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"Look at that thing." Greg pointed off to the left as the two boys walked along the shoreline.

"What?" His cousin Stan swiveled his head to look where the older boy was pointing. "Its an RV, so what?"

"What do you mean, what?" Greg retorted.  "You don’t see anything weird about it?  How about the fact that we know everyone on this stupid little island and it doesn’t belong to anyone? How about the way its painted all black, even the windows?"

Stan looked closer, "Yeah I guess it’s kinda weird.  No writing or anything either, and its driving awful slowly."

The boys watched the vehicle as it cruised slowly past them, then as boys do, they put it out of their minds and went back to idly insulting each other as they walked along the deserted beachline.  But Greg never completely forgot about the strange RV and he saw it around town several times in the next week.  No one in town seemed to know anything about it though, and on an island with less than 100 people altogether that seemed hard for the boy to stomach.  Even stranger, no one he talked to had ever seen anyone get in or out of the RV.  It just cruised slowly through the small town, and once or twice he had spotted it parked on deserted streets.  Once he got up the nerve to walk up to it, but as far as he could tell there was no one in it.  He couldn’t see anything through the black windows and he heard no noises from within.  He watched for several hours but no one approached.  Finally he had to head back to Stan’s house where he was staying for the summer.  In the morning the roadside was empty.

Sarah Taylor pedaled her bicycle along the windy coastline.  Her Aunt kept telling her not to go off by herself, she said they could both go riding when she returned from her job on the mainland.  But Sarah was almost ten and besides, what could possibly happen to her on this tiny little island.  She always laughed at Aunt Sally when she talked about the ‘mainland’.  It wasn’t like they were in the middle of the ocean.  The highway connecting the small ‘key’ as they called them in Florida was barely four miles long.  You could be shopping on the ‘mainland’ in 15 minutes if you wanted to.  And besides, she had the cell phone that her Aunt had given her for safety.  If she called 911 it wasn’t like it would take long for help to get to her.  The whole island was barely a couple of miles across. 

She was playing a little game she liked to do, counting the pedals and she pushed up and down with her feet when she saw the helicopter approaching from out at sea.  It was rare enough that she stopped and set her feet on the sandy road to watch.  As it drew closer she could see that it was painted entirely black.  It was a large helicopter, larger than any she had ever seen, with two huge propellers on top.  As the small blond girl watched it approached the shoreline and hovered there, about twenty feet or so off the ground.  She watched intently and so didn’t notice the black RV pulling to a stop on the road halfway up the small hill on the side of the island.

At first it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen.  She was just about to decide it wasn’t worth watching any longer, and just maybe she didn’t feel like being out here on her own after all, when a door must have opened on the far side of the helicopter that she couldn’t see.  The only way she knew about it was that suddenly a man fell out of the hovering craft and crashed to the beach.  The helicopter then rose rapidly and started back out to sea.  Sarah couldn’t understand what was happening but as she watched the man on the beach moved slightly.  All she could think was that she had to help the poor man.  Leaving her bike by the side of the road, she hurried down the small hillside toward the beach.  As she ran she pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911.  A woman answered and she breathlessly told of the man falling from the helicopter.  She barely gotten it out when the phone suddenly gave a burst of static and went dead.  Shrugging, she put it back in her pocket and hurried on.

As she neared the man, she slowed and gasped.  She couldn’t believe he was still alive.  His body lay twisted and broken looking in a small pool of blood.  Even at the age of nine she had seen dead bodies on the tv several times and she felt sure this had to be one also.  But then he moved again!  He seemed to be trying to untwist his torso from where it was sprawled over his legs.

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