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Somewhat to my surprise, given the uncomfortable conditions, I fell quickly asleep. And I dreamed. I dreamed of things unseen in shadow, things which in my dream woke to my presence, and begin to gather near....
I woke with a start, to find Laughlin leaning close over me, his hand over my mouth. After a moment of panic, I realized that someone was knocking at the door.
"You were having a nightmare," Laughlin whispered. "It's the maid. Do you want to tell her you're here?"
Judging by the light, it was dawn, which was more than a little early for a maid. I shook my head, whispering, "Let's see what she does."
After a moment, I could hear the jingle of the maid's keys in the lock. Gripping my knife in one hand, I looked underneath the couch towards the door, trying to get an idea of how many people came in, and whether they were male or female. I saw the bare legs of one female maid enter the room. Unfortunately, instead of going towards the bedroom, she was heading in our direction, which meant she would spot us behind the couch at any moment. I gave Laughlin a questioning look, and feeling like a complete idiot, made a motion on my forehead like the one he'd used in the hotel bathroom, hoping he could do whatever he'd done there again. No such luck. Laughlin shook his head and shrugged an apology. So much for 'magic.'
Putting on my best hung-over expression, and keeping the hand with the knife out of sight, I wrapped my left arm over the back of the couch and pulled myself up enough to peer blearily over the top. "Who'z there? What time is it?"
Despite all appearances of being tired and slow, I was, of course, prepared to duck back under cover if the woman was armed with anything dangerous. As it turns out, she was armed with a large load of towels.
"Oh!" she cried, startled by my appearance from behind the couch. "I...knock," she stammered out in broken English.
The bare-chested Dr. Laughlin rose beside me and said, "Who's there, dear?"
The girl blushed red and said, "I sorry!" She deposited the towels on the rumpled bed and left quickly.
I got to my feet, locked the door, then plopped down on the couch and giggled. "Oh my. That poor girl. I think we thoroughly embarrassed her."
Laughlin grinned. "I think we're safe for the moment. Probably the cult and Stroeker are too busy with each other to give a few nosy tourists any trouble. I should go get some pants."
I nodded, although I was really starting to grow fond of the towel. "I suppose you're right. That was rather early for the maid to be by, though. It's what, barely dawn? Why on earth would she be coming by at this hour?"
"Maybe there's a bomb in the towels," he said. Then, with a look of sudden concern, he turned back to the towels. I found myself examining them as well, a feeling of unease going through me. There couldn't really be a bomb in them, could there? The towels were large, fluffy resort-style bath towels, and there was a largish stack of them. They did not appear to be ticking or anything like that. I had no training in demolitions, but I knew that the girl didn't have any time to set a timer, and if she didn't know for sure that I was in the cabana, a bomb with a pre-set timer would be a bad idea. More likely it would be a motion sensor. Although if it was a motion sensor, I doubt the girl would have dropped them on the bed as quickly as she did. Besides, how many Tongan natives had access to bomb-making materials? Where would it come from? It was probably just a stack of towels, and our recent adventures were just making us paranoid. Still...wouldn't we feel foolish if it was and we didn't check?
"Get out," Laughlin said, apparently come to a similar conclusion. "Only one of us should be here, and you need to track down Stroeker."
I shook my head. "No way in hell am I leaving a civilian behind to deal with a potential bomb. Look, if it is a bomb, it can't be on a timer, or they couldn't be sure they'd get us. Which means it's likely a motion sensor, or maybe a remote detonator. Either way, the best thing is to get it out of here, put it far enough away that it can't hurt us and then throw rocks at it or something. If the maid carried it in, we should be able to carry it out, so long as we're careful." I moved towards the bed, with the intention of picking the towels up together...carefully...and moving them outside. Maybe throwing them in the ocean. Just to be sure.
Unhappy, Laughlin said, "Hold on, then." He traced another symbol on my forehead, and I felt an odd sensation travel down and across my body, like the rapid spreading of a cool gel that coated me from head to toe, and very slightly numbed my lips and fingers.
"Okay, now," he said, standing behind me.
As I gingerly picked up the towels, there was a sudden movement and a sharp pain in my left wrist. A snake had bit me out of the towels, then retreated rapidly. I let out a yelp, but kept moving quickly. I still wanted to get the towels out of the cabana as quickly as possible, so the snake didn't get loose and bite Laughlin...or go into hiding somewhere. "Shit! I just got snake bit," I announced. "Damn!" And I was willing to bet the damn thing was poisonous. How the hell had the maid managed to carry the towels without getting bitten herself?
I made it out of the cabana without any difficulty and put the towels down on an open stretch of beach. I moved back a bit and threw a few rocks at the pile, then grabbed a nearby stick, intending to use it to pick the towels apart in an effort to uncover the snake. I was hoping to capture the thing in case the hospital needed it to make an anti-venom. I was just attempting to recall whether it needed to be alive for that, when Laughlin spoke up.
"You're not poisoned," he said. "Look."
I looked at my wrist, and although there were two red marks where the snake's fangs had struck me, the skin was not broken. I looked dumbfounded at my arm for a moment, then muttered, "Good. That means I can kill the damn thing." I continued poking at the towels with the stick until it stuck its head out again, at which point I impaled it with my knife.
"Well, that answers our questions about the cult," Laughlin said. "And it's going to make going back to my cabana a bit more interesting."
"Oh yes. It's probably too much to hope that they figured the snake at my place would take care of the both of us."
"We surprised the girl. They probably didn't know we were together. They do now."
I pulled my knife out of the snake's body and wiped it clean in the sand, trying to act nonchalant about nearly being killed for the second time in two days. "True. Which means there's probably an equally nasty surprise waiting at your place, too." I began to dig a small hole in the sand. "Which leaves us with a very interesting question. Just what the hell have we stumbled into? Obviously it has something to do with that island, but what?"
"It obviously has to do with those statues and cult artifacts. From what we heard, the locals went nuts when they discovered that Stroeker was stealing them. Which means they were cultists. If every single one of his picked workers turned out to be cultists, the odds are good that most of the islanders are, which means we can't really afford to trust any of them. So. That leaves us with two questions: where is Stroeker and how was he going to get them off the island? Alternatively, we could just get on the next plane out of here," he offered with an ironic grin that told me he didn't mean it. Besides, the next plane was on Monday, two days from now, and was the one we were both scheduled to leave on anyway.
"I need some things I left in my rooms, like my passport, for one," Laughlin continued. "Why don't we deal with that and then see if any ships have shown up recently? There's a radar station at the airfield."
"All right. Just let me finish with this." I pushed the snake's body into the hole, then filled it in again, smoothing the edges so that it didn't stand out. Then I picked up the towels and grinned. "Let's leave them wondering whether or not we've sprung their trap yet."
I headed back into the cabana with the towels, which I refolded and placed back on the bed. Then I packed my shoulder bag with my cash, passport, badge, sunglasses, knife, lockpicks and flashlight, and put on my shoes. I grabbed the binoculars and camera I had bought for tourist cover, then looked the room over for anything else I thought I might need. Satisfied, I turned to Laughlin and said, "All right, I'm set. Let's check out your place. I assume you still have that item of Stroeker's that I gave you last night?"
He smiled at this, since he was still only wearing a towel. "It's on the couch." He got dressed in his still-wet clothing while I stowed the gun in my bag. Then I went to each of the windows, plucked a hair or two from my head, and laid them across the sill. The idea being that if someone came in through the window, the hair would be knocked off...that was the theory, anyway. I did the same with the door on the outside, then turned to Laughlin. "Lead on, professor."
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Last modified on August 21, 2002 by Kris Fazzari.