By the time Harley and Eddie had found their way back to the cave again, stumbling through the forest with their flashlights and their tools, night had fallen, and the wind had been blowing in their faces the whole time. Even with the black wool balaclava pulled all the way down over his head, Harley’s face stung like it been slapped a thousand times.
Eddie, similarly attired, had done nothing but bitch all the way back.
Especially because their haul had been so disappointing.
The moment they staggered into the cave—about the tenth one they’d tried—Russell had been up on his feet and shouting, “What the fuck? You left me here?”
Harley, trying to get the tarp back in place, had told him to shut up, but Russell was just getting going.
“Where the fuck have you been? I wake up, and I’m ready to go, and you two assholes are nowhere around! Where did you go? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you got so damn drunk last night,” Harley said, gesturing at a few of the beer cans glittering in the glow of the Coleman lamp, “we didn’t have time for you to sober up.”
“You didn’t have time, or you didn’t want to share whatever you got? You went digging, right?” His eyes went to the shovel and pickaxe they had dropped by the mouth of the cave. “What’d you find? You holding out on me already?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, slumping in a weary heap against the wall. “We’re holding out on you.”
Harley tossed his backpack down, reached inside it and threw a string of crystal rosary beads on the ground. “That’s what we found.”
Russell picked it up, looked at the beads—apparently even he could tell they were pretty worthless—and tossed them away. “What else?”
“What else what?” Eddie said. “It took us hours just to dig up that piece of shit.”
“I don’t believe you,” Russell said, grabbing Harley’s backpack and shaking it out. A cascade of PowerBars, Tic Tacs, Chapstick, Trojans, and the like spilled out.
Harley felt his temper start to rise—this day had been bad enough already—and he was about to demand that Russell put it all back in the bag when he stopped himself. He could tell that Russell was on the verge of losing it altogether, and maybe a little drunk even now. He also knew what was really wigging him out—and it wasn’t the idea that he’d been cheated. It was having to spend the day alone, cooped up in this cave, wondering what was going on and whether or not he and Eddie were even planning to come back at all. Russell would never admit it—Harley knew that damn well—but he was having a panic attack.
After two years at Spring Creek—and several stays in solitary confinement there—Russell had lost his talent for solitude, or confinement.
“So what’s the plan then?” Russell said, looming over him but still having to stoop beneath the low roof of the cave. “Do we leave?”
“On what?” Eddie said. “Last I checked, the Kodiak’s on the rocks.”
“The skiff then.”
“In these seas?” Eddie sneered.
“Well what then? Are we gonna dig again tomorrow?”
That was the million-dollar question that Harley had been puzzling over all the way back. As he and Eddie had skirted the colony on their return, he had seen the propeller blades of the Sikorsky rising behind the stockade wall, and he had glimpsed the stark white light of electric bulbs. That guy Slater and his Coast Guard crew were settling in … but for what? If they moved into the graveyard, all he’d be able to do was wait them out.
Or, and this had occurred to him halfway back, he could wait to see if they unearthed anything of value, then steal it from them once they had. It wasn’t as if the Coast Guard thought there was anyone else on the island. Maybe, as a result, they wouldn’t take the normal security precautions. You never could tell.
“What are we eating?” Eddie said, rummaging around in the supplies. “Let’s make something good and hot.”
“Sure,” Harley said, “and while we’re at it, why don’t we hang out a sign that says we’re here? Why don’t we make a big fire, and some smoke, and maybe even attract some animals to the smell?”
Eddie, stymied, rubbed his mittened hands together and waited.
Harley crawled over to the box of canned rations, and tossed them each a couple. The ones he grabbed for himself said BEEF STROGANOFF.
Grumbling, the other two settled into their corners and dug in.