Don looked up at the mountain, shaking his head, one hand on a palm tree so he could put his weight on one leg. "That's a ways up," He said.

Raincloud spit out a seed then dropped the rind. "Should we even bother heading up?"

"Sure," Kevin said, shrugging.

Don shrugged. "Maybe," he shaded his eyes, looking at the rock. "I think I see something. I'm not sure what."

"Where?" Raincloud asked.

"Right there," Don said, pointing.

Kevin squinted. "I don't see anything."

Raincloud moved over to stand behind Don, looking up his arm to see exactly where he was pointing. "You mean at the top of that sheer cliff?"

"Right below the top. See that? It looks weird," Don said.

Raincloud nodded. "Yeah. It's not too far up. Let's head up."

Don and Raincloud looked at Kevin, who shrugged. "Sure. Let's see what you guys see."

The three men, soaked with sweat, began heading up the steep grade.

"Is it just me, or does that look... weird?" Raincloud asked.

"Yeah," Don said, gasping, his face red.

"I still don't see anything," Kevin said.

The three men pushed between the large shoulder high ferns and stumbled as they stepped out onto cracked tarmac. Don almost fell, going down on one knee, gasping, his face red.

"Don!" Kevin cried out, moving up and kneeling next to Don, reaching out with one hand to brace the older man.

"Don, are you all right?" Raincloud asked, kneeling down next to the older man.

Don nodded, gasping. "Will. Be." he gasped. "Just need a break for a minute," he shifted position and sat down. "Humidity is killing me."

"You have a bad heart?" Raincloud asked.

Don nodded. "Yeah. Well, no. I mean, I had a triple bypass last year. I've lost a lot of weight, changed my diet, but I usually take high blood pressure pills."

"Shit, they went down with the plane," Kevin said. He gave a weak smile. "Well, at least the food here is all natural."

Raincloud nodded. "Just take it easy. None of us or anything on this island are going anywhere."

Don nodded, chuckling. "True. That."

After a few minutes Don's breathing returned to normal and he started to stand up.

"Just wait a couple more minutes, all right?" Raincloud asked. He kicked at the cracked asphalt under his feet. "Do you think it's weird that there's a road on the side of a mountain on a deserted volcanic island in the South Pacific?"

Don shrugged. "You saw that dock, right?" Raincloud nodded and Don held up one finger. "One, it's a Navy installation. Two, it's an unmanned island. Three, that dock went out far enough that it must have been a hundred feet or more to the bottom, which means they can dock a big ship there. Four, turn around," he pointed off to the left of the mountain.

Raincloud turned and looked, noticing that the road went on for a couple hundred yards with a steady downgrade, before obviously doing a hairpin switchback. That wasn't what caught his attention, rather it was what was beyond the road. Kevin turned, saw what the other men were looking at, and just stared, his mouth slightly open with shock.

A small town sat off to the side of the mountain, surrounded by jungle. The mountain blocked the view for some of it, but Raincloud could count twenty city blocks visible in front of him, and a dozen city blocks that went from his right to left. He could see the small toy-like appearing cars on the streets.

"That's..." he started.

"We're saved!" Kevin said.

"Abandoned," Don said. He sighed, rubbing his chest. "I've been looking at it. It's abandoned."

"How can you tell?" Raincloud asked.

Kevin stopped, looking at the town. "Aw crap."

"The cars don't move, the roofs are damaged, there's a lot of debris in the streets," Don said.

Raincloud shaded his eyes from the sun overhead and squinted slightly, bringing in the buildings into a little better focus. He could see Don was right. Cars were slewed around, there were a couple of large vehicles, roofs were damaged, it looked like a few houses had collapsed, and there was green in the streets.

"I'll take your word for it. I lost my glasses in the crash," Raincloud admitted.

"No extra pairs?" Kevin asked.

Raincloud shook his head. "One pair in my luggage, but we never found my suitcase."

"Oof, suck," Don said, slowly getting to his feet. He turned away from the town. "Let's see what this road leads to. We can check the town out later."

Raincloud nodded, turning away from the town. "Why do you think it's there?" he asked, following Don as he headed for the upward switchback.

"Training. The military used to do a lot of amphibious assault training after World War 2," He said, shrugging. "My dad told me about how his ship would take the Marines out to an island so they could practice assaulting a beach. Probably a mockup for urban combat practice."

"You said your dad was in World War 2?" Raincloud asked.

Don nodded. "He was in the Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1941, when it all went down. My mom was a WAVE, got hit with shrapnel when the Japanese strafed the town."

"Wow," Kevin said, looking at the older man with surprise. "Was he in Korea too?"

Don nodded. "Yeah. He was on the USS Boxer when it caught fire. I was a little kid, and I remember my mom driving us to Walter Reed."

"He get hurt bad?" Raincloud asked as they rounded the hairpin.

Don nodded again. "Yeah. It ended his Navy career. It also gave him cancer. That's why we were on that plane. He only had a few weeks to live and we were going to Hawaii."

Raincloud nodded, slowing his pace a little. He glanced at Kevin who nodded and slowed down too.

"Did you join up? Like your dad?" Raincloud asked.

Don shook his head. "I was going to, during Vietnam. My dad told me he'd break my arm first. Told me about the guys that were brought in by helicopter all shot up," he sighed. "Then my friends started getting drafted and after a while I started attending funerals."

Raincloud just listened as the older man went on, describing how he would watch the news every night, his mom wringing her hands as they watched the draft lottery numbers scroll up the screen.

"Think we're almost there," Don said, suddenly breaking out of talking about going to the funeral of a girl he'd known that had been killed after signing up as a nurse.

"Looks like it," Raincloud said. The road turned sharply up ahead, flattening out for a dozen yards or so before the corner. "What do you think we'll find?"

"Probably a parking lot. There's probably a few old vehicles, that's what we saw," Don guessed. "Probably nothing more."

When they came around the corner they saw a small parking lot, empty, with the parking space striping peeling and cracked, as was the asphalt.

That wasn't what held their attention.

There was a heavy metal door, painted OD green, embedded in the cliff face. Beside it was a sign.

FACILITY IS NOT MANNED
NO ENTRY
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
PROPERTY OF THE US ARMY

"I thought you said this island was the property of the Navy," Raincloud said.

"That's what the dock said," Kevin said.

"Then why does the Army own this?" Raincloud asked.

"I have. no. idea," Don admitted.

The baby giggled when I picked her up, laughing when I zerberted her stomach. I looked up and smiled at Heather, setting the baby back on the floor.

"It'll be a couple months," I told her. "You going to be all right?"

She nodded, rubbing her swollen stomach. "I'll be fine, Tony," She said. "It's not like you're going to Africa or into another CoG site with the boys."

I laughed, holding my hands out. Heather sat down in my lap, the baby making her solid weight heavier than usual. She was a big woman, muscular as well as pregnant, but she fit in my arm comfortably as I hugged her.

"You're going to hang out on a tropical island and I have to stay here," She laughed. She kissed my forehead then drew back, her arms still around my neck. "Promise me you'll stay safe and come back to me."

"I promise," I told her.

I promise

I promise

NEURAL SPIKE DETECTED!
MEMORY INTERRUPT!
run dcc.exe
DCC FAILED
run dcc.dll
DCC FAILED
run dcc.bin
DCC FAILED
brin dcc.bat
running...
NEURAL DAMAGE AT 45%
PERSONALITY OVERLAY IN TRAUMA MODE
ant.exe has crashed
ant.exe is not responding
poke 1,0
poke 56334,129
poke 1,1
sys 64738
ALT COLD START SUCCESSFUL
brun survive.bin
survive
Survive
SURVIVE
SURVIVE!

Richard pushed stopped and held his hand up. "He's right past this bend in the creek," He said, looking over his shoulder at Renee and Mike.

"All right. Let's go talk to him," Renee said, smiling. She adjusted her shirt, knowing that her looks would help in any discussion with a man.

They walked around the corner and stopped, staring.

There was nothing but piles of rubble. Broken mud bricks, the straw poking through where the bricks had broken. Everything was smashed, broken, rendered completely useless.

"I don't think he's going to help us," Mike said, staring at it all.

"Gee, ya think?" Renee snapped, squinting as she took it all in. She moved through the destroyed camp, looking at everything. "He knocked everything down, but I don't see any tiles, no metal, no tools. Just broken bricks."

She hmm'd to herself, rocking back and forth on her heels while she looked around. "So you found the place, left, and he moved what he wanted to keep and destroyed the rest. Interesting."

Mike just stared, looking around. "What do you mean: interesting?"

She chewed on her lip. "Do you think he might be hurt? Injured, maybe?"

Mike shrugged, looking at Richard, who shrugged. "I don't know, maybe?"

Renee moved over to look at the dirt, kneeling down. Both men looked at each other, at Renee, then at each other again, Richard raising one eyebrow. The young woman had gone from lazily bored to intent and focused.

"Look right here. Know what this is?" She asked.

Both men moved over and looked down. There were lines draw in the dirt. An oval with lines through it and shapes drawn inside.

"No. What is it?" Mike asked.

Renee pointed at the shape on the upper right of the circle. "That's America," She said. She pointed at the shape in the lower side. "That's South America," she pointed at the stones pressed into the ground in the middle of a boot print. "I imagine those were for Hawaii and for this island," she giggled slightly, shaking her head. "These long lines here, that's longitude. These lines are latitude," She looked up at the two men and both of them were surprised by the intentness in her eyes. "He's trying to figure out where he is. Probably by the stars, how high the sun gets at noon, the length of the day, and the way the moon moves across the sky."

She pointed at the boot print that had crushed the pebbles into the ground. "He didn't bother destroying it, which means he doesn't think we'd find it important. Which is another clue as to what's going on."

"By all means, go on," Richard said. He was surprised that what he had dismissed as a spoiled little rich girl had a working brain.

"Those boots. Look at the depth of the print. He's a big guy. Trust me, I know shoes. That's a man's size eleven extra-wide. His prints are about a half-inch into the dirt, despite the ground pressure offset of the side of his foot," Renee traced one of the boot prints off to the side. "Which means he weighs a lot. He's military, he's not fat."

She stood up, looking around. "This tells us a lot," she said. She moved around the sides, looking closely, then suddenly bent over with an outcry of pleasure.

"Aha!" she said, straightening up with a piece of cloth in her hand. She held it out to the two men. "It's dried, but it's blood. He's injured enough he had serious bleeding."

She walked back out, looking pleased with herself. "So, what does this tell us?"

Richard chuckled, staring at her. "All right, Doctor Holmes, what does all of this evidence tell you?"

"He has full mobility. Otherwise he couldn't move so well through the underbrush. If his legs or arms were damaged, he couldn't have swam here, couldn't have done all this, much less knocked it all down. If the wound was on his torso, he wouldn't be able to lift things," Renee's face was slightly flushed with excitement. "So, he suffered a head wound, and that's what's going on."

Mike looked at Richard, who shrugged. He looked back at Renee. "OK, how does a head wound explain all this?"

She smiled, her teeth bright white and perfect. "Certain head injuries, certain brain damage, explains all of it."

She waved her hand at the wreckage. "He destroyed it, to keep the alien monsters from using it."

Mike frowned. "What alien monsters?"

Renee smiled. "OK, follow closely, Watson," She motioned at them and they drew closer. "He suffered a severe head wound in a crash that killed almost everyone. He's in excellent physical shape and trained to survive, trained to perform certain actions even when borderline unconscious, right?"

The two men nodded. Renee smiled and put her arms around their shoulders, turning them to look at the camp. "He gets close to the beach, right, and sees us. What does he do?"

"He swam around to the other side, avoiding us. Avoiding other people," Richard said.

"Uh-uh-uh," Renee said. "That assumption is faulty. You see, his head wound made it so he didn't see people. If I was seeing what he was seeing, I'd avoid us too."

Mike looked at her wide smile, his brow furrowing. "What's he seeing?"

"His brain is damaged. He can't see faces. What he's seeing is a blank flesh colored mask, with orbs in the middle that might be eyes, and a mouth at the bottom of the mask. Not only can he not see faces, he can't recognize facial features or distinctive markings," Renee said. "If the damage was severe enough, his speech and language centers could be damaged, which means he's not hearing us talk, he's hearing random noise."

"Jesus," Mike said. "Isn't that deadly damage?"

Renee shook her head. "Actually, no. It might be permanent, or the swelling in his brain might go down and he'll regain the ability to see people and understand us."

She took a step back towards the castaways camp, her arms around the two men's shoulder, pulling them with her.

"He's not avoiding us because he's an asshole, or he thinks we're useless," she told the two men.

"Then why's he avoiding us?" Mike asked.

"Because he's scared. We look like people at a distance, but when he sees our faces," She paused and lowered her voice. "We look like pod people."

"Oh," Richard said, looking around. "Can we help him?"

Renee shook her head, "If we corner him, or approach him and make him feel like he can't get away," She paused for effect.

"He'll kill."

survive
Survive
SURVIVE