Tales of Downfall and Rebirth
Page 13
Whack.
Mitch brought the flat edge of the oar down on his hands. The man bellowed as his upper body fell back into the water, his leg still hooked awkwardly around the railing. Mitch smacked the man’s knee with his oar for good measure. The man’s leg spasmed, lost its hold on the railing, and the rest of him flopped into the water.
“Dad!”
Mitch spun around. Eddie grappled with another man twice his size, his oar out of play and crushed between them.
He reached them in three strides and wound back, jabbing his paddle into the man’s side. He stumbled, releasing Eddie, and snarled when his gaze landed on Mitch.
He lunged for Mitch’s paddle. Mitch held on but the man was too strong. Time for plan B. Mitch swung out his right fist, the fishhooks between each finger. They latched into skin as Mitch punched the man in the face. His hand bounced off but the hooks stayed. The man howled, an unearthly sound, soon lost in the sea’s spray as the Windfall surged on.
Eddie hollered and charged, hitting the man square in the solar plexus. Together they fell back. The man’s head cracked against the railing. Eddie was still perched on top of him, his small fists punching his torso. Mitch leaned over and tugged him back against his chest. His hand scrabbled against the deck until his hand closed over the grip of his oar.
Mitch held it out in front of both of them as they stared down at the man, deathly still. The oar shook despite his best efforts.
Eddie gulped for air beside him. “They were going to kill us.”
Mitch didn’t say anything, just watched the dark stain that spilled out along the planks.
* * *
Mitch gave Dani some whiskey pilfered from the cruise ship to help her sleep in a makeshift berth belowdecks, cradled by their hard-won treasure. He and Eddie kept the Windfall pointed east despite their exhaustion. But there’d be no rest for him until they reached land.
The wind had gentled and the sailcloth had held up enough that they needed to make only a few adjustments to keep them on course. Eddie hunkered down next to him in the cockpit.
“She going to be okay?”
He’d gotten the arrow out and dressed the wound, but he didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
“Once we get a doc to finish patching her up.”
“We’re going back to Homer?”
Mitch frowned. He didn’t know what irritated him more—that Eddie assumed they were going back to the Homer Cooperative in the first place or the hopeful throb in his voice as he said it.
They’d been doing okay, hadn’t they? He’d kept them fed, clothed, safe . . . well, as best he could. Didn’t that count? But heading back to Homer felt like they were giving up. Going backward, after all they’d done to survive and thrive.
He took a deep breath. “Yeah, that’s the plan.”
He didn’t see any other options. The Cooperative had a few medical professionals in their ranks, and was big enough to protect them against whoever those crazy bastards were. Besides, he was fairly certain Dixon would treat them right. If not, the booty below would do the trick.
Eddie nodded to the body lashed to the railing. “Who do you think they are?”
Mitch forced back the revulsion that lurked in the back of his throat.
“I don’t know.” Their war cry lodged in his brain. “Wait. High-dah . . .”
He snapped his fingers. “Haida are a native people that live off the coast of mainland Canada near the Alaskan panhandle, if I remember correctly.”
He thought back to the faces in the dugout. Had they really been Haida? Or just a group of men mimicking their traditions to survive?
Eddie frowned. “That’s all the way across the gulf.”
They were either very brave or very desperate. He felt Eddie watching him and shrugged.
“Maybe the folks in Homer will know more.”
* * *
HOMER COOPERATIVE, SOUTH CENTRAL ALASKA
NOVEMBER 4, CHANGE YEAR 0/1998 AD
Gray-tinged dawn heralded their approach to the Kachemak Bay. The ruins of Homer were to the north. Dixon had told him fires, fighting, and the need for more resources had pushed survivors to the southern, less-populated side of the bay. Before things changed, supplies had to be airlifted in for the tiny cluster of homes there. The now useless airstrip and hangar had been a community center for the surrounding areas for years and made a natural starting point for the Homer Cooperative.
Until now, Mitch had never risked going near their new harbor. People would kill for the Windfall. But as he laid eyes on the folks from the Cooperative who gathered along the shoreline, he hoped it wouldn’t be today.
They dropped anchor a ways off, and after the initial alarm, a small rowboat with three men slowly crawled out toward them.
“Declare yourself,” a man’s harsh voice rang out, while another kept a crossbow leveled at Mitch’s chest.
“Mitch Davis. We have news, and, if you wish it, a proposition.”
The faces in the boat flickered in relief before suspicion clamped down once more.
“But I’ll only talk with Dixon.” Mitch’s chest squeezed tight as the men on the boat conferred, then slowly rowed back to the docks.
Minutes ticked past, then a half hour. When the boat returned, Dixon was in it.
“Permission to come aboard?”
He couldn’t quite keep the eagerness out of his voice, but at least Dixon’s face betrayed no emotion.
Mitch waved him on. Dixon came with Tom, his second, who scanned the deck with undisguised hunger. Mitch positioned himself so he was blocking their view of the dead Haida warrior.
Dixon smiled. “It’s a fine ship, Mitch.”
“That it is.”
“You bring news?”
Mitch nodded, his throat suddenly dry. “I do, but before we get to that, you meant what you said last time?”
Dixon’s face broke into a smile. “The Homer Cooperative would be honored to have you. That’s still true.”
“The Windfall is mine.”
Tom’s mouth dropped open. “Now, wait a second—”
Dixon slapped Tom’s shoulder, silencing the younger man.
“The Windfall is yours, but if she harbors here, we’ll occasionally require use of her.”
“Understood. But only so long as I train the folks who take her out, and have final say on when she sails. I want no risks to her.”
Dixon held out his hand. Mitch slowly relaxed his hold on his oar, and shook. Then he stepped aside.
* * *
The crackling woodstove made Dixon’s cabin quite cozy. Or maybe Mitch was so worn out it didn’t matter where he was so long as he didn’t have to do anything for a while. Sitting beside him at the table, Eddie could barely keep his eyes open, his chin propped up by his hand. Dani slept soundly on a pallet, snuggled under a handful of furs and a homemade blanket. Once Dixon heard their story, he had wasted no time getting someone to see to her injury.
Mitch supposed he should feel grateful, but he was too weary, all momentum gone. That nearly all their goods from the cruise ship had been taken from the Windfall didn’t help.
Across the table, Dixon cleared his throat.
“Folks along the coast from Yakutat to Cordova have spotted the Haida warriors. Pillaging like goddamn pirates. That you three got away with just one arrow-shot shoulder is amazing.”
“So you knew about them?”
Dixon frowned. “I heard stories, but it wasn’t enough to trouble us much.”
The unspoken pride that Homer was bigger and doing better than the other settlements filled the silence. “But what you’ve described is more disturbing. If they’re doing such large-scale salvage . . .”
“They’ll target Homer eventually.”
Dixon nodded. “And thanks to you, we’ll be ready.”
“I always wondered how you did it.”
Mitch raised his brow. “Did what?”
“Get all those goodies you’d trade.” He thumped the table with his hand. “I knew you didn’t have a bigger crew.”
Should he deny it? He was just so damn tired. Of everything. Mitch bit the inside of his cheek. “Really?”
“You don’t get to be a leader of a group like this without knowing a thing or two about people.”
He stabbed a finger at Mitch. “You’re a loner. That you’ve survived this long means you’re lucky or crafty or both. And frankly we need more of those people here. I’d hoped you’d come around eventually.”
Mitch took another swig of his drink. Dixon didn’t have to rub it in.
Dixon leaned in. “How’d you keep the Windfall hidden?”
It might have been the exhaustion or the whiskey, but Mitch didn’t see any point in lying.
“We kept her moored a ways off the coast and rowed in, taking all the sails with us.”
Dixon whistled. “Jesus. I’m surprised your kids didn’t mutiny.”
Mitch flicked a glanced at Eddie, then Dani, both sound asleep. He shrugged. “They’re good kids.”
“What about their mom?”
“She lived in Seattle. Anyway, they were visiting me when things . . . Well, you know the rest.”
Dixon winced and nodded. “You’ve done well, for them and yourself.”
Mitch grimaced. “We’ll see.”
“I won’t lie and say I’m not thrilled you’re here, however it came about. And with the Windfall, we’re going to be able to do so much.” Dixon caught himself. “With your permission of course.”
“It’s all right. Get it out of your system. The sooner you and your engineers figure out how she works and get to shipbuilding, the better.”
Dixon chuckled. “The hell of it is, I never liked the open water.”
“Too bad. With my contacts and your boats, this could become a big trading center.”
“That’s quite a proposition. You and your kids going to stick around long enough to make it happen?”
“I don’t know. At least through the winter. Then we’ll see.”
Dixon gave him a hearty slap on his shoulder. “At least you’re honest. We’ll see what we can do to change your mind.”
* * *
HOMER COOPERATIVE, SOUTH CENTRAL ALASKA
MARCH 14, CHANGE YEAR 1/1999 AD
The trebuchet launched a pile of stones to sea, the momentum rocketing the whole apparatus back on greased rails.
“See that?” Harrison grinned ear to ear, practically dancing. “The rails’ll distribute the force and make sure the boats don’t tip or get knocked off course.”
Mitch quirked a brow. “Or split open the deck?”
The ex-high school physics teacher looked sheepish. “That too.”
It was Harrison’s idea. Dixon’s chief engineer. He’d burst into a council session, clutching a book to his chest.
“Look at this: the Battle of Caishi in China. Trebuchets mounted to riverboats.”
Since then, they had eagerly set about to put the plan in place with the Cooperative’s slowly growing fleet of sailboats—only to find out the torque generated by the war machines could rip them from their mount on the ship deck. The damage to the Windfall, since fixed, had been almost a physical wound when Mitch first heard the whomping crack and then saw the deck planks torn apart. And no way to treat a loyal friend.
“Well, what do you think?” Harrison asked.
Mitch walked around the floating arm trebuchet. Rather than swing the counterweight around the axle like a traditional catapult, the axle rolled out of the way on rails so the counterweight could fall straight down. As it did, it pushed the arm away, then jerked it back with the full force of the weights dropping. The compact machine also packed quite a punch with a hundred-plus meter range.
For the last six months, the Homer Cooperative had prepared. A good percentage of folks already had hunting experience. Alaska was rife with elk, bear, moose. Everyone had mandatory bow practice twice a week, on top of some hand-to-hand basics taught by two black belts who used to run a karate studio downtown.
According to survivors’ accounts, the Haida not only stole goods, tools, and weapons, but people too—primarily skilled workers and young children. Someone had a book on the First Nation peoples of British Columbia. With how Vancouver went up in flames like so many other major cities, the Haida, living on the islands to the west, must have dealt with refugees fleeing the more populated areas. Resource-strapped and desperate like everyone else, it seemed they’d fallen back on the teaching of their ancestors to survive.
That explained their impressive dugout canoes and weapons. But not their targets or the savageness of their attacks. Who was he to judge, though, wearing clothes he stripped off of a dead man? Anyone who’d lasted this long had done things they weren’t proud of, himself included. But at a certain point, you had to let that go. You had to do better than just survive.
After much discussion with Dixon and his advisors, they settled on the need to protect what they’d already built in Homer, and to demonstrate to the Haida they were not to be trifled with.
Hence the war machines and the calluses on everyone’s draw fingers.
“Mitch?” Dixon prompted.
What Dixon was really asking was whether he and the kids would stay long enough to see this through. Mitch had held off getting his wrist branded with an “H.” Dixon hadn’t pressed him, but Mitch knew some of those in the Cooperative were getting impatient with them hanging around if they weren’t ready to commit.
He gave the trebuchet one last look and nodded. He didn’t like it, but was it really any crazier than the salvage operation he and the kids had run? Mitch glanced at Dixon and Harrison who still jittered beside him.
“The wind gods will have to be smiling down on us.”
Dixon waved his hand impatiently. “Of course, but . . . ?”
Mitch nodded. “What do we have to lose?”
* * *
HOMER COOPERATIVE, SOUTH CENTRAL ALASKA
APRIL 3, CHANGE YEAR 1/1999 AD
Mitch kept his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket as he headed back from the harbor. Despite his foul mood, he registered the few curt nods he received from members of the Cooperative he passed on his way to the cabin Dixon had granted him use of until they came to a more “formal arrangement.” Dixon’s words, not his.
He slowed his approach at the sight of Dani speaking to a young man outside the cabin, a soft blush on her cheeks. Mitch came up behind them.
“Danielle, who’s this?”
She jumped and turned, fluster intensifying her blush. “Dad, this is Charlie from school.”
Once they got settled, Dani and Eddie started taking classes with the other Homer children, using books and textbooks that had been saved or salvaged. It had kept the kids busy during the winter months, but now it was just one more thing tying them here.
“I see.”
In a few years, Charlie wouldn’t have to look up to meet Mitch’s gaze. Today, however, Mitch used his height to remind the young man just who he was talking to, and he was rewarded when Charlie swallowed.
The young man gave Mitch a deferential nod, mumbled something to Dani, then scurried off. Mitch watched him go, partly bemused, partly annoyed.
“Remember what we said about making connections here?”
Dani huffed. “He’s just a friend, Dad. Anyway.” She gestured vaguely toward the harbor. “How did it go?”
Mitch couldn’t hold back his groan. “Bunch of
landlubbers. Don’t know how they’re going to be ready in time.”
One of the men he was training to crew the Windfall ended up in the water before they’d even gotten out of the harbor—and it had just gotten worse from there.
“There’s an answer to that.”
“No.”
She placed a hand on his arm. “Dad, I mean it.”
“We’ve been over this, Dani. I won’t put you and your brother in any more danger if I can help it.”
“Even if it gets you killed in the process?”
Mitch didn’t answer, just entered the cabin. Eddie glanced up from where he was sitting cross-legged on a wide-plank floor in front of the woodstove, book in his lap.
“You two fighting again?”
Mitch shook his head. “No.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Dani, the matter is closed.”
“The hell it is.”
Mitch looked at her in surprise. “What—”
“You’re always saying we need to think for ourselves, but as soon as we do, you say the matter’s closed.”
“Honey, that’s not—”
“Dad, please. Listen for once.”
Mitch glanced at Eddie. No help there. Mitch faced Dani and crossed his arms.
“We’ve done everything you’ve asked of us and more. Now, it’s time you do something for us. Let me and Eddie crew for you when the time comes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Name one person here who’s better than us.”
“That’s not the point.”
Dani arched her brow. A slightly smaller but scarier version of Kathy. “Do you even want the Cooperative to succeed?”
Mitch held up his hands. “Where’d that come from?”
They’d put off their departure a couple of months to see this through, hadn’t they? Originally, he told the kids it was just for the winter. As soon as the snow melted, they’d take the Windfall and—
“Because it seems like you’d rather fail than take us along.”
“At least you two would be safe.”
“But without you, where would we be?” Eddie piped in. He slowly got to his feet. “You’re our dad. You’re all we have.”