Day 36: The Hotel Tango: Midmorning
Cody Jackson couldn't quite suppress a shudder as he and the four others stood looking at the crumbling shell of the Hotel Tango. One would never guess by looking at the decayed building the host of monstrous atrocities that had been committed there by the late Captain Robert "Bob" Russell against seven teenagers , lost in the jungle due to a airplane "crash". An accident that was in all likelihood as thoroughly planned out by the deranged captain as his sexual humiliation of the captives. As Jackson looked at the building, he felt a faint touch on his left shoulder and turned his head to look into the dark eyes of Melissa Wu, a look of concern on her attractive Amerasian face as she quietly asked:
" Are you sure you're ready for this Cody ? There's enough of us here that you really don't have to go in…", her voice trailed off as she waited for his answer. Taking a deep breath, then letting it out slowly, broad shoulders slumping, Jackson replied in a husky voice:
" I'll never be ready to go in that hellhole again. But I have to, for the memories of the others and because I can't lead the others if I'm afraid of where I'm leading them."
Withdrawing her hand from his shoulder, Mel sighed softly, " I guess we need to get it over with then." She took Jackson's hand in hers as the tall young man addressed the rest of the group.
" Ok guys," he began, pointing at each as he spoke , " Eric, you and I will go and see if we can disconnect the generator, Mel, gather up any medical supplies that idiot Russell may have left behind. Daley, you and Lex have the most important job; figuring out where he stashed the food he had. It'll be a lot easier on us, trying to make this trip, if we have a food supply that we don't have to eat or let spoil in just a day or two. Let's go ahead and get started; I really don't want to be within a mile of this place after dark, Mel and Eric probably feel the same way." With that, he waved Eric McGorrill over to him and they went left, towards the maintenance area of the old building.
" How you holdin' up Chief ?" Eric asked, absently adjusting the ever present straw hat on his ginger brown hair, reaching out to briefly touch Cody's shoulder, silently as he noticed the trembling in his own hand. Damn, am I ever gonna get used to this?! It's been almost a week now and I still get so nervous around him I nearly puke! I'm not scared of Cody, I Love him. It's just such a bizarre situation and this is the first time we've done anything alone since we escaped from here.
As if sensing Eric's thoughts, Jackson spoke to him, " Calm down. I swear, you're even more nervous than I am," a slight smile flickering across his attractive face. " I haven't forgotten what Mel and I told you. There just hasn't been time to be with either of you since that day. We have been kinda busy, y'know." Eric nodded in wry acknowledgment, busy was barely adequate to describe the level of activity since their encapturement, escape, the horrendous battle on the beach, dealing with their injuries and planning how to escape to yet another island, albeit on with a hope of being able to communicate with the outside world.
" Yeah, you have a point there," Eric replied, a wry smile on his face as he walked alongside his companion, "if we've been anything in the last week, it's definitely been busy." And indeed the seven surviving castaways had been very busy preparing their plans to escape to another island. It would have been difficult enough at full capability, but Eric and Jackson were both still weakened by the withdrawal effects of the drug Subversion and Nathan McHugh was only just starting to recover from his concussion dealt by the insane dead pilot, Captain Russell. The others were still surreptitiously watching the three older boys and to a lesser extent, Melissa Wu as well, as she had also been tormented by the dead man. After a few minutes walk around the decayed structure, the two teens were at the small maintenance shack for the decrepit Hotel Tango, the crumbling wooden shed visibly swaying in the tropic breeze. Nervously , Jackson opened the rusty door up, wincing as the elderly hinges screeched in protest.
" Well, what do you think Chief," Eric asked, looking over the taller young mans' shoulder into the gloomy shed, "is it small enough for us to move or is it another old hunkof junk like everything else here at this damn place ?"
" Well, they," he said , stressing the THEY, " are both kinda on the dinky side actually." came the calm baritone reply. " Look for yourself." he said, stepping back so Eric could see the shacks contents clearly.
" What do you mean …" Eric started , the dropped his voice for a moment in surprise for , just as Jackson had said, there were two smallish generators, both relatively new , sitting on the floor, with a trio of kerosene filled drums surrounding them. His voice nearly broke as he exclaimed: " Two of them? That psycho had TWO generators here?! What was he planning to do, stay here forever with us as his fucking sex slaves ?" he said in mixed anger and amazement.
Apparently that was his plan, Jackson thought to himself, carefully not saying it aloud to keep Eric from getting even more worked up. He was excitable at the best of times. The one thing Jackson didn't want right this minute was to have to calm Eric down, not when being here had his own nerves as tightly wound as they could possibly be. Aloud, he said:
" No time to try to figure that idiot pilot now , let's see if we can get these generators and the barrels moved around front. There's a couple of old gas cans by where the rowboat was burned that we may be able to use. We could take one with us when me and you go tomorrow to get Nathan and Taylor up here with the rest of us; it'd be nice to have fuel for a signal fire at night while we travel back and forth, he explained to the nodding Eric.
"It would be nice at that," Eric agreed , adding " I hope the others are having as much luck finding Cap'n Chaos's scraps as we are." He glanced towards the far side of the Hotel Tango for a moment before he and Jackson began to unravel the nest of wires and connections.
Three hours later, Eric Jeremy MaGorrill's hopes had been fulfilled as the five young people all met for their lunch in front of the ruins, a sizable amount of recovered materials now in front of them. Each of the others was giving their progress reports to Jackson as they ate a humble meal of water, bananas and a unusually large fish Jackson had caught that morning .
" He had to have been ripping off people for at least a couple of years, judging by some of the expiration dates on some of the food Lex and I found," redhaired Daley Marin was saying in between sips of water, " some of it has already expired, but Lex and I got about three months worth of food that should be good for anywhere from five to twelve months before it hits its out dates. That includes," she said with a grin, "over thirty MREs."
" That's great Daley," Jackson said sincerely, " if we get a boat built, we'll need food we don't have to cook. Good job, both of you." he said, smiling at Lex, who hugged his stepsister as Jackson turned to the strikingly attractive Melissa, sitting with a expectant look on her tanned face as he asked her for her news.
" Like Daley said, Russell must have been doing this for a while, because I had to leave at least half of the medical supplies I found alone just because they were out of date. However", she said, flashing her white teeth in a blinding smile, " what wasn't out of date included nearly three times the meds we had in our total survival gear from both planes, not just ours. I even found transfusion kits and actual surgical tools in two cases. If we do have an accident, at least we'll have enough supplies to have a chance at helping anyone out." She looked at Jackson with her dark eyes and asked the question on everyone mind. " What's next ?"
" Ok, we'll spend the next couple of hours getting everything squared away in the section of the Tango Ian was in; it's the soundest. After that, Eric and I will take the tent and we'll have about four hours of daylight to get started towards Taylor and Nathan. With any luck, we should get there at least three hours before dark tomorrow. Give us about two to three days, then we'll all be back together as one big group and we can start working on the boat, if Lex is ready to," he said, eying the young genius.
" I'm already getting the design worked up in my head, after seeing the remains of the burned boat. It'll be a lot of work though," he warned.
"Who's afraid of hard work ? " came Eric's petulant reply.
It took him thirty seconds to realize why everyone started laughing uproariously. Then he joined in himself with a rueful grin.
It took two minutes for the laughter to quit echoing in the jungle.