Beneath the Lake

by Christopher Ransom

  Behind him, another murderous scream erupts, this one higher than the woman’s. The crash of an overturned cooler, followed by the sounds of two bodies grunting and snapping at each other’s throats. A choking sound. Feminine rage, animal fury. Another collision, weight slamming into a car door.

  Only now does Ray grasp why the woman is no longer attacking him. Megan has taken the fight to her, and in so doing saved his life. He forgets all notions of escape and shoves himself up, the hardest push-up he’s ever done in his life, and somehow gets his right knee into the sand. His other leg is dragging behind him in an invisible trap, the pain so intense he can perfectly visualize a shark or an alligator with its jaws clamped around his thigh, tugging, thrashing, refusing to let go.

  The fighting behind him continues. Flesh slapping flesh, ragged breathing.

  More shrieking.

  He reaches for a lawn chair and turns it over, falling to his knee. Another stripe of hot pain sings through his arm and… ‘Ah-ah-ah-aaahhhh!’ – he lets out a long cry, bargaining with the pain. His body is ordering him to stop, but he can’t stop now. If Andie gets past Megan, Sierra will have no one left to protect her.

  Dad! Where’s my dad? Andie must have gotten him before she came down. Found him up on the point, where he was supposed to be playing lookout.

  A spot of white light races across the ground in front of Ray, a sharp cone, different from the yellow light of the lantern he took from her. The light shoots off into the clearing, racing along like a little flying saucer, lights up a shrub, then comes racing back, scanning the camp site. The disc catches the side of his face. It stops on his left eye, sending a blue solar flare into his skull.

  Ray closes his eyes, ducks, rolls, afraid it’s her, she’s found him again. He is on his back, using his elbows to crab away from her. The light chases him, moving down his chest, his legs, showing him more of his blood, sand and blood clumped together and smeared over his legs like war paint.

  The light retreats, and Ray expects the next swing of the blade at any moment, but it doesn’t come. The light dances over the picnic table, to the hind end of Colt’s blue Audi, and from this distance Ray can see the actual beam of it, the long tube of white light. The beam is coming down at a sharp angle, from somewhere high above the clearing. Helicopter spotlight? No engine sound.

  The light glides over the Audi and finds them. The women are locked in some kind of death grip, clutching each other as they stand pressed against the side of Colt’s SUV. They are no longer shrieking and screaming. Andie’s thick arms are wrapped around Megan’s waist, one of Megan’s hands locked around the woman’s throat, trying to squeeze, claw, puncture. Her head is tucked low, butting Andie’s chest. Their legs are locked, pushing the bodies together at a lopsided apex. Andie is trying to crush Megan before Megan can strangle her.

  ‘Out!’ a strong but distant voice echoes down. ‘Get out of the way!’

  It sounds close but not level, coming from above the camp ground.

  ‘Megan, let go!’ the voice booms. ‘Get out of the way! Ray! Get her out of there!’

  It’s his father, Ray realizes, following the long beam up, up, at an angle that narrows to meet the top of the cliff. The brown vertical face they parked so close to.

  Everything falls into order, then. Ray understands what his father wants, and why. Warren has the spotlight. He’s standing fifty or sixty feet above them, with Leonard’s rifle. He can take the woman out, but only if Megan gets free of her first.

  The possibility is enough to shake Ray into moving again. He shoves himself to his feet and limps forward, hopping on his good leg, trying to find the clear route through the mess of chairs and overturned picnic table and fire pit.

  At least twenty hop-steps away, the spotlight tracks the two women as they slide along the blue sheet metal, the light trying to hold on Andie’s face, blind her, disrupt her. Andie’s head shakes from side to side, up and down, a vampire evading the burn. No, not the light. She’s trying to get away from Megan’s fingers, which are searching and probing, trying to sink into the woman’s eyes.

  ‘Megan, let go!’ Warren hollers again, as if it were so simple. Andie has her in the ugliest bear hug Ray has ever seen. Megan is bent against the grip, bowing the wrong way. Another few minutes of this and her spine will snap.

  Ray is halfway there, only six or eight good hops away. The light darts over, hitting him in the face again.

  ‘No! Raymond, get back!’ Warren shouts. ‘Stay out!’

  Ray tries to shout back. ‘She’s stuck!’ but his voice is shredded. ‘I have to help her! Don’t shoot!’

  ‘Back!’ his father shouts, the spotlight jumping back to the women. The light rises from their hips to the rear passenger window beside their heads.

  The dark pane of glass instantly transforms into a white frosted sheet, and a fraction of a second later the rifle report arrives, spraying glass pebbles into the car.

  The two stuck bodies lurch away from the small explosion and the spotlight follows. But it’s not really the light tracking them, Ray understands now. The light is the gun. Warren attached it. Where the light goes, so goes the next bullet.

  ‘Wait! Stop!’ Ray yells, doubting his father can hear him. He hobbles a few more steps, looking around for something to bludgeon the woman with, anything will do. Can’t see anything in the dark. A lawn chair? Not heavy enough. A rock from the fire pit would work, but that’s behind him now. Maybe three steps back. He twists, hobbling sideways, and a second shot rings out.

  Ray flinches and looks back as the white spot moves over Andie’s head. Missed, but close. Does his dad know he’s running out of time? Another two steps and they will be slipping behind the SUV, the rear hatch preventing a decent shot.

  Andie screeches, lifting Megan up and turning her around, then slams the smaller body against the car, throwing her weight into it. She’s trying to put Megan in the next bullet’s path.

  Ray leans down to find a rock. The pain is too much and he falls again, clawing at the sand. Left, right, far left – there. He drags it closer. It’s heavy, too big to hold in one hand. He sets his other hand on it, using it as a focal point for his next push-up. Right knee up, he wobbles, raising himself on one trembling leg.

  The light is on Andie’s back. A shot rings out. She jerks forward and a dark blot opens in her shirt. The woman groans like a bull and Megan slips through Andie’s arms.

  ‘Megan!’ he rasps, holding the rock out, terrified the bullet went through Andie, into Megan’s chest.

  Before he can call out again, the spotlight settles on Andie’s lower back. She is leaning into the Audi as if Megan is still there, but Ray can’t see her, not even a shadow. The shot takes Andie low, just left of the spine. She arches back, screaming, and falls to her hands and knees. Another shot cracks like a whip and her arms shoot forward, her face plowing into the sand.

  Ray drops the rock.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Andie’s body rises, flattens. One knee digs in, an arm reaches out. She’s still trying to stand up. She either has the strength of a horse or she’s just plain fucking nut —

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  A string of shots, followed by a series of seemingly endless echoes. There is a brief pause, and then it resumes, each sounding louder than the next.

  POP. POP. POP. POP…

  The body is still jerking under spits of red mist as Ray feels the sting of blasted sand hitting him in the face. He falls backward, the dark face of the cliff giving way to the big tent above, a black screen filled with thousands of tiny stars. He can almost imagine himself among them, light years from the sun.

  He feels no pain now, only the relentless cold, and that isn’t so bad.

  There are worse things than being cold.

  The Medic

  The warmth returns in the form of aromas. The charred bitterness of strong coffee. The burned fat of bacon frying in a pan. The astringent bite of medicine. Clean bedsheets, soft
against his bare skin. He smiles inside, lips too dry to give up the real thing. It’s over. They have been rescued. He will never have to feel the sand or look at the lake again. He grinds his teeth and runs his dry tongue over them, working his jaw loose. A single piece of grit catches in his molars.

  His eyes spring open in alarm. The room is bright, the ceiling hazy. The pain threatens to spike once more, but it ebbs quickly, leaving him loose, weak, his hunger stirring on the wafts of breakfast cooking close by.

  He dozes a few minutes more, only to be jolted back by the clanging of pans, a whisk or fork beating rapidly. He tries to sit up and it’s not so bad, but he can’t get past his elbows. He turns his head on a stiff neck.

  His father is standing in the galley, Sierra on a footstool beside him, the two of them working a series of skillets, dishes, spice bottles. Beyond them, under the table, Megan’s bare feet dangle over the dining-seat cushion.

  ‘Hey,’ Ray whispers. Then louder, ‘Hey. Dad.’

  Warren looks over. ‘Don’t get up. I need to check those dressings first.’

  Ray stares at him dumbly.

  ‘Hold this,’ Warren tells Sierra, handing her a silicone spatula. ‘And don’t touch the pans. Hot hot, remember?’

  Sierra nods and Warren pats her on the butt on his way to Ray, looming over him with his serious face and a peek at his blue Timex watch. He rests the back of his hand on Ray’s brow, checking for fever. He reaches up to a bracket mounted behind the bathroom’s rear paneling, pumps three squirts of hand sanitizer into his palm, then rubs his hands over each other and shakes them dry.

  ‘Lie back.’

  Ray feels the sheet lift off, then the warmth of his father’s hands moving up his shin, his knee, gently squeezing his thigh. ‘Feel that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of it, or only here?’ Warren squeezes harder, near Ray’s groin, and Ray winces, air blowing through his clenched teeth.

  ‘Now all over,’ Ray hisses.

  ‘Okay. Not bad. You didn’t pass out this time.’

  Ray looks down. His father is removing a thick gauze bandage from his thigh, bordered with medical tape. Underneath is a yellow horror, his flesh stained or rotting, a jagged ten-inch line sewn with what appears to be green fishing line.

  ‘Minimal seeping,’ Warren says. ‘That’s good. Don’t mind the color. That’s just the Betadine.’

  Warren turns to an open tackle box at the foot of the bunk. There are forceps in there, gleaming silver scissors, bricks of bandage, ice packs, heat packs and a bunch of other medical equipment. No fishing lures or rubber worms. Warren rips open a fresh pack of something resembling a small diaper and squeezes clear ointment from a fat tube into it, decorating it like a cake. He drapes the bandage over Ray’s thigh, then begins tearing strands from a roll of medical tape. A few seconds later the job is done.

  Or not: ‘Turn on your right side. We need to do the arm.’

  It is only then that Ray sees the plastic line running from his forearm up to the curtain rod, where a bag of saline hangs. Another bag, one he can’t read, must be antibiotics. The cut on his forearm is not as bad, but shares the same green suturing.

  ‘Why do you have all this?’

  ‘Once you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, you learn not to travel without a good first-aid kit.’ Warren lifts him up and administers a B-12 shot into his son’s butt cheek.

  Megan sighs heavily and her feet withdraw as she sits up. ‘Hi, Ray.’ She sounds tired, nothing more or less.

  ‘Hey you,’ he says. ‘Nice to hear your voice.’

  She doesn’t reply. Ray sits up and his father adds another pillow behind his back, then gestures at his tackle box.

  ‘Got ampules of morphine in there, Raymond. You can probably still feel its effects. Helped get you through what could have been a much worse night.’

  ‘Yeah’ is all Ray can think to say.

  Warren smiles coyly. ‘Know what I used to seal those lacerations in the leg and your arm?’

  ‘Fishing line.’

  ‘No, that’s the real thing. Hospital sutures, heavy gauge, the stuff they bring out in terrorist bombings. I’m talking about below that, to close the flesh below the skin. Because, let me tell you, those went deep. Woman used a goddamned grain scythe on you, Raymond. You don’t fuck around with a cut like that, excuse my language, ladies. So I scrubbed you out with surgical sponges, tweezers to get the sand out, though probably not all of it. You’re gonna take some of that sand home with you, I imagine. But then, we always do, don’t we? After I had the wound as clean as I could get it, I gave you a nice dose of what we used to call the ol’ Saigon Super Juice.’

  Ray’s appetite has abandoned him. He sets the bacon on the plate and leans back. ‘Yeah, what’s that?’

  ‘Superglue. Just like you buy in a hardware store. I kid you not. Once the Army figured that out, the way it can lock up a sheet of skin tight as bunk cot, and the body dissolves it over a week or two? They airlifted pallets of it incountry. We carried tubes of glue the size of Crest toothpaste through the jungle. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘When can we go home?’

  Warren wipes a hand over his mouth, nodding, and to Ray he looks almost disappointed. ‘Soon. Very soon. But you and I have something to discuss first.’

  ‘What’s the plan? I can’t walk like this, can I? Megan, can you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Ray,’ Megan says, in the same flat tone.

  ‘She got off easy, a couple of fractured ribs. Two broken nails from the lady’s cheek. She’ll be fine.’ Warren pats his shoulder. ‘Finish your breakfast now. You’re going to need it.’

  Later, after a few more hours of rest, Warren removes the IV lines. He helps Ray out of the trailer, one arm around his waist as his son slings another arm over his father’s shoulders. Megan wears an Ace bandage around her cracked ribs, between a purple bikini Ray hadn’t seen until an hour ago, and he wishes he could be alone with her, back in the tent, kissing her bruises and tasting the sweat from her navel. Wishes they were still free enough to be together that way, and wonders if they ever will be again.

  Ray is shocked by the sight of last night’s disaster zone. He is not sure what he expected, maybe that his father would have made a cursory effort to tidy up, for Sierra’s sake if no one else’s. But everything is as it had ended, and daylight reveals the depth of the madness in which they now exist.

  The Audi is riddled with bullet holes, at least ten shots in addition to those Ray recalled. Broken glass in the sand, shattered beer bottles, overturned coolers, food stores left to spoil, punctured fruit and soda cans spilled everywhere. The picnic table rests on its side, its tablecloth streaked with blood. The stone circle of the fire pit is kicked open, the ashes scattered

  Andie’s prone form is as it had been put down in the turkey shoot, the massacre that unfolded in the clearing. Ray knows the body is not bloating already, but it seems so, her girth rising in a hump and pocked with red holes and trails of dried black crust. Half her head is blown off, as well as most of one foot. A scoop of her ass dug out like a carton of ice cream, the ones you see through the window in the parlor freezer. Maybe coyotes did that. Or the raccoons. But more likely his father’s rain of bullets.

  Ray looks from the gore to Megan and finally to Sierra. Colt’s daughter stares at the body expressing no signs of fear, sadness, confusion or even disgust. Nor has she retreated into catatonia. From her quiet inspection, one might guess she is looking at a mangy dog sleeping in the shade, nothing more. Megan’s quiet distance and their collective acceptance frightens Ray more than Andie or the ranger ever did.