by Jonah Buck
“I felt like I owed him, so I agreed. Let me tell you right now. Never feel like you owe something to someone who isn’t a close friend or family. If some jerk says you owe him for this or that or some other imaginary obligation, tell him to stick it right in his ear. I worked for the man, but I didn’t owe him anything.
“See, the problem was, the circus master had a son who was about my age. He was kind of a mealy thing, and he was being groomed to take over the circus when his father finally retired.
“So for what was supposed to be my last gig, I walk into the big top, and they’ve got a special podium set up at the center of the ring. The circus master is standing there with his son and a pastor. It took me a second to figure out what was going on, but by then it was too late to just duck out of the back of the tent and run away without looking back.
“Our circus master tells the crowd that they’re in for a very special event. They’re going to be the witnesses to his son’s wedding, right there in the center ring.”
“Oh no,” Harrison said. “Surely he wasn’t going to…”
“Oh yes he was. He told the whole crowd that his son and Miss Grits were going to get married right then and there in a very real and legally binding sense. I don’t know how he talked his son into it. Maybe he fancied me to begin with. Either way, it was clearly a really cheap ploy to keep his star attraction from leaving. If I was married to his son, I couldn’t very well head out on my own and leave the circus.”
“That is a low move,” Denise said. “Did he actually expect to get away with that?”
“Apparently, he did. Maybe he thought I’d be too surprised to protest. Or maybe he thought I’d be genuinely thrilled to land that catch.”
“So how come you’re here enjoying my amazing company and hunting bats instead of starring in circus acts?” Harrison asked.
“I had the rifle I used for my act.”
“Please tell me you didn’t murder them all and the authorities are still looking for you to this day,” Denise said.
Gail laughed at that. “No. Nothing so dramatic as that. I shot out the support ropes that anchored the tent in place and allowed it to keep its shape. About an acre of pin-striped fabric collapsed down on everyone’s heads, including the audience. I squirmed out of my hoop skirt while everyone thrashed at the tent. Fortunately, I was wearing something underneath, but I would have done it even if I was buck naked under there so I could run away better. I wriggled out from under the tent and slipped away with the crowd. I never looked back, and I haven’t regretted it since.
“I only got into hunting because it was a quick way to make money with my skill set. If you need a dozen quail all shot out of the air at once, I’m your gal. All told, I’d rather do something else, though.”
“Like what?” Denise asked. Given that she was looking to get out of the hunting business herself, and she had a dearth of ideas about what to do with herself afterwards, she was happy to poach ideas from Gail.
“I’ve always wanted to try my hand at painting,” Gail said. “After spending so much time either on the move or out in the wilderness, I’d love to just rent an apartment in a big city somewhere and try my hand at it for a couple of years. Maybe Boston or New York, someplace where I can see the ocean. I’d need to sign up for some art lessons, though.”
Denise just nodded. She’d never harbored any great yearning to be an artist, and she didn’t care for spending much time in cities. She liked being out under the wide open sky without worrying about bustle and chaos on the streets.
They were almost to the ridge of the hill. They were all sweating already. Behind them, Denise could just barely see the Shield of Mithridates as it steamed hard for the horizon. They were officially on their own on Malheur Island.
Another large white rock poked out from a nest of brambles nearby, just like the one on the beach but a little smaller. The pale rocks didn’t look like the rest of the boulders and stones on Malheur Island. Aside from these boulders, the rest of the rocks on the island were more or less uniformly dark greys or browns. If that mountain really was a volcano, maybe it spat them out thousands of years ago. Denise had no idea; she wasn’t a geologist.
Just like its cousin on the beach, this rock had also been carved into a grotesque face. It looked almost like a crouched gargoyle, all fangs and horns and sneering eyes.
“Alright, your turn.” Harrison handed the machete to Denise, and she started chopping her way up the hill. Gnarled tree roots and bushes with grabbing thorns made progress slow.
“So what would you do if you had forty thousand dollars on your hands, Harrison?” Denise asked. Maybe he had some ideas she’d like.
“Me? I’d like to expand my hunting business. Open up some branch offices in other parts of the state. Baton Rouge. Shreveport. Maybe I’d even expand into Arkansas and Mississippi. If I invest it right, I can make and remake that money. I’ve got Clark to pretend he’s the Harrison Quint the business is named after, but I’d need more Clarks for the other offices.”
“If you had enough, don’t you think you could get away with telling people that you actually own the business?” Denise asked.
“I could. I’m the hog king of New Orleans. However, I’m not going to. Enough people would still hire me, but some of those fellows who like Clark so much would much rather hire some white boy to do the job. In fact, if too many of them hear that some lowly nigger with a smart mouth and a handsome face was too much competition for the good, honest white folks of the neighborhood, they might ask some of their friends to come have a chat with me. The next thing you know, I’m strung up from a tree with a bunch of halfwits wearing their wives’ sheets staring up at the soles of my boots.
“It wouldn’t be worth it. I wouldn’t have to pretend like I was Clark’s gopher on every job, but I can drop that act once we get out into the field every time anyway. Nah, I’d just attract the wrong kind of attention. I get by pretty well right now. I’d get along even better with a huge pile of money stashed quietly away in my bank where nobody but me knows about it. The last thing I need is some half-polished turd deciding that I’m uppity because I’ve got more than him. Nope. No siree, Bub! Clark will still be the Harrison Quint that answers the phone at Harrison Quint Hog Extermination. I’ll be the Harrison Quint that cuts Clark’s checks, and only him, me, and the bank will know that.”
They were just short of the top of the knoll now. Soon, they’d be able to look over a good portion of the island and pick out a good spot to set up their camp.
“So what about you, Denise? What would you do with forty grand?”
“I haven’t quite decided yet. I just know I’d like to get out of the hunting business myself.”
“Really? Why?” Gail asked.
“It’s a long story,” she said.
“You better not start it then. I’ve got an important meeting in five minutes,” Harrison said.
Denise laughed. “Well, I haven’t gone on any hunting expeditions in a while now. There was an incident. A bad incident. Before this excursion, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back in the field again. Frankly, I wouldn’t have come on this one if they hadn’t insisted this wasn’t a trophy hunt before I signed that non-disclosure agreement.”
They reached the top of the hill and looked out over the island in front of them. Denise forgot everything she was about to say as they all stared at the huge thing in the distance.
SEVEN
REAR ADMIRAL HERMANN HOOKSTADT
It took an hour to clamber down to the beach on the far side of the hill and cross a couple of small chasms. Right now, they all ignored the potential base sites, though. They were much more interested in the thing they’d seen from the hill. Now that they were up close, Denise could appreciate the sheer size of the thing.
“Jesus. This thing must be from the Great War,” Harrison said.
The SMS Rear Admiral Hermann Hookstadt was close to four hundred feet long. The thick steel armor at the front of the ship
had torn and ripped open when it ran aground prow-first into shore. Rust covered the parts of the metal where the paint had flaked off over the last fourteen years. The snouts of two heavy duty naval guns poked out over the deck nearly forty feet above Denise’s head.
More guns lined the ship’s spine further out. The rear of the ship still rested in the water, but the front had plowed a furrow all the way up onto the sand of the beach, almost to the edge of the jungle. Of the ship’s three smokestacks, two had fallen off and lay in the water. The third had tilted forward and leaned drunkenly against the back of the bridge.
“Wow. This must be from the German Far East Squadron,” Denise said. “I was only a teenager when the war broke out, but I remember reading the news and listening on the radio about the Empire mobilizing for war.”
“The war was in Europe. What’s this doing here?” Harrison asked.
“The war was everywhere,” Denise said. “Some of the areas where my father and I hunted became enemy territory overnight because they were in German East Africa. We didn’t have trenches crisscrossing the veldt, but it was scary nonetheless. Sometimes, we’d be out in the field, and suddenly, we could hear artillery and machine guns off in the distance.”
“So what’s the German Far East Squadron?” Gail asked. “I don’t remember anything about it.”
“America hadn’t entered the war yet, so it probably wasn’t big news over there. With British casualties, including colonial troops mounting, our news made hay with it. We needed some good news. I always had sort of mixed feelings about it, though.
“When the war broke out, the Germans had one naval base in China. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it was their Pacific fleet. Mostly, it was just a few cruisers like this one and a scattering of support ships. Basically, they were just there to support the few itty-bitty German colonies in this hemisphere. They were never meant for a full-out war.
“When they found out that war had broken out, they realized that they were completely cut off. The British Navy had a much stronger presence than their little squadron, and most of the ports on this side of the world were suddenly in territories allied against Germany. The only truly safe ports were on the opposite side of the world.
“A couple of the ships split off and became commerce raiders, basically pirates. Some people in Cape Town were deathly afraid they’d meet up with the German forces in East Africa and start bombarding us, but it never happened. This must be one of the ships that split off from the main group.
“Most of the squadron decided that, rather than surrendering, they would try to make a mad dash all the way around the world to Germany, moving through hostile waters all the way. They’d have to steal coal from enemy ships and fuel up in neutral ports if they wanted to make it, all while playing cat and mouse with bigger, meaner battleships out looking for them.
“They set out from their port before any British ships could block them in and capture them, and then they sailed hard across the Pacific. Their leader, Rear Admiral Maximilian von Spee, and pretty much all the men aboard, knew that they were doomed. The entire ocean was against them.
“At first, they got lucky. They went all the way down to the tip of South America, trying to slip into the Atlantic. That’s when the British Navy found them. A couple of big British cruisers zeroed in on them, but the Germans fought back and actually managed to sink the ships, which were comparable to their German counterparts. It was the first defeat of a British squadron since the Napoleonic Wars. Over a thousand sailors died. Even trying to frame the news in favor of Britain, the local papers sounded grim about it.
“By then, the British knew where the Germans were. When von Spee stopped at the next neutral port, the locals gave him a bouquet to celebrate his victory, but he just told them to save the flowers for his grave.
“Next, the British sent out their best. The ships they dispatched were bigger, faster, and more heavily armored than the German cruisers. The Germans tried to run when the new squadron found them, but the British ships caught up with them and started firing.
“The German cruisers were annihilated during the battle. Their flag ship, with von Spee on it, caught fire and capsized, killing everyone aboard. The British ships didn’t attempt to rescue any of the German sailors, and over two thousand of them died. It was just a drop in the bucket compared to some of the battles that were raging on the continent, but the newspapers crowed about it for days because it was such a lopsided victory. Only one of the German ships escaped, and it was hunted down shortly after.
“I guess this is one of the ships that split off early to become a commerce raider,” Denise said, looking up at the wreck.
“You almost sound like you admire them,” a voice said from the edge of the jungle. Silas Horne sat on a mossy log, watching them. “I see that this old hulk caught your attention too. I was over by the village when I spotted it and thought I’d investigate.”
“I do admire them a little,” Denise said. She scratched her cheek, eyeing Silas. He’d always been perfectly pleasant to her, to all of them. However, he also preferred to stay with the other main group of hunters, and he often hung around the expedition’s only other Englishman, Creighton Montgomery, who had called Harrison a kaffir. She didn’t dislike Silas, but she wasn’t sure she trusted him either. At least he was alone, and not with Creighton.
“Sorry if I may pry, but why? South Africa is a colony of the British Empire. I was drafted into the military but only sat in the trenches for about two days before the Armistice took hold and ended the war. The Germans were our common enemy.”
“I always thought there was something…” Denise searched for the right word, “venerable about their decision to steam out against overwhelming odds. They knew they’d be practically reliving Homer’s Odyssey, and they decided to go for it anyway. I can respect it. It would have been safe to just stay in their original harbor and surrender. It would have been easy. Instead, they looked out over that watery blue horizon and told safe and easy to get stuffed. Sometimes, that’s the only way to live your life. You have to charge into those unsafe waters and accept that the consequences are what they are. We’d never leave our rooms sometimes if we didn’t. I’m not sure any of us would be here on this island if we didn’t.”
“Fair enough. It was worthy of a certain amount of respect, but it got them all killed. I suppose I consider myself a bit more meticulous. Sometimes, I’d rather be alive than bold.” Silas eyed her for a moment. “You look uncomfortable.”
Denise realized she was standing as stiff as a toy soldier. She forced herself to relax a little. She still wasn’t sure if Silas was here just by chance or if he thought it would be fun to pester her the way his colleagues did.
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to bother you. Consider this an olive branch of sorts,” he said, as if reading her mind. “I was just as curious about this ship as you were. Sorry that maybe the company I keep can be a bit beastly sometimes.”
“Well, thank you for reintroducing yourself. The three of us are working together. Are you and Creighton teaming up?”
“Yes. He can be a bit rough around the edges, but we share a passion for fox hunting and a few other hobbies I won’t bore you with. He’s establishing our camp a bit closer to the native village. It’s nice to have company with shared interests, especially in odd conditions. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose it is,” Denise said. Silas smiled a bit sheepishly. Now that he was by himself instead of with some of the other hunters, he actually seemed rather sweet. Maybe she’d invite him to their base camp for supper later, assuming they could find a good spot.
“You said there’s a village that way?” Harrison asked.
“Indeed there is. We can’t see much of it, though. It’s built on the beach, and the locals have erected a fence of sharpened logs that separates it from the rest of the island. No one has come in or out of the gate.”
“We met one of the villagers earlier. He didn’t seem very happy we were her
e,” Denise said.
“Oh?”
“He said we had until tomorrow night to leave. Also something about the mountain or the months. I don’t know; I didn’t understand all of it.”
“Well, I suppose I wouldn’t be very enthused if I suddenly found a bunch of strangers lollygagging around my property, either. Hopefully, everyone can stay out of everyone else’s hair, and we’ll be away from this island before they know it.”
“Hopefully,” Denise said.
“Very well, I should be off to help Creighton set up our equipment. I believe I saw Jubal Hayes setting up somewhere nearby as well, although he seems to be going it alone. Farewell.” Silas started off across the sand.
Denise looked back up at the SMS Rear Admiral Hermann Hookstadt. It lay on the sand like a beached sea monster, decaying on the beach. “I wonder what happened to the crew.”
“Looks like a lot of them are dead,” a voice said from inside the ship. Balthazar van Rensburg emerged from inside one of the huge rents in the ship’s forward hull. He moved as silently as the big predators he hunted, and he looked just as dangerous. He scowled at Denise. “I found some skeletons inside, some of them still wearing what was left of their uniforms. It looks like maybe the ahools attacked. Some of the skeletons are in pretty bad shape.”
Denise processed that. It might make sense why the warship ran aground. The ship came too close to Malheur Island, and then giant bats started to attack the crew. Once they smashed into the sand, they were stuck here.
“I am claiming this ship for my camp,” Balthazar said. “It has steel walls, and I can seal off the interior behind heavy doors. It should be safe. You and you are welcome to join me if you wish.” He pointed to Gail and Harrison. “But you are not welcome, DeMarco.”