Clarice flew past Alison on the other waverunner, then cut the power abruptly just as Jolene's head, for no apparent reason, disappeared under the water. A loud air horn blasted from the direction of Brogan's boat, but what he was trying to signal them to do, Alison had no clue.

In a flash she saw Clarice diving off the waverunner and cutting through water, disappearing and resurfacing a few long moments later with a sputtering, coughing Jolene. Alison turned the key again, and her waverunner blessedly kicked back into life. Clarice pulled Jolene toward her in a hold commonly used by lifeguards, and Alison drove the waverunner close to the pair, then reached down to help pull Jolene up behind her. Long strands of stringy seaweed were tangled around her ankle, and she looked dazed.

"You take her. I'm going swim over and get the other one," Clarice said, gesturing toward the waverunner that had drifted some distance away.

"Get on here now," Alison said. "There's some kind of shark over by Miranda."

She reached out her hand again and Clarice took it and climbed on the seat behind Jolene. Alison turned the waverunner around and saw that Brogan's boat was already pulling up by Miranda. He had a long, wicked looking object in his hand, and he leaned over the boat and struck at something with the end of it.

"Looks like a speargun," Clarice said, "but that's an odd way to be using it." Alison watched as Brogan's boat eased over closer to the banana float, saw him reach over and lift Miranda on board and wrap a towel around her.

Alison headed for the shoreline near the dock, clutching the handles as the breaking waves lifted them and thrust them toward the shore. She beached the waverunner, just as Brogan pulled up to the dock and helped a trembling Miranda out of the boat. Jolene stepped shakily off the waverunner, and Alison hurried onto the dock to meet the three of them. Jolene was leaning against Clarice for support, her face drained of color.

Brogan tossed Clarice a towel, and she put it around Jolene's shoulders, covering her breasts. Alison walked up on the dock to meet the three of them, then hesitated as they went past her toward the shore just long enough to hear the cameraman on the dock ask Brogan what the hell was going on out there.

Brogan made some unintelligible response, but Alison did hear the other man say "Are you crazy? Don't you remember what happened last time?"

Brogan barked an order for the guy to shut up, looking pointedly past him to where Alison was still standing on the dock. She turned away, pretending she hadn't heard, and hurried after the other contestants. As soon as they got to the shore, Jolene stumbled away and a moment later they heard her retching in the bushes.

"Well, ladies," Brogan said, pausing at the end of the dock before he got back on the boat to retrieve the remaining waverunner. "I think we've got enough for today."

Miranda was sitting on the sand with her head down against her knees, and Clarice had gone to help Jolene. Brogan was on the boat with one the other cameraman. It was now or never, Alison thought, as she put on a bright smile and approached the cameraman who'd stayed behind on the dock. The sun glinted off his bald head and he had a tattoo on the side of his neck that continued down his right arm, extending below the sleeve of his t-shirt all the way to his wrist. His age could have been anywhere from 30 to 50. He watched her through narrowed eyes as she approached.

"Hi," Alison said, continuing when she got no reaction. "I was wondering if you've filmed these shows before."

He continued to watch her, then turned to the side and spit a thin stream of tobacco juice into the crystal clear water. With effort, Alison maintained her pleasant expression, despite her disgust.

"It must be interesting work," she said. "Have you guys worked on any other reality shows?"

He took another long moment, glancing out into the water where Brogan seemed preoccupied with retrieving the other jet ski, then looked back at her.

"Didn't Brogan warn you not to talk to the crew?"

"Oh, come on," Alison said, moving a little closer. "That's just when the cameras are rolling." She looked pointedly at the hand-held camera hanging from a strap over his shoulder. "Surely that rule doesn't apply when we're between scenes."

The way he was just staring at her made her feel uneasy, and after about 20 seconds of silence she was so sure he wasn't going to answer her that she was startled when he finally spoke.

"Here's some advice," he said. "The cameras are always rolling." With another look at where Brogan was out on the water, he turned and walked off the deck, and headed the opposite direction from the cabins, presumably toward the area where Brogan had his base camp.

There was no point in following him. Maybe she'd have better luck with one of the other cameramen. But it was starting to look like her plan to find out information about the previous taping by chatting with the camera crew was going to be a lot more challenging than she'd imagined.

* * *

"There's no way I'm eating that." Clarice stared at the rabbit carcasses cooking on spits over the fire. "No way."

Alison wasn't particularly crazy about the idea herself, but figured if freshly killed rabbit was the worst thing they were going to have to ingest, they were probably getting off easy. And after spending most of the day cavorting around on the water on jet skis and a banana boat for Brogan's cameras with nothing to eat and drink but peanuts and beer, she was feeling lightheaded and hungry.

And both encouraged and frustrated by the cameraman's comment to Brogan about what had "happened last time." The man knew something, that was obvious. But getting him alone, much less getting the information out of him, was likely to be a challenge.

Miranda piped up. "I saw this reality show once when I was a kid where they made the contestants eat these disgusting slug things and it was actually a race."

Clarice looked at her.

"No, really," Miranda said. "One team had to eat slugs and other team had to eat worms."

"Ate a rattlesnake once," Luke said, then went back to staring into the fire.

"Yeah, well." Travis said. "I think we should all just be grateful that Billy Ray was able to get us some fresh game today, or we'd probably be going hungry."

"I'm not eating it."

"Nobody cares if you're eating it, missy," Billy Ray said.

"My name's Clarice."

"So, Billy Ray's the only one of you guys that caught anything today?" Alison asked, hoping to keep the tension between Clarice and Billy Ray from escalating any further.

Luke walked over to the stump where Billy Ray had skinned the rabbits, picked up the bowie knife with the jagged edge, and stared at it for a few moments with the same intensity that he'd stared into the fire. He wiped the bloodstains from the knife on the ground, then carried it back over to his spot around the campfire and sat down.

"Maybe I'll catch something tomorrow," he said.

"I rigged up a couple snares," Daryl said, "but I didn't catch anything."

"How'd you become the hunter, Billy Ray?" Alison asked.

"I've been huntin' since I could hold a gun," Billy Ray said.

"Yeah, but you're not back home with your personal armory, honey," Jolene said. "So how'd you do it? Rig up a snare like Daryl?"

Billy Ray grinned, reached into his pocket and pulled out an object that glinted in the firelight.

"Didn't have to," he said, holding up the gun. "Brogan gave me this."

Holy shit, Alison thought. That's all we need, some redneck running around the woods with a gun.

"Funny I didn't hear a shot this afternoon," Travis said.

Billy Ray looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "Big island," he said.

"Yeah."

"You shot a rabbit with a handgun?" Miranda asked, and Alison realized she'd probably grown up with people who hunted.

"Didn't say I shot it," Billy Ray muttered. "Just said Brogan gave me this gun, that's all. Ain't no huntin' rifle, that's all."

"I think dinner's about done," Miranda said, appointing herself as hostess and passing out the plates with the main dish and some cornbread she'd made on the camp stove.

She handed a plate to Clarice, who looked at the meat dubiously.

"Come on, Clarice," Miranda said. "My daddy used to hunt rabbit all the time. We had rabbit stew more often than a McDonald's hamburger."

"Tastes like chicken," Travis put in helpfully.

Clarice took the plate and smiled weakly. "I guess when in Rome . . ."

"That's the spirit," Jolene said. "You just gotta' go with the flow, honey."

"Hey, were any of you guys back here eating today when you were supposed to be hunting?" Miranda handed the last plate to Luke then went back and sat down beside Alison, balancing her own plate on her knees.

Everyone looked at each other. "What?" Travis said. "Did you find bread crumbs on the trail back from the beach?"

"No, it's just . . ." She shrugged. "When I went to get the stuff to make cornbread, it seemed like there was a lot less food there than there was this morning."

"Hmm." Travis shrugged. "Maybe Brogan just wanted to make sure we had the proper motivation for the hunt today. No kill, no eat."

Clarice shivered and looked around nervously. "Or maybe we aren't the only guests on Reality Island."

"I was all over this island today," Billy Ray said, looking up from his plate as he tore into his meat with his teeth. "Believe me," he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "If there was anything roaming around here bigger than these critters, I'd have seen it.

"Hell," he laughed. "I'd have shot it."

"Well isn't that comforting," Alison said.

"We could have used you and that gun down on the beach today," Miranda said. "You ever shoot a shark?"

"Don't get many sharks around my area," Billy Ray said. "Catfish, yeah. Gators, too." He grinned. "Sharks, no. But I'd be happy to come down there to the beach tomorrow and pick one off for ya', little lady."

"You girls have some trouble out there?" Travis asked.

"Oh my god," Miranda said. "It came as close to me as you are, Travis."

Miranda told the story of how Jolene had fallen off the tube, and the next thing Miranda knew there was a huge fin cutting through the water headed straight for her while she sat there, just floating on an inflatable banana while Clarice shot across the water on her jet ski to help Jolene.

"So what the hell was Brogan doing while this was going on?" Travis said. "Filming it?"

"He hit it on the nose with his speargun," Miranda said. "And it just swam away. It would have been really amazing if I hadn't been so scared. Tiger shark. Brogan said it was 'a small one.' Didn't look that small to me."

"By the time Brogan picked up Miranda, Clarice already had Jolene up on my waverunner," Alison said. "The whole thing was scary, but really, the shark never came near where Clarice and Jolene and I were."

"It's just a good thing Clarice used to be a lifeguard," Miranda said, "or Jolene might have drowned."

Jolene looked up from her meal, where she'd been silently listening to Miranda and Alison describe the events of the day.

"If the shark never came near me," she said, "then what pulled me under?" 

Writer's Note

Is Jolene imagining things? Or was there something in the water?