He folded the paper, put it under his arm, and took a long pull of coffee, finishing it. He wiped his mouth, put the paper napkin in the empty cup, and got up and stretched. The paper fell from beneath his arm and landed open on the concrete. Heel to Hero. Funny, he’d never felt like a heel, and he certainly didn’t feel like a hero.
He picked up the Herald, tossed everything in the garbage, and headed for the bus stop. The 9:11 would bring him to the cemetery by 9:26 if it was on time.
Splinter didn’t feel like a hero because his decision to keep his survival a secret, even from Lenah, weighed on him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling she was better-off without him. With him out of the way she’d be forced to move on with her life and find a man who could give her what she needed and make her happy. Do all the things he couldn’t. It was better this way, the man he was going six-feet-under.
Air breaks chirping broke Splinter from his daydream and he got on the bus and dropped change into the ticket stand. The bus pulled away and made a right on Lake Worth Road, bumping along. A boy sat next to his mother staring at him, and Splinter crossed his eyes. The boy laughed and when the child’s mother saw Splinter entertaining the boy she smiled. What a difference a haircut and shower made.
He swayed in his seat as the bus made a right on US-441 south. They passed Target and a housing development to the east as the bus rolled through the morning humidity. Rows of white tombstones stretched out beyond a metal fence to the west, and the bus’s air brakes squeaked as it stopped before the cemetery gates.
A computerized voice burst from a speaker, “South Florida National Cemetery.”
The boy waved goodbye to Splinter as he got up and went to see his final resting place.
Splinter pulled the bill of his cap down and blended in with the crowd that worked its way down a gravel road toward a gathering of mourners. Splinter chuckled. He didn’t think he’d met this many people in his entire life. News vans lined the narrow lane closest to the main road, satellite dishes raised, generators humming. He kept his head down, met nobody’s gaze, and stayed behind a man and woman who walked side by side, the man’s arm around the woman’s waist.
Dirty-white tombstones stretched out in all directions, like dominoes waiting to fall. Grass filled in the gaps, and lines of people stretched away from a center mass where Lenah stood. Splinter’s grave marker and a headshot of a young Will in his uniform and wearing a watch cap sat on an easel next to a podium.
Splinter hung back and leaned on a palm tree, a thick crowd of people before him.
The PA system crackled to life, and Lenah tapped the microphone with her index finger. The system squealed, and she stepped back, hand on heart.
She leaned back in and said, “Sorry.” Lenah looked down at her notes. Someone coughed. A child whined. “This is hard for me, so bear with me.” She folded her prepared speech and put it in her pocket. “It’s hard because I loved Splinter Woods and Will Dodge. In different ways, but with equal strength, and to put them both to rest today is an open wound I know will never heal.”
Mice ran up Splinter’s neck, the little claws of worry and concern digging into his nerves like needles. Someone had seen him. Was watching him. Splinter scanned the crowd, but it was no human searching for him, it was a cat.
Poseidon sat at the edge of the small dais, peering into the crowd. When the shifting and swaying of the mourners was just right, Splinter saw his friend, who stared in his direction and appeared to have spotted him. Galatia and Nereus sat behind Lenah and appeared half asleep. He missed his friends, but they too were better off with him dead.
Lenah was going on about Will. His service in the Navy, his marriage and two children, all but one having died and left him. Sadness washed over Splinter at the thought of never seeing Will again. To never hear his laugh, see that bright gleam in his eye Splinter wished he had. The gleam that said, “Yeah, whatever, move along, you aren’t the droids we’re looking for.”
The crowd murmured, and Splinter looked up. Lenah was dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief.
“Who was Captain Matthew Woods, who everyone called Splinter?” Lenah paused and laughed. “That’s right. He got under your skin. He was a pain in the ass. But you know what else? He loved this country. What it stood for. Let me give you a brief accounting of his honors.” Lenah paused and shuffled some papers.
“Hey, mister,” a young boy said. A red-haired freckled youngster stood before Splinter, looking up into his sunglasses. “That guy asked me to give you this.” The boy handed Splinter an envelope.
“What man?” Splinter stepped behind the palm tree.
“That man right…” The boy pointed to an empty spot along the road. “He was there.” The boy walked off and kept looking over his shoulder back at the road.
Splinter opened the envelope and found Will’s police badge with a note folded around it. It read, “Splinter, I’m glad you made it. Maybe I’ll see you down the road. Go find some peace. Enclosed is Will’s badge. I thought you should have it.” It was signed Silva.
Splinter pulled down the bill of his cap and slipped the badge in his pocket along with the note. He looked to the north and saw a bus chugging down US-441 south. If he walked fast, he could catch it.
“Captain Woods earned a Silver Star and Meritorious Service honors for service to his country. He earned two Purple Hearts…”
Lenah’s voice faded. Kabul faded. Splinter left it all behind.
He arrived at US-441 just in time to catch the bus. He waved, air brakes chirped, and then he was heading south, bouncing and swaying with the roll of the road, destination unknown.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Shark: Infested Waters
Edward J. McFadden III juggles a full-time career as a university administrator, with his writing aspirations. His novels THROWBACK and The Breach were recently published by Severed Press, and his short story Doorways in Time appeared in Shadows & Reflections, an estate authorized Roger Zelazny tribute anthology with an introduction by George R.R. Martin. His other novels include AWAKE, The Black Death of Babylon, Our Dying Land and HOAXERS (Crossroad Press.) Ed is also the author/editor of: Anywhere But Here, Lucky 13, Jigsaw Nation, Deconstructing Tolkien: A Fundamental Analysis of The Lord of the Rings (re-released in eBook format Fall 2012 – Amazon Bestseller), Time Capsule, Epitaphs (W/ Tom Piccirilli), The Second Coming, Thoughts of Christmas, and The Best of Pirate Writings. He lives on Long Island with his wife Dawn, their daughter Samantha, and their mutt Oli.
Chapter One
Simon didn’t have an exact word to describe the smell permeating the air. The closest he could come up with instead was a color: green. The air smelled green. The trees, the miles of endless forest, the river, the lifeforms running and scampering and screeching in the trees and underbrush. Even when it wasn’t actually green, it felt green, lush and growing and full of life.
This was the world he’d always dreamed of visiting. This was the Amazon.
He wasn’t the only one who stood on the dock and stared out at the lush world around them. Not including the captain and his two crewmembers, the tourist boat that he didn’t even know the name of yet would be home for the next several days to five other people. Simon hadn’t had a chance to meet any of them yet, as he’d been too busy rushing out to get his first true views of the untamed jungle river. He had to assume that everyone else had the same level of interest as him. After all, this trip hadn’t been cheap for him, and anything this expensive would only attract the die-hard true believers, right?
As soon as one of them, a tall man with slicked-back black hair, opened his mouth, Simon knew differently. “This is seriously what we’re paying for?” the man asked.
A young woman roughly Simon’s age turned to look at the man. Despite her petite stature being dwarfed by his, she shot him a feisty look that said she would be more than willing to take him on if need be, and if Simon were a bettor, he might even put his money on her.
&n
bsp; “What did you think you were paying for?” she asked. “Casinos on the river? Roller coasters? The whole point of a trip to the Amazon is seeing the wildest that the world has to offer.”
“The wildest that the world has to offer is in my bed, sweetcheeks,” the guy said. Oh brother. Simon would have done something to put the asshole in his place, but he didn’t have to. The little woman was more than capable of doing it for him.
“I don’t think your tiny little worm can actually be considered wild,” she said. She walked away from him then, but not before “accidentally” stepping on his foot. Judging from the hardcore wince he gave, she must have more force in that tiny foot than anyone gave her credit for.
The tall man turned to Simon, giving him a look that obviously meant he expected to get some sympathy for his rude treatment. “I hate bitches like that, don’t you?”
Simon tended to consider himself to be the quiet, unassuming sort. He wasn’t at home with confrontation. But in this moment, it felt very important to him that he unambiguously let this guy know that he wasn’t on his side. Almost before he even realized what he was doing, he gave the tall man the finger and then walked away.
With the unpleasant guy out of the way for the moment, Simon could go back to appreciating where he was and how he had gotten here. The Amazon had always been his number one dream vacation, but it had never been something he believed he’d get around to. He especially thought it would be out of the question given the massive amount of student loan debt he had to pay back now that he was done with college. But his aunt had given him the trip as a graduation present, and even though she could only afford to send him during the offseason, he was extremely grateful.
Judging from the relative age of most of the other people waiting with him at the docks for their boat, Simon suspected he wasn’t the only one here to celebrate graduation. In addition to the obnoxious guy and the feisty young woman who had defied him, there were three others, a guy and a girl couple, as well as another young woman who appeared to have come with the feisty one. He hadn’t had a chance to truly meet any of them yet. Simon supposed he should try to introduce himself, as the six of them were all going to be on the boat together for just under a week, cruising down the Amazon River and taking in the unspoiled wilderness, yet he just couldn’t force himself to make the first move. He had always been rather shy, and nothing about this situation made that any easier.
Short-and-Feisty, however, didn’t seem to have the same problem. “Hi!” she said to him, shooting out a hand for him to shake. “I’m Miriam.”
“Simon,” he said, taking her hand. For someone so tiny, her grip was ridiculously strong. She cocked a thumb in the direction of the other young woman who had come with her. “That’s Katherine.”
Katherine gave him an exaggerated wave, but said nothing else. The couple, seeing that the introductions were finally happening, came over and joined them.
“I’m Lucas, and this is my girlfriend Lara,” the guy said. “Pleasure to meet you all.” He then paused and looked in the direction of the taller man, who was still glowering at the river some distance away. “Or almost all of you. Miriam, was Cory giving you any trouble?”
“Not any trouble I couldn’t handle,” Miriam said.
“His name is Cory?” Simon asked.
“That’s what he said on the bus ride over here,” Lucas said. “Other than that, I didn’t really bother to listen to much of what he said. Most of it was just bitching and complaining, as far as I could hear.”
Simon had taken a bus from the city to here as well. It had been a small, overcrowded affair where nonetheless very few people had gotten off in this vicinity. From the stop, he’d had to hitch a ride in the back of a truck to get here. None of the others currently waiting here had been with him for any of that, so he had to wonder if there had been a way to get here that hadn’t smelled like chicken and pigs.
His Aunt Annie may have paid for him to come here, but she sure hadn’t been able to pay much.
Simon had to assume that most of the others were here, at this off time in the season and taking less than reliable means to get here, for the same reason. Apparently, though, they’d gotten here by different means than him.
“Did you have a bus that brought you all the way here?” Simon asked.
“No, we had to take a smaller shuttle,” Miriam said. “Thankfully. Katherine here was convinced we would have to ride the rest of the way in the back of a livestock hauler, but I told her that couldn’t possibly be the correct way.”
Simon kept his mouth shut and tried not to blush.
Miriam, however, seemed to realize that she’d said something to make him uncomfortable. She remedied the situation by changing the subject. “Where are you from, Simon?”
“Nebraska,” he said. Normally, that was something he felt self-conscious about, coming from a state that many considered to be middle-of-nowhere. But he thought he had detected just the hint of a mid-west accent in one of the other tourists, so maybe he wouldn’t feel so out of his element here.
“I’m from Iowa,” Lara said, confirming his theory, “although I’ve been living in San Diego for the last couple of years.”
“And I’m San Diego born and raised,” Lucas said as he affectionately kissed the top of Lara’s head.
Miriam and Katherine looked like they were about to chime in with their own places of origin, but before they could, they were interrupted by a whistle from Cory back over at the dock.
“Hey, assuming the rest of you are going to be stuck on this shitty trip with me, you might want to look alive,” he called. “It looks like our ride and home for the next few days is here. And it’s exactly as terrible as I expected it to be.”
Oh lordy, Simon wasn’t looking forward to dealing with that attitude for the rest of the trip. But when he turned and looked at the boat they would be taking, he honestly had to agree with Cory. This was definitely the conveyance of tourists who couldn’t afford to see the Amazon during peak times of the year with respectable tour agencies controlling it.
Damn, Aunt Annie, Simon thought. I love you so much for this trip, but next time, please check the brochure a bit closer.
There was a name stenciled on the side of the boat, but it was so chipped and faded that Simon couldn’t even tell if the name was in Spanish, English, or Portuguese. If everything about the environment around them said “green,” then everything about this boat said “brown,” even the parts that were supposed to have color. And it wasn’t a rich brown, either. It was the washed-out brown of mud and excrement and rotted leaves left to bake in the sun. The thing had obviously been around for a very long time, and Simon honestly wasn’t sure how the rickety thing managed to stay afloat. About the only positive thing that could be said in its favor was that at least it was large enough for the small group of tourists to live there for several days like they were supposed to. The question then became whether or not they would even want to.
As much as everyone else looked like they wanted to defy Cory’s snide statement, none of them said anything in the boat’s defense. Most of them looked downright shocked at the sad state of their home for this trip, and Simon had to assume that, like him, they hadn’t been the ones to arrange the specifics of their trip.
“Please tell me this is some kind of joke,” Lucas said.
The boat slowed as it got to the dock, and the two deckhands stepped out to tie it off. Simon didn’t know a lot about sailing, but he didn’t think the knots they were using were of the best quality or workmanship. Behind these two, a third man came out of the cabin, looked around confused for a minute, then saw the tourists waiting for the boat and waved at them. While the two deckhands appeared to be locals, the man in the captain’s hat had a light complexion and features that vaguely marked him as being of some kind of Eastern European stock.
“Welcome!” he bellowed at him. His thick Russian accent confirmed which part of the world he hailed from. “You must be my guests for
the week! Welcome, welcome! Come aboard and join me!”
Simon looked discerningly at the boat and captain, then at the other tourists, then again at the lush world surrounding them. So then, this was to be his dream Amazon vacation. Already he could see how it would leave a little something to be desired, but at the same time, he hadn’t expected five days in the rainforest and along the Amazon River to be a pleasure cruise. He’d wanted to see the real river, not some overly touristy version of it, and that apparently was what he was going to get. He would take the bad, as long as it brought all the amazing world of his dreams along with it.
After all, despite the company, despite the janky nature of the boat and the strange-acting captain, this was something people did a lot. What was the worst that could happen?
Simon grabbed his backpack with his belongings and was the first to approach the boat. Following his lead, the remaining tourists took up their own possessions and boarded along with him. None of them took notice of the shifting change in the wind, or the dark clouds that had just popped up far away on the horizon. And none of them, not a single one, thought for even one second that they might not leave the Amazon River alive.
Chapter Two
Simon would have expected the captain of the boat to introduce himself, or at least give some kind of prepared speech, but much to his surprise, the captain promptly disappeared from sight while his two deckhands loaded up some supplies that had been left on the dock. The tourists were left to mull about on the deck, each of them unsure of what they were supposed to do next.
“Is it just me, or does this seem a bit disorganized?” Lara asked to none of them in particular.
“I told you,” Cory loudly said to her from where he was standing on the far side of the deck. “This whole thing is a shitshow.”
Shadow Of The Abyss Page 23