He reached the shore and struggled the boat back onto the roof of his gray Buick LeSabre. It was already old, already dinged and scratched, already rusting all around the rear wheel hubs. But it ran well enough and it had a big trunk, which was all Elton really needed.
He put the key in the ignition, turned it and heard the familiar hitch before the engine cranked and churned into life. It occurred to him just then how he might have handled things if the car hadn’t started. Prolly hoofed it and bought a camera at that gas station, his mind supplied almost instantly. For all his cognitive weaknesses, Elton was excellent at solving problems. I could say I wanted to take pictures from the lake. Nobody’d check to see the film. Just the camera would do. After that they’d call me a tow and I’d be back to good. Really really.
And then Elton surprised himself. He was suddenly thinking of what he’d do when he got home. There was no girl to feed or to fuck. No locks to double-check. No neighbors to watch and no need to make friendly with them just in case.
For eight years he had been living his own kind of torture, always concerned, always afraid. But now… now he was free of all that.
And yet…
Elton sighed deeply. “I’m lonely,” he said. “I doan wanna go home to a empty basement.”
And though he hadn’t even considered the notion until just that moment, he decided then and there, with his previous victim still settling into the weeds and silt just yards behind him, that he needed to find her replacement.
3
His time in the fortress had taught Obe much about himself, which was ironic considering how much he would eventually forget. His pain limits, for instance, were not nearly as high as he’d thought they’d be. But, then had come his ability to adapt. That, too, had been a surprise.
Another revelation came early on when the women had told him they could select the memories he would be allowed to keep. He had thought this was a bluff, another way to beat down his morale. He’d been wrong.
They had gone to work immediately and succeeded with surprising speed. In a matter of months, his mind had been reduced to mere dozens of memories. All were unconnected details of various friends and family. Even his own name had become a mystery. The only victory he could claim when it came to the battle of his mind was a vague knowledge of a loving brother. That he had a loving brother the women had freely let him keep. It will hurt more to know you will be missed, they had told him. But the actual feeling was the one thing they hadn’t been able to fully extrude.
He had previously wondered if other island men had retained such treasures. But his new knowledge of the day in the helicopter and the flood of memories that had come with it had taught him he could not be alone in this. And yet he knew no other island man would endure the knowledge of having a loved one somewhere on the island.
The car had turned him off course for the green sector and he was now running due west, directly into the heart of black sector. This was an area to which he’d never been. Such a thing was against the women’s rules. Nevertheless he ran forward with eager abandon and was rewarded almost immediately. When he jumped over what appeared to be a narrow trench he saw it was, in truth, a dry stream bed.
Water! he thought. The white perimeter poles- twenty feet high and thick as trees- were only feet in front of him and he took note of his location. I can follow it. The other end must be where the stream is. Moments later he committed only his second major infraction since his release from the fortress and sprinted between two white poles that marked the boundary to the sector where he could only hope of earning an entrance.
Two more hills loomed to the north so he veered south where the land suddenly leveled out into a dirt road leading back into the small, abandoned city before him. He realized he couldn’t hear the car anymore and chanced a look behind him. It was stopped at a base of the last small hill, the engine steaming in the bright moonlight. Trapped in the beam of light from its lone working headlamp was the largest woman Obe had ever seen. She chased on foot but was slow. He knew instantly he’d live to receive the second mark on his arm.
In his surety, however, he faltered. A hardened tire rut, one which had probably been there for months without a single human interaction, found his bare foot. Fierce pain shot through his ankle as it rolled and sent him sprawling to the ground. His palms and forearms slid through loose gravel and clods of baked earth. His chest slammed down next, knocking the beleaguered wind from his lungs.
The effect was instantaneous. His silver litany stopped. His limbs now felt the strains of exertion. He suddenly couldn’t find the energy to even stand. His lungs were gasping for air, but his muscles demanded it more and refused to acquiesce. On his knees, he saw the huge woman exhale a mist into the midnight air as she closed the gap between them at a pathetic jog.
Obe staggered to his feet and his left ankle yelped. He stumbled and caught himself with his left hand. The raked palm cried, the strained thumb screamed, and he almost fell again. But he slowly stood and took a few awkward steps. The ankle was weak, as soft and useless as a square of folded cardboard. But he pushed on and soon found a hobbling rhythm of forward progress.
He could hear the pounding footsteps of the behemoth woman behind him, and he didn’t dare look. But they were also fading. Twenty feet. Twenty five. Perhaps thirty now. Even with a twisted ankle he could outrun her.
She must be injured too, Obe thought.
His bare feet soon found the paved road that magically delineated the city from the country. His ankle was swelling, lessening the pain, but it was still so frail. Any wrong step could drop him to the ground.
He searched for safety and saw a number of possibilities. Alleys and walkways were there now.
She’ll have trouble in tight spaces, he thought.
Seconds later he gently turned toward a walkway and glanced over his shoulder. She was there, puffing away and eyeing him with a dark malevolence that meant a swift death if she ever caught him.
He slipped into the walkway where every other hobbling step banged his body against the brick walls. He protected the injured thumb, letting his shoulders take the hits. He hopped delicately over a bulging plastic bag, surprised to even see a plastic bag. The end of the alley was in front of him and he could see that the sky of black beyond it was now a few shades lighter in the coming sunrise.
He reached the end and stepped into open space. He stood at the northern edge of town. To the left and right ran a street that marked the final boundary between civilization and wilderness. Running alongside it was the same trench he’d seen earlier, now wider and more defined. On the other side was nothing but more grass-covered hills.
It’s all the same, he thought. The city’s just another kind of jungle. Just another place to be hunted.
He turned around and faced the approaching woman. She was turned sideways and shuffling along the tiny walkway. Obe hadn’t realized just how small it was until now. He had fit through easily enough, but even sideways she barely had room.
“Damn you little bastard!” she yelled. He smiled. He’d never seen one of the women truly angry. She tripped over the plastic bag, spilling the contents into the remaining shadows. She swore and looked down, and instantly Obe bolted to his right and out of view.
His injured ankle, however, loosened again and sent him sprawling to the ground. More pain, so brilliant he was sure he’d broken the damned thing, flared again, and he knew he couldn’t run at all anymore. He would need a place to hide.
On his knees, Obe scrambled along the edge of the trench as best he could. He could see only two places that offered genuine concealment, and both were horribly far away. Another walkway between buildings taunted him ahead on the left, but he didn’t think he could get that far, and it only meant more running when he arrived. Closer and to the right was a small wooden bridge that crossed the trench. Wide enough for a car, there was a scant two feet of space beneath it.
Driven by instinct, he stumbled toward it with his good leg
then dove head-first, descending in an uncoordinated fall like some kind of bloated walrus falling from a cliff. Just before it cut his face open, he saw a stiff protrusion sticking from a jumble of trash wedged under the little bridge. The object slashed across his face from his left jawbone, directly between his eyes, and up into his hairline. He managed to stifle a scream, aware instantly that he had barely missed blinding himself.
He scrambled under the bridge and lay still. Already he could feel the blood trickling between his eyes and alongside his broken nose. He looked back and saw the woman standing outside the end of the walkway. She was looking in his direction.
Obe’s heart stopped.
For a long moment nothing happened. The woman didn’t move. Obe didn’t breathe. Unaware it was there at all, Obe’s litany became stuck, repeating the one word cloudy over and over in his mind. His lips did not speak them. He was aware only of the woman and that he would never recall or see his brother’s face before his death.
“Shit!” the woman yelled, and broke Obe from his trance. She turned her head the other direction, then back again. “God damn little fucker!”
The moments ticked by in silence. Obe held his breath. There was only the sound of his own heart swashing through his ears and the faint and distant wind. Blood trickled slowly down his face and onto his chest, the only movement in the world. Finally, the women’s massive shoulders drooped, and she turned back into the walkway.
More seconds passed. He had always been amazed at how easily sound carried on the island. Now he hoped this didn’t include his own panting breaths. A full minute later she emerged again, now carrying the plastic bag, and he held his breath once more.
She stood a moment, looked in both directions as she seemed to do her own careful listening, then stepped straight toward him. He gasped once and quietly, then returned to holding his breath, though his lungs protested immediately. In seconds his heart seemed to slam with each beat, vibrating his delicate ribcage. When she turned toward the bridge, he once again thought he was dead.
Her footsteps soon pounded loudly, singularly, into his head as she approached. His lungs had gone from protestations to squeals.
Fuck off, he thought, and held strong.
When she was directly above him there was an enormous gasp in his mind and an even bigger slicing pain in his chest. Her footsteps had stopped. She was kneeling down. She was about to reach over the edge, grab him by the collar, and hoist him up with one giant arm. His heart nearly broke through his chest. His lungs screamed. A black spottiness swept across his eyes. And an instant later the next footstep slapped the wooden board above his head, and he realized she hadn’t slowed at all.
Just two seconds later she reached the dirt and tufts of dry grass on the other side and headed back toward the steaming car.
Obe forced himself to count to ten before letting his trapped air out through his labored nostrils. The pain was immense, and he made it to six before he gave in. A sudden, involuntary gasp hit him. The black spots subsided instantly. He listened for her footsteps. Two seconds. Three. He heard nothing but his own slamming heartbeat and gasped again. This time he counted all the way to twenty before drawing in a long, slow, sweet, fulfilling breath of air.
4
Miles away, on a large hilltop overlooking the island’s only source of fresh water, stood three men in blue jumpsuits. One among them was a brute, taller than the other two by a full head and nearly wider than both combined. He had no doubt been a prized specimen in his days in the fortress.
Today, the brute and a spindly second man were engaged in a heated conversation. The third man listened intently but had not spoken for some time.
The trio did not face each other, for to do so would open their backs to a possible attack. They stood instead as a star, their shoulders nearly touching in the center. Sound carried well in this world without the sizzle of electricity, the cries and laughter of crowds, or the drone of highways, and they could hear each other well without raising their voices.
“He’s a Crete I’m tellin’ you. We can’t take the risk.”
“He’s only just got here, Jain. He doesn’t know what he is. And we don’t know if they’ve gotten to him yet.”
The smaller man turned momentarily to look up at the huge man above him. “Then I think I should go find out. I’m a spy, so let me spy! If he’s a fuckin’ Crete and we miss it, he’ll be delivering contraband to Rein and Doov and all of ’em in a week. Mark my words, Deek, he’s trouble.”
“I don’t know,” Deek intoned in his low, resonating voice. “He’d be a hell of an asset. I just think it’s worth looking into. You know what Stoup used to say.”
“I don’t care about some guy I never met,” Jain countered. “He’s dead, ain’t he? So how smart was the guy, really?”
It was then the third man spoke in a soft Latin accent, and his voice, though the quietest of all, held the most weight.
“Rule One, gringo. It’s as true out here as it is down there.” It was all he said and all he needed to say. Jain hung his head and apologized.
“Uh, sorry, Lace.” He quickly looked up to the billion stars and picked one. “Sorry Stoup. I was just, you know… agitated. I didn’t mean to, uh, disrespect…” but Jain trailed off, knowing any apology to a dead man held little weight.
Lace allowed the moment to flesh out in awkward silence. His patience had always been his greatest asset. Deet, far from the mindless cretin he appeared to be, knew his place and kept his own mouth shut as well.
Finally, Lace turned from his section of the hills and stream beyond and faced Jain directly. Jain turned as well and saw the familiar inked shapes on Lace’s forehead and cheeks. A collection of small face tattoos he’d gotten in the Salvadoran gang of his past, its symbols were mostly a mystery. While elaborate and copious tattoos were commonplace among island men, Lace’s unique method of self-ruination stood out.
The only image Jain recognized was the small teardrop at the corner of Lace’s left eye. He had heard it meant Lace cried for the loss of a fallen brother or perhaps marked his time spent in one particular prison, but Jain suspected it truly meant Lace had been not just the serial rapist that had brought him to the island, but a murderer as well. Lace, however, would not talk of it or any of the other strange, angular brandings. Jain, like all the other men of their ilk, had learned not to ask.
“And yet,” Lace nearly whispered in his Latin brogue, “for a small white man, you are wise, Jain. I believe this Obe to be a threat as well. We will deal with him, esé. In our own way. Have patience. The right time will come if you wait it out.”
Jain grinned and nodded his assent. Behind him, a man in blue quickly descended the long hill toward the cold stream below. Deek saw the movement and squinted toward it in the coming sunlight. “Who’s that?” he asked. “Friend or foe?”
“Can’t tell,” Lace said in his soft inflection. “Better get down there and find out.”
Deek didn’t speak again but moved with eerie silence and speed. Jain followed close behind him, and from the tall grasses near and far soon rose another five men. All descended on the would-be water man from every direction. Lace alone stood still and watched it happen.
5
Obe lay under the little bridge, uncaring of the sweat and blood descending from his face. The woman was gone now, had been for minutes, yet he was still awaiting his destruction. His breath came in too-loud rasps as it issued steam from his nostrils in the pre-morning cold.
She could be playing me, he thought. Could be standing twenty feet from here. Waiting for me to come out. They could all be here by now. They’re going to flay my skin. They’re going to punish me for breaking the rules.
It was an irrational fear, born of the paranoia the women had bred into him. He was finally healing from such tortures, but his road to full mental health was long and the occasional lapses still held weight.
His heartbeat seemed to evade him, stammering and unable to get a r
hythm going. Slowly, one hitching breath of air at a time, the revelation came to him. He wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t be dead. She wasn’t coming back, wasn’t playing a game. He’d outrun her fair and square, and she’d given up. He was safe.
Eventually, Obe closed his eyes and just breathed.
“Nice bit of running just then.” The voice was inches above him, on the bridge itself. Obe cried out and jolted, banging his elbow on a support beam.
“Calm down there, cowboy. We don’t want her to come back, do we?” It was a man’s voice, and Obe’s heart skipped, stopped, then jackhammered back into life. “Sorry,” the voice continued. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that.”
Obe looked up through the splintered slats of the old wooden bridge. The man was lying face-down, his gentle eyes staring down patiently. Behind them the moon worked the last of its midnight shine, dimmed only by the surrounding blue-black sky as the advancing sun tinted the world with color.
“Who…” Obe managed. But his fear was still too palpable and he managed no more. The stranger, however, was visibly patient. Obe swallowed and tried again. “Who are you? I’m Obe.” He fought the urge to spell his name as he’d be taught by the women, and succeeded.
The man laughed good-naturedly. “Whoa there, friend. Hold off on the formalities for a bit. Let’s just relax a little first. We’re in no hurry. She’s long gone. We’ve got the day to ourselves now.”
A strange mixture of shame and pride swept through Obe. “She’s gone?” he asked.
“Yup.”
Obe hesitated, feeling like a child in wanting stronger confirmation, stronger proof. Then he decided he didn’t care and asked again anyway. “Really gone?”
“Really gone,” the stranger laughed. It was a wonderful sound. “Didn’t look too happy about losing you, either. You totally threw her with that narrow alley trick. Like I said, nice bit of running. Did you see the size of her, though? She’s a record, I think. Too bad we don’t hunt them, huh? She’d be one for the trophy room.”
Woman Scorned Page 3