Holiday of the Dead

by David Dunwoody; Wayne Simmons; Remy Porter; Thomas Emson; Rod Glenn; Shaun Jeffrey; John Russo; Tony Burgess; A P Fuchs; Bowie V Ibarra

  Jackie – struggling to get the twisty cap off her beer, shook her head. “Tomorrow’s our first day here … you guys aren’t getting off that easy!”

  My brother’s ambitions were left in the porch that night along with several empty beer bottles. Jerry was smart enough not to push his luck. There would be plenty of time to get out on the lake, though I could still see his mind churning as we continued to enjoy our vacation together. By the time Monday rolled into Tuesday and we’d spent the day with the kids hiking, and Tuesday rolled into a Wednesday full of swimming off the local dock, I’d all but forgotten my brother’s anticipation of Raindance Island …

  Back on the boat still trying to dislodge the mess in the propeller, I realized I’d been right about the blade of the filleting knife too. The tip snapped off leaving me little blade left to work with, and in the process of breaking it, I knocked my tackle-box into the lake along with my cell phone. Not that the phone had worked worth a damn on the lake anyway. Though beautiful and cloud free, service remained unwilling to cooperate with my obvious distress. Not wanting to risk getting the phone wet and after numerous futile attempts to call the girls at the cabin, I’d finally stuffed it in one of the many plastic drawers of my tackle-box – one of many terrible decisions I’d made that day.

  It wasn’t until Jerry suggested I try the broken paddle instead of the filleting knife that I noticed how truly pale my brother had become.

  “I don’t know if the paddle would do any good,” I said disgusted. “Its wrapped in there pretty good.”

  “From when we hit the–”

  “Yeah,” I said, interrupting my brother as I studied the mess lodged around the blades of the propeller. My stomach climbed up into my throat as I tried to understand just how we ended up in such a horrible situation in the first place …

  I know by Thursday I’d forgotten about the island altogether though I’d not forgotten about going fishing with my brother. In fact, I was chomping at the bit to get out on that beautiful lake after the six of us had dinner at a local restaurant called The Lakeshore Inn. They served the best pickerel I’d ever tasted. Even Andrea, who refused to acknowledge fish was even edible, enjoyed the mouthful I insisted she at least sample. Breaded in a delicious beer batter, it took all my strength not to get in Jerry’s boat the moment we arrived back at the cabin.

  Jerry was suffering from the same itch that Thursday evening, I could tell. “Saturday is Man-day,” he’d said cracking a beer open while our sons set up a game of Monopoly in the screened porch. Moths danced on the screen walls, attracted to the light of an antique lamp as I listened to my brother tell our wives of our plans to spend Saturday fishing. The girls gave us a hard time, but it wasn’t long before we realized they were taking great pleasure in pulling our chains.

  “You go have fun with your little boat,” Jackie had said sarcastically, “while we do our woman work, cleaning and a scrubbing, and a tending to the children …”

  After the kids went to bed, and the wives retired to the living room to watch a movie, Jerry and I reminisced over past fishing trips – finishing off one of two twelve-packs that had been sitting in the fridge. It was good to be with my brother again, and it truly felt just like old times. Thinking back now, I guess I realized for the first time in my thirty-nine years alive that he was not only my brother, but my very best friend as well.

  Though both born and bred in Manitoba, my brother had since taken a job in Boulder, Colorado. He worked for a group called Genecore Cryonics, a company that took the money off those who could afford it, and offered them the possibility of immortality, freezing the deceased’s body with the anticipation that they might someday be reborn once technology found a way to catch up. This was right up my brother’s alley of course – though to meet him, you’d never know the intelligence he hid under the guise of a simple man, who still found farts funny and the last beer in the fridge irresistible.

  It had been two years since our families last rendezvoused, and I was happy that night to finally be with him again, only then realizing how much I missed him. The beers flowed freely and our wives appeared willing to give us a distance they suspected we required to reacquaint ourselves – the last time Jerry and I were together was our mother’s funeral two years earlier.

  Still lying in the boat, Jerry moaned – tearing me from my thoughts. My mind was wandering when I should have been trying to get us out of our mess. I brought a flask of water over to where he still lay in the boat. “Here,” I said, lifting his head up as I held it over his dry white lips. “Drink something, you’ll feel better.”

  Jerry let out a cough and water splashed onto my hands. He was no longer able to swallow. I pulled the flask away, frightened by the strange colour of his eyes then gently, I lowered his head back down.

  I took some electrical tape I’d found earlier while searching for tools I could use to unclog the motor, and taped a fresh towel around Jerry’s bite. The bleeding had stopped but I wanted to protect him against any infection, surprised that I could think straight at all after everything that had happened. Not far from the boat a fish jumped – a flash against the sun, before disappearing once again.

  The lake itself remained hauntingly peaceful throughout the horrible ordeal and as we drifted along, serine waves licked the hull while I searched the shoreline of distant islands wondering if I could get to one of them using the paddle still available. The question was: what waited on those islands? I’d seen enough on Raindance to change my mind immediately for as they say – once bitten, twice shy. In the distance, a loon cried out, breaking my concentration. I chewed nervously on my bottom lip, debating what I should do and pondered just how much time I had left to do it. The daylight wasn’t going to last forever, and I was becoming frustrated.

  “It wasn’t worth it, Jerry,” I finally mumbled to my brother frustrated, but silence answered me and nothing else. For a man who loved to talk, my brother had so little to say now – a far cry from his excitement only days earlier when the fishing trip still seemed like a good idea.

  “They have what’s called a body farm on the island,” Jerry had said Thursday evening when he was still very much alive and well. Midnight soon came to pass while we drank in the screened porch. Jerry turned on a small transistor radio and found a station broadcasting Coast To Coast, a paranormal talk radio program we’d both been fond of over the years.

  “What the hell is a body farm?” I’d asked, as host George Noory talked through radio hiss about unidentifiable flying objects spotted above Phoenix years earlier.

  “Well, they study the environment’s effect on corpses,” my brother explained. “At one time, they used dead pigs; they even dressed them up in clothes to make them seem more realistic, more human … but now they’re using actual bodies.” He rocked in his chair, balancing on the back legs when he slapped his neck suddenly, bringing the annoying buzz of a mosquito to an abrupt end.

  “Who are they?” I’d asked, feeling light and inquisitive – a perfect buzz with perfect company. Everybody inside the cabin was fast asleep by then, and we did our best to whisper our slurs.

  “The U.S Government,” Jerry said.

  It seemed odd to me at the time. Why would the U.S government want to study rotting bodies? What more, why did they have to study them up here in Canada? “Where do they get the corpses?” I asked, wondering if my brother was pulling my leg, something he’d taken pleasure in doing on several occasions in the past.

  “Where do you think?” he replied getting up. “You want another one?”

  I shook my head and finished what was left of my beer then handed him the empty bottle. “I don’t understand.”

  “How do you think I know about the island?” Jerry asked. If he winked, I couldn’t see it in the dark, but it seemed an apt way to end his sarcastic question. I looked out on the lake and watched a long thin reflection of the moon as it danced upon drifting waves. I tried to imagine an island out there in all that tranquillity, lined w
ith the bodies of people who’d spent large sums of money under what I could only assume were false pretences. A short clamour was followed by the sound of my brother sliding the patio doors closed. He sat back down next to me and handed me another beer.

  “That’s highway robbery,” I said and then added, “If you aren’t full of shit, at least what they’re doing is.”

  “I swear on Mom’s grave little brother,” he said, twisting the cap of his bottle as he leaned towards me. He whispered, “It’s a military operation under the guise of a private corporation.” I could smell the beer on his breath as I searched his eyes for sincerity, but like the imaginary wink I was certain had been there only moments earlier, the sincerity had remained hidden in the night. “Think of it like a post-mortem tax donation of sorts.”

  “Why would the government have to do something out here that they could just as easily find out in a laboratory?” I asked, cracking my beer open.

  “You can’t recreate Mother Nature’s effect on a dead body in a laboratory.” Jerry said tapping his fingers on the table. “You have to put them out in the environment.”

  “Is that why you chose this place for our vacation?”

  “Shh,” Jerry slurred, “you’re going to wake the kids.

  I calmed down but the thought remained in my mind. This, my brother could see.

  “You don’t think Wabigoon is beautiful?” He asked, holding a vague hand out toward the lake in the dark.

  “Of course I do but–”

  “I won’t deny I’m intrigued, but it in no way lessens the fact that it’s great to see you and your family again. You can pick our vacation spot next summer, on one condition of course …”

  “What might that be?” I asked as I took a swig from my bottle. Beer ran down my chin onto my shirt.

  “There’s somewhere for us to go fishing …”

  We spent yesterday lolling around the cabin; our original plans to tour the local goldmine quashed by a rash of intense thunderstorms that all but tore the roof off. Our two families had become one again, and we rode out the storms playing Uno and Mousetrap with the boys – the power remaining out for hours at a time. Jerry continued on, drinking beer like a trooper, but I was too hung over after the late night prior, and chose to cleanse my palette on a bag of pretzels and a six-pack of Orange Crush, much to my brother’s chagrin.

  ‘What a pussy’, he’d muttered.

  At one point during that afternoon, Jerry took me aside and showed me something he made me promise to forget I ever saw. It was the photocopy of a military map he’d brought with him from Boulder. It was a satellite image that looked like something you could get off of Google Earth though he insisted Raindance Island would never appear on such a public search engine, as it was not for schmucks like me to see.

  On the black and white map Jerry circled our cabin with a highlighter. He unfolded the paper two more times and pointed at a small island approximately thirty-two miles from the shoreline where we were staying.

  “That’s a long way to venture,” I said

  “I got a GPS, don’t worry,” Jerry insisted. “We’ll have to bring an extra container of gas though, just in case …”

  I should have known at that point that Jerry’s excitement was an indication there was more to the detour than my brother was letting on. He saw dead bodies all the time at work so why the insistence to see more, especially while on holidays? I considered that perhaps he felt this was somehow a gift to me – a gesture of sorts, two brothers on some kind of rite of passage, some Tom Sawyer-like adventure. Maybe if we were thirteen – but now, as both of us flirted with our forties – I was no longer so certain.

  It was just last night that we retired early to bed, each of us anticipating what I can only assume were very different outcomes of our fishing trip. Early Saturday morning we awoke to find individual lunches packed by our wives. They’d been left on the shelf in the refrigerator, and under each paper bag lay a drawing in crayon, our kids’ renditions of what two fools might look like pretending to be outdoorsmen. Jerry’s son Jonathon – the fledgling horror fanatic, drew my brother frantically fighting to get a fish off his hand, little drops of crayon blood dripped from his yellow fingers. Beneath it Jon wrote ‘Don’t get bit by the piranhas’ in bright green marker. The pictures gave us both a good laugh as we made coffee in the quiet of the cabin. I felt like a kid again, back in St. Norbert Manitoba, where the two of us often woke early as boys to sneak out to the Red River, launching our canoe just as the sun came up, rods and reels – cheapies bought at Canadian Tire – resting in the length of our vessel.

  The gentleness of this morning had put my mind at ease, and my paranoia of Jerry’s preoccupation with Raindance Island subsided with the arrival of a spectacular sunrise – the taste of coffee still fresh on my tongue. We loaded the boat making sure we had all the essentials: the beer to feed our pleasure, the music to induce our memories, and each other’s company to re-establish what had always been, the most influential relationship in all my years alive. I packed my lunch bag into the cooler and closed the lid, placing the picture my son drew in my pocket with the map of our pending journey.

  On the way to the boat-launch Jerry explained what he had in mind for the day.

  “We’ll head out to Raindance Island first, just to take a look. I can’t imagine they post any security there. As I said – it’s out of the way and doesn’t even show up on most maps. Which reminds me, did I bring the map?”

  “I got it – good thing I’m here, eh?” I said, pulling it out of my pocket. Jerry switched his satellite radio to a Blues station and we listened to Muddy Waters while I unfolded he map to take a better look. In the top right corner of the page were the words: Operation Prairie Flood.

  “I brought my camera too, not too often you get to see a body farm. There should be a dock there where we can anchor and take a look around.” Jerry said; his eyes remained on the road.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “You look around all you like. I’d sooner stay in the boat.”

  “What are you twelve? Come on little brother, live a little.”

  I studied the map until we arrived at the boat-launch. Jerry turned off the radio and adjusted his mirrors as he backed the truck down the cement ramp in the early morning light. “That’s weird,” I said noticing something peculiar on the map. “I think I can make out a couple of tiny boats near the island – they’re marked with X’s on the bows.” I put the map down and leaned my head back, realizing I was in Jerry’s line of view. “You sure they don’t have any security sitting on that corpse farm? They are military …”

  “The satellite takes a new picture every four hours. Someone could have been there dumping bodies off or taking decomposition readings at the time the photo was taken but it’s the weekend now, and it’s early. Worst case scenario – we see people walking around, we just cruise on by.”

  “As simple as that, eh?” I said, always amazed at his ability to avoid concern.

  “You worry too much,” Jerry said, putting the truck into park. He opened the door and as he stepped out onto the cement pad, he smiled. “Live a little bro. There’s a container of gas in the back of the truck, you mind grabbing it?”

  Jerry made it seem logical at the time. I am a worrier by nature though I have to admit, as we put the boat in the water, I felt no such anxiety. I was in no hurry to see dead bodies certainly, but above that – I was feeling rather excited about the adventure we were embarking on. We would go to the island, Jerry would see what he needed to see, and we could get down to some fishing. Still, looking back I struggle, wondering if there’d been any inkling of instinct that I’d ignored, not that it really mattered anyhow. I suppose what happened – happened. Dwelling on it was becoming a pointless endeavour, no help to me at all. Nothing would change the fact that Jerry – my only brother, was no longer amongst the living.

  It happened rather fast actually; one large gasp of air and it was over. Jerry’s chest remained e
xtended; his eyes open, his stiff fingers appearing to clutch imaginary weapons. A tear formed in my eye as I glanced down at my watch. Jerry’s son and wife would be sitting down to supper with Andrea and Joshua and they’d be wondering where we were. I reached for one of the paddles and found the broken one covered in blood and matted hair. I dropped it and found the good paddle resting beneath Jerry’s leg. With a gentle tug, I pulled it from under his body and placed it in the water. Pointlessly, I attempted to paddle in the direction of the cabin, thirty-odd miles away. It was insanity to think I would be able to get us anywhere at all with the limited amount of time I had left, and as my mind continued to race, the boat went nowhere. I dropped the paddle next to my brother’s body and placed my hands atop my head utterly defeated. Around me, the lake stretched for miles. I collapsed into the driver’s seat of the boat feeling helpless.

  The venture to Raindance Island had taken longer than we’d first anticipated. On the map you could not make them out but in order to get to our destination we had to manoeuvre through two separate narrows – one of which took almost an hour, the other just under twenty minutes – but still a setback nonetheless. The cattails were so high, we could not see over them, and if not for the GPS we may never have found our way through the maze of tributaries at all. I doubted now that I could make it back to those narrows before sunset, even if I could get the motor going again – and if by some miracle I did manage to get back there, I’d likely get swallowed by those narrows and lost forever anyway.

  It certainly didn’t help that the GPS started acting up shortly after we arrived at the island and had not worked properly since. Jerry thought maybe it had been zapped by some kind of military surveillance or anti-radar – I don’t quite recall just what he said now – all I did know was that one good paddle did me no good at all. I was stuck, along with my dead brother, in a hellish nightmare I wanted out of desperately.

  I eventually concluded I had little choice but to wait out the approaching darkness and try and make it until dawn. Certainly by morning, Andrea and Jackie would have a search team out looking for us, maybe even an airplane. Mind you, we were miles from where we were thought to be fishing, but boats drift … right? I left my faith in that single notion as a swarm of mosquitoes had their way with me. With every inch the sun dropped below the tree line came a thousand more buzzing attacks. Frustrated, I rifled through my duffel bag until I found some bug spray and coated my skin with it, feeling the sting as it came in contact with my sunburned flesh.