Chapter 10

“My name ... My name is Dr. Simon Walker. United States Army Medical Corps. If you are hearing my voice, your life is in grave danger... ”

There was something haunting about the man’s voice as it crackled through the speakers. I’m not going to lie; the first thought that went through my engineer brain was to question how, in the name of all things holy, this recorder was still being powered. Under normal circumstances, that thought alone would have had me on my hands and knees, under the desk, and tracing wires back to a power source, but in my defense, being told that your life is in danger has a way of re-ordering your priority list.

“I have no idea what the date is. My best guess is that it is around March by now, of 1953. I ... I don’t know how long I have. These bouts of ... lucidity ... they come and go. Some last hours, others only a few minutes, and it could be days before I get my next one, maybe weeks. I have managed to sneak this tape recorder away from the others, and I will try to explain as much as I can, when I can, about what happened to our expedition. But if you are not alone, you should stop now. Come back when the rest of your group is sleeping, I don’t know what will happen if you are caught listening to this and there is much to tell you. My story is not a short one. But if this is all you get to hear, then please, try to give this message to my wife, Abigail.”

There was the sound of shuffling through the speakers and a deep breath before the man continued to speak.

“I’m sorry, honey. I tried to fight it; I really did. I know I promised I would be home soon, but ... If I don’t make it, tell our son about me. Help him grow into a better man than his father. Tell him to remember me in his prayers, as I hope you do, and that I will always be looking down on both of you proudly. The two of you are the only good things that ever came of my life. I never have, and will never, stop loving you or thinking of you. The memory of your face, your smile, your touch, and the incredible warmth I have always felt when you are close have been the only things that have kept me going these long months. No matter what happened here, only you have ever had my heart. I must go now. I will be back as soon as I can.”

“Dan? Are you coming?” The sound of Hayley’s voice snapped my attention back to the doorway. I hit the stop button, hoping that it would play again the next time I returned.

“Yeah, I’m coming. I’m just checking something,” I called back as I started making my way back into the tunnel. I took another look around the room. Something wasn’t right here, and I meant more than just the recording. Meeting Freja was ... well, it was hard to explain. There was an intrinsic yet mysterious trust in my thoughts toward the Goddess. Yes, of course, that thought could have been planted in my mind just as easily as the urge to fuck the girls senseless had been, but there was more to it than that. If she meant us harm, she could have easily done it. There were ways to make our lives unimaginably painful on this island, and that was before you considered the fact that - if what she had said was true - she had saved us from the plane crash in the first place. The island, so far, contained everything we could possibly need not only to survive but live in relative comfort. There were certainly worse places to be stranded. Even down to the lack of poisonous insects, which should have been everywhere in this part of the world.

I couldn’t pretend to know anything about the abilities of Gods and Goddesses, but based on the urges we seemed powerless to resist, she could just as easily have us re-enacting her favorite scenes from Oklahoma ... or The Hunger Games ... or The Human Centipede.

The reality was that despite the novelty of our situation, despite the sudden and possibly irreversible ending of our old lives, we were actually doing pretty well, all things considered. It was not even remotely difficult to imagine ways that Freja could be making our lives significantly harder than they were now.

But then there was that voice.

There was a scene in Full Metal Jacket that talked about a Marine’s “thousand-yard stare.” I remember watching something about how that was a reference to PTSD, or more simply put, the look on a man’s face when he has seen some shit that the human mind was never meant to process. It is a look you can see on any old newsreels of any old war; that haunted, almost vacant look of shock and horror etched onto the faces of men barely old enough to be in college. I had no idea what this Simon Walker guy looked like, but his voice sounded like he would be wearing one of those looks as well. I couldn’t possibly know what he would tell me, not before listening to the rest of his story, but I knew, just from the sound of his voice, that I wasn’t going to like it.

The flickering light from my torch sent shadows dancing onto the walls of the room. It was barely ten feet square, yet this room, and the tape recorder it held, had immediately become the center of my world. And to the right of the recorder was a large dark stain on the wall.

“Fuck, please don’t let this be the one point that water is getting in,” I muttered to myself as I stepped closer and dabbed my finger against it. The wall was cold, but it was dry. I huffed out a sigh of relief, but I knew I would have to keep checking on it. Just because it was dry now, that didn’t mean it would stay dry, especially when it started to rain outside.

Fuck! If water is getting in here, it must be getting in other places too. And the rooms on either side of this one are sealed shut. Fuck fuck fuck!

“Dan! Come on!” Ray’s voice was thrown up the tunnel and bounced into the room. “Time’s a wasting!”

“Jesus, are you on the clock?” I yelled back, probably a little more harshly than I had meant to. “What’s the rush? I will be there in a minute! Or would you rather this place drop on your head while you’re sleeping? Do you need me to hold your hand out there? I’m working here!”

“Errr ... Take your time,” his answer came a few moments later, followed by the unmistakable sound of the girls giggling at him.

The way the others had acted toward this room was another thing in an increasingly long list of things on my mind. More accurately, how they hadn’t acted toward this room. Not a single eye in the group had even flickered in the room’s general direction. To the outside eyes, or at least as far as my outside eye could tell, not one of them had seen the room. I could understand if it was tucked around a corner or camouflaged in some way. But it was right there. They couldn’t miss it if they tried to. More than that, when I called them back, they continued to act as if the room wasn’t there and I was seeing things. Then, when I said something, they either ignored me or changed the subject. None of them were blind, none of them were stupid, none of them had any cause to play this kind of joke, and it would be counterintuitive if they did - considering our survival may depend on finding good shelter - and even if one of them had a warped sense of humor and thought it was a joke, the rest of them wouldn’t.

The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed.

I cast a glance back at the recorder. Perhaps Dr. Walker would have answers for me when I returned after the others were sleeping. With another look at the ominous dark stain on the wall, I headed out of the room, turned into the corridor, and promptly crashed into Hayley.

“Oh fuck, you scared me,” she panted after that first yelp, a smile returning to my lips. “Where were you?”

I looked at the doorway again; either of us could literally have reached out and touched it from where we were standing, yet not only had she not seen it, she had not been able to see me beyond it. The door and the room behind it were less than two feet away from us. There is no way on earth that she could have missed me walking out of it. I resisted the urge to drag her in there and show her; I was starting to understand that the mysteries of this island were a complicated subject that people came to grips with on their own terms and in their own time. Maybe I could broach it during our next collective moment of lucidity. Whenever the hell that was going to be.

“Sorry, baby, I was just checking something out. Nothing to worry about. Shall we get back?” I answered with a smile as I turned toward the light at the end of the tunnel. She reached for my hand and stopped me, gently spinning me back toward her. It was the first time I had properly seen her face since I bumped into her. In the flicking torchlight, the unmistakable look of worry and upset was washing over her delicate and wonderful features. “Hayls, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I’m...” she cast a look over her shoulder toward the bunker’s entrance. “I’m having one of those... moments,” she whispered. “You know, where everything is clear, and I can remember.” she fidgeted nervously on the spot. I frowned for a second. Now that I thought about it, I had been having one of those moments since I met Freja. I had felt the urge with Liz and Katie, but I was never out of control like I was before.

“Me too,” I said quietly. “Do you think, the others...?”

“No, they are all excited about the bunker. Look, while I am... here ... I wanted to talk to you,” she said. I opened my mouth to speak, but she pushed a finger to my lips. “Please, let me say this. I don’t know how long it will be until I get another chance.” A relieved smile pulled at her lips as she saw me nod to her. “Dan, I’m worried about never seeing home again. I miss my family, I miss my friends, shit, I even miss my job. But as hard as it has been being away from them, there has been one thing on this island that has kept me going: You. I can see you working so hard to help everyone; I see you worrying, I feel you tossing and turning in your sleep, I can see how hard you are trying. I just wanted to say thank you,” she pressed her finger a little harder against my lips to pre-empt my response. “But, there’s more than that. I think I am falling for you, Dan. It isn’t the sex. As mind-blowing as it is, I have always been pretty open-minded with that part of my life; it’s why the other girls don’t bother me. In fact, I’d love to join you all more often. But there is something between us, isn’t there? You feel it too. I see the way you look at me. Since the crash, I have started having feelings for you. At first, I put it down to the thing happening to us, the loss of control. I told myself that if I still felt it for you when my mind was clear, I would talk to you. So here I am.”

She looked up at me almost pleadingly. I arched an eyebrow at her and waited the few seconds it took for her to realize her finger was still on my lips. “I feel it, too,” I smiled at her. I could almost see the weight fall off her shoulders and her body relax. She melted into my arms.

“I love you, Dan. I know it’s quick, and I know I should wait, but with everything happening, God, I have fallen for you so fucking hard. I...”

I silenced her with a kiss.

“I’m not sure social convention applies here,” I smiled again as our lips finally parted. “Waiting, in the interests of not sounding too keen, doesn’t really work in this situation. I have fallen for you, too. When all of us are together, it is you I want to be close to. I don’t know why, but I am drawn to you. I was on the plane.”

“Ohthankgod!” she breathed. “I thought I was going nuts. It was crazy, right? I mean, I had a plane with almost a hundred passengers, and all I wanted to do was talk to you.” she laughed giddily.

“I have to ask, though. What about the others?”

“Oh, Hannah is not far behind me in how she feels,” She giggled, still leaning against me. “And I’m pretty sure Robyn is getting there. I’m not sure about Katie or Liz yet, but I know Amy is interested.”

“She is?”

“Oh God, Yes. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Erm...”

She giggled again. “Men!”

“My question was more about how you feel about them. How you feel about me being with them, with everything going on”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “I have always swung both ways. I knew I was bi-sexual when I was younger, so us all being together is more than fine with me. It’s hot as fuck. Besides, it’s not like we have much of a choice in the matter. So how about we make a deal? I will be happy for you to be with any and all of them whenever you like, as long as I can as well. But ... I want something that the others can’t have.”

“What’s that?”

“This.” She pressed her hand to my chest, right over my heart. “I know Hannah will fall for you, I’m pretty sure Robyn will as well, maybe even the others. But I want to be your first.”

“My bottom bitch, huh?” I chuckled. I was never going to get used to the way my breath caught in my throat every time I heard that musical sound of her laughter.

“Yeah, something like that. Make me your number one, and I promise I will never have a problem with any of this. Is ... Is that something that you can give me?”

I kissed her again. “It’s something you already have.”

She threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly. “I love you, Dan.”

“I love you, too, Hayley.”

We stayed like that for a few more moments before she pulled away. “Okay, we’d better get back before Ray sends out a search party.” she smiled, her hand slipping into mine and leading us toward the exit.

The rest of the day was a waltz of activity. Everyone seemed to be looking to me for some form of guidance even though our communal building project now looked to be unnecessary and indefinitely on hold. The first job - after torches were refreshed - was to start dragging the rotten carcasses of the bunker’s furniture out of that large central room and stack it up inside the gun emplacement. If nothing else, it would make good firewood in the event that the weather turned colder, so keeping it inside would ensure that it stayed dry. I didn’t even try to suggest that the men should do the heavy lifting. I think I would have been lynched.

The straw mattresses, however, were in remarkably good condition. The straw filling had rotted away to almost nothingness, but, protected from the elements, the cloth covering had survived the long decades mostly intact. More than that, the crates of military equipment had been a treasure trove of useful items. I’m not sure that any of the girls liked the idea of walking around in full Japanese service uniform, but when Liz reminded them that a storm could hit at any moment and pointed out how cold it could get, the rest agreed that they shouldn’t be burned at the altar of fashion.

Finally satisfied that the rest of the girls weren’t going to burn the things staving off hypothermia, Liz and Amy headed back to the river to retrieve the food that had been collected the previous day.

The heavy-duty boots were a great find too. Only Ray, the largest of our group, struggled to find a pair in his size, but the ones he claimed as his own were close enough to be able to use comfortably. It was a massive step up from the sandals and flip-flops we had pulled out of the cases. Katie and one of Ray’s girls shrieked with glee when they found a tin containing sewing needles and thread, saying something about how they would have those mattresses up to a usable condition as soon as possible with the caveat that they be the first to christen them, each giving Ray and I hungry looks at they did. On being told that they would have the brains fucked out of them on the mattresses before anyone else, they immediately dragged them outside and into the light, sat down, and got to work.