Page 18 of Stranded

“What?”

“Who?”

“I didn’t get a good look. But I saw their eyes… in the trees.”

My shoulders drop. “It was probably just a lemur.”

He quickly shakes his head. “No. When I was getting out of the water, I noticed a bunch of mud around the edge, and I saw human footprints in it. Footprints, not shoe prints. I followed it and it ended at a tree across the clearing. When I looked up, I saw the whites of two eyes, human eyes, looking back at me. I couldn’t see anything else, and when I took a step closer, he took off. I followed briefly, but he moved fast and I losthim instantly. Besides, I’d just got out of the water and had no shoes or clothes.”

“Didn’t want to get your dong scratched up?” I ask, unable to help myself. He gives me a humorless glare and I shrug my shoulders. If you couldn’t laugh at a time like this, then you’d probably go mad.

“So we aren’t alone. Do you think there is more than one person out there?” King asks, watching the jungle with trepidation.

“Probably. I think it'd be difficult to survive here on your own, especially for an extended period of time. But considering he was in a tree, he’s probably native to this island.”

“So, what do we do now?” I ask, not sure what to do with that information.

“We have to draw him out. Maybe set a trap of sorts. Leave out fruit for him.”

“I doubt he’ll respond to that if he’s the one that left it for us that first morning,” Kings says, and I agree.

“And why do we want to draw him out? If he leaves us alone, we’ll leave him alone,” I say with a shrug.

“I—” West starts then stops, frowning at the jungle as he considers his next words. “They could be a native, upset we took their home… But what if they’re not? That grave didn’t have a very native feel to it.”

“No, it didn’t,” King agrees. “And leaving us food doesn’t seem like something a hostile native would do.”

“There could be someone on the island who doesn’t belong here, like us. Maybe they’re just scared?”

“Why would a human, who isn’t a native, be scared of us?” I ask, looking back and forth between King and West. Sure, we were big guys, with a few tattoos between us, and I suppose we could look intimidating,but that couldn’t be worse than being alone on a deserted island, could it?

“I don’t know, but we need to lure them out with something,” West says.

“We can’t try to trap him. They haven't done anything wrong and that might make them angry,” King says, shaking his head.

“Fine, no trapping, but we should still try to lure them out into the open. Best to know who we are dealing with.”

“Well, we can’t use fruit as bait, he clearly already knows how to find that,” I say, considering our options. “Oh! What about soap? Or shoes? You said he was barefoot, right?”

“Yeah, he was, but I don’t have a spare pair, do either of you?” We both shake our heads. “But soap is a good idea. If he’s been here a while, I bet it’ll be hard to resist some home comforts. Let’s go back to camp and see what we can find. We’ll need to be quiet so let’s do it without mentioning what we’re doing. We’ll leave it in the middle of camp, on the log by the firepit. Then we split up. I’ll go up to the main hut and watch from there. Bower, you stand in the path that leads to camp, try and keep out of sight. And King, you hide in the trees on the opposite side of camp.”

“What do we do when we see him?” I ask, unsure what our plan is here.

“We’ll just talk to him calmly, and try not to spook him, see if he talks back. He might not even speak English. I speak a few words of Japanese and Spanish, what about you two?”

“Only English for me.”

“I can do a couple words in Spanish and Italian,” King adds.

“Alright. Let’s hope he speaks English then. Ready?”

We both nod and silently follow him back to camp.

As he instructed, we quietly climb up to the main hut where our bags are and search through them for anything we can use to bribe them out. I hold out a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo. King adds a pair of socks and some face moisturizer. West surprises me by pulling out a silver necklace with a seashell on it.

“Where’d that come from? You got a girlfriend back home, West?” I ask in surprise. He’s never mentioned a girl before, I assumed he was single since he flew around so much.

“No,” he says, staring down at the necklace in his hand while he rubs the back of his neck, looking embarrassed. “I, uh… When we were in Perth, I was grabbing some snacks and it caught my eye. I don’t know why I bought it, to be honest. I just thought it was pretty, and kinda wished I had someone to buy it for.” He looks up at us with a grimace on his face before looking back down at it again.

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