RUNAWAY MOON

by Howard Brian Edgar

  Donnie and Eric lock eyes at the mention of flooding, suddenly sharing the same five-alarm brainstorm. They’ve been away from Sugar Pine Point for a few days, sidetracked by the threat of hillbilly hunters and too busy to think about the rising Pacific Ocean. Sam’s comment has refocused their attention. Should they tell Sam and Ankur, or keep it to themselves?

  Eric runs his finger across his closed lips. Donnie nods in agreement.

  “That was Earth’s fifth mass extinction. Today, we’re witnessing the sixth,” continues Hayden. “Considering the observable facts and some educated guesswork, I’d say this one has already killed ninety percent of the human and marine populations, seventy percent of plant life. Those numbers are likely much higher along the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts where rising sea levels are probably still reshaping coastlines and shrinking continents.”

  Reshaping coastlines and shrinking continents! The silent alarm sounds louder, more insistently to Donnie and Eric. Now would be a good time to tell Sam what they’ve seen. Except that the community has a more pressing problem. What good would it do to add the specter of a potentially life-threatening sea level rise to everyone’s worry list now? Why worry if the Pacific has stabilized, a very real possibility? So Donnie and Eric keep their big secret, for now.

  The next day as Dawn breaks, Matias, Diego and Alex rouse everyone to collect rocks under the expert tutelage of Ankur. They work steadily and quietly until each person has dozens of good throwing rocks stockpiled. Without stopping to rest, they dig and camouflage more than sixty booby traps by mid-Day, starting up at the ridge line then working their way steadily down hill, placing each trap according to Ankur’s strategic master plan.

  Hannibal finds a new lookout some fifty feet from his first spot. If the Jakes were watching the compound, they probably spotted him and Satin already. He sets traps on three sides of his new position, leaving the bottom clear for his escape route. From there he goes down to the lake for a prearranged meeting with Alex.

  “Tell me everything you know about them,” says Alex.

  “The old man looks fifty-five but could be forty. He’s got bad teeth, nasty beard, rawhide leather skin and a noticeable absence of personal hygiene. I smelled him fifteen feet away, worse than some of the garbage I hauled when I had my rig.”

  “So you found them sitting around the campfire?”

  “They were nowhere in sight when we got there. We spotted a cave up in the hills that might be theirs, and we were about to go up there when the old man suddenly appears behind us like some Neanderthal ghost rising from the bushes. He greets us with a warning, then his three evil sons appear. The youngest looks about sixteen, the oldest maybe twenty.”

  “What about the assault rifle?”

  “M-16, thirty-shot banana clip. My old man had one, too. Personally I’m not much into guns, but I wouldn’t mind prying that one from Jake’s cold dead hands.”

  “Is it remotely possible that you’re imagining all this, and that they’re really just loners who want to be left alone?”

  “The way they checked out Satin from top to bottom, they don’t want to be left entirely alone. They had the same primitive facial expressions as the male chimpanzees I saw masturbating at Central Park Zoo when I was ten. They didn’t even try to act civilized. They’re bad news, Alex. Not just for our women and children, but anyone, including us, who gets in their way.”

  “So you just walked away from them?”

  “We apologized, excused ourselves and backed out of there as fast as we could. As we were leaving, we overheard the oldest son’s saying to his father, ‘We just gonna let her walk away?’ It was chilling.”

  “No wonder she’s freaked out.” No sooner are the words out of Alex’s mouth when Satin sashays over to them.

  “Bet your ass I’m freaked out. This shit is all my fault.”

  “I should have just gone up there alone.” Hannibal puts his arm around her protectively.

  “This is nobody’s fault. They would have found you eventually, same way you found them, by your campfire,” says Alex. “Problem is they’re hunters with not much left to hunt. You can bet they’ll be looking for something to eat besides fish, pine nuts and weeds, and there isn’t much animal protein around anymore. When was the last time any of you saw a squirrel or pine marten?”

  Hannibal wracks his brain. “I think it was the day we arrived.”

  “That’s what I mean. Eventually, Jake would see your campfire and come for your food. Then they’d see your women and come for them. Your visit only hastened the process.”

  Matias and Diego come down the beach to join them.

  “We need to set more traps and make more weapons,” says Hannibal. “We’ll need more than a couple of spear guns to defend ourselves, and Diego’s got our only hand gun.”

  “Correction,” says Diego, reaches under his pants leg. “Diego’s got the only two hand guns.” With that, he pulls out a two-shot pearl handle derringer from an ankle holster, wraps it in his bandana and slips it to Satin. “Just in case.”

  “How cute! It’s a little pea shooter.” Satin stuffs the derringer in her hip pocket and gives the bandana back to Diego.

  “A little peace of mind. That pea shooter saved my life twice.”

  Hannibal turns to Diego. “Thank you, my friend.”

  “I hope she’s fired a gun before. They are my last two bullets.”

  Satin demonstrates. “Step one, cock it, step two, point it, step three, squeeze the trigger. I got this.”

  Meanwhile, Eric and Donnie are over near the big rocks, teaching the others how to pitch rocks.

  “Accuracy is way more important than speed or power.” Eric selects a round stone from the small pile at his feet, winds up and hurls it at the target, a two-foot-wide by four-foot-high rectangle made of dandelion flowers he and Donnie have jammed into the rock crevices. The stone hits dead center near the top of the target zone. The impact causes sparks to fly.

  “Always aim for the head and face,” says Donnie.

  Samson sits quietly and watches Satin, Julia and Rachel take turns throwing rocks. The dog’s natural instinct is to chase anything the humans throw. He’s been scolded for doing that, so now he just sits and lets out a sad little yelp each time a stone strikes rock, then recoils when the sparks fly.

  “Keep practicing.” Donnie pulls Eric aside out of earshot of the others.

  “Dude, I can’t stop thinking about the Pacific. We really should check on it.”

  “I thought we settled it. Let’s stay focused on this problem, the one we might be able to solve, first.”

  Against Jake’s orders, Jake One crouches alone on the ridge. He peers down on Hannibal and Satin, now accompanied by Alex, Matias and Diego. He cannot hear them, but he sees them clearly. He chews on a dandelion stem-first while he watches them. Then he slowly eats the whole thing, big yellow flower and all. He can’t take his eyes off Satin. The image of her in the company of four men excites him. He imagines her with him, his brothers and his father, instead. The sudden pressure in his groin forces him to shift his weight. His right foot slips, disturbs some pebbles and dried twigs.

  “Shit.” He mutters under his breath, hoping they didn’t hear his slip, then skulks away silently and heads back along the ridge without being seen.

  Alex turns immediately and glances up toward the ridge. “I think we’re being watched.”

  Everyone falls silent and waits while Alex closes his eyes, listens.

  “Sounded like the crunch of twigs being stepped on.”

  “I didn’t hear it,” whispers Hannibal.

  “Neither did I, and I’ve got my mother’s bionic hearing,” says Satin. “She could hear shit I whispered into my cellphone from two rooms away.”

  Matias and Diego shrug if off, too.

  “Maybe just a lizard,” says Alex.

  “I doubt it,” says Matias.

  “Trust your instinct,” says Diego. “They’re watching us.”


  Alex turns to Hannibal. “I’m taking over the watch tonight. Hope you’re okay with that.”

  Hannibal has not slept well for days since meeting the four Jakes. His face is ashen, his eyes are sunken and weary and his hair and beard are wildly disheveled, clear signs of fatigue. “Does that mean I get to sleep in my own bed?”

  “Not tonight, you both need to sleep somewhere else,” says Alex.

  “We will play the old shell game.” Matias agrees. “They guess where you are.”

  Hannibal and Satin find makeshift bedding and move in with Sam and Julia for the night. Alex, armed with a homemade spear and the flare gun, picks his way slowly upward around the big rocks and fallen trees. He is careful to avoid the traps they’ve set like little land mines all over the hill in locations, which he has committed to memory from Ankur’s map. He settles down in a spot with a good view of the ridge-top and the beach in both directions.

  Within minutes, Matias appears on the hill nearby, carrying a spear gun. “You didn’t think I’d let you do this alone, did you?”

  “I didn’t think much about it at all,” says Alex.

  “A good general never sends one against four.”

  “When did you become the general?”

  “Face it, we are all generals, amigo.” Matias grins at him and sets up a second lookout position about twenty feet from Alex’s position.

  Not long after, Diego appears and sets up a third lookout position on the hill. He points to the gun at his waist, the same gun he had once threatened Alex with, and shoots him a grinning thumbs up. Despite their readiness, the night watch continues straight through until Dawn without incident.

  As Dawn breaks, the night watchmen rest while everyone else works in teams to prepare. Ankur, Rachel and Julia set more traps along the northern sector of their community, starting from the lake’s edge, leading across the beach right up to the foothills. Once they finish setting traps, they immediately turn to gathering nuts and edible plants while Sam goes fishing.

  Except for their communal campfire dinners, they have taken to grazing throughout the day while they work. They’ve collectively forgotten two favorite pastimes from their previous lives, namely breakfast and lunch. Without clocks, they have even simplified their perception of a typical day from twenty-four hours to the four Ds – Dawn, Day, Dusk and Dark.

  By end of Day, they have set all the traps in the hills leading up to the ridge and down to the northern end of the beach, where they are most vulnerable to attack. They’ve intentionally left the southern end of the beach clear, an escape route for Diego and Matias, if necessary, and a pathway for Alex’s safe return to Jessa and Deuce.

  Ankur and Sam Hayden have carefully calculated and mapped the best locations for each trap, using a mathematical spacing pattern with the highest likelihood of tripping up four intruders.

  “Our best offense is a stout and unexpected defense,” states Sam.

  Alex, Matias and Diego agree that the assault rifle will be their number-one target. It won’t matter who is carrying it. Since the assault rifle is capable of killing every member of the community with bullets left over, they focus their strategy on turning the opposition’s deadliest weapon into its first casualty. Jake, the family patriarch and leader of the pack, will likely be the one carrying the M-16, and he will likely come from the high ground along the ridge. Jake will be Diego’s first target. With everyone in attendance, Alex calmly, quietly lays out the final strategy.

  “Matias, Diego and I will defend the hill. If I see them coming, I’ll fire the flare gun and light up this whole area. Hannibal will lead the lake group, Marcus, Eric and Donnie, and defend using their stones and spears against possible attack from the northern lake.”

  “Remember, aim for their heads and throw as hard as you can.” Eric demonstrates one last pitch. He winds up and launches the rock equivalent of his best fastball. The tennis-ball sized rock strikes one of the biggest boulders about six feet off the ground. Sparks fly in every direction. Samson lets out a little yelp. “Like that,” adds Eric.

  By the time Dusk turns to Dark, their preparations are complete. They have booby-trapped most of the area, memorized the location of each trap, made enough weapons to defend themselves or conduct hand-to-hand combat, if necessary, and completed an intensive three-day paramilitary training camp.

  “After all we’ve been through, I still can’t believe we have to fight other humans for our survival,” says Donnie.

  “I can’t believe we’ve wasted so much time and energy getting ready for an attack that’s probably never going to happen,” adds Marcus.

  Chapter 11

  December 11

  The Dark hangs over them like a thick blanket of misery. Alex settles into his new lookout post only yards away from Matias and Diego. They raise their hands to Alex, revealing their relative locations on the hill. The new posts are higher up and well camouflaged, yet afford them unobstructed views of the ridge and the lake below.

  The others turn in early with only faint hopes of sleeping comfortably through the night, if at all. Alex doubts anyone will. With just a few hasty days worth of limited training under their belts, he’s less than confident they will remember their positions and safely carry out their roles, if a real attack comes. How will they react to the sudden loud pop when he fires the flare? Then there’s the fear factor. How will they manage and control their natural human fears in a real combat situation?

  The community below is eerily quiet, pin-drop peaceful. Hannibal and Satin are hidden in Rachel’s shelter, relieved to be away from the hills and closer to the lake at the northern end of the community. Yet only Rachel sleeps.

  Ankur bunks under the temporary shelter Eric and Donnie slapped together when they first decided to spend a few days at Emerald Bay North. Ankur is too scared to sleep, so he entertains himself watching Eric and Donnie change sleep positions in tandem.

  Marcus sleeps in Meg’s shelter, where he’s been staying since Meg and the girls ventured south. He’s the only one in the community flying solo tonight, yet he’s not alone. Samson is there curled up, sleeping protectively between Marcus and Lily and Mia’s bed, so no one is completely alone tonight.

  Alex leans back, tries to wait patiently and fights the urge to nod off from the sheer quiet boredom of the night watch. The only thing keeping him awake is the thick black, double-strength instant coffee Sam brewed for him, Matias and Diego after campfire. The mug sits beside him, still half-full of the muddy stuff.

  A mile south, Deuce Jacks is also awake, not fighting sleep at all. He sits on the open porch of their shelter staring at the northern shore of Emerald Bay, wondering what Alex and Samson are up to right now, what drama and excitement he’s missing by not being there with them. He hasn’t played a single first-person shooter, RPG or MMORPG combat simulation since The Crash and he’s itching for some League of Legends or World of Warcraft battle-arena action, even if it happens to be real.

  Finally Deuce makes up his mind. He will journey north and join the resistance. He finds Jessa sleeping. If he awakens her and asks for permission, she will surely say no, so he rips a blank page from Alex’s notebook, writes her a quick note, grabs his spear and vanishes into the night. His note says, “Going to help Dad and Samson. Don’t wait up. Love, Your Favorite Son, Deuce.”

  Jake gathers his brood and inspects them like a general reviewing his troops. “Okay, listen up. Here’s how this will go down. Me and Jake Three are the ridge team. Three knows where your new mama sleeps. Jake One and Two will be the lake team. Jake Three and I will attack from the ridge, take out the night watchman, grab the target and carry her to the North beach. There, we’ll meet up with Jake One and Two and carry her home.” Jake has it all figured out.

  Jake One disagrees. “We should all take the lake route. They might be expecting us from the ridge.”

  “Why would they be expecting us at all?” Jake asks pointedly.

  Jake One flashes back to his careless misstep on t
he ridge, turns red-faced. In the dancing candlelight of the cave’s interior, Jake fails to notice, pacing continuously back and forth like a caged animal.

  “Didn’t you teach us strength in numbers?” challenges Jake One.

  “I taught you to divide and conquer,” answers Jake sharply.

  Jake One stares back knowing he must resist confessing his unauthorized spy mission and untimely misstep, the most likely reason why the survivors might be expecting visitors. There would be harsh punishment if Jake knew that Jake One’s insubordination and resulting tactical error may have already cost his family the element of surprise.

  Jake One’s rebelliousness has grown stronger with each passing year under his father’s iron thumb. At twenty, he respects, fears and hates his father all at once. He has seriously considered killing Jake, one final payback for the abuse he suffered at his father’s hands all these years. The abused nearly always become the abusers.

  Jake One does not know that his father was also abused as a child. By the age of six, Jake hated his mother and father enough to set their cabin on fire and burn it to the ground. He found a cave to live in and learned to survive by his wits, alone in the woods.

  Twelve years later, when he turned eighteen, Jake captured, abducted and imprisoned a young woman named Ella, who was a few years older and unfortunate enough to stumble upon his cave during an innocent vacation nature hike. Jake had gagged her and tied her up deep inside his cave then used her as his personal concubine, raping her savagely and repeatedly.

  By the time Jake One was born, Ella had been Jake’s captive for more than a year, her spirit completely broken, her sense of herself demolished. Despite the pregnancy, Ella continued as Jake’s willing slave.

  For his part, Jake utterly lacked concern for her safety and wellness during the pregnancy. Orphaned at six, he also lacked morals or conscience. So while his infant son, Jake One, suckled at one breast, Jake suckled at the other. Jake One continued breastfeeding, even after Jake Two and Three were born during the four years that followed. For her part, Ella was forced to continue breastfeeding and pleasuring all four of them in a multitude of ways, according to Jake’s selfish, infantile and perverse whims.