by Patti Abbott
He learned about Protection Island. The history of the coal mines that ran underneath Nanaimo Harbor. The explosion that had killed a hundred whites and fifty-three Chinese. Protection Island’s rebirth as homes for the wealthy. He studied nearby Newcastle Island too, since at low tide one could wade between them. A rare species of albino raccoon prowled its shores. A Hawaiian convict lay buried on Newcastle in an unmarked location. The Old Man studied them but he didn’t visit them. That would somehow violate the pact he and the Bastard had made. He’d have to cede to the Bastard the advantage of terrain.
He picked his tools and his attire carefully. He knew the Bastard might use explosives. The Bastard favored cheap radio detonators and the most rudimentary land mines. That was another advantage the Old Man would yield. He would never employ explosives again.
He decided on an air taxi to take him across the Georgia Straight to Nanaimo, and then a rented boat with a thick plastic windshield and a powerful outboard motor. He wanted to limit his exposure on the water. The Bastard might decide that the contest began when the first one of them reached Gallows Point. And the Old Man knew the Bastard would be there first.
He considered his own advantages but took no comfort in them.
*****
In the air the Old Man settled his stomach and said his goodbyes to the city. He was anxious. How could he not be? He had done nothing like this—nothing at all, really—for years.
He held two fingers to his neck and listened to the thrum of the plastic replacement heart in his chest. His pulse was elevated but steady. He thought of Chen, of Higgs and Mulcahy. He wondered what they would’ve been like at his age. Would they have taken to retirement? Higgs, maybe. Not the others.
He’d outfitted himself in dark clothing and carried his gear in a red nylon hockey bag. He’d tinted his hair dark so that no one would try to assist him with his luggage out of sympathy. He’d avoid people, but more importantly they’d avoid him.
In a Nanaimo diner he put away acidic coffee and stared at grub he didn’t want. He reminded himself he was doing this for justice. Not selfish reasons like revenge. Least of all out of idleness, the “sheer boredom” the Bastard had spoken of. He’d settle things with the Bastard, get justice, or go down swinging, the way the others had.
At dusk he walked to the marina and paid a man in cash for the use of the boat. The Old Man checked it thoroughly. He inspected the motor and made sure there were no superfluous wires. Satisfied, he paid the dealer. The dealer told him to be careful, boating at night.
Protection Island wasn’t five miles from shore. Houses and moored yachts gleamed in the fading light. Newcastle lay to the north, thick deciduous forest set back from peach-colored sand.
His new vessel was called the Bran Mak Morn. The name meant nothing to him.
Halfway across the bay he realized he had to piss. He could see no one on the docks, nothing glinting from the yachts save the odd bit of brass or chrome trim. He eased off the throttle until the boat was coasting and did his business off the port side, feeling exposed. The city glow from the harbor was slight. It wasn’t tourist season.
The sun fell. There was a light rain. He slipped a paddle into the water, preferring not to use the motor for the last part. He knew the Bastard was watching him. Probably had been since he cast off from the marina. But from where, was the question. If it was him…
The Old Man considered it. The best vantage would be one of the houses, or the trees behind them. The yachts would offer an advantage of proximity and escape. But he wasn’t sure the Bastard would employ the water. The stooped way he’d moved back on the mainland…
The Old Man chastised himself. He was falling into familiar patterns of thought, patterns that hadn’t helped him back before retirement. You couldn’t anticipate the Bastard. You couldn’t outthink him. The Old Man would have to trust his instincts, and treat Protection Island as if every square foot could be weaponized.
He clambered out of the boat onto the jetty. He’d bent to retrieve the bag when a bullet punched through the windshield close to his cheek.
Off-kilter, he tipped clumsily back into the boat and flattened himself. His hearing was still keen, but he hadn’t heard the shot.
Lying staring up at the stars he put the trajectory together. It had come from Newcastle Island. A precision shot, more than half a mile. He hadn’t expected the Bastard to use a rifle.
He turned onto his belly, spun around and peered up through the screen. He could see nothing on the other island save the outline of trees. The adrenaline chill was a comfort.
He set to work. First he slipped down into the seat and brought the engine to life. Keeping his head low, he corrected the course so the boat would graze the western point of Newcastle Island. It might run aground. It didn’t matter either way.
A nylon cord would keep the wheel from correcting. He eased up the throttle and secured that, then flicked on the pair of powerful lamps built into the prow of the boat.
He heard the crack of the second shot, and the third, both aimed at the neon lamps that lit up the beach on Newcastle. The Old Man slung the bag over his arm. He killed the lamps and in the sudden darkness dropped into the water.
The water was cold and he couldn’t quite touch bottom. It took effort to pull the floating bag underwater. He couldn’t have it bobbing above the waves as he swam.
He’d scouted Newcastle well and knew that the rocky eastern beach offered the best cover and the shortest stretch of exposed ground to the trees. Northeast, the sandbars rose and it was there you could walk between islands at low tide. The Bastard might wait for him there. He might already be waiting at the eastern beach. In the past the Old Man had often felt that the Bastard had access to his thought processes. He wondered what preparations the Bastard had made. Perhaps none. Maybe that morning the Bastard had simply taken down the rifle, stuffed his pockets with cartridges, and set out to ambush the Old Man. There was no accounting for the Bastard.
Water crept into his nostrils. He swam awkwardly, the bag upending him, careful his strokes didn’t break the water’s surface. He paused to take in air and check that the Bran Mak Morn was still on target. It seemed to be slowing. He reached the rocky isthmus and felt his waterlogged shoes touch the island. Above the lap of the waves he could hear little. He pulled himself up, remaining behind the barnacle-flecked rocks. He’d imprinted a map of Newcastle in his mind. He knew the distance he’d have to cross to reach the forest.
In the forest he could outflank the Bastard. He could stalk him. The advantage would be his. A person could never really know a forest, and knowing that fact would give the Old Man his much-needed edge. He climbed up over the boulders. Grass and a few weather-beaten logs separated him from the nearest trees. He started across the sand.
He realized his mistake too late to amend it. A bullet clipped his shin. The Old Man pitched forward, landing on the sand with the bag behind him. He kicked the bag back down into the rocks and lay quiet.
“Clever business with the lights,” he heard the Bastard say.
Bullets punched the sand around him. The Old Man kept his head down the way a new soldier does who’s unaccustomed to fire. He’d never seen the Bastard shoot. Was he missing on purpose to keep things interesting?
The Old Man needed to get back to his equipment bag, but that was impossible given that he was pinned down, with the Bastard closing in. He’d need to circle around. He could break for the forest, or he could slip into the water and approach from a different point. Swimming would tire him. Waiting here was no good. A forest run was suicide. He crawled ahead, judging the distance to the log. Paltry cover, but better than what he had now.
He did a soldier’s spring to a standing position and ran all-out. When he reached the log, this strange surge of vitality carried him over it and he broke for the trees at a dead run.
He crashed into branches and fell to the dry mulch of the forest floor. Truthfully he couldn’t recollect bullets chasing him, or the t
hundercrack of a rifle. The pain in his leg, the sweat beneath his coat, and his overworked synthetic heart—those were real. He could have dressed the wound with the kit in his bag, but his bag was wedged between boulders at the water’s edge.
A network of well-trod paths led around the island. The Old Man could stay off the paths and trample through ivy and undergrowth, or chance the hard-packed dirt. Visibility versus noise. He stuck to the path.
He’d feint, as if to circle around the Bastard’s position, and then double back for his bag. Without the bag he had no chance. He hoped the Bastard didn’t know it. He had a folding knife in his pocket. The Bastard had a gun. Doubtless the Bastard had other things.
The flesh wound aggravated his stride, but didn’t devolve into a limp. His footsteps were silent.
The ground rose. To his left was a still lake. A dancefloor of algae and fallen leaves rested on the stagnant water. To his right the trail led off to the bay named after the dead Hawaiian.
The Old Man thought about that story as he walked. The Hawaiian had been executed for murder, tried by the Hudson’s Bay Company, in the days when the country was a trading post for the British. He wondered how fair the trial had been, a dark-skinned defendant in a company-run post. Maybe someone had taken a dislike to the Hawaiian. Maybe the Hawaiian had offended one of the merchants’ daughters. To be buried in an unmarked grave on a strange island—he’d offended someone.
The ground sparked in front of him. Instinctively the Old Man dove, landing in a soft mess of fern and rotten wood. He started crawling away from the track, turning back to see where the shots were coming from. The sound was too soft for a large-caliber rifle.
Something landed nearby, something fused and burning. He rolled away as it exploded in a gasp of smoke.
Dummies. Firecrackers.
He looked up and saw the Bastard, belted into a hunting hide between two trees on the other side of the trail. He was bringing up his rifle. The Old Man leapt up and moved.
He ignored the pain. He was disoriented. He thought he was heading toward the water. He stumbled over a fallen tree. A bullet blasted away shards of rotten wood. The Old Man dove over, landed, scurried out of sight.
The Bastard was laughing.
Bullets chipped away at the Old Man’s cover. He knew a well-placed shot could slam right through a dead tree. He dug in. He had a feeling the Bastard wanted him dug in.
He stayed there for an hour. If he tried to run, the Bastard would have a good sight on him. And what was in that direction—the water? What could he do there?
Why firecrackers? Why not grenades?
It was a game to the Bastard. Never a duel. The Old Man wasn’t his equal. Hadn’t been even before retirement. He was toying with him. Herding him towards--
He heard something hissing from the nearby foliage. Suddenly the air was redolent with an acrid, sour smell. The Old Man’s eyes watered. Tear gas? Some kind of homemade agent?
His skin burned. He bolted from cover, stumbling. He heard the shots and thought he could hear the bullets passing him, swarms of them, one shot rolling into another.
He was running. He was sobbing. The chemicals burned his throat and nose. He could hear the water. He headed that way.
The ground sloped downward. He slid and stopped. Milky vision slowly returned to his eyes. When it did, he saw he was near the water’s edge. The bottom of the short slope was lined with punji sticks, dozens of them, sticking out of the ground like brown serrated teeth. Coils of razor wire wound around their base. If he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t sensed something was off…
He realized what an idiot he’d been. He’d gone into this as a duel. The Bastard had spent the year arranging amusements for himself. This was the game for the Bastard—to make him run this obstacle course, the two of them, stalker and prey.
The Bastard would be behind him, with the rifle, waiting to finish him off.
The Old Man pulled out two of the punji sticks, broke one, tossed the top half and the other stick into the water. He jabbed the broken bottom half back into the mud, and used his hands to create the impression of a limb sliding into the water.
He took up the heaviest thing nearby, a segment of rotten stump, and heaved it into the lake. The splash was underwhelming and it bobbed in the water. But it had stirred up the silt below.
The Old Man scrambled back into the tree line, slowed his breathing, and waited.
He heard footfalls, the crunch of dry leaves. He didn’t look up. The feet stopped. Leaves ruffled near where the Old Man lay. The Bastard was prodding the bushes, looking for traps. With a pained wheeze the Bastard made it down the bank. The Old Man looked up, saw the Bastard kneeling, holding up the broken stick. The Old Man stood up very quietly. He’d already opened the clasp on his blade.
One chance.
The Bastard was below him with his back to him. He took aim and threw. Instinctively the Bastard turned. He’d aimed for the Bastard’s heart. The turn moved a shoulder into the blade’s path. The blade cut into the Bastard. The Bastard fell. He landed on the razor wire and let out a whinny of a scream that would have been funny anywhere else.
The Old Man ran. It was at least two miles back to the rocks. The bag was everything. He could collapse of a stroke or heart failure after. He had to get the bag.
The Bastard had the gun. The Bastard would know the fastest way across the island. The Old Man was unarmed. If he wasn’t fast enough…
Somewhere on the island the dead Hawaiian was buried. Which meant that with every step, he could be walking on someone’s grave.
He stuck to the trail and didn’t pause once for air, not until he was at the edge of the forest. He’d come out farther south than he’d planned. Here there was no grass, no driftwood between him and the rocks.
He started across the open ground. The first shot pang-ed across one of the boulders that lay so frustratingly close ahead. He ran all out. A shot tore through his shoulder and propelled him forward, onto the rocks.
He fell, pulling himself over, putting the boulders between him and the shooter. He edged close to where he’d kicked the bag.
The bag wasn’t there. He reached over to probe the crevice where the bag had been, but his arm refused to move. He could feel precious blood soaking through his coat. He looked up.
The Bastard was crossing the beach at a casual pace, obviously in pain. The rifle was in his hands.
“You’re cleverer than you were,” he called out.
The Old Man ignored him. He turned over and used his good arm to feel about in the junctions between the rocks.
His fingers touched the woven nylon handle.
“Now that you’ve got your guns,” the Bastard was saying, “we can escalate things a bit.”
“Didn’t bring a gun,” the Old Man said. His good hand pulled the black weatherproof case from the bag, and he began undoing the clasps.
A desperate shot rang out, hitting the rocks. The Old Man was moving now, the device in his hands. With his teeth he pulled up the antenna.
“Spent the year learning about radio frequencies,” the Old Man said. “Never could figure which one you used. Had to learn how to sweep through them. Technology’s sure something.”
He depressed the device’s lone button and stood up. The Bastard had the rifle leveled at him.
The Bastard didn’t shoot. The Bastard was laughing.
The Old Man’s thumb left the button. He dropped and covered his head. The explosion shifted the boulders and raised the heat and left nothing of the Bastard except dark pieces of bone and gore amidst a spew of blood.
The noise was enough to break the skull.
It didn’t stop, either. The Old Man felt a rumbling. He stood up. He watched a plume of fire leap out of the forest, then another, then more. A sequence of explosions, painting the sky black and red, detonating the island. The mine shafts. The Bastard had wired it all.
The boulders danced as the rocky beach went up in turn. The blast left fires that
cooked everything in their wake.
The Old Man crouched and listened to the intermittent rumblings. The sand burned into glass and the trees gave way to geysers of fire and shattered earth. Pressure and terror seemed to meet and fuse. Black sleep rolled over him.
He dreamt of white raccoons.
Allure Furs
By Patti Abbott
I began working the counter at Allure Furs the September I was seventeen. I was tired of the lifestyle my measly allowance bought—fed up with being the “poor me” high school girl with no money for a Saturday night movie, a Bon Jovi concert, or a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. My mother—single and overworked—seemed relieved that I removing the burden of providing such things from her.
Few would have predicted a shop selling expensive fur coats could appear so down-on-its-heels, but Allure Furs managed it, squashed as it was between a dilapidated movie theater with a torn marquee showing second-run films, and a donut shop with a missing “u” in its sign, dating from the 1930's. Dont, as the sign spelled out in electric green letters, turned out to be a fitting warning. The trio of businesses attracted little interest except for an early morning sugar rush and the midnight Saturday showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was never around for either event.
Allure Furs had no reliable clientele, sometimes managing to elude customers for days. Standing at the bus stop at five o’clock, the incessant hum of the movie soundtracks still rang in my ears, and my clothes carried home the combined scents of popcorn, licorice and yeast. It took no small effort to remove the smell from my clothes.
My decision to apply for this job seemed flawed almost immediately when my prospective employer came out to meet me. Mr. Polifax was the most hairless man I’d ever seen, and he walked with his midsection thrust out, the rest of him following behind in a slithery crawl. Physically, there was nothing to admire and more importantly, his personality was no better than his countenance.
