Two figures wander past my room towards the beach. Squinting against the dying light, I realize it is Pamela and Bill, leaning close to each other, like inseparable young lovers. I leave the bungalow to join them, if only to get a moments respite from the painful memories swirling around my head.
As I approach Pamela and Bill, I realize this is not a romantic stroll as I first assumed. No, Bill is practically staggering and leans on Pamela for support. Rushing to his side, I take his other arm to steady him.
“Oh, thank you, Phillip,” Pamela speaks my name like the conclusion of a prayer. “Bill isn’t well. I thought a cool breeze off the ocean would help him.”
“Bill, what’s wrong? Is it something you ate?” I ask.
Clammy perspiration coats his face. His blue eyes are glassy and vacant, but he focuses on me with a weak smile. “Ah, Phillip, that’s a good lad. Pamela seems to have taken the notion that she is some kind of super woman, leaping from building to building, slinging frail old men over her shoulders with ease. I will be all right. I’m just a little peaked. Look, Pamela was right about the sea air. I feel better already.”
With what seems to be considerable effort, he nudges us back and stands on his own feet.
Pamela clasps her slender fingers to her lips. Worry pinches her delicate, patrician features. Nervously, she glances from me to her ailing husband.
“My little girl, my Angela, is gone,” he laments, swaying like a tall oak in a gale. “She was studying to be a doctor…make the world a better place. Gone. All gone.”
He tries to step forward but his knees buckle. Pamela and I rush to grab him.
“Water. Let’s get him fresh water from the restaurant,” I urge.
We half drag him along the beach to the restaurant. No one is there. It is completely dark, but through the swinging kitchen doors, I see the glow of a torch moving around and hear the clatter of pots and pans.
“Hey, can you bring us some water?” I call to whoever is in the kitchen. “We’ve got a sick man here.”
We rest Bill on a chair. Pamela clasps his hand in both of her own, and he looks up at her with a hazy stare, as though he is descending into a dream. Several buttons on his shirt are undone, revealing the sun burnt skin of his chest and white chest chair. His breathing is shallow. Where the hell is someone with fresh water?
“I’ll be right back,” I head to the kitchen. The doors swing open. The kitchen is large, with a center island covered in stainless steel. Pots and pans of every possible shape suspend from an oval ring over the center island. The glow of the torch comes from around the corner.
“Hey, we need water,” I call. No answer.
Rounding the corner, I see two island women I recognize from amongst the staff stuffing supplies into sacks. They freeze when they see me. On my first night at the resort, they waited on my table, joking amiably with all the guests, but now they regard me with undisguised contempt.
“Stop! Those are our supplies. You can’t take them,” I try to wrest one of the sacks from the women. Slapping me about the face and neck, cursing furiously, they hold me off. Owen appears from one of the pantries with an arm crammed with food. He drops the food, reaches into a drawer, and pulls forth a carving knife. Hulking over me in the dancing torch light, his face gleams like black granite.
With swift jabs of the knife, he advances towards me. I hop back, staying beyond the reach of his blade. Behind him, the two women scoop up the food Owen dropped.
“Help!” I cry. “They’re stealing our food!”
Owen slashes at me; I duck away.
“Not your food, man,” he snarls, crouched low to spring in any direction to prevent my escape. “Dis is our island. Everyting on it belongs to us.”
I grab a pan and swat the knife aside. He lunges again, the sharp point aimed straight for my heart.
“My God, somebody stop them!” Pamela stands in the doorway, while Bill leans heavily against the doorframe.
Owen’s lip curls into a menacing sneer. Panting with effort, he slashes at my face. I tumble backwards, narrowly avoiding the knife. Pamela hurls plates at Owen with considerable accuracy; it gives me enough time to dash to the far end of the center island and out of Owen’s reach.
“Owen, come!” The island women call, nodding in the direction of what I assume is a back way out of the kitchen. Shouts of alarm from the other guests grow louder as they rush towards the scene.
Torn between his desire to gut me like a fish and the need to escape with his loot, Owen hesitates, but yields to the calls of his companions and follows them away. Jonas, Robby, and some other guests barge into the room.
My words rush out. “It was Owen. Owen and two of the women who work here. They stole our food. I tried to stop them; they got away.”
Bill groans and collapses to the floor.
Chapter Nine
“We’ve got to go after them,” Conner paces the kitchen, crunching the shattered plates beneath his heels. “Who’s with me?”
“Owen has a knife,” I warn.
Jonas lifts the torch the women dropped in their haste to leave, surveys the damage, and shakes his head. “Don’t bother. They’re long gone by now.”
“Fucking great,” Conner huffs with his hands on his hips. “Do we have anything left?”
Holding the torch aloft, Jonas looks in the pantry. “They didn’t wipe us out—”
“Only because they were interrupted,” Amy interjects with loud exasperation.
“They certainly knew what to look for—bottled water, boxes of dried cereal, bags of rice,” Jonas continues.
“My husband,” Pamela pleads. “My husband needs a doctor.”
Bill lays flat on his back, his head cradled in Pamela’s lap. I kneel beside him, hold his wrist, and look at my watch. “He’s got a faint pulse. I don’t understand what’s wrong with him. Bill, can you hear me?” A weak flutter of his eyes assures me he is conscious. “Bill, listen to me. Have you eaten anything that could be affecting you?”
“No,” he rasps. “This might be the problem,” he opens his shirt to reveal a thin scar on his chest. “I have a pace maker.”
The realization of what this means makes my eyes grow wide with alarm. “The pace maker stopped working when the E.M.P. blast hit us,” I rise to my feet. “Bill, you’re in danger of heart failure. We’ve got to bring a doctor here.”
“There is no way to summon a doctor. You would be better off bringing him to the town,” Jonas advises.
“How? There’s no car,” Pamela says.
“We have flat carts—big enough for a man to lie on. It is the best we can do,” Jonas offers.
Pamela looks uncertain, desperate to save her husband but clearly daunted by the task of pushing him over the hilly, winding road all the way to Rio Galera.
I place one of Bill’s arms over my shoulders. “Don’t worry, Pamela. I’ll help you.”
Visible relief washes over Pamela.
Gwen steps forth from the crowd. “I’ll come, too.”
What? Why does she want to come? I shake my head. “It’s too dangerous.”
She stands firm. “It doesn’t matter. We can get Bill to a doctor faster if three people do it versus only two.”
I am about to argue, but Conner slams the door to the pantry. “What are you going to do about this, Jonas?”
Caught off guard, Jonas tries to stammer out a response. Conner presses on. “How’d they get in, anyway? Maybe you let them in.”
“That’s absurd,” Jonas protests.
“One thing is certain, those fuckers will be back to steal the rest,” Conner bypasses Jonas and addresses the crowd. “If the rest of the world really was blown to hell then these supplies are the last we’ll get. When they run out, we’re screwed. From here on out we’re responsible for our own security. Who’s with me?”
Numerous heads in the crowd nod in vigorous agreement. Jonas stands off to the side, obsolete and forgotten.
“Phillip, we’ve got to
hurry,” Pamela re-focuses my attention.
Jonas takes us to a flat cart over which we lay blankets to provide Bill with some cushion. Gwen dashes off to the kitchen. She returns and hands me a steak knife. “Here, it’s better than nothing. Tuck it in your belt.”
Pamela leads the way holding a torch. Gwen and I push Bill over the narrow bridge that spans the lagoon. Mentally, I retrace the road from the airstrip in Rio Galera to the resort. We have a long journey ahead of us.
More than once, we come to a fork in the road and struggle to determine which way is correct. Night is an impenetrable shroud upon the land; landmarks are impossible to see. Pamela and Gwen look to me for guidance, to decide which road will lead us to town. I half remember and half guess, pointing the way we should precede and praying I am right.
“Even if we find the doctor, do you think they’ll be able to help Bill?” Gwen whispers.
I check to make sure Pamela cannot hear us over the rattling wheels of the cart. She walks several feet ahead to light our path. Bill is alive but unconscious.
“I don’t know,” I sigh. “There’s a good chance he is beyond saving, at least here on this island. What he probably needs is a new pace maker, and that’s not going to happen. Either way, we’ve got to try.”
We push on for several minutes, struggling on the steep hills and pitted asphalt.
The road levels off. I turn to Gwen. “Why are you helping us?”
“This may shock you to know, Phillip, but I care about Bill, too,” she replies in a tone that makes me look stupid for asking. “Besides, it’s good for me to do something; it’s better than sitting in the resort, slowly losing my mind,” she continues, her expression calm and self-possessed. “I can’t stop thinking about what happened to my parents, to our home and everyone I knew… I’m not like you. I haven’t completely given up hope that our parents and all the other people we care about are still alive—even if it’s only a shred of hope. In that way we are very different, Phillip. You do the sensible thing. When it is pointless to hope for something that is not going to happen you accept it…you move on. I’m the fool who keeps believing, keeps thinking that suddenly things can change.”
It is clear she refers to more than just the whereabouts of our families. For Gwen to be so transposed and self-aware is odd. It is unlike her. I want to tell her how much I admire her perseverance, long after other people would have surrendered. I want to tell her that she is not wrong or foolish for clinging to her dreams, but I do not get the chance.
“What is that glow in the sky?” Pamela calls our attention to a pulsing, orange light that fills the horizon.
It takes a few seconds for me to realize what I am looking at.
“Fire,” I say. “Rio Galera is burning.”
Chapter Ten
The ominous glow acts as a beacon, guiding us onward. The closer we get to our destination the brighter the glow. It illuminates the hillsides, turning the land an unsettling red. The smell of charred wood fills the air.
“Huh, what’s that light?” Bill rouses himself and struggles to rise.
“Something is burning,” Gwen answers in a soothing tone. “We’re taking you to a doctor. Lie down…conserve your strength.”
“Pamela! Where’s Pamela?” He tosses his head from side to side, anxiously looking for her.
In an instant she is at his side, stroking his face and murmuring, “Shhh, Bill, I’m right here. We’re heading into town to find a doctor for you. Rest, darling.”
The sound of breaking glass comes from one of the large vacation homes atop the nearest hill. In the crimson light, I spot the black outlines of two men furtively running from the back of the house to the front. They notice us on the road below.
“Looters,” I mutter, and prompt Pamela to get in front of the cart again. “Let’s keep moving.”
Unmoving, they stand together, looking down on us—silent, foreboding sentinels.
We proceed with renewed speed, and as we go, I check over my shoulder to see where the men atop the hill are. They remain in place. Perhaps the house they are no doubt looting is not worth leaving to harass us. Either way, I do not breathe easier until we are out of their sight.
As we near the town, women pass us—some with children in tow—heading in the opposite direction. They carry bundles of clothes and jugs of what I assume to be fresh water.
“Doctor. We need a doctor. Can you tell me where to find the doctor?” Pamela stands before some of the fleeing women, but they brush her aside and continue on their way.
We reach the final stretch of road that leads to the heart of Rio Galera. A section of the town—where tiny homes press tight to each other like captives in the hull of a slave ship—belches forth great jets of flame. From this distance, each burning home resembles a smoldering lump of charcoal. Fire floats into the night sky in rolling sheets and waves, filled with thousands of incandescent sparks caught by the updraft.
Scattered around the town other buildings burn, one of which I recognize as the office to support the airstrip. Nearby fires cast swirling shadows on the untouched façade of the white clapboard church.
The carnage brings us to a halt. Awestruck, we stand before the conflagration without speaking.
Gwen breaks our paralysis and points to a section of Rio Galera unscathed by fire. “The clinic—I spotted it on the way to the resort.”
Islanders pass us on the streets, none stopping to offer aid. The scorched hull of a burnt out car sends plumes of smoke billowing our way. Shadows skulk down the narrow alleyways. I hear a woman’s terrified scream, and from somewhere else the shouts of men fighting. I take the knife Gwen gave me and hold it with my free hand.
Even from afar, I can tell the glass doors and windows of the one level clinic are shattered. As we roll Bill up the cement ramp to the clinic, a gaggle of children clutching stolen goods dash through the shattered doorframe and vanish down the alleys.
Light from Pamela’s torch reveals a long hallway strewn with office supplies.
“Wait here,” I tell them, and then take the torch and enter the building. With the knife firmly in my grasp, I walk down the corridor, shining the torch light into the various rooms, all of which have the appearance of a building ravaged by a hurricane. Anything that could be broken is broken: computers, chairs, glass cabinets that just a few days ago likely held medical supplies but now are bare. As a macabre joke, vandals placed the clinics demonstration skeleton in a chair behind the doctor’s desk, seated upright, nonchalantly resting its skull on one bony hand.
I hurry back to Gwen, Bill, and Pamela. “Everybody’s gone. The clinic staff probably abandoned the place to protect themselves. The place is a wreck. Looters stole all the medical supplies.”
“No, no, no,” Pamela trembles. “What are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry, love,” Bill struggles to sit up. “I feel stronger now…getting my second wind.”
Pamela buries her face in her hands. “This is madness. Where are the authorities? Why don’t they put a stop to this?”
“I could be wrong, but I think we passed the police station,” Gwen looks about us warily. “It was burning to the ground. It’s not safe for us here. We should get back to the resort.”
Pamela grips the cart handle to prevent us from moving it. “No. No. We must get a doctor!”
Plaintively, I gesture to the vandalized clinic. “Pamela, the doctors are all gone.”
“They must be somewhere,” she insists. “You didn’t see their bodies in there, did you? No? Then that settles it. Someone here will tell us where the doctor is.”
“Even if we find the doctor what could they do for Bill without their supplies and the clinic looking like this?” Gwen asks.
Pamela hesitates as doubts shake her resolve, but then she stands firm and says, “You don’t know the supplies were stolen. Maybe the clinic staff removed all the supplies to protect it from the looters.”
Pamela is determined to scour the island
for a doctor, and looking at Bill laboring to breathe I cannot fault her devotion. Gwen exchanges an uneasy glance with me, but we both know turning back without finding a doctor is not an option.
“Okay,” I agree. “Let’s make this quick.”
Backtracking, we propel the cart over the pitted, debris-strewn streets. Behind the shutters of a home, we glimpse the light of an oil lamp.
Pamela pounds on the doors. “Please, can you tell us where to find a doctor?”
I see movement behind the shutters—at least one person is definitely inside the home, but they do not answer the door.
“Please!” Pamela kicks the door. “Just tell us where a doctor is and we’ll leave!”
Gwen urgently taps my arm, and points towards a tall island man watching us from the shadows of a nearby building. On the other side of the street, another man also observes us with keen interest. My heart freezes when I realize they hold machetes in their hands.
“Pamela!” My whisper is an urgent hiss. “Pamela, we have to go.”
Weeping with frustration, she scratches at the door. “I know you’re in there. Why won’t anyone help us?”
I rush up to the door and gently drag Pamela away while Gwen labors to get the cart rolling again. Methodically, without haste, the two men follow us. We pick up speed, almost running now.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” Pamela sees the men and whimpers with growing panic.
The cart jostles Bill incessantly, but we cannot slow down.
As we race towards the end of the street, two more machete-wielding men, visible only in outline, step out of the darkness. They stand in the center of the street, blocking our way.
“The alley!” Gwen shouts, and immediately steers the cart down the nearest alley.
We sprint down the alley, crashing through piles of trash and stumbling over the uneven terrain. At the end of the alley, we strike a gutter. A wheel snaps off the cart, sending Bill tumbling to the ground.
“Bill!” Pamela screams.
I rush to lift him up, and then I see a flash of white that snaps my head back and flings the knife from my grip. Falling flat on my back, my vision clears and I see Action standing over me clenching the fist he used to punch me in the face. Before I can move, a handful of men surround us. One of them seizes me from behind and hauls me to my feet while another places the pointed end of a machete against my throat.
Last Resort Page 10