Retreat
Dan Baltic had called all the junior associates in for a meeting on a Friday afternoon. We stood in his office, waiting for him to say something. He sat behind his desk, glaring at us. He opened the polished humidor on his desk, pulled out a cigar and cutter, and looked right at Oliver as he snipped off the tip. Oliver flinched.
I was sweating under my collar. It couldn’t be Penis Inspection Day again already. Could it? My mind raced through what I remembered of the Outlook calendar. Was it time for the Horny Saw Games? Naked paintball? Pin the Tail on the Ass-ociate? I was too afraid to ask.
“Q1 wasn’t great,” Baltic said. He stuck the cigar between his teeth without lighting it. “I don’t blame you guys. The holiday season was rough on all ten of you.”
“Nine,” said Oliver.
“Yeah anyway, morale is low. That’s why I’m sending everyone on a trip.”
We all exchanged nervous glances.
“I rented a Gulfstream jet,” Baltic said. “Monday morning you’ll all fly out for a week-long meditation retreat at a monastery in Tibet. It’ll be a great opportunity for you all to connect with yourselves and each other.”
Austin turned to Tanya and smiled. She made a disgusted face.
“But not too connected,” said Baltic. “That would be gay or something. So Chad is going along with you as a chaperone.”
Just then, Chad walked into the office and sat on Baltic’s desk. His slacks were too tight as usual. I looked away. Not everyone did.
“Here’s the kicker,” said Baltic. “This trip will be an opportunity for you to show some nerve. Some gumption. Maybe even some moxie. One of you will prove himself and secure his place right up here at the top of the firm.”
“Or her,” Tanya snarled.
“Yeah, yeah. Calm your toots, tits.” Baltic struck a match. “Anyway, be at the airport on Monday, 5 AM sharp. Don’t pack anything. You won’t need it.”
That was four months ago.
I don’t want to move. If I move, I risk being spotted. And moving means leaving this tiny spot of shade and stepping back out under the unforgiving tropical sun. But I’m in too much pain to sit here any longer.
I’m covered in screaming sunburns; the swollen red skin around my joints feels like it’s about to split open with every step I take. I have no clothes—none of us do. I could make a shelter or poncho out of leaves or something, but I was already blistering by the time I had thought of that.
I decide to risk a glance out of the tiny glade. There won’t be anything to see. There never is. But I lean out to take a look anyway. I’ve come to know this tiny island like my own studio apartment back home.
I’m hunkered down in the jungle, which covers a couple of acres in the middle of the island. A ring of sandy beach dotted with the occasional palm tree encloses the jungle. Beyond that is nothing but ocean. You could do a full circle without taking your eyes off the seam where blue meets green. Not a single cloud between me and the punishing sun. Our own little firmament, complete with the eye of God glaring down from above to burn me alive. It would be inspiring, cleansing even, if it weren’t a prison.
Only one unusual sight mars the otherwise pristine beach. My eyes linger on it. The pain of it never gets any better. It’s a reminder that we should have been home a long time ago.
I had gone in feeling pretty confident that I would win the promotion, or raise, or whatever Mr. Baltic had been offering. Among the junior associates—four gals, five guys—I’m the top performer. The girls were mostly there to socialize, and most of the other guys were dumb. Austin’s a weird little troll and nobody has forgotten how he slammed two trays of oysters the night before orientation and then puked them all over us the next morning. My only real competition is Chad. He used to strut around the firm like he owned the place. But that didn’t bother me. He didn’t work. He just kissed up to Dan and the other partners. I’m the firm superstar.
Well, I was.
Now I’m stuck in this gorgeous hellscape, staring at the beached wreck of the Gulfstream. All ten of us had survived the crash, waking up to find the pilots were gone without a trace. Did they bail on us? It doesn’t matter anymore.
The fuselage of the plane is off limits. To me, anyway. That’s where Chad and the girls hang out.
We had been separated into two groups pretty fast. Tanya wanted to forage, something about being a vegetarian. Austin had followed her, of course, and the rest of us guys just sort of stuck with them.
Except Chad. He stayed in the cabin of the plane and kept the rest of the girls with him. I don’t know how they’ve been surviving. I never see any of them except when Chad’s laying out on the surf naked, sunning his balls.
Of course, our group was a total shit show. The guys kept trying to fuck Tanya, especially Austin. I might be guilty of making a pass at her myself, but I honestly don’t remember. Anyway, after like three days it was enough to drive her to knock on the door of the plane. They let her in and that was the last I saw of her.
Without her, we had no idea what to do. She was the one who knew what was safe to eat. The guys started dying. Oliver found some kind of berry and shit himself to death soon after. We cooked and ate him over a couple of weeks. After we finished him off, we got so hungry we started fighting. Then Keith was dead and we ate him. Brock went nuts and staged a one-man raid on the fuselage, and Chad snapped his neck in broad daylight. We ate him too.
Now there’s just me and Austin left. He’s out there somewhere, hunting me like a wild hog. But he’s as sunburned as I am, and he won’t make his move until he’s desperate.
I see movement in the underbrush. I duck back under cover, but I know it’s too late. I’ve been spotted. Austin comes running out of his hiding place, hopping across the white sand like a scalded cat. A weird little goblin-man at the best of times, he looks positively inhuman wearing a giant leaf around his waist and waving a five-foot stick sharpened to a point.
All I’ve got is a club about half the length of that spear. If I obey my first instinct to freeze and hope he didn’t actually see me, I’m done. If I run away through the jungle, I’m done. My best bet is to meet his charge, maybe surprise him with ferocity and get close enough to brain him before he can stab me. I stand up, let out my best war god bellow, and run at Austin. As I had hoped, his eyes go wide. He falters a little bit. I pick up speed.
“What are you dorks doing?”
We both stop and turn to look. Chad is standing on top of the airplane cabin, naked, bronze, shining, standing with his feet about double shoulder width apart. He’s holding a spear of his own that could have been made from metal salvaged from the wreckage.
I stammer. “Chad, could you, uh… put something on before you talk to us?”
“No.”
“Seriously, if you give me five minutes I can make a perfectly good loincloth out of—”
“You’re still killing and eating each other? You know the ocean has a thing called fish, right? And you can drink coconut water and breast milk?”
“Where the hell are you getting br...” I trail off. This close to the wreckage, I notice the elaborate fish nets and traps in the sand. A bounty of fish hangs over a low fire, being smoked. A pile of coconuts and raw fruit stands nearby, slowly drying in the sun.
“Let me ask you something,” says Chad. “When you killed and ate those other guys, did you eat their junk?”
“Well, it was meat,” says Austin, “and—”
“GAAAAAAAAYYYY”
“I mean, no,” says Austin. “We didn’t eat their junk.”
“You threw away nutrients in a survival situation? What an idiot!” Chad jumps down from the top of the plane and goes in through the door.
Austin and I stare at each other. “I’m gonna kill him,” he says.
“Not if I get to him first,” I say. “Look, we need to work together. If we can kill him, we can take all that food and shelter.”
“And the girls,” says Austin.
“Uh… sure. If they’re even still alive in there.” I think for a minute. “Look, we need to get out of the sun before I boil alive. Let’s make a plan.”
I throw a rock that dings off the side of the plane. “Chad!” I yell. “I challenge you!” My second rock hits one of the windows with a loud thwack. I know he heard that one. The door flies open and Chad strides out in a fury.
“You’re dead!” he yells.
“Oh, shit!” I yell back, feigning terror as I turn to run. He chases after me with his spear. The sun is setting, so it’s not as painful to be out here. But I run for the jungle as fast as I can anyway.
We hit the trail and I keep my eyes down. As soon as I see a patch of leaves on the ground, I leap over it. Chad doesn’t. He steps on the leaves and they collapse under him, dropping him right into the stake pit trap we spent the afternoon building.
I turn around to watch Chad’s demise. He stands there, puzzled, in a hole about two feet deep, looking around at the widely spaced sticks that don’t quite reach his knees.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I shout. “Austin, I told you they were too short.”
“They’d work on me,” he says from somewhere in the foliage.
“Chad isn’t five-two!” I shriek before taking off running again. Chad bounds out of the pit to pursue.
My last chance is coming up here. We hadn’t counted on the stake pit trap to kill him, but we were hoping it would at least wound him so he’d be sure to get caught in the snare we’d set up ahead. If the snare didn’t get him, I was fucked.
I jump over the tripwire. Chad hits it, but the loop of vine doesn’t snag him.
“Do something!” I scream in actual terror. Austin, hiding behind the nearby tree, stands up and tries to pull the counterweight log down himself. But because he’s a lawyer and not an engineer, and an idiot on top of that, what happens instead is a branch over his head breaks. The counterweight swings free and crushes Austin into bloody gibs against the tree trunk.
“Fuck,” I say.
Chad laughs and picks up Austin’s fallen spear. He points both weapons at me. I back away along the trail, careful to avoid the stake pit. Soon he’s got me back out onto the sand near the Gulfstream. The fire is roaring now.
Chad throws Austin’s spear at my feet. “Pick it up,” he says.
I obey.
He holds up his weapon. “Duel!” he shouts. “Duel!”
The door to the plane opens and all four girls come out. They’re wearing only their bikinis and they’re all obviously pregnant.
“Fuck!” I say.
The girls begin to chant. “Duel! Duel! Duel!”
Chad squares up with me. He knocks my spear out of my hands easily.
“FUCK!” I say.
I run back toward the jungle. I follow the path, glancing over my shoulder every now and then to see Chad gaining on me with his long bounding giraffe strides. I look ahead again and the stake pit is right in front of me. I don’t have the time or gross motor coordination to leap over it, so I skid to a stop.
Chad places the point of his spear between my shoulder blades and I piss my loincloth in terror.
“For attempted murder and cannibalism,” says Chad, “I sentence you to death. You can get your sentence suspended by answering just one question.”
“F-fine,” I say.
“You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“YES DAMMIT WHAT’S THE QUESTION”
“Did you, or did you not, cook and consume Oliver’s dick?”
“Are you fucking kiddi—” The spear presses harder against my back.
“Or did you make like a vulture and eat his eyeballs and asshole? What was it? You’re under oath here.”
“We… we…”
The spear vanishes at the sound of the girls screaming from the beach. I hear footsteps. I turn back to see Chad running back down the path. I follow him. The girls are shrieking, jumping up and down, pointing at a black dot on the horizon, hanging low in the sky over the ocean. An increasingly loud black dot. It’s a helicopter.
“Rescue protocol!” Chad barks. The girls jump into action, throwing kindling on the fire and choking it with the plane curtain to make thick black smoke.
We all wait in total silence as the helicopter gets closer. Finally it does a circle over the crash site and lands on a stretch of sand. The door opens and I run for the chopper when I see who comes out.
“Mr. Baltic!” I yell. “Thank God!”
He puts out his arm and calmly stops me from hugging him. “You look like hell, kid.” Then he looks at everyone else. “How was your retreat?”
“Retr…” I’m in disbelief.
“It was great,” says Chad. “Very relaxing. Refreshing.”
“Yes,” says Mr. Baltic, eyeing the women’s bellies. “I can see that.”
“But, Mr. Baltic,” says Tanya, “how did you find us?”
Mr. Baltic points to Chad. “I saw your signal from hundreds of miles away. I’d recognize the sun’s glare off those balls any day.”
“What the hell?” I mumble. I look away, feeling sick. Then I notice Austin’s spear is still where I had dropped it, just a foot away from me.
“Anyway,” says Mr. Baltic, “it looks like the retreat was a success, what with the planned unexpected emergency survival situation to provide an opportunity to relax and reconnect. Seems like everyone made it out fine.”
“Planned?” I nearly scream. “Everyone did NOT make it out fine! Four of us are dead!”
“Really?” Mr. Baltic scans around with his finger, counting quietly. “Oh, shit, there are six of you.”
“There were ten of us on that plane!”
“Oliver said nine.”
“Plus Chad!” I’m purple in the face, tearing my hair out. “And Oliver’s dead! Austin’s dead!”
Mr. Baltic scratches his chin. “I only expected fi… anyway, we have a problem now. Besides the pilot, this baby is only a six-seater. Our four women are with child, so they have to get on. Ladies first and all that.” He makes a jerking motion near his crotch. “Anyway, of course I’m going back, so that leaves…”
“Yeah, about that,” says Chad. “This guy here tried to kill me unprovoked and steal our supplies. And he ate the guys who died.”
“Wow,” says Mr. Baltic.
“Yeah, he was not a team player.”
I become frantic. “It’s a lie! He made it all up!”
“That’s a shame,” says Mr. Baltic. “Because a man who would stoop to murder and cannibalism to survive is a man who has what it takes to be a lawyer. You clearly don’t. Congratulations on having your retreat extended.” He beckons to Chad and then turns to climb into the chopper.
In a rage, I pick up Austin’s spear and make a lunge for Mr. Baltic. Chad’s faster, and in a split second I am laying on my back, bleeding into the sand with the shaft of Chad’s spear sticking straight up out of my chest.
“Damn,” says Mr. Baltic as the chopper lifts off. “He was gonna stab me in the back. Guess he would have made a fine lawyer after all.”