Cut Off

by Robertson, Edward W.

  Whatever the case, they were in a comfortable routine, engaging in nothing more dangerous than the occasional leap from one pool to the next and far too much unprotected sex. Tristan spent the hours honing her woodsmanship, learning to walk among the fallen leaves, seeds, and nuts with little to no sound, to rub her face with mud and hide behind screens of shrubs.

  When she wasn't observing, she took her outrigger canoe into the waves, both to practice its use and to better explore the jungle's coves in search of a more seaworthy vessel. It turned out that the jungles of Hana were rich in life, but miserly in boats. Some canoes and a few small motor boats, but she didn't know how to operate those and did not like the idea of relying on something mechanical that required fuel and the steady maintenance of moving parts. Their entire predicament hinged on the idea that disaster could come at any time. They needed something analog. Something that, like the body, was ready to move the instant you needed it.

  She kept waiting for a letter to appear under the front door, to hear the scuff of his sandals on the walk. Instead, each day was an emptiness, a new stretch of hours with too little to fill them. She traveled up the road to a former village and scavenged half-empty bottles of rum, vodka, and bourbon. She had plenty of fruit juice from the yard. At first, she waited to drink until late afternoon, when there was nothing to do but sit on the lanai, but soon she drank as she pleased. More than once, she started at breakfast and napped by noon. She always had a good buzz by evening, though, and sometimes stayed up far too late, lost in the numbness, and woke feeling scraped-out, no matter how long she spent sleeping on the lanai.

  She knew it couldn't last. Not unless she learned to ferment her own fruit, an idea she toyed with once the neighbors' cabinets began to empty. Then again, everything was temporary. She intended to enjoy herself while it was there.

  Most days, she forced herself to get up before they did in order to catch them before they left the house by the creek. The mornings got harder. She sometimes skipped breakfast, gagging as she brushed her teeth with baking soda and water.

  Three weeks after the split, as she hid behind a trunk while they sat beside the stream dipping their toes in the water, Alden hunched his bare shoulders and leaned forward. "Do you think I should go talk to her?"

  Robi pulled the tie from her hair and swept her locks into a dark ponytail. "Do you think you should?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you're thinking about it."

  "I'm thinking about her alone in the house. Worrying about us."

  "Let her worry."

  "Do you think?"

  Robi brushed her nails down his spine. What she said next was too soft for Tristan to hear. Their backs were to her and she rose in silence, cat-stepping across the damp earth. As she neared another trunk, her foot slipped and squelched in the mud, releasing an earthy smell.

  Alden whirled, struggling to his feet and reaching for the rifle beside him; a part of Tristan was proud that he kept it with him, ready to act. He got up and stalked from the creek, face resolved. Before he could find her cowering behind a tree, Tristan stood and ambled toward him, as if she'd been on her way to find them.

  He smiled tightly. "That's what I thought."

  "I heard voices," she said. "Just making sure it was you."

  He eyed her, mouth a sharp line, then shook his head. "Bullshit. I've been hearing noises for days. The first time I check it out, it's you?"

  "Apparently so."

  "What's apparent is you're stalking us. You're so weird! Why can't you just leave us alone?"

  "Because you're sharing an island with aliens who don't want us to be here!" She closed on him, conscious that she could smell herself but not him; she wasn't bathing as often as she ought to be. "What's so special here that you can't leave it behind?"

  He rolled his eyes. "Quit following us, okay? You don't get to tell me what to do anymore."

  "I'm not asking you to apply for a permit every time you want to make out. All I want is for you to move to the Big Island. Okay? Can you do that?"

  "I'm over it. Don't talk to me again." He turned away and walked back to Robi, who stood beside the creek, watching. They murmured to each other, glanced at Tristan, and walked into the jungle.

  She was too hollowed out to follow. He had resented her for a long time, hadn't he? She'd seen signs of it for years. She'd passed it off as him being a teenager, but the truth ran much deeper. Would things have been different if she'd given him looser rein? What if she'd allowed him to mingle with the people of Lahaina rather than keeping him sequestered for years?

  She hadn't trusted the Guardians, but prior to their arrival, some of the locals had seemed all right. Perhaps they would have been able to build a placid relationship with them. Not chummy, necessarily, but enough to have stayed on good terms. It would have provided Alden with a social outlet. Given him time away from her. As for herself, she might have been clued in to local events, in position to head off the Guardians' insidious takeover. There would never have been the attacks on the Fallback Shack. No need to trick Lewis into walking into his own death, and thus no alien reprisal. They would never have been forced to Hana in the first place.

  Maybe the problem lay in her lack of ambition. Once they'd gotten to Maui and put together a functional home, they'd never taken it any further. Never attempted to rig up solar panels or rudimentary plumbing. Never bothered to replace their sailboat after it was stolen. Never gone exploring beyond supply trips to Lahaina or Kahului.

  They'd just...existed. She'd been content with that, satisfied that it meant Alden was safe at all times. But there'd been nothing in it for him. Nothing he could use to draw purpose from his life. It was no wonder he'd fallen so deeply into Robi the instant something meaningful had finally arrived before him.

  She dwelled on such things as she weeded the garden. As she walked to the creek for water. As she paddled around the ocean, pushing herself to take the canoe further and further from land. One time, she was so lost in the possibilities of what she'd done wrong, and what could have been, that she found herself halfway to the Big Island. Both it and Maui were hazy shapes on the horizon. She stopped, alone in the slop of the waves. She could see she'd switched roles with Alden; now he had purpose and she had nothing. She wondered if it might be better to slip over the side and swim until she couldn't.

  She didn't. She couldn't say why. She returned to land and then to the house. The lanai didn't really need sweeping, but she did so anyway. She couldn't say why she did that, either.

  Days trolled by, senseless and dull. One morning, as she sowed melon seeds, metal jangled from the road: dog tags.

  She cocked her ear to the sky, then grabbed her pistol and a large knife and loped through the trees toward the road, moving with all the stealth she'd honed following the kids around the jungle. She would need to move fast. Cut loose the dog's collar. If it shied away, she would be forced to disable it, then take the collar. Dash to the canoe, paddle out as quickly as she could, and dump the beacon into the sea. Even then, it would be dicey. When the lab had unwittingly betrayed them, the jet had shown up in minutes. Once the beacon was in the water, she might have to ditch the canoe, too. Would be much harder to spot her head against the ocean than the bright red boat.

  She reached the edge of the road and ran toward the jingle, hunched low. Ahead, the road curved to the right. A snatch of dun flashed between the trees. Tristan burst forward, slowed to a walk so as not to spook it, and swung onto the road.

  Before her, Helen put her hand to her throat and gasped. A golden retriever trotted toward Tristan, tail swishing, followed by two thin pugs. A chihuahua mix darted between Helen's feet.

  "Tristan!" the woman said, starting forward with a clack of black nutshell necklaces. "You'd need a plastic bag for what you just scared out of me!"

  "Helen?" Tristan laughed and moved to embrace the heavyset woman, whose lilac perfume didn't quite mask the scent of her travel sweat. Tristan stepped back, careful not to
trample the paws of the multitudinous dogs. "I thought everyone on the west side had been incinerated!"

  "As far as I know, they were. I stayed put in the hills for weeks before those danged bugs buzzed off!"

  "What brings you to Hana?"

  Helen's tan face brightened with wrath. "Three days ago, Charley came back with a collar on. I don't collar my pack—what if one were to get snagged on a branch and strangle? So I threw it aside. When we were off on a walk, one of their jets came by and circled the home. Can you believe it? They were fucking with my dogs!"

  Tristan chortled, then sobered. "They're using them to locate us. Collar's got a homing beacon in it or something. You've got to be careful of strays, okay?"

  "I know how to handle my pack." She turned in a half circle, taking in the jungle. "God, I can't get over this place. Do you live here?"

  "Right down the road. Were you thinking about staying? The people mostly keep to themselves, but I'd go talk to Papa Ohe'o."

  Helen smiled, eyes aglitter. "Papa Ohe'o? Tell me he lives up to that name."

  "Not in the way you'd expect," Tristan said. "But he's a good man." She gave Helen directions to the house beyond the pools. "If you decide to stay, come back and let me know?"

  "Of course, dear. Here." She unwrapped a lei of purple and white flowers from her wrist and lobbed it at Tristan. The flowers were fresh; she must have strung them as she'd been walking. "You look like you could use a little color in your life. So long!"

  She strode down the road in the company of wagging tails. Tristan held the lei in her hands, staring dully. After ensuring she was alone, she lifted it over her head, the flowers tickling her collarbones.

  She didn't see Helen again that day, nor the next. Four full days after their meeting, Tristan got up, ran until her stomach felt good enough to take food, rinsed herself off, then hiked down the coast to Papa Ohe'o's. Helen was there on the porch, laid out in the sun, topless.

  She glanced up, smiled, and casually moved to cover herself. "You couldn't have called ahead?"

  "Sorry," Tristan muttered. "Was starting to get worried about you. But it looks like you're fine. More than fine."

  "Sorry I haven't been back to see you." Helen smirked and glanced into the woods behind the house. "I've been rather distracted."

  They chatted about the area, the people, and Papa Ohe'o, who showed up a few minutes later, looking mildly flustered. They couldn't keep their eyes off each other. Soon, Tristan excused herself. Helen and Papa O, as she called him, both insisted she come by for dinner some time. Tristan promised vaguely that she would.

  Later that week, she headed to her cabinet and discovered she was down to a single fifth of rum. She knew how to make more—the process was essentially the same as the ethanol she'd learned to make before leaving Hanford—but rather than tumbling down that route, she decided to end this chapter of her life with a bang, then start over new, boring, and blank. That meant erasing her mind with a "just finished her last final of the semester"-style bender.

  Two days later, she was awakened from a heavy, dreamless sleep by pounding on the screen door. She winced, reached for the water glass beside her pile of blankets, and trudged around front. For a moment, she forgot her hangover: Alden stood on the other side of the screen. He didn't look angry or irritated or impatient to deliver some message and move on.

  He looked scared.

  "Robi's been taken," he said. "You have to help me get her back."

  20

  The lantern glared over the ship. Ness threw himself flat. So did Sprite, landing on the deck with a hollow thump.

  "Should we shoot him?" Sprite hissed.

  "We should shut our fool mouths," Ness said. "Sebastian will be done in five-ten minutes. Then we're out of here."

  The light played over the sails, sweeping back and forth, then lowered to the deck, moving methodically. Ness swore to himself. Should have tried to get behind the cabin. Too late now. The beam advanced, trickled past him, then lurched back, pinning them.

  A voice called across the water. He couldn't understand the language, but the emotions in it weren't friendly.

  "Can you translate that?" Ness said.

  Sprite shook his head. "Now do we shoot?"

  "If you want to see what five hundred gallons of burning diesel looks like, go right ahead. Or, as a non-exploding option, you could see if he speaks Chinese."

  The man repeated his foreign query slowly and loudly. Sprite poked up his head and asked something in Chinese. The man on the dock replied in his original language.

  "Nothing doing," Sprite said. "I can tell you this much, he sounds pissed."

  "Keep talking. Try every other language you know."

  "You mean English?"

  "Anything that might stall him!"

  Sprite raised his head again, said something in Chinese, waited a moment, then tried what sounded like another dialect, Mandarin or something. The man shook his head, stalked to the edge of the pier, and pointed to the chain and fuel hose running from the yacht into the water.

  "Is there something I can help you with?" Sprite tried. "Such as English lessons?"

  The man shouted something else, then turned on his heel and jogged from the edge of the pier, taking his light with him. A rifle projected from his shoulder.

  Ness got to his feet. "This is jacked up. I'm going down to get Sebastian. Get in the cabin and punch it as soon as we're onboard."

  Without giving Sprite time to argue, he made sure his laser was securely holstered, then leapt over the railing. He straightened his body and hit the water feet-first, knifing into it with a slew of bubbles. Between that and the darkness, he couldn't see jack shit, but the pump rumbled below him, pointing the way. In the moonlight, he was just able to make out the gigantic silhouette of the sunken cargo freighter, canted at a low angle, the tip of its stern little more than ten feet below the water.

  Ness kicked down, gesturing wildly with his hands, the electrical signals of which would travel better underwater than they did through the air. He repeated himself time and again, uncertain if Sebastian could sense him above whatever dumb signals the pump was throwing off—or if Sebastian was still down there at all. Lungs burning, he flipped around and kicked upward, ankle snagging on something ropy. He kicked to free himself, but it held fast. He reached down and his hand closed around the rubbery, giving surface of a tentacle. Sebastian swam up beneath him.

  "Disconnect everything," Ness signed in the water. "We have to leave now."

  Sebastian tried to sign back, but it was far too dark.

  "Can't see," Ness signed. "Go now now now!"

  Sebastian wagged his head up and down and disappeared into the depths. Ness kicked and broke the surface, emerging into a thunderstorm. Curiously, there was no lightning. And the thunder was much too rapid. Ness circled in place. Light flashed on the pier, accompanied by the crack of gun shots. A rifle answered from the boat.

  Bubbles swarmed the surface. Sebastian emerged from their middle. His baseball-sized eyes swiveled toward the dock.

  "That's why—"

  Ness was interrupted by Sebastian snatching him up and hauling him through the water. The alien swung around the yacht's bow, putting the boat between them and the gunmen, then stopped and sank into the waves.

  "What are you doing?" Ness shouted uselessly.

  Sebastian exploded upward, snapping his tentacles around the side railing of the yacht. Sprite's rifle roared from the main cabin, briefly silencing the men on the pier. Ness charged behind Sebastian into the cabin. Pebbled safety glass blanketed the floor, rattling with each pitch of the boat.

  Sebastian went straight for the controls. The yacht's motor thrummed to life. Metal clanked from the anchor and the winch. Ness exited the cabin and took cover in the doorway. A half dozen muzzles flashed from the docks. Ness took aim, splashing blue lasers at a man standing brazenly in the open. The man screamed and fell in a ball. Some of the others shouted at the light. Ness shot at another, s
etting fire to the crate the man was hidden behind.

  The yacht turned tail, presenting Ness square to the riflemen. He swore and fired wildly, less interested in hitting anything fleshy than in preventing the owners of that flesh from firing back at him. A bullet crashed into the back of the cabin, showering Ness with fiberglass splinters. He dropped prone and dashed inside on hands and knees, small squares of glass pressing into his skin. The yacht gained speed, opening the gap between it and the docks. Ness sprinkled them with lasers to keep them honest. Their return fire became sparser, bullets humming through the air, striking nothing. They quit entirely before the ship was out of range, either to conserve bullets, or because it was clear the "battle" was over.

  Ness picked himself up and brushed off the pebbles of glass sticking to his skin. Inside the cabin, Sprite and Sebastian exchanged a meaty high five.

  "What the hell was that?" Ness said.

  "Total bullshit!" Sprite spread his palms wide. "All those guys came out on the dock yelling their heads off. Before I could say anything back, they started shooting!"

  "I was only gone a minute!"

  "Like I said, it was bullshit." He gazed at all the little cuts on Ness' forearms and knees. "You all right?"

  "It's just the glass." Ness crunched forward. Before he could begin searching, Sebastian plucked a first aid kit from a compartment and slung it at Ness. Ness dropped onto a padded bench and swabbed himself with rubbing alcohol, baring his teeth at the sting. "Slow down. You're wasting fuel."

  Sprite eased down the throttle. Ahead, the mouth of the bay gleamed in the moonlight. "Well, now what?"