by Jamie Tuck
~
. . . back to yesterday, the first of these brutal sunny days.
Aboard Kirrin - Wade Talbot’s fish-seeking missile. No crew. Just the two of them.
They’d left the dock at dawn and headed due east into the glassy North Sea - straight into the rising sun as she lifted herself from the cold water. A fireball lost, missing from the skies over an African plain. The sea, it seemed, evaporating before their eyes - slowly emptying like a sink.
Six hours on very fast boat.
One hundred and seventy six nautical miles due east to the Dogger Bank fishing grounds.
Every one of them directly into this new sun.
They’d skimmed effortlessly - three dozen pistons pumping thunderously, hammering nautical miles free from the water.
Then Talbot looked at his radar.
‘What the fuck?’ he said.
He tapped the gadget with a finger.
‘What the fu . . ? Who?’
He looked at the horizon.
‘Who the fuck is . . .?’
He again tapped the radar.
Talbot’s face then reddened and hardened - maddened - into the face on a crucifix.
There was no doubting it, there was a boat where it shouldn’t be.
Right on top of his buoy.
The radio message from the other side was clear and, anyway - the buoy was always there. Once a month, every month, Talbot’s buoy had been bobbling around in that same spot for over thirteen years.
But yesterday it was not alone.
‘What the fu . .? Who the fuck?’ Talbot whispered.
He made up his mind.
‘Thievin . . . fuckin . . .. . . CUNTS!’
He’d pulled down hard on the throttles of both mighty engines.
Talbot’s blood overheating like water in an old kettle as they speeded across the ocean. Hash could only watch, way too afraid to take the shaking, rattling, whistling, boiling thing off the stove.
‘Thievin CUNTS!’ Talbot had roared at the sun, gripping the knobs on his ship’s wheel like the throats of skinned children.
‘CUNTS!’
And they’d skimmed on relentless across the calm lake that was once the cold, capricious North Sea. On towards the boat they could see now on the horizon, the boat in the spot - the spot where the buoy should be. Talbot’s spot. Tied to Talbot’s 13-year-old buoy.
The little boat - this little boat - slowly coming into view, the face of the young lad on the deck smiling up at the monstrous approaching machine.
A big fat spliff at his lips.
‘Thievin CUNT! Bastard!’
The orange tube of the distress flare in Talbot’s fist, his finger on the plastic ring-pull trigger at its base and . . .