Blood and Bone: A Smattering of Unease

by Noble, Shannon Rae

  The human flotsam proved to be a young man, about 30 years of age, long-limbed, tan, shaggy sun-bleached hair. The drone registered his heartbeat as well as his breathing.

  Damn! The fact that the castaway was still alive meant that Troy would now have to deal with him. He briefly thought about leaving him on the beach until he got up and found the house on his own, or until tropical storm Rae had her way with him. He pushed the thought away. Karma was a coldhearted bitch, as he well knew; it wouldn’t do to rack up bad karma. It shouldn’t matter to him now, as old as he was, but for some reason, it did.

  He took the elevator down and drove the buggy out to the boardwalk. He didn’t own a bot capable of retrieving a human from the beach. He knew that if the flotsam had any serious injuries, he would be screwed, because all Troy could do was bend at the waist and haul the body into the buggy by his arms and the back of his shirt.

  It took about ten minutes to get the lanky body haphazardly into the buggy so that it wouldn’t slide out again on the fifty-yard drive back to the house. Troy had plenty of upper body strength to go around, and handling the castaway’s body was like handling that of a really big fish – except that he had never handled a 6-foot, 190-lb fish before, and he’d always had a line to reel in.

  He sat for a few moments after dragging the body into the buggy, panting and sweating, letting his heart rate calm. He tried to reach and rub the sharp new knot in the middle of his back. As he did, he looked over and studied the intruder’s face. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the younger man during his earlier exertions. Now, Troy felt a sense of déjà vu at the sight of the broad, tanned face and snub nose.

  He shook the feeling off. The stranger was too young for him to know or to have known during his previous life in the States.

  At the top of the elevator, he maneuvered the dead weight into one of his extra chairs and used his remote to guide it into his “guest” room, where, once again, Troy was faced with heavy lifting. Cursing and muttering under his breath, he managed to get the torso, then legs, entirely onto the guest bed.

  The space between Troy’s shoulder blades complained sharply, and he knew his lower back would have its revenge on him by morning. He’d be lucky if he didn’t end up lying flat in his bed for a week from the abuse he was heaping on his body . . . or at least, what was left of it.

  He clumsily stripped off the stranger’s sodden clothing, which were worn threadbare and bleached nearly transparent from days spent in salt water and exposure to the relentless Pacific sun.

  He didn’t bother trying to dress him; he just left some of his largest, oldest shorts and a t-shirt at the foot of the bed.

  He checked vitals again using the MedScan, which provided a clearer analysis of his conditions than the drone had. Vitals were steady. No broken bones, but some deep contusions and a goose egg on the noggin. The worse diagnoses were exposure and dehydration.

  Troy could handle cuts, bruises, and the sunburn, but sent for the MedBot to administer the IV. Despite being a hunk of metal and wires, the MedBot was surprisingly competent and gentle.

  The reluctant host left the curtains closed and exited the dark room. It could be hours or even days before the intruder regained consciousness.

  He wasn’t about to take either of his boats out or send for medical help from the mainland, which was at least a couple of days away. According to the weather reports, the storm would hit within twenty-four hours, and he was fully equipped to take care of his uninvited guest for a week, if need be.

  On his way to throw the tattered shorts and shirt into the trash bin, he noticed the wallet in the shorts pocket. Surprised, he said. “How the hell did he not lose this?”

  He attempted to pull some identification out of the wallet, but everything was wet and stuck together. One of the limp cards tore a little when he tried to peel them apart.

  “Nope.”

  He tossed the wallet, contents and all, into the dryer.

  He glanced at the clock in the living room as he rolled through. “Damn!” he uttered.

  The morning was nearly gone, and he was starving. All of the exertion of the last couple of hours had burned up what little fuel he had gained from his half-eaten breakfast.

  One of the pastimes that he truly enjoyed and didn’t use bots for was preparing food. He was too hungry to do a from-scratch lunch today, so he just heated his leftovers from the evening before and grabbed himself an imported brew. Smiling to himself beneath his overgrown, unruly moustache and beard, he said with a chuckle, “Everything here is imported. I’m in the middle of nowhere!”

  He snapped his tray to his chair and returned to his favorite spot on the deck.

  He popped the top on his beer bottle. He held it up so that the early afternoon sunlight shone through the amber liquid.

  “To you,” he said, toasting the horizon.

  In the seventeen years he’d lived on the island, he’d experienced the wrath of five tropical storms: one in 2039, two in 2041, one in 2044, and one in 2046. He supposed he’d been lucky to not to have been hit more often. But then, maybe his island was easy to miss, just the size of a pinpoint in the vastness of the Pacific, and not even large enough to register on a map.

  He finished his lunch and rolled into the kitchen to clean up his dishes. He looked in on his uninvited guest, even though there was no need. If anything changed, his cell phone would beep. But he had to satisfy his curiosity.

  The human flotsam slept soundly, breathing easily. He hadn’t changed position. Troy was almost disappointed. Though people weren’t his strong suit, it had been months since he’d last had company.

  He snapped his fingers, suddenly remembering. “Wallet!”

  He pulled it out of the dryer and took it to the living room. He clicked on the satellite television, tuned it to the Weather Channel, and set himself to examining the contents of his guest’s wallet.

  “Hmm . . . coupla shopping discount cards . . . sixty-seven dollars . . . library card . . . destroyed photograph . . . aha! Driver’s license!” He held the item up in front of him as though he had won a prize.

  “Thomas Quinn. Age 33. Six-foot-one. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. Atlanta, Georgia.”

  Troy’s forehead wrinkled as he concentrated, waving the driver’s license to and fro as though fanning himself. “Thomas Quinn. Thomas Quinn . . . Tom Quinn . . . Tommy Quinn . . . Tommy Quinn.”

  His eyes widened and he felt the blood drain from his face as realization struck him. “No. It can’t be!” He picked up his glasses from their place on his tray and examined the photo, which had been protected from the salt water by its lamination. “Oh, shit.”

  Because it was. “How the hell . . .”

  He wasted no time. He rolled to the panic room behind the kitchen. He keyed the combination into the number pad beside the door, which clicked open to allow him admittance. He rolled inside, grabbed a cardboard box and set it on his tray. Rolling around the house, he removed various scattered paintings and framed photographs from his walls, and a collection of books from his shelf. He had hung the paintings himself, so they were within easy reach. Not everything fit in the box, so he stacked some of the paintings on top of its contents. Back in the panic room, he leaned the excess paintings and photographs facing the wall. He set the box heavily on the floor. As he reversed from the room, he locked and closed the door firmly behind him.

  “That should do it,” he said.

  His phone alarm beeped.

  * * *

  Tommy blinked blearily, trying to focus on anything within his dim surroundings. A sharp, pulsing pain threatened to explode out of his forehead. His mouth tasted like dust, and his lips were excruciatingly chapped. He was conscious of his battered body: he felt like one big, aching bruise.

  He found that he could move his arms and legs with a little effort, but sharp pains and stiffness convinced him to wait a while before trying to move a second time. He discovered that his left arm was attached to an IV drip whose bag hung, sus
pended, from a portable metal pole. But he could tell, even in the darkness, that he was not in a hospital room.

  It didn’t matter. He was in a comfortable bed, with a roof over his head. And most importantly – he was dry, the bed was fixed in one spot, and it didn’t heave and sway relentlessly.

  There was a whirring sound like a small toy car that had been wound up and let go. A robot-like machine rolled up to the bedside, red lights blinking from what Tommy took to be its “face”. A female computerized voice emanated from speaker holes located on its “chin”.

  “Please relax, lay back, and rest. You are being treated for dehydration and exposure. Intervenes fluids are being administered. Please do not move unnecessarily or remove the needle from your arm.”

  Feeling slightly weirded out but comforted, all the same, Tommy did as the robot instructed and lay back against the pillows.

  Just then, the door of the room swung open, letting in a shaft of sunlight. Tommy blinked and squinted against the sudden glare as a man seated in a wheelchair rolled into the room accompanied by a sour, nasty smell. He couldn’t see the man’s face; it was silhouetted against the brightly lit doorway.

  A bedside lamp clicked on.

  When his eyes had adjusted, Troy saw the man sitting silently, contemplating him out of small, round, brown eyes. Wild gray unkempt hair stuck out every which way from the top of the man’s head. It matched the gray, wiry hair that started at his chin and spread down his neck and across his cheeks.

  He wore an oversized grayish-white t-shirt and an equally large pair of shorts. His arms and shoulders were sinewy and well-muscled. From his shorts, gaunt legs protruded awkwardly, as though they didn’t know what position they were supposed to take. The skin on his legs hung loosely from his bones. His feet were bare.

  Attached to the arms of the man’s wheelchair was a shiny metal tray, upon which sat a glass of water, a medicine cup, and Tommy’s wallet.

  The old man cleared his throat. “Thomas Quinn,” he said in a frail, scratchy voice. He picked up Tommy’s wallet from his tray and set it on the bedside table. “I didn’t take anything. I just wanted to know who I picked up off my beach. I dried it for you in the dryer. How are you feeling?”

  Tommy open his parched mouth and croaked in a slow Southern U.S. drawl, “Awful. My head.” He winced. Even talking hurt.

  “Sorry. I didn’t want Shelley to treat you for pain if you didn’t have any. But I brought you water and some ibuprofen, just in case. Can you swallow?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, here. Open. I can’t help you sit up or prop you up, but I can hold the glass.”

  Tommy obliged, groaning as he tried to tip his head up just enough to where he could receive some water. He opened his mouth. The old man dropped the tablets in one at a time, each one followed by a tipping of the glass of water to Tommy’s lips. He managed to choke them all down. The gagging wasn’t caused so much by the tablets as by the old man’s sour stench. Still, he tried to chug as much of the water as he could. The cold freshness was like heaven on his tongue.

  “Not too much, just yet,” Troy cautioned, pulling the glass away. “You’ll get sick. But I’ll bring you some soup and crackers in a little while.” He pushed a button on the arm of his wheelchair, which reversed through the doorway. “You need to rest. Don’t be afraid of Shelley, she’s just a MedBot.” He turned the chair to away from the room, then looked back over his shoulder. “The name’s Steve.” With that, he rolled away, the motorized chair making a high-pitched whining noise.

  Tommy then realized that the relentless ache in his stomach was the sharp ache of hunger, made a little sharper by the few gulps of water he’d just taken. He couldn’t remember how long ago his last meal had been. Days? A week? Two?

  He knew that four ibuprofen on a completely empty stomach would likely make the hunger worse, if not make him sick. He hoped the old man would bring food soon.

  * * *

  As he rolled around the kitchen, Troy caught the weather report. He had designed an open floor plan to accommodate his chair, so he could easily see his widescreen in the living room. He watched the dark gray representation of the approaching storm: a huge cloudy cartoon-like whirlpool coil in the South Pacific Ocean. It seemed so huge and so close to the island that it was incomprehensible to him that it hadn’t made landfall yet. Looking past the television through his open French doors, all was still sunny and peaceful.

  His thoughts turned to finding a way to get Tommy Quinn off of his island, but the reality of it was that they were going to sit tight while the storm blew through. If he tried to get Tommy to the mainland, he would run the risk of getting caught in the storm and killing them both. Besides, he had already done his storm preparations. Both of his boats, Melody and Harmony, were already battened down inside the reinforced boathouse. The house would be sealed and ready for the storm with just a touch of a few buttons on his universal remote control.

  Troy was just going to keep his fingers crossed that Tommy wouldn’t guess his true identity. Troy disliked confrontation, and there was no telling how Tommy might react if he learned the truth. He didn’t know how much Tommy knew or remembered about the past, but he was willing to guess that, if Tommy knew anything at all, the knowledge would not be to Troy’s benefit.

  At least here on the island, Troy had the security of knowing his own home and its nooks and crannies, as well as the island’s geography. He had his Colt .47 if things got nasty. He’d bought the beautifully maintained antique gun mostly for show, but it would fire like new if he needed it to. And he could always retreat to his panic room.

  The thought of his Colt prompted Troy to unlock the glass cabinet where he kept the firearm on display. It wouldn’t hurt to load it and keep it with him – just in case his uninvited guest should prove to be hostile.

  After loading it, he tucked the gun into the side pocket of his chair and took the castaway his lunch. Typical fare for someone who was ill: chicken soup made from last night’s spit-roasted chicken, crackers, and green gelatin. Nothing heavy for a half-starved man.

  Troy propped Tommy’s pillows behind him, and Tommy pulled himself up into a sitting position. He was grateful for the food and thanked Troy profusely.

  “Just take it easy,” Troy responded. “Don’t eat too fast.”

  He left Tommy to his meal. Having seen the younger man wrinkle his nose when Troy came near, Troy decided to go and bathe. There was never any real reason to practice good hygiene. Who was Troy going to offend? Millie, his cat?

  Fresh from his bath, he checked on the castaway. The food was eaten, the flotsam, napping. Troy quietly took the dishes away.

  Back on the deck, Troy lifted his binoculars. Was he seeing things, or did the horizon line look a little darker? Was the haze a little closer?

  The sun had traversed its arc and now hung behind Troy’s house, which cast a brief shadow down the front boardwalk. The sky’s pastel blue had deepened, and the water’s shade had become inscrutably dark.

  The tide was beginning to turn. Waves lapped gently at the shore. Nothing seemed amiss, but Troy felt a distinct sense of unease. He scanned the water to the right and left along the beach as far as the view allowed. He decided to go for an outing.

  He left his uninvited guest sleeping and took the elevator down. He drove the buggy off the boardwalk and south along the beach’s edge. He used his binoculars often. He did the same on the way back, passing in front of the house and the edge of the boardwalk.

  The quality of the light had changed, now that the sun had dropped behind the house. Though the difference was subtle, the colors of the ocean and sky had grown darker. The ocean was calm, and Troy saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  He returned to the house and sent his drone out from the deck. He sent it around the island as far as it could travel. The entire island seemed peaceful. The drone detected no intruders, and nothing unusual seemed to be happening that merited attention.

  He t
ook video of the ocean from the opposite side of the island. There, though the sky was still clear, the yellow ball was well into its slow descent toward the water. It was the perfect image of an idyllic sunset on a hidden tropical retreat.

  The video taken from this side of the island was a little different.

  Troy knew tropical storm Rae was coming in from the west. From where he sat, all he could see with his binoculars was that the dividing line between sea and sky was growing ever more hazy and dark. The drone recorded video of several large shapes approaching beneath the waters. They were too far away to determine what manner of fish they were. Troy surmised that they were a school of bottlenose dolphins.

  “Hey, Steve. What’s that?” Troy started at the sudden raspy Southern lilt behind him.

  He moved his chair a little to the side so that he could see Tommy propped up against the door frame.

  “Hi Thomas,” Troy said. “Where’s the IV? Shelley should scan your vitals before you move around.”

  Tommy flapped a hand. “Tommy, and she already did. She told me to take it easy and to drink lots of water, but she took out the IV.” He rubbed his arm where a piece of gauze was taped to it. “Still getting used to not bobbing around like a cork in the middle of the ocean.”

  “You can sit down.” Troy nodded toward a grouping of outdoor furniture arranged at the corner of the deck.

  “Thanks.” Tommy walked uncertainly to the grouping and slowly dragged a lounge chair close to where Troy sat. “This is a pretty sweet spot. Where are we, exactly?”

  “I can’t tell you, exactly. But I can give you a guess. Somewhere in the South Pacific between South America and Australia.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality. Y’all probably saved my life.”

  Troy shrugged and said nothing.

  The silence stretched on.

  “So . . . what were y’all looking at?”

  Troy looked up from his tablet. “There’s supposed to be a tropical storm coming in, but all I can see is a big wall of haze.”