The Fourth Man

The Trap and The Bait

The Trap and The Bait

In the morning Krill led them to the campsite of his people. It was a good few hours walk through the pine forest, and the untidy and bedraggled teenagers were a startling sight to the eight people keeping a large blazing fire going. So this was the smoke they had seen the previous day.

"What on god's earth?" one of them began "what is this Krill?"

"These," said Krill "Are what I stumbled across last night when I was hunting, they got lost here, looking for the Fourth Man."

"Well join the club," an elderly man grumbled "and we're still no closer to knowing who or what he is."

"Ignore him," said Krill "That's Allan, and he's just generally moody." Krill turned back to the adults "These are Siggy, Exo, Quaker, Thomas, Nerpato, and Jonathan," he introduced them in turn, "and may I introduce to you Allan, Cairn, Freida, Kahn, Daisy, Jellah, Qwasi and Graham. We're - as far as we know - the only nine survivors left on this island."

"Make that fifteen," said Siggy, noting one or two faces to memory. Allan was an elderly man, bald head and silver beard, and a seemingly constant frown, Jellah was young and athletic, maybe early twenties, as well as Daisy, an attractive young woman with khaki shorts and dirty green vest top.

"Well it's best to stay together," Graham stood forward, he seemed to be the natural leader of the group "And we're always safer in larger numbers."

"Cool," said Exo, "we caught some strange small rodent in a trap last night," he held out a squirrel like creature "Is it safe to eat?"

"Yeah," Graham beamed "That's what we call the Kerolupe, and it's great slow roasted on the fire."

All of a sudden a large explosion sounded very close to the camp

"What the hell was that?" Quaker demanded. The concerned looks on the others faces showed they didn't know either.

"I don't know," Graham admitted "It's not anything to do with us."

"So much for only ones on the island," Siggy scoffed.

"We have to check it out," Jellah and Daisy chimed together.

As a large unit, minus Allan (who stayed by the fire) they moved in the direction of the smoke and flames ahead. Suddenly the trees stopped and opened out into a clearing, evidently caused by a large explosion of some kind. A large crater had been created in the soft mud.

"Look in there!" Quaker pointed, it was a boat "That's the boat me Siggy and Exo came on, how on earth did that get there?"

"I don't know," said Graham, "But just stay here."

Quaker edged closer to the edge of the crater.

"I don't understand how that got there."

"Everything is strange on the island," Qwasi pointed out.

Quaker stepped into the crater, and began to advance down

"Look!" he cried "It's still intact too."

"I think you should come back," Graham called into the crater.

"One second," Quaker sounded back up.

He reached the boat and examined it. The look of confusion still obscured his face as the boat exploded and caused an even more violent burst of flame than the explosion before had done.

There was no doubt. Quaker had surely been blown to pieces in the blast.