Dark Island Book 1 (Complete)

Chapter 28

"Are you Joe Franklin?” I asked again. A cold chill run through my body as I gazed at him. After all this time searching, I found him. He lifted his head meeting my gaze.
“Yes I am. How do you know my name?” He asked confusingly, letting go of the dog tags.
After a moment’s hesitation, I decide to tell him. I have to get this off my chest.
“It’s me Jack, your brother.” I answered. “I have been looking for you ever since you disappeared a few years ago.”
He looked at me half surprised and confused. “Jack? Is it really you?” He asks silently. His eyes started to tear up a little as he stands up. “But how? I thought that I was a goner. I thought that nobody was coming for me, that I would be stuck here for the rest of my days.”
“After we ended up here, I noticed a ship similar than the one you were on, and when I found your dog tags in it I just knew you were here. I just knew you were alive.” I said as I stand up with tears in my eyes, and hugging him.
“I have no idea how to get of this island Jack. I have been trying too, but never succeeded.”
“We’ll find a way. There must be I way. But first we need to find Harold, my other friend.” I said.
I walked up to where Ronnie was sitting all tied up and still unconscious, cutting him loose.
“Ronnie, wake up. It’s going to be okay.”
“Wait…what? What happened, where are we?” He asks while regaining his conscious, still confused about what had happened.
“It’s my brother. He was here all this time. He’s alive.” I said.
“Your brother? I thought you said-“
“Yeah, I know what I said, but he is here and he is alive. And he is going to help us find Harold.”
“Before we go out looking for your friend, we will have to set up camp somewhere, so we can regroup and think things through. We do not want to be caught off guard.  There may be still hope for him, if he was taken by those people.” Said Joe as he started getting his stuff together.
“What do you mean?” ask Ronnie
“They only do offerings once in every few days. In addition, I did not hear any strange sounds yet, drums to be precise. They start with heavy drumming.”
“Then I say we better get ready. We have to find him.” I said.
“I know of a place not so far from here, near the beachside, we can set up camp there for the time being.”
“Sound like a good idea. We should head there.”

***

I peered out from between the palm fronds. “Call me crazy,” I said in amazement, “but I think that’s a chicken.”
The feathered creature perched on a fallen log was smaller than a farm hen, and a deep rusty brown rather than the usual white, speckled, or Rhode Island Red. Otherwise, it was a dead ringer-the same four-toed bird feet, fleshy crest, and gizzard. It bobbed as it moved, pecking absently at the rotted wood, clucking softly.
“It is a chicken,” confirmed Joe. “Before they were bred for food many years ago, all chickens were like this-the Pacific jungle fowl, living in the wild.”
I shot him a cockeyed look. “You’re putting me on.”
“No, really,” Joe insisted. “Haven’t you learned anything from history? This is a living fossil.”
I grinned at him. I knew from experience that Joe was never wrong about mostly anything. Pushing up my too-long sleeves, I stepped out from behind the tree. With our own shorts and T-shirts in rags, we had taken to wearing fatigues from the abandoned army ship on the other side of the island. These were in perfect shape, if a little faded. However, they were almost our size. Joe grabbed the baggy fabric of my shirt. “Where are you going?” He asked.
“We’ve been living on fish and mostly fruit,” I replied. “If that’s a chicken, its dinner. It will be our present for Ronnie. He has been feeling very depressed of lately. I think the island is starting to get to him, and the fact that we haven’t find Harold yet.”
Ronnie rested back at the camp. Today was his birthday, or at least as nearly as they could reckon the date, it was. There had been so little to celebrate lately-so much danger, so much fear. But real meat - our first in almost two weeks - that would be a worthy present. It would also be the only present. As Joe put it. “None of these coconut trees take American Express.” I approach the log from behind, steeping softly in the tangle of vines and underbrush. The bird clucked and pecked, seemingly unaware. Then, just as I lunged, it took off, flapping furiously. I tumbled painfully over the log, landing in a heap on the ground. Joe grabbed at the fowl, but it beat its wings in his face before flying off through the rain forest.
Yelling, I ran after it, Joe hot on my heels. It was an awkward chase. Every ten feet or so, the bird would have to land, its chicken legs pumping like miniature pistons before it could take off again. We were faster, but we had the jungle to contend with. Branches and palm fronds slashed at our bodies and faces, and low vines tripped us up.
Joe pointed. “It’s heading for the beach!”
Suddenly, a cry from the jungle: “Dinner! Dinner!”
Joe and I burst out onto the beach, just seconds after yelling. We ran full speed and screaming.
Then Ronnie sees it-a scrawny, undersized brown hen, flap hopping for its life.
“I got it!” Ronnie ran across the beach, lining up the bird with his keen athlete’s eye. He lunged, arms outstretched, hands ready. But the fowl squawked loudly and scrambled just out of his reach. Ronnie went down, eating sand.
Joe pulled a four-foot branch out of the woodpile. “There’s only one way to hit a knuckleball.” He cocked it back over his shoulder and took a home-run swing.
“Strike one!” he cheered, fanning.
“Get out of the way!” I yelled, panting from exhaustion.
But Joe lined up the chicken and took another cut. “Strike two!”
“Hey, watch it with that thing!” I yelled at Joe
But it was hard to stop Joe once he had decided on a course of action. He raced into position, colliding with me, sending us both staggering. Joe recovered, pulled back his ‘bat’, and took his final string. “Strike-“
Whack!
Joe himself was the most surprised person on the beach when he made contact. The bird sailed twenty feet through the air and fell to the sand, stone dead. Joe dropped the branch as if it had suddenly become electrified.
Ronnie turned on him. “Joe, how could you do that to an innocent little bird? And why were you chasing it?” Joe sneered. “To give it a check from the Publishers Clearing House?”
“No, this is good!” I explained. “It’s a Pacific jungle fowl. And its for you Ronnie, your birthday present.”
Ronnie was still mad. “You didn’t have to bludgeon it!”
“The bird had to die somehow, right?” he argued. “What difference does it make if I Babe-Ruthed it?”
“It makes a difference to the bird,” Ronnie insisted.
“Not anymore,” Joe chuckled.
I turned my attention away from my irritation with Joe. “This is meat. Less fighting; more eating.”
We soon learned that having meat was much more complicated than merely opening a shrink-wrapped package from the supermarket. The fowl’s head and feat had to be removed. The carcass had to be sliced open. It was I job and a half. The smell of warm blood in the tropical humidity was nauseating. I fought hard to keep from throwing up as I use my dagger to scoop the innards away.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Joe strolling away. “Where are you going?”
“When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. I thought I would, you know, get going. Maybe take a swim-“
At least Joe didn’t lose himself completely, stranded here alone for heck knows how long. I thought to myself gazing at his goofiness.
“All right smart guy. You’re going to pluck this chicken.”
“In your dreams,” he laughed. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be chasing that dumb bird around the beach. I’m the hunter; you guys are the kitchen staff.”
I gave a smirk at Joe.” “I’m glad that you still have your cocky ways and goofiness intact after being alone for so long, still cracking jokes. Well, today you’re going to make dinner for us.” I held out the bloody carcass.
“If you don’t want that up your nose,” said Joe sarcastically, “get it out of my face.”
“I’m not falling for that!” I countered back at him with an evenly voice.
“Enough!” It was a cry from Ronnie that froze everyone like the subjects in a still picture. “Horse-playing is just another way for you to goof off!” said Ronnie.
“I don’t want any chicken!” Explained Ronnie bitterly. “Not if it means a big stink like this! It’s my birthday, and were lost, Harold is still gone, and I’m probably never going to see another one! So take that dumb chicken and throw it in the ocean for the fish!”
Joe took the carcass out of my hands. “I’ll pluck it,” he said.