Chapter Text
Sweat dripped down my scalp and neck as I hoisted another log, my sixth so far this hour for the new camp.
After spending last winter almost freezing to death in a tiny tarp-walled lean-to that cannibals were constantly raiding, we’d learned how to better survive out here. Well, I’d learned-- Kelvin and Virginia seemed to have things figured out from the beginning.
I’d met Robert, mission codename “Kelvin”, exactly once before the day we’d gotten in that wretched helicopter together. In my honest opinion he’d seemed like kind of an asshole. To be fair, I probably came off the same way-- that sort of thing had been encouraged in our previous life.
Life on the island was different. The man whom I’d comforted while writhing around on the forest floor was no longer Robert. He was my best friend Kelvin now, a sweet innocent man with a bright easy smile and eyes that crinkled at the edges when he was happy.
And Virginia… well. I was fucking terrified of her at first. (Yeah, the six limbs was a huge part of that, sue me.) She never did anything violent to me or Kelvin, but it was difficult to accept her companionship right away.
I’d immediately recognized her as the woman from the photo of the missing billionaire’s daughter. Yet now Virginia’s hair was a tangled mess, her chin often speckled with the blood of some small woodland creature. The way she liked to silently sneak up on me still gave me panic attacks. But we’d reached an uneasy peace after living around each other. And I had to admit, I might have starved to death last winter without the offerings of small game she’d miraculously found for me when all my traps kept coming up empty. So, we were friends now too whether I liked it or not.
I’d made plans to build a third bedroom on this place, just so she could have her own space apart from me and Kelvin. That meant even more logs. I was already behind schedule-- the wind was picking up in the afternoons and the nights were getting chilly, which meant soon the leaves would start turning orange to indicate autumn’s arrival.
Right now though it was still green and sunny and hot as hell, with tiny flies and gnats going up my nostrils as I breathed deep then coughed from the exertion of hoisting the heavy log.
“Fuck,” I spat out, making the squirrels that had been watching me from nearby trees scatter.
As I tugged the log down the hill to our base I avoided looking at the cannibal camp on the rocky outcropping to my right. We’d slaughtered them all a few days ago, covering over the stinking piles of bodies with tarps and leaves.
Not to respect them with a grave, but to smother the smell and to aid in decomposition-- like a landfill, keeping trash contained until it could break down and become earth again.
It had been a nasty surprise indeed to find these monsters here, something I thought only existed in ancient legend-- it had been hard enough just staying alive on our own after the crash. The first appearances of them had scared me so badly that I’d let the scouts run off, a decision I’ve come to regret now.
But I thought they were peaceful wild men scoping out new interlopers to their island, not cannibals!
They began to show up in more intimidatingly scary skeletal makeup and increased numbers. After attempts to talk with them didn’t work I scared them off with yelling or burning torches waved about. Scouting their paths in the area, I discovered hideous signs of cannibalism and torture that made me vomit. Bodies on pikes, entrails strewn all over. They even ate their own, the disgusting brutes. Yet still, I endeavored for neutrality, thinking maybe they’d leave us alone if we kept to ourselves.
Then one day in the brutal cold of winter they’d grown bold and hungry enough to attack Virginia.
After killing the man who bit her and tending to her wound when the rest of the group ran off, I swore to leave no cannibal alive on this godforsaken island. Traveling in every direction once the spring weather began, I showed no mercy to these heathens as I purged them whenever our paths crossed. At our helicopter crash camp I left traps all around to keep them away from our lean-to and stashed supplies.
My worst fears had been confirmed one by one: on my travels I’d found the bodies of my dead teammates, their GPS trackers still functioning as if to mock my slowness in locating them. I’d hoped to find them alive but... no such luck. We also found camps of tourists, and other merc teams, whose rotting ransacked corpses were a result of the filthy cannibals nearby.
We’d discovered one of their monstrous main base camps on a scouting day last week. I’d made a plan of attack, giving Virginia the shotgun and pistol so she could dual wield (three arms was super helpful for that). Kelvin used my fishing spear, which he was much better at using than me in all aspects, and I had my hatchet. Considering Kelvin and I were special forces the cannibal freaks never stood a chance.
Now we were taking over this area, setting up in a flat grassy field just below the rocky jutting of their old camp. That way, we couldn’t see it except when walking up over the ridge to look at the ocean behind us. The breeze blew up over our camp towards theirs, usually not the other way around, so we’d almost never have to smell the bodies or the lingering stains of blood and offal tainting that ground.
I’d faced our new cabin towards the snowy mountain peaks in the center of the island. The view was truly spectacular. People elsewhere on this strange little globe called Earth paid hundreds of millions for views like this, and here I had it without paying a dime of my own money. I’d certainly paid my “sweat equity” though, gritting my teeth while trying not to roll my ankle on the rocky path back down the hillside.
This house was going to be bigger and better than last year’s lean-to, and all the effort was going to be worth it when I didn’t have to keep babysitting my pathetic fires all day because the breeze kept blowing them out. We’d finally be able to have a fire inside this year, with a smoke hole in the ceiling for ventilation.
Of course, this also meant Kelvin was getting his own room, something that bothered me in a way I couldn’t rationally explain even to myself.
It was a good thing by every metric. Kelvin and I had been forced to share one tiny stick bed last year, a necessity for surviving the terrible winter temperatures (which Virginia was seemingly immune from). That sleeping arrangement hadn’t been very comfortable in a cramped lean-to, and even sharing body heat hadn’t made up for a lack of insulation from the elements. This year we’d be much cozier and warm with a whole cabin to block out the freezing wind, as well as blankets made from foraged cloth and clothes I’d washed in the ocean.
Yet for some reason, the thought of spending the cold nights alone instead of curled up next to him weighed me down like a stone in the pit of my stomach. I’d even thought about bringing it up to Kelvin sometime… but he’d been so excited about getting his own room at last that I didn’t have the heart to do it.
In many ways, though they were both grown adults I did feel like the guardian caretaker for Virginia and Kelvin, even as it seemed like they didn’t need my help to survive out here-- and I did in fact need theirs. We made up an odd little family, but Kelvin’s injuries and Virginia’s.. condition meant that neither one of them could communicate with me the way I preferred. That made it isolating sometimes, especially watching the two of them get along together like peas in a pod, neither one speaking. I wished I could communicate better without relying on words.
Arriving back at camp-- little more than a tarp tent with a fire circle and a couple of stick chairs at this point-- I fitted the log into the frame that would become our big cabin over the next few days. Then I heard heavy footsteps crunching through the underbrush and saw Kelvin not too far off bringing a log of his own. I waved as he approached, giving him a thumbs up. He grunted as he followed suit in placing his log onto the frame I’d outlined with sticks and small rocks. We walked back out into the woods, repeating our treks back and forth all morning until panting and exhausted. Just one more tree, I kept thinking, but when Kelvin chopped another down and I went to hoist my twentieth log for the day my back almost gave out, making me wince.
“Okay, let’s take a break,” I said when Kelvin looked at me, beckoning with my hands Virginia-style.
He smiled, nodding. We didn’t always have to use a notepad now, which was refreshing for us both.
Back at camp we drank deeply from the creek, then washed the flies out of our noses and ears. We grabbed some dried fish for lunch from our stash and crunched them in silence as we sat in our stick chairs by the fire pit.
I used to hate silence, back in my old life. I’d always have the TV on, or my Bluetooth speaker playing music, or playing an audiobook from my phone. Hell, I’d been listening to one just minutes before we’d begun our descent onto the island. Now it was blown to smithereens along with my laptop.
Being here with Kelvin and Virginia had not only made me appreciate how musical nature sounds could be, but also that silence-- or its relative version in a lively forest ecosystem-- wasn’t something to be avoided. Sitting in silence was a bonding experience more powerful than people gave it credit for.
Kelvin and I shared a look between bites. Good fish. We didn’t have to say it aloud, and I realized maybe I was getting better at this nonverbal communication stuff after all.
--
When the helicopter crashed, everything changed in an instant.
At first it was horrifying. I didn’t even know Fisheye’s real name, or the pilot's, because the first time we’d met was on the day of the helicopter flight and we weren’t exchanging pleasantries.
Now his corpse was on the ground in front of me, the pilot's stuck in the wreckage above, and I couldn’t catch my breath. The horror combined with the intense fall I’d had from that hideously tall tree was too much.
Then the sound of grass rustling and distressed moaning reached my ears, and I looked up to see Kelvin contorting himself in the grass nearby. When I forced my body to move despite my pain and went to him, he looked almost as if he was having a nightmare. Shock, most likely. I grabbed his shoulders in a gentle grip to calm him down.
“Kelvin. Kelvin! You’re okay,” I said, even though my stomach turned to see blood coming out both his ears in a slow small trickle.
“Kelvin, it’s okay, just breathe. Breathe with me.”
I inhaled deeply then exhaled loud with my mouth open, trying to maintain eye contact with him, but his pupils never reached mine and were wandering back and forth in an unsettling manner.
I snapped in front of his face: he made zero reaction. I did it twice more and he finally blinked, and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. At last he seemed to become a bit more cognizant, his eyes following my finger-- slower than he should be responding, though.
“Okay, bud. Okay. It’s gonna be okay,” I muttered over and over, almost more to myself than Kelvin.
I’d broken out in a cold sweat from the fear that I was alone out here, but after a few minutes Kelvin did seem markedly improved. He tried to follow my conversation, but didn’t seem to be able to speak-- I didn’t push him on it, digging around in my pack until I found a notepad we could write to each other on. Unfortunately his handwriting was jagged and uneven, like a child’s, making it difficult to read. He seemed not to remember many words at the moment either.
His first note to me was Fisheye dead?
I felt a hot wave of nausea flow through me as I nodded. The sad look on Kelvin’s face broke my spirit.
Yes, I wrote back to him. After we’ve rested a bit, we’ll bury him.
Kelvin nodded, and we sat in the sun a while longer before fulfilling our goal. Having no idea of the true dangers that lurked on this island, we didn’t think to prepare any shelter besides a tarp pup tent. And for the moment, we were lucky none of the cannibals were scouting in this area-- yet.
When I first tried to lift Fisheye, though, despite my special forces training I found the nausea getting the better of me. Bile rose in my throat and I had to drop my teammate’s body and go vomit in a bush, barfing up the meager MRE I’d just eaten not twenty minutes ago alongside some pain medicine. Oh well.
Finally with Kelvin’s assistance I relocated our fallen teammate to a shady area of the woods, laying him on his back with his arms at his sides as if he was having a snooze. We covered him with branches, leaves, fern fronds, and stones, until no part of him was visible. Then I fashioned a stick cross with some duct tape I’d found in a supply bin and marked the grave. It was far enough away from our tent that if the “burying” didn’t stop the smell, we hopefully wouldn’t have to deal with it. The pilot's body was far above us, and we'd made sure to not place our tent too close to that tree in case anything else fell.
I felt woozy even considering leaving our camp this late in the day, convinced that this island was dangerous. Any unfamiliar terrain could kill us. It was getting dark, and though I had a sat phone and a lighter I didn’t trust my footing at night-- there were sudden cliffs everywhere. So I made sure Kelvin ate and took some medicine, then I drank some water from the stream nearby and passed out in the tent.
In the morning while stretching my stiff aching muscles I discovered my companion had slept outside by the fire. Kelvin didn’t seem any worse for the wear, smiling up at me with a warmer expression than he’d ever given me as Robert. He didn’t seem any better, though, still unable to talk-- and needing me to write to him because he apparently couldn’t hear either. This was worrisome.
He did at least have a GPS tracker so that I couldn’t lose him if he wandered off. I wasn’t sure if he could successfully use his own sat phone to track me, though, since he hadn’t even opened his emergency pack yet. He thought my name was my codename, scrawling Hawk in his messages to me. I didn’t have the heart to correct him, not when I’d realized he didn’t recall having any other name besides Kelvin.
My companion didn’t seem to have a sense of urgency to leave camp any more than I did, and I found that his malaise was resonating with me. We sat next to the stream all morning watching the fish swim around picking algae off the large rocks.
What was the point of the mission, when both the copters had crashed due to some unknown assassin who might be on his way back to us at this very moment? I’d been in bad scrapes before due to my line of work, but this was by far the worst. We had no way to radio the other team due to our equipment being damaged beyond repair, and the trackers were far enough away on my sat phone map to make me nervous about traveling towards them. What if that was exactly what the mysterious assassin was hoping for? Would it be walking into a trap?
I’d never been in a situation like this before. Every other time things got tense, we were able to talk it out in hushed tones or quick walkie-talkie sessions between firefights to hype each other up and stay calm. We’d lost men in the field, but never like this. Never this quick.
I didn’t even know their names. Neither did Kelvin. That somehow felt like the biggest injustice of it all. They had died as strangers in a strange land, with no one to mourn them except two other strangers.
So I decided in that moment that no matter what, I was going to stick by Kelvin. For better or worse.
–
After a full day of logging and building, we’d been so exhausted that we slept in later than usual the next morning. I awoke with sun in my eyes feeling an insistent need to piss, realizing that Kelvin was curled into me.
Again, it wasn’t ideal for cuddling any more than our old stick bed-- there simply wasn’t enough room for two grown men to stretch out in a tiny tarp tent. But I’d come to rely on Kelvin’s closeness over the past year and a half, mostly for my own sanity. Waking up alone on this infested island was my recurring nightmare; every time I woke up with my heart pounding in panic Kelvin’s presence was rock-solid and reassuring.
I crossed my legs to lessen the throbbing demand from my bladder. That way I could lay there and enjoy Kelvin’s warmth a few minutes more. I didn’t have to think about how we’d be sleeping in separate rooms, which also meant separate beds, in just a few days. My body instinctively relaxed as I breathed slow and deep, my closed eyelids red from the sun streaming into the tent.
Too soon however, Kelvin stirred beside me and did not linger in the tent like I wished he would. He also had to piss, apparently. Though my body was screaming for a similar relief, when I noticed he was going to our latrine area I went the opposite direction to give him privacy, on the pretense of checking our drying rack for breakfast.
Today went just as yesterday did: quick breakfast, logging and building, breaking for lunch, then more logging and building until it got too dark to see our way through the tall trees and dense underbrush.
At twilight, I asked Kelvin to rebuild the campfire while I made a daubing mixture of wet mud, leaves, tiny stones, and twigs to apply to the cracks between the logs: this would insulate the gaps from wind and weather. We ate a quiet dinner by the crackling fire, then went to sleep in the pup tent again since our house was still unfinished.
The next day I woke up feeling funky, deciding I needed a full-body rinse. There was a waterfall not too far downstream from our camp. I shed my clothes on the shore and waded up to it in the shallows.
Getting close enough that I could feel the mist on my face, I touched the water with my fingers before stepping in. The pressure from above was way more intense than I expected, almost knocking me off my feet, but after days of sweaty labor it felt amazing to be washed clean. At least, as clean as one could get without any soap. We had hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes, but those were precious and saved for disinfecting injuries. I turned my head from side to side, feeling my lengthening hair get pulled in different directions from the strong water pressure.
Breathing deep as I stepped away from the spray, I felt refreshed. Standing in the shallows, I rubbed at my face and arms to slough off some dead skin. Then a sudden movement in the corner of my vision startled me. It seemed like a flash of a deer galloping by... but I knew better.
“Ginny?”
There was a giggle somewhere above me-- I looked up to see Virginia peeping down from a rocky ledge. When we made eye contact she scrunched up her face in amusement and held a hand over her mouth.
“Ginny, what have I told you about sneaking up on me? It’s rude.”
Virginia skittered away in response. I sighed while trying to ignore my sudden adrenaline surge, remembering the first time I’d met her.
--
I’d been hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, trying to finish our lean-to one frosty autumn morning. She had snuck up on me while I was finding another dead tree to chop down, scaring me so badly I almost attacked her on instinct. Yet something about her energy was so non-threatening that I’d lowered my hatchet and stood still, watching her watching me. Finally it dawned on me that this was Virginia Puffton, daughter of the missing PuffCorp CEO.
Then I realized she had six limbs instead of four.
By the time I’d recovered from a sudden bout of dizziness she was taking off on three legs with the speed of a gazelle, sprinting deeper into the woods. A minute later I wondered if she had been real, or a hallucination of my frazzled mind. I decided not to tell Kelvin about her.
But she’d showed up at our camp later that night, her skimpy white leotard that served as her only clothing giving her an eerie glow in the faint moonlight.
Kelvin had pointed at her, making the closest sounds he could get to speech: a sort of babbling “Muh-- mah-- muh--” noises that were almost like a baby testing out its first words.
“Yeah, I see her too Kelvin,” I whispered, forgetting for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to understand me this way. “I think she’s friendly.”
She hadn’t stayed long. As soon as I added fresh split logs to the fire, she’d startled from the whooshing noise as the flames roared up and ran away. I wrote down on the notepad the story of my encounter with her that afternoon, showing it to Kelvin so he could understand she wasn’t a threat.
Virginia began to appear several times a day after that. One afternoon she never left. She’d joined us, whether we approved or not, and would bring gifts. A handful of picked berries one day, some aloe vera stalks or mushrooms the next. I always thanked her, and she seemed to almost understand me when I did.
As fall turned to winter and we relied on each other more to survive the island wilderness, I realized that I’d started a new family here and would likely never return to my actual family back in the United States. What kept me awake some nights, though, was the haunting realization that my new family already meant more to me than my old family ever had.
My wife Diane and my two small children, Dax and Jane, were estranged from me. Had been for years-- the kids’ whole lives, really. My colleagues had reassured me it “came with the territory”, but I wasn’t so sure that was the only reason. Whenever I was home on leave it seemed like my family didn’t know how to act around me, or how to talk to me. My baby boy cried when I picked him up, and my toddler daughter hid behind her mother when I laughed or spoke too loud. I was a stranger in the house where my name was on the deed, my credit card on the mortgage payments. Diane didn’t even pretend to be sad at my leaving any more either: she smiled when she spoke of things “getting back to normal”. I had wondered on more than one occasion if she was cheating on me, but I never saw any signs. To be honest, after my drunken makeout session with a sailor in the Maldives, I deserved it.
But even now, desperate to be anywhere but this island, I could scarcely manage a pang of regret for the family I’d lost. They would get a very nice payout from my pension package. Since we hadn’t been able to access working comm equipment to radio HQ, I was certain that Kelvin and I had been declared dead alongside Fisheye and all the others. I couldn’t remember the specifics on my company’s life insurance policy, but it was worth at least two hundred grand. That would give Diane some time to get her own job, or perhaps to find a new spouse that would pay for her and the kids.
It was morose and self-pitying to go down this train of thought, I knew. But I couldn’t help myself some nights, when my back was too stiff to get comfortable and I listened to Kelvin’s faint snoring beside me.
I felt like I’d been given a new chance at life on this island. Of course, I didn’t enjoy the circumstances, but-- the longer that Virginia and Kelvin and I survived, the more I found myself wanting to survive. Not only that, but also to thrive. We deserved that, didn’t we?
Especially once the cannibals started showing up with more hostile engagements, I found my will to live getting stronger by the day. If these disgusting heathens could thrive here, then dammit, so would we. That mysterious assassin had yet to make a second appearance. Which meant that he probably assumed the cannibals would finish us, making the smart decision to get the hell off this island and never come back. Proving him wrong felt like more of an accomplishment than my entire career.
–
Wrenching myself from my reverie, I had one final quick dip under the waterfall before climbing out to dry on the grassy shore. I stood naked and shivering as the breeze hit my goosebumped skin, frowning down at my assortment of cuts and bruises that I’d accumulated from our laboring travels.
Here in the stillness I listened for any signs of unnatural life. The cannibals had the foulest, most sickening scream that they liked to use before attacking, to scare the wits out of their enemies. It worked pretty damn well.
I had no idea whether or not this cleared-out camp would remain safe. To my knowledge so far there were at least three separate groups of these cannibals across the island who did not seem to coexist peacefully with one another. However, they also seemed to give each other a wide berth, which is why I’d decided to shack up here next to what had seemed like a main camp. Maybe we’d be able to stay here undetected until next spring, when they traveled further on scouting raids.
In any case we had to try, because this year I was not going to experience the hideous muscle cramping and jaw pain that came from trembling in cold with chattering teeth all night long.
Shaking my head to get water droplets out of my hair, I spread out on the grass in the warm sunshine, grateful the ground wasn’t full of icy snow just yet.
“Hawk!”
I startled, reaching for my tactical jacket to cover myself just in time before Kelvin burst through the treeline and headed towards me on the shore with a big grin on his face.
He couldn’t really say the “k” sound at the end of my name so it came out as more of a “Haw!”, but I knew what he meant.
“Hi, Kelvin,” I called out to him, waving as I made sure my face was towards him so he could read my lips.
He pressed a foraged notepad into my hands. You want more fish today?
His handwriting had improved drastically since the crash, and now looked more or less how it probably did before the accident. Which was fortunate, because now he could fit more words on the tiny notepads at a time to conserve the paper.
Nodding, I scrawled back a quick reply: Yes, thank you. I’ll cook them.
He nodded and left to go where the water was calmer upstream. I was mostly dry enough by this point anyway and decided to just get dressed, getting the fire back at camp going at a nice burn for the fresh fish.
We ate a big breakfast of a whole fish each, sucking every morsel of fat and flesh from between the tiny bones. After washing up in the river and taking a big drink, I asked Kelvin to cut the logs we’d stored into planks while I went to go find another dead tree to fell. The house frame was complete except for the roof now, but it took longer to properly attach the planks up high and it took two of us to do it, so the work was slow going. At lunch time, I noticed we still had more than half to go, and probably wouldn’t finish today. But the snow hadn’t come yet and I wasn’t worried. So long as the damned cannibals stayed away we could handle the weather-- we had last year, after all.
Before I could brush myself off and get us back to work, though, Kelvin tugged on my sleeve and presented me with a note that he’d obviously written a while ago. It was folded and re-folded so that the creases were almost ripping the paper apart, as if he’d debated for some time about whether or not he should give this to me.
What’s wrong with me, Hawk? is all that it said, and my heart broke for my companion.
At first I’d tried to explain things to him… but he’d been too out of it from his injuries to understand. I’d asked if he remembered his actual name. When I mentioned Robert he’d written back Who is that?
I wasn’t a doctor. I didn’t know how to explain brain damage, or injury-induced deafness and muteness. I was in way over my head here. All I could do was be honest about how I felt in this situation, and I took out the notepad to reply.
Nothing is “wrong” with you. You survived a terrible accident, which gave you hearing and memory loss. But that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you, Kelvin. I think you’re doing just fine under the circumstances.
Why can’t I remember that my name used to be Robert? he wrote back right away, fishing out another crumpled note from his pocket where I’d written last year, Do you remember being called Robert ? with his reply underneath of Who is that?
I sighed, giving him back the old note and using the back of the new one to write my reply.
I don’t know. I’m sorry, Kelvin, but I’m not a doctor. You hit your head pretty bad and now your brain is all shaken up or something.
I paused while writing, remembering that I’d tried to reassure him at first by saying his memories would probably come back “soon”. Well, “soon” had turned into over a year, so… the chance of that happening didn’t seem good at this point.
I’m sorry that I can’t help you remember your life before this. I didn’t know you for very long as Robert, I finished up, handing over the notepad and watching Kelvin’s face as he read it.
He frowned, then sighed as if resigned. You remember your life before this? he wrote back to me.
Yes, I do. Hawk is my codename, like yours is Kelvin. My actual name is David Matthews-- no relation, I tacked on at the end, because growing up everyone always made a stupid Dave Matthews Band joke whenever I got introduced to new people.
We kept passing the notepad back and forth, wasting daylight and paper, but I suddenly didn’t care. This was the most we’d talked in weeks.
You want me to call you David?
If you want to call me David that’s fine, but I don’t mind being Hawk while we’re here, if that makes sense. Feels like I’ve started over, in a way. With life.
That makes sense. Guess I’ve started over too.
Does it bother you, that you can’t remember your life as Robert? Does it make you upset? Confused?
Confused. Feels like I’m supposed to be upset but… I like it here. With you. Not so bad. Probably my life as Robert was worse.
That floored me. With everything we’d gone through, almost starving and freezing to death and having to fend off bloodthirsty cannibals, it was truly incredible that Kelvin had a similar attitude towards the island that I did.
My life as David definitely was worse. I like it here with you too, Kelvin.
He gave me a shy smile at that last note, then tucked the notepad away-- the conversation was over now. As much as I felt like we’d just gotten started, I also knew this was probably a lot for Kelvin to process.
I was just grateful we’d gotten the chance to really talk. That we were on the same page about living here. Motivated to work on the house some more, I started cutting logs into planks.
We still didn’t finish the roof that day. When Kelvin pressed close to me in the cold tent I was glad for it.