“Got any questions, shoot,” Tom said.
“What’s with the door?” Josh asked.
Tom looked amused. Apparently he had wondered the same thing. “I guess the guy who designed the place was trying to do something new. It gives the Tower three separate, private floors, so it kinda works. What do you think?”
“The door’s a little heavy, but it looks pretty cool.”
“That’s what I said.” Another juice-stained grin. “What do you think of the island so far?”
“It’s more than we thought it would be. Which is good. It’s really good.”
“Wait till dinner. Al cooks a mean fish.”
“We’re all looking forward to it. We’ve been eating nothing but canned fruits and stale chips for the last eight months.”
Tom chuckled. “Yeah, I can see how fresh fish will taste really good after that.” Tom tossed the empty bag into a nearby trash bin. He stood up and glanced down at his stained pants. “I’m gonna go find that baking soda now. Stay as long as you like, kid.”
Josh watched Tom come out from behind the door, then start down the stairs. He thought Tom was gone and started to turn back toward the window when the big man stuck his head back up through the opening.
“Hey,” Tom said. “That girl. The blonde. She taken?”
“You mean Gaby?”
“I don’t know, is that her name? She’s a looker, huh? I mean, the other girls, too, but that one. Wow.”
“Yeah,” Josh said, and thought, Asshole.
“How old is she? Seventeen?”
“Eighteen.”
“Not that it matters,” Tom smiled. “It’s not like there are statutory rape laws anymore, am I right?”
After loitering around the Tower for a few more minutes, mostly to make sure Tom was gone before he went back down the stairs, Josh continued his tour of the island.
He was still trying to shake off his encounter with Tom. It was unsettling, more so because the man didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with lusting after Gaby in front of him. In Josh’s experience, what guys said was usually the least objectionable thing about how they really thought.
What an asshole.
Josh pushed it out of his mind and continued along the cobblestone path.
The Kilbrew Hotel and Resorts was confined almost entirely to the east side of the island, with nearly the entire western half covered in thick vegetation and sprouting trees. Obviously the developers had plans for this half of the island, too, but had never gotten around to it. They weren’t really going to leave an entire half unclaimed, were they?
He walked aimlessly for a while, eventually stumbling across a big, gray concrete building. It was an ugly thing, two stories high, with long white poles sticking up along the flat roof like skinny metal limbs. The building was surrounded by hurricane fencing, including a padlocked front gate. Electrical coils extended out from the building, vanishing underground. There was a small, almost insignificant shack next to it with a steel door.
He could hear a persistent humming noise coming from inside the building, and knew right away that this was where the island got its power and where all those solar panels delivered the sunlight they stored all day to be processed into electricity. There was a big generator somewhere inside the building, doing all the work.
A sign read: “Power Station.”
Josh walked around the building, taking it all in, until his teeth started chattering from the noise. He found the cobblestone pathway again and followed it south, all the way back down to the beach, where hard rock gave way to soft, mushy sand.
He was about to return to the hotel when he saw Debra farther down the beach. She was pulling a casting net out of the water slowly. When he got closer, he saw that the net was full of fish.
“Wow, that’s a lot,” he shouted down the beach at her.
Debra gave him a big grin before plopping the net into a big, aluminum bucket. She jerked on the net and the fish fell out, sloshing and thrashing for their lives. Josh didn’t know his fish, but it looked like there were at least a dozen different species, most of them as big as his arm.
“This is nothing,” Debra said. “Wait until next year. I’m going to need two people just to pull this net out then. Used to be, this lake was full of fishermen, taking fish out of the water as fast as they could spawn. Now, you can’t throw a rock in there without conking a dozen fish on the head.”
Josh grinned at the image.
“Good for us,” Debra continued. “As long as you’re a fan of fish, anyway, because we’re never going to run out of them. Ever.”
Josh did like fish, though he wasn’t sure if he liked them that much. He supposed he would have to get used to it. Hell, it beat running around abandoned cities looking for canned goods, anyway.
He caught Debra sneaking a look at his face, but unlike Tom, she was too polite to come right out and say anything about it.
“Is it hard to throw that thing?” he asked, watching as she assembled pieces of the net along her right arm to cast again.
“Nah. It’s all in the arms. Here, I’ll show you.”
She walked back to the water’s edge and fluidly tossed the net out. It looked like a spreading spider-web, expanding before falling into the water and dipping underneath the surface.
“The trick is to give it time,” Debra said. “Usually you need to know your terrain when you’re casting. If you’re doing it from the shore and you know there are rocks or other things it could get snagged on nearby, you pull it up faster. Here, though, it’s pretty much just sand below, so I’m going to let it sink all the way to the bottom to get maximum coverage.”
She started to pull, and once again the net was teeming with fish.
“Voila,” Debra said. Instead of throwing the fish into the bucket with the others, Debra pulled a line and the net opened up. Right away, fish began making their escape back into the lake. “We already have more than enough for today, so these lucky suckers get a reprieve.”
“We can’t just put them all in the freezer for later?” he asked.
“Sure we can, but fish are always better fresh. Besides, they’re not going anywhere. As far as I know, the creatures don’t like seafood.” She hiked the net, now in a tight and neat bundle the size of his head, over her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here. I was wondering how I was going to get all this fish back to the hotel. I usually don’t take this many back with me, but since we have a few extra mouths today, I wanted to make sure I got enough.”
Josh grabbed one side of the bucket as she took the other, and they headed up the beach toward the cobblestone pathway.
“What happened to your face?” she asked after a while. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Everyone’s asking, so why not?” He shrugged. “This guy in Beaumont decided I’d look better with a busted nose.”
“Ouch. Did you at least tattoo him back?”
“I didn’t, but Gaby did.”
“Which one is she?”
“The blonde.”
“Young one or older one?”
“Young one. She basically saved my life. Twice now.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Yes, she is.”
Debra grinned at him. “You and her…?”
“We’re just friends for now.”
“‘For now.’” Debra laughed. “Teenagers will be teenagers.”
Josh felt himself blushing a bit. “Where’s Kyle?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.
“Probably in the lobby playing his games. He’s like you — not much of an outdoorsy type.”
“How do you know I’m not an outdoorsy type?”
She gave him a wry look.