Ragnarok

by Michael Smorenburg

  The word ‘authorities’ rankled him and Tegan regretted having added that mention.

  “Nope.”

  He’d clammed up. Everything in his tone and body language said the interview was over.

  “Well, I appreciate it,” Tegan smiled, and extended her hand.

  “Sure,” the captain said, but ignored the gesture, opting for his cigarette box.

  Wasn’t that fun? she said to herself as she slid into the rental car. Touchy!

  She was forty miles north of their rental home, an easy hour’s drive. The sun was not quite at noon and she was rather peckish, so she turned to the town in search of some early lunch.

  Over lunch, she mulled over the unpleasant departure.

  Her dad had arrived home with more catch than they had room in the freezer for, and they’d quickly had to make friends with the neighbors to see that it didn’t spoil.

  Over dinner, he’d been planning his next trip out to the reef.

  Tegan had bridled at the excess of it.

  “I thought there was a ban on it since midnight?”

  “We have challenged it,” John had asserted. “In court.”

  “What?” She’d flown into indignant rage. “You’re not serious? The authorities are being responsible and halting the re-extinction and you challenge them to reverse it? You really won’t stop until it’s all gone, will you?” And then she’d added what she now regretted, “You make me sick!”

  She may well have been PMSing, she now admitted to herself over a lonely meal. Certainly, Pete’s absence was making her very emotional and ratty.

  She’d stormed to bed and left early this morning without saying goodbye.

  She wasn’t sure how she was going to face her folks again. Nothing like this had ever occurred between them.

  Trying to still the voices in her head, she took out her computer and started answering emails.

  When that was done, she had an idea. She opened Google Earth and found her location on it, then she zoomed out the view and took a look at both the relative distance to her rental home and the trawler berth.

  For the fun of it, she placed pins at these locations, naming each, and then used the measuring tools to get straight-line distances.

  As she already knew, she was about forty miles from home. She found Pouch Cove mentioned by the captain. It was about four miles from the end of the point… the peninsula that the boat of interest had rounded.

  “Huh,” Tegan said out aloud.

  A quick Google search turned up the media reports of the sporadic attacks on hamlets along the coast, and a bit of pouring over Google Map identified the locations.

  She put pins on the map and identified them ‘Attack #1’, ‘Attack #2’, and ‘Attack #3’.

  There were no details in the news for the most recent inflatable boat found adrift, but the waitress came back very quickly with news that one of the other patrons thought it was about eight miles northeast of Pouch Cove.

  Pouch Cove again! she pondered as she put the pin on the map and marked it simply ‘Inflatable’.

  The first attack was eight miles across a bay, to the west of the point.

  She researched ‘speed of a rowing boat’ and Wikipedia quickly returned her answer.

  “A rower can maintain 40 strokes per minute for only a brief period. Longer, narrower rowboats can reach 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph) but most rowboats of 4.3 m (14ft) can be rowed at 3–4 knots (5.6–7.4 km/h; 3.5–4.6 mph).”

  “Interesting…” she said aloud.

  Longer, narrower rowboats… 8mph… So, an hour’s row. Hmmm.

  The calculator on her phone said that the Bay Roberts attack was nearly three hours’ row.

  Three hours out, three hours back… Hmmmm, she pondered it.

  The Bell Island attack was two out, two back.

  And then she realized that she was measuring everything from that point, the point eighteen miles from where she was sitting.

  Why am I drawing from this point? she asked herself.

  The answer was obvious as soon as she asked herself the question. The lines from each attack back to the point were like the spokes on a wheel. It made her blood run cold and she shivered, checking the hair standing up on her forearms.

  Was she the only one who’d seen this? she asked herself. Surely not!

  She went back to the media reports of the attacks. All after midnight. All in line of sight of the point.

  Very curious.

  She felt deep inside her that she was onto something, something huge.

  With a bit of calculation, she figured out that the three attacks occurred within one, two and three hours of 9 p.m.

  The first at 10 p.m., the second at 11:30 p.m., and the third just after midnight.

  Presuming she was right, the perpetrators came by sea—from the point or close to it—could see the lights of their target, and were drawn to them like a moth to a flame… and always left their base three hours after dark.

  Wow! she exclaimed to herself. Now what?

  It wasn’t healthy to talk to oneself, but she really didn’t care right now.

  Should she take this to the cops? To the coast guard? At least tell the manager of the restaurant?

  Go take a look?

  Leave a note?

  What about Pete? Tell him? she asked herself under her breath.

  And then it struck her. She’d left her crypto phone on charge on her bedside table.

  Shit!

  But now she didn’t care and pulled up his number on her regular “never contact me” phone.

  Hey Mister Gun Runner she typed into Messenger, long time no hear. Lot to tell u. Up in Newfoundland on the trail of Incident. Mapped attacks. Think I have something huge… just HUGE.

  Her finger hovered over the send button.

  She now knew she was going to send it, but should she add more or remove anything?

  She re-read it and just hit the button before she could ask the question again.

  His last logged entry to the app was almost two weeks ago.

  She knew nothing about this man and had no way to find out. His name… if that was his name! she suddenly thought. Brought up nothing in the news.

  He was not part of some catastrophe. It was a small consolation.

  She knew nobody she could ask about him. He was a spook. Truly a spook.

  Next move? she wondered.

  It seemed kind of obvious… She had time to kill, wasn’t thrilled about heading home, and had nothing to do when she got there that she wasn’t already doing… Take a drive up the eighteen miles to the point and see what she could see. It seemed like a good idea.

  Rather than just go, she did some research.

  Google Earth showed two roads marked Routes 20 and 21 that would take her north.

  The captain had said the wooden boat full of men had rounded the cape.

  Amazingly, the shortest common distance—the travel vectors—from all of the attacks terminated at the tip of the peninsula. With a bit of calculation, she found that the travel times of one, two and three hours from the tip of the peninsula suggested that if a rowing boat left at 9 p.m., it would arrive approximately when the attacks took place.

  Humans are creatures of habit, she reminded herself. A raiding party would tend to depart at the same hour each time, she surmised. This new clue suggested that her location hypothesis was a very strong one.

  She scouted the satellite image to glean what she could of the peninsula.

  Route 20 extended as a suburban road almost all the way to the point. It terminated at Biscayan Cove on the eastern side, then it looked like a foot track hugged the coast for less than a mile to the end of the cape.

  Swooping into the satellite image, she saw that the point offered a vantage point that gave an excellent view all the way back down the west side of the peninsula. The entire coast back to Bell Island was totally visible… except… except for one small inlet just five hundred meters down the western side.

>   She switched to a more vertical perspective and zoomed down onto the funnel-shaped bay that bent slightly and then flared out wider, just like a keyhole, with a shale beach evidently out of sight from the ocean.

  Surely not?

  Her heart was racing and her vision bounced with the excitement of the prospects.

  The cliffs around that keyhole bay were digitally measured on the satellite image so that, as she ran her cursor around them, the meter height readout showed a sheer one-hundred-meter drop-off.

  And then she saw that a stream from higher up meandered down and disappeared into a gulley that seemed to exit into the bay below.

  She zipped down to place herself on the cliff and saw that it seemed unlikely that a hiker could see the beach.

  “Huh!” she exclaimed and then flew her view out over the sea, spun the orientation around and looked back from the ocean toward the bay.

  At the time of day that the satellite image had been taken, the bay was mostly filled with shadow, but a beach was clearly there.

  Jeepers…!

  Her hand was trembling with excitement.

  She flew the perspective in at sea level to confirm what seemed obvious from above… that the bend in the channel did indeed make beach invisible from the sea.

  “Cunning,” she said aloud. Very, very, very smart!

  It was like she was already there. Had already discovered her quarry hiding out… whomever that quarry might be.

  She dropped Google’s little man icon onto the road of the map and dropped into street view where she pushed along the roadway to see if there was anything else she needed to know.

  It was noon.

  She could easily drive the twenty or so miles, scout for an hour or two, and still be home before sunset.

  She called for the bill.

  By 1 p.m., she had reached the end of the road, parked and took a cursory look around.

  Down broad wooden stairs, was a slatted timber slipway with upturned dinghies most likely belonging to the residents of the sparsely scattered homes she’d passed on the way in.

  She was no seafarer, but the launch site looked like it needed particularly calm conditions. Today the sea was coming in lumpy and angry from the east, so no boats would be out and nobody was about.

  The head of the path she’d seen on Google Earth led off close to her parked car. It was sign-posted ‘Cripple Cove Link’.

  “Very nice,” she said sarcastically as she passed the sign. I don’t even want to know how it got its name, she thought.

  The path climbed gently toward a prominent ridge, then doubled back on itself in a series of switchbacks until she was looking down onto a wild bay with the most northerly lookout point beyond it.

  At a guess, she estimated the path to be about one hundred meters above the water.

  So, this was it! Two hours ago, the whole search had suddenly come together for her on a map, and now she was closing in quickly on finding out if the idea held water.

  She thought about calling her folks, but still felt the pangs of regret at her own outburst. It would be better to talk in person.

  Instead, she recorded a voice packet for Pete on her messaging app.

  “Hey Mister Gun Runner. Excuse the panting but I’m on quite a steep mountain path, taking a look at a hunch I have about the attacks. Thought I’d share it with you in case… well… you know.”

  She let go of the record button and the message whooshed away on its lightspeed course to some unknown location around the world.

  Silly! she admonished herself and regretted having sent such a melodramatic slice of her mind to essentially a stranger who—although he still knotted her stomach—had in all reality become almost a figment of her imagination.

  She was now at the junction where the path descended toward the point and lookout some distance below. From what she could see, it would not provide her with any better view than she already had, so she wavered on continuing.

  The sun seemed to have canted too far over in the sky, yet her wristwatch confirmed that it was already almost two. It didn’t possible that she’d been walking an hour.

  Yikes!

  The excitement of the chase had compressed time.

  No matter, she thought, the path home was mostly downhill. It wasn’t a complete catastrophe if she finished her investigation soon.

  The signpost had said ‘Cripple Cove Link.’ …Link? The path offered no circuit that would take her a bit more to the south. She was expecting a loop that would do so. Indeed, hadn’t it looked like a continuous path round the headland and back to the destination? She reviewed her memory but couldn't recall it clearly.

  The bush didn’t seem too thick, so she estimated her best trajectory through it to take her the few hundred yards to the gulley and beach below, and struck out.

  It was slower going than she at first estimated, but within twenty minutes she came to a sheer cliff that felt like it ran perpendicular to the coast.

  Indeed—across a narrow void, she saw the opposite and facing cliff. Below her must be the gulley.

  This must be it!

  The edge was hard to discern because it sloped away from her and was thickly entangled with foliage.

  Trying to get a better more vertical view down onto the beach that she knew was there, the pea-sized gravel under her feet turned her shoes into roller-skates and she accelerated dangerously toward the precipice. The only way to stop was to lurch to one side and make a grab for a branch. She hit the ground flat on her side, knocking the wind from her lungs and sending a small avalanche of scree and talus down through the bush, plunging it into the void above the water.

  Shit!

  She lay a moment panting with fright.

  Gingerly pulling herself to her feet by a branch thick enough to hold her weight, she gained enough confidence to lean out to get a look, spying only the very corner of the beach she’d come to investigate.

  So close, so very close to crossing this lead off of her investigation, but it was too darned dangerous, she decided.

  She’d come back by boat. Charter a ride or pick better weather and see if she could find a friendly local down at that slipway to row her around.

  Actually, she thought, if she just knocked on a few doors—with such relatively calm waters in the lee of the peninsula, locals probably visited this beach quite regularly—someone could cross it off for her without much more ado.

  She cautiously made her way back to more level ground, dusted herself off, inspected the scrape on her elbow and hip and began to make headway back to the path.

  But something caught her attention, the burbling of water. The brook she’d seen on the satellite image. It was coming from somewhere not too far away, off to her right.

  Won’t hurt, she re-assured herself and changed course.

  The brook was not much more than a garden hose, but it tinkled crystal clear and tasted good to a parched throat.

  Up above, was a solid blanket of foliage laid out by the towering trees that enjoyed these comely surroundings and sweet water.

  Instinctively, she began to follow the water’s course.

  A riverbed must be easy to follow, she concluded, as she pushed aside brush and ducked under branches. The course was steep but manageable, solid underfoot and not too slippery.

  It was going very well indeed.

  She looked back but couldn’t see much for the bush, yet the cliffs closing in on either side told her that she was perhaps already halfway down.

  She came to a small waterfall and halted.

  It seemed impassable.

  She took a firm grip on a branch with the girth of a broomstick and tested it to see if it would hold. It proved amply solid, so she leaned out for a better look. It was the height of about two storeys down to a small pool, black with depth. The small cliff appeared slippery, but over to one side where it made a corner with the valley cliff was a natural set of steps.

  She made her way over for a closer inspection.
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br />   It seemed easy enough, but perhaps not, she second-guessed herself, erring on the side of caution.

  She stood a moment looking up and around at this Eden. The air was now rather chilly on skin moistened by the exertion of the climb in the shade of the fading afternoon, and that’s when she felt the first hint of a sore throat…

  Darn it.

  The first autumn colds were already gripping the northern hemisphere and she hadn’t yet had her flu shots. She couldn’t afford to get sick.

  And then she heard it.

  Laughter. Men’s laughter.

  She cocked her head, wondering if it was a trick of the stream or adrenaline of the hunt imposing a phantom in her mind.

  She caught the sounds again. More than one man. Not raucous laughter, just passing the time; more from camaraderie than an outright laugh.

  Christ!

  Adrenaline coursed her veins and her instinct was to run—to turn and run for her life—but she hid because the sound was already too close.

  She craned her neck to sneak a look down through the thicket beyond the pool, and saw that she had time to quickly adjust her position and remain camouflaged by the foliage while still being able to see through it.

  The voices were audible now. Guttural sounds to her ear. Gruff voices speaking confidently and easily. Three men.

  Then she saw them, shaggy-haired and dressed like beggars in ill-fitting sacks.

  Fuck!

  Her mind was exploding and she kept her head low, not risking even another glance.

  Closer the voices came until she could discern the individuals of the group.

  They were at ease, unhurried. Their voices carried the warmth of bonds.

  She lay there listening, wondering if the sound of her thundering heart would give her away. They could not see her, and she could not see them over the ridge and twenty feet of space that separated them.

  In the agonizing moments, her mind began to play tricks. She convinced herself that a man was climbing the cliff, and she lay frozen and waiting for his face to appear at any moment.

  But he never appeared.

  Instead, the men sounded like they were washing. Bathing. Periods of silence, whooshes of water. A chuckle. Silence.

  And after an eternity of torture, there were sounds of them preparing to leave. Their voices were directed away from her, down the path.