Thunder in paradise (part 6)

 As Carol and Robbie awoke from their slumber, the first thing that Robbie noticed is that Carol was holding his hand. Afraid to move in fear of spooking her, he waited until her eyes opened and they fell into a kiss under the exotic sunrise.

‘Good morning,’ Carol said and he drew the outline of the abstract tattoo on her neck. The fact that she had tattoos all over her, and piercings everywhere possible, never turned Robbie off. Yes, he wanted to be with Nicola, but its Carol who is giving him what he really wanted…a family.

It was Carol whose head rose from the white, hot sand, her smile turning into terror as the bloody corpse of Sean lay beside them. Right there and then it was more than just them, their 30 second blisses tainted by the sombre shade of scarlet tattooed in the sand. Robbie followed her gaze and staggered backwards like a crab.

When Robbie bumped into Carol, he jumped to his feet.

‘It was you! He accused.

‘No way man, it has to be you!’

They both suspected each other when Robbie wagged his index finger in the air….’Pablo!’

The pair high tailed it over to the boat house, the white sand becoming hot in the morning sun, where Pablo’s ropes that bound him lay empty.

‘The little shit!’ Robbie was spitting with rage like oil on a hot griddle. ‘So he’s responsible for all those people dying after we took him in when no one else would. To think,’ Robbie paused, ‘I was going to offer him a room in my house to rent so as he wouldn’t have had to live in the shelter anymore!’

Carol was silent, outraged as she had helped him with his English and spent so much extra time with the guy.

‘We need to find him! We need to find him before he finds us!’ Carol said with fear in her tone.

‘Agreed, lets stick together though ok,’ Robbie asked, ‘I don’t want to find you dead too!’ he said and kissed her.

‘Agreed’ Carol nodded licking her lips which were dry, even dryer from the kiss. ‘Where should we look first?’ she asked.

‘I’ve a feeling he’s in the forest!’ Robbie deduced as that would be where he would hide.

‘The forest it is then!’ Carol followed Robbie’s lead.

Before leaving the boat house, Robbie searched for a weapon to arm himself and protect Carol and their unborn child. He found a machete, ‘that should do the trick!’ he nodded and led Carol into the forest.

They followed the only set of footprints in the sand and took it from there. When they reached the forest, they looked for broken branches and footprints in the soil, anything to lead them to the whereabouts of Pablo.

Carol paused at an unusually big tree, the last of the footprints ending in front of it. She tapped Robbie on the shoulder and pointed upward. He nodded and gave her the machete before beginning to climb the unusually thick trunk. He was like a monkey, as though climbing trees came second nature to him.

When he got to the topmost point, Robbie looked towards one of the branches and scream, ‘found him!’ There was the snivelling monkey the white of his eyes showing. ‘No, I not, I not kill!’ he said as Robbie escorted him down the tree.

So, there the three of them stood, each swearing blind that they weren’t the murderer when Carol had enough and swung the machete in the direction of poor Pablo. She went at him with rage Robbie had never seen. She swung that machete and eviscerated Pablo like it was all in a day’s work to her. Robbie just stood there open mouthed.

‘It was you? All this time you have been killing all of our friends and work colleagues?’ he asked the blood thirsty woman in front of him.

She brushed the hair out of her eyes, smearing blood onto her face and smiled and winked at him as he stood there dumbfounded, ‘yup!’

‘But why?’

‘Well, being the receptionist,’ Carol began ‘I had my tongue in Mike’s ear. I told him that the team needed to regroup for the good of the firm. I was the one who put the brochures in front of him and heavily promoted Mnemba as I knew, from doing my homework, that it was where I would bring a group of people if I had wanted to kill them all.’

‘Why though?’

‘To get to you, my love!’

Robbie gasped, he couldn’t think as to why she would want him gone, they were about to bring a child into the world for god’s sake!

‘But why? What did I ever do to you?’

‘You are using me as a human incubator!’ she began, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand as she let that fact seep in. ‘You never wanted me! You wanted Nicola. I’m just a womb to you, giving you something she wouldn’t!’

‘Look I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like that but I can guarantee that I am going to be there for that child through thick and thin no matter what!’

‘Exactly,’ Carol pointed the machete at him unbeknownst to herself. ‘I already have one baby daddy in my life and he gives me hell so there is no way on this earth that I was going to bring another child into this world out of wedlock just to be berated by their father!’

‘So,’ Robbie staggered backwards tripping over some loose tree roots, ‘you killed six other people just to get to me?’ he said looking at the point of the machete in his face.

She smiled and replied, ‘well, seven if you count the tour guide!’ her grin growing bigger than ever.

Robbie was scared for his life and swallowed hard. ‘You killed Lucas?’ he asked with a shaky voice.

‘I had to get ye all thinking it was him so that the murders seemed genuine.’

‘How do you mean genuine? They were murders, there’s nothing that can call that anything but genuine!’

‘True!’ she let out a laugh that would have turned anyone’s stomach keeping the machete pointed in Robbie’s face.

‘And you don’t feel…. feel bad about it?’ Robbie stuttered, his bladder giving way.

‘Ah now c’mon!’ she said as he blushed red as his khaki green shorts became visibly wet.

‘I’m sorry!’ he said.

‘You should be!’ she answered and cackled once more, her derisively antagonistic laugh echoed through the empty island, reverberating off of every tree.

Robbie couldn’t see what was so funny! He looked at her and didn’t recognise the woman he had woken up with barely an hour ago. ‘She must have a screw loose!’ he said in his head before asking about the baby.

‘If you kill me, it’ll have no father!’ he said gesticulating towards her stomach.

She waved the machete about as she answered, ‘do you really think now that I was going to let you of all people have a say in my child’s life?’

He couldn’t grasp the ‘of all people’ bit.

‘You could have said it wasn’t mine!’ he was really clutching at straws now. ‘You still can, no one except for those in the office know your pregnant. I sure as hell didn’t tell anyone!’

‘What!’ she screamed, ‘what do you mean sure as hell didn’t?’

‘Well I heard you have to wait three months and the fact that its out of wedlock would kill my parents!’ he said apologetically, shielding his eyes from the diamond glare that was hitting the machete through the trees.

‘What are you going to tell everyone?’ he asked referring to the situation they were in.

‘I’m going to tell them that you were the killer and that I had two choices, kill or be killed.’

‘So eight fly off and only one comes home?’

‘Exactly!’ she smiled, ‘and you have killed before when you were on the force, so what’s to say you didn’t devolve into a murderous rampage?’

‘I never killed that boy!’ Robbie said defensively, ‘I simply took my eye off of him for a second and the gun went off in his hand!’

‘Did you cry afterwards?’ she asked smiling sadistically.

‘Yes,’ Robbie admitted, ‘for years!’

‘Then that’s the difference between you and me!’ Carol explained, ‘I enjoyed taking their lives. It was like a gift from God seeing the life extinguish behind their eyes. Now Mike, he was a tough one because he was so strong, but I persevered and finished him good.’ She said, the whites of her eyes abnormally big. She looked like a daemon possessed.

As she was looking into the abyss, Robbie saw his chance and jumped up and dived for the machete. There was a struggle and then a loud moan. She looked at her hand and saw the fresh crimson liquid that was blood on it. She coughed and the blood spurted out of her mouth like a volcano slowly erupting. She looked down and saw the blade stuck in her gut. She fell onto the soft soil and managed to get the strength to spit out some residual blood and smiled, Robbie horrified at the fact he was now responsible for the death of his unborn child as the machete was firmly lodged in her stomach. Carol died laughing and when the light from her eyes vanished, Robbie forcibly closed them, realising that he was never going to be able to get over the death of two children by his hand, whether intentional or not.

Out of desperation, Robbie pulled the machete out of Carol, the blood seeping from her body at an alarming rate, and slit his throat with it.

Before doing so he thought long and hard. He knew the boat to the mainland was coming later that day and there were eight bodies to explain. He knew that even though his child, their child, was still only a tiny foetus that he will never be able to look at himself in the mirror again and not see the little one hit all the milestones beside him…. their first steps…. their first day of school…. their wedding. These were all things that he was going to miss and he just couldn’t experience that pain, so ……

 

Later that day the clean up crew came to the island trying to make it habitable for the next group who were renting it. They were faced with eight bloody corpses and couldn’t find Lucas for love nor money…well until the tide went out. He had been hit over the head and tied to a pole of the boat house that was only visible at low tide. Some of the bigger fish from the reef had gotten to him.

 

No one will ever know what happened on the island of Mnemba over the course of those three days except the law firm of Reid and associates none of whom lived to tell the tale.