent and would answer to Zeus and Hera. They were ‘housebroken’ but would also gladly find their own food, so we wouldn’t have to feed them any of ours. She asked that if for any reason we didn’t want them to leave a note on one of our boats and put them back in their crates near the boats and she would take them back.

Like, with the way the girls were oohing and ahhing, THAT was ever going to happen!

I was very surprised when I called out ‘Zeus’ and one of them ran over to me! It was the male and he WAS a cute little fucker. He kinda looked like a mini Doberman Pincher. Mostly black with light brown paws and facial markings. The tip of his tail was white as was his belly. I called out to Hera and sure enough, the other one came running over to me! She was a cutie too and was light brown and white. She was very affectionate and wouldn’t stop licking my nose.

Yeah, there was NO CHANCE that Ibera was ever going to be asked to take these two back.

It took some time to tell everyone about the area we found, but once we did, it was instantly agreed it would be good. For now, at least.

Now, we just had to get the four toolkits, sixteen duffle bags and eight backpacks from here to the site that was nearly a mile away!

Aaargh!

Lonnie ‘Lone Wolf’ Corrigan’s POV:

I really wish these fuckers woulda listened to me when we were trying to decide what we wanted to take with us. I just know we forgot a whole bunch of stuff. My guys were so obsessed with fucking Lucy (Lucinda) that we never really put a lot of thought into what we SHOULD be asking for!

And the Professor certainly gave us enough time!

Not that Lucy minded all the attention, mind you. She’s a nympho who craves sex more than any guy I know. Not that it’s a bad thing, I just wish we could have waited till we were settled down better.

Slick (Sly Willum) and Tiny (Tony Molina) were accomplished operatives but they were purely ‘urban’ in their experiences. Neither of them were ever in the military and when it comes to our survival, would only be useful as muscle or ‘go-fers’. Tiny’s biggest asset was his size. He was by far the tallest of anybody on this island and as strong as the proverbial ox. I was told he could bench over 400 Lbs!

Josh had been in the Marines and could shoot a fly off a gnat’s ass at 300 yards. Unfortunately, he has a short temper and got kicked out of the Corps for beating the shit out of his Commanding Officer! (After doing a 6-month stint in the brig.) Josh isn’t quite as big as Tiny, but only about four inches shorter and damn near as strong. His nickname, ‘Baldy’ doesn’t bother him, since he has long hair that he keeps in a pony tail that stretches halfway down his back.

I was hesitant about having him in our group purely because of his volatility. I personally haven’t had many dealings with him but, I also haven’t had any problems with him. He has survival training and was the only other person in our group that sided with me when it came to cooling it with Lucy.

I was trained as an Army Ranger and just did one 6-year hitch before realizing that I couldn’t kill as many fuckers as I could as a paid assassin. At $1000 up to $10,000 a pop, I managed to keep myself very busy and made a shitload of money that I have stashed in safety deposit boxes all over the country.

Not that it’s going to do me any good now! Unless I can somehow get off this friggin’ island. There’s a rumor that this island we’re going to may not be on Earth? That’s total bullshit. How the hell are they going to get us to another planet when it’s a major operation just to go to the moon?

No, Jonah and that Professor probably started that rumor just to keep us from using these great boats to get back home! The bastards didn’t give us no oars, so that’s all the evidence I need. I know a lot about Astronomy, so, it’ll just be a matter of time till I figure out where the hell we are.

Until then, we’re going to have to set up a camp and make some weapons so we can get George Sachs’ harem of babes all to ourselves. That bastard Murdock just got lucky and since George is a pussy, it’ll be his three against our five, since Lucy is very good with knives that, that stupid bitch, Ibera, gave her a shitload of!

Lucy won’t like us having all that extra pussy, but even SHE said she likes a little pussy once in a while.

Georges girls are MUCH finer than OUR overly-horny skank.

Okay ... shit is getting weird. Our ‘oarless’ boat just got put into this weird glass tube and we’re getting one hell of a light show! It looks like we’re going a gazillion miles an hour but it feels like we’re standing still.