Excerpt No. 2 : Clint
Today, unlike yesterday, there were no order, so I could do pretty much whatever I wanted. Since I already had an excess of food, there was no point in gathering any fruit or vegetables that would just end up rotting, I had topped off my water bottles yesterday after dealing with Travek.
I decided to spend the day with the Beachers. They were the strong people on the Island; they understood the concept that in extreme situations like this, you had to do whatever it took to survive. It was one thing to survive here, but it was another to thrive. And the Beachers thrived.
Most looked at them as animals. Well, in regards to the animal pyramid, the Beachers were about as close to the top you could get.
On my way down to their territory, I was greeted by a crossbow arrow shot at my feet. As if that was going to scare me off.
“Cut the bullshit, Frank. It’s Clint.”
I plucked the flimsy arrow from the sand and snapped it in two as I made my way towards Frank, who was the unanimous leader of the Beachers. A tall thick Hawaiian, whose voice wasn’t as deep as one would expect, but it was still an octave lower than most. He carried a crossbow, now slung across his back, and wore a stubby dagger that has seen better days on his belt that looped into his practically shredded tan shorts. His always-bare chest and arms wore a series of swirling tribal tattoos, under a myriad of various scars, half from the war and half from his time before the Island. He was only eighteen, but that was old here on Penance where the average age hovered around sixteen.
“Why did you do that?” He said referring to his arrow, which was now snapped into two pieces in my hands.
“Why did you do that?” I mimicked back in his deep, accented voice.
For a moment, it looked like he was going to hit me—which wouldn’t have been the first time Frank and I had gotten in a fight.We stood toe-to-toe, before breaking out into huge grins and hugging each other like we had known each other our whole lives.
“How is everything, Frank?” I asked as we made our way towards the Beachers camp.
“I will answer with an old Hawaiian Proverb with a little Frank twist on it,” he said with a sickly smile. “La’I lua ke kai. The sea is very calm and all is peaceful.” I was grateful for the translation.
“Now, let us cause a hurricane!” I enjoyed his little twist on it, more so than the proverb.
The Beachers camp looked like it was straight out of a movie. Located on the beach, with a huge camp fire in the middle of a series of ten well built single room houses. There were three others just like this further down the beach, all under Frank’s respected command. Each camp held close to thirty of the what would be the Island’s worst. Savages would be an accurate word for these guys had they not be united, but under Frank’s word, they became a feared group of organized pirates who had everything they could ever want and more on the Island.
Weapons—machetes, daggers, swords, a few bows and quivers of arrows, even shields—were scattered everywhere, and not just the meager pieces of wood with nails driven into it that the city people had. No, these were real weapons, found in the crates that were occasionally dropped onto the island via helicopter. Nobody understood why we were provided with weapons, but nobody here questioned what they could not find answers to.
Frank had claimed the crossbow as his own. Nobody questioned his authority, because as a powerful leader he was also a reasonable one. He treated everyone fairly, and did not abuse his power; he gave people an opportunity to thrive on Gilligan’s Island (which was more of a joke title at this point).
Crates of food littered the camp site. If you were one of the few allowed to step foot into the Beachers’ property, you’d see the occasional boar being roasted on the fire. On the rare occasion one of Frank’s camp didn’t have something they needed, or, more accurately, wanted, Frank would organize a raid and they would go and take it.
“Have you heard from Esme?” Frank asked while standing with me right outside his main campsite, both of us admiring at the camp he had created.
“Besides the occasional order and her daily supply drop off, nothing.”
He had continued to admire his creation while we spoke. “She is a queen of ice. This is not the Esme we both knew from the war. She has changed. She has become untrusting and unstable. The day will come where her leadership will crash and sink into the ocean. Her paranoia will be the disease that eats away at what we and the others have created for her. “
Each word he spoke was precise and said with emphasis, a kind of emphasis one could not help but think about and consider.
He wasn’t wrong.
