Horizons

by Catherine Hart

  Behind them, the Southerner guffawed. The soldier laughed. Even Blair chuckled and said, “Guess she told you!”

  Kelly pressed on the back of his neck, urging his head forward. With lean, strong fingers, she carefully probed and prodded all along his spine, the curve of his shoulder blade, the collarbone and socket. Moving his head back, and to either side, she repeated the procedure. Even that cautious manipulation caused him to moan in pain.

  “You’re right. It seems to have slipped out of place, rather than broken. Now, I want you to just sit there, neck straight. Bend your back and shoulders forward just a tad. That’s right. Now, take a couple of deep breaths. Exhale all the way. Try to relax your muscles as much as possible, and let me do the work.”

  “Warn me before you pop it back in,” Zach told her.

  “Will do,” she promised blithely. “I’ll give you a count of three beforehand.”

  With one hand cradling his collarbone, and the other on his upper arm, Kelly braced her knee into his shoulder blade. “That’s right. Breathe in. Out. Relax. In. Out. Again.”

  At the bottom of his third deep sigh, with no forewarning whatever, Kelly wrenched his shoulder back into the socket. He gasped a surprised yelp. His face pallid as he fought the resultant waves of pain, he rasped irately, “You were supposed to warn me! You lied!”

  His indignation didn’t phase her. “It was for your own good. You would have stiffened up otherwise, and made it harder on yourself and me.” When he tried to turn toward her, she stalled his motion. “Sit still. Your shoulder needs to be wrapped, to limit the strain on the joint, before you start moving it too much. We certainly don’t want you putting it back out, which would necessitate putting it back in again. Do we?”

  “My shirt will suffice as a bandage, I suppose,” he conceded gruffly.

  She helped him shrug out of it. Working efficiently, she tore it into strips, wadded some for padding, and soon had him securely bound—even across his aching ribs. “We’ll rewrap this later, and check those ribs more closely. How does it feel?”

  “Much better,” he allowed.

  Her fingers probed lightly up the back of his neck, giving him chills. Just as Zach was wondering if she might be flirting with him, her hands came flat over his ears, her thumbs braced beneath his jaw. Again, with no prior notice, she gave his neck a swift twist to one side. Bones cracked audibly. Quickly, before he could recover from that sly maneuver, she yanked it back the other way. Again, the bones in his neck snapped and popped loudly, reminding him of a Rice Krispies commercial, tuned to high volume.

  His howl was more one of surprise than of physical distress. Zach leapt to his feet and whirled on her. “You sneaky little witch! What are you trying to do, twist my head off?”

  Her smile was more of a smirk. “Why? You using it for something important?”

  Again, the others laughed in appreciation of Kelly’s snappy retort. Before Zach had the opportunity to respond in kind, Kelly said, “You’ll notice that you can now bob your head up and down and turn it from side to side with ease. Which is more than I can do at this point. I wish someone would do me the same favor I just did you.”

  “Oh, lady! Just give me the chance!” Zach’s hands were flexing at his sides, as if itching to surround her throat. Then, tentatively, he rotated his neck. His eyes widened in astonishment, and his fingers relaxed. “God! I feel like a new man!”

  Kelly’s eyes twinkled. “Like I told you before—that’s what they all say. Even the big, bossy, know-it-alls like you.”

  Chapter 4

  Prior to resuming their descent, the ladies made a necessary trip to the bushes.

  “Watch out for snakes and such,” the Southerner warned.

  Alita nearly tripped trying to stop in mid-stride.

  Blair turned on the speaker with a frown. “If I recall my research correctly, there are no snakes in the Polynesians. Nor are there any wild mammals to speak of.”

  “Yeah? What are you, some sort of walkin’ encyclopedia?” the man jeered.

  Blair bristled, drawing herself to her fullest, if still diminutive, height. “Actually, I’m a librarian, and proud of it. So, what valuable contribution have you made to society, Mr.…?”

  “Roberts,” the man filled in, shaking a cigarette from his pack and lighting it. “For most of my life, I was a farmer. I helped keep the rest of you folks fed.” He held his cigarette aloft, peering at it. “Had a decent tobacco crop going for a while, too, until the government starting hounding the tobacco companies and poking its nose in where it wasn’t wanted.”

  “Roberts,” Zach repeated thoughtfully. “Weren’t you one of the backhoe operators who worked on the cathedral project? Part of Sam Wright’s crew?”

  Roberts met Zach’s look squarely, almost daringly. “Yeah, and you’re the bigwig in charge of the whole shebang. I’m surprised you’d remember one of us lowly peons.”

  “I try to keep abreast of every aspect of any project I take on,” Zach replied. “That includes material and labor. I recall you particularly, because Sam commented on your ability to repair or operate almost any piece of machinery on the construction site.”

  Roberts shrugged. “Not much different than running a tractor or combine, when it comes down to it.”

  “Sam was impressed. You know, he’s generally a pretty decent judge of character. Runs a clean crew. No drunks. Nobody into hard drugs. Somehow, I get the feeling he missed something vital about you.”

  “Well, ol’ Sam’s a good guy, and a fair foreman, but he ain’t perfect,” Roberts allowed. “Everybody makes a mistake now and ag’in.”

  “What was yours?” Zach asked more pointedly. “The one that got you arrested?”

  Roberts chuckled. “Wondered how long you was gonna dance around the barn b’fore you got to the door, Goldstein.”

  “So enlighten us,” Zach persisted. “What crime did you commit that was serious enough to haul you all the way back to the U.S. in handcuffs? What was it, Roberts? Robbery? Tax evasion? Hit and run?”

  The man smirked. “Yeah, I reckon you could call it hit and run. I hit my whorin’ wife in the head with a bullet and ran like hell.”

  The others stared at him, aghast.

  The corporal let loose a low whistle. “Holy crap, man! You killed her?”

  “Deader than a doorknob,” Roberts declared. His face was defiant, as if he were proud of the dastardly deed.

  “You… you murdered your wife?” Kelly stammered.

  “Because she cheated on you?” Alita exclaimed in disbelief.

  “What kind of low-life swamp rat are you?” the steward speculated with disgust.

  “You’re insane!” Blair added, her expression one of fear and revulsion. “They need to lock you up and throw away the key!”

  Roberts glared at her, his beefy hands forming hard fists. “Hey! You didn’t have to live with the bitch! I reckon by killin’ her, I did myself and the world one huge favor.” While Roberts’s attention had been focused on the others, Zach had quietly approached the big farmer from the rear. Now, he reached out and grabbed the man around the neck in a choke hold. “Corporal! Get the handcuffs out of my pocket!” he yelled.

  Roberts went wild. With an enraged roar, he rose up, his hands tearing at Zach’s arms as he tried to buck the smaller man off him. But Zach hung on, tightening his hold until Roberts’ face was a dull red. The soldier, having retrieved the cuffs, had to dodge and weave around them, but he finally managed to fasten the shackles. Then he added his own weight to Zach’s and between them they finally subdued their captive.

  “You… you ain’t cops!” Roberts wheezed furiously. “You got no right to do this!”

  Zach pressed his knee more firmly between Roberts’s shoulder blades. “Shut up! We have every right to protect ourselves against a madman in our midst.”

  With the soldier’s help, Zach re-adjusted the cuffs, securing Roberts’ hands firmly behind him, in a manner designed to render him more powerle
ss than if they’d left them to the fore. “Now, this is the way it’s going to be, Roberts. We’re taking you down with us, and we’re going to turn you over to the law. Until then, you’re going to behave yourself, or I’m going to stomp a mudhole in your ass.”

  “And I’ll help him,” the corporal supplied.

  “I will, too,” the steward piped up.

  “Count me in on that,” Kelly added for good measure.

  “Mighty brave of y’all, with me trussed up like a Thanksgivin’ turkey,” Roberts sneered. “Look, just ’cause I done my old lady in, don’t make me crazy or mean I aim to kill anyone else.”

  “Maybe not, but we can’t take that chance, which makes me glad I took those cuffs you left behind,” Zach told him. He held the key in plain view before putting it back into his pocket. “Don’t even think about trying anything, Roberts, or I’ll personally push you over the first cliff we come to.”

  “You need me to help carry that wounded guy,” Roberts protested. “I can’t do that tied up like this.”

  “Nice try, no cigar. We’ll manage somehow, even if we have to strap the man to your back.”

  As it turned out, they didn’t need Roberts’s assistance in that area after all. Upon checking their wounded, they discovered that the unfortunate fellow had succumbed to his injuries. After conferring for a moment, the men determined that it would be best just to leave the body where it lay, and to mark the spot with a bright piece of cloth so a search team could find it later.

  Kelly disputed their decision. “We can’t just leave the poor man here, where birds and animals might get him! It’s… indecent! Can’t we at least bury him?”

  “How? With what?” Zach argued. “The ground is harder than cement, and we have no tools for digging.”

  “A cairn,” Blair suggested. “If nothing else, we could pile rocks on the body. It would better mark the site as well.”

  “We’re rather pressed for time here, ladies,” the steward reminded them. “And we have two other injured people whose medical attention should not be delayed.”

  “If you won’t do it, I will,” Kelly insisted stubbornly.

  Zach raked his fingers through his hair and heaved an exasperated breath. “Okay, we’ll do it. Then we’re on our way, with no further delay. I don’t mean to sound harsh or unfeeling, but those of us who are presently alive are not out of the woods yet ourselves, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. We can’t jeopardize our own lives for those who are beyond help.”

  While the men, all but Roberts, assembled the rocks, Kelly bound Wynne’s ribs, using strips of the lining from one of the jackets she’d collected. She also wrapped Blair’s swollen ankle, doing as best she could without removing the woman’s shoe.

  “I think we’d better leave the shoe on for the time being,” she advised, noting how far the bruised flesh was puffed out over the edge of Blair’s low-top sneaker. “Otherwise, you may never get it back on again.”

  Blair agreed. “This business of trail blazing is hard enough without trying it in bare feet. The only thing keeping me going is the thought of reaching the beach, and soaking my ankle.”

  “Do you want me to look at your elbow?” Kelly offered, turning to Alita.

  “After the way you yanked at Zach’s shoulder and head?” the singer said with haughty disdain. “I think not. I will wait until I can get proper medical attention from someone who knows what he is doing.”

  “Suits me,” Kelly replied readily. “That way, if you decide to sue someone, it won’t be my butt on the line.”

  It took them the rest of the afternoon to complete their laborious descent—skirting around steep drop-offs, encountering sheer cliffs hidden by jungle growth and having to backtrack to find an easier route, working their way carefully down and around the hazardous slopes. At last they found themselves on fairly even, less-rocky ground, though still amidst the dense growth of towering trees and knee-high brush.

  “Which way now?” the corporal, who had told them his name was Gavin Daniels, asked.

  “Might just as well flip a coin,” Frazer Benson, the steward said, leaning heavily on the limb he was using as a crutch.

  Zach eyed the sky, noting the slant of the sun. “There’s no way to tell which is the shortest distance to the coast, but if we head west, we might have more daylight. I’d guess the trees will start to thin when we near the shore.”

  They turned west, trudging wearily along in Zach’s wake.

  Early on, almost as a matter of course, Zach had assumed the role of leader, the others deferring to his decisive manner, his natural air of authority. On the job, he was used to being in command. Now it was reflexive. That no one questioned his doing so was of no particular significance to him. At this point, his primary goal was to find a way out of this tropical tangle, to gain the shore and whatever aid and safety was to be found there.

  It was an hour before the trees began to thin, as Zach had predicted they would, and another ten minutes before they spotted traces of blue water through the verdant foliage and heard the muted rumble of the surf. The soil grew looser, sandier. Then the beach loomed before them, pristine and beckoning. The vast, empty ocean beyond, with a red sun hovering slightly over the horizon, served as a deceptively serene backdrop.

  One by one, the survivors set down their burdens and sank onto the sun-warmed sand.

  “I’ll never go camping again,” Blair swore on a groan. “I ache in places I’d forgotten I had.”

  “So do I,” Kelly commiserated. “And to think I prided myself on being physically fit.” She blew her bangs off her forehead and sighed. “Oh, but doesn’t that breeze feel heavenly? God, but it’s good to be out of that jungle!”

  A few feet away, Alita sat examining the remains of her spike heels, and the huge broken blisters on her feet. “My poor feet will never be the same again!” she lamented. “And just look what those rocks did to my shoes! They’re in shreds!”

  “Better your shoes than your feet,” Zach pointed out. He looked past her, down the long stretch of barren beach. “Damn! Not a building in sight. Not so much as a thatched hut!”

  “No piers, no boats, no sign of civilization,” Frazer added morosely. “There’s not even any litter, though I never thought I’d hear myself complain of that.”

  “Maybe all the activity, the ports and villages, are on another part of the island,” Gavin Daniels suggested.

  “Possibly,” Zach concurred with a worried frown. “Could be there are too many reefs on this side, making this section inaccessible to ships and large craft. Still, you’d think there would be some tangible evidence of human habitation, if only a gum wrapper or a discarded beer can.”

  “Yeah, I could really go for an ice cold beer right about now,” Roberts muttered, his tone surly. “On second thought, it could be piss-warm, and I wouldn’t care, long as it was wet. My mouth’s ’bout as dry as an old maid’s twat.”

  “Sir!” Wynne Templeton spoke up for the first time in hours. “There is no call for such vulgarity. There are ladies present, and a gentleman would monitor his language.”

  “Well, la-de-da!” Roberts grumbled. “Didn’t know I was travelin’ with the Queen’s grandma.”

  “It certainly beats traveling with a murderer,” Blair announced bravely.

  Roberts’s eyes narrowed. “Look, you little…”

  “Oh, por Dios!” Alita butted in. “The old woman just lost her husband. Have a little consideration.”

  “James is lost?” Wynne asked confusedly. “Oh, my! Someone must find him.”

  Kelly heaved a sigh. “Great! Now see what you’ve done? Thanks a heap!”

  Zach pushed to his feet. “I’ll go look for him in a little while, Mrs. Templeton,” he fibbed. “First we have to see to our prisoner and get a fire going. It’s going to be dark soon.” Zach led Roberts toward a sturdy palm tree. “We’ll anchor him to this. Daniels, lend me a hand here.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Roberts proteste
d loudly. “Least you can do is give a man the chance to take a whiz!” Zach altered his course, steering Roberts toward the bushes. As they passed Kelly, Roberts leered at her. “Yo! Sweet cheeks! You want to come hold it for me?”

  She leveled him a cool look of contempt. “I can see why your wife went man-hunting elsewhere. No doubt, it had something to do with your enchanting attitude, your wonderful manners, and your refined speech.”

  “You don’t know jack shit,” he retorted. He nodded toward Alita. “What about you, princess? The offer’s still open.”

  “In your dreams, hombre.”

  With Roberts secured to the tree, they located enough dry driftwood to start a fire. In the course of their search they discovered a banana palm, and several coconuts which they cracked open on a nearby rock. The milk tasted like nectar to their parched pallets.

  Sufficiently revived, at least temporarily, Zach announced, “I’m going to walk down the beach and see if I can find a road, or a house, or any indication of civilization.” He pointed toward the south. “I’ll go this way. Daniels, you try north. We’ll meet back here. Benson, you watch over the others until we get back. Keep a particularly sharp eye on our prisoner.”

  “Won’t you need light? A torch or something?” Kelly asked.

  Zach looked skyward. “We should be able to see fairly well if we stay out in the open. The clouds have passed over, and there’s supposed to be a full moon tonight.”

  Blair grimaced. “I should have known better than to fly during a full moon. Nothing good ever happens to me during a full moon.”

  “I love a full moon,” Alita intoned with a smirk. “It makes everything so romantico, so much more exciting.”

  “The better to ride your broom, my dear?” Benson inquired mockingly.

  Alita rounded on him. “You shut up, you little wimp!’ She threw the remnants of one shoe at him, narrowly missing his head. “In truth, you are probably just jealous. But I am used to that. Everyone is envious of me.”