Horizons Beyond the Darkness

by Scott B. Williams

  Larry could see that he had no choice. If Jessica weren’t on board, he might have tried something foolish, even if it meant getting shot. But he couldn’t do that and leave her alone to these men. They were going to find her anyway, it was inevitable, but as long as both of them were alive, there was hope. Keeping that faith wasn’t easy though when he felt those steel cuffs lock into place around his wrists. But when it was done, the one who had secured them questioned his companion.

  “Dis mon is an American, Myron. How are you going to keep his boat? And where are you taking him? There is no jail in Bensontown.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Delbert. This will be easy to explain. We found this boat abandoned, just like the little one beside it. The people who sailed it must have had an accident at sea. Or maybe they encountered pirates. There are lots of pirates in these waters now, you know,” he said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, when Sidney comes back, we will take it offshore and get rid of the evidence.”

  “Overboard?”

  “Of course.”

  “But what of the one on the island?”

  “You don’t know the whole story, Delbert. That’s why we are here. Sidney knows what to do with the one on the island, and the woman too, if he sees her.”

  “You bastard! I know what you did!” Larry said. “I knew as soon as I saw that Russian-made AK.”

  “Ah, so the man and the woman on the little boat really were your friends. It’s tragic, what happened to that fellow, but it was entirely his fault. Delbert, watch him! I am curious to see what is in the cabin of this unusual boat. Maybe he has other things stashed below that he has not mentioned to us yet!”

  Fourteen

  JESSICA HATED THE SUSPENSE of waiting down below, but the look on Larry’s face told her he wasn’t hearing of any alternative. She understood that he wanted whoever was in the approaching boat to think he was alone, and she understood why. With all she and Casey had been through since escaping New Orleans, she knew all too well how being attractive, young and female made her a target. And that danger carried over to the men in their lives who were trying to protect them. The last thing she wanted to do was to draw unwanted attention out here in this remote place, especially with Grant ashore and Thomas and Mindy’s whereabouts still a mystery.

  She did as Larry said and retreated to the far bulkhead at the foot of the double bunk, drawing the blankets and pillows up around her to stay hidden, but keeping the .22 rifle in hand. Jessica still had less experience with firearms than the rest of her friends, but she had participated in the ambush of those men on the Pearl River. She didn’t know if any of the shots she’d fired had hit anyone, but she’d tried to do her part. That time she was using the bolt-action, scoped .22 that Casey had taken from the camp of the man who had taken her on the Bogue Chitto. Since then, she’d had a couple of opportunities to try Grant’s semi-automatic Ruger .22 and she liked it much better. All she had to do was keep pulling the trigger to fire follow-up shots, and right now it was loaded with an extra-long magazine that Larry said held 25 rounds. Jessica hoped she wouldn’t need it, but anytime strangers approached there was a good chance it would mean trouble.

  Larry had closed the overhead hatch and the aft end of the bunk was quite dark, even in the daytime. There was an opening port light mounted high in the bulkhead that faced aft, but she couldn’t see the approaching motorboat from that angle. She could however, hear what was going on outside with the Lexan pane halfway open. With her ear pressed as close to it as possible, she waited and listened, hearing Larry’s greeting and some of the responses from whoever it was in the boat. From their accents, Jessica guessed the men were islanders. The one doing most of the talking sounded kind of like Scully, although his English was much more distinct and lacking the unique pronunciations Scully used that had taken her a while to understand. It only took snippets of their conversation for Jessica to ascertain that the men were policemen of some sort. At first this was a relief, because it meant they weren’t bandits zeroing in on the catamaran to loot it. But the more of the questioning she heard, the more Jessica realized these men weren’t going away easily.

  She heard Larry answering the man’s questions and she heard him trying to dissuade them from boarding the Casey Nicole. She was hoping they would agree and that momentarily, Larry would enter the cabin to get his paperwork as he suggested he would do. But that didn’t happen. From what she could overhear next, two of the men came aboard and another left in their motorboat to go to the beach and look for Grant. They had seen the kayak and knew someone was ashore. Jessica was certain that the boarding would lead to the men looking down below. If they just glanced inside without entering, she thought there was a chance they wouldn’t see her as long as she was quiet and remained covered up at the dark end of the bunk. But if they decided to really search, they would certainly find her. There was simply no place to hide in the small cabins of a 36-foot catamaran.

  When the man asking questions saw the shotgun Larry had taken on deck, things began to unravel fast, and Jessica knew they were in trouble. She heard the policeman’s orders to his companion to put the gun in their boat and to put the handcuffs on Larry. For a moment, she debated whether she should reveal herself and intervene, or just wait. But then what the men discussed next sent a chill down her spine. They were not merely arresting Larry to take him to jail—they were discussing how to get rid of him! They were going to kill him and probably her too when they found her, unless she did something about it!

  Jessica gripped the rifle tighter as she felt her heart rate increase and her palms become sweaty. Though she couldn’t see any of what was happening, she knew both men had guns and that Larry was lying facedown on the deck, where he would be completely helpless. If she opened the hatch quickly, she might be able to shoot at one of them before they realized what happened, but what if she missed? What if they went ahead and shot Larry in the back as soon as she startled them? She had little confidence that she could pull off such a feat. That was the stuff of action movies, and maybe real-life for experienced law enforcement or military types, but certainly not for her. She barely knew how to use a gun, but she could do what she had to. When she heard them talking about searching the boat first, before they did whatever they were going to do next, Jessica decided her best bet was to wait. She would let them come to her, where she would have the element of surprise and would be ready and waiting, so close she couldn’t miss.

  She didn’t have to wait long. She knew the moment of truth was coming when she saw the companionway hatch slowly open and the shadow of the man standing over it fall across the cabin interior. The first thing she saw of him from where she sat against the bulkhead, her knees drawn up in front of her and the rifle already shouldered, was his worn leather boots with the cuffs of his brown trousers tucked inside. Jessica felt herself shaking as she focused on the rifle sights, her target ever changing as the man descended the steps. Could she really do this? Shoot a man at point blank range before he realized a gun was aimed at him? Just a few weeks prior, the answer would have definitely been no. But today she could and she would, because she knew she had to.

  She saw the side of his face by the time his feet were on the cabin sole. He looked to be in his 40s or 50s, a touch of gray in his stubbly beard that stood out in contrast to his ebony skin. Slung at his side was the AK-47 rifle that she also recognized as one of theirs. The man’s attention was on the nav station instruments that were the first thing he saw once he was inside the cabin. Jessica fought to control her breathing, as the front sight of the rifle seemed to be weaving in circles and figure eights all over the center of the man’s upper body. The deep breaths she took must have given her away, because he suddenly turned to face the bunk, straining as his eyes adjusted to the shadows as his hands went to the rifle at his side. Jessica squeezed the trigger and heard him yell in surprise and pain. She pulled it again and again as fast as she could move her finger, the sights still moving all over the place but the bullets h
aving effect as the man tried to pull himself back up the companionway ladder but instead fell back and collapsed to the cabin sole in an unmoving heap. The sound of her own rifle in the confines of the cabin completely overwhelmed her sense of what was going on outside. But Jessica knew the other man was there, and he was going to come below to find out what happened to his friend. The only question was whether or not he would shoot Larry first. She had to get out of the bunk and on her feet fast. She couldn’t afford to wait and find out.

  * * *

  The days and nights had run together since she’d been alone on the island and Mindy hardly cared, except that now she was feeling hunger pangs she could no longer deny after two days of no appetite at all. She had been returning to the cistern in the mornings and late afternoons to drink her fill of water, each time bringing the full pitcher back with her to the place among the rocks she had found that first evening. There had been no sign of human presence on the island, but she still couldn’t bring herself to try and take shelter in the spooky old castle. It wouldn’t have been much better anyway as it offered no protection from the biting insects that tormented her day and night.

  Mindy had followed the road in the other direction from where she’d first come across it after fleeing from those men who’d killed Thomas. She found that it led to another small cove on the opposite side of the island, just as she’d expected. That place must have at one time been a proper harbor, as whoever built the castle and the road would have brought the materials to the island with a boat or ship of some kind. The cove was empty and desolate now though, and when she looked out across the water from every point she could find that offered a view, she saw no sails on the horizon or any other sign of human activity on the water or nearby cays that looked equally deserted. The men who had shot at her had not come back, and at this point Mindy decided they probably wouldn’t. Maybe they knew she couldn’t get off the island and they were simply leaving her here to die.

  At first, she’d almost wanted to die, because she couldn’t imagine her life without Thomas. But slowly succumbing to exposure and starvation would be a miserable way to go, and she didn’t relish the idea of throwing herself into the sea to drown either. Mindy didn’t have much to live for, but she wasn’t ready to give up. And with her stomach growling with a rumble she could no longer deny, she spent her third morning on the island searching for anything she could find that might be edible. This led her back to the beach near the end of the road, where she waded out into the shallows, trying unsuccessfully to grab at the small fish that swarmed around her ankles. Giving up on that effort before she exhausted herself, and having no knife or other means to fashion even the most rudimentary spear, Mindy was out of ideas when she came upon a line of large tracks leading from the water onto the beach. Realizing what she was seeing, she followed the trail a short distance to the soft sand well above the tideline, where the tracks ended at a small mound. Dropping to her knees, she dug with her hands until she uncovered it—a nest of sea turtle eggs! Mindy knew it was highly illegal to bother the eggs of these protected and endangered sea creatures, but here was food—food that would keep her alive until she could do better. The shells were soft and leathery, but Mindy was able to tear them open with her teeth and squeeze out the protein and fat rich insides. The turtle eggs were in fact more nutritious than anything else she could have found in or near the water. Mindy knew she would survive now, as there were probably many more such nests on the island if she was there long enough to need them. She was so intently focused on this unexpected good fortune that she was unaware that she was no longer alone until she heard someone shout.

  Mindy was so surprised to hear a human voice that it didn’t register that it was her own name that was being shouted out. She sprang to her feet and bolted down the beach in the opposite direction, daring to look over her shoulder only long enough to see that a man was running after her, yelling and waving one hand high overhead. In his other hand she saw that he had what looked like a gun, and Mindy was certain that if she didn’t quickly reach the concealment of the woods, she would be dead.

  She had fifty yards to go from where she’d been kneeling beside the turtle nest. When she came to the edge of the vegetation, she plunged straight into it, disregarding the raking thorns that tore once again at her already scratched bare flesh. The briars here were even worse than that place where she’d fled the first day, and she hadn’t gone twenty feet when she came to a total impasse that no human could worm their way through, no matter how small. Mindy was trapped, and the man chasing her was closing in. He kept shouting the same thing over and over and finally it dawned on her that she was hearing her own name! She bent and stooped to get a view through the foliage between herself and the beach and saw that her pursuer was blonde and tan; not an islander like the men who’d killed Thomas. And whoever he was, he somehow knew her name! She was hidden from him now but he’d seen where she entered the bushes and she had nowhere to go or hide as he ran towards her, still shouting:

  “MINDY! MINDY, I’M GRANT, ONE OF SCULLY’S FRIENDS! YOU MET US THE OTHER DAY ON THE CATAMARAN, REMEMBER?”

  Fifteen

  AS SOON AS HE entered the woods, Sidney Evans found evidence that whoever had landed on the beach in the sleek, two-seater kayak had also continued on into the interior of the island, in the same spot where the woman had entered the bush. Whoever it was had been wielding a machete, and Sidney was able to follow their trail quite easily, unlike the woman they had given up on finding the other day. The cuts through the heavy vegetation were fresh, indicating he was not far behind whoever had made them. The trail led roughly in the direction in which the woman had disappeared, and Sidney felt quite confident it would take him to the ruins or the other side of the island. He moved as quickly as he could, the Winchester rifle in his hands, barrel pointing forward in case he ran into a surprise. Like Myron had said, if the people from the catamaran found the woman, they would have to kill them all. They could not risk the possibility that her story would get off the island, and besides, the new boat surely carried many more valuable items than the tiny little boat they had found here first. It had been their lucky week, and Sidney knew that as long as these foolish Americans kept arriving at remote islands like this one, he and the others in his village would prosper, despite the shortage of goods and lack of communications with the outside world.

  Myron and Delbert would take care of the man aboard the boat. All Sidney had to do was tie up these loose ends on the island and then they could set about the business of finding a good place to hide the two sailboats. He was looking forward to trying out the .30-30 on a live target. The rifle had been rusty to the point of barely functioning when they took it from the little boat, but a couple of hours spent disassembling and polishing the working surfaces had made it slick as new again. Sidney loved lever-action rifles, because he’d often dreamed of being a frontier marshal or sheriff like the ones he grew up watching on television in old Western movies. This one was a genuine Winchester 1894 too, and even if it wasn’t chambered in a caliber his heroes would have used, it was close enough. He was determined to give it a good trial today, and when he was done, he would carve the appropriate number of notches into the bottom of the buttstock.

  When he came to the road leading to the ruins, Sidney kept to one side near the edge of the trees and moved with caution until he came within sight of the walls. He half expected to find his quarry inside, but though he watched and listened, he heard no voices or anything else to indicate anyone was there. Although he knew it would be dangerous if whomever he was following from the catamaran were armed, Sidney knew he would have to go inside and search room to room to be sure they were not hiding there. He had just reached the back wall and was working his way carefully to the side doorway when he heard shouting in the distance, in the direction of the cove on the north end of the island. It was a man’s voice, but Sidney couldn’t hear what he was yelling. Certain that this man must be the one he had been followi
ng, Sidney abandoned his plan to search the castle and took off at a run along the road to the north.

  The shouting continued as he ran, and he could tell that it was coming from somewhere on the beach to the north of where the road ended. Sidney slowed to a walk and crouched down as he neared the road’s end, keeping low and out of sight until he was within view of the cove and the curving strip of sand that bounded it. There at the far end, he saw a man running to the edge of the woods. He was no longer shouting, but Sidney was sure that whoever he’d been calling to was already in the woods, and he was about to enter them as well. Sidney raised the Winchester to his shoulder. It was a long shot but he decided to risk it because the man would be gone in a few more seconds, and Sidney could now see that he was carrying a rifle too. He aimed high and fired, hoping to see the man fall, but that didn’t happen. Instead his target dove into the sand without hesitation and began crawling towards the woods. Sidney worked the lever to chamber a second round, and fired again. He saw his second bullet kick up sand just inches from the man’s head—a close miss—but a miss nonetheless. He levered in a third round immediately after but it was already too late. The man had disappeared into the bush.

  * * *

  When Grant reached the cove at the other end of the road leading north from the ruins, he immediately saw footprints crossing the beach to the water’s edge—the same small footprints he’d been seeing since they’d examined the fire pit on the beach. They ended at the water’s edge, which puzzled him at first, and scanning the beach in the distance, looking for someone walking in either direction, he saw nothing at first. But then he caught a glimpse of movement higher up, above the high tide line and about two hundred yards or so distant. It was a woman, down on her knees and digging at something in the sand. It had to be Mindy, and he thought maybe Thomas was somewhere nearby, even though he’d only seen one set of footprints. Grant shouted and waved as he started in her direction. But to his surprise, the woman didn’t return his greeting. She quickly got to her feet after glancing his way and then took off at a dead run in the opposite direction, heading farther north. Grant had only seen Mindy once, when they’d met in the anchorage, but he was sure that the running woman was her. He yelled out her name but she either didn’t hear or didn’t care. She was running away from him as fast as she could, but why was she so frightened?