This Is Who We Are

by Matt Christiansen

I’m pretty sure it’s not powdered sugar…” he said directing Mo’s eyes to a bag of white powder sitting on the desk.

  Having been pushed aside to make room for some old looking sea charts that were still laying open, the charts were unfamiliar to the boys, confirming in their minds what they had suspected about the ship having been around the world.

  “Whoever was here must have left in a hurry, look!” said Mo, who pointed to the protractor and pencil sprawled out over the chart, as if they had been dropped suddenly. “Whatever’s going on, I bet it’s up at that warehouse. Let’s go check it out!”

  “Definitely,” Lee confirmed. “But we can’t just walk up that path, they’ll see us coming. I don’t know what they’re up to, but by the looks of those dudes with the guns, I’d guess they probably wouldn’t want us here. I say we duck back into the woods and climb up the slope using the cover of the trees.”

  Moses nodded and led the way out of the shack and back into the woods. As the boys made their way up the steadily increasing slope to it’s eventual plateau at the top of the cliff, they began to formulate a hushed escape plan for if things went badly.

  “So I’m pretty sure this giant cliff is the same one that we saw coming in, so the Phoenix should be at the base on the far end of this crag. If anything happens and we have to split up, let’s make our way back to that beach that was right next to the cliff. Whoever gets to the cave first should get the boat and get it out into water deep enough to put the motor down and keep an eye out for the other one. After an hour, if the other one still isn’t there, then go for help. We only have a few more hours of light left.”

  Lee nodded in acceptance, and was about to speak when there was another shrill crack that echoed through the island.

  “We’re getting near the warehouse now, we’d better shut up,” Lee whispered, an air of grave seriousness coming over him.

  The boys crept up to the edge of the woods, to the point where their cover came closest to the warehouse. After determining that there was nobody roving the perimeter of the building they streaked across the open ground to the side of the warehouse. They snuck around the building until they found a door that was significantly smaller and more out of the way than the others. To their surprise, they found it unlocked and Mo followed Lee into a dimly lit corridor.

  In no time they determined that the building consisted of one enormous room with a single hallway running along three of the four walls (the fourth wall, it could only be assumed, held the giant doors).

  “Dude, what are we doing?!” Mo whispered frantically, “We don’t know what kind of people we’re dealing with.”

  “I donno, man, but the voices are definitely coming from behind this door. They sound more distant than the other doors. I say if we’re gonna do this, we take this door.” Lee thought out loud, “Don’t forget how we got here. A left at the end of this hall and it’s the first door on your right.”

  Mo swallowed, nodded at Lee, and gently twisted the handle of the door. Little by little, he eased the door open just enough to slip his head through and see what was going on. His head then slid back and he beckoned for Lee to follow him, crouching, into the warehouse.

  As it turned out, the door was a rarely used side door opening into the main storage room of the warehouse. The door was partially hidden by a four foot wall of barrels, the contents of which the boys could only guess. The voices were now crystal clear and although the boys couldn’t pick out specific words, they sounded angry.

  Suddenly Lee, who was crouched next to Moses, went completely still. Mo watched him close his eyes slowly and when he opened them, his usual sharp glint had been replaced by shear terror.

  “Dude, what is it?” Mo implored, recognizing the desperation in his brother’s face.

  Voice wavering uncharacteristically, Lee answered “I know that voice.”

  The gigantic hangar doors were open, letting in the natural orange light of the sun as it continued it’s daily descent into the sea. The air was thick with dust particles sifting through the air lazily, revealing six men standing in a circle, arguing over something. The only lighting was that from the sun, and the shadows in the expansive room seemed extraordinarily deep. The men as a group looked rough and scruffy, but one man in particular looked a cut above the rest. He was a broad, hulking man with the look of a wild beast. His body looked solid and his face chiseled. He was bald, and his skin was pigmented a deep brown.

  The great man seemed to be scolding the two men that the boys recognized from the Jeep. Suddenly there was a temporary lull in the conversation and when the man spoke up, Moses heard a thick African accent. The voice was a strange combination of a rasp and a roar, sounding hoarse and nasally and simultaneously thick.

  Mo glanced again at Lee, who had once more closed his eyes in recognition. “Who is that?” Mo asked.

  “He was there that night my tribe was slaughtered.” Lee said calmly, though Mo could tell that terror was stirring just below the calm. “I saw him standing next to Abeba. He looked at me. His eyes…”

  He paused, but Mo listened expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

  “They were red, blood red. And he screamed at me. He told me I’d never escape.”

  “You’re sure that’s the same guy from that night?” Mo asked, “I mean, there’s a lot of guys in Africa. This seems like an extremely random place for him to be.”

  “Oh, it’s him…” Lee replied softly.

  Lee sank into the barrels as if to disappear and suddenly the stack scooted backward and the entire wall of barrels collapsed. When the deafening sound of the evidently hollow drums faded from the cavernous room all six of the men were staring at the boys. Time stood still.

  Having been taken by surprise, the men immediately turned their guns on the boys. After the drums had settled and they could make out what they were aiming at, they lowered their weapons as the great man that Lee so desperately feared let out an unnaturally thick laugh. The noise resounding from his throat was high, in a sense whiney but with a deep tension.

  “Show yourselves, children,” the man commanded in his tell tale voice.

  Frozen, the boys didn’t budge.

  “C’mon, get over here!” another man jeered impatiently.

  It was only when the second man started over toward them that the boys began to slink slowly from the shadows where they had been observing.

  The African man removed his sunglasses that had shrouded his eyes, revealing two dark red eyes, as Lee had recalled; the color of fresh blood.

  “No… Ha! It’s the little drummer boy. What are you doing here, boy?” the man asked in a maddeningly amused voice. “It’s nice to see a familiar face.”

  He then addressed the small company of men who now surrounded Moses and Lee. “The Blood Diamond… I knew this one long ago in Africa. He ran from me like a coward once before, now let’s see if he’ll do it again.

  “What do you say, kid? Have you grown a pair since the last time we met or will you run, afraid just like before. Or maybe we should find Abeba first so that she can watch you run again.”

  The man’s voice had tightened down to a tense murmur now. He stared at Lee, grinning an evil smile, waiting for some sort of response.

  Mo, who seemed to be invisible though he was standing not three feet from Lee, glanced at his friend and saw that he had again, closed his eyes. He wanted to say something, to console him but was afraid of what the man would do.

  After a lengthy pause Lee’s eyelids opened, revealing his narrowed brown eyes staring straight into the hellish face of the man. He straightened up, arched his back, and gazing into the man’s blood red eyes, he unleashed a roar the volume of which Mo had never heard before.

  “You can’t win this fight,” the man snarled as he lunged towards Lee and struck him in the face with an enormous fist.

  Lee had seemed ready, but took the punch full force and was knocked from his feet, landing yards from where he had stood. Dreadlocks spi
lling onto the floor he whipped his head around to retaliate. To his surprise, the man stood, smiling, staring down at him. “I see why you ran. You’re weak.”

  Lee leapt from where he now crouched on the floor, tackling the monster and landing heavily next to him on the cement floor. Immediately, Lee thrust his knee into the man’s back and began assailing him with a flurry of punches.

  Moses watched the man strike back, get to his knees, and kick Lee (still on the ground) hard in the stomach. Thinking furiously about how to help his brother, Mo felt in the pocket of his board shorts. His hand wrapped around a small slotted screwdriver. His face lit up as he recalled using the screwdriver to open the gas tanks of the Phoenix to fuel up for their venture. As he looked around, the focus of everybody was on Lee, who was now on his feet dodging haymakers thrown by the man.

  “Hey, dick for!” Mo yelled at the top of his lungs.

  As the giant turned to face him, Moses hurled the small screwdriver at the man like a knife. As the tool lodged itself, slot first in the man’s right eye, Mo roared “Plan B! GO!”

  The boys exchanged glances and after shooting him a look of thanks, Lee tore off out of the warehouse and into the trees, in accordance to their plan. He ran as though the armies of hell were lashing at his heels and in a matter of minutes he had cleared the small beach and was crashing through the water toward where he trusted the Phoenix was