by Tom Shepherd
“Jeez Louise! Warn me when you’re gonna stop suddenly.”
“Look.”
This time, whoever walked the shore displayed no light, except for a tiny beacon which beeped red-white dashes out to sea. It was about a quarter mile up the beach, so we had a long hike. Fortunately, the moon retreated behind a bank of clouds, so we covered most of the distance undetected. By the time we got close enough to see silhouettes scurrying along the beach, we tramped over another turtle trail marring the smooth surface.
Meanwhile, the airplane buzzed somewhere in the darkness. We never actually saw an aircraft, but our first hint of suspicious activity came when the moon peeked through the clouds. Three figures wrestled with a dark parachute, gusts swelling the canopy like a black bra. One of them grappled with a canvas bag which the chute insisted on dragging up the beach. I would have been cussing, or at least shouting in frustration, but they battled the wind-driven parachute in silence. Tanella knelt in the sand.
“Let’s move closer,” she said, crawling.
I grabbed her foot. “Whoa, girl. These ain’t turtle lovers.”
“With this much cloud cover my camera phone is useless. We’ve got to see them to identify them.”
“Shhh! They’ll hear you.”
“Listen to the surf roar. They won’t hear anything, unless we jump up and scream at them.”
“Text your dad. Or call the cops!”
“And say what? We saw people on the beach in the moonlight? The police won’t come, and my father will order us home.”
“But—but—”
“Come on. You’re the one who loves action movies. Where’s your sense of adventure?” She slithered away in the darkness.
“At the movies, you can go for popcorn when the shooting starts.” I dropped my backpack. “Stay here, Chloe.”
Down on all fours, crawling after her, I started mentally arguing with myself. This is sooooo stupid. I’m going to get killed. Everybody’s going to get killed. Only Eric will survive. Is that justice? God! Risking my butt on the beach at night—I can’t even get a tan!
Both elbows and knees were brush-burned from digging and pulling, and the waist of my shorts scooped sand into my panties every time I slid forward, but I was too frightened to raise my belly. Tanella waited for me to catch up with her. She jabbed a finger up the beach toward the dunes, pointed at me, and crawled the opposite direction toward the ocean.
Okay, we split up, I thought. Surround them. Brilliant idea. I’m working with a suicidal genius.
She gave me the easy part. Two hundred feet of beach plus the whole width of the island to run from them. But Tanella had half as much sand and no place to fly but into the surf. I worried she might get caught between crashing waves and three gangsters dueling with a parachute. My eyes swept the darkness from the scampering silhouettes to Tanella’s probable location. Sand caked my hands and arms and legs; sweat and grit plastered my hair. As I crawled I could feel a dirt ring forming around my neck.
Then the most God-awful stench washed over my face. A ton of six-day-old garbage uncollected behind a fish market. I heard a terrible Hisssssss and looked up, eye to eye with a snake head and beak jaws jutting from an enormous armored body. One snap and my face was red mush.
You had to be there.
It isn’t every day you get to nose-kiss a leftover from the dinosaurs. For an instant, I was alone with the monster in a world of darkness and stench. Like one of the expendable, minor characters in Jurassic Park. So, naturally, I did the only sensible thing. I jumped up and screamed my freaking head off. Three searchlight beams snapped on me and the sea turtle. I heard several metallic clicks.
A distant voice shouted a string of profanities, ending with “It’s one of those kids!”
I jumped back from the Caretta, who coughed and resumed plodding seaward.
“Hi, guys. I didn’t see nothin’.”
At the water’s edge Tanella leaped up and shouted, “Sally Ann—run!”
The lights swished to her and I took off in the darkness. Panting, slipping in the sand, running in total panic, knowing I was abandoning my best friend in the world into the hands of the people who killed Carsten O’Malley. My foot hit something soft, a strap, which snared and tangled my legs. Frantically, I tore at the bindings, only to find my backpack. Light beams swept the beach, but the sand rose and fell where I lay, forming a shadow-filled trench deep enough to hide my whole body if I stayed flat.
“Sally Ann-nnnn?” a voice called. And I swear to God it sounded just like Elmer Fudd. “We got that wascal f’wend of yours. You better come out and talk, or we gonna d’won her in the surf. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”
Beams skimmed and flashed all around me. I pulled out my phone to summon the cavalry—shoot! The battery was dead again.
With Eric sleeping like Rip Van Winkle, no help was coming. I knew they would kill me if I came out, but they’d kill Tanella if I didn’t. Sliding crab-like out of the sand ditch, my foot touched the backpack and I felt a hard lump within it. Grateful for the rumbling sea, I unzipped the pouch and withdrew Eric’s stupid water laser. Well, heck. Black, wire handle. Looks like a real gun. Maybe, if I could get closer...of course, the turtle!
Somehow, I found the Caretta’s trail without the lights finding me. Crawling in the wake of the monster was not easy, but I soon caught up and slipped around her side, so the loggerhead’s shell hid me from the people down the beach. After a few minutes, me and the turtle were about to go swimming, so I flattened myself at the edge of the surf as she paddled away, her chores finished ashore.
Eric’s water laser felt light and flimsy in my hands. I lay on my back and looked up at the starless sky, thinking about going into battle with a black plastic toy as my only weapon.
Then I heard, unmistakably, Clancey Beaumont’s voice. “We’ll have to find the other kid. She may have recognized us.”
They were less than twenty feet away, standing on a ridge of sand which marked the high tide line.
“What about this one?” Elmer Fudd said.
“We’ll bury her behind my hotel.” I heard a pistol cock.
“No!” I broke the red orange, fake-weapon safety guard away from the muzzle and jumped up. “Drop your lights and your guns or I'll shoot!”
“Sally Ann—run! Run!” Tanella shrieked. In the halo of their flashlights I saw Clancey Beaumont grasping Tanella by the hair braid. He waved a handgun in his free hand. Then their lights flared in my face and I could see nothing.
He laughed. “What kind of gun do you have, Miss Palmer?”
I shielded my eyes from the hurting light. “An Uzi, Mister Beaumont, or whatever-your-name-is. And I’ll mow y’all down if you don’t let my friend go.”
“She’s holding something black,” Elmer said, his cartoon voice beginning to fade. “It does look like a gun.”
Beaumont stepped toward me with Tanella in tow. “Squeeze off a round, fire at the sea, Sally Ann, and we’ll let her go.”
“Let her go, now,” I ordered.
“Sally Ann, please!” Tanella said. “Run!”
“Let’s see what your friend’s packing.” Beaumont dragged Tanella with him by the hair. He stalked toward me at the water’s edge.
“Please, God,” I whispered, “let this stuff be strong enough…”
Beaumont halted a few paces away and laughed. “She’s got a real dangerous looking water gun. Sells for nine-fifty in my gift shop.”
“Eat perfume, sucker!” Pointing the toy at his head, I fired a burst of ten or eleven squirts into his face. Direct hit. He screamed and fell to the sand, dropping Tanella. I pumped the water gun in the air like a Jihadi cheerleader. “Yes!”
Tanella grabbed the back of my T-shirt and ran, pulling me with her. Over my shoulder I saw Clancey Beaumont fall into the surf, splash brine in his eyes and howl above the wind. Then the third, silent man raised a hand, and Elmer Fudd shouted, batting the other man’s arm.
Crack!—and a flash of spark
s. “No! They’re only kids!”
I heard something smack flesh. The silent one slapped Elmer with his gun hand, knocking him to his knees. That’s all I saw because I started running faster, straight down the flat, wet sand along the water’s edge.
Splat! Splat! Whizzing bits of metal punched the sand at our feet. Silent Sam was aiming without a light and missing us by just a few feet. Any second I expected a bullet to tear through my skin and sling me bleeding to the wet sand.
“Eric, wake up!” I shouted at the spider in my T-shirt pocket, “Call your dad. Call the cops. Call Dick Tracy. Call the Marines. They’re shooting at us!”
Tanella veered upslope away from the waves, crossing from wet cement to snow drifts, which slowed our pace but made us tougher targets for the gunman chasing us.
“Gotta get—get away,” I panted, “I’m too—too cute to die!”
Our silent pursuer tried to hold Tanella and me in his light, but whenever he caught us with the beam she jerked left or right, out of the light, pulling me along, making him search again. Two more gunshots snapped, tossing white plumes waist high to my left. Then moonlight poured over the sea, like God tipped a pail of silver paint across the surface. Glancing skyward, I realized the moon will soon hose the whole beach with pale light. Up to now, Silent Sam had to find us with the searchlight and shoot with the other hand. Hard to hit two shadows on a gray beach. Spill moonlight on the shooting gallery, and we’re Daffy Duck floating in a milk bucket.
“Up there—into the woods!” Tanella stretched her legs to stride up the dune. More lights swept us, and now two guns flashed, spitting lead teeth at our feet. We were both gasping, sucking air like sprinters at the finish line.
“Tanella—if they kill me—you can have—have my laptop.”
“Run, just run!”
Topping the dune we crashed into a snow fence half buried by drifting sand, designed to halt the migrating dunes from smothering the shrubs and trees paralleling the beach. I cried out in surprise, but our combined weights flattened the barrier, wrenching up sand and mutilating the crest of the dune. Flipping over the ribs of wood, I tumbled down the back slope and flipped into a wax myrtle shrub in the gully. Tanella rolled beside me, bounced up, and flew into the maze of live oaks. I scrambled into the forest after her.
Vines and roots snared, tripped me. I fell again and again, each time rolling and leaping up. Hobbling on twisted ankles, ignoring thorns that sliced my hands and forearms, I had never been so terrified. Every bush was a gunman, every tree branch flapping behind us was an aimed pistol. I expected lead nails to pierce our bodies before we cut through this jungle. My hands felt wet and sticky as I thrashed at vines and branches barring my escape route. Hot and sweaty and peeing my pants from terror, limping, crying, adrenalin-driven, I plunged deeper into the thicket. When I was certain we were lost in a forest of murderers, I burst through a hedgerow and fell onto the gravel shoulder of Barrier Island’s beach highway.
I was weeping, kissing the pavement, when Tanella crashed through the bush and skidded beside me, popping pebbles at my face. Her braided hair glistened with sweat in the moonlight; her T-shirt looked like she’d been playing tag with a pack of lions.
“I—I think they quit—following us,” she said, gasping.
“I’m not waiting to see!” Leaping up, I tried to run, but my legs folded beneath me. Gravel bit my palms as I broke the fall. I started crawling and sobbing. “Gotta get away... gotta get away!”
Lights of a car swung around a bend in the highway to the north. I lay on my back and cried while Tanella ran down the center of the road waving both arms. Blue lights slashed the darkness, sweeping tree shadows into a ghost dance.
“Cops! Oh, God, it’s the wonderful, beautiful, freaking cops! I love you! C’mere! Here, here!”
The car stopped and I covered my eyes with an arm to blot out the headlights. I was beginning to hurt all over. Tanella came back to me as the car door slammed.
“What happened to you?” Inspector Borkowski pushed my arm from across my face.
“Drug dealers. On the beach. They shot—we ran.”
“You look like hell.”
“I just came from there!”
He flashed a light along my arm. “Your hands are bleeding, kid.”
“Huh?” They felt wet, but I had no idea. “Thorn bushes. We escaped through the thorn bushes…”
“Let’s get you to a doctor.”
“No! Get the drug dealers on the beach!”
“We saw them,” Tanella said. “They had a big bag, dropped by a plane.”
“Dropped by a plane, eh?” He offered a hand, hauling me to my feet.
“You gotta arrest them before they get away,” I insisted. “They killed Carsten O’Malley.”
He shrugged and turned to his car. “All right. I'll look into it after you get first aid.”
“They shot at us!” I said, hurting all over now, and angry.
Tanella nodded. “Repeatedly.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t seagulls or surf or other kids punking you?”
“No way,” I said. “Those dudes were shooting real bullets.”
“Okay. We’ll fix your hands, then check it out.”
Borkowski sprayed my blood-caked hands with antiseptic from his first aid kit, taped them in gauze and wrapped both of my ankles in Ace bandages. With hands and feet bound, I felt like a teen mummy, fresh from the crypt of a bad movie. But at least I could walk, and the throbbing in my hands quieted a little. Despite her gashed T-shirt, Tanella suffered just a few cuts. She had stumbled across my path and followed me down the six-lane highway I’d cut barehanded through the underbrush.
We drove up a paved access cut to the edge of the dunes and Borkowski swept the beach with the squad car searchlight. Totally barren. Not even a loggerhead trail in sight.
“Your imagination ran away with you,” he said, still scanning with the light.
“They grabbed Tanella by the hair,” I told him. “They were going to kill her. That wasn’t my imagination.”
He opened the car door and we walked down the dune; his flashlight beam bounced ahead of us. “How’d you get away?”
“I squirted perfume in the eyes of the guy holding Tanella.”
“You liquidated him. Very resourceful.”
“It really happened!” I said.
“Did you recognize this big, bad killer?”
Tanella nodded. “It was Clancey Beaumont.”
He laughed. “Get serious, kid.”
“It’s true,” she said. “And I don’t think he's really Clancey Beaumont.” She explained how Beaumont didn’t know enough American history to write a book on Mosby.
“Rich guys hire people to do things for them, then they take the credit,” Borkowski said as we crossed from soft-dry to hard-wet sand. “Where’d all this happen?”
“Right here,” I said.
“No,” Tanella said. “Farther up the beach, I think.”
“Could’ve been anywhere along here,” I said.
“Who were the other two men?” Borkowski’s light swept the edge of the water, revealing whitecaps close to shore. The wind picked up and I was suddenly chilled. Rain in the air, a musty smell, different from sea salt. I rubbed my arms with bandaged hands and shivered. Borkowski took off his blazer and slipped it around my shoulders. I could have kissed him, if I wasn’t so mad because he didn’t believe us.
“I never saw their faces,” Tanella said. “They kept their flashlights in my eyes.”
“Did you recognize any other voices?”
“One man never spoke.”
“And the other? Did you recognize his voice?”
“Yes, sir,” Tanella said. She and I exchanged glances.
“Well?”
“One of them sounded just like Elmer Fudd,” I said.
He clicked off the light. “All right, that’s it.”
“Look, I don’t have enough imagination to invent bullcrap like this!”
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“She doesn’t,” Tanella agreed.
“Clancey Beaumont and Elmer Fudd. Who was the third guy, Donald Trump or Donald Duck?”
“He obviously disguised his voice,” Tanella said. “He must have known we’d recognize it.”
“You kids show me an empty beach where you insist a drug ring is parachuting bags of dope. You say they shot at you, held you hostage. I find no evidence, no shell casings, no footprints in the sand, no drug dealers. Some dark airplane you never saw dropped the bag. You can't identify the plane, the location, or the players in this fantasy. Oh, excuse me. You do have a positive ID on two of the perps. A Looney Tune character and Clancey Beaumont, one of the richest guys in Georgia.”
“But—”
“Let’s go. I promised Mr. Bennett I’d check up on you, but you’re too weird to allow on the beach by yourselves at night.”
“Inspector,” Tanella’s voice trembled slightly, “I am not given to hyperbole.”
“Look, we’re done here,” Borkowski said. “You need to be in bed. Tomorrow this island will be evacuated.”
“Why?” I said, fearing the answer.
“National Weather Service announced about half an hour ago, Hurricane Hagar is definitely headed for the Georgia coast. Already packing 145 mile-an-hour winds and building up steam over the warm Atlantic. By tomorrow night, the whole island will be under water. Hagar’s predicted to hit at high tide.”
We found Eric snoring by the bikes, wrapped in his sleeping roll. He yawned and said, “We gotta go? Can’t I just sleep?”
“Let’s go,” I pulled at his sleeping bag with gauzed hands.
He tumbled out. “Jeez, Sally Ann! I was sleeping. You’re so—”
“Eric, don’t start with me. This has not been a good night.”
“Got that right.” Eric shook sand from his sleeping bag. “Totally boring. Just empty beaches and rolling surf.”
When we reached the Island Club Hotel it was nearly three A.M. The two professors sailed the high seas of dreamland, and anyway we were exhausted. So, we tiptoed through Dr. Blake’s and Uncle Bob’s apartment and climbed painfully up the single flight of steps to our under-the-roof suite.