“You promise, Mrs. Markson that you will not be here within the hour?”
Sabina nodded.
“Yeah, I promise.”
Peter appeared relieved. He lowered his hands and turned to begin walking back down the path toward the beach. He paused as Sabina’s voice called out from behind him.
“Peter, tell your father thank you.”
The young Indian smiled and then the smile dissipated and his face grew very serious.
“I will, but get your family away from here, Mrs. Markson. Don’t let my father’s hope to keep you safe be in vain. The ones who come after me are men consumed by terrible hatred for your kind. They will not show you or your children any mercy.”
Both Peter and Sabina froze as the sound of an engine emerged from somewhere in the distance. Peter’s eyes widened as he pointed to Sabina.
“Hurry! Get your children and go now!”
Jackson’s voice called out from the top of the hill.
“There’s another boat coming about a thousand yards away!”
Sabina yelled up to her children.
“Get down here now! Move as fast as you can! We’re leaving!”
Peter was already running down the path toward his two companions. He paused halfway down and turned to face Sabina.
“We’ll intercept them and try and give you some more time. Good luck Mrs. Markson. My father wanted you to know how much he respected your husband. He was a good man who deserved a much longer life than he was given.”
And then Peter was off again running toward the other two men and their boat. Less than a minute later they were moving away from the island and toward the other approaching vessel.
Jackson and Mika arrived with Bosco at their side. Mika pointed up the path toward the small camp they had called home for the last two weeks.
“What about the tents?”
Sabina lightly pushed both her children onto the path in front of her.
“Leave them – we don’t have time. Get to the boat now!”
The family of three and their dog scrambled down the path and onto the beach and then reached their bruised and battered family fishing boat. Sabina watched as Jackson untied the boat from the shore without her having to tell him to do so. He was moving with the same deliberate confidence his father had.
Mika grunted as she lifted Bosco onto the back of the boat. The dog’s tail wagged as he waited for the other three to join him. Soon Sabina was in front of the vessel’s controls and giving a silent prayer the small diesel engine didn’t choose that moment to give them trouble. She rubbed the Saint Christopher medallion around her neck and then turned the key.
The engine fired with a belch of dark black diesel smoke, the sound and scent bringing relief to everyone on board.
Sabina put the boat into reverse and backed away slowly from the shoreline until they were in water deep enough to turn around and head out from the protected cove into open water. Jackson pointed to the north where no more than a few hundred yards away, Peter’s boat was nearing the other approaching vessel.
“Who was that, Mom?”
Sabina glanced at the other two boats before turning her boat sharply to starboard, hoping to conceal themselves on the other side of the small island before heading south.
“His name is Peter. His family knew your father. He came here to warn us.”
Another plume of smoke belched forth as Sabina increased the engine rpm’s. The boat’s bow plunged into a series of three-foot waves sending spray onto the cockpit windows. There was a tidal change and a strong breeze making for some rather snotty water conditions.
Jackson’s right hand reached out to lightly tap the boat’s badly worn, paint-chipped console.
“Come on girl, get us out of here.”
The sound of Jack’s voice coming out of her son’s mouth momentarily startled Sabina. And then she gave a small smile, comforted by the presence of her dead but not forgotten husband.
“What was that?”
Mika asked the question while looking at the two tribal fishing vessels that were at that moment intersecting. Then Sabina and Jackson heard the same sound that had startled Mika.
Gunfire.
Peter’s boat suddenly veered sharply to the right followed by yet another series of shots being fired. Sabina couldn’t tell if each of the boats was shooting at the other. She didn’t care. Her only concern at that point was getting her kids away from the danger.
Her right hand pushed the throttle forward nearly to its limit. The wood-hulled bow lifted upward and then crashed back down into a particularly deep wave trough, sending the vessel’s occupants leaning from side to side as the ship struggled to steady itself.
Sabina grimaced as she clung to the steering wheel while her eyes strained to see through the saltwater-drenched windshield.
“They’re following us.”
Jackson’s tone was matter of fact. Sabina glanced behind her to confirm what he said. Peter’s boat appeared to be drifting on the water while the second boat was now heading straight for them. Bosco voiced an uncharacteristic growl from the floor where the Golden Retriever lay, sensing Sabina’s growing concern.
The Markson family’s boat pushed through another wave as Sabina struggled to keep its bow pointed straight. The hull groaned and shuddered in protest at being pushed so hard through far less than ideal conditions.
Behind them the other boat was closing the gap.
“Jackson, take the wheel. Keep her pointed south.”
Jackson moved himself behind the controls while his mother grabbed onto the hunting rifle and moved toward the back of the fishing boat where she stood pointing her weapon at the other boat that followed.
A five-foot wave hit the front-left side of the fishing vessel, causing the small boat to lurch right. Jackson overcorrected, which in turn made the boat then tilt precariously onto its left side.
Jackson gritted his teeth, determined not to make the same mistake again.
“Sorry.”
Sabina steadied herself and then continued to aim her weapon at the still-approaching boat behind them. It was close enough she could make out the driver and three other men. They were cheering and urging the driver to go faster. Two of them were holding assault rifles. At its current pace the other vessel would likely catch up to the Markson family’s boat in just a few more minutes.
The Saint Christopher medallion felt warm against Sabina’s chest as her mind scrambled to come up with some kind of plan to keep her family safe. She could see the leering mouths of the four Luttia tribal members as they glared back at her hungrily with lit cigarettes jutting out of their mouths. The widow instinctively knew that if those men overtook them, they would quickly kill Jackson and then have their way with both her and Mika.
I won’t let that happen.
The boisterous shouts of the men carried over the water, chilling Sabina to her core just before a hint of hope presented itself to her.
On the tribal fishing vessel’s port side she saw the top half of a ten-gallon propane tank likely used for cooking.The distance between the two vessels was by then less than a hundred yards.
I might only get one shot at this, Sabina. Make it a good one.
Sabina Markson would never have called herself a particularly competent shooter but at that point she knew it was their only chance for escape. She had seen plenty of movies where the hero fired into a propane tank to create an incredibly powerful explosion. The mother of two hoped she could fire such a shot and be that hero for her kids.
“Slow her down, Jackson.”
Sabina’s son looked at his mother with an expression that clearly demonstrated his complete confusion over the request that he slow the speed of their boat.
“Go ahead, slow her down. I need us to be as steady as possible.”
Jackson was about to protest again when Mika’s voice cut him off.
“Do what Mom says!”
Jackson reduced the throttle by half while
Sabina took aim and held her breath, praying to God, Jack, and anyone else that might be listening, to make her aim prove true.
She fired and missed short, the bullet hitting the water several feet in front of the other boat.
“Dammit!”
The rifle’s bolt action was heavy and awkward, requiring far more time than Sabina would have liked to expel the spent cartridge. Though it took only a few seconds before she was able to once again raise the gun and aim, it felt like an eternity.
The men in the tribal fishing boat appeared uncertain over whether or not Sabina was actually firing on them. Then they saw her take aim for a second time and the uncertainty vanished as they scrambled to take cover. The boat veered sharply to the left, giving Sabina a much better view of the propane tank.
She fired again.
This time she was certain she had hit the target but there was no indication of her having done so. No explosion. No fiery ball of flame like in the movies.
No hope.
One of the four men took aim with his assault rifle and fired even as the man driving the boat screamed for him to stop. The three rounds that left the rifle in quick succession each created a small detonation at the tip of the rifle as the bullets raced toward their intended target. Those detonations in turn ignited the invisible cloud of propane that had escaped from the hole created by the bullet fired from Sabina’s hunting rifle.
The explosion was considerable.
A great whooshing noise erupted behind the Markson family’s boat followed by a blast of warm air rushing past them. Remnants of the tribal vessel’s fiberglass hull fell from the sky while the remainder of the boat sat in the water engulfed in flame.
Bosco was on his feet barking at the fiery cacophony while Sabina’s children looked back at her with mouths hanging open and eyes wide with both wonder and newfound respect.
“Throttle her up again, Jackson…due south. Keep us at least five hundred yards out from the shoreline.”
This time Jackson said nothing regarding his mother’s instructions. She gave the order and he intended to follow it without question.
The waters around them continued to grow more restless but Sabina didn’t mind. She was more determined than ever to take on whatever challenges awaited and keep her children safe.
And God help anyone who tried to prevent her from doing just that…
---------------------
EPISODE ELEVEN:
Sixty-seven year old Silas Toms carried the corpse of his wife on the narrow, rock-strewn path that led upward to the top of the hill that overlooked the isolated four hundred acres they had called home for the entirety of their lives together.
Grace Toms had embodied the essence of her first name, having lived with an unwavering dignity even as her mind and its memories flickered like a weak flame perpetually on the verge of going out completely.
She had been smitten by Silas the moment her eyes first saw him walking like some great, unbending tree across the streets of the tiny North Dakota outpost of Fortuna when she was just a handful of days past her eighteenth birthday. She continued to watch him every time he came with his family into town from their far-off hillside ranch. He seemed beyond possible as his great frame moved past her. She glanced down and noticed the size of his hands, two massive, calloused tools that swung slowly at his sides with each long step of his faded and tattered blue-jean clad legs.
A few years later after news spread that he had lost both his parents, she was carefully watching him again as the wood-planked floor of the Fortuna General Store trembled under the weight of Silas’s hand-made leather boots. He said nothing as he stood in front of the counter patiently waiting his turn, his remarkably broad-shouldered back straight and unyielding underneath the long-sleeved blue colored cotton work shirt that he wore most days except Sunday when he and his parents would make the hour-long horse ride to the single-story white church located on the outskirts of Fortuna.
Back then the little town and the surrounding area had no more than a hundred souls that called that northwest corner of North Dakota home and not a one of them was absent a long-standing fascination with the Toms family and their little cabin far up in a narrow valley cut out a thousand years earlier by a long since gone river. The Toms had arrived in North Dakota via Wisconsin. The then new state was all but giving away hundreds of acres to anyone willing to attempt to make a life in the remote and barren lands that ran along the Canadian border. Silas’s parents were young and both physically imposing individuals who took what little money each of their families had left them and bought up nearly a thousand acres of land and through sheer force of their collective will, managed to make a modest living as cattle ranchers.
Silas had been an only child, his birth being a very difficult one that nearly killed his mother. Both parents raised him with equal parts love and determined discipline. His mother taught him to read and write while his father showed him how to dig a proper fence post hole and lay thousands upon thousands of feet of barbed wire.
Those years pushed Silas’s body to its physical limits, and he pushed back. By the time he was a teenager he had surpassed his father’s height, and soon after his physical strength as well. One late Saturday afternoon found father and son in Fortuna’s only street contemplating how they would go about repairing a broken wagon wheel. A moment later and Silas was grabbing the bottom of the wagon and lifting that side of it off the ground so his father could remove the wheel and replace it with the spare that was always kept in the back.
A small crowd gathered around the wagon, whispering in awe as a then young Silas Toms appeared to struggle only slightly as he held the great weight off the ground for nearly five minutes. After the spare wheel was successfully installed, Silas slowly lowered the wagon and then looked up to see several sets of eyes looking back at him. As was his nature, he ignored their stares and simply climbed up to the front of the wagon and waited for his father to command the horse to begin their return journey home.
Shortly after his twenty-first birthday Silas lost his father. The elder Toms had been walking along the outskirts of the family property among the various hills and crevices looking for a lost calf. He slipped down a loose-gravel slope and then found himself temporarily pinned against a narrow opening between the ground and a large slab of rock. In the twenty or so seconds it took for him to free himself from the opening, he was bit nine times in the back by a swirling mass of rattle snakes who called the space underneath the rock home. By the time he pushed himself back onto his feet, Silas’s father could feel the venom scorching its assault upon his central nervous system.
He knew he was in trouble.
Four hundred yards was as far as he made it before collapsing, the muscles of his legs gripped by terrible spasms. Though immobile, death did not arrive for several more hours. Silas did not locate his father’s body until the next morning. He ran back home and told his mother who stiffened, stood silent for several seconds, and then whispered for her son to bring the body back to their home.
Mother and son buried the family patriarch atop the hill overlooking the property later that afternoon. Silas watched his mother out of the corner of his eye, noting how stoic she stood over the grave, her mouth a grim slash across a face just beginning to show the deep lines of impending old age. Then she abruptly turned and made the journey back down to the cabin where she proceeded to make supper for her and her son.
Silas ate very little though as he stared at the empty space at the front of the table where his father always began each meal with a brief prayer of thanks.
“He’s gone now, Silas. Don’t waste time on what was. Life is only meant for what will be.”
Though his mother sounded completely convinced of her own advice, Silas was certain he overheard her crying softly in her bed later that night.
She never spoke of his father again, and just three years later Silas was digging a second grave at the top of the hill for his mother after she died from a severe bou
t of pneumonia during a particularly cold and terrible North Dakota winter. The first foot of dirt was frozen, requiring several hours to break through to the softer earth underneath. The wind-swept snow swirled around the young man as he dug out a hole and then lowered the body of his mother into it.
Silas Toms was all alone – but not for long.
Grace approached him two weeks later as he stood inside the Fortuna General Store and quietly told him how sorry she was to hear of his mother’s passing. Silas nodded his gratitude but said nothing. By then he stood at his fully grown height of six- foot-nine and cut a particularly imposing figure given his great size and glowering, deep-set dark blue eyes. Few people dared speak to Silas so he found Grace’s uncommon bravery somewhat amusing, though his firm-set jaw gave no indication of that humor.
American Survivalist: RACE WARS OMNIBUS: Seasons 1-5 Of An American Survivalist Series... Page 12