Kal, Male, 37

	- Narrator, disaster survivor and castaway

	- 6'1, 190lbs, straight, shoulder-length dark-brown hair

Kate, Female, 36

	- Nina's lover, pre-disaster wife of Kal

	- 5'8, 150lbs, pale skin, shoulder-length curly red hair

Nina, Female, 26

	- Kate's lover, pre-disaster triad with Kate and Kal

	- 5'4, 115lbs, light-brown tanned skin, straight shoulder-length brown hair

The next seven weeks of my life were the most forgettable I'd ever known. Horrible. Frightening. Isolated. My mind was numb from the confinement. The bare cell was so unnatural, soul-crushing, inhumane. I wasn't allowed visitors for two weeks, and no books or other diversions for four. It was solitary confinement, and I may have lost parts of my sanity, at least for a time, in those days.

Kate and Nina were allowed to visit me for very brief periods, armed guards just outside the door. They were heartbroken, tried not to show how much they hurt for me, but I knew. They didn't speak of what I'd told them, didn't offer more than mere platitudes, really. They usually brought me extra food, which naturally had been searched by the guards, leaving sandwiches ripped open and puddings leaking over the edges of their containers. I was a criminal who had tried once to escape. The guards were taking no second chances with me.

The women had been investigated as a result of my escape attempt. They told me they had been subject to several rounds of questioning, had their apartment searched twice, been made to feel like outcasts. Nina continued to patrol, though she often wondered if she would be relieved of duty at any time. Kate worked her shifts in the care wards, but I was not on her list of official patients she could freely visit.

I had other visitors irregularly. Sometimes it was a military officer, asking me the same questions as all the rest. Who was I? What was I doing in Papeete? Who was my GS contact? Why did I try to escape. I largely ignored them, steeled to the reality that anything I said would only make it more difficult to force down the raw, gnawing frustration I felt in my isolation, in my inability to get back to the island.

Psychologists visited me as well. They talked softly, friendly, though certainly distant. I heard of experiences with other 'castaways' who had been recovered, how they often held onto delusions which they believed fervently despite being presented with evidence that the monsters and benevolent civilizations they had 'met' did not actually exist.

I offered little to help their efforts to 'fix' me, but over those weeks, after the isolation, the frustration, the painful longing for my island family, I started to doubt myself. I wondered if I had imagined it all. Perhaps I had been hit on the head so hard that I'd invented the story. Perhaps my life on the island had been so horribly lonely that I'd invented people to love me. Perhaps I really did need to be 'fixed.'

Self-doubt is useful tool when one wants to get to the bottom of things, but in such large doses, with so little to mitigate the damage it caused, it was a self-destructive way of withdrawing from reality. I started to have hallucinations, ones I usually could identify after the fact, but during them, they felt real. I talked with Bailey, felt Amy's hand in mine, touched Keekah's dark skin. I kissed my infant, had even given it a name. Several really, each time the hallucination visited me I decided on something new.

After all that, my doubts about my own memory became emboldened. If I could invent such vivid memories alone in that cell, wasn't it possible I'd done the same on the island? How could I tell the difference? It felt real. I ached for Bailey, for Keekah, for Amy, to hear Tok's laugh, to listen again as Gale scolded me to put on clothes before going into the woods. I tasted the stews, the acorn mash, the island wine. I knew the high I got from smoking our grass, the pleasure I took in feeling sweaty young bodies pressed against mine. And yet... I doubted. If I was hanging on to myself, it was a tenuous grip, only by a thread.

And that doubt grew stronger as each day passed in the cell, and my sense of reality became less and less capable of telling truth from fiction.

Until Kate visited me one afternoon. I'd scratched marks on the wall where it was hidden by the bed to keep track of the days. By my reckoning, that day was January 20. In the back of my doubt-ridden mind, I knew Bailey's due date was close at hand, but in my state of mind, it was almost a quaint concept. Nostalgic. The realism had been forced out by my isolation, by the psychologists' passive aggressive insistence that my memories were hollow and illusory. A lost part of me cried out in rage over the thought that Bailey was due and that I didn't even know if she had survived the attack, but it was drowned out by sedate rationalizations that stole from it all urgency.

Kate's visit that day set me back toward where I'd been weeks before, and it was an unexpected discovery which led her to come to me then.

She slipped into the room, the door closed behind her by a guard. Like most of the visits, I huddled on the bed, barely acknowledging her presence. I wasn't human, really, not in the social sense. I was too lost in my circumstances to value even her spare minutes of time.

Kate sat next to me, said quietly, “I believe you, Kal.”

Her words didn't register.

“I believe you,” she repeated. “I didn't. Not for a long time. It... it seemed too... improbable... it was... obvious you had suffered, and... and I... we thought your mind was... broken, maybe. That you'd... created a story to make you feel better. That's what I thought... until they brought your bag.”

My eyes opened just a bit wider, something registering, but it fought to come to the surface.

“When they found you on the GS boat, you had a bag over your arm. Some small thing, really, and it sat with your clothes down in a locker since you arrived. At some point they had pulled out your things and gone through them, trying to figure out the truth about you. They didn't find anything that said you were telling the truth. But I did.”

My head slowly turned, weariness very gradually becoming awareness.

“They gave me your things a couple of days ago, guess they had given up on caring about you any longer.” Kate glanced up at the small barred window before reaching into her purse and pulling out a small piece of paper. It was a drawing, one I was slow to recognize. She showed it to me.

“I've seen your attempts at drawing before, Kal, and... 'stick figures,' I think is the best way to describe it. You... you didn't draw this, did you.” It wasn't a question. “Someone else drew this for you.”

I stared at the drawing. It was intricate and detailed. It showed a man that resembled me. More than resembled, it even had the scars from the bomb blast in full detail. Next to me stood Bailey, my arm over her shoulder. In her arms was a child, a newborn. We were all smiling.

“Amy. Amy drew this.” Fire roared up from my belly, released from an icy cage where it had barely smouldered for so long. “Amy drew this. She gave it to me weeks ago. I don't remember slipping it into my bag.”

Kate looked at me with tears. “Oh, Kal. I am so sorry. So sorry I doubted you. So sorry I didn't help you. I didn't know.”

I watched her eyes squeeze out a steady flow of salty liquid. I said evenly, “I'm glad you know now.”

Kate wrapped her arms around me and pulled me tight, crying on my shoulder. I let her, my mind rousing from a long sleep, beginning to race. In some ways, that was harder than the weeks spent in isolation. I'd resigned myself to my depression, to my doubts, to my long hours spent doing nothing, with no one. Kate's belief brought me all the pains and aches of hope, something I'd fought hard to avoid for weeks. Hope meant dealing with the futility of my situation. Frustration came roaring back.

“Help me.”

Kate leaned back. “I already told them about the drawing. They don't care. They don't know you like I do. You really did marry Bailey, didn't you? She really is having your child?”

“She's due any day, yes.”

Her tears flowed harder and she squeezed me tighter. For the first time in weeks, I let my emotions run free, and I matched her anguish. I whispered into her ear, “I love you Kate. That never changed... it... it just went away for awhile, ok? It went away because you were gone. I never wanted to let that go... but I had to.”

“I know, Kal. I know. I had let you go, too... I don't want to lose you again.”

“Then help me. Get me out of here. Help me get back to the island.”

A sharp rap on the door was followed quickly by the door opening and guard stepping half-way into the room. “Times up, ma'am. Come back tomorrow.”

Kate looked at me, eyes a dark red, contrasting only somewhat from the brilliant coppery strands falling over her shoulders. “I will. I promise.”

And with that, she was gone.

- - -

It was almost two weeks before she or Nina came again. Two very painfully long, frustrating weeks. It made all the difference in the world that Kate believed me. It made me realize what was at stake, back on the island. Stakes I'd tried hard to lose in my doubts and my misery. Those doubts had been shattered by Amy's drawing, by Kate's trust.

And still, I rotted in my cell. I needed to get back to Bailey. I needed to know if she had survived, if she had given birth to my child. My heart broke thinking that she'd might not have survived, that even if she did survive, she'd probably gone into labor without me there. I pounded my fists on the walls often in frustration, but there was nothing I could do about it from inside the cell.

Nina came to me at an unusual hour during the first week of February. The guard let her in and closed the door. It was the first time I'd seen her since Kate showed me Amy's drawing.

She cast a furtive glance at the door, drew me close to her and hugged me. “I believe you, too, Kal,” she whispered, “and we're working on it. Hang in there. We're working on it.”

I said very quietly, “working on what?”

“Getting you back to the island. And we're going with you.”

My heart fluttered, briefly soaring before the walls of my cell closed in again. “How?”

“Let me worry about that. Just be ready to move, it won't be longer than a day or two now. Just be ready to move.”

I looked around at the bare table, the only thing in the cell besides my bed, couldn't help but chuckle. “I may need to pack a few things first.” She smiled, hugged me again, and we kissed passionately a moment.

She whispered in my ear, “when it happens, just do what you're told, ok? We have friends helping. It won't be easy, but it's going to work. Trust me, and be ready.”

Nina kissed my lips once more, lingered, then pulled back and knocked on the door. The guard opened it, Nina slipped out, and I was left bubbling with a mix of hope and excitement. Finally, something was happening. After so many weeks stuck in a cell, I felt weak, out of touch, and damn sure ready to do anything to escape.

- - -

It happened quickly. I jolted awake as a key turned in lock. A woman wearing scrubs and a mask stepped in, motioned me to follow, said quietly but firmly, “Kal, move now!”

She led the way down the hallway, quickly moving us into a passage that ran perpendicular to the main one. We darted through a small kitchen and out the other side, climbed a set of stairs down into another hallway. A man joined us, handed me clothing and a face-mask which matched his own. I donned blue scrubs and the mask, slipped booties over my bare feet. The uniform was too big for me and I had to keep hold of the tops of the pants to keep them from falling off.

Another hallway brought voices. The woman hissed to me as we rounded a corner, “don't panic. Act like you belong here!”

Two Marines moved past us at a brisk clip, eyes briefly falling on us as they went by. They rounded the corner and disappeared and we walked on. We passed two more groups of Marines before exiting the building through double doors. Instead of following the walkway which led to what looked like a heavily-fenced and gated area a few hundred feet away, we moved right, around the building. The man watched behind us as the woman pushed aside overgrown bushes and opened a small square door, below which I saw only darkness. She slid down and motioned me to follow her.

My feet found the ladder and I made my way quickly down in the darkness. It was a long climb down, echoes of our feet made it sound like a long hollow tube. The man descended directly above me. Arms caught me and helped me away from the ladder at the bottom, and the man jumped quickly to my side. He said, “gonna have to crawl. Probably wet in there, too. Just follow Freya. I'm right behind.”

Freya sparked a head lamp and began to crawl through a small passageway. I was only a foot or two behind, my heart pounding as the reality of what we were doing finally hit me.

The passage snaked in places but was largely straight. We turned off twice onto connecting tunnels, and eventually came to a place where we could stand. Freya started up another ladder and I was soon following. She paused after a climb of a few dozen rungs, then knocked quietly on the door above. It opened immediately and Freya practically jumped out. I raced up and joined her, followed by the man.

Nina took my hand and we soon ran through a narrow alley into a section of overgrown woods. My rescuers were right behind us. Nina said nothing as we raced on, darting around wind-blown trees and jumping a couple of small streams. We came upon a set of small buildings, but didn't come out of the woods enough to see them clearly.

I don't know how long we moved in the night. At one point, we encountered the mesh and turned left, Nina feeling along, eventually finding a small gate. We went through and ran on.

My legs were terribly weak and tired by that point. The weeks in the cell had left me too depressed to do so much as exercise, and I paid for it greatly that night. The man seemed to notice and braced my arm as we raced away from the cage and deeper into the island.

- - -

It was just after dawn when we finally stopped. Nina pulled us up short of a couple of buildings. One was a stocky house, clearly abandoned and looking in poor repair. The other was an outbuilding that may have been a shed or outhouse, I couldn't tell from the back. I collapsed, my legs on fire, my lungs burning and raw.

Nina knelt down, said quietly, “we're there, just waiting on the signal.”

I watched Freya flash her light twice. From the house, a second light flashed twice, and Nina pulled me to my feet. We moved up the drive as the door opened. I was pushed inside, then down steps quickly, coming out in a large basement. The room looked much better than the rest of the house, but it, too, showed that it had lacked care for many months, if not years.

I slumped onto an old, low couch, pulled my face-mask away. Freya and the man stood near the stairs talking. Nina was nowhere in sight.

I caught my breath, said, “what's the plan?”

Freya walked over, knelt, said, “We're just here long enough to collect some things, then we move again as soon as you can walk. Here, take these, they'll get you through the next few hours.”

“What are they?”

“Amphetamines. Sorry to dump them on you, but can't afford to have you slowing down on us right now. Still a lot to do. We've got a place were we need you to stay hidden a while.”

“Who are you two? Where's Nina?”

“Nina had to get back before anyone notices her missing. My name is Freya, friend of Kate's. This is Kelv. Please, take the pills.”

She pushed a canteen into my grasp and I threw back the uppers. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because I need to know more about your acorns, and I can't do that from here.”

“You believe me about the acorns?”

“Its the only warm lead I've had in months. I'll take my chances on you right now.”

I let my head fall back, trying to wrap my mind about the last couple of hours. I'd been broken out of the cell, escaped through a system of tunnels and woods, and I was sitting in a dilapidated basement talking to two people I didn't know who wanted to see the acorns. I closed my eyes, tried to calm down, and tried not to think about what it meant to 'stay hidden a while.'

- - -

We'd been on the move for more than an hour when I realized the amphetamines had kicked in. They'd come on gradually, more difficult to feel with the adrenaline already pumping. But they made me forget my weary legs, at least for a time.

I'd crept with Freya and Kelv back through woods to the North and East, generally staying off paths or roads. We heard a helicopter race by at one point, but it never paused or showed any indication that it saw or even cared about us.

When we pulled up at the tiny shack, I thought they must be joking. “This is the safe place I'm supposed to hide?” The shack was no bigger than a square ten feet wide. It was blue, or use to be, and sat along the edge of a backwash area not too far from the beach which ran East from Papeete. There was nothing close by, the surrounding area overgrown with ferns and bushes. I didn't even see it until we were within a few feet.

“No one will find you here. Was an old hermit living here until three days ago. Kate had learned about him months ago from some locals who hadn't seen him in weeks, and she'd befriended him. She dropped in to see him from time to time, and three days ago she found him dead down by the water. No one but Kate comes out here, and now, you'll wait here until we can secure the boat.”

“Boat. Now you're talking.”

Freya smiled, “patience, Kal. I know you are eager to go back to your island. Trust me when I say I'm eager to gain possession of a big sack of the acorns. If what you say is true, we could find something to help us keep the bugs away. It might make all the difference in the world.”

“Patience. I know... I... I've been patient... I'm doing all I can.” My mouth moved faster than my brain, the speed making me jittery and on edge. “Patience was hard in a cell. So hard. Now I gotta wait in the shack of a dead man. I gotta do something. Anything. Give me something I can do to make this go faster. Please, anything.”

Kelv spoke in a thick English accent, his ruddy face dirty from the long escape. “Here.” He pushed into my hands photocopies of maps. “No one but you knows whar this bloody escape is leading us, so you betta find the bleeding island before we gotta run fer it.”

I stared at the maps, some showing several islands, others, close ups of individual ones. “Yes. Ok. Yes. I can do that. Hurry, please hurry.”

Freya put a hand on my shoulder. “We will, Kal. Please be patient. Stay here, don't go anywhere. Kate or Nina will come out at some point if they can, but stay here no matter what. There's enough food and water and other supplies for a couple of weeks. Stay here. Don't do anything stupid like try to paddle yourself out to sea.”

I nodded vigorously, sweating, shaking from the drugs. “Ok, okokokok. I know, I know. It was stupid. It was stupid. Yeah, go. Go get started. Go get us a boat. I'll find the island.”

They set off immediately, and I spent the next couple of hours pacing aimlessly in rapid circles around the shack.

- - -

I spent hours buzzing from the uppers, unable to do much more than walk around and let my mind race. It was a blur, really. By the time I came down, I'd forgotten to start scouring the maps and my legs were beyond help. I crashed onto the small cot in the one-room shack and passed into a deep slumber until well into the next day.

I awoke with a headache, my mouth dry, my legs too sore to move for a while. I slowly crawled toward the sink and found a jug of water. I drank half of it before I felt less dehydrated. I leaned back against the wall, then reached for the pile of black and white images I'd been given.

I started with the close ups. I thought about the layout of the island. I'd drawn a map or two while I was there, and Amy had done a better one. I knew roughly what it might look like from a satellite view, and I immediately excluded two dozen of the ones before me.

My stomach growled and I rose on painful legs to look into boxes stacked beside the sink. I found some stale crackers and cans of fish dip with peal-back lids, then settled back with the images, eating as I rifled through them.

It didn't take too long to find a couple that looked about right. They both shared a long, South-facing beach, as well as a significant peninsula to the West. Looking between them, it was obvious which was the right one as soon as I spotted the shack on in the Northwest part of the island. From there, I found other landmarks, including fields that could only have been the crops planted there. The images were clearly taken since Gale had been stranded. I saw the lake barely visible beneath some overlying cloud cover, but it was there. I'd found my island, and then I had to connect it to one of the pulled-back images that showed its position amongst others in a chain.

The process was much more difficult. I knew the island was too far from other islands to see them, so the images that showed clusters of islands within a couple of miles of each other weren't right. I eliminated those which didn't clearly show the Western peninsula. It came down to two images again, and both of them showed what could have been the right island.

I was not sure which it was. From the pulled-back view, the details on the islands were hard to make out. I couldn't see the lake or the shack, couldn't tell if the peninsulas were exactly right, or the beaches long and wide enough. No matter how hard I tried to tell them apart, I was unable to fix on the right one. It was very frustrating.

I spent the evening pacing despite my soreness. I couldn't sit still. I was aware enough to make little noise, and when the 'normal' mosquitos began to buzz around me, I returned to the shack and found more sleep.

- - -

A noise awoke me. I held still, heart in my throat, my breath waiting for the next sound. I heard the crunch of steps on the overgrown vines surrounding the shack. I looked for a weapon, anything I could use to prevent being taken back to that horrible, isolating cell.

“Kal,” a female voice said just loud enough to pass through the wooden door. “It's me.”

Kate opened the door and stepped in. She was covered in mosquito netting, closed the door firmly behind her. The look on her face was one of intense relief. “Kal, I've missed you so much.”

She yanked off the netting and leapt into my arms, hugged me tight. It felt good to hold her again, it had been so long. What followed needed no words, no explanation, and none were forthcoming. Her hands moved over my body, mine over hers. Her shirt was unbuttoned automatically, her breasts in my hands as our lips pressed together.

It was intense as she pulled my shirt off and pressed her lovely tits against my chest. Kate's large nipples were hard, and I dropped my head to suck on her mounds. She moaned, ran her hands through my hair. I'd not showered in a couple of days, and she didn't care. The desire was so clear that her body moved instinctively, shedding her pants and underwear, and pulling down mine as well.

Kate pushed me onto my back and straddled my hips. There was no foreplay, no kinky words, no need to explain or ask permission. She mounted me, my cock sinking quickly into her hairy vagina. Kate sighed as her clit hit my pubes, her hands running quickly over my chest and my face.

She rode me rapidly, intensely, both of us full of need, full of passion for each other. It was as if we'd never been apart, how quickly it felt normal again. Kate's pussy was soaking wet, tender, so, so hot. I throbbed into her body, her cunt slipping up and down on my shaft.

Kate leaned down and kissed me deeply as she fucked me, looking into my eyes. If ever I doubted her feelings for me those eyes told me to doubt no more. My cock was on fire inside her body, her juices were slick and drooling over my balls. Her ripe vagina felt so wonderful wrapped around my dick, and I felt precum run out in spurts as her ass slammed down on my thighs.

I held her tits in my hands, feeling again the wonderful flesh in my fingers. Kate's body shuddered, quivered, her pace quickened, her grinding became intense, and she barely stifled a cry as she climaxed on top of me. Kate's pussy clutched and spasmed as she came, her mouth slapped down onto mine, and she moaned wonderfully against my tongue.

I didn't last long. She never slowed, even as her climax faded. Kate rode me like she had never forgotten how to make me cum. Each movement, practiced over years of our relationship, served to milk from me the seed she wanted. I felt it filling my shaft, my penis expanding inside her. Up and down her slick labia stroked my cock, up and down her hairs trailed behind them. Cum shot out of my dick, followed by a second, a third powerful squirt. My ejaculation consumed me. I pulled Kate down hard against me as I came in her, her lips squished against mine, her breasts mashed against my flesh.

My cum slowed to a trickle and I could feel it dribbling down from her hole. I wanted to keep fucking her but my body was unable to keep up the pace and as she cooed while we kissed, my penis slipped from her vagina, semen rushing out and over my groin.

I didn't want to let her go, and she seemed in no hurry. So I held her. Held my wife. One of my wives. It was a confusing state to be in, really. There was still a lot to deal with in the future, assuming we made it off Tahiti, and assuming we found the right island, and further assuming that Bailey and the others had survived. But for at least an hour, I held Kate like I had so many times before, and together, we felt whole for the first time in many months. Whatever was to come, that night, I was connected to the person I'd spent most of my adult life loving, and for a time, the rest of my terrible worries were allowed to quiet down and sleep.