by Ronan Cray
Inside the hollow of the little bird’s chest, a tiny balloon fluttered. Each pulse shuddered the starling’s whole body. No soul presented itself. He gazed upon that beating heart for a long time. The interior of a bird struck him as uncannily similar to the interior of a human. He referenced a school anatomy book to be sure. The proportions varied, but each had the same mess of organs, bones, and blood you exposed in any horror movie. This brought on a strange sensation in Carter. He had stumbled onto a well-hidden avian secret.
If birds looked like humans on the inside, no doubt humans could fly. He was on the right track.
He continued to wonder about the soul. If he stopped this interminable shuddering, would he actually see the soul ascending? Had it been a good bird? He laughed at his own inane philosophy. A good bird indeed.
With one of the remaining pins, he pricked at the heart, first tentatively, then driving it straight through. Black blood gushed over the pink plastic head of the pin. The heart stopped almost immediately, but the twitching continued.
He waited.
The bird died. A silence fell on the room so thick the Superman alarm clock still lying in the garbage can ticked audibly for the first time in two weeks. The bird stopped moving.
Nothing.
No soul escaped the iridescent breast of this little starling.
At first, he suffered the suffocation of failure. The secret of flight remained hidden, the soul of flight a mystery. All he had done was kill the bird.
Where there was life, he ended it.
Thus he discovered his only power.
By Carter’s calculations, he’d survived two weeks on the island. Of the eighteen who arrived that first morning, only eight remained. Of Carter’s boat, only he and Mason lived. While they slept, Emily disappeared and Lauren’s hut collapsed. After that, no one asked questions about the disappeared.
The daily chores exhausted everyone beyond care. Three nights ago, Tuk threw another dinner party, complete with fresh vegetables and those delectable ribs, in order to “keep spirits high”. He insisted it wouldn’t be long before a ship came to rescue them all.
Carter did not expect one. If a lifeboat from this island could reach their sinking ship, they could leave at any time. If Tuk really wanted save them, he would rowed them out to the shipping lanes and waited for rescue. Instead he kept them here with promises and platitudes. Carter needed to know why.
In the meantime, he aimed to improve his living conditions. The comfort of life within the Great Wall appeared far superior to the cold nights of Departure Camp. Carter determined to earn a room. But how? To do so required solving a few mysteries. He felt the answers lay in the riddle of Paul.
Why wasn’t Paul’s hair white? Why did he not try to escape, given all day to do so? Why didn’t he work on the Flow? Paul never even entered the Great Wall. The first clue to the inner workings of Tuk’s political structure fell into place. Paul wasn’t allowed in, and neither were residents of Departure Camp, after hours. The walls only kept those inside safe. White Hairs. For some reason, they needed to know insiders from outsiders at a glance.
Carter knew exactly what they were hiding from. Unlike the others, he had seen it.
Either you moved inside the Wall and lived, or you stayed outside and died. Determined to earn his hair dye, he kept watch for any opportunity to prove his worth. He worked twice as hard as the others. He volunteered like a bitch. He kept track of who stood in Tuk’s favor and who did not. He was careful to disassociate himself from the latter, and this meant rarely speaking to Paul. He probably could have coaxed valuable information out of the embittered man but he couldn’t risk Paul mistakenly adopting him as a “friend”. He kept Paul at arm’s length, but he still hadn’t found his “in”.
It wasn’t long before the opportunity found him.
On salt detail. Carter stood in the middle of a saltern, bent double, scraping salt with a rake and shoveling it into buckets. The sun reflected off the gleaming red surface like a solar oven. Even though most of the water evaporated off, the salt remained wet. He felt the added weight in his shovel. By the afternoon, he felt it in his whole body. His feet sweated inside layers of waterproof plastic bags. He needed that sweat on his head. Granules caked the hairs on his arms like a cardigan. They percolated into his eyes and, when he wiped them, worked their way into the cracks in his hands.
Eddie and Mason’s gal-pal, Amy, toiled beside him. Carter recognized tension between Mason and Eddie, but he could never determine the cause. They were never to be found in the same place at the same time. On a small island, that took deliberate effort. Even when they filed out of the Great Wall, they stood at opposite ends of the line. Mason always stood behind Eddie, never the other way around. That told Carter that Mason was the weaker of the two and had something to fear.
Carter could have asked Eddie directly, but he remained wary. The man’s mind broke after the sinking. He muttered to himself as he worked with unintelligible, blasphemous words. Amy once tried to make small-talk, but Eddie called her a slut. She left him alone after that. Everyone did. Eddie’s head darted upward whenever someone came near, as if he expected an assault. He moved in quick, short bursts, like a nervous bird.
Like a bird. Carter wanted some time alone with Eddie. If Mason was afraid of Eddie, Eddie’s fear was more valuable. It automatically made Carter the strongest of the three.
Two White Hairs, Dragos and Colin, managed the salt detail.
Carter held a keen interest in Colin. Colin was the tongueless boatmen that brought him ashore. Though he couldn’t speak, his eyes burned. The young man fought internal battles that, in the absence of an outlet, festered within him. He never opened his mouth except to eat. When he did, it was better to look away or lose your own appetite. Colin held secrets Carter wished to know.
Dragos, on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up. No one was better for gossip. He complained bitterly. His topics took his full attention. He referred to himself in the third person, always the hero of his own tales. He would stop working to save calories for his jaw. When overexcited, he sat down. When Dragos sat and talked for too long, Colin slapped him on the head to get him back to work.
“What you want to know, Dragos knows this, what you want to know… how does Dragos make his famous liquor? Where is still? How does he ferment? Well, today is your lucky day. Dragos will make it known to you.”
Dragos was always half-drunk. No one deprived him of his alcohol, because no one knew his personality without it.
“The truth is, Dragos misses his home country. He misses, especially, kvass. You know kvass? Like Coca-Cola, only better. On a hot day like this, a nice warm glass of kvass is what a man needs. But we have no rye on this cursed island. How can Dragos make kvass without rye? So he improvise. He use potatoes.
“But Dragos make a mistake. He let it ferment too long. Ados kindly provide yeast from, well, disgusting places, and Dragos want to make sure it cooks very, very good. He cooks it so long, it becomes like beer.
“In your country, is called Pruno, yes? The criminals make it. Well, in my Romania, we make it, too, only we hide it someplace besides the back of toilets. Ow! Ok, Colin, Dragos works.”
Carter casually pressed him. “I bet you’d rather be in Romania right now.”
“Oh, yes. This place terrible. Six years too long. Dragos needs to go home. Especially now.”
“Why now, especially?”
Dragos paused before answering. This caught Carter’s attention. Dragos never paused. Colin stopped shoveling salt to stare Dragos in the eye, as if in warning. “Well, you know, especially with this hard work today.”
“No, that’s not it. You have a better reason. What is it?”
Dragos searched askance from Colin. “He has right to know, don’t you think?”
Colin went back to his work, giving tacit consent.
“It is because of your friend Emily, what she said, and why she is not here.”
Eddie and Amy stopp
ed to listen. Dragos, for the first time, didn’t seem to appreciate the attention.
Eddie spoke. “You know what happened to Emily?”
“Well, no, not exactly. Only idea. Only speculation.”
“What’s your idea?”
Colin shook his head.
Eddie snapped. He waded across the pool, shovel raised. He took aim at Colin’s head.
Carter moved faster. He caught the shovel in mid-air.
Eddie raged. “That sonofabitch! We’re stuck on this godforsaken island, disappearing one by one, and this bastard knows why! Don’t get in my way!”
Carter liked it. As the only one calm, he had all the power. He spoke over his shoulder to Colin. “You’d better let Dragos talk now.”
Colin nodded.
Dragos spoke carefully, more grammatically. “She told us something we didn’t know. We are like you. We were stranded here six years ago. Nearly everyone on our ship died. We waited for rescue, but it never came. Tuk organized our survival. We thought we owe our lives to him. When he decided to stay, build a permanent camp here, we agree. We had faith in him, like god.”
“But not anymore.”
“No, not anymore.” Dragos spit in the water. “He lied to us. That night, at dinner, your friend Amy said our ship was stolen. Only one person could have known.”
“Tuk.”
“Yes. If he tried to steal the ship, our crash was no accident. It was his fault. The reason he never tried for rescue is that he didn’t want it. He feared going back.”
“Can’t you just leave? Get on a boat and leave?”
“No. Tuk would kill us if we stole boat. He has that Pinoy, Angel, always watching us. We tried to build raft in early years, but failed. Tuk found out.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing, to us. But Paul he sent outside the wall.”
“Paul was in on it?”
“Yes.”
“Why was he singled out?”
“Because he was new, then. And because he is vegetarian.”
That made no sense, but Carter didn’t ask.
“So we need to take out Tuk.” Eddie had calmed down enough to re-enter the conversation.
“No! We can’t. That would be… wrong.”
“Wrong? He marooned you here! Are you the least bit pissed off?”
“Yes, but killing Tuk is not the answer.”
“Then what is?”
Neither Colin nor Dragos answered.
Colin knew. Tuk had kept them alive for six years. Even if this was his fault, even if he betrayed them, they still owed their lives to his organization. Power endures. That meant they had only one thing in mind. Escape.
Carter had the good sense not to ask about it in front of the others. This was informational gold. Either he escaped with them, or he informed on them to gain the good graces of Tuk. This was a win-win.
“So what happened to Emily?” Amy asked.
Dragos sighed. “She knew too much.”
“Wait, you’re saying Tuk had her killed?”
“Wanted her, had her, who knows? Easy to die on this island. Maybe he didn’t even try.”
“Emily ran away,” Amy said. “I saw her run out of the Camp.” That was new. She hadn’t admitted that before. “Someone ran after her. She didn’t come back.”
Across the plain, Angel appeared on his rounds. Colin motioned everyone back to work. Conversation ceased. They worked for nearly an hour in silence. Dragos finally launched into a non-stop description of his mother’s cooking. No one else spoke. It just made them homesick.
Eventually, the red mess gave way to black rock, like open sores scabbing over. When their shovels scraped basalt, they took turns pumping water back in. A hose trailing in from the ocean attached to a pump powered by an exercise bike. Nothing felt more surreal than pedaling a stationary on a desert island, and Carter couldn’t begin to know where they got it. Each pool had one.
When full, they wrestled the large tarpaulins back across the pool, stretched them tight, and left buckets on the downhill end to collect condensation. The process worked in rotation. In a few days this pool would evaporate and they’d be back to clean out the salt. With all this done, Colin released them.
As Eddie and Amy walked away, Colin took hold of Carter’s arm. He wanted to speak to him in private. He nodded to Dragos.
“You maybe saved his life. He is thankful.”
“Sure, no problem,” Carter replied.
Colin jerked his head toward Carter, eyes on Dragos. He wanted something more.
“Really?” Dragos asked, his eyes wide open. “Yeah, ok. Why not?”
“What?” Carter asked, confused. “What am I missing?”
“He wants to tell you our plan.”
“Escape,” Carter said. He wanted them to know he knew.
Dragos nodded. “Tonight.”
That was a surprise. That didn’t give Carter much time to decide.
One way or another, this would be his last night at Departure Camp. “How?” he asked.
Colin smiled. He pointed upward.
“By air,” Dragos slurred.
Paul never left the campfire until everyone fell asleep. Carter needed to get out of camp for his rendezvous, so he tried to outlast him. He waited until only he and Paul remained around the campfire. Paul didn’t speak, but it troubled Carter to hear him humming 99 Red Balloons. Did he know? Carter feigned a yawn and headed toward his bungalow. Carter waited an hour until the camp settled into muffled snoring.
He had just risen to leave when he heard someone else walking around outside. He focused on his breathing and heart rate for several minutes until the sound disappeared. He peered through the crack in his door. No one remained around the embers of the fire pit which meant even Paul had finally called it a night.
Carter had a knack for silence. He slipped away through the sand as quietly as the tall grasses blew in the breeze.
He made sure to urinate prior to leaving the camp. He walked so as not to work up a sweat. He even kept his mouth closed. He had no intention of adding liquids to this soil. Lauren’s body had taught him that.
He had no trouble seeing in the dark. Even without a moon, the Great Salt Wall loomed like a phantom beacon, darker than the night and sparkling with a million more stars. No one stood watch outside the Gate overnight. Still, he kept off the main path. When he reached the Wall itself, he followed it past where it died into Mt. Elvis, then just a bit more to where Dragos and Colin promised to leave a knotted rope for him to climb.
It wasn’t there.
He held his breath in the dark. What a fool. Had this been an elaborate trick to draw him away from camp? Was this how the others disappeared, lured by the promise of escape?
Carter never trusted anyone, but he read people well enough to know when someone wasn’t lying. Dragos and Colin were too simple to play a role in a conspiracy. Even Colin, without speech, would give it away.
Carter waited.
He heard footsteps. Sandals scraped against the salt on top of the wall. He had never seen C&C patrol up there, but then he never came out at night, either.
He pulled himself into a narrow cleft like a hermit crab. He always picked his moment, gaining the upper hand on his victims, taking them when they were most vulnerable. Waiting like a cornered fox was not his forte. He balled up his ineffectual fists and held them out against the darkness.
“No one there.” Dragos’ voice drifted over the rustling of a knotted plastic rope dropping down the cliff face.
“I am,” he said, as he took the end of it, tugged, and began to climb. His sore arms barely functioned after the day’s labor.
Dragos carried plastic sacks with various food and supplies. A flagon of water weighted Colin down. Carter, ever the opportunist, did not ask to help. He brought nothing. He kept light on his feet.
Nevertheless, it took some effort to keep up with them as they wove through the night over fields of fallen boulders and slanting crevice
s, ascending the face of the mountain. It had probably only been half an hour, but it seemed as if he would see the sun before he saw the end of this journey.
A roar of hot, rushing air echoed across the stones like dragon breath. Carter stopped. Was that the volcano? Would it blow? Dragos and Colin didn't take notice, moving on ahead and dangerously out of sight. Carter ran to catch up.
Just around the bend, a hidden plateau emerged. A jagged ring fault surrounded the remnants of a small caldera, completely sheltering this spot from view. A bright glow lit the walls, but it wasn't lava. Two flames hissed like nostrils into the semitransparent walls of a gossamer balloon.
Three men already stood in the basket. Carter recognized Sammy, one of Tuk’s closest advisors. The other two were from other boat crews. Jealousy and admiration filled him. How did they get invited to escape before Carter? He picked the wrong associates.
Emily unleashed a tectonic shift greater than the one that formed this volcano. Colin, Dragos, and Sammy made up half of Tuk’s core contingent. Only a great sense of betrayal could have driven them to escape after six years of harmony. Carter still didn’t fully understand it, but he knew one thing: if three members of the Manor House were moving out, he should turn back now, turn them in, and claim one of those empty spots for himself.
But he couldn't. The balloon captivated him.
Flight! What a glorious double entendre!
Carter didn't know anything about balloons, but this one looked ready to leave.
“You’re just in time!” Sammy shouted out to them. “We couldn’t wait for you and risk being found out. Five minutes and we’re leaving. Help throw the rest of the supplies up.”
Carter stood transfixed, admiring the balloon. “How did you build it?”
“Tie this!” Dragos grabbed a bundle of plastic bags filled with dried fish. He secured it to a series of ropes hanging on the outside of the basket. “Sammy’s idea. He is like dark MacGuyver. Used to be Tamil Tiger, recruited from his village at fourteen, fought in Sri Lanka for ten years. When peace came, he escape.”
