Chapter 9: Naked Lunch

"Virgil? Virgil, come on bro, wake up."

Gordon was whispering in his ear. Why was Gordon whispering in his ear?

"Mmmmfgghff."

"Human, Virge, speak human."

With effort, Virgil raised his head and peered blearily at the demented chipmunk masquerading as his brother.

"Why are you whispering? And why are you grinning like a supervillain?"

"I'm whispering because I don't want to frighten it away. Want the weather report?" Gordon's grin was a feral thing this close, and he jigged on the spot even as he bent over Virgil's body, still in the FBS.

"Ugh." Virgil dropped his head back and closed his eyes. "Let me guess. Rain."

"Noooope."

Virgil processed that for a moment, think blinked his eyes open. "No?"

"No. It is windy, very, but it is also – well, not gonna call it sunny but it's definitely Not Rainy, which I think counts as sunshine in Scotland. There is dry. Lots of dry. You know what this means?" Gordon cackled. "Naked time!"

"What?"

Gordon poked his shoulder. "Come on. Time to get up, get naked. Rinse out these suits because I am telling you, Virge, up close and personal is not the fun thing it should be with you just now."

"You're no bed of roses yourself, little bro."

Another cackle. God, what is wrong with him?

"I know. Come on. Sea bath and freshly laundered suits." With that he was gone, and Virgil was left to drag himself out of their FBS and outside to face the day.

What he found was a blustery sky with racing clouds, but yes, they were high and light. The steep hill at the head of the island looked sharp and clear for the first time since they'd arrived, and the sudden sense of freshness was exhilarating. Virgil threw his head back and let out a whoop.

From near the gully head he heard Gordon laugh, the sound carried to him on the wind.

"You said it!" he heard Gordon yell back. As he watched, his brother pulled his suit off his shoulders and then shimmied it down to his hips, before pulling his undershirt off and waving it above his head.

Then he was gone, down to his beloved sea, and Virgil found himself following urgently, unzipping as he went.

When he made it down to the beach Gordon had already rinsed his suit and underwear and then thrown himself into the water, shouting at the cold before duck diving down beneath the surface. Virgil pushed his own suit down and off, climbing past Gordon's suit, haphazardly abandoned up toward the sheltered end of the shale and pebble beach. Then, gingerly, he stepped on the shifting surface down to where the sea foamed and surged against the shore.

"Holy shit, that's cold," Virgil gasped. He squatted to rinse his suit and underwear as Gordon had done, and then, before he could second guess himself, he put his clothes behind him, stood, and took two huge steps before dropping down, into the clear water the lighter sky had rendered a pale jade green.

It was beyond cold, and the thought of ducking his head under the water was one that horrified him. But then Gordon was coming up beside him, blowing out water and yelling for happiness, and the option of staying above water was suddenly taken from him.

"No, Gordon, wait – "

Too late. Two hands gripped him at the shoulder and suddenly he was under, his ears and nose burning with the intensity of cold.

He fought his way back to the surface, spluttering and coughing, to see Gordon staying upright in the water as effortlessly as one of his damned seals, scrubbing furiously at his hair as he did so.

"Get washing, Virgil. Gotta get out of here pretty darn quick." With that he dived back under the water to glide past him, up and onto the rocks.

"You're a freak, you know that?" Virgil grumbled. But he took Gordon's advice, rubbing at his head and bending to rinse it before following him back onto the shale beach.

Gordon dragged his suit, t-shirt and briefs up out of the gully to where he staked them out on the short, springy turf with rocks. He stood with hands on hips and glared up at the sky.

"Wind's good, but we need more sun."

"We need – Jesus, Gordon, move – we need to get into shelter."

Gordon threw his arms open to the wind, a crazed Viking with his blond beard and – was that an all-over tan?

"God, that feels good."

"It feels," Virgil glared, pushing him up back towards their shelter, "like hypothermia." His teeth had started to chatter. How could Gordon, with so much less body mass, not be feeling it? And he heard his dad's voice, and remembered a cold March day years ago, in Kansas, as they watched Gordon dive into the old millpond.

His father had watched without expression as Gordon happily climbed out of the water to throw himself back in again from the overhanging mill beam, even as cold mist rose from the water's surface, even as they stood there in jeans and sweaters. Then his father had sighed. "No sense, no feeling, son," he'd said, and in the background Gordon had shrieked and cavorted as though it were summer, and nothing but sunshine.

"You know what?" Gordon sounded as if he could muse there all day. "I don't think they'll dry well like that. I can use some of the fishing line, make a washing line up by Casa de Tracy."

"Great idea. Just hurry up."

Grinning, Gordon gathered up his wet suit and underclothes and strolled after his big brother. Virgil turned back towards the hut, hurrying, thinking of the oh-so-small warming cube and how he could possibly wrap his entire body around it. A sixth sense of brotherly protection, long honed, kicked in and he stopped and looked back.

His ridiculous brother was sitting down and attempting to urgently pull his wet IR suit back on. Virgil knew, from bitter experience, that that was an almost impossible task.

"What in the seven hells are you doing?"

"Look." Gordon motioned with his head over his shoulder, towards the sea, and a spit of rocks extending into it. For a moment, as spray hit and soared above it, Virgil couldn't see what he was looking at. Then he caught sight of it; a large container, bobbing in the water, stuck against the rocks. No more than twenty metres out.

"Salvage. Could be anything in that." Gordon grunted as the suit snagged against his skin. "God, come on, stupid suit. That could be food!"

"Sure." Virgil came back to stand shivering above him. "Or plastic key rings. Or tins of foot powder."

"No, it's gourmet delicacies in cans. Lots of cans. Gah."

It was almost pathetically heroic, watching as his brother fought against his uniform.

"Give it up, Gordon. You're never getting that back on while it's wet."

Gordon glared at him.

"This – this is something I am going to be taking up with Brains. First thing. Uniforms that can be got on no matter what."

"Good. In the meantime…"

But his idiotic brother was shaking his head.

"One quick swim and I'm out there. C'mon, Virge, I gotta try." And somehow, by contorting himself into a one-man Twister game, Gordon had managed to force the suit back onto his wet skin. "Get back inside, Virge, you'll freeze."

Infuriating.

The sun chose that moment to fully appear from behind the clouds, and once again the transformation was startling. Shadow clouds raced across the grass at his feet, but the sun lit that grass to an emerald green almost electric in colour.

Gordon whooped in response and disappeared back down to the sea.

"Oh, hell," Virgil muttered. All very well for Gordon to tell him to get safe and dry, while he frolicked in a freezing ocean. Wrapping his arms about himself and his wet suit and underclothes, and crouching down to conserve body heat, Virgil watched as Gordon soon appeared in his line of sight well out into the water, stroking sure and strong across the two metre waves. No helmet, of course.

"Scott, I don't know how you haven't murdered him years ago," Virgil muttered. The wind kept rushing past him, leaching heat, and it occurred to him he had to make a better decision; hut or gully. No way he would leave Gordon, so gully, and protection from the wind, it was.

He hurried down, feeling that vague sense of awkward self-consciousness he always did when it was daylight and he was naked and outside. Not that it happened often. He suspected Gordon would happily go naked twenty four seven if the rest of the family hadn't objected.

His naturist brother had reached the container and was obviously trying to figure out how to pull it back in with him.

Virgil put down his suit and underwear, cupped his hands and called through them, "Too heavy?"

Gordon tugged at it and it lurched off the spit of rock, dipping lower in the water but floating obediently with the force of the waves.

"It's GDF!" Gordon yelled back.

GDF? What the hell was a GDF container doing in the sea?

And Virgil's stomach lurched. He heard himself say, "No…", the sound lingering here in the shelter of the gully, echoing from the rocky sides.

A glaringly obvious answer that his whole body wanted to reject.

Another downed plane.

Gordon was struggling to bring it along with him as he turned back towards shore. The waves were too big, the container too heavy. It was an absurd battle, bound to fail, and Virgil shouted at him, the heaviness in his gut adding force to his words.

"Leave it! No point!"

Gordon looked up, and to Virgil's relief, nodded. His hand dropped away from the container.

And a massive gray-blue head rose directly in front of him.

Virgil wasn't aware of saying anything. No thought, no hesitation, his legs moving before his mind made any kind of decision. He was mid-thigh in the water before Gordon yelled at him.

"Stay there! Stay there, don't move!"

It was his operational voice, and it stopped Virgil as nothing else could have. This was Gordon in action mode, sure and hard, and Virgil knew to listen.

Waves slapped at him, hitting his chest at their peak and knocking him backwards. His vision of Gordon and the creature, the shark, god, a shark, a monster, was by turns obscured and cleared as the waves rolled between him and his brother.

"Gordon! God, Gordon, please – "

It seemed as though Gordon wasn't doing anything, just staring straight at the thing, its pointed nose and black dead eyes somehow hanging above the water as it rode the motion of the waves. And then a larger wave and the thing was gone, and Virgil had never felt fear like this in his life before, ever. His hands had left his sides and were stretched out towards his brother, and he was saying something, nothing, but his whole body was shaking, his mind a white out of frozen thought, frozen feeling, nothing but terror.

And Gordon was gone.

A scream then, something primitive and raw.

And clarity; he was going in, orders be damned.

But then, Gordon broke the surface again, and he was churning through the water, looking like he was staying in one place as the waves rose and fell but actually powering through them, covering the distance, slowly, so slowly, speed and technique trapped in a nightmare of force and counterforce.

"Come on! Come on!" Virgil took another step, another, straining forward, and a larger wave suddenly lifted Gordon almost above head height before surfing him along on its crest for an impossible ride to drop him into Virgil's arms. The force knocked Virgil down onto his ass even as he gripped Gordon in a death hold, his feet gone from under him and a terrible moment of realisation that the resurgence would drag him back out with it, into the deeper water, into the waiting shark's open mouth.

His body twisted in the wave, flailing, and he felt Gordon fighting him – no, grabbing back at him, pulling him towards the surface, his own legs kicking furiously towards the shore.

They both burst into the air at the same time, and the waves helped them, slamming them along and up onto the shale, human flotsam expelled back to the land.

Virgil felt his legs still scrabbling, still trying to get further onto shore. He didn't care, even as the rocks bit and tore at him.

"Virgil! It's okay, it's alright, we're clear. We're clear, Virge."

He stopped, his whole body rigid with tension, breath lost to the water he was choking through. He heard Gordon coughing beside him, spitting out water, groaning, muttering nonsense.

"Fuck." Gordon shook his head, his chest heaving, up on all fours and head hanging down. "That was… god, Virge, what were you doing?"

"What – what do you mean?" Virgil stopped and coughed out his own mouthful of seawater as he lifted up on his elbows, his chest feeling as if it had a band of steel around it.

"You were coming in!"

"Of course I was coming in. What did you think I was going to do?"

But Gordon wasn't looking at him, just shaking his head.

"And anyway," Virgil continued, stung, "how the hell did you get away? I thought it got you, I thought it took you down."

"So you were going to come in and join the party?"

"I thought it got you!"

"Oh, shit, Virge."

"What?"

"You just – " And then Gordon's arm was around him again, only this time he was being pulled into a wet and uncoordinated hug, and as uncomfortable as it was, he didn't resist. He was tight against Gordon's chest as he felt the harsh fight for air change to breathless giggles.

"Hoo, boy, that was intense. Naked Man to the rescue!"

"Get off," Virgil said, but a kind of light headed relief almost had him joining in with the laughter.

"Oh, shit, Virge, you've done a real number on your hands. Ooh, your knees too."

"I have? Oh." Dazedly, Virgil checked himself over, and grimaced. Blood was streaming down his arms from raw elbows, and as he tilted his head he could see more on his legs. With a big brother's tenderness and care he elbowed Gordon to release him and gingerly pushed himself to his feet.

Gordon dropped and rolled over onto his elbows, grimacing up at him.

"There's antiseptic cream in the first aid kit. We better get onto those."

"Yeah." Now that they were both out of the sea, the cold reasserted itself in Virgil's awareness. "Back to home base, come on." He reached down and helped Gordon to his feet. It didn't completely surprise him when Gordon immediately reached for another hug as they stood there.

"Thanks, bro," he heard in his ear.

He tightened his hold briefly in response, then pulled away, slapping Gordon on the back before picking up his bundled suit and underwear.

"Home. Come on."

"Yeah. Right. Wow. So, that was SharkBert."

"SharkBert?" Virgil considered his torn hands for a second before mentally shrugging and putting them to use in pulling himself up onto the turf above. The pain that shock and fear had kept at bay was beginning to claim his attention, but the overwhelming relief was still the best anaesthetic he could wish for.

"Yeah. He – or she, I can't really tell, and you know, wasn't going to go looking – he was the one I met when I met Ernie."

"Wait, what?" Virgil stopped and turned to Gordon just clearing the gully behind him. "You what now?"

"Ernie? Remember? The seal? Damn, the senility is strong in this one."

"No, I mean – you knew that shark was out there?"

"Well, yeah. I figure he was the one you thought you saw the other day."

"You knew? You knew that monster was around? And went out anyway?"

And Gordon was looking at him like he had two heads. He tilted his own to the side.

"Ye-es?"

"You let me go swimming in there too?"

"Well, what you did wasn't so much swimming as spluttering a lot – "

"You and your good outcomes. Do you realise what you put me through?"

"Yeah, I know, sorry, bro, I –"

Virgil raised a finger in warning that silenced Gordon. When he spoke, his voice was calm.

"I will, very carefully and with malice aforethought, throttle you. In your sleep. Just so you know."

There must have been something in Virgil's expression that got through to Gordon at last. He gave a nervous little laugh.

"You mad?"

"No." Virgil began walking back, avoiding the rocks where he could. "I'm naked. And cold. And, you know, plotting murder. Just giving you fair warning."

"But Bert's not that bad. He was just checking me out. That's what Great Whites do, you know, the only species that do it, put their heads above the water and have a good look. He didn't want to eat me, he's not hungry, he eats the seals. He was just saying hello. You think he remembers me? I think he remembered me."

Gordon was babbling. Gordon was nervous. Good. He should be bloody terrified.

"Hey, Virgil, come on, it all ended up alright, didn't it? That container might have had something really good in it. And – oh, shit!"

That made Virgil stop and turn back, a question on his face.

"My briefs! And shirt. I left them here – where are my briefs?"

Virgil joined in scanning the island, as far as they could see.

"Is that them over there?"

Two far distant blots of white, lying on the turf, flipping over in the wind.

Heading for the cliff edge.

"Holy shit!" And Gordon was off, racing across the island, even as the wind caught and lifted his underwear again, rolling them along towards their ultimate destruction.

And Virgil let out a genuine, deep laugh that followed him on his ridiculous chase.

Sometimes, the universe just gave you a freebie.

Shaking his head, arms wrapped around himself to try to ward off the cold, Virgil kept going towards the hut.

The adrenalin rush had proved to be an exceptional agent of distraction, but now the realisation of what Gordon found in the sea once more filled his mind. A Global Defence Force container. Those things just didn't get dropped into the ocean by mistake. There was only one likely explanation, and it was one that suggested a conclusion he just didn't want to reach.

Perhaps two days ago he would have dropped into a state of deep depression. But Virgil had found his balance again, that level of calm and practicality and strength that had always served him so well in the face of impossible dangers and grief. As Gordon said, there was nothing to be done for anyone else. It was time to think seriously about their own long term survival. It was time to accept there would be no rescue planes, no sightseers, no ornithologists; that if they had survived the plummet from the sky, then so could Scott. So could John. There was no second guessing Fate, no bargaining to be made.

For the first time, the thought of surviving here long-term didn't fill him with dread. Of course, all such thoughts depended on him persuading his brother that playing with sharks was not a good long-term strategy.

In the distance, Gordon was pouncing on his clothes. He stood up when he had them and then waved them as if they were victory flags, making Virgil chuckle again.

And why not? Life on this island was going to be a series of small struggles each day. Others had lived here, the ruins showed that. They'd died here, too, and there was no one to tell their story. Only they could know if they had found some way to laugh on their island at the edge of the world, to laugh at the hardship and the fear and the loneliness that bit harder than the wind if allowed. Laughing or crying, the gravestones claimed them in the end.

That wouldn't be the fate of the Tracy boys. No, this would be a story, no doubt wildly embellished by a certain aquanaut, told among a family safe and warm on their tropical island home, one day in the near future. Virgil set his mind to that. May as well make it a story of victories, small though they might be.

And in the meantime, unless they were both competing for the Blue Cashew Award – victory would mean a damp and cheerless shelter, warming cube, a swag, and a young brother by his side, whole and unharmed.

All things considered, Virgil would take the win.