The Stranger (9 page)

Eleven

Days slipped by in that breathless heat. In the cool of early morning I hooked driftwood from the lake. Sometimes I’d find human corpses in the shallows. Most were so far gone that you couldn’t tell if they were male or female. Young or old. Bread bandit or Yankee. They were mushy things resembling old leather satchels with ragged holes where the fish had picked away the soft tissues. They always went for the eyes, too. Fish must find eye meat the sweetest. Every so often Lake Coben would offer up a fresh specimen that proved to me that there were still people out there in the forests and hills beyond Sullivan. For reasons unknown to me they sometimes wound up dead in the lake. Maybe bread bandits hunted them down like wild dogs out there, beat them to death, then tossed them into a stream that fed the lake where they eventually floated here.

As the days passed there were no more outsiders showing up either. What’s more, I didn’t see any more of that light in the ruins of Lewis, so the urge to take a boat across there sort of went off the boil.

The rest of my workday was taken up with cutting the wood and delivering it in the pickup. With electricity rationed to those six hours in the evening, anyone wanting a hot drink or a cooked meal used wood stoves, which were nothing grander than barbecues out in their backyards.

Every night I fitted more stones to the tomb and made it that much larger.

Hey, it wasn’t all work. We went to the cinema to see a movie that we might have seen a dozen times before. After all, with the world in pieces there’d be no new features coming to town. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded. There was something magical about seeing the world as it once was, before the crash. Most nights the cinema was a good half full. Then there were the bars, the pool hall, bowling, or maybe just a tub full of beers swimming in a gallon of water and ice. A few of us would gather on a porch to sip beer while chewing the fat beneath starry skies.

To say the whole world had gone shit-faced sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? I remember the beach barbecue when we must have eaten a whole hog, grunt and all. There weren’t a lot of young people in Sullivan, but we made a real party of it at night. We emptied a few cases of wine while the empty beer bottles rose in a glittering pyramid on the sand. A kid with a Jeep that boasted the mother and father of all sound systems drove it down to the shore. The music boomed across the lake. If the 50,000 ghosts that must surely haunt Lewis had ears they’d have had a feast of music that night.

But there I go, remembering the good times. A kind of golden six weeks after the arrival of the pregnant woman and her family. There was no trouble. Unless you can count the underpants bunting that some drunken kids strung across the town hall. Or the Caucus complaining that certain work quotas weren’t being met. Like who cares that ten thousand tins of baked beans in warehouse A should have been moved two hundred yards to warehouse B? Or that some of the residents grumbled that the music was getting too loud? Or—horror of horrors—those young people were actually enjoying themselves and laughing in the streets at night? If you ask me, I say to hell with the whiny complaints. Those young people were taking a vacation from the cold, brutal reality surrounding us.

And yeah, you’ve guessed right. It was too good to last.

One Sunday in July a storm came down on the town like a landslide. Thunder. Lighting. Torrential rain. The lake turned to cream. Surf broke over the jetties. One of the fishing boats tore loose and went rolling away through the waves, never to be seen again.

The Gerletz family were the boat experts. They raced through the storm tying extra lines to the lake cruisers and fishing craft to stop them being carried away. They had their hands more than full taking care of all the island’s boats as well as their own fleet. Soon they called in more help. I found myself with Ben and one of the Gerletzs’ daughters, a big-boned twenty-one-year-old, along with half a dozen townspeople. We hauled small boats out of the water high up onto the beach, away from the pounding surf. Everyone was soaking wet. The temperature plummeted so much our bodies steamed as we worked our way along the shore, tying more lines to the big lake cruisers in the hope they wouldn’t be torn out into the lake where they’d be lost for sure.

And all the time we stumbled through lightning flashes, deafened by thunder that threatened to bring the entire sky crashing down.

That was the afternoon the whole world turned rotten again. It happened fast.

This is how fast.

We moved away from the main harbor area to a stretch of coast where free-floating cruisers were moored. These were simply roped to concrete anchors in the shallows or to three or four rickety jetties that clearly weren’t going to withstand this storm-force punishment.

Ben and a couple of middle-aged guys waded into the water to haul at a rowboat that had water sloshing ’round up to the seat planks.

“Leave that one,” Gerletz called over the thunder. “Get the big lake cruisers secure first. This wind’s going to rip them from the moorings.”

Quitting the rowboat, they waded to where a big white cruiser bounced on the surf. Miss Gerletz must have had muscles in her spit. She plunged into the water, reached up and grabbed the big boat by the guardrail post and dragged its prow to face the beach. “Tie that line to the cleat, then run it up to the concrete block on the beach.”

This we did, but the boat bucked crazy-horse style. Even with three of us holding onto the rope it buzzed through our fingers, dealing out friction burns right, left and center.

The boat was a real millionaire’s toy. I could see white leather upholstery in the cabin and gin and whiskey decanters rattling in their holders. You might wonder why we worked so hard to save these vessels. The truth of the matter is, they made useful workboats now. More than one millionaire’s cruiser was used to ship gasoline barrels ’round the island to the part of Lime Bay that was inaccessible by truck. Even so I couldn’t resist a grim smile. The boat I wrestled to save that gleamed as white as a cheerleader’s grin had the name
Crowther
painted on the stern in gold. No doubt Crowther junior would thank me for saving his family’s boat.

Yeah, right: some time never!

There wasn’t time to dwell on it. The Gerletz girl finished tying off the mooring to the concrete slab firmly anchored into the beach. “Next,” she panted, then hurried to another boat.

With waterspouts rearing up like goosenecks out in the lake and rain slamming into our faces, we moved forward. Inside forty-five minutes we’d secured extra mooring lines on a dozen lake cruisers. Some of these were hefty twenty-tonners that boasted galleys, cabins and bars. So far we hadn’t lost a single one on our stretch of coast. Some of the rowboats were a different matter. Several had sunk; one had been smashed into two clean halves across a rock. But they weren’t a real concern. There must be a good couple of hundred rowboats on Sullivan; plenty of those were pulled high and dry on the beach.

A real cause for concern was a big cruiser tethered to the jetty at the far end of the beach. This was the farthest from town, the least used, certainly the most poorly maintained. Even from a hundred yards away I could see the whole structure rock under the pressure of the huge cruiser that had broken loose at the stern. The winds caught the boat, swinging it out first into the lake then back and—CRASH!—against the jetty. By the time we’d reached the thing the jetty’s planks had started to pop off the timber frame wiThevery knock of the boat.

“Hurry up, you guys!” the Gerletz girl yelled through the storm. “We’re going to lose this one if we don’t work fast.”

“Someone’s all ready up there,” Ben shouted.

“See who it is.”

I looked at the figure that wrestled with a rope, trying to tie it to the iron ring set in the jetty.

“It’s Charlie Finch,” one of the men said, using his hand to shield his eyes from the stinging rain. “He’s got the front line tied.”

Gerletz moved up the plank. “We need to get the aft line secure, otherwise she’s going to smash the jetty to pieces.” The boat underlined what she’d just said by swinging back into the jetty again wiThenough force to make the whole thing shudder. Ahead another plank popped off the frame. “It’s coming apart at the seams.”

We were halfway along the jetty, all set to help the old cop tie down the boat, when he saw us. Then he did a weird thing.

He waved us back. “It’s OK,” he shouted. “I can handle it.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Finch,” Ben called. “We’ll give you a hand.”

“I’m fine!”

But he didn’t look fine. “I can handle it,” he repeated. “Go see to the other boats.”

“They’re all tied down,” Gerletz said. “This is the last one.”

The last one. But it was the big daddy of them all. This was a multimillionaire’s yacht with what must have been half a dozen cabins and a couple of bathrooms. In the near darkness the thing looked like a big, angry bear that swung from side to side to butt the jetty with those crashing blows.

“Go back,” Finch bellowed. “I’ll have it tied in a minute.”

“You’ll never manage it by yourself.” Gerletz shook her head in disbelief. “I’ll climb onto the boat and throw another line.”

“This is good enough.” The ex-cop looked furious that we were trying to help him. His eyes blazed at us through the spray.

“The line’s not strong enough,” she said. “You need thicker rope.”

“It’s not safe out here,” Finch insisted. “The surf will wash someone into the lake.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it.” With that, Gerletz bounded from the jetty onto the boat. The girl must have been scrambling across boats in all weathers since she could walk. Even though the boat bucked under her, she ran from one end of the deck to the other without touching the guardrail once. In seconds she’d pulled a hefty orange rope from a locker, uncoiled it, tied it to the deck cleat, then hurled it at us. The thing nearly got away from us into the surging water, but Ben got a grip, and soon we were all hauling the rope. It was like trying to pull a house from its foundations. For a while I didn’t think we’d bring the pitching boat under control, but at last it moved. Soon it lay hard against the jetty. It still rose and fell with the waves, but at least it no longer battered the wooden structure like a gigantic hammer.

“It should hold,” Gerletz shouted from the deck. “But I wouldn’t put my shirt on it.”

She returned partway down the deck, but instead of returning to the jetty she opened a cabin door.

Finch shouted at her. “Where are you going?” The alarm in the man’s voice startled her.

She looked back at him. “The boat’s too low in the water. She might have a leak.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Finch cried. “Leave it until the storm’s dropped.”

“But it might—”

“It’s not safe on there. The damn boat might sink with you on it.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, puzzled by his manner. “It won’t sink yet.”

“Get off the boat; you can’t be certain.” Lightning lit up his face. There was something terrible about his expression. Like he’d seen a room full of corpses. “Just get off the damned boat, OK?”

“No.” This time she sounded annoyed. “I’m not leaving it like this. You can wait on the beach, but I’m going to pump out the bilges.”

She’d ducked her head to go into the boat. Thunder crashed across the lake so loud that I saw Ben wince at the sheer volume. I also saw Finch. He was tense and staring at the boat. The man’s reaction to Gerletz entering the boat just didn’t make sense.

Or at least it didn’t make sense then.

Because five seconds later Gerletz came scrambling out of the boat onto the deck like she’d been thrown there. She looked through the dark maw of the cabin door, then called back to us. This time her voice was high, anxious-sounding.

“Greg. Come up here quick.”

With the boat securely tied I had no difficulty in climbing up onto its broad deck. I shot a questioning look at Gerletz.

“You better take a look at what’s in the cabin,” she said.

With the electric storm lighting the boat like a strobe I took a single cautious step through the doorway.

I stopped dead and whispered, “Oh, Christ.”

Outside Finch was groaning, “No, no, no, no . . .”

There in the gloom, lit only now and then by the flicker of lightning, were a group of faces. As I looked at them, they looked back at me, their eyes seeming to glow in the storm light.

“Valdiva,” called one of the men back on the jetty. “What the hell’s going on?”

I stepped back onto the deck. “There’s a bunch of kids in there.” I took a breath. “They’re outsiders.”

Twelve

This is when the impossible happened. When the town of Sullivan learned that the old ex-cop, Finch, had been hiding outsiders on the boat, it exploded. There’s no other word for it. As far as the public was concerned Finch became enemy number one. Not content with arresting him and locking him in the town’s four-cell jail, they wrecked his house and smashed up his car. Someone even went down to the bottom of his yard, where he kept his dog. They burnt the kennel, then shot his animal as it cried for its master. Man, you could have taken a knife and carved the mood of savagery that hung over the town.

Just twenty-four hours after the outsiders had been found, Finch stood trial in the courthouse. It sickened me. OK, Finch had risked infecting himself and thereby others on the island, but it was that volcanic eruption of public fury that got me. I know the people were scared, but it was how they dealt with it that turned my gut. As I sat on a patch of grass outside the courthouse that Monday afternoon I told myself there’d be a lynching. Hundreds of people seethed like a boiling lake outside the doors. Already some children had thrown stones. One cop wound up with a busted cheekbone. The fury had infected everyone from ninety-year-olds down to toddlers.

Ben sat beside me. He looked restless, uneasy. “They want Finch’s blood, don’t they?”

I nodded. “I think they’re going to get it, too.”

“So what’s the point of a trial? They’re going to find him guilty anyway.”

“They already have,” I told Ben. “Now they’re deciding the punishment.”

“Jeez . . . he was only trying to help the poor devils.”

I knew Ben had been down to the boat where the outsiders had been secretly hiding out and that had now become their prison that morning. I asked him what was going to happen to them.

“It’s already happened,” he replied. “The Caucus didn’t waste any time.”

I shot him a questioning look. The mood the townspeople were in, I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot the strangers dead just like they killed Finch’s dog.

Ben noticed the expression on my face. “Don’t worry, they haven’t been harmed. At least not yet. Old man Gerletz took the boat to the far end of the lake. They’ve been put down on the shore there.”

“Where they’ll be left to starve, no doubt.”

“Gerletz dumped some food with them. So they’re OK for now.”

“
For now
being the key phrase. Jesus, there might be bread bandits out there.”

Ben shrugged. “Orders from the Caucus.”

“Yeah, orders from the Caucus. What will they end up deciding next?”

“They’ve already ordered that the boat they were using be burnt out in the lake so as not to risk contamination.”

“But Finch could be contaminated. What’s the point in going to all that trouble when it might already be too late?”

Ben just shrugged again. “People are frightened; they’ve got so desperate they’ll do anything if they think it will save them.”

“From what I saw of the outsiders, they just looked like a couple of ordinary families. They had kids with them.”

“But you don’t know that. What would happen if you got that sixth sense of yours going? And you knew they were infected? You’d have waded into them with an ax, wouldn’t you?”

I looked at him, burning with anger for a moment; then it passed. “I guess you’re right, Ben.”

“This way the town has at last done its own dirty work instead of leaving it up to you.”

He was right again. Even so, it seemed so unfair. Those outsiders might have been free of the virus or whatever. They might have lived here and never developed Jumpy in twenty years. Just then, over at the courthouse, shouting rose into a roar. The doors opened and a bunch of cops and Caucus members left the building. They climbed into cars and screeched away.

“I guess they’ve made their decision,” Ben said, looking as if an unpleasant taste had found its way onto his tongue. “My guess is they’ve passed a death sentence.”

It turned out they had. But not in the way you might have thought.

I said to Ben, “Are you covering this story for the paper?”

“No, the editor’s handling this one himself.”

It was one of those times when you’re curious to find out what’s happening, but deep down you just don’t want to know. Finch had been found guilty. Whatever punishment they were going to impose on the guy, you knew it was going to be bad. Ben had used the word
draconian
. I wasn’t all that sure what draconian meant, but it sounded like a hard, evil word.

The crowd’s agitation infected Ben. He stood up, began to pace ’round, running his hands through his hair.

The crowd . . . no, for crowd read MOB . . . was beginning to yell. “Bring him out! Bring out Finch!”

I guessed they’d made up their own minds to tear him to crud there and then.

Then something started happening. A
something
that made me uneasy. I stood up to watch. Outside the courthouse is an open area. It’s called the Peace Garden. There are sculptures of children holding hands, a fountain, fenced areas of grass with flowering cherry trees. There’s also a kind of raised stage made from brick that probably is around waist high. In the past it’s been used for music recitals. Last Christmas the local children performed a carol service there. Standing in a tight pack, perhaps it would accommodate a choir of around twenty. There were concrete steps leading up to the stage at both ends where processions, or orchestras, or bands, could enter and leave without having to clamber up onto the thing.

Until a few minutes ago some kids had been there shouting abuse at the courthouse; now the cops came out of the building and cleared the stage. Then they formed a cordon around it to keep people off.

Ben swallowed. His hands were shaking worse than ever. “Jesus, I guess they’re going to bring out Finch and shoot him there.”

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” I suggested. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

“No.” His voice had a trembling quality to it, but he’d made up his mind. “No. I’m going to see this out. Then I’m going to write a story for the newspaper. I’m going to shame Sullivan for this.”

But the people of Sullivan had no symptoms of shame, or even second thoughts. A cheer went up. The crowd began to applaud another group of guys who’d emerged from the courthouse. For some reason they carried a table. By the time they reached the raised stage in the Peace Garden I could see it was a hefty antique piece of furniture. A good eight feet long, it had six legs that looked nearly as thick as tree trunks. With some sweating and cussing they managed to lift it up onto the stage. Moments later a couple of other guys appeared with a board, or what appeared to be a board, but then I realized it must have been a door that had been removed from of one of the offices inside the building.

“What on earth are they doing?” Ben shook his head.

“I don’t know, but my guess is they’ve got something unpleasant planned.”

The crowd milled, shouted. There was a sense of excitement now. A sense of
revenge
.

Over the next half hour the eager crowd saw plenty more activity. All of it mysterious, if not downright weird. A truck arrived piled with house bricks. After that an ambulance pulled up right by the stage where the table now stood.

OK. I’d got the picture now. Finch would be marched up onto the stage. A firing squad would assemble. Bang, he’s dead. His corpse gets dumped into the ambulance. Show’s over folks. There’s nothing more to see.

But they’d got something far worse planned.

Miss Bertholly neatly climbed up the steps onto the stage. She went to stand by the table. As if ready for the funeral that would take place any time now, she was already dressed in black. Another member of the Caucus (who I recognized as Crowther senior) handed her a microphone that was attached to the bullhorn he carried.

There was still a buzz of voices in the crowd. It fell silent the second she began to talk.

“Listen to me, please . . . may I have everyone’s attention? Thank you. Today is a black day for Sullivan. It’s going to become darker still. But this afternoon we must perform an act that will be burnt into our memories forever. Because we must have no repeat of the crime Charles Finch has committed. If it happens again, if strangers are admitted into this, our place of safety, it will probably spell the end for us all. We can’t allow this to happen. No one wants to see their wives, their husbands or children die. Let this be recorded, then. Finch has been found guilty of endangering our lives by bringing threat of the disease into our community. Those strangers might have been infected; there was a clear risk they might have infected us. Fortunately they never left the boat, so the chance that the disease will manifest itself here is slight. At a meeting of the Caucus in which the presiding officer, Justice Abrahams, was present, it was decided that the penalty for this terrible crime against our people could only be the most severe at our disposal. Death.” She paused to scan the crowd with her cold eyes, perhaps looking for any dissenters. There were none. People nodded. A man shouted, “Hear, hear.”

“However,” she continued, her amplified voice echoing from the buildings, “for Finch to be executed has been deemed insufficient punishment. After all, if Finch dies this afternoon he has in effect escaped the remorse he should feel for his crime.”

Ben and I looked at one another. What the hell was she talking about? Had she gone crazy?

“Therefore—” Her voice rang out loud enough to scare the doves from the rooftops. “Therefore, the penalty of death will be applied to the daughter of Charles Finch, one Lynne Margaret Wagner.”

The madness had started. I moved toward the stage, my heart pumping like fury, my fists clenched.

“It is the will of the Caucus that the penalty be executed now.”

I was hearing the words . . . I heard them loud and clear, but somehow they no longer made sense. I felt as if I’d broken loose from the real world. That this was some vicious nightmare that had erupted into wide-awake daytime.

The woman continued to speak in that ice-cool lawyer voice. “It is also the will of the Caucus that each person here will be a party to the execution.” She looked down at one of the police officers within the cordon. “Sergeant Marsh, please discharge your duty.”

The crowd packed in toward the stage. I felt myself hemmed in by men and women who strained to see what was happening there. The heat from their bodies came through their clothes; they panted, their eyes blazed. The smell of their perspiration spiked my nostrils—hell, they were so close I could smell unwashed hair. There was something feverish about them. Like they’d been gripped by sheer passion. Something they had no control over.

Something like the passion that gripped me when I killed. But I was immune to this. Their hot bodies pressed hard against me from every direction, but all I felt was this cold, cold vacuum inside me.

“Lynne . . .”

I saw Lynne brought from the back of the ambulance to be led up the steps. For the first time I thought of her as “my Lynne,” the beautiful woman who’d slip into my cabin to make breakfast once in a while. The same woman with the hip-swaying walk who I’d once held in my arms.

Blinking at the sudden sunlight, she shielded her eyes. The n she looked ’round as if confused, or maybe wondering if this was anything more than a weird practical joke. A momen t later she saw her father. He’d been brought from the courthouse to watch.

The cops sat her on the table. Then, before she even seemed aware of it, they pushed her down; there was something gentle about the action . . . they pushed her until she lay flat on her back, like it was some kind of weird outdoor operating table.

More men moved forward with the door, which they placed across her chest. From above it must have looked like the figure of a cross, like so:
+
Lynne’s head and throat lay clear of the door, as did her legs. Two guys held each end of the door so it formed a seesaw across her chest, with her torso as the pivot.

“No . . . ” I heard her voice plainly enough. Like she was waking u p from a dream, she started to struggle. “No, let me go. What do you think you’re doing?” She turned her head to see her father, who stood cuffed to two security guards. The man’s face had an engraved look to it. As if his head and face had been carved from granite that had the word
HORROR
written all the way through it.

Cool as ice, Bertholly explained. “Each adult man and woman will be hande d a house brick. Once you have the brick you will form a line at this end of the raised dais, where Mr. Crowther junior is standing. When instructed to do so, you will walk up here and place the brick on the door. This will continue until the door cannot contain any more bricks.”

An electricity of excitement crackled through the crowd. They surged forward, eager to be first. No way did I want to go, but I was carried along with them. As the tidal wave of people shoved me forward I saw Lynne begin to struggle, her head twisting from left to right, her legs kicking. In a second men and women pounced on her to hold her still.

I yelled. In some way I thought I’d yell myself awake. This had to be a nightmare.

But with remorseless momentum events rolled forward. Men and women were handed bricks, they stood in line, they climbed the steps, they walked up to where Lynne lay on the table, her long hair hanging down. There, they placed the bricks on the door that the two men balanced on her chest.

To me, in that shocked state, the procedure didn’t make sense. Why were they doing that? Why weigh the door down on Lynne’s breast?

By the time the tenth brick had been placed there I heard her scream. “Take it off! It’s heavy. You’re hurting me. Do you hear?
It’s hurting!”

So, that was it.

Brick by brick, the door lying across her chest would become heavier. Neighbor after neighbor would play his part in her death.

My God, yes. Miss Bertholly the lawyer would be right. Everyone would remember this. They’d remember when bit by bit they crushed the life out of the mother of two children. The beautiful woman whose crime it was to be the daughter of Charles Finch.