The Dark Atoll Read online

  CHAPTER Five - Acclimatizing

  Oh crap! She was gone. She wasn’t there beside me when I woke up and I figured that she’d just gone off into the bushes for a minute. But she didn’t come back. I got up and started looking for her. I was afraid to call out for her, in case someone had come during the night, so I move quietly as I started to search the little piece of land where we had spent the day. I didn’t panic. I let my training kick in. I may not have had a lot of actual instincts developed yet but I had plenty of theory and academics. That would have to be enough.

  Looking around at our campsite, I could see the track where she had left me for a few minutes the day before. It went into the bushes and returned. A second set of tracks had been added, both going and returning. I could see where we had slept. And I could see where my companion had left me, heading east, toward the inner side of the atoll.

  I wasn’t an expert tracker, and subtle clues like tiny bent leaves would be lost on me but disturbances on the ground were easy enough; even tracks that a more casual observer would have missed. I followed the path she had taken until it came to a narrow beach, just a few feet wide. There she turned north. She had walked close to the water, and some of the footprints had been washed out already but there was enough to show me the way. At the northeast corner of the islet, her tracks entered the water and vanished.

  I stood looking out at the water for signs of her in the dim morning light, but I didn’t see anything immediately. What now? Why did she leave? Other than going in the same direction that I thought that she had, searching each of the hundred or so bits of land surrounding the atoll as I went, there’d be no way to find her.

  Suddenly I heard a soft whisper behind me saying, “Florin?”

  I turned quickly and saw that Allie was about ten feet away, watching me.

  She said, “What are you looking for?”

  I said, “I was looking for you.”

  I expected her to smile and say good morning or something but instead she jumped backward, crouched down in a cautious stance and looked quickly at the water for her escape route and demanded, “Why?”

  I said reassuringly, as gently as I could, “Allie, I was concerned about you. You weren’t there when I woke up and I didn’t know what had happened or why you left. You are my friend. My girlfriend, if you haven’t changed your mind. Um, I kind of love you. When we went to sleep last night, I was pretty sure that we both wanted us to be a family.”

  Allie looked surprised and slowly stood up. She didn’t relax completely but she did take a step toward me.

  She frowned and said, “Allie? That was my name from before. How do you know me?”

  I said, “Allie, you know me. You called me Florin just now. Do you remember yesterday? You were tied up over a pit and we escaped together and came here.”

  Allie softened and said, “Oh Florin! Yeah, I remember. Um, it um, when you said you were looking for me, I got afraid. So, you were worried about me? And wanted to find me...in case I was in trouble?”

  I said, “You were in trouble yesterday, when I met you. You were hanging over a pit and tied up by people who don’t like you. I like you. You said that I was your boyfriend.”

  She smiled finally and walked up to stand in front of me and said, “I also told you that I won’t do sex with you. So…not everything I said yesterday might be true.”

  I smiled and reached for her hand. She hesitated but let me touch her.

  She said, “I like sleeping beside you. Better than vegetables. I wasn’t cold. You put your arm around me. Can you really fight?”

  I said, “Allie, I really can fight.”

  She grinned and said, “I hope so. Do you want grapes? I tried to catch a fish, but I didn’t get one.”

  Allie led me back to our hidden camp and brought out more grapes and we ate together.

  I said, “Allie, I’ve been thinking about it, and if I have to fight, I want to get it over with.”

  She said, “We could hide for a few more days. Maybe longer.”

  I said, “We could but we would be worried every minute until it’s settled. I want to settle it. You said that we can’t really be together until I fight, so I’m ready to fight. How do I find the people that I have to challenge?”

  Allie said quietly, “I love you. I remember now. When I woke up, I left. I didn’t think that I knew you. I sort of remembered but I thought that maybe I didn’t hate you, but I left. I wasn’t going to come back. But when I was swimming, I started to feel bad. I felt sick. I felt like I had lost something. Then I remembered your name and I had to come back. When I saw you on the beach I was asking if it was you. When you talked, I remembered.”

  I said, “Allie, I didn’t forget you at all. I thought that I lost you too.”

  Allie lowered her eyes and said, “I hope I don’t forget tomorrow.”

  We sat for about a minute and then she said, “I forget every day. I forget on purpose. Every morning for…since the darkness…”

  I said, “For 18 years.”

  She said, “Every morning for 18 years, I wake up and forget yesterday. It’s how vegetables are. I learn but I teach myself to forget things. I don’t forget how to swim or find grapes, but I forget that I was tied up and that you have to fight and that I love you.”

  She didn’t look at me as she finished that sentence.

  I said, “Allie, I love you to. We didn’t want to say it, did we? And I don’t blame you for wanting to forget that. It hurts to think about what that means. To love someone. If you forget yesterday, you don’t have to get hurt.”

  She still didn’t look up as she said, “But if we stay together, soon I won’t be able to forget. I will learn about you and never forget you. And if you get killed or Mushed, I can’t forget. Like Christie.”

  I said, “Allie, I won’t let myself be killed or Mushed. I can’t. Allie, I know that it has only been one day, but you love me, and I love you. You told me that you don’t belong to me. That’s fine. You don’t have to. But in a way, I already belong to you. When you were gone, I looked for you. Um, because I belong to you, I can’t let myself be killed or Mushed. I won’t let anyone steal me from you or take me away.”

  Allie finally looked up and said, “Oh! I can do that! If they try to take me away from you, I won’t let them. If I belong to you, I don’t have to do what they say. If you belong to me, you don’t do what they say. If they say, give us Lana so that we can Mush her…”

  I broke in and said, “Either they run away, or I kill them. No one will try to take you away from me unless they want to be killed.”

  Allie lowered her head again and said, “Christie didn’t belong to me.”

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  She went on, “When they took her to Mush her, I ran away. I couldn’t fight them. If I said that she belonged to me like you are saying that we belong to each other, they would have Mushed me or killed me. So I ran away, and she didn’t belong to me.”

  I said, “Allie, is Christie still alive?”

  She started to cry as she said, “No. She isn’t dead. But she isn’t alive. Can we talk about something else? You could kiss me. Wait, no, I want to, but I still need you to fight first.”

  I said, “Then let’s go fight! I don’t want to wait.”

  Allie stopped crying and lifted her head and said, “You are strange!”

  I said, “Yeah. I am. I’m strange and you are beautiful. Where do I go to fight?”

  She said, “Any island with people, with boy-people, will fight you.”

  I said, “But I should go to the place with the most people. I want to do all of the fighting at one time.”

  She said, “If you go to the big village, on trade day, a lot of people will be there, and they will all see the fight. They will tell the others to leave you alone.”

  I said, “Allie, you use the words They and Others like they are different. I don’t think I understand.”

  She said, “They are the girl-people. Others
are the boy-people. Girl-people like girls. Boy-people like boys. Others stay in villages. The ones called ‘They’ swim to places and don’t have villages. If you fight, They will tell Others about it when they see Others. Then everyone will know. Breeders and Vegetables don’t care. Breeders and Vegetables leave you alone.”

  I said, “OK. When is trading day? Where do we have to go?”

  Allie said, “That way. About three days walk and swim to the other side of the water. But between here and there are people.”

  She indicated that the main village was to the north of us, almost directly across the atoll, and that we would have to travel northwest to start with. When we came to the north end of the atoll, we’d turn east and then south. It could be possible to go directly across the atoll, but we’d need a canoe. Allie’s plan was to walk where possible and to swim far out from the inhabited places to avoid confrontation. If we’d had a canoe, we could make it in a day or a day and a half.

  We decided to head on out. It was early in the morning, a few hours before noon, and Allie thought that we could make it quite a way before we stopped for the afternoon.

  The next few days consisted of walking along a beach, swimming across an inlet from the ocean, stopping on uninhabited islets for meals, and walking again.

  Every morning, Allie would go out and try to catch a fish. She did that by swimming and diving, without the help of any kind of mask or goggles and catching a fish by hand. She would simply swim close to a school of fish, hold her breath and stay still for as long as she could, and when I fish got close enough, she grabbed it. She clutched the fish with her fingernails, digging into its flesh to keep it from slipping away. She was used to eating the fish raw. I could eat it raw but would have preferred to cook it at least part of the time. Unfortunately, Allie felt that fire in this part of the reef would draw unwanted attention right now, so raw it was.

  We had the grapes for hydration and fruit, and we didn’t go hungry. Some days Allie didn’t get a fish, but she was successful about two thirds of the time. She went out early in the morning, and again just before it got too dark to see. One fish was plenty to feed both of us.

  The third day out, before we reached the end of the bit of land we were traversing, Allie had us swim about 100 yards away from the shore and then head in the direction we wanted to go again. Apparently, the nearby island was a common camp of ‘They’, a tribe of the nomadic women that had formed here in the aftermath of the plane crash.

  After that, the routine was the same, but we spent an increasing amount of time avoiding the beaches and only landing on the smallest of them. Here our supply of grapes was gone, and it was just fish. I showed Allie how to use the filtration straw that was part of my emergency supplies and we got enough to drink, even though it took a long time.

  It really was hard to keep track of how many days it had been. The time melted from one hour to the next; a dim morning, a day that never saw anything but twilight, and a night that was blacker than that. There was essentially no time here. It was a ‘Land That Had Forgotten Time’.

  Allie had estimated that it would take three days, but I soon figured out that she was extraordinarily bad at estimating or tracking time as well. On what I would have guessed was the sixth day of our journey, a storm came up.

  We saw it coming and made it to a little strip of land and hunkered down. It was the most sheltered in the thickest parts of the small trees, and we huddled together and waited. The winds weren’t bad, but the rain was relentless. It was easy to catch enough runoff to drink but we didn’t get any meals.

  After the storm had been going on for several hours and didn’t seem to be abating at all, I stretched my jumpsuit between some bushes and secured it enough that we could lie down and at least keep the water off of our faces. We were wet but as we held each other to keep warm, I think that both of us enjoyed the extended time just being so close and being comforted by each other this way.

  That night, we fell asleep with a torrential rain, and we woke up the next morning with an even heavier downpour.

  Every morning, we had repeated the same thing that we had that second day when I woke up and Allie was gone. Since then, she didn’t actually disappear completely, but I would find her crouching a few yards away staring at me. It had become part of our morning ritual. This morning was no different, except that we were wet.

  I lifted my head and looked for her when I woke up, and there she was, 15 feet away, squatting and watching me.

  I said softly but because of the rain, louder than normal, “Allie, it’s me, Florin. We’re friends. You like me and I never hurt you.”

  She said blankly, “Allie? Florin? My boyfriend?”

  I said, “Yeah, Sweetie. Your boyfriend. We’re family. I love you. I never hurt you.”

  Allie relaxed and crawled out of the rain back under out tiny shelter and I hugged her.

  I kept my arms around her until she began to nuzzle my neck and then I smiled and said, “I’m glad to see you.”

  She laughed and said, “I’m glad you remember me. How do you do that? You always know me. I should go fishing.”

  I said, “Allie, it’s pouring! There’s a storm.”

  She said brightly, “Not under the water. I’ll come back. I promise,” and she ran off toward the beach.

  I followed and watched as she ran into the surf and dove under. Sitting in the pouring rain, I waited. Allie would surface now and then for a few seconds at a time and then disappear again. She wasn’t gone very long before I saw her swimming through the downpour toward the beach again with a fish held in her teeth.

  There was no reason that we couldn’t keep traveling, even in this weather. It was wet but there was nowhere to stay dry. The rain was cool but not so cold that we suffered from it. During the day we walked and swam. It was slower in the storm, but we kept going. Each afternoon, we found a place in the bushes and trees to eat some fish and rest for the night.

  It was loud and we didn’t talk much. The constant beating of the rain drowned out all other sounds, and Allie and I didn’t try to compete with it. We would have had to shout at each other, and that would make it hard to communicate any feelings accurately. We did hold hands often when we walked, and we slept in each other’s arms at night. Some of my favorite times were when we would use my bundle of clothes and my safety-vest as a flotation device and our naked bodies slipped and slid, touching here and there as we kicked our legs, relaxing as we swam. But every morning we went through the routine of Allie having to take a few minutes to remember who I was and why we were together and that nothing horrific had happened the day before.

  On what might have been the tenth day of our three-day journey, things changed a bit.

  When I woke up that morning, the noise of the rain was lessening, and the storm seemed to be dying down somewhat. Allie wasn’t awake yet and I stayed still, just holding her gently as she lay on my shoulder. Normally she woke up before I did. When she did finally stir in my arms, she surprised me by hugging herself to me and making a contented purring noise. She raised up on her elbow and looked at me and smiled.

  She said, “Florin, you’re still here. It’s raining. Oh, I think it might stop. You feel nice. I like you,” and she ran her hand over my bare chest idly.

  I said, “Good morning, Allie. Do you remember me?”

  She said, “I can’t ever forget you. You’re my hunky boyfriend. I kind of like love you, silly.”

  I said, “But you were surprised that I was still here.”

  She looked puzzled and said, “I wonder why. Oh, because it’s morning. I thought that you would go home last night. Where are we?” and she raised her head to look around.

  She frowned and stood up and turned in a circle to get her bearings.

  She said, “Oh. I forgot. I thought we were at my house. We’re at the place. It doesn’t have a name.”

  I said, “It’s called Rangiroa.”

  She said, “OK. That’s right.”

&nbs
p; She looked down at me where I was laying on my back and stepped across my body and sat down on top of me, straddling my hips. I didn’t know quite what to do. The way that she was sitting, her legs were spread, and her vulva was pressed down on my penis. She sat there, her breasts above me, looking into my face with her hands resting on my chest. She was so beautiful.

  Allie was about five-foot-seven-inches tall. I was about five-eleven and three-quarters. We were both in our thirties, so pretty young and hadn’t even hit our physical prime yet. Allie was like my grandmothers. They said that Pops’ wives were some of the most beautiful women who ever lived. Allie was stunning. It seemed like the other women that I had met, the ones outside my own family, and even my moms, weren’t as large-breasted as Allie and some of my grandmothers. Neither of us had been paying that much attention to how we looked up until now, because we were busy staying alive but now, with her sitting on top of me, looking at me the way that she was, I really wanted to reach up and feel those beautiful coconut-sized fruit. We could make love like this. She could just slide herself onto my penis and that would be that. I had the start of an erection forming but I wasn’t at all embarrassed about it. Allie had chosen to sit on top of me, so why would I be embarrassed if she excited me?

  Allie said, “So, tell me again. You’re my boyfriend.”

  I said, “Yep, I’m your boyfriend.”

  She said, “And you want to be a family with me.”

  I said, “Yeah, We’re a family. You and me.”

  She said, “And you get married where you come from.”

  I said, “We do.”

  She said, “So, you’re going to marry me and be my husband and like a family from the old days.”

  I said, “I’d like to. That’s what you told me that you wanted.”

  She said, “But you only have sex if we are permanent and never leave each other.”