Man Hunt

by K. Edwin Fritz

  Soon the helicopter was headed north toward the Hawaiian islands. They flew low over the blue sector, scattering tree leaves and tall grasses like so many frightened cockroaches. Josie saw several men down there. They always stood still and looked up at them. Again her heart ached knowing how much they yearned to be away from the island. She was sure Monica flew low simply to torture them even more.

  When they had cleared the island and were chasing down nothing more than whitecaps and blue seas, Monica opened her mouth and turned a serene two-hour flight into hell. She took it upon herself to use that time as an additional, unauthorized session. Josie could do nothing to stop her and grumbled because she knew she wouldn't dare talk about it upon her return.

  Monica brought up Charles again. And although her strength wasn't as potent while preoccupied with piloting the helicopter, Josie nearly broke down into tears for the third time that day. Her emotional instability was primed, and she learned it was all but impossible to stop her tears completely. Once the faucet had been turned on, it was likely to always drip. Like torture. And while she fought to hold back, she learned that sometimes it was simply better to cry. For the majority of that trip, she yearned for it. Only thwarting Monica's smile of success gave her the strength to bear the long flight alone with the skilled counselor.

  A little while before they arrived at their destination, Monica finally let it all rest, but not without first emphasizing how important it was that she do a good job on this mission. Josie had played the part as best she could for the entire flight. She would have liked to explode at Monica, but again she simply agreed.

  Finally, they received clearance and landed. This was the real world.

  The little airport was relatively deserted for 4:30 in the afternoon, yet it was bright and inviting even as the storm picked up strength outside.

  "How long did she give you?" Monica asked as they walked through the back doors and into the terminal.

  "Ten days," Josie said.

  "Really?" Monica looked sideways at her. "That's generous."

  Josie didn't respond right away. But Monica's sickening stares and heavy breathing exposed her frustrated curiosity in a way that Josie couldn't simply ignore. "It's a difficult mission," she said finally. "But at least it's on the west coast."

  "How many?" Monica asked.

  "Just one," Josie said, and somehow managed to hold back a smirk. She could see the counselor was dying to know all the details, but this time Josie held her resolve and said nothing more. She had revealed only enough for Monica to do her job and be there for pick-up when needed. It wasn't Monica's right to know any more. Those were the rules. The small victory that it was, Josie nevertheless loved and enjoyed every second of her held tongue. To Monica's credit, and Josie's frustration, she didn't ask and further questions.

  They reached the counter, and a far too cheery Hawaiian woman smiled at them. "May I help you?"

  "One round-trip ticket to California," Monica said.

  "What city?" the attendant asked.

  "Doesn't matter. We'll take whatever you've got that leaves soon."

  "Oooo," the attendant said. "We're a small airport, ma'am. We don't have that many flights. The best I can do is…" and they all waited in tense silence while her computer brought up the relevant info. "We have one open seat on a flight to San Diego leaving at four tomorrow morning." She paused then added, "Though it is first class. If price is a problem the next one wouldn't be until noon. That one goes to San Francisco."

  "That would be better," Monica said.

  Thank God it wasn't San Diego, Josie thought. Frisco is so much closer.

  Thank God for that first class seat, Monica thought. That's going to make this so much easier.

  The attendant quoted a price and Monica produced the amount in cash from a leather zippered wallet she always carried to the airport. The attendant did her thing, punching buttons and asking pointless questions about luggage and fruit or vegetable parcels. Finally satisfied, she smiled at them while the computer printed out the tickets.

  "Ok, you're all set for a round-trip ticket to San Francisco. You'll be arriving at San Francisco International Airport at five-forty-two p.m., and your return flight will leave from there on… Wednesday the seventeenth at eleven a.m. Thank you for flying Hawaiian Airlines."

  Josie's ears perked up. The seventeenth. But of what month? When she got the ticket she looked at it. The letters 'JUL' were printed neatly halfway down. July, she thought. How the hell did it get to be July already? Christ, that makes today the seventh. She allowed the date to sink in a little further. We missed the fireworks.

  They found a short row of chairs where Josie could sit and wait away from the main entrance doors. Monica double-checked the ticket. "I'll see you in ten days, then. Good luck. Remember what I've said." Josie nodded, anticipating her departure.

  Then Monica turned and left to go fill another much-needed shopping list of such strangely linked items as groceries for twenty women, crates of fruit for over two hundred men– ripeness was not a priority– case upon case of water for everyone, more gallons of gasoline, and perhaps a new pair or two of green sneakers.

  Watching her go, Josie once again battled with an overwhelming mixture of exaltation and fear. She knew the fear would dissipate soon enough and tried to enjoy her freedom. Still, there was something to be said about being left behind without food or money and only one small suitcase filled with ridiculous items. It was always this way. The women had been taught how to fend for themselves, and they never failed to do so.

  There will be food on the airplane, she thought. In the meantime maybe I can persuade some single guy waiting for his flight to buy me dinner.

  She looked at the clock on the wall and the time stamped on her ticket. It was not yet 5:00 yet the afternoon light was entirely gone, replaced by more clouds and rain.

  'Noon,' the ticket said. Not '12:00' or even '12:00 p.m.', but 'Noon.'

  Like 'High Noon', she thought. Great. And I get to spend the next twenty hours in this place. Even better. She lay down across the triple-connected blue plastic chairs and used her little suitcase as a pillow.

  Sleep came quickly. It had been a long day.

  2

  While Josie slept, she did not see Monica cross the small airport and approach the only other ticket counter. "I need a round-trip ticket to San Diego leaving as soon as possible," she said. "First class."

  The young man behind the counter tapped at his computer's touch screen with his eyebrows raised, obviously doubting he could accommodate her. Then suddenly he perked up. "You're in luck!" he said. "We just so happen to have a single first class seat available. It leaves–"

  "At four a.m. I know," Monica said. She looked over her shoulder as she spoke, eyeing Josie's sleeping form less than a dozen steps away. "Do you know how far it is from San Diego to San Francisco?"

  "About… five hundred miles, I think," the attendant said.

  Monica's shoulders dropped after a moment of silent calculation. "That's not much time. Is there any way you can set up a car and driver waiting for me? I need to leave immediately upon arrival. I'll also need a rental waiting for me in Frisco. Something nice. Can you do that?" The attendant nodded, smiled, and began punching buttons.

  3

  Gertrude stood inside her clean, white room behind her enormous desk and pondered things until she reached a conclusion. Then, without pausing to reconsider, she trekked around the cherrywood monstrosity and quietly moved to her open office door. She stepped into the hallway and faced left, toward the bulk of the fortress and Josie's fading footsteps. Then she watched.

  Josie's walk showed no signs of anger. She could have been mistaken for idly working toward the lunchroom instead of having just left some of the most threatening few moments of her career. It told Gertrude only that she would have to be patient over the next ten days.

  The headwoman turned back and caught a glimpse of her office once again. The obvious signs of vandalism
had been wiped away swiftly, of course, but there were still quite a few colored pencil marks on the desk that needed heavy-duty cleaners, a broken light-bulb to replace, and the Venetian blinds had kinks in three of its slats that would never look right again. She made a mental note to instruct Monica to add another set of blinds to her list of supplies, then took in a deliberate breath of air and held it just long enough to remember the GOPHER.

  Moments later she was back to her position behind the desk, a fresh tarp of paper imprisoned under her heavy hands, and all the colored pencils within easy reach.

  She started the way she always started. The fortress came first. Before the Helen of Troy Stream, the black feeding arena, or even the edges of the island itself were drawn, the fortress was always given first rites.

  The outline of Monroe's Island's came next, followed quickly by Helen of Troy Stream and Diana's Gulf. She worked slowly at first, then faster as her mind began wheeling more and more with each pencil stroke. Soon she was drawing in the streets and alleys of the blue sector with the haste of a teenager on the last minutes at work the night of a big date. Gertrude's lust of the approaching moments was certainly the same.

  Then she suddenly stopped. She stood, exchanged her blue pencil for a bright red one, and looked down at her creation, trying to let her mind wander toward the next conclusion. She placed the cherry tip on the central square of blue where the men met and exchanged yarns, where the GOPHER had embarrassed her women. Slowly, her colored pencil strayed, leaving behind a broken tendril of scarlet running straight across her newly drawn yield. It moved directly north from the blue feeding arena. Of this there was no hesitation.

  As Gertrude's mind did the hunting, the pencil wandered east and west, even back south, but its progress was consistently north. Finally, it stopped and tapped a spot at the edge of the island just in front of a large crescent chunk. Gertrude let out a long, slow breath and smiled.

  She left her drawing where it was and moved immediately. Outside her office she turned right, toward the stairway to the basement. Toward the garage.

  "Lorraine can wait," she said aloud. "I have a rodent problem to take care of."

  4

  Josie woke with a start hours later, blinking heavily at an unseen brightness. She'd been having a nightmare. Charles, of course. What other nightmare could there be? There were lots of people in the airport now, and she was embarrassed to have been lounging in front of them.

  How long did I sleep? she wondered. Her stomach groaned, telling her she had missed the opportunity to mooch a free dinner from some pig. As her eyes cleared and to her utter shock, she realized it was the following morning. The storm had passed and bright sunshine now blasted in through the little terminal's wide windows. An elderly woman sat across from her, quietly reading a book. She seemed to not have taken any notice of Josie. In any case, her husband slept in the seat beside her, his chin resting on his chest and his straight-brimmed Florida Marlins cap pulled down over his eyes.

  Josie took her little suitcase with her and found the only bathroom. It was dirty but still a pleasure to be in. She relieved herself, splashed water on her face to wash away the lingering nightmare, then went back out into the terminal. She found half a bagel still wrapped in wax paper on the top layer of an open trash can. Making sure nobody saw her, she pilfered it and was soon eating as she strolled around.

  Unfortunately, there was very little to explore, especially since she'd used the little airport about a hundred times before. In five minutes she found herself back at the triple chairs trying for another nap. The clock on the wall told her she still had four hours to kill before her flight would board.

  When she woke again the little terminal was jammed with people. The noise had woken her, in fact, and she felt guilty knowing she had hogged two extra seats. She dashed her eyes to the clock, wondering what exactly she'd do if she'd missed her flight. It was 11:20. She hadn't missed it. Not quite.

  The old couple was gone, replaced by a pasty, overweight Texan wearing too much white and constantly blotting his sweaty forehead with a folded handkerchief. He completely filled the far right seat of his own flock of chairs, lifting the other end a half-inch off the floor. He was staring at Josie, and immediately she knew he'd been doing so for some time.

  Suddenly she felt invaded and became conscious of the clothes she was wearing: black jeans and a black T-shirt, both just tight enough to accentuate her natural curves. He was too old, too eager in the eyes, to deserve to look at her that way. She sat up, adjusting her clothes' wrinkles and folds, and pushing her black hair off her face. The Texan looked quickly back to his newspaper.

  Josie looked at him openly for a moment, unashamed to know he felt her eyes. This was a man of the real world. A man who was quite probably the typical man Monroe's Island sought to educate. His stare lingered for a few moments before finally sliding to the outside windows.

  He was married. The fat gold ring on his third finger gleamed in the hot sunlight now glaring through the windows. Yet he couldn't be satisfied with what he had at home. His eyes had told Josie that. He hadn't been just absently glancing or even mildly appreciating. He had been leering. He yearned. Desired. Was he the kind of man who could go that extra step and make the attempt? Josie studied him. The clothes: expensive. The composure: confident. The disposition: brash. Yes, she decided. He would be that kind of man. Maybe not without some internal guarantee he'd never be caught, but given just a little push he'd lower himself to the ranks of the unfaithful, the unclean, the abusive.

  They weren't all like that, of course, but it seemed Josie had a knack for picking them out. Her job as a recruiter wasn't so much about flaunting her stuff, as other girls wasted their time doing, but about who to flaunt it to as well as when and how much. It was the art of seduction. One of the rules she had agreed to follow was to only bring back willing specimen. Only those men who proved they deserved to be there. It was supposed to justify what they did. Josie had become less sure about that, yet looking at the Texan with his God-awful rancher's hat and remembering the leer she'd caught in his eyes gave a boost to her hatred of men like Charles. If she'd wanted to, she could have recruited him with ease. But Monica wouldn't be back to pick her up for ten days, and her mission was far more specific than the likes of him.

  While in the bathroom again ten minutes later, she heard the boarding call for her flight. She looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly and with great control. This was no ordinary mission. She needed to be on the top of her game, and she didn't know if she had enough courage. Gertrude was really pushing her to the limit this time.

  Once on the plane she consciously noticed how the stewardesses couldn't satisfy themselves in kissing up to everyone. She felt like telling them they didn't need to degrade themselves, that there was more to life than being a sheep to someone else's warped vision about how they should act, that with just a little effort they could be flying the damned planes and earning a hell of a lot more money in the process.

  Instead, she politely declined a pitch for alcohol and enjoyed the in-flight movie when it came on. It disturbed her more than a little when she realized nobody else was really watching, as if they'd all seen it ten times already and that the leading star had already made two more recent and greater-grossing films. July, she thought again. I came to the island in a June. That means I've been there over six years now. God. Six years. It's almost like I've grown up there. She started to think about her mother again and how she wanted to just call home, just go home. It really couldn't have been as bad as she remembered. All teenage girls fight with their mothers.

  Then she heard Monica's voice the day she'd been discovered on that telephone hotline for teen rape victims. The soothing voice asked her if she felt loved at home. Josie had said 'no' all too soon, and she had known it. The voice asked her if her own mother would understand being date-raped, if she could even talk to her mother about it. Again Josie had answered too quickly. But by th
en she'd already agreed to meet with the counselor, free of charge, just to talk about things. It hadn't taken long before she heard about and admitted her interest in the island. She had wanted to be a part of it because she had hated Charles so much and because Monica, the telephone counselor, was so right about how all men acted.

  She had met Steph a few days later, and they had instantly bonded and then agreed to take on the job of trainers together. They had arrived just three days apart, Josie first and henceforth always one step ahead of Steph. On their first recruiting mission a month later, they had been a team. It had been the most frightening thing she'd ever had to do, but it turned out not to be so bad. The sedatives they were given worked quickly and lasted a long time. Josie laughed to herself, remembering how the first pig she and Steph snared had passed out too fast. They had struggled together to lift the teenager, only two years older than they were, out of the airplane once it docked in the Hawaiian terminal. It was a miracle the stewardesses and other passengers didn't interfere. They hadn't made so much as a single plan in the event of trouble. How different would things have turned out if only…

  But she didn't allow herself to finish the thought. It had happened. She had again "Lived Like That". She had told herself an if-only. It wasn't as bad as yelling at herself for making a mistake– the cardinal sin of Living Like That– but it was still dwelling on the wrong things in life. Life was made up of so many if-onlys. If only Charles hadn't raped her, she could have led a more normal life. If only her own parents would have understood her a little, she wouldn't have called that hotline. If only the men in training weren't so damned scared and lonely, she wouldn't be in this mess now.

  Josie shook herself away from the past and back to the blissful action-packed movie. She couldn't be an if-only person. She had to be a what-now person. Even if she and Steph saw less of each other since she'd been promoted to black squad, even if Gertrude would continue to belittle her and threaten her. She had to take this mission seriously. If she passed it, if she brought back that precious cargo, Josie had a suspicion Gertrude meant to promote her to second-in-command. It would crush poor Rachael, but who else could Dirty Gertie choose? Emma? That was a laugh. And Sherry was far too new and inexperienced.