Dead Reckoning (30 page)

“Ok, so I still don’t know if you are there, but I am willing to take the chance after all that has happened. I still hate you, and I still give up. But I need Kate and my children to be ok. I need them. I don’t know how I’ll care for them, but if you are there and can do this, I will figure it out. I don’t expect an answer since I’ve never heard one before. But we’ll see what happens. At least I need to know what happened to them. That won’t give me a reason to live, but at least I can put a bullet in my head, hoping to see them on the other side. Maybe I’ll see you, for all I know, and then I can tell you what I think about you putting us through all this.”

I didn’t say those things out loud, but somehow it made me feel better to articulate them to myself. Then doubt crept back in, and I felt ridiculous.

“Do you think it is wrong to keep sex slaves?” I asked Joe as we ambled along.

“Yes,” he replied.

“I don’t understand how people can behave like that.”

“Hunger,” Joe replied.

“That fat bastard I killed yesterday wasn’t hungry,” I said.

“Maybe not for food,” Joe retorted.

“Whoever ran those people off the road back there wasn’t looking for food,” I said.

“What made people ever behave?” I continued.

Joe explained his theory that, at some point during our evolution, a few people found it easier and more beneficial to get along with each other than to oppose one another. It came to be considered good or moral to treat each other in a certain way.

“Then,” he said, “C
ertain moral beings noticed that not everyone was behaving this way. They had to come up with some way to make them all toe the line. They invented gods and devils and heaven and hell to scare everyone into good behavior.”

“So you think morality came first and then religion.” I stated rather than asked.

“Yes. I believe religion was simply man’s attempt to make everyone conform,” Joe said.

“But what makes two heathens like us behave?”

“The ironic thing is,” Joe replied “The religious types try to behave out of fear that the great watcher is watching, whereas you and I behave because we know that they were right in the first place: it is just better to get along. So, I ask you: who is really moral, the ones who behave out of fear, or you and me, who behave just because it’s right?”

I thought about that as we walked along. Then my mind wandered to a different subject.

“You know what my worst fear is, Joe?” I asked. “That what seems most likely is actually true—that, like a candle, we die and then, poof, we’re done. And I’ll never get to find out the answers I’ve always wanted to know.”

“If there is a god and you could ask him one question, what would it be?” Joe asked.

“What is outside this universe?” I responded immediately.

“Not one of the usual questions like what was the purpose
?” Joe asked.

“No, by the time you get to God, the answers to most of the big questions will already be obvious,” I said.

Joe smiled. “You are a surprising person,” he said. “I’d ask him what we were supposed to have learned from little babies suffering. And then I’d tell him what he can do with that answer.”

We reached a fork in the road. One path circled back around toward Holmes
Harbour and, although circuitously, from whence we had come, while the other made directly for Shadow Point and my family. I had thought long and hard about a request I was about to make of Joe, and I knew this was the best and last place to make it. Any further and Joe would have to backtrack, which wasn’t that big of a deal, but truth be told, I felt a strong desire to be alone when I discovered whatever I was to discover at Shadow Point.

Joe and I stopped and looked back and forth down the east-west oriented road.

“It’s right, right?” Joe asked.

I indicated that it was.

“What’s the matter then?”

“Listen Joe. There is something I have to ask you.”

“Shoot,” Joe said.

“You remember when we first met, you asked me what else you should be doing besides walking around aimlessly?”

“Of course. And you think you know what I should be doing?”

“I made a promise to some people, and I don’t think I can keep it. But I think you might be able to.”

23

Town of Langley, Whidbey island, WA

Having parted ways with Joe, I suddenly felt very alone. Whidbey Island started to seem more like a morgue than a quiet tourist island. The thing about Whidbey Island is that it gets spookier as you go east. The west side is weathered and beaten from the incessant parade of Pacific storms, and while it has plenty of vegetation, it tends to be sparse in places, which makes the west side seem lighter. The east side, by contrast, is densely vegetated and overgrown. It seems dark because, in the afternoon, it is. The beach upon which Kate’s parents lived was called Shadow
Beach precisely because, as an east-facing beach with high cliffs, it came into shadow in the early afternoon and remained that way until dark. The mornings were nice and warm, but the afternoons and evenings were shadowy and cool, exacerbated by the afternoon north wind that frequented the area during the summer months.

             
Less than a half hour after leaving Joe, I came within sight of Langley, WA. I didn’t need to go down into the town as the road to Shadow Beach passed by on a bluff above. I stopped for a moment at the overlook and scanned the town for any activity. A few overturned cars sat rusting in the middle of Main Street. The windows of many buildings had been broken out. One building—a restaurant, if memory served—had burned to the ground. A huge fishing boat remained perched in dry-dock on the beach down below town.

             
Langley always struck me as odd. It was a town of over 5,000 residents, but I found no reason for its existence. It sat next to the water but seemed to ignore it. It was the only tourist town I had ever been to that seemed oblivious to the one thing that might have attracted tourists. Not one of the beach side restaurants actually faced the water. Buildings blocked the entire shoreline from the rest of the town. Stairs that led down to the water and the so-called waterfront below looked like more of an afterthought than a planned attraction. A single, poorly maintained dirt road provided the only vehicle access to the beach, and even that led only to a dilapidated marina. Langley couldn’t claim to be a gateway to anything, a ferry from the mainland didn’t terminate there, the town effectively blocked its only view, it lacked a great waterfront, and it wasn’t even at a crossroads. There simply wasn’t much there. Yet it existed.

             
I noticed heaps in the road—bodies I guessed. Then a flash of movement in an alley, which vanished before I could lock onto it. Someone was down there; time to move on.

             
I had but a mile left, and I knew it would be a spooky walk. Within a few minutes, I entered what the kids called “the tunnel.” Whenever we drove the road north of town to Shadow Beach, the kids talked about the tunnel. Less affected by the warm, drying late afternoon sun, that part of the island stayed moist, and virtually everything grew there. Competition for sunlight was fierce, and as a result, the ground rarely got any of it. Pines towered above, and species such as alder and madrona, complete with its constantly peeling red bark, over slung and enclosed the roadway. Branches tangled and twisted their way across the road, except for a small square, perhaps ten feet on a side, through which trucks passed. Even at the top of the day in the height of summer, that road was dark, moist, and mossy.

             
A chill leapt up my spine as I passed a dripping ceramic driveway sentry. Covered in green slime, the little troll’s eyes peered out from under the hood of its raincoat and followed me as I passed. How the driveway’s owner could have enjoyed this greeting every time he returned home eluded me.

             
Close then, I began to run. I crested the last rise and saw them not fifty yards in front of me. It stopped me cold in my tracks. Six of them stood over a corpse in the road, their mouths dripping with blood. They ripped and tore at the flesh of the thing, fighting amongst themselves for the best morsels. One of them stopped and stared blankly in my direction, chewing and oblivious to my presence.

             
I pulled out my gun and tried to recount how many bullets were left. I had additional ammunition in my pack, but there would be no time to reload once they noticed me. And there would be no sneaking past them. They could not be fooled, eluded, or outran. I had to scare them off or kill them all. It was them or me, one on six.

             
Frozen, I didn’t know how to proceed. I doubted whether I could hit one from fifty yards and I didn’t dare waste any of the bullets left in the clip, so I decided to walk straight up to them. I hadn’t made three steps when they heard me, or smelled me, or sensed me. Whatever it was, they all turned simultaneously and began walking toward me.

             
God damn it! I've come five thousand fucking miles and I'm going to be killed within a mile of the house. I struggled to remember how many bullets my gun held. It was a Glock-19, I thought, so does that mean it had 19 bullets in the clip? My mind reeled as I remembered bits of conversations about magazines versus clips and bullets versus cartridges. I felt for Jeremy Peterson’s gun and noted its position in my belt.

             
Oh, hell! This is it. I stood up straight and quieted my mind and controlled my breathing and heart rate. Just shoot and if you run out of bullets then fight with your hands. I'm not going to die in this damned street by a pack of wild dogs!

             
I raised my gun and aimed at the leader. At 20 yards, I decided it was close enough, and I fired. I hit it. It fell in the road and flailed, trying to get back up. It finally laid still. The others recoiled from the gunshot and stopped to look at the leader. The two taking up the rear suddenly scampered into the woods, but the other three tore out after me. I fired as rapidly as possible at the approaching menace. Within the first half-dozen shots, two of the three fell and struggled in the road. I took a bead on the final predator and fired repeatedly. Finally, within a few feet of me the last dog whimpered and fell to the pavement as my gun began to click harmlessly.

             
I dropped to my knees and gasped for breath as my heart pounded in my chest.

             
Suddenly, I remembered the other two dogs and snapped back to the present. I wiped the sweat from my vision with the back of my hand and pulled out Jeremy’s gun. Thinking better of trusting my life to an unfamiliar gun, I ripped off my pack, fished out the other magazine and clicked it into my gun. I pulled back the slider to chamber a round, stood up, and held it out in front of me. I kept my eyes ahead as I shoved Jeremy’s gun into my pack and slipped the pack back on.

             
I scanned the woods as I edged down the road. The dog closest to me clung to life with shallow, raspy breaths. I decided not to waste another bullet on it. The next two lay still in the road, and the fourth followed me with its eyes, the rest of its body paralyzed and useless. I stopped at it and considered its pink, foaming mouth. A sudden shutter ran up my spine.

             
I walked up to the twisted heap of flesh, organ, and bone in the road. It bore no resemblance to anything in my experience. It surely wasn’t human, but the steam that rose from it indicated it had been alive in the not too distant past. Maybe it had been one of the pack. Or maybe the poor creature just happened by only to be ambushed. With a little different timing, I could have been that meal.

             
Keeping a wary eye on the woods and my ears peeled to my rear, I jogged the rest of the length of the road and turned onto Shadow Beach Lane. Just as I entered the road, I heard a gunshot echo through the woods from the direction of Shadow Beach. The road wound down another half mile before hair-pinning back toward Kate’s parents’ house. With urgency, I instead took a shortcut sprinting over a cliff.

             
I bounded recklessly down the hill, fearing that I had come all that way only to have gunshots end my family minutes before I got there. I saw some movement and stopped in a small clearing just above the beach.

             
The child was on one knee, flipping rocks over and poking at the sand. At least from my vantage point it appeared to be a child. He held a shotgun in one hand. I slowly moved closer, careful not to give away my position. He wore dirty blue jeans, and a tear down one side revealed a gaunt white leg. His filthy, red hooded sweatshirt stood in stark contrast to the cobalt water of the bay and the dreary, gunmetal sky. Could that be my boy? He was a little skinny, but that would not have been a surprise after all that time, and he was about the right age.

A single flake of snow fell somewhere between us and interrupted my gaze.

He stood up and threw a rock into the cold, still water. It tumbled end for end through the air and pierced the surface without creating a splash. Ripples spread out in perfect circles and upon reaching some predetermined distance, vanished back into the tranquil water. He took a handful of pebbles and whirled around, spraying them across the water. He crouched down and paused as if to study the sound of the stones tearing into the water. Maybe he imagined himself firing an automatic weapon or ducking for cover as bullets pierced the water around him. Must be a boy. He spun as he finished the throw and I caught a glimpse of the side of his face. Obscured by long, sandy blond hair that protruded from under his hood, I could not identify it.

Right color hair.

              He walked a little to the right, and, even from a distance, I could hear the sound of gravel crunching underfoot through the still air. He turned over a larger stone and pounced on something like a cat on a mouse. He picked it up and studied it for a moment, flipped it over several times, and then put it in his mouth.

There was a sudden disturbance in the water; a strange linear ripple emanating from left of the boy’s position straight out into the bay—too straight to be natural. He scrambled toward the origin of the disturbance, set down the gun, and grabbed a fishing pole from among the weeds. The pole heaved forward as the boy struggled against the creature on the other end. Each time he pulled
, a streak in the water appeared as the line tightened, then as he relaxed and reeled, the line slipped back under the surface. A fisherman's worst enemy poked its head up through the water and looked curiously at the boy. Then the seal disappeared back under the surface.

             
It was not long before the boy dragged the flapping prize onto the beach, silver flashes piercing the monochrome scene as the fish flipped from side to side. The fish writhed and jerked, and its gills heaved mightily in and out as it struggled for oxygen. The boy grabbed a large rock, and with a swift, sharp chop, ended the commotion.

Suddenly, I heard rapid footfalls behind me. As I dove down into the weeds, my knee landed square on a twig and the snap of it cut into the cold air like a firecracker. I heard a skidding sound as the person came to an abrupt stop and cautiously listened for more sound. I held my breath. After a few tense seconds, the footsteps resumed, and the figure ran past me down toward the water. I slowly lifted myself up and peered down toward the bay. It was another child about the same size as the first one, but with much broader shoulders—likely another boy. He was also armed and carried something furry by the legs. He set down his rifle and dropped the creature on the beach.

I saw a brief glint of steel as the first boy took out a knife and began cleaning the fish. He plunged the knife into the fish’s underside and in one clean motion, opened the cavity from the anus to the jaw line. He ripped out the innards and dropped them on the beach and then, as if thinking better of it, scooped up most of the mess and tossed it into the water. With a scooped hand, he shoveled water onto the beach and washed much of the remaining evidence from the scene. It was either a small silver or a very small King Salmon, but food either way.

Good for them. Well done.

The spectacle suddenly made me aware of my own building hunger. He slit the skin from head to tail along the spine, peeled down the skin revealing the pink flesh. A few more cuts and he had several small boneless salmon fillets. He cleaned the fish just as I had taught my son to do it when he was old enough to safely handle a knife. The other boy moved in and after a brief, barely audible disagreement, they began eating.

A shrill screech poured out from the forest behind me. An emaciated crow flew over me and swooped down over the boys, searching for leftovers. It landed about ten feet from the boys and hopped toward their day
’s catch. One of the boys edged over toward the guns, while the other picked up a tiny bit of the entrails and offered it to the bird. The bird got about as near as a bird will get, and the boy lunged forward but missed. Millions of years have taught birds just how close they can get to potential predators. After a while, the only birds left are the ones that know how close is close enough.

The bird flew off toward me in a fit, shrieking loudly. As the bird approached, its eyes locked onto me, and it let out another series of caws and began circling over me. My hair stood on end and my pulse quickened. I heard pellets spray into the forest behind me and then I heard the shotgun blast.

“Don’t shoot!” I yelled. “Charlie, is that you?”

I felt around for any kind of projectile, and my hand landed on the freshly broken twig. I hurled it toward the fowl, and it flew off. When I stood up, the boys were gone.