by John Oakes
He wiped a hand over his chin and examined it in the dim, greenish light. He extended his tongue and licked it. The copper taste of his blood mingled with the blinding pain, and the blinding was okay. It was marvelous. Blind like rage.
He pressed both hands into his mouth, got them bloody, and dragged them across his forehead, across his eyes and down his cheeks.
“Fuck sake?” Darby shifted his weight uncomfortably.
“From the moment they zip tied me, I knew I could get out,” Winton said. “But I didn’t.” Winton balled his fists. “I wanted to survive,” he growled. “I wanted peace. I didn’t want to disturb.”
Ignoring the pain he was about to incur on his hurt rib, he raised his clenched fists high as if holding a dagger before a sacrifice, then tensed his torso and brought his bound wrists down as hard as he possibly could into his sternum. His torso formed a wedge with his arms, and in that momentary explosion of energy pinpointed at the locking mechanism between his wrists, plastic shattered and fell away.
Sublime freedom. He lolled his head, coming to rest his gaze on Darby. “Peace ain’t good enough.”
He screamed and rushed forward, stunning Darby frozen. He jagged right at the last second and jumped with unnatural grace onto a chair. He shot like a panther off the arm rest onto Darby’s back, hands griping anything they could, clawing upward. Head and fleshy neck presented themselves as open targets, as Darby flailed. Winton bore down on Darby’s left ear, sinking his teeth in without a shred of hesitation and felt the majority of the ear come away with surprising ease.
Darby screamed, and it rang like music. Winton dropped off his shoulder before the screwdriver came stabbing for his face. As Darby stumbled around in shock and pain, Winton spat the ear out. He picked up one of the chairs and, using his whole body, spun and flung it at a control panel. Old wood shattered and the chair back came free with one of the rear legs attached. Winton picked it up by the leg and held it over a shoulder like a club. He crow-hopped toward Darby and planted his battle axe into the bloody mess of Darby’s neck and jaw. A pleasing crack sounded as wood met sticky wet flesh and bone.
Darby was stunned. In a defensive move he lunged away, bouncing off the shaft housing. Winton circled right to make him back up the way they’d come.
“You’re fucking crazy!” Darby shrieked. He held out the screwdriver to back Winton off.
Winton was already swinging his makeshift weapon.
Wood met wrist with a sickening crunch, and the screwdriver went flying into the bulkhead.
Darby cried out again and bent over his broken wrist.
Winton stepped into his back swing, and cracked the chair back into his skull, just behind his ear.
The big boy crumpled sideways in a heap of baby fat and overalls.
Winton took the momentary pause in violence to listen. Had they been heard? Was anyone coming? Julius looked down from the walkway. Alone. The noise of the scuffle had reached his ears but no further.
Winton looked at the nearby air compressor with its six-foot-tall rusted tank. He chopped at its base with the chair back, and flakes of oxidized metal showered off it. He struck again and again, nearly chopping through the thing entirely. He worked on another leg, one facing Darby. He smashed it to bits, leaving it bent and brittle. Last, he attacked the wall mounts holding the tank up. Before he finished with them, the pain in his side overcame his subsiding adrenaline. He had to stop to breathe.
Darby groaned and woke comically, eyes dazed, mouth pulled down at an angle, braying like a donkey. Winton grabbed the wall mount with both hands and reefed at it until it snapped near the bolt. He put his shoulder into the tank and pushed like a lineman trying to move a sled. Crackling sounds emanated from the base. The other wall mount held, causing the big tank to list and spin. Its unbalanced weight proved too much for the other mount; it snapped. The tank groaned as it crashed down across Darby.
The sound of its fall was almost completely absorbed by the thick young Australian, except for the sickening crack of bones.
The lonely thrum of the generator served as silence.
Winton stepped around the tank so he could see Darby’s face. One arm was pinned between his crushed body and the tank. The other pushed at it uselessly. His eyes were bloodshot, head bobbing about like a toy on a dashboard. Finally his head fell back, eyes looking to Winton.
Winton stepped closer and unzipped his pants. “You wanted to see my dick.” He pulled it out and presented it to the dying Darby. “Fair trade.”
Darby looked at it, then up at Winton’s face, and died.
TWENTY
Winton stalked back up the stairs, growing wearier with every step. When he reached the top, he was huffing his breaths. He had to take a moment bent over with his hands on his knees.
“Mother of God,” was all Julius had to say, when Winton faced him.
Winton responded by searching Darby’s tools and cutting Julius out of his zip ties with a pair of wire cutters. He handed him the screwdriver. “You hold onto this.”
“For what?”
Winton looked into his eyes, eyes that appeared startled with the gore of Winton’s visage. “To fight!” Winton took a couple of slower breaths through his mouth — his nose was useless — and tried to slow his pounding heart. “Hopefully you won’t have to. But if you do, don’t blink.”
Julius looked down at the tool. “What are you thinking?”
“I have a plan.” Winton saved his breath and pointed to a huge three-foot-tall fire extinguisher. “Thing weighs as much as I do, so I need you to be ready to grab it. I’ll have to be the decoy.”
“For what?”
“Julius.” Winton snapped his fingers. “Get with me. I’m going to lure one of these fools in here, then call from down there for help. Once they walk down the stairs, you get up and drop that big ass fire extinguisher on them.”
“Jesus. That’ll kill somebody.”
“Yeah,” Winton said, “if you do it right.”
“And what if there’s two?” Julius said.
“Well, that’s what the screwdriver’s for.”
Winton headed back down the steps and waited behind the air tank. Five minutes passed. Winton’s breathing and heart slowed, but his high level of alertness kept his mind sharp despite all his pains.
A chirping sound behind Winton made him jump.
A phone.
On the floor by a control panel, Darby’s phone lay face down. Winton ran and snatched it up. He’d received a text from someone named Derek: Anders is meeting with the union now. I’m grabbing a bite. Be down in five to yank them out. Depends what Anders decides.
Winton looked up. “Shit.” Anders had to be the leader. “Tom,” as he’d called himself. The union was his potential new business ally? It wouldn’t be the first time a Louisiana union got involved in something shady. And for Anders, it would mean that the crumbling of Maroulis’ estate wouldn’t affect his trade. Plus, with a little pre-planning, Anders could then park his ship anywhere he wanted on this stretch of the Gulf.
But even if a deal with the union leaders went through, Anders would still want police protection. To get that protection from Remus, he’d keep Lucas for leverage.
Remus seemed like a vindictive asshole, though. Winton had the sore spots to prove it. He’d pull something, and Lucas would end up dead. And Winton and Julius? Them too, if they were still held in the ship. Time to fix that, then, Winton decided.
Winton walked back to the stairs.
“Julius.”
Julius looked down through the grating of the walkway.
“I just read an informative text.” He waggled Darby’s phone. “We’re getting out of here, now. Get ready.”
Julius nodded, his face a hard mask of resolve. “I’ll be ready.” Blood dripped from his mouth through the grating onto the floor beside Winton. “I’m fucking ready.”
Winton pointed up at him. “You’re gonna be the first black guy on HGTV.”
“Goddamn right I
am.”
“Hey,” Winton said. “My brother is locked up just beneath the room we were in before. You know, just in case.”
“I hear you. If something happens to me, name your son Julius.”
“I dunno. You think the name would work for a white kid?”
“Don’t make me laugh, asshole. My face hurts.”
Winton nodded and ran back around the toppled air compressor tank.
Minutes stretched out, feeling unnaturally long. Finally, the door opened onto the walkway above, and light shined in. Winton couldn’t see who it was by their feet alone, but heard them speak in an Aussie accent. So Derek, it appeared, was not the American.
“Where’s the little one?” he asked.
“Took him down.” Julius was sitting as before, hands clutched together in his cut zip ties.
“Down here!” Winton said in his best Aussie accent. Derek started down the stairs, machine gun slung over one shoulder. He was the stylish one with dark hair. Derek turned at the bottom and saw the big tank laying on the ground. “Ah, hell.” When he saw that someone was beneath it, he stopped short. “Jesus Christ.”
He started forward again, and the big red fire extinguisher sailed into view from above. He flinched.
But too late.
It struck him side-on atop the shoulder. Derek’s torso and face slammed to the floor at high speed. The heavy canister bounced away, clattering against the propeller shaft housing, rolling to a stop near Darby’s feet.
It didn’t kill the man, but by the time he had a hint of consciousness back, Winton had time to drag him out of sight from the door, zip-tie his hands behind his back around a pipe, and gag him.
Winton was getting quite the workout. As he gathered up Derek’s phone, gun and the rest of his zip ties, he decided he could open a gym that simulated escaping a ratty old Chinese smuggling ship. “Still beats the treadmill,” he said.
He looked for a contact in Derek’s simple burner phone. The American, Bill. He texted: Want revenge on Darby? Now’s the moment. Come to engine room quick.
When Bill the American entered the engine room, he looked about eagerly. When he didn’t see anyone on the upper walkway, he took the stairs down to the engine room floor. At just the right moment, Julius reached out between steps and grabbed his ankle. As he went to take his next step down, his foot remain in place.
“What the… Darby?” Bill looked behind him.
Winton stepped out from behind a fifty-five-gallon barrel and leveled Derek’s submachine gun at him. “Not quite,” he said. “Hands up.”
Bill’s face paled, but he did as told. He looked disappointed as much as afraid. Disappointed at being captured or at not getting revenge on Darby, Winton couldn’t tell. Julius stepped out and pulled the gun strap off the American’s shoulder. They both motioned him back toward the big tank and followed after.
“Shit. Is that Darby?” Bill bent and squinted in the dim space.
“Yep,” Winton said.
Bill looked over his shoulder. “You gonna kill me?” he asked, jaw still.
“Not if I don’t have to.”
The American submitted to being tied up once he saw what they’d done to Derek. “I can’t believe it.” His stunted speech couldn’t hide his amazement. “You smashed that fat prick. Could still turn out to be an okay day for me.”
“That’s what we’re hoping,” Julius said.
“How many are there of you?” Winton asked. “Tell me straight and I’ll be ginger with the gag.”
“Seven, including Darby.”
Winton counted three crew in the engine room “Anders, Jemma, Joey, and…”
“Brenner. Listen. What’s your plan?”
Bill seemed as Winton had earlier, desperate to survive.
“My plan is to get my brother and get out of here.”
“Brenner is all right. He just drives the boat.” Bill had broken out in a sweat. “Don’t hurt him. The one you have to kill is Jemma. She won’t let you go quietly if you escape. She’ll hunt you down.”
Winton was getting the idea that the crew wasn’t entirely tight—not with Bill, anyway.
“What about Anders?”
“Just business. Trying to make deals and sell product. He’s the reasonable one.”
“Do you know who Remus is?”
“Heard the name, but not really. Anders deals with all that himself. ”
Winton sent a text from Bill’s phone. They pulled the same trick on Brenner, and tied him up next to Bill. He was in his forties and had a greying mane of scruff and wild eyebrows above intelligent eyes.
“What the fuck just happened?” Brenner asked Bill in a gravelly Aussie accent.
“Guess we didn’t know who we were dealing with,” Bill said, looking at Winton.
“He killed Darby,” Brenner said. “Pushed a bloody great tank on him.”
“He bit his ear off, too.”
David looked his grizzled face and world-weary eyes at Winton, face bloody, holding two machine guns. “Well, fuck me.”
Julius put his gag in, then one for Bill, just over his mouth, gentle as promised.
“We’ll try to have this all cleared up soon,” Julius said.
The two captives glanced at one another, then nodded to them. Unlike the others, Brenner didn’t have a cell and carried a radio instead. Winton took it off him.
That left Joey, Jemma and Anders, who were off the ship talking with the union leaders.
Winton rushed up the stairs and down the passageway to the other side of the ship. His hip had stiffened from his efforts, and he had to hop and limp to keep going. He finally reached a rounded rectangular hatch with a wheel lock. He cranked it to the left, and cranked and cranked. Finally a scrapping sound, a clunk, and the door swung inward.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
A thin man wearing a dirty white undershirt with blood stains on it stood on a chair. He was tapping on the ceiling with a pebble.
“Lucas,” Winton gasped.
Lucas Chevalier gazed over, standing in profile. His black hair was slicked with sweat, his face drawn and ashen. “Big brother,” he whispered. Lucas stepped down off the chair and turned face-on. His left arm hung unnaturally. He trudged closer to Winton and the light. “Big brother…”
Where Lucas’ hand and forearm should have been, there was nothing. Open air. The few inches remaining below his elbow were capped with a mess of bloody gauze and medical tape.
Lucas shuffled forward on shaky legs, until he stood fully in the green light of the passage lamp. He leaned wearily on the door frame, his expression genial and far away. “Big brother. You saved me.”
TWENTY-ONE
Winton’s senses took in more alarming information than he could begin to process at that moment. His brother was alive, but he was not whole, nor was he lucid. Winton couldn’t tell if he was on some sort of drug, had a blood infection, or if his mental state was the effect of his trauma.
Winton snapped himself into action and gave Lucas all the support he could muster. Together they ambled down the passageway.
Julius appeared around the corner. His eyes trained on Lucas, then the missing arm. “Oh, shit.”
“I know,” Winton said, even though he did not in fact feel like he knew anything anymore.
“The three of them are heading back onto the ship.” Julius planted a finger in his palm. “We got to go.”
“There’s only one way off the ship. They’ll be coming right up the stairs.” Winton latched on an idea. “Julius, take my brother into the engine room. Keep an eye on our prisoners from the upper walkway.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Winton tapped the radio in his pocket. “I’m going to distract them, so you can get Lucas down the stairs.”
“How will I know when to run for it?”
“You’ll hear a gun shot.”
Julius’ eyes went wide.
“Just trust me. Get Lucas to the truck.”
; Julius got an arm around Lucas, acting as a much better support than Winton ever could.
“Lucas?” Winton asked.
Lucas looked down at him.
“Who did this to you?”
Lucas turned away from his missing arm, as if not wanting to be reminded of it. “Her.” His voice quavered, and he sniffled. “Jemma.”
Winton nodded at Julius. “Go.”
After they parted ways, Winton positioned himself in the dark and made his call on the radio. “Boss!”
A few seconds passed. “Yeah, Brenner.”
“Everyone come to the cargo bay. Quick.”
Footsteps echoed through the hulk, growing louder as they neared the cargo bay door. Sunlight coming through the open hatch above was now replaced with yellow light from the loading dock. It was fainter, but bright enough to silhouette the figures of the three remaining crew as they entered.
“Brenner?” Anders searched about the cargo bay, doing a casual turn. “Good news, mate. It looks like these union fellas are picking up what we’re putting down. As long as we have the copper, Remus has to run protection for us.”
The door to the passageway creaked shut behind them. Joey turned toward it, and his weapon and sling came off his shoulder easy as could be. Before he could react, Winton pressed the muzzle of Bill’s submachine gun into his stomach. “Back up,” he ordered softly. “Hands on your head.”
Joey backed into the light, hands on his head, appearing more confused than scared.
“Keep going,” Winton said.
Joey kept backing away until nearing Jemma’s side.
“What’s this?” Anders asked.
“Fuck. It’s the dwarf!” Jemma reached for her waistband.
Winton pulled the trigger, and three rounds belched from his gun. The weapon had more kick than he was prepared for, especially firing one-handed, but each shot hit her, climbing up her torso. Jemma stumbled, then sat down hard and tipped over, dead.
“What the—” Anders started forward.
“Freeze!” Winton said. “Fucking freeze!”
Winton didn’t know who to watch closer.
“Brenner!” Anders yelled. “Derek!”