The Island - The Final Chapters

by Michael Stark

  The hard look that slid across her face faded into resignation so quickly that I wondered if Elsie had finally accepted the fact I wasn’t going to trade him off to the circus as the world’s next great freak show.

  “He don’t understand a lot of things, Hill William,” she began.

  “I know, Elsie,” I said as gently as I could. “He’s six. I know. Just tell me what he said.”

  “He said Gabriel knew how to die.”

  I looked at her in exasperation. “What does that mean?”

  The old woman spread her hands out and lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say anything else.”

  I swallowed my frustration, wondering if I’d ever get an answer that actually illuminated the question rather than posing a new piece to the puzzle.

  She puffed on her cigarette and sent smoke billowing off with the wind. “You still ain’t told me what happened.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “I know. Once we get out there, it’ll make more sense. If I go into it now, I’ll sound like one of the segments at the end of the news.”

  “You look like you’d went ten rounds with a tiger.”

  I laughed and winced at the effort. “I feel like it.”

  Elsie puffed on her cigarette again. “What’s the deal with you and Denise?”

  I looked at her and shrugged. “Ask me a question I have an answer to.”

  She finished her cigarette and put it out in the bucket of sand next to the chair. “It’s one you need to get an answer to. Like it or not, Hill William, every one of them looks up to you. It’s your business if you want to stake a claim on that girl. But, you can’t go wandering around like you have no say in the matter.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, sure she would tell me anyway.

  “Because wishy-washy ain’t one of your options,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Neither is letting that girl manipulate you. Get it figured out.”

  She walked inside, banging the door as she went. I pulled myself up with a groan and limped around the edge of the station to check the cistern. We had no measuring stick, but the hollow boom echoing through the old metal tank told me the rain hadn’t been heavy enough to make much of a difference.

  I looked up at a bright blue sky. As much as I dreaded the coming storms, we needed them.

  Elsie had everyone back at the station except Joshua half an hour later. He still hadn’t returned from his hunting trip. The old woman had been working up lunches off food from the island the past several days. With no time to go grazing, she dug deeper into the supplies Charlie had sent over and packed a lunch of sandwiches made of stale bread and what looked like Spam.

  We left without Joshua. Elsie and Daniel shared the shotgun seat. The boy clambered up on top of his great-grandmother as if he belonged there. Kelly, Denise, and Tyler took the back seat. I winced when I saw them sliding in. I would have rather walked than ride in what my mind had already begun to register as Baby’s seat. The three men took the rear compartment, opting to tie the doors open and take in fresh air rather than ride in stifling discomfort. Keith and Devon each brought a shovel.

  The trip down took all of fifteen minutes. Elsie gasped when we were close enough for her to make out details on the beast. I kept driving, pulling up with both bodies lying no more than ten feet ahead. I left the others to inspect the hellish corpse and retrieved the shotgun from the dust where I’d thrown it the night before.

  The instant the light fell across the barrel, I saw the name Benelli. Parks had been right. Baby’s husband had probably paid a hefty sum for the weapon. Constructed of blackened steel and black synthetic grips, the gun looked downright wicked.

  When I turned back, Kelly had her hand to her mouth. Denise looked as if she wanted to be sick. Even the men looked pale. Elsie had Daniel pulled up close in front of her. Surprisingly, she wasn’t trying to shield the boy from what lay in the road. I thought about the wisdom of that decision and then decided it probably didn’t matter. The boy had most likely seen worse in his visions.

  I relayed the details from the night before, leaving nothing out and watching their reactions as I told the story. Most floated somewhere between shock and denial and I couldn’t blame them. If I’d been on the other end, I’d not want to believe the story either, even with the evidence lying right in front of me.

  We buried Baby under the road. No one wanted to pick up the body, including me. When Keith tamped the last bit of sand atop the new mound, he glanced around.

  “Anyone want to say something?”

  As undignified as the burial had been, the uncomfortable silence that followed seemed worse. My entire body of knowledge regarding the woman boiled down to the three words she had spoken the first time I met her when she asked her husband if I was lost. The confrontation that had followed had left me angry and the pair offended. The thing that had risen out of the backseat reeked of corruption and evil. Baby had ended up nothing but a corpse hijacked by something that I still didn’t understand. The soft-eyed woman had been gone at that point. She deserved, at least, common respect.

  “Rest in peace,” I said finally.

  The same scene repeated itself at the camp. The digging took longer this time. So many roots snaked through the sand under the trees that we chopped as much as we dug. Better ground lay twenty yards away, but that meant moving the body. Keith eyed the sand closer to the tent a few times, but every time he looked down at the headless corpse, he went right back to shoveling and sawing at roots. I never stopped. I’d wrestled the body once. I wasn’t doing it again.

  Denise and Tyler had the tent cleared of crates by the time we finished. I helped the pair load the new supplies into the SUV’s cargo compartment. The crates meant life for another couple of weeks at least. They also translated into a cramped ride down to the dune buggy.

  The group had gathered around the card table by the time I forced the doors shut on the Suburban. I walked over and found them staring at the message written on the plate. The rain had faded the original script, but enough remained to leave the words clearly marked against the white background.

  “Looks like you have celebrity status with the underworld,” Devon remarked. “That’s gotta suck.”

  I smiled tightly and glanced at Daniel. The boy stared at the table, eyes somber and unreadable.. As with most things, I couldn’t tell if his interest bore any significance or if his unswerving gaze meant he was off once again, wandering through his own visions.

  “Let’s go. The dune buggy is still several miles south. It won’t take long to get to it. I know a good place to stop for lunch on the way back.”

  The looks of relief sliding around the group told me they liked the idea of moving out into the open as much as I did. Three bodies in a six mile range tended to put a damper on the park-like feel of the wooded interior. Stopping at the shipwreck would hopefully provide a much needed diversion.

  The plate remained the only unfinished business in the camp. I reached down, flipped it sideways and flung it against the nearby tree. It shattered against the rough bark, exploding into a dozen pieces.

  When I turned back, the rest stared at me, some with uncertain looks, others surprised. I left them standing and headed for the Suburban.

  We found the dune buggy where I’d left it, untouched with the windmill spinning merrily in the breeze. Relief washed over me at the sight of the odd little vehicle perched high on the sand. All morning, I had dealt with a nagging worry that Parks had followed me up the beach and claimed the buggy as his own. With the Suburban, we could get by without it, but the idea rankled enough that I might have spouted a few curses and headed down alone to fetch it back.

  A touch at the back sent the power needle shooting high up in the green. Inside, the items I had taken from the truck at the southern end of the island sat undisturbed. Rainwater beaded on the seats in a few places, but otherwise the vehicle looked the same as I had left it. I cleaned off the seats and motioned for Denise to ride with me.
/>   Keith had extricated himself from the pile of bodies in the back and moved up to drive.

  “Look for some timbers sticking out of the sand a few miles north of the Wall Street camp.” I told him. “It’s an old shipwreck. We’ll stop there.”

  Once the big SUV rolled out on the beach, I fired up the dune buggy. The little vehicle lurched to life, accelerating quickly to its top speed - which felt fast enough, but in reality, was slow by any standard. It would take more than an hour to retrace the route we’d just taken.

  The timing provided a good opportunity to talk to Denise. Unfortunately, every opening I considered sounded completely clueless, pompous, or condescending, even to me. I mean hell, where’s the sensitive and thoughtful approach to, “Why did you climb in bed with me in the middle of the night?” No matter which way I looked at the question, the immediate response it invited was, “Why did you let me?”

  I had no easy answer for that one either. Trying to explain I’d thought she was someone else ignored the fact that I’d known exactly who she was by the time it was over. I turned the words around in my head a dozen different ways and every one of them came out sounding like a man backing away from a bad decision.

  Maybe I was.

  I struggled to come up with the right approach. Somewhere in the middle of the mental maneuvering, Denise looked over and smiled.

  “I guess you wanted to talk to me, huh?”

  Well, there you go, simple, easy, and direct.

  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  She eased back in her seat, slipped off her flip flops and stuck her feet up on the crossbeam that acted as a meager dashboard.

  She saw me looking at her feet.

  “I know, they look awful, don’t they? I never thought I’d need nail polish on a camping trip.”

  “They look fine to me,” I said, unsure of how to respond.

  “That’s because you’re a man,” she replied, sounding like Elsie. “I can make this easier. I didn’t sleep with you to get back at Joshua or to hurt anyone.”

  Denise paused and turned her gaze out over the ocean. The ponytail clinging to the back of her head swayed in the breeze.

  “I don’t want you feeling like I’m in love either,” she said when she looked back.

  “I see,” I replied and searched for something a bit more brilliant than those two words, but failed.

  “Joshua and I have been off and on for months,” she continued. “I came out here because of the others, not him. I’ve known them for a long time, Keith and Jessie longer than anyone.”

  She wiggled her toes against the windshield, leaving little smudges across the surface of the glass.

  “You want to know why I did it?” she asked, defiance creeping into her voice, “because you’re good looking, because you’re different, and because I may be dead tomorrow. I have nothing to lose.”

  I nodded, trying to act thoughtful when what I really wanted to say was “Jeez, really? How does that play on the flip side? Would it be okay for me to wander up and sneak into bed with Kate or Kelly tonight?”

  What I ended up doing was changing the subject. Whatever deep thoughts I might have had on the topic evaporated when it became clear no deeper avenue existed. We talked about a lot of things, from weather to the food we missed most, but the subject of sex and relationships fell to two sentences.

  I waited until brake lights flashed on the Suburban. The thought of stopping for lunch sent a long growl through my stomach. I leaned out to look past the big vehicle and saw blackened timbers rising out of the sand.

  “We’re here. Good thing too, I’m starved,” I said. When she looked up I shot her a tight smile. “Call me old-fashioned, but I see sex as something two people decide on, not one. Talk to me next time before you crawl into bed with me.”

  Color rose in her cheeks, but the sight of the others piling out on the sand stifled any response.

  I pulled the dune buggy higher up on the sand beside the SUV. The decision to stop at that point proved a good one. The wreck, obviously old and mysterious, provided a good distraction from thoughts of bodies and burials. Even Daniel seemed interested, walking through the giant ribs and running his hands across the timbers. I left him alone. Any other kid would have been full of questions and hopping with excitement. For all I knew, every time Daniel touched one of the thick, dark beams, he slid off into visions of storms and drowning people.

  The good mood lingered, spreading over into the afternoon and helped along by an absolutely glorious late fall day. A steady ten to twelve knot breezing sliding in off the ocean had me eyeing the dock once we made it back to the station. We needed the food and I needed the ocean. Tyler opted to come along for the ride.

  I eased Angel out into the inlet and motored up past the point into the ocean. As soon as we hit deep water, I dropped the swing keel and hoisted both main and jib. The next few hours flew by. Tyler had watched the sails go up dubiously. Alarm replaced the doubt a few seconds later when Angel leaned to starboard.

  “We’re turning over!” he shouted and grabbed on to the lifelines. I laughed harder in those few moments than I had in years. After a brief discussion on how sailboats actually work and explaining that heeling was the correct term for the turn-over feeling, he settled down.

  Sailing carries its own magic. You feel the water rather than simply ride over it. The ocean becomes a great, sighing beast moving under you that can whisk you away with it, or swallow you whole. You become exquisitely aware of your place in the world and of every tiny adjustment in it. Ride in a car or jump in a motorboat and you become a spectator rather than participant. The world slides by like a movie played across a giant screen. Hoisting a sail sits on the other end of the graph at a point labeled Immersion. Every sense demands attention. Life or death can hinge on every decision. You become both master and navigator of your own destiny and feel that responsibility in every turn.

  A mile or so down the coast, I set rods out on the stern and let the wind act as our trolling motor. Tyler lay back in the cockpit seat with a ball cap pulled low over his eyes and watched the lines stretching off behind the boat. I lounged in the pilot’s seat with one hand on the tiller. The other would have probably offended every self-righteous wine snob in the world. I didn’t pour the Carolina Red into a goblet, snifter, or even common water glass. I just drank it from the bottle.

  A King Mackerel, several Spanish, and a wahoo later, I made ready to bring Angel around for the run home. I’d pointed at the boom and started explaining to Tyler why he didn’t want to be standing while I brought the boat around, when he frowned and pointed at the island.

  I looked over. A pickup sat parked high on the sand. Several figures milled about nearby. Angel skimmed by maybe a half a mile off the coast, too far to make out much detail except one of them looked larger than the rest.

  A small geyser erupted part way between us, followed by another, the two spaced wide apart. Had the sea been rough or the swells larger I might have missed them entirely.

  “There’s a pair of binoculars in the cabin next to the radio,” I said to the younger man. “Grab them and see if you can tell what they’re doing.”

  He lurched below and emerged seconds later. After studying the shore for a long moment, he looked at me in surprise. “I think they’re shooting at us.”

  I reached for the binoculars and took a look myself. Half a mile with cheap field glasses doesn’t provide close-up and personal images. Light refracted around the figures wreathing each in a little rainbow effect. I didn’t need to get any closer though. The big one had to be Dwight Little. The rest looked like Parks and his band of not so merry men.

  I swung the tiller hard and sent Angel angling out into deeper water. The move seemed to excite the men on the beach. They looked like ants scurrying around on the sand.

  We motored back up the coast. The pickup followed us a ways and then stopped as if it had run into a wall. I marked the distance on the GPS between there and the point. It cam
e to just under eleven miles. Dwight had followed us to the edge of his territory.

  I had no idea what scheme Parks had cooked up to get the man on the island, but he apparently now had weapons. The island had not only just gotten smaller. It felt as if we were at war in our own backyard.

  Elsie had flounder from the last catch searing in a pan full of butter and wild garlic when we reached the station a while later. A heavy pan sat on a back burner packed full of sliced potatoes. Riding high across the mouth-watering aromas, came the smell of freshly baked bread.

  Everyone ate ravenously except Jessie. She picked at her food, looking tired and pale.

  She rose late the following morning and came walking down the hallway in slow steps. Her cheeks burned a dull red and she couldn’t stop coughing. Elsie dug through the backpack Charlie had sent over until she found a thermometer. The girl’s temperature measured 101 degrees. Six hours later, it had climbed to a 104. She fought it for two days. Jessie never evidenced the violent behavior we’d heard about on the news. She just grew hotter and weaker and increasingly less lucid as time passed. We had aspirin, Tylenol, and ibuprofen. They barely made a dent in the fever.

  The day before she died, her body swelled as if hooked to a helium tank and pumped full of gas. Blood trickled from her eyes and wet the sheet beneath her. We stood by helpless, unable to comfort her or treat the disease. She passed early the next day. Kelly woke me and took me up to the sick room. What lay on the bed looked nothing like the sweet-faced girl I’d known for so few weeks.

  By then, the coughing had spread and with it came another kind of fear, one borne of both frustration and finality. We could fight monsters. We could huddle down inside our wooden prison when the sun dropped low and fend off the night. None of that helped when it came to the virus. We, like the rest of the world, could do nothing but wait and hope.

  We had someone at the station the rest of the world didn’t have, though. He couldn’t stop the disease, but could foretell the future.

  His name was Daniel.