The Dark Atoll Read online

  What about the clothes? Lana didn’t feel that she needed any. And she certainly didn’t want any of mine. Somehow my offer of my shirt indicated to her that I wanted to “do sex” with her. Did they have prostitution here? And she had said that she wasn’t “mine”. Maybe it wasn’t prostitution. Maybe I had inadvertently proposed to marry her. Or buy her.

  That was kind of funny. She was pretty. I had been in so much of a hurry earlier that I hadn’t paid attention to how tall she was, or anything else I guess but now that I could see her, she was good looking. Actually, she was very good looking. I couldn’t know how old she was, probably somewhere between 20 and 40. She was fit and trim and her breasts were lovely. They were the first ones that I had really seen but they were large, like my grandmothers, and very round and firm looking. I wondered what she ate. It had to be fish, but she must be getting enough of it. Maybe turtles, too.

  His wasn’t going very quickly though. I didn’t know much. She seemed willing to share information, but she didn’t seem to know how to offer it. She certainly didn’t know how to anticipate the questions that I had.

  CHAPTER Three - Lana Who?

  I said, “Lana, you’re right, I am strange. And this is strange to me. I fell off a boat and washed up here. I don’t have a way to leave and I need to learn to live here. I think that things here are different than where I’m from. If you would help me understand whatever you can, it would help me a lot. Look, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, and if you can answer questions for me, that would be good.”

  Lana cocked her head as she leaned back on her elbows and said, “OK. Take off your clothes.”

  I looked surprised and she said, “They’re wet.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say about that. She was right, they were wet. It would be good to get out of them and let them dry. Well, she was naked, I guess that I could be, too.

  I asked, “Are we safe here?”

  Lana shrugged her shoulders and said, “Probably. No others followed us, and they don’t come here for no reason. It’s small and hiding and I come here to hide. I will stay here for dark. Maybe till days apart. Um, you talk strange. Like before. Let me try. I will stay here until…tomorrow. Or maybe for more times. No, for more days. Others talk…no, wait…the others have changed our talking. Oh, it doesn’t remember easy. Stupid.”

  I said, “Lana, I can understand you enough for us to talk to each other.”

  She frowned and said, “Teach me again. Like talking before.”

  I said, “You mean that you want me to help me remember how to talk like people did before the cataclysm?”

  She said, “What’s a cataclysm? The darkness? Yes. Help me remember to talk from before the darkness. Like you do. Like my parents did.”

  I said, “OK. Just try and I’ll um, remind you how others talk.”

  She said, “I know how others talk. I want to talk like you. I can teach you to talk like others if you talk to others. Or to them. Or to vegetables.”

  I said, “Wait. To vegetables? What do you mean? Are you teasing me? Or mocking me?”

  Lana looked surprised and said, “Oh. You don’t know our language. I am a vegetable. The others, the boy people are others. They, the girl people are they. The boy-girl people are breeders. The girls who are not girl people or breeders are vegetables.”

  I said, “Um, OK…let’s come back to that. You try to remember the way that we used to talk, and I’ll help correct you where I can.”

  She said, “Good. That will be fun.”

  As we continued, I helped correct her speech patterns and she remembered quickly. I quickly interpreted in my head until it didn’t sound strange to me at all.

  I said, “OK, so, we have time and we’re safe enough. Um, is it really OK if I do take my clothes off?”

  She shrugged again and said, “I think you should. Get dry.”

  I stood up and slowly pulled off my boots and socks. Then unzipped my jumpsuit, keeping my eye on Lana to gauge her reaction. I laid the suit aside and undid the vest and took it off. I wasn’t sure what to take off next. Somehow, I thought that maybe it would be easiest if I took off my underwear. My shirt was long enough to go below my waist, and if I bent forward, it might hide my groin a bit. When my briefs were off, I took a breath and grabbed the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head. I quit looking at Lana just before I got fully naked and I laid out my shirt to dry and finally turned and looked at her again.

  Lana met my eye and said, “You’re a boy. I didn’t know. Are you a boy people or a breeder?”

  I said, “Do you mean for sex?”

  She said, “Yes. Do you do sex with boys or girls?”

  I said, “Um, girls. I mean, um, what’s a vegetable? Who do they, no, I mean not they, um, vegetables…do they do sex with girls or boys?”

  Lana said, “Vegetables don’t do sex. When they do sex, they are girl people or breeders.”

  I said, “Um, I guess that you could say that I must be a boy vegetable then. But, if I was going to do sex, it would be with a girl.”

  She said, “So a breeder vegetable. Me too. You’re tall. Your thing is…pretty.”

  I blushed and said, “My thing? My penis? I’m sorry. It…um, it’s…I’m sorry!”

  She said, “Why are you sorry? I told you it was pretty. Do you want me to say that it isn’t?”

  I said, “Well, no. Um, I guess um, if we are going to be naked, that it’s really nice that you think it’s attractive. Lana, I’ve just never been with a woman and…no, I mean, I haven’t been naked and…”

  She said, “Florin, am I ugly?”

  I was still standing in front of her as I exclaimed, “No! Not at all. You’re very beautiful.”

  She said, “Really? I might not hate you.”

  I was taken aback and said, “Hate me?”

  She said, “Now that I know that you’re a boy and that you are tall and pretty...I mean handsome, maybe I like you. I don’t belong to anyone. Ask me questions. I won’t do sex with you.”

  I thought, “OK. Fair enough. At least she might not hate me. That’s something.”

  I said, “You can ask me questions too. We can take turns.”

  She said, “Like a game. From before.”

  I said, “Um, yeah. OK, me first. What are we going to do when it gets darker?”

  She said, “I might go to another place. You might follow me. I might stay here. You might stay too. Do you want to sit down?”

  I did want to sit down. I got on the ground and Lana smiled slightly as I sat cross legged facing her.

  She said, “Now me. Where did you come from? Are there more people? If I go when it gets dark, will you follow me?”

  I said, “Lana, My family lives on an island a few hundred miles to the west. Part of our family lives where the United States used to be. We haven’t heard from them for a long time and I was going to find them. My boat was built for a long journey in rough weather and I thought that it would take two years to get where I was going. I didn’t just fall off my boat, I has hit on the head and thrown overboard by someone who wanted my boat for themselves. I washed up on the beach. I heard you off in the trees, and I went to see who you were. Um, yes, there are more people. Not many. I don’t really know how many. Where I lived, there were a few hundred that we knew about.”

  She said, “You were a family? Boys and girls? And mothers and fathers?”

  I said, “Yeah. My father and grandfather and their wives.”

  She said, “I miss family. What year is it?”

  I said, “It’s 2088. The cataclysm was in 2070.”

  She said, “The darkness and storms. 2088. Um, 18 years. I’m 36 now. I thought it was something else.”

  I asked, “What did you think?”

  She said wistfully, “I don’t know. Maybe five years, maybe a hundred. I don’t know. Maybe it was a dream and it never happened. I was 18. What about when it gets dark? What will you do?”

  I said, “If you leave, if yo
u will let me, I’ll probably follow you. But only if you want me to. If you want to leave and go away, I won’t bother you.”

  She said, “If you were going to bother me you would have tried to do it already. I think that we’re together now. Maybe we will be a family. Maybe you will decide to stay here when it gets dark.”

  I said, “If I stay here, will you stay with me?”

  She cocked her head and looked at me and said, “I might.”

  I said, “How did you get here?”

  She said, “It’s my turn. You asked me already what I will do if you stay here. Now I can ask. Are you thirsty?”

  I said, “Oh, I am. I’m actually very thirsty. If we hadn’t been talking, I would have been looking for drinkable water. I have a thing that makes the water so that we can drink it.”

  She said, “Wait,” and she turned over onto her knees and reached under a bush near where we sat.

  I was suddenly simultaneously shocked, embarrassed, thrilled, and terrified. Lana was on her hands and knees, facing directly away from me, stretching to reach something hidden nearby and I got my first real look at a naked human female backside. It was incredible. I think my heart jumped into my throat and I felt like I was choking. She was beautiful. Like in a sexual way. Like I’d said, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about things like that since I had been so busy just learning to prepare for survival in this harsh climate but now I didn’t have anything to do and thought that maybe it was time to turn my attention to…well, to Lana’s very pretty um, body. I mean, as a new area of study.

  No, to hell with it. If I was honest, I really meant I wanted to study her because she had a fantastic ass and I was drawn to her suddenly by what seemed to be an irresistible force telling me that Lana was the one woman for me and that I had to do everything I could to get her to want to “do sex with me.” Damn the clouds and lack of sunlight! As she stretched in front of me, I could just see the folds of her vulva between her legs but why in the world wasn’t the sun out, giving us more light? I started to sweat from the mix of emotions I was feeling. OK, think. Um, oh no, all I could think about was illustrations of sexual positions where the girl was on her hands and knees. Right there in front of me! Damn, I had to calm myself.

  OK, the way to calm down was to accept my feelings and explore them. To…but I never finished that thought. Lana turned back and grinned at me and held out a hand full of something. She crawled close to me and sat down with our knees nearly touching and held out what she had brought from her hiding place. She took half of it and handed it to me.

  I let her put the thing in my hands and I found myself holding a small bunch of grapes.

  She popped a grape into her mouth and said, “See, grapes. They grow lots of places. I bring some and hide them at my houses.”

  I gave her a look and she said, “Well, not like real houses. On the big islands they have real houses,” and then she paused. She frowned and said slowly, “It’s hard to talk better again. On the bigger islands, there are two resort hotels and several stores and homes and other buildings. They were all abandoned when we got here.”

  I thought to myself, “Oh thank goodness! Something to talk about and think about. I can focus on that. Look at her breasts! No, think about houses!”

  She continued, “Go on, eat them. There will be rainwater but there’s no place that it collects here. Some rainwater collects in bowls in the reef but that’s far away. The grapes are good. Go on.”

  Lana seemed much more friendly and happy than she had been up to this point. I didn’t know exactly what had caused the change, but it was getting more comfortable for both of us. And now she was more talkative.

  She ate her grapes and said, “I was 18. We were in Hawaii for a competition. I was a senior in high-school. A cheerleader. Well but not really. Well, I was, because I was on the team and everything, but I wasn’t one of the girls; like I didn’t really fit in. I wanted to be a biologist. I had a scholarship for starting at the university the next year. My folks couldn’t really afford school, so the scholarship was my only choice. There was some talk about doing some modeling, but I didn’t really want to, and my parents were against it, so yeah, I didn’t go there. So anyway, we were in Hawaii. And when the thing started, we heard about Yellowstone and everything, and the news was really bad and there was no way to go home. But then, the other volcanoes started erupting and I was told to get on a plane with my coaches and teammates and there was an evacuation or something and we took off. I didn’t know what was really happening because they didn’t give us much information and I just went along with whatever. I didn’t even know where we were going or why. I still don’t. But after we were in the air for a while, it got really bad and it seemed like we were going to crash. Everyone was pretty panicked. Are you my friend?”

  I said, “I think I am. At least I want to be. I um, like you. And…I like you. Um, I’d really like you to be my friend.”

  She smiled and said, “We’re naked.”

  I said, “Um, yeah. Is that OK? You said that it was. I offered you my shirt, but you said it wouldn’t be right and stuff.”

  She said, “Yeah. I feel different now.”

  I jumped emotionally and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry! Do you want my shirt? Or my jumpsuit? I’ll get dressed!”

  She laughed and said, “No, I mean, I feel better now, not that I want to put clothes on. Geez. I haven’t worn clothes for, well, for a long time. The time after we first got here is pretty fuzzy. I can’t actually remember wearing clothes since we were on the airplane.”

  I said, “Then what do you feel different about?”

  She said, “Oh, I don’t know. Like it’s kind of weird to remember that we’re naked. Almost everybody is but it’s weird now to remember that it’s weird. I mean, I’m totally sitting here with a boy, naked. Hey, talking normal is fun. You think I’m cute, don’t you?”

  I said, “Well, yeah. You’re beautiful. Um, I never really saw a girl naked before.”

  She said, “Yeah, me too, in a weird way. I feel like I’ve been asleep. Like in a fog. Like I just woke up. But it isn’t a dream, is it? We’re really here, in the middle of nowhere and the world is gone and everything.”

  I said, “Yeah. It is.”

  She said, “What was your name again? You told me but I feel like I didn’t hear everything. Like a different part of my brain was listening before. Did I tell you my name? I’m Alison.”

  I said, “You told me that your name was Lana.”

  She smiled and said, “Oh, maybe I told you that they call me Lana. Hey, would you call me Allie? Like my friends did?”

  I said, “Sure. It’s nice to meet you, Allie. I’m Florin,” and I held out my hand to shake.

  She grinned and took my hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, Florin. Are we on a date?”

  I looked chagrined and said, “I was 14 when the cataclysm hit. I’ve never been on a date. I wouldn’t know.”

  Allie smiled and said, “I think we are. I didn’t date much in school, before but let’s be on a date. We met and I took you to the beach and we have a little picnic.”

  I said, “And we lost our swimsuits somehow and we feel OK about that?”

  She said, “Yeah, I guess so. We just won’t tell our parents. They might not approve. So, what do you mean, you never saw a naked girl before? Not even in a movie or anything? You never had a girlfriend?”

  I said, “Well, not really. I didn’t have a girlfriend. I was, like I said, 14. But my family had some warning and I really kind of started preparing for all this when I was maybe 12. And we didn’t watch movies. I saw pictures in anatomy books but those were just drawings. Um, you’re really pretty.”

  Allie smiled again and said, “You’re cute too. We’re the same age, right? Like mostly? I’m what, 36? And you’re…”

  I said, “32.”

  Allie said, “So, that’s cool, we’re about the same age, right? Florin, I’m afraid we aren’t going to make it back home to
night. The bus broke down and it isn’t our fault, right? So, if we have to stay here for the night, that’ll be OK, won’t it?” and she winked at me.

  Then she laughed and said, “Oh wow! When was the last time I teased or made a joke about anything? You know what?”

  I said, “What?”

  She got a wicked look in her eye and declared, “I’m going to kiss you!” and she leaned forward and planed her lips on mine with her arms around my neck.

  Sitting cross-legged the way that we were, she almost knocked me over. I steadied myself with an arm on the sand and we didn’t actually go down but for a second I thought that maybe Allie wanted us to fall with her on top of me! Naked. The kiss didn’t last long, and it was more playful and awkward than passionate, but it was nice. Really nice. I’d never been kissed by a real girl before. Relatives, sure but not a girl…on a date…without clothes on.

  When Allie sat back down, I said stupidly, “Am I your boyfriend?”

  Allie cocked her head in a way that I was starting to find really endearing and said, “Yeah. I think so. If you want to be. You want to be my boyfriend, right?”

  I said, “Well, yeah, I do!”

  She said, “So, you never had sex either, right? I mean, we might not but you know, if you’re my boyfriend, and all, we might um, want to sometime.”

  I said, “Allie, I never did it before. I know how, from books but you told me you weren’t interested in that. And there’s kind of this other thing but don’t get me wrong, I think you’re really wonderful but, in my family…”

  Allie said, “What? I don’t quite remember what I told you. Oh, that I didn’t want your shirt and that I wouldn’t ‘do sex’ with you. Yeah, that’s how they talk. It sounds pretty stupid now. Do sex. So, well, see, here it’s not like it was before. Could we not talk about that right now? Um, there’s a thing, huh? About sex? You like me but is it just as a friend? I get it. A lot of people only like the same sex as they are.”