The Island: Part 2

By Michael R Stark

The Fever exploded across the U.S. and the world. Hour by hour the news grew worse. The virus was spreading at a bewildering pace, killing so fast that estimates had to be constantly revised. Even worse, it appeared to be mutating to an even deadlier form.

Stranded on Portsmouth Island after the President instituted martial law, William Hill found himself fighting to survive even though he had come to the island to die. The old village offered shelter against the storms and the coming winter. The sea offered food. Life should have been simple.

It wasn’t. He hadn’t counted on the old woman, or the odd little boy she brought with her. He hadn’t expected to provide for nearly a dozen people.

He wasn’t prepared for the evil that came to the island. William Hill had never been afraid of the dark. He never had reason to.

He did now. Not only had the evil come.

It knew his name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael R Stark
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476183442

Michael R Stark

Trying to figure out when I started writing is like trying to decide when I started walking. The stories have always been there, rummaging around in my mind. Some went on paper. Most didn’t. I wrote my first novel when I was 22. Thankfully, I left it to the dustbin of history where it shall always remain.Imagine the grin, yes, it was that bad.As for influences on my latest story, The Island, that one has been up there banging away in my head for a long time. Parts of it were told at bedtime. Though honestly, those who heard the parts wouldn't recognize them in the story. By the time we get to the second book in this series, they will find some recognizable moments. They'll also probably be upset that the adventure turned into something of a horror story.Ahh, well, most of them are old enough now to read it for what it is.I grew up in North Carolina, which is why part of the story is set there. I’ve been to exotic parts of the world, many countries, and most states. None of them I know as well as the one I called home for most of my life. It makes it easy to write about it, and the people in it.I hope you enjoy the stories.MS

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The Island

Part 2

by

Michael R. Stark

PUBLISHED BY: Michael R. Stark on Smashwords

The Island - Part 2

Copyright © 2012 by Michael R. Stark

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the author’s written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Chapter VI - Stranded

I brought Angel in and tied her alongside the dock. Fears of clashes with tour boats had faded with news of the ban. Any craft within miles would be headed to a real port: Ocracoke, Hatteras, or south to Wilmington. With fenders in place to keep her from rubbing against the heavy wooden pilings, I set about getting ready for nightfall.

Elsie and Daniel could use the bunks aboard the boat. Bunk might have been an exaggerated term for what amounted to four inches of foam rubber laid over plywood. Still, I doubted either would be complaining by morning. I knew what it felt like to sleep aboard with water lapping at the sides and Angel rocking gently. The effect went beyond soothing and ventured into the land of the comatose. I’d probably have to drag them both out of bed come daylight.

I stretched a tarp across the back, using the boom to make a tent over the exposed cockpit. The skies looked clear enough. The wind had picked up a bit too, meaning no dew-covered seats to dry with the backside of my pants. Not that I made a habit of drying seats that way. It’s just the way life worked. No matter how much I dried them with something else, my rear ended up cold and wet. The tarp would rectify that problem. The makeshift shelter would also act as a wind-break and keep the cabin a bit warmer.

Once I had the boat secure, I dug the tent from a locker and headed for the shore. A quick search along the undergrowth at the edge of the beach revealed the small opening that Joshua and the girl had used earlier. I eyed the break suspiciously and poked around the twisted mass of dead wood and weeds. The entire shoreline looked like a perfect haven for rattlesnakes and copperheads. I might have come to the island expecting to die, but I didn’t want to do it with a pair of holes gouged into my leg and my skin rotting off.

Inside, the path led through a thicket of brush and pine, rising gently for about twenty yards. Thick, hairy vines wrapped around many of the trees. The same plant, poison ivy, also grew as a shrub underfoot. I gritted my teeth and stepped inside, edging along a tiny walkway that looked more game-trail than footpath.

I emerged into a long, wide clearing, ringed by trees and carpeted with grass that looked more like a lawn than a field. Here and there, aggressive and fast-growing weeds popped up thin, reedy heads, but for the most part, the grass rose only a few inches high. Had anyone asked me to describe the place with one word, I’d have chosen glade. Most of the clearing lay in cool shade with the dying sun dappling the far end in wide swaths of golden light. Trees loomed again in the distance, but spaced far apart and devoid of the tangled growth along the beach. Nestled in a little green nook on the left side, gravestones cast long thin shadows across the grass. Unlike modern cemeteries where the tombstones stood in perfectly aligned rows, these jutted from the ground like old and crooked teeth. A few had surrendered to time and wind and collapsed. Others leaned at crazy angles as if threatening to join their fallen brothers.

Like the town, the graveyard had been abandoned, and it showed.

Wonderful.

Not only did I get to sleep on the ground, I’d also have the pleasure of sleeping next to the dead.

The thought of eating dinner near the old cemetery carried even less appeal. I had no idea where the center of the old town might be, but given the size of the island, it couldn’t be far.

I made short work of the tent, placing it at the edge of the sandy soil between grass and trees and set about gathering firewood. The task proved easy enough. A past storm or series of them had washed tons of debris and deadwood up into the twisted tangle of trees and vines just up from the shore. I dragged in large branches, even parts of trees snapped in half by wind or water.

By the time I’d finished, the sun had drifted low on the western horizon. Cool air settled in as the shadows grew. The bite in the wind carried the promise of a chilly, if not cold night to come. Elsie and Daniel passed by at one point, on their way across the opening to the graveyard. I let them go and worked on clearing debris away from a sandy spot I intended to use for the fire. Half an hour later when they came strolling back, I had a small but warm blaze crackling and popping. Both looked cold. I waved an invitation toward the fire, but the old woman declined with a shake of her head.

When the flames died down, I scooped sand over the coals to keep them from blowing sparks into the nearby brush. After the meeting, I figured I could rake the sand away, toss on a new batch of firewood and have a roaring fire going in a fraction of the time it would take to build a new one from scratch. Satisfied that the camp was as secure and comfortable as I could make it, I headed back to the dock to both hunt out a jacket and gather up Elsie and Daniel.

To my surprise, the old woman had put together a veritable feast, with the left-over ham from lunch serving as the main course. She’d stirred up a huge bowl of potato salad to go with it. A pot full of green beans sat next to it. Behind the ham lay a plastic grocery bag half full of freshly baked bread.

I looked at the pile of food sitting in the cockpit and grinned.

I had more down there than you thought, didn’t I?

She snorted.

You got a mess down there. That’s what you have. I’ve never seen stuff thrown around with such carelessness. One thing you are not, Hill William, is organized.

I ignored the comment and pointed to the bread.

"Never mind where you found the stuff to make that. How did you make it? The whole cooking arrangement on this boat is a two-burner stove."

She rolled her eyes.

See? That’s what I’m talking about. Do you even know what a Dutch oven is?

A big pot with three legs, I countered.

Do you know how to use one?

I scratched my head. She had me there, even though I didn’t want to admit it.

The grin of triumph on her face didn’t last long. A scowl slid in to replace it. She wagged a bony finger at me.

You need to do something about your bathroom facilities.

The last word came out in exaggerated syllables like fa-cil-i-ties, all of them delivered with Elsie’s gray eyes glaring at me over the edge of her spectacles.

I quit squattin’ a long time ago, Mr. Hill.

I wasn’t expecting anyone on this trip to be squatting anywhere, I shot back.

That’s ‘cause you’re a man, she said smugly. Men never think of anyone but themselves—like this ham. You might be fine sitting around a fire gorging on a piece of meat, but most people want a bit of fixins. And most of them don’t want to crawl in a little corner to do their business either.

I opened my mouth and then promptly closed it. I’d seen how Elsie stood up to Dwight Little, using nothing more than that little finger and sharp tongue to turn a monster of a man shaking with anger into one chastised and sulking. I had no desire to end up feeling like a schoolboy again.

Daniel stood behind her. He actually looked like he might grin. I wrinkled my nose at him and gathered up as much of the food as I could carry. Ham in one hand, potato salad and bread in the other, I glanced at the boy and motioned toward the seat locker next to me.

Grab a flashlight out of there. We’ll need it coming back.

I led them up the path, through the thicket, and past my camp. Elsie noted the huge pile of wood I’d dragged in next to the tent. A thin wisp of smoke drifted up from the sand.

"It sure looks like someone is planning on staying warm tonight," she said and shot me another glaring look.

I took a deep breath, glanced up at a star forming in the darkening sky, and wondered what I’d done to get on her bad side.

Finding the others proved easy. A huge fire blazed in the middle of what turned out to be little more than a loose collection of buildings. Calling the place a town implied streets, sidewalks, signs—at least in my mind it did. Calling it a ghost town drew those same thoughts into images straight out of TV westerns. I half-expected to see hitching rails, a saloon with a weather-beaten sign creaking in the wind, even sage brush rolling down a dusty road.

In that manner, Portsmouth came off a bit disappointing. The buildings were spaced a good distance from each other. Hard-packed, sandy lanes ran between them. Too narrow to call streets, too wide to call paths, they stood out like white veins against a wide open expanse of carefully clipped grass and perfectly pruned trees. The entire village carried the same landscaped feel to it with white picket fences sectioning off yards and massive oaks dripping Spanish moss. Even with architecture a century old, the structures stood straighter and probably cleaner than the days when Portsmouth actually had residents.

The place looked like a museum, which it was. The Park Service and local historic groups not only kept up with the maintenance, but also watched over the old village during the summer months. The town carried what had to be the only ban on the entire island. Campers could set up a tent virtually anywhere on Portsmouth except here, among houses built in an era when people lived simply and the ocean both gave and took life.

I winced when I saw the fire. Any other time, any other night, the meeting might conjure up a park ranger

Reviews for The Island

[teebag180 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am writing this after reading the full series of the island because in order to really to get the full feel of this story you need to read it all!It's in 5 parts but it builds up as the story progresses. Some people may find book one - 'hard' ( I'm not sure hard is the best word) - so I will say 'different' (maybe), as the whole plot line isn't there but as I say in the next few books it really does come in to play a lot more and things really do develop more.It has a very 'narrative' kind of feel about it, (with insights into the main characters life) but with a touch of creepiness thrown in for good measure. It kind of reminded me of the way Stephen king writes, he gives you that narrative from the character with little facts and details which I personally found interesting, with little hints at what is to come so you want to read more, then things get really creepy as it progresses. I'm not sure of what happened for things to get the way they are in the book/series, but I got the impression there would be a follow up which I will definitely read which may explain further.I would highly recommend you give this a go.At this moment in time the first three books of the series are free, so if you are not hooked after those like I was, - you haven't lost out. I would strongly suggested that you please don't give up after book one, all the books are really short so if book 2 and 3 are still free - download and carry on.And if you were totally addicted to them, get book 4 and 5, they were only 0.99p in the iBook store. Bargain!If you like the writing of stephen king, creepiness, a bit of horror and storytelling give them a read...........Oh just read them anyway!

[sunnydrk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I always love a good "end of the world" book. While the Island was intriguing, I found it to be ho hum and without a strong plotline. That being said, I am still interested to see where it goes and will read the next book in the series.