FULL MOON ISLAND

by Terry Yates

  “Hey, Doc, is that a bazooka in your pants or are you happy to see me?” asked Gringo Boots smiling that cheesy “I’m from Philly. What did you expect me to say?” smile. As if on cue, most of the group broke up laughing. Kyler knew that if his cheeks hadn’t been red a minute ago, they definitely were now, but Zora didn’t stop rubbing his neck, and somehow…he didn’t know how he knew…she was smiling.

  CHAPTER 21

  Pvt. FranAnne Fulton cussed under her breath as she entered what had been the base rec room before the wind and the rain had blown out the windows and decided that the room looked too nice and had a pissing contest in it that covered every inch. The Colonel had sent her to find anything of value that they could use, whatever that was supposed to be. She was still upset at having to stay with the Dixon girl instead of being able to draw her weapon and take one of the flanks. She was as good a shot as Hawkins or Gibson, but that didn’t seem to matter with Potts. She was a girl. She could’ve understood it if Potts kept her with the group because he was so worried for a girl soldier’s safety, but she knew that that wasn’t the case. Potts didn’t like women in the army and made no bones about it. When Potts sent her to do something safe, he did it more to demean her than anything else. She was sure of it. He didn’t care about her safety. He wanted her to feel useless. Sure, a few people would say that she was nuts or that she shouldn’t get too uptight because Potts didn’t care about anyone’s safety.

  She surveyed the room. This had been one of the few places where she had ever felt good since she’d been shipped to No Name Island. She had come straight from boot camp to here. There hadn’t been many girls at Fort Hood during basic training, but at least there had been a few. She didn’t just miss the female company, but she also missed girls. FranAnne Fulton was a twenty three year old lesbian from Mt. Airy, North Carolina…or Mayberry as it was more often called. Mt. Airy was the town where Andy Griffith grew up. She was too young to remember the show when it was in production, but naturally she had seen every episode a hundred times since Mayberry was actually based on Mt. Airy. Her parents and especially her grandparents, who claimed to have gone to school with him, said that Mayberry was exactly what Mt. Airy looked like when Andy Griffith was growing up. Not much was different half a century later. Maybe several hundred more people and twenty-five or so new buildings since the thirties, but on the whole, one needed to only ignore the newer structures to see what it had been like back then.

  She and her friend Lindsey French had been the only two lesbians that they knew of at Mt. Airy High…and they weren’t even attracted to each other. People always had this idea that any two gay people will pair up with each other just because they are gay. That was moronic. She and Lindsey had just been friends who had gone their separate ways after high school. Lindsey had gone to New York while FranAnne had decided to try her luck in San Francisco where she stayed for two years, enrolling at Central Art College where she studied to be a graphic artist. She met a girl named Carla Smithson and the two moved in together two weeks later. It hadn’t been a good idea. They had hardly known each other, but FranAnne had fallen head over heels in love, and all but got down on her hands and knees and begged Carla to move in with her. Carla acquiesced, and it was nothing but bad news from day one. Carla just couldn’t be trusted by herself. She was often seen by other girls on the arms of different women. Women who were not FranAnne. They fought about it constantly, the both of them screaming at the top of their lungs. Many was the night that two police officers would show up at their apartment and ask them to keep it down or stay at separate places for a while. But they never did. They would always make up and return to their happy world…for a day or two…before all hell would break loose again. It seemed that they always picked up their fighting where they had left off before. Finally, one morning Carla was gone. No verbal goodbye…hell, not even a note. She learned later that Carla had taken up with a bull dyke named Rhonda and had moved away leaving her all alone. She tried to make it a few months without her, but she just couldn’t handle the loneliness, so she left San Francisco and moved back to Mt. Airy for a couple of months. Mayberry was just too small now. She’d seen so much, that she felt more out of place then than she had when she was growing up. She thought of suicide more than once, but someone…usually her mom, would remind her that things always looked better in the morning. Without knowing it, her mother had thwarted her early demise more than once over those dark months.

  She had never been especially close to her father. As hard as he tried sometimes, he could never really understand her. He was never the heart to heart type of father like you saw on…well, the Andy Griffith Show. The only advice her father ever gave her, she took. At twenty-two, she joined the army. She wasn’t sure why she joined, but she figured anything was better than the way life had been so far. At least in the army, she would have a steady job, benefits, retirement, and who knew…maybe she could meet some cute girl in some far off land somewhere. The possibilities seemed endless. She had gone to Ft. Hood in Texas for basic training. Being short and stocky made boot camp extra hard for her. She was the slowest person in her unit, but not the weakest. She was stronger than all four of the other girls in the unit and a couple of the men. Her low center of gravity gave her extra strength, which she had to use on occasion when they had to hand to hand combat each other or put on the football helmets and hit each other with the padded sticks, which they called sissy sticks. She wasn’t very good at using the sissy sticks. Seeing as how there were five women, she usually got teamed with a guy and it was always one who was bigger and stronger than she was who would always beat her silly, hitting her three times in the helmet with the stick before she could land one blow. Then he’d give her a few jabs to the gut, then another to the head before finally hitting her till she went down…but she never went down easy. If she got knocked down, she got back up…over and over and over again until she physically could not get back up again. At first, the Drill Sergeant would come down on any man that held back on her. As mean and shitty as some of the men could be to her and to the other women in the unit, none of them wanted to keep beating on her after they had bested her, but after awhile, he started blowing a whistle like a football coach would when she was down. She’d been knocked cold so many times that he didn’t want her to receive any brain damage…plus, he seemed to be taking a liking to her…if not to her, then to her tenacity. She didn’t give up and she guessed that impressed him. The men quit being so mean to her, too…that is until, she started getting singled out for special praise…if a drill instructor can actually give praise. Several times he put her in charge of the unit for some drill exercise or parade, and when that happened the men reverted back to their old ways. She’d hear the usual comments like “Hey! Where do lesbians hang out? At a Klondyke bar!” or “Who are you going dressed as on Halloween? Count Dykula?” She had learned to ignore the remarks. She’d had to. If she tried to fight back, it only made things worse. She’d take a swing at one of them and they would duck out of the way and say things like “Missed me! Guess I dodged the “mullet” on that one.” The girls weren’t much better, though she generally got along with them okay, but she still never really seemed to fit in.

  The only thing that FranAnne had ever really been good at in boot camp was shooting a rifle, which her grandfather had taught her when she was eleven years old. He used to take her hunting with him. She didn’t like it much. She never understood why you shot at something that couldn’t shoot back, but she did learn that she had a keen eye and a deadly aim.

  After boot camp, she was sent straight away to No Name Island. She wasn’t sure why. She was just part of the island militia that more or less guarded whatever the army and the scientists were working on down in the bunker…or the mine, as she liked to call it, for that’s what it reminded her of. She’d only gone inside the building twice, and had found out the true size of the structure. Once, she had delivered a box and got no farther than the security desk, where two very
straight and mean looking MPs stood vigil. They silently took the box from her, and waited for her to leave, without ever saying a word. The second time, she had driven a project general and what she guessed was a scientist from the helicopter landing pad to the building where she escorted them all the way to the elevator where she was dismissed, but not before seeing the inside of the elevator. When the men entered the elevator, they didn’t turn around like most people do because there was no back wall in the elevator, but another door. She thought the structure was just a medium sized three-story building, but just before the elevator doors closed, she saw at least fifteen or sixteen floor buttons on the panel. Only two buttons would’ve been needed to go up, but the other fourteen or fifteen must mean that they went down, but how far? How does an elevator go fifteen floors down on an island with an ocean below you? It didn’t make any sense. She and everyone else on the base who didn’t have clearance, which few did, just assumed that it was some secret project like the Stealth Bomber or some new heat seeking missile. Who knew? Who really cared? She didn’t. She just did her job and enjoyed it for the most part. She’d do twenty years, then retire. She’d only be in her early forties, young enough to start something new.

  She continued to shine her flashlight around the room hoping, if nothing else, to maybe find a couple of beers or something. They had plenty of food, albeit candy bars, peanuts, by now soggy potato chips, and plenty of water. They would be okay until the helicopters came back for them. Even little Kayla Dixon would be all right. Her mother had plenty of breast milk and they had plenty of rags to use as homemade diapers. At the most, she might get diaper rash or something. It was a pity about losing her little boy…especially to that…thing. She had trouble saying the word werewolf. She still couldn’t believe it and she doubted any of the rest of them could either. If it was a werewolf, she sure as shit hoped it was like the werewolves in the movies and asleep somewhere right now.

  As she moved through the room, she kicked away debris and paper that littered the floor. She made her way to the small room where the vending machine and the soda pop machine stood, usually empty…the vending company only came out about once every six weeks. Sodas and candy bars went fast on the base, the women gobbling up as many as the men.

  She shined her light around the little room and found the machines, both still standing. The room was in the center of the small little house and it had no windows, so other than some water on the floor, it still looked like it had the last time she’d been in there.

  FranAnne only got about two feet before she tripped over something that had been lying in the middle of the room. Her flashlight flew from her hand and hit the floor hard, the light going out just as she heard the glass lens smashing to bits. As she fell in the darkness, time seemed to stand still. It felt like she was falling in slow motion, dreading what she might hit when she landed, hoping not to break her jaw or her teeth or crack her head open or puncture a lung with a rib.

  She landed hard on the floor, but at least it was the floor. There had been no dangerous obstacles between her and the ground, with the exception of whatever it was that she had tripped over was still beneath her legs. Whatever it was had been soft and had not hurt her knees or cut her shins. She sat up and pulled her legs off of the object and drew them to her. FranAnne began to get an eerie feeling about what she had tripped over. As she sat, her eyes began adjusting to the darkness and a form began to take shape. Yep. It was a body. She looked at it for a moment trying to decide whether to go tell someone or check and see if the body was still alive. She didn’t want to touch it, but she knew that if she ran and got help, the first thing Potts would ask was if it was still alive… and then she’d be stuck with egg on her face. No, she’d better just buck up and check to see if it had a pulse or if it was breathing at all.

  She started to reach her hand out toward the dark figure. The body was lying on its side away from her. She just didn’t want it to be someone she knew or someone whose innards would wind up in her hand when she drew it back.

  As her eyes finally adjusted completely to the dark, she could see that the body was naked. She never really cared to see a naked man, especially a dead naked man, but she was going to have to do it. There was no way out of this one. FranAnne continued to reach her hand out to the body, feeling it shake a little at the thought of touching a corpse. The closer her hand got to it, the more it began to tremble.

  “Come on, FranAnne,” she muttered under her breath, “you can do this.”

  Just as her hand was about to touch the corpse’s back, she thought she saw it flinch. She could have sworn that its shoulder had twitched a little. She withdrew her hand for a moment, waiting to see if it twitched again. It didn’t. As a matter of fact, she didn’t think it had moved at all. She was just nervous, that was all. She was a trained professional who had prepared herself to see dead bodies at some point in her military career, and perhaps, who knew…kill someone at some point.

  The more she tried to talk herself into touching the body, the more nervous she became. She told herself over and over to relax. It was just a body, a stiff, an inanimate object, there was no life to it. Pretend it’s just a storefront mannequin like the ones you’ve seen you’re whole life. That’s it. Just pretend that it’s a mannequin, made of plastic, with a wig on top of it, waiting to be donned in the stores newest and finest regalia. Yeah, that’s the road to travel down. It’s just a mannequin. It can’t hurt you.

  She had convinced herself that her hand only had to move one or two feet and the initial shock would be over with. She was going to do it. She wasn’t about to give the Colonel any excuse to prove his lifelong theory that women didn’t belong in the military.

  She took one last breath and reached her hand out and carefully touched the man’s shoulder, her fingers pressing ever so slightly into his skin. She’d done it and it hadn’t killed her. The one little bit of shock that she did receive, was that the man’s skin was warm to the touch. She’d expected it to be ice cold, devoid of any warmth or signs of life, but it wasn’t. Maybe he’d just died. Maybe he’d just died because it had taken her so long to check him out. Whatever the case, she had to live with it. She wondered who he was. She had to roll him over to find out the identity of the man who had for a few minutes, filled her whole body with abject fear. She kept her hand on his shoulder, and reached out and put her other hand on the other shoulder in preparation to turn him over, but first she got out of her sitting position and onto her knees. She really didn’t want the body to flop over into her lap. Being on her knees gave her a little extra room between herself and the corpse. FranAnne tightly gripped the man’s shoulder with both hands and began to roll him over. He wasn’t heavy but he wasn’t light either. She let go as the momentum of his weight turned him over the rest of the way, his head flopping to the side as it did so. She peered down into the dark and tried to get a look at the face. FranAnne had to admit, that from what she could tell, he’d been a fairly handsome guy. One of those guys who had no trouble picking up straight girls and the occasional lipstick lesbian.

  She placed her hand to his neck trying to feel for a pulse like the army had taught her to do, but not before placing her hand on her own neck feeling for the best place to find a pulse. She’d found a good spot just under her jaw line between the jaw and the ear, then found the exact spot under the man’s jaw and began to search for the pulse that she didn’t really expect to find. She was pretty sure he was dead. As she moved her hand along his neck, she could feel his whiskers against her fingers, the stubble sticking her fingers like the bristles on a brush. Ah…she’d found the spot on his neck that coincided with the one on her neck and began to press down in search of a pulse. She wasn’t feeling anything, but she wasn’t sure she was doing it exactly right, so she pressed down harder. Still nothing. Okay, she thought, one more time. With this, she jabbed her fingers hard into the man’s neck…

  CHAPTER 22

  Kyler was resetting the wet splint on Micha
el Blum’s leg when he and the boy heard the scream. It had carried across the small courtyard, clear as a bell over the wind and rain causing both to jump, but not before Michael grabbed the doctor’s wrists to steady him. The boy didn’t want a third break in his leg.

  Kyler pulled away from Michael and ran to the mess hall’s open front door area where he was joined by Zora, Sgt. Cohen, Locklear O’Hearley, Gringo, and Sam Fong who had just gotten the generator to work, giving them a little light. Potts, Hawkins, and Gibson were somewhere on the base searching for supplies and attempting to find one of the big, stationary base radios that might still be working.

  “What the hell was that?” Gringo exclaimed.

  “It was a scream,” Locklear answered, “A woman’s scream.”

  Sgt. Cohen turned around to scan the room. Ariella was still with Lauren, Samantha was still with Sylvia, Shelly Dixon was asleep with her baby lying next to her as Nurse Walling stood over her, and Opal Munn was sitting on a table holding hands and talking with Wilbur, seemingly oblivious to the scream. All the females were accounted for except one.

  “It’s Pvt. Fulton,” the sergeant answered, walking through the front door and out into the rain.

  Kyler turned around towards Nurse Walling who was just making her way toward them.

  “Nurse Walling, stay here.”

  With this, he stepped out into the rain, joining the MP, the two of them scanning the area for any signs of FranAnne Fulton. Though the sky was still dark for that time of day, many of the clouds overhead had disappeared. It looked like just another rainy day although there were some very ominous looking dark clouds on the horizon.