"In on what?"
"Setting us all up. Blowing up the boat. Trapping us here. Is it possible that Thelma helped Wesley plan it? I mean, I'm beginning to wonder. For that matter, maybe this whole thing was her idea."
"I tend to doubt it," Kimberly said. "She might be a hell of an actress, but I think she really and truly believed that Wesley got killed in the explosion. She didn't know what was going on. She just got into this whole mess when she found us trying to ambush her husband. That's the way I see it, anyhow."
"If Thelma wasn't in on the plan," Billie said, "then all this was Wesley's idea like we thought in the first place. So how does Thelma fit into it?"
I saw where she was heading. "If we're right about Wesley's motives," I said, "she'll be killed like the rest of us."
"He can't possibly let her live," Billie added.
"That'll be her tough luck," Kimberly said. "But he won't kill her as long as he has uses for her. And maybe he doesn't intend to kill her at all. We suspect he's doing all this so he can be the sole survivor and inherit and so forth, but we don't really know what the hell his reasoning is. Or what to expect from him."
"I expect he'll try to kill me again," I put in.
"I suspect you're right," Kimberly said, and smiled at me. "We'll try not to let that happen."
"Thanks," I said.
"So, what do we do?" Connie asked.
"Nothing," Kimberly said. "Not today, anyway. You're in no condition to go on another hunt for those two. I'm sure Rupert has a lot of writing to do in that diary of his."
"Big deal," Connie muttered.
"It is a big deal," Kimberly told her. "I want him to keep current with it. I want there to be something -- a record of what's happened here. In case we don't make it."
"That's a laugh. I'm sure Wesley's gonna kill us all and then let Rupert's little diary incriminate him. Are you kidding me? He'll burn it."
"Thanks, Connie," I said.
"Oh, get real."
"Anyway, I'm not planning to get killed. I'm gonna make it out of here -- I hope we all do. And then I'll find a publisher. We'll be famous. I'll make a ton of money. And everybody who reads my true-life adventure book will see just what a bitch you are."
"Maybe I'll burn it myself."
"Just try, and see what . . ."
"Knock it off," Kimberly said. "Both of you."
"And you leave Rupert's diary alone," Billie told her daughter.
Her daughter said, "Yeah, right, take his side, why don't you?"
That was pretty much the end of the conference. It hadn't turned out so badly, after all.
Being the intended target of Thelma's hit, I came out of things looking a lot better than expected. I was now the survivor of an assassination attempt, not the dork who'd let Thelma escape.
I couldn't help feeling a little scared, though.
It's one thing to have somebody pull a razor on you because she's your prisoner bent on making a getaway. It's a whole different ballgame if she dropped in on us with a battered body and a load of lies just so she could get close to me, late at night, and rip me open.
I'm damn lucky to be alive.
---------------------—
Day? Anybody's Guess
----------------------
Musings On My Return To The Journal
It's where I left it. So I've opened it. So now I'm writing again.
I don't know why I'm bothering.
Except, like Kimberly said, we've got to have a record of what's been happening here.
Maybe the cops'll get their hands on it, someday.
Yeah, right.
Do they have cops in this goddamn armpit of the universe? Do they have anyone?
I know one thing: I don't ever want to see this thing get published. Not anymore. Not after what happened.
"After what happened?" you ask.
I don't know what happened.
It has been a few days since my last entry in the journal. I think. I'm not sure how long it's been.
I just now turned back a couple of pages to read what's there and refresh my memory. It's almost like somebody else wrote them. Wrote them a long time ago. Years ago. So much has changed.
I'm embarrassed to see what I wrote.
Example: I expect he'll try to kill me again. The placement of again makes it sound like I've already been killed once. But that isn't the real problem. (One can't be held accountable for the grammar of dialogue, right? And who gives a rat's ass, anyway?) The real problem is my cavalier, jaunty fucking attitude. Ah, yes, my good Wesley? He'll likely make another try for me. Tut, tut. Have to be on my guard, won't I? Have to remember to duck.
Well, here's news.
It wasn't me he got.
It was them.
Kimberly, Billie and Connie.
They're gone with the fucking wind, and I'm not. I'm here, back at the beach, writing in my journal, alive and well and alone.
I'm not planning to get killed.
Another gem from my previous entry.
Talk about arrogance.
Talk about being the prime asshole of the world.
Talk about prophetic.
Of course, I don't actually know if the women have been killed. I think it's likely, but I'm not sure. I know some of what happened, but not everything. They were still alive when I went down, but what happened to them afterwards?
I don't know.
I know they're gone, though.
I can't handle this. I'm going for a swim. Maybe I'll be lucky and a shark'll eat me for dinner.
War Party
This is the next day.
I was too messed up to do any more writing yesterday. I went for a swim, like I said. The sharks didn't get me, though. I didn't see hide nor hair of any sharks.
I did consider suicide, though.
One of those really cool, melodramatic suicides like you've seen in a billion crappy movies -- where some idiot goes swimming off into the sunset. The deal is, I guess, you keep swimming away from shore until you get too pooped to make it back. So even if you eventually change your mind, you're history.
There are several reasons why I didn't do it.
A. Drowning sucks.
B. Being dead sucks.
C. Being the lone survivor is not a fate worse than death.
D. I'm not one hundred per cent sure that all the gals are dead.
E. If I kill myself, I won't be able to do any of the things that I want very badly to do to Wesley and Thelma.
F. Like it or not, I do feel a certain obligation to play Ishmael and tell thee, to be the Horatio of our noble, lost band and report our cause aright to the unsatisfied.
Other than not kill myself, what I did yesterday is of little consequence. I swam, I ate, I wept, I slept.
Today, I'll tell what happened to us on day eight.
As much as I know, anyway.
Day six was when Thelma returned, battered and claiming that she'd killed Wesley. That night, she went at me with her razor. Then she escaped by swimming away.
Day seven, we did a lot of talking about what had happened on night six. And I did a lot of writing about it. Other than that, nothing of consequence happened. Connie's injuries were the main reason why we didn't take any action. She seemed to be getting better, though.
Nothing happened that night.
Day eight, Connie was still sore but she was ready for action. We all were. We knew it was time to go after Wesley and Thelma.
We hoped that Wesley was already dead.
We were fairly sure that Thelma had lied about killing him, just as she'd lied about nearly everything else. We thought mere was a good chance, however, that Wesley had died from the wounds he got on the night of our ambush. Kimberly had put her spear through his left tit, and she'd rammed a hole into his ass. As a result of those wounds, he could've died from blood loss or from infection.
If he wasn't dead, we figured he might at least be incapacitated.
On the other hand, maybe he'd recovered enough to be a real threat to us.
We'd discussed every possibility that we could think of.
We'd concluded that anything was possible, but that we were more likely to have trouble from Thelma than Wesley.
We set out at mid-morning.