The Island Of Depravity Ch 01

Jack Easterly and the Island of Depravity

Dr. Hayanishi's evil machine threatens to drag down the United States of America into a wanton swamp of lust, and only atomic chemist Jack Easterly can save his country. A lusty serial in the tradition of the 1930s pulps.

Chapter 1: In which our intrepid hero receives a most inconvenient visitor

Knock

The sound came just as the co-ed behind Jack Easterly's desk reached for the button of his slacks. Her blue eyes narrowed and she looked up with a naughty grin.

"Dr. Easterly?" A man's voice called.

"Yes? What is it? I'm in the middle of something." Jack yelled back, without taking his eyes off Anna Lee. Everything about her was worth looking at: her golden curls, her dimpled smile, and the way her sweater's neckline revealed the yawning cleavage between her breasts.

"I'm here on official business, Dr. Easterly. I need to talk." Came the reply.

Jack rubbed his five o'clock shadow and grimaced. A stained lab coat hung loosely on his slender frame, and an unkempt mop of hair reached down to his wire-rimmed glasses.

The co-ed was his lab assistant, Anna Lee. She had made her intentions known one evening when they were working late, on a day Jack had been drinking more than usual. That had been four months ago, and she'd given him no reason to regret it.

"Dr. Easterly!" The voice sounded urgent.

"Sorry, Sugar, but you'd better run along now." Jack sighed in resignation.

"You sure, Doc?" She flipped up her skirt as she straightened, letting him see her lacy white panties.

"Go on, shoo!" Jack said with a rueful shake of his head, and waved at the door. "I—ah, after your 3:00 class?"

"Oh, I don't know. Not if you're going to stand me up like this." She pouted. Before he could reply, she slipped out the side door with a swirl of her skirt and a mischievous wink.

Dabbing with a handkerchief at the bright red lipstick stain she'd left on his mouth, Jack stepped to the door. A battered metal table dominated the spacious office, littered with black metal cases lit from within by the dim glow of vacuum tubes. A slab of wood on trestles stood against the back wall, covered in stoppered glass bottles, Bunsen burners, and the tell-tale spiral that any of Anna Lee's backcountry Tennessee relatives could have identified as a still. A faded poster of Tailgunner Joe reminded viewers that Communist spies could be anywhere.

"Dr. Easterly? I'm Thomas Crandall." The man at the door was medium height, with the crooked nose of one unafraid to take a punch, and a hairline that that been fighting a losing battle for years. His eyes, though, burned with an unsettling seriousness.

The two shared a handshake, Jack not quite willing to meet the other's fierce gaze. He shoved a pile of papers off one of the two easy chairs onto the floor and waved the other man to sit.

"Thank you for your time. I'll make this brief." Crandall began.

"No apologies necessary. Can I offer you a drink?" Taking two glasses from a sink in the corner in one hand, Jack reached for a flask of smoky brown liquid.

"No." The other man frowned.

"Oh, don't worry. It's safe—I am a chemist, you know."

"The United States of America has enemies, Dr. Easterly, and they don't rest because I'm thirsty." Crandall said, his mouth pressed in a firm line.

Jack's eyebrows rose. He hadn't heard a man speak like that since he left the Navy. Lots of water under that bridge since, and the man's tone gave him the willies.

"You don't mind, though?" The other man nodded, and Jack poured two fingers for himself. The homemade whiskey burned going down, but it eased the knot in his stomach, just like it always did. Feeling better, Jack perched on the arm of the other chair.

"I know this is sudden, but believe me, there is no time to waste." Crandall pulled a leather wallet from the breast pocket of his suit and flipped it open. "I'm with the National Radiological Directorate."

"I don't believe I've heard of that." Jack said, looking more closely at the badge in surprise.

"We like it that way." Agent Crandall's frown became a grim smile. "President Eisenhower established the Directorate last year with a secret directive. Officially our only job is to liaison with the newly created International Atomic Energy Agency."

Jack nodded. As a leading expert on atomic chemistry, a job offer from the new United Nations organization had come as no surprise, but Jack turned it down, preferring to keep his lab at the university.

"Our real mission remains top secret." The agent continued. "That won't be a problem given your clearance at Maple Ridge Labs, but please understand that this is need-to-know information."

Jack nodded again, taking another sip to settle his nerves. Doing weapons research for the government at Maple Ridge was one thing; but from Crandall's tone, this was different.

"We protect this country from the very real dangers of rogue technology."

That brought a sharp look from the professor.

"Rogue technology?" He said skeptically.

"The Agadir Earthquake in Morroco last year—"

"That killed, what, 10,000 people?" Jack interjected.

"12,258 actually. It wasn't natural."

"It wasn't—"

"The Lituya Bay Tsunami three years ago? It wasn't either."

"Lituya Bay?"

"The newspapers said that two people died—that's because they didn't know about the Air Force's secret rocket base. 129 good men died that day—and we still can't tell their wives what really happened to them." His expression promised a short future for whomever was responsible.

Jack gave Agent Crandall a calculating look.

"And if this story is true, what does it have to do with me?"

Agent Crandall straightened his jacket. Pulling an audio cassette from his breast pocket, he asked:

"You have a player for this?"

"Of course." Jack pulled a bulky case from under the table. "One of the new transistor ones."

"One of our men captured half of a telephone conversation in Kowloon." Crandall said as he inserted the cassette.

"Ah, Meester Ivanovich. So good to hear from you." The recorded male voice had a thick accent that Jack couldn't place. After a moment of static, it continued. "Yes, thank you. Our final round of tests have all been positive, and each female subject exposed to the radiation responded exactly as expected."

The voice paused.

"No, these were not the initial test subjects. The original subjects are...no longer responsive to stimuli."

Jack looked at Agent Crandall quizzically. The G-man shook his head, face grim.

"No, no." The voice continued after another pause. "None of the male subjects displayed any change. But the female population should serve your purposes well. Quite well, I believe. Should your bid for the machine turn out to the highest one, you will be able to place copies of it in every city in the United States. Once you turn them on, every last shred of virtue and morality in America will crumble before the onslaught of its radiation. Your triumph is certain."

Jack frowned into his moonshine, fortifying himself with a healthy swig.

"That, of course, brings us to the subject of my call." The voice continued. "You are not the only party interested in my invention. I will allow all of you to bid for it next week, by—"

The tape cut off abruptly.

"That's all we got." Agent Crandall said. "The tape arrived by courier but our agent never returned. The CIA station chief in Hong Kong traced the call's origin to a hotel room in Port Morseby."

Jack looked up in surprise. It had been years since he'd heard that name, but memories still flooded back. Most of them featured an Australian woman who'd nursed a randy pilot to health during the war, and he had a sudden vision of her strapped naked to a lab table, bombarded with mind-altering radiation.

With an effort, Jack wrenched his imagination away from the horrific scene, throwing back the rest of his drink to ward off the sudden chill in his soul.

"We've alerted the CIA station chief in Jakarta to watch for him when he returns, but we can't arrest him until we know whoever he's working with can't carry out the sale. " Agent Crandall continued.

He eyed Jack sourly as the chemist poured himself another drink, but he didn't say anything.

"Then I don't understand why you've come to me. Once you've got a hold of whatever technology he's claiming to have, I can—"

"I'm afraid we don't have time for that, Dr. Easterly. We don't know how his technology works, what it is capable of, and most importantly, how to stop it. We need someone with your skills on-site."

Agent Crandall stood and straightened his tie.

"Dr. Jack Easterly, your country needs you."

Jack stiffened.

"Me?" He took a drink to fortify himself.

"You flew out of a Port Morseby airdrome for months, you know the area. I've seen your record, Dr. Easterly. You're an honest-to-God war hero."

Jack opened his mouth, then closed it. Turning away from Agent Crandall he walked to the table.

"Not any more." He hung his head, refusing to look at the other man. More than anything else in the world right now he wanted to drain his glass, but the other man's gaze stopped him.

"That was twelve years ago." Jack said helplessly. "I haven't been back since. Not even once."

"What happened?" Crandall asked. When Jack didn't answer, he shrugged. "I'm sorry, but frankly, there's no one else with your qualifications."

Taking his cassette tape out of the player he held it up for Jack's inspection.

"What if I told you that we suspect the voice on that tape is Dr. Takato Hayanishi, formerly of the Japanese army's Unit 731."

"Unit 731..." Jack breathed. One of the pilots he trained with ended up in Unit 731's experiments after he was captured in Manila. Randolph had still been alive when MacArthur's boys liberated the camp, for a given value of "alive."

"That's right." Agent Crandall nodded; his voice was low and urgent,sensing an opening. "We know he and some of the other Jap scientists working on their atomic and biological experiments escaped after the war, but this is the first time we've located one.

Jack stared morosely into his drink.

"I'm sorry Agent Crandall, you'll have to find someone else."

"There isn't anyone else, Dr. Easterly."

"I'm sorry. I...I was younger then."

"Jack..." Crandall approached the scientist. "I've seen your file. It isn't just your wartime experience. You work with substances so lethal that the government doesn't even acknowledge they exist. I don't understand."

"I..." Unable to finish, he closed his eyes and shook his head.

"That's very disappointing, Dr. Easterly." The G-man pulled a card out of his coat with a sigh. "My plane leaves from the National Guard airfield at 8:30 this evening. If you change your mind, show this to the guard at the front gate."

"That's not—"

"I know it's a tough decision, but your country needs you. Make no mistake, Dr. Easterly, we may not have officially declared war like we did in 1941, but our nation is under attack just as surely as it was that December morning. I know you're still the same man that did the right thing then and you'll do the right thing now."

After Crandall left, Jack drained his glass and slumped into the chair, hoping that if he told himself enough excuses then sooner or later he'd start to believe them.

By the time Anna Lee's class finished two hours later, he'd had enough time to flip his self-loathing into resentment against Crandall for putting him in the situation. The anger and the alcohol were a powerful aphrodisiac, making him want to bend the co-ed over the table and pound her until she screamed.

"Hey there, Doc." She pranced in, skirt swirling around her pretty legs.

"Come 'ere, you." Jack slurred, grabbing her wrist in an iron grip and pulling her close.

Anna Lee's eyes widened in surprise and a little fear. Normally he was a quiet drunk, more likely to ignore her than molest her—this was something new. Then she quickly forced her expression into a coquettish look of feigned dismay.

"Why, professor! I—"

Jack cut her off with a fierce kiss, mashing his mouth against hers. His hands roamed over her body as if they wanted to touch her everywhere at once.

"Uhm." Anna Lee stifled a grunt as Jack's fingers clenched her ass hard enough to leave marks. He rubbed his body against hers and she could feel his hardness against her stomach.

"Why don't you let me take care of this." She began to lower her body with a calculated look. She didn't understand his behavior, but if she could distract him with a blowjob maybe she could finish without any more bruises.

"No." Jack wouldn't let her escape. Panting, he manhandled her sweater over her head, exposing the creamy tops of her swelling breasts. The sight spurred him like a red flag in front of a bull, and he lowered his head, pushing down her bra cups and sucking hard on her nipples.

"Oooh!" Anna Lee gasped, feeling his rough insistence jar her arousal into gear. His hands dropped to her curvy hips, feeling for the waistband of her skirt.

"Leave my skirt on," Anna Lee said, wriggling out of her panties and sending them across the room with a casual toss. "Just in case that man comes back."

"Don't talk about him, damn it." Jack growled, "This is about what I'm going to do to you."

He grabbed her armpits and hoisted her onto the table. Holding her by the shoulders, he pinned her against the tabletop, forcing himself between her knees and spreading her legs. His erection leaped up like a missile at its target.

"Ooooh, are you going to experiment on me?" She pantomimed, holding her palms against her cheeks in mock horror.

Her words hit Jack like a sucker-punch. His knees quaked and he struggled for breath. He imagined her strapped to a table in some god-forsaken jungle, suffering under some buckteethed Tojo look-a-like.

Oh, God, Jack thought, backing away from Anna Lee and burying his head in his hands, what if that really was happening? Not to Anna Lee, but to some innocent woman. The face of his wartime love reappeared in his mind, twisted in fear as she struggled.

Anna Lee's eyes widened in shock at his reaction.

"What's wrong?"

"I...nothing...I just—" What if Crandall didn't catch him? He imagined millions of innocent Americans exposed to whatever hideous device the mad scientist had created.

"You can't fool me, Sweetie. You look like a squirrel that's just discovered someone done eat the nuts you buried." She admonished him, sitting up and caressing his cheek. Holding his rapidly softening cock in her other hand, she added, "Even John Thomas looks sad. Is this about your visitor?" She asked.

"No...I mean, yes, sort of." Jack tried to recover his equilibrium.

"That's not much of an answer, silly." She stared sympathetically.

"He asked me to do something, but I..." Jack rested his hands on the table, staring blankly between her breasts.

"You said 'no?'"

"I can't. Maybe when I was younger, but now I—"

"Maybe you should say yes." The girl interrupted gently.

I—wha-what?" Jack looked up, startled.

"I'm just a country girl, but I do know this—" She let go his soft cock to squeeze her breasts, "—if you're so broken up that these beauties don't get John Thomas hard, you've made the wrong decision."

"But I'm not—I'm..." Jack waved vaguely in the direction of his still.

"Then maybe it's time you are something else." Anna Lee said, giving him a shrewd look.

Jack blinked. Anna Lee was right. Somehow, the naïve coed understood what he himself didn't. Whether he wanted to go was irrelevant—this was something he had to do.

Pulling up his pants he eyed the half-naked co-ed.

"Twice in one day. Never would have expected that." He muttered.

"Professor?"

Resting his hands on the girl's shoulders, Jack stared into her eyes.

"I need to go away for a while. I'm not sure when I'll get back. But whatever happens, thank you."

"Um, sure, Doc." She smiled and reached for him. "Now how about we do something to help you remember—."

He silenced her with a kiss.

"I'll call just as soon as I get back." He said after their lips parted reluctantly.

Once she was gone, Jack moved quickly. From under the table he pulled a black valise, the one he used to carry sensitive atomic research to and from the labs at Maple Ridge, the one with certain...precautions. Communist spies could be anywhere, and it never hurt to be careful. It wouldn't be the first time he'd left suddenly for classified work, so he scrawled a hasty message to his department chair and left.

Jack's mind was still spinning when he pulled into his own driveway. He lived alone, in a small bungalow on the north side of town. Leaving his Thunderbird idling in the driveway, he raced inside to pack, valise in hand. A nagging voice insisted that something was wrong, but he was in too much of a hurry to listen.

He was already inside the dark entry hall by the time he realized what it was telling him. The light should have been on; he always left it burning when he knew he'd be staying late at the office. Before he could react, though, lightning flashed through his skull, sending him sprawling on the wooden floor.

Jack kept moving through the pain, stumbling to his knees, but another blow upside the head sent him reeling to the ground. Eyes watering, he looked up at his attacker.

It was too dark to see the man's face, but there was no doubt about the shape of the revolver in his hand.

"Jack Easterly?"

"Who—"

"I don't reckon you're a-needin' to know that." The voice drawled with a mountain twang.

The man raised his revolver. Even in the gloom of the unlit hallway, the revolver's open barrel was a pit of blackness.

"You done mess with the wrong gal, Mister."

*****

Will the mysterious gunman shoot Jack? What did the evil Dr. Hayanishi's machine do to the helpless women in his clutches? And will he do the same to the entire United States?

Tune in next installment to find out!