27.

And The Rock Cried Out - No Hiding Place – Phone Call – Weenie Roast – Little Talks

Dr. Thomas Mittelwerk had never seen the island with his own eyes. When the DHARMA Initiative began construction on the island in 1970, he oversaw certain changes to the project's original intent even as he worked side by side with the DeGroots. Despite his distance, he felt he knew the island's layout in his very bones. Every photograph, every report, every planted root that DHARMA had left was his to absorb. To learn from. He had taken to a kind of paternal adoption of the island, he felt. It was destined to be his; the perfect bottle for ornate study of the human condition. In his sleep, he could have sketched the contours of the island, marked the boundaries of sea and sand. He knew the faces of those who had died. He could graph the spread of the Purge protocol.

He could not understand what was going wrong.

The failed pathogen release he grasped; someone had made a grievous, expensive error. His sharp eyes had almost immediately noted the mistaken proportions of the delivery pallet. That could have been ameliorated, given time. Time was not given; just after the sight of the second ship – Hanso's ship, damn the old hermit – he had given the order for the suicide protocol. The dead could give away nothing of his aspirations. All he had to do was go to ground, to survive long enough to steal a way out. He knew the theories, saw Dr. Chang's work. If not a departing ship, then perhaps the Orchid anomaly.

But first – to hide. He knew the paths to the old cabins; the jopok had radio'd him to confirm the location. It would do for a start. Perhaps even take a hostage if necessary.

So where was the path?

He stood again at a gap of banyan and bamboo, a cruel sense of deja vu tensing his stomach. The handle of a gun felt too sweaty in his palm. It seemed he'd encountered the exact same stretch of sand at least twice so far, and ducking from view into the jungle simply led him back. That wasn't right. There was a copse that he recalled from long ago footage; a small hill, a few stands of foliage, and the path was simple. He found all of those and even a narrow, foot-driven path that seemed right, and yet his feet found their way back to the coverless view of the two distant ships.

Mittelwerk swore once, softly, and plunged again into the jungle to try his instincts once more.

. . .

Benjamin Linus trailed Hurley by a few feet, tactical baton still swaying lightly in his grasp. He had personally verified a half dozen suicided mercenaries; Bernard at the temple had since notified him of more. The worst two batches were going to be near the cabins, and the ones set to pillage the Orchid station with the scientists. He was going to have to broach the discussion of disposal shortly; the island knew only two seasons, summer and typhoon, and both were uncaring and harsh in their treatment of the dead.

Not, at least, that he had to worry about infection and plague from that vector. Still, he mechanically noted to himself. Putrescence does a thing to morale.

"We'll ask volunteers to take them to the far beach near the docks and have a bonfire, I guess. That's kinda weird and icky, too, but I don't think having Frank fly 'em out for burial's gonna work either. Maybe Hanso can take 'em? I don't know." Hurley sounded exhausted but not grieving. A brief, superstitious chill ran Ben's spine at the response to his unspoken thoughts and he shrugged it away with a grimace. Hurley knew Ben well enough by now to not need the island's whispers to guess at his businesslike handling of the morbid.

"That's a possibility. The ship hasn't made any contact yet," he reminded the protector gently. "So I'd rather not make assumptions on their behalf."

"All this crap is Hanso's problem too, though, right?"

"Yes-" Ben halted in his tracks as something creaked at the edge of the jungle not far ahead. His empty hand flashed out and grabbed Hurley's thicker arm with a firm grasp. The big man had already stopped, but he edged back at the contact. "Wait," he hissed, in a low, sibilant voice.

Ben slid past Hurley silently, not even the rustle of his pants working against him any longer. On instinct, the baton quietly snapped into readiness in his right hand. His head cocked to the side, listening for another trace of the sound. Only bugs – and a rustle of grass, twenty meters to the east. Close to the cabin paths. His lips pursed, then flashed teeth. A survivor, looking for safety. He hunched down to skulk, prepared to track this potentially last intruder.

"No."

Ben whipped his head around. Hurley was smiling at him, a little sadly. "It's the doc. Er, other doc. Crap doc, not ours. Mittelwerk guy."

"Then you should definitely keep your voice down!" Ben's blue eyes flashed. "I don't gather he's going to dissemble should he get a chance to spy us!"

"He won't. He's always wanted to be here, you know. I could tell. It's like... I looked at him?" He shifted his weight and shoved his hands into the pockets of his dirty jeans. " And the only thing he's ever really felt in his life is when he really wants or thinks he owns something. I think that's why he was so into the Hanso Foundation and stuff. He got power there; he could steal it. It's like that's what he gets off of. Taking things and making them his. And... he thought this place was his. And it's not, it's not anybody's."

Hurley swallowed and shrugged a little, looking sad. "But he's the island's now. I guess I'm sort of okay with that."

"Hugo."

"Cuz he's the sort of jerk that could talk his way out of a lot of all this if he gets out. And that'd be really, really wrong."

"Hugo." Ben collapsed the baton. "I don't understand."

"I do. It sucks. He's gonna die here and that's pretty much gonna be the end of it." He lifted his head and gave Ben a wet, teary look. "But in a way, it's sort of what he'd want. And I can't let you hurt him. Cuz you'd be hurting yourself now. That crap's done, dude. I want to help people on this island. Guess I sorta started with you without telling you. Sorry, man."

Ben glanced to either side, selected a thick, ropey banyan tree to lean against, stunned into complete silence. In the distance, a hiss of grass and the crackle of branches. He turned his head to look where there ought to be an intruder, and saw nothing, just as promised. He took in a heavy, jerky sigh and put the baton away in a deep pants pocket, and then crossed his arms over his chest. He found himself unable to look at Hurley. "I don't need help." It sounded thin in his own ears.

"You're not over your daughter, you're projecting some sort of crabby like and hate thing onto like half the gang-"

"Aggressive ambivalence." Dead flat voice.

"Sure, that. You're still looking for something to fight, though at least you're sorta helping people before you go get yourself shot up, and you've spent the last week terrified that this crap is going to lead to, I dunno, another decade of 'us vs. them' war."

"I am not terrified." He shifted against the tree.

"And worst of all, you don't even lie that great anymore. Damn, dude. That's, like, your signature role. I don't think even Bernard sounded like he was buying it today. Bernard. He's smart, but he's like as peaceful and out of it as me sometimes. Jeeze! I can't go around being honest all the time, it'll kill me."

Ben snapped his head around to frankly gawk at Hurley. The big man's expression was still weary, but he had that pudgy, joking grin that went all the way into his eyes. Unable to help himself, Ben uttered a short, sharply surprised laugh.

. . .

Hanso's people would in fact ultimately take the bodies. A small boat with a little over half a dozen passengers approached the shore of the island not long after Ben and Hurley came back to the edge of the shore. Most of them got out and sloshed their way onto the clear, clean beach with smiles on their faces – Desmond, Penelope, little Charlie, Kyra, Doc Ellis, and Richard, whose smile looked wry enough to match Ben's own. The boat's operator remained aboard, tossing a thick, industrial looking phone to Richard to bring ashore.

"They don't want to presume, which is kind of a nice change," Alpert explained to Ben's arched eyebrow. He outlined the offer to help clean up after the attack, as had been explained to him by their intermediaries in Europe, and offered Hurley the phone. "Not sure what's going on there, but someone wants to talk to you."

"'Kay. They're invited, by the way." Hurley fiddled with the heavy device. "I don't mind this time. I think it'll be alright." The phone began to buzz in his hand, causing him to look down at it with a bit of a jump. "Satellite phones again. So weird." He squinted down, looking for the right button, and found it at the base. "H'lo?"

. . .

"Good afternoon, Mr. Reyes." The voice was thickly accented; the stilted, glottal boisterousness of English words on Dutch lips. "I apologize for the additional troubles your people have encountered. It is of my view that what you have faced is detritus; the remnants of unexploded bombs my people left in our wake, as is our folly."

"You're Alvar Hanso."

"Yes." A gentle, sniffling inhale. The voice seemed very old. "I should ask forgiveness of you as I might have your predecessor, but I have heard that the island holds no ideas of Gods now. Only humans. Regardless, I have regrets."

"I saw all that stuff back in the day, with the Initiative. Some of 'em meant well. I think you did."

"There are vast pamphlets written about the brick and mortar nature of the cobblestones on the road to hell."

Hurley curled his hand around the phone, absorbing that. He looked up at the small knot of rescues talking among themselves at the edge of the sea and sand. A noise drifted to him and he looked further north to see Krish hobbling slowly between the supports of both Tsuchi and Renee Kircher. Rose trailed behind with others yet in tow, her hand in Bernard's slightly larger one. They were laughing. Krish looked worn; more exhausted than ever, but he still managed a wink and a grin for Kyra when she looked over to catch his eye.

"For what it's worth sir, I don't think we got onto that road. Isn't there also a bunch of stuff about how journeys never really end and that all the important stuff is found along it while you go?"

A little laugh came from the other end of the line, distant and tinny. "There is, yes."

"Then it can't ever really be a road to hell, cuz that's an ending." Rose caught his eye and he gave her a smile and a thumb's up gesture. "We're just getting started around here."

There was a long, not uncompanionable silence from the other end. "My people will offer you whatever assistance you need and will be happy to ferry any home whom might wish the trip. You have assurances that the remaining loose ends beyond the island are well in hand. I thank your Mr. Alpert for certain advice in these matters."

"I appreciate that. And hey, you know. Time's not out yet. You might visit here yourself sometime. Call that an invitation. All the loose ends."

There was a long, hearty laugh. "Perhaps someday. Good luck, Mr. Reyes. Thank you for the talk."

. . .

Ben watched Hurley look thoughtfully at the phone for several long moments. "You still at a loss over what to do next?"

"Yeah, dude. Even more now, I think."

"I have an idea." Hurley looked up at him, at the crooked grin. "Weenie roast."

Hurley began to laugh. "...You're frickin' unreal sometimes."

"And occasionally serious. I don't think we're gonna scare up a couple dozen servings of foie gras, camembert on toast points, and roast pheasant for the guests."

. . .

"No shit, this is an honest to god weenie roast. Whose idea was this?" Kyra hopped up on her toes to look over Krish's shoulder at the roasting pit near the island docks. "I think this is the weirdest thing I've seen." Krish turned very slowly to look down at her with a long, witheringly disbelieving look. "In, like, the last five hours. Before that it was waiting for velociraptors. I'm still kinda waiting for those."

"I've heard there's a great story involving a polar bear," Krish supplied by way of response.

"Not as good. Raptors!" She put her hands into claw shapes and grr'd at him. He shook his head and looked at the gathering.

Over thirty men and women disembarked Hanso's unnamed ship to visit for supper. A handful more had apparently volunteered to stay aboard and ensure they had rigged the Helgus Antonius properly for towing. Ben and Hurley were talking to the ship's captain, animated gestures about the series of possible events waiting for the ship and its morbid cargo.

Kyra guided Krish – still fragile from the episode near the heart of the island – to a picnic table near the pit and piled four hot dogs and some island-made kettle chips onto a plate with some epicurean effort. "You made a couple for me?" Krish asked her with an arched eyebrow.

"Fuck no, man. I'm starving. Your hands work fine." She shrugged and waited for him. "You said you had something you wanted to talk about." She watched him pause for a second.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do." He glanced up and smiled. "You're actually really happy right now."

She put her plate down and looked around the gathering, caught Ellis's eye for a moment. "I actually really am. You know, most of the times, I get a job and we get through it, and someone's got the worst of it. People that don't deserve it, I suppose, though I know if I really sit and think through this, this wasn't that great, either. I mean, people died today. That's still sort of..." She shrugged, picked up one of the dogs and dipped it into some stray relish.

"You feel like this was still more 'right'."

"And I guess I don't hate my role in it for a change. I mean, look at that chick and her husband." She jutted her chin towards the Humes. "They're disgusting. It's cute."

"That's good. That's the core of what you need; knowing what you do things for."

"Ah, trouble's over, so we're back to meditation class?" She grinned up at him, lopsidedly, then sobered. Krish was smiling back, but it was a peaceful, distant smile. "What? Come on, what is it?"

"I want to ask you a favor." He shrugged a little. "I think it might be unfairly hard, but you're who I'd ask."

Kyra tilted her head and licked a dollop of ketchup off her finger, beginning to feel unsettled. "Okay."

"Let me tell you, first. And why." He took a long, slow swallow, and did.