I looked around for a place to change.
“Just do it here,” Kimberly said. She was pretty matter-of-fact about it.
I shook my head. “I can go over to the rocks…”
“Don’t be silly,” Billie said. “Just doit here. We won’t peek.”
Connie smirked. “Who’d want to?”
I sighed. Then I said, “Well, okay.”
After their backs were turned, I pulled my trunks down and got them off. It felt weird. I was naked on a beach in broad daylight, and the three gals were almost near enough to touch. They weren’t wearing much, themselves—but more than me.
I got enormous, all of a sudden. I stepped into Andrew’s shorts and pulled them up as fast as I could.
“You decent?” Billie asked.
“Almost.”
I shoved myself inside the fly and got the zipper shut. The shorts were big and loose, drooping well below my waist. But I hitched them higher and got the belt cinched.
“All set?” Billie asked.
“Uh, yeah.”
She turned around. They all did.
I bent down fast and picked up my trunks. When I straightened up, I held them in front of me.
Connie said, “Good God, Rupert.”
I shook my head. I felt as if my face might burst into flame. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
Big mistake.
“Your hard-on’s the matter, you fucking degenerate.”
“Connie!” Billie blurted.
“Well, look at him!”
“He doesn’t need you pointing it out to everyone,” Billie scolded her.
“It’s already pointing out to everyone,” Kimberly said, smiling.
I think I moaned. I think I muttered something like, “Oh, man.”
In the meantime, Kimberly’s comment had cracked Billie up. Even Connie was laughing about it.
The object of their amusement, meanwhile, was shrinking like an icicle in Hell.
I stopped trying to hide behind my trunks. “Yeah, well,” I said. “These things happen, you know?’
“Happen to you all the time,” Connie said.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Billie told me, being sort of solemn now that she’d finished laughing. “Don’t worry about it, honey.”
Honey?
Kimberly said, “Looks like the big fella’s out of commission, anyway.”
“Do we have to talk about it?” I asked, feeling awfully squirmy inside.
“You’re the one who brought it up,” Kimberly said. She gave me that smile again. That spectacular smile.
I actually laughed, myself.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Now, can we get on with things?”
“Here.” Billie tossed me Andrew’s lighter. “You’ve got the pockets.”
I dropped it into a front pocket of my shorts, and felt it way down against my thigh. “How about the knife?” I asked Kimberly.
Normally, I avoided looking at it.
This gave me an excuse, though.
It was tucked into the front of her bikini pants. The thickness of the plastic handle made the flimsy white triangle purse out. I could see bare skin down there.
Kimberly’s open right hand suddenly covered it all.
Patted it.
“I’ll hang on to the knife. It has an appointment to keep with Wesley.”
Over at the supply pile, we gathered a few items so that we’d have something to snack on. The food went into the pockets of Andrew’s shorts. (My shorts, now.) Then we gathered our weapons.
I volunteered to carry the ax.
“It’s awfully heavy,” Kimberly said.
“I can handle it.”
“Let’s take turns.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You start out with it, if you want. Just let me know when you get tired.”
“Okay.”
The ax required two hands. I wanted to have a back-up weapon, though, so I loosened my belt enough to slip a tomahawk under it, by my right hip.
Billie watched me do that, then pushed her tomahawk down the side of her pants. The waistband couldn’t take the weight. “Woops!” The pants were at about a forty-five-degree angle by the time she grabbed the weapon.
“Mom!” Connie blurted. “For Godsake!”
“Oh, calm down.” She pulled out the weapon, hooked a finger under her waistband, and corrected the slant.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
At that, Connie glared at me as if I were somehow to blame.
I just gave her a goony look and shrugged. “I wasn’t even looking,” I said. Which was a lie, and she knew it.
Billie, still determined not to carry the tomahawk in her hand, came up with the section of rope that had been around Keith’s neck. Someone had untied the hangman’s noose, so she had four or five feet of rope to work with. As all of us watched, she knotted the ends together and made a sling for her tomahawk. She slipped the loop over her head and put her right arm through it, then adjusted the rig so that the rope crossed her chest like a bandolier, the weapon hanging at her hip.
“I oughta do that,” Kimberly said.
As it turned out, Kimberly and Connie both did it. They used sections cut from the main length of the hanging rope, which we’d kept coiled with the rest of our supplies.
It took a few minutes. Worth the wait, though. They each had a spear. Would’ve taken both hands just to carry their weapons if they didn’t have the tomahawks suspended by the rope slings.
We didn’t burden ourselves with water bottles. For one thing, we wanted to travel fast and light. For another, we figured that we would never stray very far from the stream.
At last, we were ready.
Kimberly led the way. I went second. Connie followed me, and Billie took the rear.
We left the beach behind at the place where Wesley and Thelma had escaped into the jungle.
The Hunt
At first, we tried to follow the trail of Wesley’s blood. Kimberly moved slowly through the bushes, often stopping, sometimes crouching for a closer inspection.
Even though Wesley must’ve bled plenty from his chest and buttock wounds, it wasn’t easy to find the places where he’d left dabs of it behind. The jungle was so dense, in most places, that you couldn’t see for more than a few feet in any direction. Also, not a lot of sunlight made it down to our level. We spent most of our time trudging through deep, murky shadows.
We probably would’ve had no luck at all finding traces of Wesley’s blood, if Kimberly hadn’t been so
