Red Sand

by Ronan Cray

  “Escaped?”

  “After peace, Government purged his unit. Somehow, he saw it coming and managed to get away. Based on his military experience, he was hired on as radio man for ferryboat outside of… I can’t pronounce it. Somewhere in India. He is crafty. I’ve never seen anybody able to build something from nothing the way he can.”

  Carter, in his wonder, did not fail to notice the size of the basket. It wasn’t built for six. He was odd man out. Would Sammy let him fly? He needed a back-up plan. There must be something around them he could use.

  A considerable amount of debris littered the plateau. It must have taken them some time to build the balloon. At least two weeks. Carter feigned an interest in the construction process as he dug through the remains. “Where did you get the fabric?”

  “Parachutes. From an airplane crash.”

  Carter found backpacks, flight suits, dried and broken grasses, more plastic bags than he could count, and plenty of discarded fish bones. He checked the flight suits for something useful. He found it. A round cylinder protruded from a holster. It wasn’t a gun, at least not the kind Carter would have preferred. It only shot flares. He hid it under his shirt, in the waistband of his jeans. “Where do you expect to go?” He tried to sound natural.

  “Don’t know. Maybe Africa. Maybe when we’re up there, we see ship.”

  “Or maybe there’s another island.”

  “No.” Dragos didn’t hesitate. “Not another island.”

  He tied on the last of the bundles. Already, the balloon lifted a few feet off the ground, straining at the long strands of braided plastic still holding it to Mount Elvis.

  Carter made a move toward the basket. Sammy put up a thin, strong hand. “Thanks, Carter, but you’re not coming.”

  The flame pulsed again, breathing life into the beast.

  “In fact, none of you are. I appreciate your help, but we’re leaving this island without you. I can’t risk the weight of six people in the basket. Don’t give me that look, Colin, you’re the one who brought a stranger. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve put us all at risk. Now throw off those guy lines and find some place to hide.”

  Carter suspected this. He shivered with excitement. He couldn’t wait to let them to know they were in his power. He drew the flare gun, smiling. “I have a place in the basket,” he spoke slowly, taking aim at the balloon. “I know Tuk prefers arrivals to departures.”

  They did not respond as he expected. In fact, just the opposite. They laughed at him.

  “He doesn’t know.” Sammy leered at him.

  Carter didn’t like this. He feigned a confidence that seeped out his soles every second. “I know I have you where I want you.”

  Sammy settled in the basket like a schoolteacher on a desk. “Sure, go tell Tuk. See what he says. Carter, just because this is fun for me, I have to ask. What do you think happened to your ship?”

  “The Princess Anne?”

  “Yes.”

  “It sank.” He felt like a four year old.

  “Of course it sank. But why? I understand you were a Steward on the ship. Did the captain share anything with you? Did you have any clue that the ship would sink that night?”

  Carter thought back. He’d sat near the Captain at dinner. There was no indication of distress, no impending sense of doom in the Captain’s demeanor. There were no rumors. No urgent messages passed to the crew. One moment they sailed on calm seas. The next moment Carter found himself in the water.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Tell him,” said one of the other Princess Anne survivors.

  “No, I don’t want to make it easy for him.”

  “Tell him. I want to see the look on his face.”

  Carter felt helpless. A moment ago, he held all the cards, but now…

  “We blew it up.”

  “What? That’s impossible. You’re living like cavemen here. You couldn’t blow up a cruise ship!”

  “More specifically, Colin blew it up. That’s why you’re here. We can’t run this island ourselves. We need cheap labor. We’ve been blowing up ships in this quadrant for five years.”

  Dragos fidgeted. “Tuk made us do it. He ordered us.”

  “Ordered?” Carter placed Tuk as more of a functionary. “Who is he to give orders?”

  “Our Captain! Captain of the Prince Edward!”

  Carter was speechless. No matter how quickly his mind worked, he had trouble digesting this.

  “Look. His ears are smoking. You don’t get it, do you, pretty boy? We blew up your ship. We collected whatever we could from the wreckage. We saved a few people for hard labor. It’s that simple.”

  “But… it’s such a waste!” All those bodies, unclaimed, sinking, unseen, in the dark.

  “We took what we needed. The rest is unimportant.”

  Carter re-evaluated. “That doesn’t change our current situation. It only confirms it. You’re running from Tuk. Now, so am I. I get a spot in the basket, or this flare goes through the balloon.”

  Sammy shrugged. “Fine, you’re in.” The other two passengers pulled out knives and started to cut the lines. The appearance of knives gave Carter pause, but he couldn’t get into the basket with one hand on the flare gun. The threat of it would have to be enough. They were busy anyway. He tucked it back in his belt and leapt for the basket.

  “What about us!” Dragos begged. “We helped you build balloon!” Colin stood behind him rigid as a stone.

  No one answered. Hands gripped Carter and pulled him over the rim. He experienced a moment of elation. His plan succeeded! Then he experienced a moment of free fall. A hand ripped the flare gun from his waist as another pushed him from the basket. He hit a flat rock hard, ass first, and rolled backward.

  The last line cut, the basket shot upward. Dragos dashed past him, leaping for a trailing series of bags. Colin, arm outstretched to stop Dragos, opened his mouth and let forth a ghastly shout which cut short when something down the trail stole his attention. He ducked into the shadow of a nearby ridge.

  Dragos let loose a wild stream of Romanian obscenities. He caught one of the bags but it tore under his weight. Fish tumbled past him as the rising balloon pulled him off the ground. His feet pedaled frantically. A knife flashed as they started to cut the rope that Dragos held. The basket ascended, faster now. Colin stared up at Dragos’ heels, at least fifty feet off the ground and rising. The inhabitants of the basket cut furiously at the rope, shouting at Dragos to shut up and let go. Dragos lunged for another bag. Too late.

  The rope looped over itself like a corkscrew. For a moment, it didn’t even look as if Dragos fell. The balloon surged away into a featureless black sky with nothing to offer a sense of scale. It wasn’t until Dragos tipped over backward, his head magnified, mouth open in a violent scream, that the inevitable presented itself. Carter scuttled backward.

  Dragos flailed his arms and legs, swimming, picking up speed. He smacked into the largest boulder beside Carter with a wet, crunching noise, like a bitten grub. A fine red mist cooled Carter’s skin.

  Carter marveled at the carnage. It was the first body he’d ever seen that he hadn’t had a hand in killing. The mess filled him with disgust. The random chaos of it! So untidy.

  He heard footsteps behind him. He tilted his head back, blinking at a bulky dark form, when all senses ceased.

  The sensation of a fly landing on his ear woke him. Carter shook his head. That was a mistake. A bludgeon of pain shot through his cranium, as if his brain were the clapper that rang his bell. Carter’s head throbbed. His whole body ached. It hurt to open his eyes, so he didn’t. He was in a sitting position, his arms pulled back behind him. Thin bands of plastic bit into his wrists, bound to a pole behind him. The bare skin of his arms scraped against the surface. Granules fell into his cuts and burned. A pillar of salt. They tied him to a pillar of salt. It was hard as granite.

  Carter’s pants were wet. All the shame of his high school years came back in an instant. Still wettin
g myself, even now. He wanted to cry. With great willpower, he maintained his composure. He focused on opening his eyes. Blinding light stabbed him through several painstaking attempts.

  The Flow spread out before him. His pillar lay halfway between the Manor House and the pools, facing the Gate. In between were the remains of a balloon. Canvas billowed out in the breeze. Rocks held it down, but the wind still rippled through the fabric, like a breathing creature that longed to fly free. The basket lay close by. A dark substance soaked the woven bottom. There were no bodies. No one was tied to the stake with him. He surmised that no one else survived.

  Cold, briny water splashed across his face. It felt wonderful, until the salt settled into his head wound. He blinked to clear his eyes and looked up. Angel stood over him, dark against the sun.

  Shit.

  “Hello, little birdie.” Angel smiled. He was so damn ugly when he smiled. “You tried to fly away last night? You don’t like the newspaper in your cage?”

  Carter wasn’t ready to answer yet. He wanted to know how much they knew, and he wanted time to remember for himself. The night was a bit foggy.

  “You were lucky you didn’t grow wings, little bird. It seems your friends couldn’t fly.” He pointed at the downed balloon, but Carter didn’t follow his gaze.

  Angel got up close to his face, took his chin between a beefy thumb and forefinger, held up the limp head. “Humph,” he laughed. His breath was worse than his smile. “You don’t look so good today. Looks like someone hit you over the head. Someone like me.”

  That was the missing piece. Carter had been marveling at the mess Dragos left on the rock. It looked like art. A museum in New York would have paid good money for it. He was just wishing he had more light to see the details, when something struck him from behind, hard. The memory sent a dull pain through his head again. He moaned.

  “I wonder, little humming bird, where you thought you were going to go? We’re in the middle of the ocean! There’s nothing else within hundreds of miles!”

  Carter finally spoke. “Africa?”

  “Stupid little bird. Your friends never expected you to get on the balloon in the first place. That’s okay. I poked a few holes in it yesterday.”

  Carter winced.

  “As I always say, the best revenge is dying last. No?”

  Someone ran past them, carrying a net. Everyone on the Flow seemed to be in a hurry.

  Carter sought to distract him. “What’s going on? What’s the rush?”

  “There’s a hurricane coming.” He smiled like a python. “You know what happens when the rain comes?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “C’mon, Carter. You’re a smart boy.” Angel pinched his cheek, hard. “Howie, Lauren, Emily… all gone. You know what took them. When the first drops of rain hit this dry little island, it will be like springtime in the Sahara. All of the flowers will be red.” He pressed a beefy hand on Carter’s chest. “You’re going to bloom.”

  Angel backed away, arms held wide. “The whole island, all of us, will bloom, and the sky will wash away our pain. This is the end, my friend.”

  Carter laughed. He liked the look of surprise on Angel’s face when he did, but then he couldn’t stop laughing. It hurt to laugh. His stomach convulsed. He thrashed against the pole, trying to free his hands. “You first!” he shouted, saliva dripping from his lips, unable to think of a better retort, but Angel was already walking away.

  No one bothered him for another hour. The sun blistered his skin and crusted his scalp. He didn’t feel it. He hid in his memories.

  Fifteen. The number of his memories. In times of boredom, and there were many, he replayed them in every delicious detail, from the first to the last. His younger brother, one classmate in the woods behind the school, two women at college, two prostitutes during his experimental years (one female and one male), the old man behind the café when he was desperate, and half a dozen at sea.

  He never enjoyed the ones at sea as much as he thought he would. There was something about losing the bodies to the depths that robbed him of a sense of place. They were so much easier to get away with, though, that it was always worthwhile. He released his urge more in his three years at sea than ten years of adolescence.

  Mourning a sense of place always brought him back to that kid in the field, the one he carved the symbol in. It was weird to play out someone else’s instructions while he derived his own pleasure. It made him feel like a very small part of a much larger machine. When more instructions never came, life lost a small piece of meaning.

  Until Lauren.

  How did Angel know what Carter saw?

  It took twenty minutes for Carter to dig a shallow grave and roll Lauren’s body in. The sand was dry, right down to the bottom of the hole. She landed face down. Her skin hadn’t broken in the scuffle, so it wasn’t blood that watered the Island. There must have been something in her mouth, some kind of liquid that dribbled out. Tiny leaves feathered out around her head, like a red laurel wreath of butcher’s broom. At first, Carter thought he was hallucinating, seeing Lauren as an Angel from Hell. Plants never grow so fast. The halo reached out and pulled her head down into the sand. New tendrils pushed out of her torso. They enshrouded her, pulsing, searching up her legs like poison ivy on pale birch trunks. He only walked away when he could no longer see her through the vines. The body didn’t belong to him anymore. Now even the land took bodies from him.

  That was the second time he’d felt the presence of someone else. He’d always been alone in his killings, but these two incidents stood out. They made him feel… insignificant. There were far more prodigious killers in the world.

  “Where’s Lauren, you son of a bitch?”

  Carter must have blacked out. He hadn’t heard Mason approach. He smiled. What a coincidence! He’d just been thinking of her!

  Mason made a fist. Carter chuckled. “You won’t hit me. Don’t even pretend.”

  “Where is she?” Mason asked again, fist sinking. “You know. You were the last to see her.”

  Carter laughed, but quieter now. He voiced his thoughts. “The island took her. She doesn’t belong to me anymore.”

  “You know where she is Carter. I want to know.”

  Carter was in a bad spot. He made the wrong allegiance; his escape failed; his prospects were grim. His only hope was to bring Tuk down before Tuk got to him. Chained to a pole in the open gave him few options. Only Mason was in a position to do something. If he told Mason about the ship, maybe he would team up with Colin to take out Tuk.

  “Mason. Listen. I’m not the enemy...”

  “Where did you take Lauren!” Mason wasn’t listening.

  Carter spotted Angel and Ados crossing the Flow toward him. “That’s not important right now…”

  “It’s important to me!”

  “Mason, dammit, listen to me…”

  “Tell me where Lauren is!”

  Angel’s ugly face had murder on it. Carter didn’t have time to argue. “She’s dead! Mason, she’s dead!”

  “You killed her, didn’t you, you…”

  “Not now, Mason. There’s something…” Angel was almost within earshot. Carter whispered. “You have to talk to Colin. Talk to Colin.”

  “Colin can’t talk.” Mason stumbled back, confused. He spotted Angel and, as a primal instinct, hurried off.

  Angel squatted down in front of Carter. “Supper time.”

  “Oh, good, I’m famished.” Carter forced a cocky grin.

  Angel met it. “So am I.”

  Ados stood behind the pole. Carter heard a bag opening.

  Angel glanced over Carter’s shoulder. “He looks sleepy to me, Doc,” Then, to Carter, “Are you getting sleepy?”

  Carter spit in his face.

  Angel didn’t stop smiling. He wiped the spit off and licked it. “Tasty.”

  Carter recoiled. A brief sting told him Ados pricked his arm. The drug worked fast. Now he did feel sleepy. He tore his eyes awa
y from Angel to stare at the ground. What horrible nightmares waited if the last thing he saw was Angel’s face.

  Time passed. Carter sensed it. He was not awake yet.

  “Well, hello, Carter. We knew you weren’t dead. We could see your heart beating.” Carter’s eyes blurred the gray contours of his surroundings. Unfocused, he recognized nothing but Tuk’s voice somewhere above his head.

  “We were just discussing forests. No, no, don’t try to talk. It’s too early. Now you’re coughing, see? Just relax and listen to my voice.

  “More specifically, we were discussing ‘forest management’. I trust you won’t interrupt. Do you know anything about forest management? Did you know that in natural, wild forests, forest fires are a common occurrence? Several times a year a fire sweeps the woods, eliminating dead leaves and branches, making room for seedlings to grow. In fact, when the Miwok people first arrived in North America, they took advantage of natural fires that cleared conifer forests to obtain acorns and meadow plants for food.”

  Carter didn’t understand. Who talks about forest management? Why now?

  “When civilized man moved in, he started fighting fires, defying the natural cycle in favor of property values and insurance rates. Instead of several small fires a year, we have one large fire. Do you see the problem with that? You can’t shake your head. Don’t worry, you’ll regain your movement soon enough.

  “Eventually, humans figured it out, but they still insist on controlling nature. Rather than let the forest burn, they have ‘controlled burns’ to mimic what the forest does naturally. It’s called ‘forest management’. As if the forest hadn’t managed itself for billions of years! The vanity!

  “Imagine all the ways we impact the ecosystem without even realizing it! What major catastrophe hangs over us because of our disruptions? What fires have yet to burn what we’ve killed?”

  Carter still couldn’t follow such an incongruous conversation. Why was he even here? That didn’t stop Tuk from talking.