We made it to Paloma today. Atiya and I had spent some time yesterday in the mini-sub discussing what we might find–the wires were still loose on the microphone there–but none of our increasingly wild guesses had matched the unexpectedly mundane, though disturbing, answer for what we found.
We cruised into the lagoon. Paloma is crescent-shaped, like a lot of atolls. About three miles long and at most a half-mile across. It doesn’t seem to be volcanic, not that I’m any kind of expert, but there is a rocky ridge that climbs a few hundred feet.
The place was empty. We had at least expected to see a plant-covered island, but most of it was bare rock and sand with a few scraggly palms and some scrub growing here and there.
More oddly, there were some artificial structures around. Not the huts of some primitive native tribe that Dr. Stepherson would have expected, but instead about a dozen metal towers that looked like an antenna of some kind. Well, there were about a dozen still standing. Most of them were damaged, tilting outwards or lying fallen, all facing away from the lagoon.
Captain Anderson called all of the research teams together, and we met in the cafeteria, along with about a half-dozen of the crew which, given what I knew now, worried me slightly.
Dr. Stepherson wasted no time letting everyone know what he felt. “Why are we sitting out here, Captain? Why can’t we go ashore?”
“Go where, Dr. Stepherson?” the Captain asked, gesturing out the window. “You can see everything on the island from here? What is there to look at?”
“There must be something here. There must be!”
“Where?”
“We won’t know until we get the chance to go ashore! Drop anchor or whatever it is you do to stop and let me put my team on the island!”
Captain Anderson leveled an unblinking gaze on him until he subsided. “Do you really expect to find anything here, professor? We can see almost the entire island. There is no one here.”
“There must be! The reports I have…”
“Are how old?” He shook his head. “Things have apparently changed.”
Dr. Stepherson clenched his fists, and, from the way he looked, I was afraid that he might be about to have an aneurysm. “We. Have. To. Go. Ashore.”
“Were you expecting this? I’m only asking because we made getting here a priority, penalizing the work of Doctors Ferris and Parimala. Why was it so important that we get here immediately?”
He slumped. “I… I thought we would find inhabitants here. That we… could converse with them before… certain events took place. I even brought a linguist along to ensure that we could talk to them!” He gestured towards Donnie, who seemed surprised at the sudden attention.
“There is nothing here, Dr. Stepherson. Why did you think there would be something else?”
“Because I had records! Because others had been here before us! I knew that…” He looked around helplessly.
I was looking out the windows at one of the collapsed towers when, suddenly, a memory floated back to me. I turned to Atiya.
“You don’t happen to still have that Geiger counter with you, do you?”
“Yeah, I think?” She dug into her bag and pulled it out, handing it to me. “Why?”
“I… think I know why we have them. And your suits.” I turned it on and was greeted by a barrage of yellow and red bars and graphs. I turned it towards her.
“What in Allah’s name?”
“Yeah.” I turned the counter towards the others. “I… think I know what happened to Dr. Stepherson’s islanders.”
Dr. Stepherson turned to me, eyes narrowing. “What do you claim to know about Pacific island culture?”
“Nothing. But I know marine biology, and I’ve been to a few islands in the Pacific before. There was a nuclear test here.”
I heard a few sudden intakes of breath and expressions of surprise around the room. Atiya grabbed the counter from my hand. “Give me that!”
She looked at it for a few moments before nodding and sighing. “Yeah. Signatures are consistent with a nuclear detonation. Probably about 60 to 70 years ago, so sometime in the 1950s.”
There was a long silence as all of us looked around the room. Atiya and I nodded at each other; was this the secret that someone was trying to protect? I turned back to Captain Anderson. “Did you know that you were taking us to a nuclear test site?”
He shook his head. “No. That’s impossible. All nuclear tests were recorded. There were no tests at all in this part of the Pacific.”
“What even gives you that idea, Dr. Ferris?” That came from Sara, who was looking at me with a dubiously curious expression.
I pointed out the window again. “I’ve seen towers like those before. On my own doctorate trip. We were at Bikini taking samples to compare to marine life from elsewhere and so determine what we could about the effects of short and long-term nuclear exposure to marine life.” I paused. “Someone set an atomic bomb off here.”
“Seriously? Can you even back up a claim like that?”
“Yes,” said Atiya, looking at the counter. “I may be a gravitational specialist, but reading nuclear signatures is undergrad stuff. Everything I’m seeing here matches the signatures from places like Trinity, Hiroshima, or Bikini. A nuclear bomb went off here. Give me a little time, and I can probably give you the specs on what it was.”
A general murmur went around the room. Sara was the first one to break it.
“Are you sure? There are no records of anything like that happening in this part of the Pacific.”
She held up the counter. “I’m our resident physics expert, and in my professional opinion, we are on the site of a nuclear explosion. Probably a fusion warhead, and probably in the late 1950s. Until we get someone else out here, that is my conclusion. And I seriously doubt that any of my colleagues would disagree with me.”
I nodded. “As I said, I’ve been to Bikini. There were towers almost exactly like these there. This was a test site. Probably one of ours, given how similar they look.”
Sara shook her head. “Our charts show every test site in the Pacific. If this was one of them, then we would have known, and we would never have bothered to come here.”
I wasn’t convinced.
“And what if there were test sites that didn’t get officially acknowledged?”
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
“You tell me.”
She shook her head again. “There must be another explanation.”
“Like what?”
“Storm? Tidal wave? Maybe an accident of some kind?”
“Doesn’t explain the radiation. Or the towers.”
“Maybe not, but we really shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions here.”
What is she so upset about? Sara was frowning and shaking her head and kept glancing around the room. I couldn’t tell if she was more upset over the thought that there had been a test here, or if she was upset that she hadn’t known about it.
Dr. Stepherson was still not willing to give up either. “We still need to go ashore?”
“Why, Doctor?” Captain Anderson stepped in again. “I understand that you were hoping to meet the inhabitants, but as you can see…” he gestured out the window at the island, “there is no one here.”
“I still need to get over there. I have to see it for myself.”
After a pause, the Captain nodded. He turned to Atiya. “Dr. Parimala, are the radiation levels here dangerous?”
She looked at the counter again and frowned. “It’s high for background, and I definitely wouldn’t want to set up a resort here, but we should be fine if we limit our time here to no more than a day or two. I’d advise against eating or drinking anything we find here, though. So no fresh seafood.” She gave me a quick smile as she said that.
“Fine then! Let us get to shore.” He turned to Donnie and Sondra. “Get your field kits together.” As they stood up to leave, he turned back to Captain Anderson. “I assume you will provide us with a pilot to get us in?”
Captain Anderson nodded, though I could tell he wasn’t happy. “Of course, professor.”
“I’ll go,” said Sara. She started walking towards the exit. “I’ll get the Dunwich ready.”
The Dunwich is one of our two large tenders and can carry about a dozen people, plus gear, to shore. The other is the Kingsport. We also have several smaller lifeboats and Zodiacs if needed, but with any luck, we won’t need those.
“How about the rest of you?” asked the Captain, looking in mine and Atiya’s direction.
“I won’t mind a chance to stretch my legs, but I don’t have any actual research I can do here.” She turned to me. “Kalen?”
I nodded. “Yeah, we should certainly take samples. If there was a nuclear explosion, or even if someone just dumped some waste here, the radiation would have led to mutations of some kind. Those will be worth documenting, even if they won’t help us with our migration patterns.”
“Or maybe they will,” Reiko said tensely, teeth almost clenched. “We’ll see how far this damage has spread.”
“You OK?”
“Fine. Just such a… waste.”
“Agreed.” I clapped my hands together. “OK, let’s do a quick survey first. Just mask, fins, and snorkels; no full gear. We’ll grab a few specimens and see what the underside looks like. I’ll ask Captain Anderson if he can do a sonar sweep to get the lay of the area. Then we’ll plan a few dives.”
“I advise against staying here too long,” said Atiya. “I don’t like these levels.”
“That high? After this long? We didn’t get warnings like this when we were at Bikini.”
“I know, but the decay curves look right for around 60 years. Whatever they set off here must have been really dirty.”
“It was a test. Maybe it didn’t work very well?”
“Or they deliberately wanted this place to be radioactive for a long time,” Reiko said. I saw her clenching and unclenching her fists.
“They?”
She turned to me, anger in her eyes. “Someone did this! For a reason!”
“Well… let’s see if they left anything.” She nodded once, quickly, in response, then stalked out of the cafeteria. Darrin looked at me, shrugged, and then followed.
I turned to the Captain. “Captain Anderson…”
He raised a hand. “I heard, I’ll have the Kingsport do a sweep of the lagoon and see if I can get a bottom map. I’ll also radio back home and see if anyone can find anything about any kind of nuclear testing done here in the 1950s.”
“OK, thanks.” I turned back to Atiya. “Sorry to run off, but Dr. Stepherson will have an aneurysm if we make him wait on us for too long.”
She laughed. “Then maybe you should take your time.”
“No. Honestly, I kind of want to see if we can find anything ourselves. Something is bizarre here.”
“Yeah.” She stepped forward and put a hand on the side of my face. “Be careful, Kalen.”
I took the hand and squeezed it. “Yeah, I will. Here, hang on to this.” I pulled the laptop out of my vest and handed it to her. She nodded.
—
A few minutes later, I had grabbed my snorkel bag and was at the tender. Several of the students were already on board, and Dr. Stepherson was supervising the loading of several large cases.
“Lot of gear?” I asked, pointing as I came up.
He shook his head. “No, for artifacts, if we find any.”
“Artifacts?”
“Humans always leave artifacts, no matter where they go or how short of a time they are there.” He didn’t take his eyes off the cases as he spoke, but he was being the most open he had been since leaving Arkham. “If people live here, or have ever lived here, then we will find their traces.”
I nodded and climbed onto the Dunwich. Two of the Zodiacs were already in the water and circling the Arkham while a third was near the shoreline and cruising slowly along, probably looking for the best place to come ashore.
Darrin and Reiko were seated, gear stowed beneath them. She was leaning close and saying something furiously to him while he was patting her hand in sympathy. Donnie was sitting opposite them with Sondra and kept glancing in their direction but didn’t say anything.
I sat behind them and next to Patti. She had her gear as well but was holding it in her lap. “So,” she asked as I found my seat. “What do you think we’re going to find here?”
“A lot of ruined reefs and a lot of diseased fish.” I shrugged. “What happened here?”
“Weird that it wasn’t on the charts. You would think they would warn people away from a place like this.”
“Yeah. Unless there was some reason that they didn’t want anyone to know about it. This place is pretty isolated, and there was supposedly nothing here.”
“Until we came here.”
“Yeah.”
Dr. Stepherson came on board and hurried to a seat near the front. Two more crew members came on board with him and waved to someone on the Arkham. Quickly, we were lowered to the water, the hooks were released, and Sara started the engines. A few seconds later, we were pulling away from the Arkham and heading towards where the third Zodiac was circling. The other two zodiacs pulled in on either side of us, flanking us on our way in.
It only took a few minutes before we were at the shore. Sara throttled down and dropped an anchor, then turned to us.
“Close as we can get. The zodiacs will get you the rest of the way in.”
The next few minutes were spent as we awkwardly moved around the boat and into the Zodiac, which then took us the few dozen yards to the shore. We quickly found ourselves on a white, sandy beach.
Dr. Stepherson was excitedly gesturing around. “I was right!” he was exclaiming. “I was right!”
“But there’s no one here!” Donnie was saying as we waded the few steps into shore.
“Look at the beach! Look at the beach!”
I glanced around, not sure what he was going on about, but Reiko saw it almost instantly.
“This section of the beach has been maintained. Someone has cleared it.”
I looked and saw what she meant. Within about a thirty-foot semicircle, the sand was clear and pristine, looking like something you would find in front of a luxury resort. Outside of that, the sand was strewn with debris; seaweed, shells, driftwood, rocks, and trash. And it wasn’t just a random clear area; it looked to be a near-perfect circle.
I glanced at the ocean. The lagoon was calm and relatively clear, and I could see the bottom a reasonable distance out. It seemed to be clear too. I felt a slight, icy pit form at the bottom of my stomach.
What was happening?
“That’s… weird,” said Darrin.
I nodded. “Ready to get wet?”
He frowned. “What?”
I pointed around the semicircle. “Someone cleared the beach. Let’s check and see if they cleared underwater as well.” He nodded and started pulling out his gear. Reiko did the same.
I walked over. “But… who did this Doctor? There’s no one here.”
“The other island!” Donnie said enthusiastically. “The journal said that the islanders here would be visited by people from another island! They must still be coming here and clearing the beach!”
“What ‘other island?'” I asked. “The next nearest island is a few hundred miles west of here?”
“Do not underestimate the distance that can be covered in a catamaran,” Dr. Stepherson retorted. “It would only be a matter of a few days for them to get here.”
“A few days? At sea?”
“We’ve been at sea for more than a few days; why shouldn’t they?”
“We’ve got a bit larger boat.”
“Do not disparage anyone just because their life experiences are different from yours,” he said, almost chidingly. “If travel here is important to them, then I have no doubt that they can, and do, make the trip.”
“You coming, Doc?” Darrin yelled from behind me. I turned. He and Reiko had stripped down to their dive vests and were standing by the water with masks, fins, and snorkels.
I waved. “Just check and see if this cleared area extends out the same distance. We’ll do a full survey later.” He returned the wave, and the two of them headed into the water.
“Thank you, Dr. Ferris. I… didn’t expect to get your support for my research.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you have certainly been hostile enough to me so far this trip! What with your constantly sticking your nose into someone else’s business.”
“Hey, that was Doctor Pickman’s request. And it kind of got pushed on me, it wasn’t something I signed up for.”
“There’s no reason for you to have to do what he asked! Instead, you have to keep poking at everyone else. Though, I suppose, that worked out for you and Dr. Parimala.”
“Hey!” I was about to object further when I heard Darrin yelling from behind me.
“Hey! Doc Ferris!”
I turned to see him standing chest-deep and about 10 feet out. Reiko was behind him, treading water about 40 feet from shore.
“What is it?” I shouted.
“You need to see this!”
“What!”
“Just… get out here!” He gestured overhand towards Reiko, then pulled his mask back into place and dropped into the water, swimming towards her.
I sighed and turned back to Dr. Stepherson. “If you will excuse me?”
He sighed as well. “Of course.”
I went to where I had dropped my bag. I was already wearing my swim trunks and neoprene vest under my clothes, so it only took a few moments to strip down, grab my mask, fins, and snorkel, and head into the water. Once I got into deep enough water, I put my fins on, pulled on the mask, checked to make sure my snorkel was clear, then started kicking out towards where Darrin and Reiko were waiting.
“OK, what?” I asked as I swam up. Reiko was buoyed up by her vest while Darrin kept ducking under the surface, looking around, then popping back up.
“We found Dr. Stepherson’s locals,” said Reiko in apparent anger. I had noticed that she had been breathing heavily, but I had assumed it was from treading water for so long. Now I realized it was something else.
“What? Where?”
“Down here,” Darrin said, panting. He seemed upset too. He pointed below us.o
I shrugged, pulled my mask and snorkel back into place, and dove downwards.
It was a bit difficult, my neoprene vest made me buoyant, and I hadn’t put a weight belt on, but I managed to get the 30 or so feet down to the floor.
As I had suspected, everything between us and the shore was cleared, with a slight ridge of rocks and debris beneath us, partially encrusted with coral, mollusks, and other sea life. Darrin was pointing at something that at first I thought was just an old anchor chain that had gotten entangled in the rocks.
Then I suddenly made out the shape in the tangle and gave a sudden intake of breath. Which, given that I was 30 feet underwater, got me a mouthful of seawater. I gagged but managed to get to the surface before I had to rip off my mask and snorkel and cough uncontrollably into the water.
Reiko smiled slightly at me. “I had to drag Darrin to the surface.”
As soon as I could breathe again, I glared at the two of them. “You could have warned me!”
“What, just casually say ‘hey, we found a few skeletons’?”
“A few?”
“Yeah, there’s more than one.”
“Fuck!” I immediately pulled my mask back into place and dove back down.
Back at the bottom, I surveyed the area. There were partial skeletons tangled in the chain; at least three or more. I swam closer and swore to myself again, this time managing not to get a mouthful of water. I could clearly see where the skeleton I was looking at had been handcuffed to the chain.
The skeletons were incomplete, probably broken apart and shifted by tides and time, and perhaps a few crabs as well, but I saw a skull lying loose on the sand. I picked it up and swam back to the surface.
“How many are down there?” I asked as I pulled my mask up.
“Three or four, at least,” said Reiko. “As soon as we realized what was down there, we quit looking and came back for you.”
“Yeah, thanks. OK. Let’s see how many are down there. I’ll go give this to Dr. Stepherson.” I held up the skull. “We’re going to need an anthropologist for this.”
“You took a skull!” Reiko seemed horrified.
“We’re going to find out what happened to them! And give them closure to… what happened. They’ll understand.”
She shook her head but calmed down a bit. “Dr. Stepherson won’t be happy that you ‘tampered with the site’ or something. At least, that’s what the anthro department is always upset about.”
“Yeah? Well, let one of them come out here then.”
“Yeah. We’ll probably have to train a few of them real quick.”
“Quick is right. We’re a bit radioactive here, remember?”
“Yeah.” She frowned. “Someone deliberately drowned the local inhabitants, then nuked the place to be sure? What the hell happened here?”
“We’ll find out. In the meantime, you two figure out how many skeletons we have down here.”
“Got it.” Reiko gestured to Darrin, who looked a bit less than enthused, and the two of them ducked beneath the surface. I started stroking towards the shore.
There I found Dr. Stepherson talking with Donnie and Sondra. I kicked my fins off and walked up to them.
“We… uh… may have found your islanders, Doctor.”
He turned to me in irritation. “What?” His expression changed, first to surprise, then to anger as I handed the skull to him.
“Where did you find this!” he said, taking it and looking at it. “And… you disturbed the site! You should have left this where you found it until we had a chance to examine the site!”
“The ‘site’ in this case is 40 feet underwater. And we don’t have a lot of time here. What would you have wanted me to do?”
“Leave it in place, take a photo, and then come and tell me about it! We could have told you what to do!”
I shrugged helplessly. “Sorry, I was just trying to help!”
“Then don’t! Well… ask first. Now, what did the site look like? How many are down there?”
“It… isn’t a pleasant sight.” I took a deep breath then described what we had seen, with the anchor chain and the bodies handcuffed to it.
Dr. Stepherson had paled as I spoke. “They… they were deliberately killed?”
“It sure looks that way.”
“Well, not that way.” That was Sondra. She was now holding the skull that Dr. Stepherson had handed it to her. She turned it to face us and pointed to something on the side. “Whoever this belonged to was shot. Twice. At close range.”
“What? Why?” Both Dr. Stepherson and I asked at once.
She shrugged. “This is clearly two bullet wounds at extremely close range. Probably contact. A ‘Double Tap.’ That’s why the far side of the skull is missing. Whoever this belonged to was deliberately killed.”
Sara had wandered over while we were talking and shook her head. “Seriously? You got all that from an old skull?”
Sondra turned to her with a frown. “I’m a forensic anthropologist. This is my specialty. I’m not totally sure of the age of the skull because it’s been underwater, and I’d have to run tests, but I can assure you of how they were killed. This was an execution.”
Sara frowned. “Maybe we should wait for the experts to weigh in…”
Dr. Stepherson interrupted her. “Ms. Howard here is an expert! She wouldn’t be on this expedition with us if she weren’t!”
Sara seemed surprised by the intensity of his response but held her ground. “Dr. Stepherson. I’m sure you have confidence in your student, but…”
He interrupted again. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you think you know about anthropology, but why don’t you stick to driving the ship and let us…”
It was her turn to interrupt. “Dr. Stepherson. I spent six years in Iraq. I assure you that I…”
“Know how to kill people? Yes, I’m sure you do.” He didn’t seem intimidated by her. “Well, you stick to killing people, and we’ll stick to figuring out how they died. And, in this case, if Ms. Howard says this person was executed, then I will accept that she was executed!”
That seemed to take Sara by surprise. She stood for a moment, then nodded slightly. “I apologize, Dr. Stepherson, Ms. Howard.” She nodded to both of them. “I certainly wasn’t intending to disparage any of you. But, if you are right, I need to report this in. Will you excuse me?” She nodded a final time and quickly retreated.
Dr. Stepherson shook his head and looked at me. “She has been giving me problems about coming here since I came on board. I really don’t think she wanted us to be here.”
“Yeah,” I said nodding. “She was with the military. Whatever happened here was obviously something the US did. She probably just felt as if you were accusing her of something.”
“Of course, we get the pilot who was in the military before coming here.”
“Apparently, most of the crew is ex-military. Part of the deal that gets us ships like this.” I shrugged, trying to act more relaxed than I was. “She’s just supporting her past.”
“Bah. All we need is for the crew to start interfering in what we have found here. Now, if these islanders really were killed, and our crew is going to try to stop us from investigating further, then we need to complete our study as quickly as possible. And, I’ll point out, you and your friend Dr. Parimala have given them the perfect excuse to chase us away!”
“What do you mean?”
“With your radiation nonsense. They’ll say that it is too dangerous for us to be here and make us leave.”
“Then, I guess I need to get that documentation you wanted.” I looked out to see both Darrin and Reiko on the surface, looking in my direction. I waved them in.
“We’ll get our gear to get more bottom time and film the whole thing. Don’t worry.”
—
We spent the rest of the day exploring and filming the site, then bringing the remains to the surface under Dr. Stepherson’s direction. There were seven bodies there. Well, parts of seven; none of them were complete. There were other sets of handcuffs on the chain with nothing in or around them, so there probably had been more victims than that, but the sea and reef creatures had carried those remains away long ago.
We didn’t get much of our own research done, but I understood. Something had happened here, and we needed to do what we could to help. Darrin and I did manage to grab a few dozen DNA swabs before it got too dark and we had to head back to the Arkham.
Reiko should have been helping, but Donnie suddenly decided that he wanted to help us, and she was giving him a crash SCUBA course. I wasn’t particularly happy about that; she was part of my team after all. I’ll have to talk to her about that. I’m still not totally sure what is going on with her and Donnie; her hooking up with him still didn’t make sense to me, but as she had correctly pointed out, it was none of my business.
But her not participating in what was part of her graduation requirements was. I would have to talk to her about that later.
Either way, Darrin and I did as much as we could before it got dark. There was one zodiac left on the beach with an annoyed-looking crewmember onboard. He hurried us on as soon as we surfaced.
The Arkham had lowered a gangway, which made it easier for us to get back on board. The two of us took a quick shower then headed for the cafeteria where a meeting was already underway.
“We need to report this!” Captain Anderson was saying as we entered. “A crime was committed here. It has to be reported.”
“I need a few hours to put together my full report, but the remains I have been able to examine so far were definitely shot.” It was Dr. Ilyas talking. He was the ship’s Doctor on the trip, but I had barely seen him so far. I knew he was part of the Miskatonic medical staff, but he worked in the clinic instead of teaching, so I didn’t interact with him much.
“But,” he continued. “As near as I can tell, these ‘executions’ took place around 50 years ago. This isn’t an active crime scene. While someone should be alerted, I don’t believe that it necessitates us leaving the area.”
“We can’t stay here!” An angry Atiya responded. “Look at these levels!” She held up a Geiger counter. “We’re risking ourselves if we stay here!”
“And how much, Doctor?” That was Sara, seeming to be bored by the whole thing. “If it’s a fractional percentage increase in getting cancer 50 years from now, then I don’t think we can use that as an excuse to leave. We report this, someone sends a ship in from somewhere, and then we can leave. Not before.”
“Why would we have to stay here?” I asked.
Captain Anderson sighed. “We need to stay here to make sure no one interferes with the site before the appropriate authorities get here. Whoever they are.”
“OK… well… who has authority here?”
He frowned. “That’s… a bit of a question. Paloma has been uninhabited for so long that no one really claims it. It’s considered part of Polynesia, but I’m not sure what government actually has jurisdiction here.”
I sighed. “Great. So how long would we have to stay here?”
“Until someone arrives to take control of the scene.”
“Great.” I sighed again. “Remind me not to report the next set of dead bodies I find. So… what do we do in the meantime?”
“We can try to contact the people from the other village!” Dr. Stepherson said. “According to Neighton’s journal, all we have to do is build a bonfire on the beach. They will know to come.”
“Do you really think the other village is still around?”
“Yes! You saw the beach. Someone is keeping it cleared.”
I hesitated. He was right. I didn’t want to stay here any longer than I had to but… he was right.
“All right. Fine. But… let’s head some distance away for the night, just to avoid any radiation from here.”
“We can’t do that,” said the Captain. “We have to stay on-site until someone shows up.”
“And what if ‘on-site’ happens to be radioactive.”
He sighed. “We’re allowed to move if we’re in immediate danger, but it doesn’t sound like we are.” He looked at Atiya.
She looked back for a moment, then sighed herself. “As long as we stick to the food we have with us and minimize our time on the island, we should be OK. But don’t blame me when you get cancer in 20 years!”
“Wait…” I suddenly thought of something. “Have we even reported this yet?”
Sara nodded. “Yes, as soon as we heard what you had found. We’ve been in contact with the Navy, which is the closest to anything having authority here, and they’re trying to find who to contact.”
“Yeah? Who?”
She grimaced at that. “They’re… having trouble finding anyone who actually claims this island.”
“Well, who would want an uninhabited, irradiated island anyway?”
She shrugged. “I’ll admit, it is a bit… odd. It’s almost like we’re somewhere that doesn’t exist.”
“Great.”
There was more discussion, but no one had anything more to add or any other options we could follow. In the end, I just went back to my cabin. Tomorrow will probably be a busy day.
And anyone out there… does anyone know who actually owns this island?