But would the ex-Corsairs have followed a president or prime minister? Maybe? Perhaps, under the right circumstances. He didn’t know and he didn’t want to think about it. He just didn’t want to go down the same road with Jenn, yet he didn’t say anything.
Tired and beat up as he was, Mike had that over-eager look in his eyes when he thought there was a boat to command. If Stu stepped in, even if he was on Mike’s side, it would end with them leaving at that very moment, throwing caution to the wind.
“If that’s the decision, then I think we should get as much rest as we can,” Stu said. “And maybe some more pain meds.” No one disagreed with that and Jenn was quick to hand out a full dose of Dilaudid even though it was too early. “Slow down there. Maybe half a dose. You don’t want to turn us into addicts.”
Mike gave this warning a shrug, while he only said, “I’m willing to risk it. Jillybean said she was getting addicted to whatever she was taking, and she had no problem, you know, not being addicted.”
“That was her. We’re different. We’re…” Weaker. It was true even though he didn’t want to admit it. Jillybean was crazy and somehow she was able to harness her craziness for her own purposes. “You don’t want to be an addict. I remember what they were from before and it wasn’t pretty.”
Cutting back the dose and feeling a miserable hunger within her, made Jenn think she was already halfway to becoming an addict. It was the pain in her joints that had her craving a new high. The pain made sleep, even drug-induced sleep far from easy. The three of them tossed and turned on the mattresses Stu had hauled down, unable to find any position that would suffice for more than a few minutes at a time.
The blustery, wet day wore away and towards sunset, Mike began coming up with more reasons why they needed to steal the boat as fast as possible. He even packed their very meager belongings, finding two pieces of carry-on luggage and a black backpack. Even the medical books were taken, although why Jillybean had stuck them in the box in the first place was a mystery to Mike. Someone as smart as her should have known that books could be found anywhere. Still, he didn’t want any excuse to tarry even if it meant hauling what felt like useless bricks.
When the room began to grow dim, he went to the door and cracked it, listening to the wind carry on without let up. “It’ll calm once the sun goes down,” he said just as Jenn opened her mouth. “It always does.”
Jenn waited twenty minutes and then proclaimed: “It’s dark. We have to go. We have to put some miles between us and them. Stu?” He nodded. As much as he wanted to take the boat, the wind was blowing fiercely out of the west. There was a good chance that the second they slipped out of the little harbor they would be pushed right onto shore. Yes, they could wait, but with every passing hour, the odds that one of the Corsairs would discover them increased. Maybe they’d catch a glimpse of the firelight or smell the embers, or maybe they would see a muddy print.
Mike sighed wearily, feeling his pains even greater than before. “Fine,” he grumbled and picked up the heaviest of the bags. Stu poured water onto the fire and followed Jenn out into the rain where Mike was grinning and Jenn was staring up as the rain fell straight down into her eyes. It was a moment before Stu realized that the wind had died.
“It’s a sign,” Mike said, nudging Stu.
Stu scratched his jaw where the stubble was coming in thick now. He didn’t believe in signs or omens. What he believed was that without the storm masking their presence, stealing the boat would be that much harder. “We’re going to need a plan,” he said in his rasping growl. Each looked from one to another. Planning was not their strong suit, especially since they only had one gun between them.
“Maybe we can start a fire like Jillybean did,” Mike volunteered.
Jenn tried not to look confused at the suggestion but she wasn’t sure how that would help them get the boat. She waited for him to fill in the rest of his plan; after a few moments, she snuck a peek at Stu. In the dark his expression was hard to read.
“That’ll just get them, I don’t know, nervous,” he said. “Or, you know extra vigilant.” He dropped to a knee and drew out a quick map of the boat, the dock, the harbor and the house. He then looked up, hoping that someone had a better idea than just lighting a fire. No one did. He rubbed his chin again, not seeing the plan. He even thought: What would Jillybean do? and came up completely empty.
“Wellll,” Stu said, with a shrug. “I think we might just have to wing it. We’ll try to, you know, tiptoe down the dock and uh, you two undo the mooring lines and shove off. I’ll go down into the cabin. They probably won’t shoot right off the bat. I bet.” He was going to bet his life on it, but he really didn’t see any other choice.
Neither did Jenn or Mike. They both nodded, not seeing any better option. With their “plan” in place, the three began trudging through the dark, cold rain towards the town. From above, the rain soaked them to the bone and from below, the mud sucked at their weary feet. In no time they were exhausted and when the wind shifted into their faces, they could barely make headway against it. By the time they had made it to the edge of town, they were forced to take an hour-long break to recover. They took that break in the Melendez house, where Stu willed himself up the stairs so he could keep an eye on the one house by the harbor and the Corsair boat.
There was nothing much to see. The house remained dark and the boat was only a shadow. The Corsairs were there, however. As they had approached the town, the smell of smoke mixing with the earthy scent of rain-scrubbed air had grown until there was no doubt of its source. He should have been scared. So much could go wrong with their barebones plan that they should have been trembling. He was too tired to be scared.
Eventually, he came down, which was Mike’s cue to help Jenn to her feet; they held each other to keep from falling over. Her role in the plan was to keep quiet, untie one of the two mooring lines, shove off when Mike told her too, and not get left behind. It seemed like a lot to ask. When she didn’t immediately reach down and grab the backpack, Mike slung it over one of his shoulders.
“If something goes wrong, we’ll meet back at the other house,” he said.
Stu thought there wasn’t even a remote chance of that happening, especially for him. He had the gun and he would use it and he would likely die, which was strangely sad. It was strange because for the first time in days, he actually didn’t want to die. He grunted at the realization that he was no longer suicidal. It was all the excess energy he had left.
After checking the Sig, he stepped out into the rain, the gun in one hand and the handle of a little powder-blue piece of luggage in the other. He dragged the carry-on along behind him like an unwilling dog until the mud clogging its wheels finally fell away. Then it rolled smoothly, making a light thump every time it ran over a crack in the sidewalk. There were many such cracks.
Jenn hissed, warning him that he was making too much noise. Stu didn’t slow and he didn’t even think about picking up the piece of luggage. His left arm was still weak and somewhat mangled from the bullet he had taken.
He led them, going in a loop so they would approach the house and the harbor from the side. Once at the harbor’s edge, the cement sidewalk gave way to a rickety boardwalk and the thumps from the carry-on became regular: thump, thump, thump. And they grew louder, but so did the sound of the falling rain, and the endless crash of the ocean. It was a rumbling roar that had started off as background static but had grown steadily as they got closer.
Fifty yards from the boat, Stu slowed and cast a quick peek behind him. Jenn was fifteen feet back, walking with her head hanging and swinging from side-to-side. Mike was dragging under the weight of the backpack and the carryon, his breath panting in and out. Together the two pieces probably weighed forty pounds, but he was so beat up and exhausted that it looked to Stu like he was hauling the weight of a baby elephant along.
It was apparent that they already needed another break, only they couldn’t stop right there out in the open. The
house of the Corsairs sat on a little hill frowning down upon them. It was so close that Stu could hear a quiet murmuring coming from within; every once in a while, there was a cackle of laughter. If someone came out to smoke a cigarette or to get more wood, or even just to take a leak, the three of them would be caught and killed.
A break would have to wait a few minutes longer. The next few minutes were do or die for them. Stu started forward again and the luggage went thump, thump. He stopped and tried to pick the piece up. It was too heavy and after a few steps he had to put it down again. He wanted to ask Jenn for help, but when he had stopped earlier, she had looked back and saw Mike struggling, and now she was acting as a human crutch and was doing what she could to keep him upright.
Stu wished he could just leave the carry-on, but he had picked up the one with the medicine and the food. He started dragging it again when a piercing white light blazed full on him. The light stopped him in his tracks. Like a deer in the headlights or an escaping felon trapped in the circle of a searchlight, he froze, unable to move as the light poured over him, forming a shadow on the dark water to his right.
He didn’t even try to bring up the gun to shoot it out. It sat forgotten in his hand as he saw the silhouette of a huge man hurl something at him. At first, he thought it was an odd-shaped hand-grenade. It struck the side of the hill ten paces up from him and rolled down to stop at his feet.
“What the hell, Stukey?” the giant growled. “I know a rat when I see one.” He hawked up a big ball of snot and spat it at Stu.
Being spat at got Stu moving. He might have been only a shadow of his old self just then, but he wasn’t going to take being spat on by anyone. Up came the gun in a sweeping move and he aimed just as the man pulled the window shut and yanked the curtain back. Stu was in the dark again and very confused. Fearing a trick, he kept the gun pointed at the window, uselessly as it turned out.
It did not open again.
A few seconds of Stu standing like a statue passed before Mike whispered, “What was that about?”
Stu held a finger to his lips. He didn’t know what had just happened and his only clue lay at his feet. Grunting down to one knee, he saw that the feared bomb was in fact the charred remains of a cooked rat. Some guy named Stukey was serving rat for dinner—there was meaning behind this, which, for the life of him, Stu couldn’t figure out. Jillybean probably would have been able to discern volumes of information from the nasty-smelling rodent and the man’s distaste for it.
“I’m not her,” he said under his breath. Slightly louder, he said to Mike, “They didn’t see us. Come on.” He kicked aside the rat and in a second the carry-on luggage was again muttering softly: thump, thump, thump, thump. Softly or not, it was the only sound that wasn’t the patter of rain, and it seemed to Stu that the closer he got to the boat, the louder the thumps became. He slowed and now the piece of luggage spoke with a deliberate cadence: thump-thump-thump-thump. Stu was afraid that anyone in the boat would be able to hear it, and someone did, only that person had his own fear.
At twenty-four, Rob LaBar was the youngest of the Corsair recon team who had come south the month before on the thirty-three foot, Wind Ripper. As such, he had pulled the worst guard times and was the butt of every prank. The pranks were a daily occurrence. Unlike the others, he didn’t dare sleep on guard duty and, after accidentally putting a bullet-sized hole in the Ripper’s hull in a fit of terror, he kept his AR-15 on safe and on the cushion beside him, instead of in his sweating hands.
LaBar was developing an ulcer. He had heard the thump-thump-thump-thump, coming closer and closer; nothing had ever sounded so dreadfully ominous to him. This wasn’t his friends playing tricks, he was so sure of it that his sweating hand had crawled along the cushion like a spider going for the AR-15…only to stop an inch away.
What if I’m wrong? he thought, remembering the panicked shot that had put the hole in the boat. It had been ten days ago and he still hadn’t lived that down and probably wouldn’t for…
The boat suddenly rocked as someone took a step on board— LaBar’s hand grabbed the AR-15, his thumb sliding to the fire mode selector. He hesitated, wanting to laugh aloud and say: Alright, who’s being the wise guy, only he knew in his trembling gut that this wasn’t one of his friends. This was exactly who he was guarding the boat from in the first place: a stranger.
Above him, the stranger took three unhurried steps to the stairs that lead down to the cabins, down to where LaBar was sitting. With each step, LaBar’s heart beat faster and faster, but when he saw the first muddy boot and the rain-soaked edge of the stranger’s blue jeans, his heart felt like it stopped. No one in the recon team wore blue jeans. They all wore camouflage.
Stu heard the scrape of the gun as LaBar slid it across the table. He knew exactly what the sound was and knew that with every step down, he became more and more of a target. “You don’t want to do that, son,” he growled. Although Stu was only twenty-one, he had the gravelly voice and the steel in his eye of a much older man.
There was movement on deck and for a moment LaBar took his eye from the boots. There were others! He could tell they were at the mooring lines…and now The Wind Ripper was being shoved off.
“S-Stop or I’ll sh-shoot,” LaBar said in a whisper.
Stu had no choice but to go on. He was halfway down and if he turned around and went back on deck, he didn’t know what would happen. When he reached the bottom step he had to pause to allow his vision to catch up to the intense dark below deck. It was a few seconds before he saw LaBar and his AR-15 which was pointed right at him.
“Stop,” LaBar said again. “You can’t have the boat. You got it? It’s my job to stop you. Got it? Do you understand?” The stranger, tall and lean, was shadowed in such darkness that he seemed to be without any features.
“You think this is your job?” Stu said, low and gruff. “Let me tell you, dying isn’t much of a living, boy.” They both had their guns trained on the other, their fingers slowly squeezing back on the triggers; if one fired, the other would as well just as a matter of flinching. They were two scorpions in a bottle, with subtle differences. Stu was too tired and already in too much pain to really be frightened. And he had nowhere to go. He couldn’t turn around and leave; he could only press on and he did so, literally.
Stu walked deliberately forward until he stood over LaBar, the black bore of the AR touching his jacket. He didn’t say a word because he didn’t need to. Every second that he remained alive was another second Mike had to get the mainsail raised and the rudder adjusted and the jib prepared.
Jenn wasn’t much help, so it was a blessing that Mike could do all this in the dark. But he was moving slowly, tripping over the lines and lurching into the shrouds in a way that wasn’t like him.
When LaBar realized that The Wind Ripper was being stolen his ulcer began to ache. “You can’t take her, they’ll kill me if you do.”
“And I’ll kill you if you try to stop me, so that leaves you in a bit of a pickle. If living is what you want to get out of this, I’d hand over that gun. We’re not Corsairs, we’re…we’re with the Queen.” This was only a little lie since Jenn had been queen once. “She’s compassionate. She won’t kill you for doing your job.”
Time was slipping away from both of them. Stu could hear Mike struggling to get the boat out into the narrow channel so she wouldn’t run aground in the middle of the harbor. LaBar was running out of time to do anything. If he didn’t stop these people he would die a horrible death, a far worse death than getting shot in the heart.
He knew what he had to do, but he couldn’t pull the trigger and when Stu reached out a gentle hand and pushed the tip of the barrel away, he didn’t fight it.
Stu quickly took the AR from him. “Up the stairs, now,” he snapped, gesturing with the black pistol in his hands. When they got on deck and LaBar saw an unarmed teenage girl slouched by the wheel and what looked like a schoolboy, still wearing his backpack, trying to coax a meager wind
into the boat’s sails, LaBar realized he had been tricked.
“Cover him,” Stu said to Jenn, handing over both the pistol and the rifle. He then moved off to help Mike. “What can I do?”
“We’re not moving. I think we’re grounded,” Mike hissed, feeling frazzled and embarrassed. He had not expected such a small boat to have such a deep keel. “I’m going to need you to help push us off.”
Going into the icy water was the last thing Stu wanted to do—second to last. It beat getting shot. Stu yanked off his coat and pulled off his boots, took a deep breath and dropped over the side. He let himself sink to the bottom, where everything was murky. Thankfully the boat had only been painted black to the waterline and he was able to see the long slope of the boat and the deep keel. He swam to it, braced his feet in the silt at the bottom of the harbor and heaved with all the strength in his back and legs. Pain raced through his body and bubbles erupted from his nose and still, he struggled against a boat that weighed nearly three-thousand pounds
By all reason, Stu shouldn’t have been able to budge it much, if at all. It was a sprightly, quick-tempered boat, however and it yearned to be free and racing with the wind. It ground forward an inch and then two and then it suddenly lurched in a brown cloud and for just a panicked second, Stu feared it would shoot away and leave him behind.
Kicking off the bottom, he swam to the boat, which Mike was scarcely able to hold in check. “Hurry, Stu,” he whispered, turning The Wind Ripper up into the light wind to keep her from bolting back into the shallows. At the stern, Jenn was also urging him to catch up. She should have been keeping a closer eye on LaBar.
He saw his chance and flung himself at Jenn, grabbing for the gun and screeching, “They’re stealing the boat!” One hand found the gun and the other, balled into a fist, found the side of her head and sent her flailing backwards.
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 10
