Man Hunt

by K. Edwin Fritz

  CHAPTER 14

  BROTHERHOOD

  1

  Obe woke not with a start or sweating, but with more of the same desperate uncaring that had been swimming through him before sleep had finally come. Something had wakened him, though he couldn't decide what. The sky, he saw, was once again black with its speckled millions. The rain had finally stopped.

  "My name is Obe," he mumbled into the pre-morning darkness, and his heart broke at the sound.

  He wriggled out from the thorny rose bush and sat up slowly, first on one elbow, then soon with his arms folded across his knees. He looked into the blackness in front of him, listening to the water crash on the rocks below and the powerful, hot wind blow past his ears.

  He pictured himself standing and walking to the cliff edge, his toes breached over into the wide space below, perhaps feeling the earth beginning to crumble while his feet slid slowly forward. He squeezed his legs tighter where he sat, and the Cliffs of the Moon seemed to respond with their washing, blustery song of desperation.

  "Hey! Obe!" The voice shout-whispered to him from afar through the thicket of bushes. For the briefest of moments he thought it was just more of his own damaged mind talking to him in the voice of the waves below. But no, it was a real voice. The calling of his name had been what had woken him.

  "Terd?" Obe whispered back. It could have been anyone, but in his isolation Obe's subconscious called forth one of the only persons from the Family of Blue who had seemed decent to him. No one answered. "Leb?" Obe asked again. "Is that you?" He wondered why he was whispering, yet he didn't dare speak too loudly. His eyes peered uselessly into the deep darkness. He could see no one. The moonlight was covered by clouds but the field was polka-dotted with the white of giant roses nevertheless.

  "Show me your sneakers, Obe." The voice had moved. It was surprisingly closer, yet he hadn't heard any footsteps. He decided he must have misheard the first time. His eyes continued straining into the darkness.

  Then a twig snapped, loud and crisp. It was even closer than the voice had been a moment ago, and Obe knew now he hadn't been mistaken. Someone was definitely approaching, coming for him. He got to his feet, beginning to feel nervous. He still couldn't see anyone, but now he thought he heard branches moving from even closer than the twig had been. He stepped backward, away from the sound, and tripped over an exposed root and fell into an immature rose bush. The tiny thorns scratched his arms and dug through his jumpsuit into his legs and back. He was sure he heard the voice laugh as he struggled to get out.

  When he emerged, Obe could see a dark figure standing twenty feet from where he had slept. It didn't look like Leb or Terd. Both were thinner, smaller.

  "I don't have the sneakers anymore," Obe told the figure. "Rein stole them from me." The figure didn't move, didn't speak. "In the alley," he added, "after groceries."

  "I'm not here for the stupid sneakers, Obe," the stranger said in a continued whisper. "I have news. News about your brother."

  The words were a hammer dropping. Obe stopped his anxious feet. He tasted a tartness seeping into his mouth, and his ears listened desperately to total silence. Even the wind and pounding waves seemed to have disappeared.

  "What do you know about my brother?"

  The figure advanced as it spoke again. "He's tall, isn't he? Dark hair, blue eyes?"

  Blue? Obe wondered. Were they? "I… I guess."

  "He used to play catch with you by a stream. Only you used rocks."

  A sledgehammer. Obe wanted to speak. He could only swallow.

  "And he used to look at the clouds with you. You found pictures in them."

  "Yes!" Obe couldn't have stopped his eagerness if his life had depended on it. "You've met him? Where? When? What town did we live in?" He paused and sent a tiny glimmer of a prayer towards Orion, who was now blessedly visible just inches above the approaching figure in the lowermost Southern sky. "Did he look for me when I disappeared?" His tongue followed up by beginning its incessant fluttering of clouds and silver and he stopped it with an aggressive verbal groan.

  The figure stopped moving and Obe took an instinctive step forward. The distance was still too great to see a face, but now he could see that it was a big person. Huge. Whoever he was, he had clearly spent a lot of time in a gym to look that way, and Obe wondered if it had made him tougher after all, if he had been harder for the women to break. He couldn't remember anyone in the Family who had been that size.

  "I don't know how to say this, Obe," the figure said. The whisper was gone now, though the voice was somehow softer. More controlled, perhaps. "I didn't meet him back home. I met him here. In green sector. Your brother is on the island."

  This was no hammer. This was an anvil. An oak tree. A meteorite. Obe felt his knees weaken and saw only swirls of black and gray before realizing he had swooned back to the rock-infused ground.

  "No," Obe said. His vision was clearing but his head was still spinning. "He can't be here. He's… he's home."

  "I know what you must be thinking," the stranger continued in his oddly secretive voice, "but I'm sure you're the one he was talking about. I saw you looking at the clouds before. He thought you might still do that. I guess they didn't steal every memory from him, huh?" The figure laughed weakly. Obe didn't reciprocate.

  "Your eyes, Obe… they're different colors, right? He said his brother had two different colored eyes. It was the one thing he remembered more than any other. And when I heard some guy in blue sector had the same condition, well, I came looking for you. In case it was the same guy."

  "My eyes?" Obe repeated. "He remembered my eyes?" The stranger didn't say anything. "Who are you?" Obe asked. The stranger didn't answer right away.

  "Does it really matter? I just came to deliver that message. How are your feet?"

  "My feet?" Obe said, still too stunned to think rationally. "Fine," he lied. "Better. I…" Obe wondered if his brother's feet were sore because his green sneakers had been stolen, perhaps even by this mammoth man in front of him. "I ripped them up pretty bad," he finished.

  He wanted to ask so many questions. His brother's face. His brother's name– but no, even his brother wouldn't know that– his island name, then. His jumpsuit. Or the clouds. He could ask about the clouds. But when he opened his mouth, the only question that mattered came out.

  "Is he still alive?"

  The figure didn't say anything for a long, long moment. Obe heard only the constant song of surrender sent out by the Cliffs of the Moon. "I don't know," the stranger said, "but…" and trailed off into silence.

  "But what?" Obe asked. His head was clearing now and anger was suddenly surfacing to mask the fear. "What for God's sake?!"

  "Well, he… he isn't a very good runner, Obe. I'm sorry, but he looked like he was having a hard time of it. When I met him I thought he wasn't going to last long. That was… almost two weeks ago. I don't even know if he's still–"

  "Never mind!" Obe shouted. "Don't say it. I don't want to hear you say it."

  "Alright. I won't say it." But of course the stranger didn't have to. Obe already knew.

  The dark stranger paused another moment then mumbled, "I'm sorry."

  Then, without another word, whoever it was turned and walked smoothly through the field of white roses. There was no sound. Whoever he was, he walked with the slow, purposeful stride of any hunting cat. He didn't stop, didn't turn around. He only vanished step by step into the darkness until Obe was left alone with only the warm wind and the luring, crashing melody of the Cliffs of the Moon.

  2

  Obe didn't know he was walking towards the sea. He barely saw he had even moved. But suddenly there he was, with his toes over the edge just like had pictured minutes before. The slab of stone marking the start of the cliff shone in the dim moonlight, still wet from the recent rain.

  He looked down at the hard, black rock. It called to him. He welcomed it.

  "How could he be here?" he asked the rock. It did not answer.

 
"What did he do to get here? Why are we both so…" he paused, thinking. "…sick?" The rock did not answer.

  "He's going to die before I will," he told the waves. They didn't answer, either, and the low thudding sound began again then, echoing across the empty hills and swallowed by the empty bay.

  "I must find him. Save him. Give him my food." The waves didn't remind him he had no food. They only fought with their brethren and crashed on their rocks. The thudding turned into a shuddering, repeated flap like a single hand of steroid-enhanced applause.

  "He's already dead, isn't he?" he asked. The crescent bay did not answer. The water only took, impassively, whatever he gave it. The flapping sound grew to a crackling echo of rotors. In seconds it rose in pitch and in volume and in presence until he could hardly hear the crashing waves. The wind suddenly blew straight down and hard instead of softly across the field. Rose bushes waved violently back and forth. White roses popped off their branches and dove over the edge of the cliff to their deaths below. The child's bright laughter sliced through the sudden din and stabbed at his heart.

  "Who is that?!" he screamed. But the Cliffs of the Moon didn't answer him. That wasn't its job. The helicopter that wasn't there carried the child that once had been. They were just above him now. Ten or twenty feet. No, only three. He could jump and grab the black bar of the landing gear. He reached up, looked up…

  But there was only the sky, black as spilled ink and just as forlorn. The cry, the pierce of delighted glee, repeated and echoed. The rotors of the helicopter blew down his hair, his hat, his billowing swim trunks. They blotted out the world. There was nothing else except the chaos of sound and wind. Nothing except that single shout of pure joy.

  His foot slipped. He fell forward. He plummeted through the air and

  3

  landed on his sandaled feet with triumphant glory. He had won!

  "No fair," someone behind him yelled.

  He turned to look but no one was there. Only the metal campfire ring browned with rust and blackened with soot and their folding chairs still surrounding it from the night before. Dew from that morning still clung to the side of the aluminum frames.

  "Yeah-huh," he said to the nobody who was somehow still there. "I won fair and square. You said first one to step on the Frisbee was the winner."

  The nobody said something else, something contradictory but it didn't matter because the Frisbee and the fire pit and the chairs were already gone. He was sitting on a horse now and the somebody was in front of him on another horse. A black one with lots of white speckles that reminded him of the stars in the sky in a weird sort of way.

  "And this one's Orion belt," the nobody said. He saw a finger pointing to a curving line of three speckled spots on the side of the horse's neck. "But it's all wrong because this horse is so fat," the nobody said. He looked and, yes, the white-speckled black horse was very fat. It was funny. They laughed about it but it wasn't the right laugh and the other flippy flappy sound wasn't there with it.

  Then the speckled horse pooped a giant turd

  that's 'Terd' with an 'E' but shitty just the same

  and they both groaned and laughed again.

  "This is going to take forever!" the nobody said, and he saw he was back at the campsite now. It was the day before. They were all struggling to put up the monster, sixteen-person tent, except two of the poles were missing from the box and using sticks wasn't working out and it was starting to rain and this was going to be the worst vacation ever.

  "This is going to be so cool!" the nobody said, and now they were at an outdoor concert. The band was one they had actually heard of and he thought he even knew the words to one of the songs and this was the coolest vacation ever.

  "A hole in one! A hole in one! A hole in one!" the nobody said, and he was putting the little blue ball– dark blue, not light blue 'cause light blue was a girl's ball– toward the windmill but the nobody had just ran to the other side of it and was screaming and laughing and telling him he'd never gotten a hole in one before.

  "You don't have the guts!" the nobody said. And it was his brother, of course, not a nobody. And he did too have the guts. Just because he'd never done it before didn't mean he wouldn't do it now.

  "I do too!" he shouted down. His brother was all those ladder steps below him, down on the concrete patio that surrounded the pool. He was already wet and drippy because he had already jumped off the high dive.

  "Then jump!" his brother yelled. And it wasn't mean at all, it was encouraging. His brother believed he could do it, and then suddenly he believed it too so he jumped and his dry, blue swim shorts billowed in the wind and then the tremendous thwapping overpowered them both.

  He looked up, awed at the glorious sight above them. A helicopter! A real-life helicopter! And they were going to ride in it!

  They had been waiting for an hour for all the people in front of them in line. But that was okay because each flight was a full twenty minutes and it took them all over the campground. They would even fly over the horse stables where they went riding yesterday.

  "Maybe we'll see your fat, poopy horse!" he yelled, and his brother laughed so loud it almost sounded like the greatest laugh in the whole wide world.

  Then it was their turn and they had to hunch over to avoid the colossal buffering of the wind that beat down on them from above as they ran to the helicopter's open doors.

  They put on their seatbelts and their headsets. They smiled open-mouthed like playful dogs. And then they were lifted up by a giant hand of God but no it only felt that way it was amazing how much thrust the helicopter had!

  "This is awesome!" his brother yelled into the headset, and he could barely hear it over the chaos of the rotors.

  "I know!" he yelled back. "Best. Day. Ever!"

  His brother laughed then, pure and clean like a polished silver vase. That was the greatest sound in the world. It was the laughter of joy and love that even the helicopter rotors couldn't blot from the world. And his brother had done it when he had said something funny and perfect and right.

  They flew over the horse stables and then across the open fields. Far down below them four horses were grazing. But when the helicopter noise came nearer they started to trot away.

  "Cool!" his brother said, and the pilot zoomed lower, and the horses broke into a gallop, and his brother turned to him and he didn't have a face but he yelled, "Check it out, !"

  4

  He woke from his strange trance and felt his foot slipping. Before him was mile upon mile of rolling waves. Below him was crashing death. Obe pinwheeled backwards, suddenly not ready to fall, not ready to die.

  Then his heel fell off the edge of the cliff and he went down. The back of his thigh hit the rocky ledge and he bounced outwards toward the abyss and the black rock below. His arms pinwheeled again, slapping flat rock and clutching for a crack, a root, a thorny bush of white roses.

  There was nothing but the flat rock and his face slammed home while his arms splayed out long and far. He stopped. Didn't slide. Didn't slip. He was pressing with all his might with arms and chest. His nose screamed white lightening but he didn't care and didn't pass out. Pain was nothing. Pain was temporary.

  He searched with his toes on the cliff wall but found nothing. He spread his legs wide, hoping to shift his balance forward. And then he found it. A little notch right under his right knee. It was a perfect little hollow, and he dug his knee in and found his foothold. In seconds he was pushing up and rolling back onto the rocky plateau.

  On his back now. Staring at the billion stars. Legs dangling over the edge. Heart screaming and slamming. Cold sweats bursting from his temples and forearms and neck. A shooting star flew across the sky, but he barely managed to notice it.

  "What was that?" Obe did manage. The only answer that came was the continued rush and slam of the deadly ocean waves below.

  CHAPTER 15

  SEDUCTION

  1

  The drive to Charles' apartment took fifteen
minutes. Josie followed him up a flight of stairs and past doors leading to other apartments. When he opened his door, he made her stand in the doorway with her hands over her eyes and count to thirty. She did so, without cheating, and listened to him scramble around trying to clean up. Just before she got to thirty, she realized she had been enjoying the moment, and she had to steel herself again.

  This is going to be harder than I thought, she realized, but not for all the reasons I had been expecting.

  The apartment was just like he had said: small, unkempt, and in desperate need of the female touch. In the living room, a couch and accompanying broken-legged coffee table faced an elaborate entertainment center, complete with large screen HDTV, BOSE stereo system, and what looked like three or four high-level gaming systems. Beside this monstrosity was a motorized spinning tower of digital entertainment selections, both audio and video. Aside that was another one just like it housing only games. Josie thought of the meager choice of half-dead DVDs in the little workout room a whole world away and felt true jealousy. Nothing else was in the living room. Not a single end table. Even the walls were blank.

  There was a small dining room. It contained an industrial cable spool laid on its side to serve as a table, two folding chairs, and in the corner a pinball machine that looked like it was from the 1970s. Charles explained his older brother had bought it at a yard sale and given it to him as a moving out present. He was ridiculously proud of it. It's only downfall, he said, was that it was so loud he couldn't play it at night. In the opposite corner was a plant stand made of unfinished wood. There were two plants in it, both cactuses. One was using a hollowed-out soccer ball as a planter.

  As Charles continued giving his little tour, Josie had to hide a smile when he brought her into the adjacent kitchen. Dirty dishes overflowed the sink, an old microwave sat squarely in the center of the only small counter space, and the cabinets were nearly empty, as was the refrigerator was stocked only with a case of beer, a bottle of mustard, a lone box of leftover Chinese food, and some sauce packets stamped with the name of a local pizza place. Charles did have, she saw, a healthy collection of coffee supplies. The coffee maker had been given its own rolling table that was up against the short, windowed wall.