by Anthology
I reach the center of my spiral with nothing to show for my efforts but a vague trail in the sand. A salty breeze ripples through my hair, and I look up and down the beach again. Could it be farther out? I was sure we’d fallen on the leeward side of the hut.
A voice calls out from the other end of the beach. I look back and see a man walking toward me. He looks up but doesn’t acknowledge me.
We meet at the hut, and I’m surprised and relieved to see that my stranger actually exists.
He smiles in a way that shows too many teeth. “I would have woken you if I’d known you wanted to walk.” He looks over my shoulder, still smiling insipidly. He sounds bored and indulgent, like someone offering to let his kid brother help chop firewood. “Oh, I found something while I was out.”
He reaches into his pocket and I draw a shallow breath. But what he presents to me in the flat palm of one hand is only my lighter.
I feel my lips stretch themselves into a rigid smile as I take it. “I was missing that,” I say. “Where did you find it?”
“Just down there,” he says, pointing at the tract of beach that I’d just searched. “Saw the edge sticking out of the sand.”
“How fortunate.” I look at his face for what seems like the first time. He’s about average height, average build. A little on the skinny side—like he hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks. He’s got a ragged, unkempt beard, and his hair has been starched and tangled by the salty winds. The sun-burnished glow on his skin makes his eyes look bright and a little mad. There’s something blandly familiar about him that I can’t place until I figure that he looks a little like me, or the way I expect I’d look after a few weeks on the rough.
It takes me a moment to form words. “You didn’t happen to find anything else out there, did you?”
He cracks that grin again. “Like that lifeboat over yonder? If I’d found something like that, I’d be long gone by now.” He laughs, and several seconds pass before I realize that he’s joking with me, and I laugh along. Still, I can’t help but look over his shoulder, hoping to see in his tracks how far he’s walked this morning.
Far enough that I didn’t see him when I first woke up.
He shields his eyes with one hand and looks at the sky. “We should try to stay in the shade. Keep ourselves from getting dehydrated.” I follow him back to the hut.
We sit on opposite ends of the hut and begin the day’s vigil. No ships yet.
I tuck my heels under my thighs. “So,” I ask, “what brought you here?”
“We were shipwrecked a week ago.” He gestures at the back of the hut and the portion of the island beyond it. “On the other side. We were just in sight of the island when we went down.”
“Supply clipper?” He sounds English, but the war has bred enough profiteers that he could be working for anyone. Not that it matters out here.
“No. One of the new ironclads. Fat lot of good it did.” Evading the abyssi with speed versus surviving them by strength is the fashionable shipyard debate. What no one seems ready to admit is that neither matters more than luck.
“What about the rest of your crew?”
He shakes his head. “I’m lucky I made it. I must have coasted in with the tide that night.” His fingers trace a pattern in the sand. “Anyway, I walked around, and I finally caught sight of your camp in the distance yesterday. I guess I was hoping for some good news or something, I don’t know.”
“Something like that lifeboat you mentioned?”
His eyes crinkle at the edges. “That would be a start. Anyway, you seemed to be set up well enough.” And there it is again, the question of food, hanging between us like a silent accusation.
“Were you able to salvage anything from your wreck?” I ask.
“Nothing but a couple barrels of pitch and some scrap wood made it to shore with me.”
I make a little hmm sound and stare at the sand between my knees.
The trouble is, I’ll need to eat soon.
He clears his throat as if sweeping our awkward evasions under the rug. “How’d you end up here? And what can I call you?”
I’m grateful for the change of topic. I extend my hand to the stranger and tell him my name.
“Lee,” he says in return.
“Huh. That was my father’s name.”
He takes my hand. His grip is firm, and he holds on a little too long. “You know what they say. Small world. Especially when you’re stuck on an island.” With that, he laughs again, his over-large teeth and bright eyes flashing. “But back to your story.”
“It started three weeks ago. We must have hit shoals, because we started going down. Seas weren’t friendly, so it was just me and some of the cargo that made it here. Small arms and medicine, mostly.”
“Mostly,” he says, suddenly meeting my eyes.
I look away, thinking of my rations. I can feel the blush rising under my tan. “So, what was your ship doing out here?”
The corners of his mouth twitch into a smirk. “Scouting.”
And now to hear which side of the war he’s on. “For what?”
He leans forward, his arms resting on his knees. “Abyssi.”
I jerk back, my hands flat on the sand as if I’m ready to spring. “You mean you went looking for those monsters?”
He nods.
“Why?”
He’s still hunched forward, and he lowers his voice to a whisper. “We found a way to kill them.”
“Bullshit.”
“Anything can be killed.”
“Not by people. Not those things.”
He sits back, and his grin is maddeningly condescending. “How do you know?”
“How do you?” I’m on my feet now, pacing the tiny hut. “Have you actually killed one?”
His smile withers at the corners. “This was our first attempt. It’s sound logic, though.”
“I’m an engineer. Everything looks good on paper.”
He shrugs, willing to leave me to my folly. But he’s watching me beneath hooded lids, and I’m taking the bait.
“How’s it work?” I cross my arms snugly against my chest.
He pauses and rolls his tongue, as if he has to think about this. “It’s not as complicated as you’d think. I hate to use the word ‘bait,’ but you need people to lure an abyssus close. Large livestock might work, too,” he says, looking thoughtful.
“What else?”
“The main thing you need is a light source. Not torches, though. They’ll follow torches, you know that, but you need something that’ll drive their blood up. Something bright and explosive.”
My mouth is dry. There is a tingling sensation on my skin and a distant ringing in my ears. “Such as?”
“Dynamite, obviously. That’s the best, if you have it on hand. Though waterlogging can be a problem.”
My teeth throb, and I have to force the words through my clenched jaw. “And…as an alternative?”
He laughs, and it’s the sound a wild dog makes in the night. “I suppose you just have to improvise with whatever’s lying around. Why, you have a suggestion?”
My vision is starting to swim. I need to eat something.
I sink to my knees, squeezing my eyes against the hunger and the nausea. “What happens after the explosion?”
He takes a slow, deep breath through his nose. “That’s where it all gets a bit more theoretical.”
I want to ask more. I also want to tell him to go to hell, to ask him what he did with my flare gun. But it’s getting hard to think around the hunger headaches.
Lee leans in. “Everything alright? You don’t look so good.”
“I need water,” I say, pushing myself to my feet.
“Stay. I saw the spring on my way here.”
A bucket sits against one wall. Even as I cast my eyes down, they flit to the bucket. Without a word, he picks it up.
“I’ll get it next time,” I say, feeling a humiliating mixture of gratitude, shame, and hunger.
“Jus
t get some rest.” With that, he’s on the beach and headed inland with loud, shuffling steps.
I wait until they’ve faded, and then I dig up my food stash in the corner. The hunger is just great enough to overpower everything else I feel about this stranger, this thief, walking a mile in the sun to bring me water.
I dig away just enough sand to expose the painted top of the old munitions box. My hands are trembling as I pry the lid off. It takes a little more effort than I’d remembered. I reach into the box, but something is wrong.
There are six rations.
I take them out of the box, count them, re-count them, rearrange them, and count them again. There are six. There were seven. I’m sure of it.
What I don’t know is how the stranger could have found my food, much less taken any without my knowledge. I’m frozen like this for I don’t know how long, kneeling over two identical rows of rations, when I hear a distant sound. Like birds. Whistling. My stranger is returning with the water, whistling.
I devour one of the rations with the speed that only the desperately hungry can muster. I replace the remaining five and cover the box again, as if it matters. By the time the stranger returns, I’m huddled against the wall, steeling myself against the stomach cramps.
He screws the bucket into the sand in the middle of the room and somehow manages to find a tin cup in one of the boxes stacked against the wall. As he fills it from the bucket and hands it to me, I’m so overcome with surprise at his solicitousness, and with the almost post-coital guilt and sluggishness of my hurried meal, that I wonder how I could have been so suspicious of this man.
And then, he belches.
He stifles it, modestly, behind a hand, and he gives me the kind of sheepish grin that would seem natural at a dinner party.
But there it is between us, a mockery of my weakness and a taunting reminder of his ability to take what he wants from me.
And like a kicked dog, I bury my face in the cup and murmur thanks.
He settles back into the sand, sitting across from me. “Hard to believe you’ve made it on your own this long.”
“Only three weeks,” I say. “Men have survived longer.” It’s another unhappy reminder of my frailty.
But his eyebrows are raised, his lips pursed. “Three? How do you figure that?”
“I’ve been keeping track.”
He gives me a long, slow nod. The kind one gives to humor a child.
“Here,” I say, setting my cup in the sand, “why don’t I show you?”
“How about we just rest here.” He doesn’t meet my eye.
“I insist.”
I lead him around and to the back of the hut, a distance so short that it makes our mutual errand, and my purposeful stride, seem ridiculous. Some part of my mind registers that the scenery behind the hut has changed somehow, that boxes seem to be missing, but I’m too focused to give it thought. Leaning against the ramshackle wall is the lid from a wooden artillery crate. Twenty-two etched tally marks form a neat row along the top of the lid, and as my guest looks on, I add a twenty-third.
When I step back to allow him to count for himself, he favors me with an unreadable glance. He flips the wooden slab.
Short, scratched lines fill the other side of the lid. At the top, they begin in even, orderly rows, but progressing down, they degenerate into crooked, irregular scribbles.
The stranger sucks his teeth.
I’m speechless. I don’t count the marks, but I know there are dozens of them. Well over two hundred, at least. I wander away from the board and look at the sea.
Lee follows, standing a few paces behind me. “If my plan works, we won’t be here much longer.” He gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. His hand is cold and moist, like a dead fish.
***
In the shade of the hut, I fall into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
When I awaken, night has fallen, and I can tell that I haven’t moved. As I stare at the canvas roof of the hut, I take a deep, bracing breath. I hear crackling. I smell smoke.
Leaping to my feet, I dash out of the hut and behind it. Lee is standing there, a new bonfire at his feet and a sickening grin on his face.
“I was just wondering if you were going to get up before I had to burn the shack down.”
He’s started the fire with a heap of smashed crates and scrap, and he’s feeding it from another pile next to him. I recognize my tally board among the sacrificial offerings.
Falling to my knees and digging like a dog, I fling handfuls of sand into the fire. Lee tackles me again, easily, and he’s chuckling, but there’s seriousness in his voice when he speaks.
“It’s too late for that. Take it easy.”
“You’ll bring them here.”
“I know.”
“You’ll kill us both.” Even I can hear the hysteria creeping into my voice.
“Not if we burn it fast enough.”
There’s a frozen moment while my animal brain does the calculation. Then, I’m on my feet and ripping my shelter apart with all the strength in my atrophied arms.
We finish in minutes, and it’s a grim reminder of how flimsy my makeshift home always was. By the time we’ve pulled the planks, crates, and canvas down, the fire is large enough for us to feed everything into it. Lee takes off running, and I follow him up the slope and to the edge of the grass. With the relative protection of distance and elevation, we turn back to observe our handiwork.
The bonfire is a beacon in the night, and I suddenly realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen something burn like this. I also realize that I’ve just helped Lee destroy everything that has sustained me on this godforsaken island.
With a glance at my face—it’s actually bright enough for us to see one another tonight—Lee seems to understand what I’m thinking, and he puts that cold-fish hand on my back again, just behind my neck.
“It’s okay,” he says.
I say nothing.
“I had to bring one close. I had to be sure. We only have one flare.”
I look up at him. “My flare.” It’s a plea. I’m too stunned, and too feeble, for anything stronger.
He gives the nape of my neck a squeeze. “You’ve been sitting on that beach with the flare gun for the better part of a year. You were never going to work up the nerve to use it.”
It’s an assault on my manhood, and however powerless I’ve felt in the last twenty-four hours, it’s a slap in the face to hear it from him.
“Besides,” he says, “you were down to five rations. How much longer were you going to last, just waiting like this?”
I spin to face him, and he takes a step back, his eyes wide and surprised. My lips part in a snarl, and his hand flies to his hip, perhaps to a gun or a knife. I don’t care. I prepare to spring.
Just then, there’s an unholy roar, a noise like the earth splitting in two. And it is. The ground trembles beneath us, sending cascades of sand downhill. We look to the bonfire and watch as it’s snuffed out like a candle, the rubble beneath it collapsing and sinking into the sand. Belatedly, I reflect that I should have dug up my remaining rations. Even though surviving the next sixty seconds is the real concern.
Then, the sand around the debris pile sinks, disappearing in a widening cone of destruction. As the disaster area stretches by five yards, twenty, then fifty, there’s a sharp smell of sulfur in the air, and all we can see at our spot on the beach is a writhing sinkhole.
It’s here.
What was a churning crater seconds ago erupts, raining sand on our heads. Despite myself, I shield my eyes with a trembling hand and look up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lee do the same.
The monster before me is so unnatural, so alien in its appearance that my eyes flicker and rove around the beast as I try to make sense of it. All I can discern at first is a gaping mouth the size of a schooner. The serpentine trunk rising from the sand is large enough to cleave an armored frigate in two. And that’s just the portion of the abyssus I can see. A glow deep within
the monster’s belly lights up circular rows of teeth, each the size of a man. I am suddenly grateful that the beast is likely to crush us in a few merciful seconds.
The creature’s long, sinuous trunk twists and flails like a worm pierced by a hook. It screams, a sound like warping metal, and shakes the sand from between its bark-like scales. Its mouth snaps closed for the briefest of moments, and the world goes dark. The abyssus has sucked the light from the full moon.
Its mouth opens again, pointed toward us as if seeking us. The rounded jaws pulse. There are no eyes on its knotted prehistoric head. I have read that many creatures of the deep are sightless, but I am sure it senses us.
I look at Lee just in time to see him point the flare gun inland.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving us a head start,” he says. He fires.
The abyssus shrieks, and even with my hands pressed over my ears, the noise tears a scream from my own throat. Heat washes over me in the furnace blast from the monster’s maw. It chases after the flare, the thrashes and jerks of its trunk aided by paddling appendages tipped with claws.
Lee grips my shoulder. I can’t hear much over the ringing in my ears and the earth-shaking rumble of the frantic creature, but his mouth moves in the long, wide syllables of a shout, and he points us away from the abyssus’s frenzied path. We run.
The abyssus is a faint glow over the hills behind us, and the way ahead is almost completely dark. Lee skids to a halt, and I bowl into him, knocking both of us into a heap of wood and scrap.
I feel something sticky and viscous on my arms, and I’m sure one of us is bleeding until a pungent smell hits my nose. Pitch. Lee’s face appears suddenly in the warm luster of a little flame. I recognize my lighter in his white-knuckled grip. He holds a split plank to the flame and tosses it into the pile.
As the blaze engulfs the mound, I consider pushing Lee into it.
I grab his arm and spin him round to face me. “What the hell are you doing?” I can feel that I’m shouting, but my voice still sounds muffled.