by M. C. Norris
Dr. Kimura still hadn’t returned. Without much explanation, he’d taken a torch down to the seashore. He’d mentioned something about kelp. His parting instructions were to refrain from disturbing his patient’s rest and recovery, but to try and keep him as warm and comfortable as possible.
Dale and Donovan were stewing over the hijacker’s special treatment ever since he’d been carried back to camp. Becoming listless and secretive, the two had slipped surreptitiously away to a distance of around fifty meters, where they’d been talking quietly amongst themselves for the better part of an hour. If this patient didn’t have so much information stored away inside his head, she might’ve been more concerned about what those two were over there plotting, if anything at all.
“You said that there were others on the island,” Sandy whispered. “Were they the ones who did this to you?”
The hijacker gave another nod. He tried to speak, but only produced a croaking sound, and had to swallow dryly again. They hadn’t found any fresh water before sundown, but Dale had managed to collect around a dozen cans of soda and beer that had washed up onto the beach. Consumption of these beverages was expressly forbidden without group consent. They were to be rationed sparingly, and shared in equal measures. Everybody seemed to be in agreement about that, at least, but it went without saying that if Dale and Donovan had anything to say about it, this hijacker wasn’t going to be included in the distribution of rations. Sandy could see their cache of aluminum cans glimmering at the base of the cliff wall, and the temptation to pilfer just a small sip for this man was a powerful one.
“The other people—are they passengers from our plane?”
The hijacker narrowed his eyes, and slowly shook his head back and forth. There was something that he wanted to say, but couldn’t. His throat was parched to the point of closure. Sandy guessed that he was severely dehydrated from the loss of so much blood, and from all the stress of whatever ordeal he’d been through. If anyone needed a sip, it was him.
“Listen. I’m looking for my husband.” Sandy’s lip began to tremble. She felt like she was hanging by the thinnest thread, and she was weighted by the worst kind of emotions. If that thread ever snapped, it was going to be a mess. Ray was everything to her. He was her rock, her knight in shining armor, and the best friend she’d ever known. He was all the family that she had left in world. He was it. They’d been through so much together, moving halfway across the country, and back again, losing everything, and then rebuilding it from scratch. Just the two of them. They’d tried everything to have children, but it just wasn’t in their cards. That’s what everyone said. But only she and her husband knew what it was like to sit at that table and keep on smiling, playing cards, while they kept getting dealt shit, hand after hand.
The first time in their lives they’d ever won anything was last week on that radio show, where she was tenth caller. She’d won them a couple of tickets to the playoffs, along with a pair of matching Orioles jerseys, hotel and airfare included. They weren’t even baseball fans. How was that for a laugh? It wasn’t even about baseball. It was about so much more than that. No one could possibly understand how much winning those free tickets had meant to them. No one but she and Ray. It was like a new dealer had just sat down at their card table, replacing the other jerk with a reassuring wink and a promise that from here on out, their streak of bad luck would remain turned around. They were just a couple of tickets, but they represented a brand new beginning.
“His name is Ray.” A tear spilled down her cheek. Sandy wiped it away. “He was wearing an orange shirt, just like this one.” She pinched the fabric of her jersey between her thumbs and forefingers, and lifted it from her chest. “He’s always smiling. Very friendly and outgoing. He’d be the warmest one in any group of people.” She leaned closer to the mutilated face. “Please. Did you see him anywhere?”
The hijacker made a gurgling sound. He blinked his eyes slowly, and shook his head from side to side. As she lowered her chin and began to weep, his hand slid across the sand toward her knee, and he touched her with his trembling fingertips. “Your husband …” he whispered.
Sandy lowered her hands from her face, eyes shimmering. “Yes?”
“… is dead.”
Sometimes the truth comes like a cement truck falling from the sky. You can feel its shadow. You can feel the pressure change, the temperature drop by a few degrees a split-second before its tonnage smashes you to a pulp. Sandy’s heart seemed to stop. Her last breath was lodged in her throat. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“All but me … and one Marine … got away from them.”
“Please, no.” Sandy began to tremble all over. “Please, not Ray. Not Ray!” She felt sure that she was going to vomit. Across the fire, Margot quit picking at her nails long enough to cast a dramatic glance from beneath one hitched eyebrow, as though utterly repulsed by her display of emotion.
“The vector ...” Blood foamed from the gaping hole in the place where the hijacker’s nose had been carved away. Neck arched, he rolled his skinned head back and forth in the sand. “Find him … or they’ll butcher us ... coming …” His lids fluttered down over his rolling eyes, and his head lolled off to one side. He was out again.
“The doctor guy told you not to talk to him,” Margot said.
Sandy could see through the corner of her eye that Dr. Kimura was entering their campsite with an armload of dripping kelp. She was pretty sure that the timing and volume of Margot’s comment was intended to reach the doctor’s ears. Sandy always tried to find the best qualities in people, but if there were any exceptional qualities in Margot, she was doing a great job of hiding them.
“What happened?” Dr. Kimura dropped his sodden mass of vines to the sand, and rushed over to kneel by his patient’s side. He was already checking the man’s vitals before Sandy had a chance to respond.
“He woke up for a second,” Sandy replied, choking back her tears, “and he told me that Ray was killed. Ray, and a bunch of other people.”
“Killed in the crash?”
Sandy shook her head, smearing the salty streams from her face. “No. Killed by other people.”
Dr. Kimura placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t believe what he says in this condition. His mind is not right. Maybe tomorrow, but not now.” He gave her shoulder a reassuring shake, glancing in the direction of Dale and Donovan. “Let’s make some tea from the kelp. Speeds rehydration. Anti-inflammatory. Strengthens the immune system.” Doctor Kimura patted her on the back, and smiled. “Don’t cry, Sandy. He will make more sense tomorrow. Go get me one can of soda. You can help me make his medicine.”
Sandy sniffed, nodded, and rose to her feet. She drew a deep breath, and gazed up the limestone wall to the double moons that had finally risen over the crest of their natural shelter. They were almost touching now, strolling hand in hand across the sky.
Christ, what certainties were there anymore? Even if Ray had been standing right beside her, reassuring her, holding her hand, not even his comfort would be enough to change two moons back into one. She could ignore the weird sounds of the jungle, endure the hardships of the situation, and even try to be strong without Ray, but two moons … Sandy dropped her gaze back to the ground. Pressing her hands to the sides of her head, she just breathed for a while. The very sight of those tandem orbs in the sky was enough to remove all hope, and maybe even trigger a nervous breakdown.
“Where in God’s name are we?” she murmured.
Get the soda. Make some medicine. Focus.
With the balls of her hands mashed to her temples, Sandy shuffled toward the swath of darkness beneath the overhanging rock shelf. It had the imposing grandeur of an ancient temple to bygone gods, fluted from eons of erosion, and polished to a shine by regular pummeling by the sea. Pale tendrils of roots squirmed their way through every crack and crevice to dangle from the cliff’s face like a hoary beard. As she bent to retrieve a warm can of Tab, she heard a falling pebble rattle all t
he way down through the limestone whorls. It landed at her feet with a thump. Winning lottery ball.
She turned back toward the glow of the campfire. Despite the friction between the brooding castaways, it almost looked warm and inviting from a distance. The flickering glow reminded her of those endless summer nights with her family on Lake Geneva, when she and her brother would join the rabble of kids to play kick-the-can, and they’d all dart like rabbits through the ranks of darkened cottages. The grown-ups laughed and hollered around their nightly bonfires, while scads of bats looped and spiraled over the commons. Those were the best of times, back when her family was still in its prime.
Nobody ever tells a family that they’re in their prime, and that one day it will be over and done. You can’t see it at the time, because of that rush of constant activity. You just live in that window of time, and you take it all for granted until it’s gone. That’s when the realization comes, much later, in a bittersweet retrospective. Mom was young and beautiful. Dad was tanned and strong. Her brother Martin was still the ornery kid with the lopsided grin who she’d always looked up to, followed around like a little puppy, and loved with all of her heart—years before he flushed his life down the toilet. God, if she could go back to one window of time in her life, and just live there forever … like miniature people in a snow globe.
She turned the warm cylinder of soda in the palm of her hand and sighed. When Dale and Donovan discovered that she and Dr. Kimura were wasting a whole can of their precious soda on making medicine for that hijacker, they were going to go through the roof. There would be hell to pay for this. She could already hear their accusations, their screams of outrage. Something so simple as a can of Tab could be just the catalyst to pit them all against each other, and have them tearing each other apart. How sad. First thing in the morning, they would all need to start searching for water, or else their group’s precariously balanced personalities were apt to topple their little house of cards.
Sandy looked down at the can of soda, and she decided that the best course of action would be to commit to being open and honest about whatever it was that they were doing, and why. Discuss it. Be democratic. Put everything to a vote. Trust was key. In this volatile situation, it was critical that they strive to be tolerant of one another, to be patient, to take the time to discover and utilize each other’s unique strengths and skills. They really couldn’t be more different, the five of them—well, now six—but at least they had each other, and that was something. It was important to realize that now, and not to lament that fact in retrospect.
Their group was blessed to have a skilled outdoorsman amongst them who could conjure a roaring fire from raw elements like some sort of a wizard. Who knew what other neat tricks Dale might have up his sleeve? They had a doctor in their circle. A doctor. Seriously, how could you possibly put a price on Dr. Kimura, with his working knowledge of natural medicine? As far as hands of cards went, theirs was not a bad one to be dealt. Her people definitely had promise, and the tight bonds that were currently missing could surely follow. It all began with trust.
A falling pebble pinged off the lip of the aluminum can. Sandy jumped, and clutched her heart. A second piece of rock landed somewhere nearby, clattering down a drift of sloughed shards. Sandy squinted up the face of the crumbling limestone wall. She could imagine it all coming down in one terrible avalanche. Their sanctuary didn’t seem so very safe anymore.
Clasping the can in her hands, she backed away from the wall. The last thing that she needed was for her group to discover Ray alive and well, only to have to inform him that his bride had been brained by a falling rock. She hesitated, glancing back at their stock of canned beverages. If they woke up tomorrow to find a limestone slab atop a bunch of crushed cans, that would be a pretty disheartening way to start the day. It would be safer and smarter to store them by the fire, away from the base of the crumbling wall. She went back, and began filling the front of her Orioles jersey with cans until it sagged beneath their weight like a bulging apron.
A small shower of pebbles rattled down through the channels to hail around her. Instinctively, she covered her head, peering warily up at the overhang through the corner of a widening eye. As she rose from her crouched position, she let out a shriek when a limestone wrecking ball slammed into the sand right beside her. She winced through the spray of particles that cascaded from the impact. Running blind, spitting sand, she clutched the cache of cans to her midsection as she fled the danger zone just as hastily as her cumbersome load would permit.
Her legs slowed when she noticed the others poised around the campfire, alerted by her cry. They looked braced for anything, ready to fight to the death against anything that threatened one of their own. The sight of them all standing united, mustered into an unrehearsed defensive stance was somehow very moving. She was relieved and proud. Dr. Kimura, Margot, Dale and Donovan—maybe even the hijacker—they could all be members of a new family in this strange home away from home, and it looked as though there just might be some hope for their little family yet. In that moment, Sandy believed with all of her heart that she could trust each one of these people with her life.
The warm cocktail of emotions suddenly chilled. Sandy’s brow gathered into a knot. What in the hell was that?
Her pace slowed to a jog, to a walk, until she lurched to a sudden stop. Struggling to make sense of the sight before her eyes, she stood frozen, staring past the flickering silhouettes of her new family to the nameless thing that loomed beyond them. A couple of cans tumbled from the side of her makeshift apron.
At first glance, it was just a tree swaying in the wind. It was every bit as tall as a tree, and it had that top-heavy imbalance of a canopy of wispy fronds. It might’ve been a tree, it should’ve been, if it weren’t for the fact that there were no trees in that narrow path between the cliffs and the sea. There was nothing in that area but sand. That stark realization clubbed her soundly, at about the same time that the stench invaded her nostrils.
It was a feral musk, distantly familiar, but confused by the soured putrescence of roadkill. The odor reeked from the strange, new tree that had somehow sprouted and grown to maturity right in the middle of their only route of escape. It made no sense that a tree would be towering in a spot where just an hour before, there was nothing. However, if it wasn’t a tree, then her mind’s cogs were condemned to spin in the vast emptiness of a search that would never find a match with anything else on earth for what she was seeing.
Bobbing, dipping in the moonlight, its motions wimpled its lancet fronds. After each session of pumping, the tree gave a lurch forward. Dust billowed from its canopy with every hop. Sandy couldn’t bring herself to scream, because she didn’t even know if she needed to. She couldn’t move, because there was nowhere to run. Her hapless new family, they had to hear something as the stinking tree shambled nearer to their campfire. They had to smell it, or sense it in some way. She wanted to warn them, but she didn’t know how. She didn’t trust her own perception, and if there was a threat to their lives, it wasn’t obvious. Whatever it was that Sandy was seeing, if she was even seeing anything at all, was a master at concealing its intentions.
Its smell, at the most intimate level, jarred loose an old memory. In their Grandpa’s barn, where her brother once used a broomstick to knock down the mud nests of the barn swallows that liked to roost in the rafters. Blizzards of angry swallows blazed through the musty corridor while he demolished their little world, warning him away from their nestlings with piping cries that he ignored, as he destroyed one nest after another with thrusts of the broomstick. Showers of dirt, eggs and hatchlings rained to the ground. Pink and translucent, some possessed only blue bulges for unopened eyes, skinned so thinly that the activity of their tiny hearts and innards could be seen by the naked eye. Others were older, feathered, with beady eyes black and bright. Sandy took them all, gathered them into the paunch of her blouse, fostering each as quickly as Martin could send them to the ground. That was the sme
ll. The pastoral musk of baby barn swallows. As she’d lowered her head down into her blouse to assure her orphanage that everything was going to be alright—and it never was, because Martin found ways to kill them all—she’d inhaled the pure essence of bird. For whatever reason, the memory of that odor had quietly kept a permanent residence in some recess of her mind.
Bobbing, hopping, every aspect of the thing’s behavior seemed something casually observed, but never consciously recorded, in passing instants of ordinary life. She’d seen these movements before, but what towered before her was a perversion of normality. That was perhaps most chilling. It was a nightmarish rendition of something dragged down to Hell from the front yard, demonically reconfigured, and belched back up in an unacceptable new form. The longer she stared at it, the more certain she became. It was a bird. What she was seeing was a gargantuan sort of bird, and her observations of everyday birds in the yard warned Sandy that its movements were no performance. Those types of creatures behaved in such a manner when they were inching their way toward something with predatory interest, gauging the distance to that object, verifying the target, in the moments that preceded a deadly strike.
It charged.
“Run!” Sandy screamed, dropping the folds of her makeshift apron. Cans of beer and soda tumbled to the ground. “Run!” As the thing thundered down the narrow funnel between the cliffs and the sea, it became obvious that there was nowhere to escape but into the dark and churning sea. There was nowhere to hide.
Dale and Donovan were quickest to respond. The younger men had hardly glanced over their shoulders before their legs were sprinting for the sea. Dr. Kimura staggered backward. Margot clung to his arm. It looked as though they might tumble entwined right into the roaring campfire.