Project Columbus: Omnibus

by J. C. Rainier

  “Oh, I forgot to ask you,” he said. “How much vodka did we sell?”

  “Well, get ready to bust your butt when we get home,” she replied impishly. “All of it.”

  “All of it?” he gasped.

  “Yep. Every bottle. Frank also placed a backorder for three more cases. He’s got the empties ready for us to pick up whenever. He also gave me an order list for some soaps he needs.”

  Cal bolted upright, forcing a mild protest from Alexis. “He’s never ordered that much from us before. Consigned, yes. But ordered?”

  “He’s got some big order in the works with Norris. Looks like this might become a regular thing.”

  He whooped with joy and squeezed her tight. “That’s great news! That should put us even.”

  “Better than,” she corrected. “We’re finally in the black. Not by much, just a few favors, but still…”

  Ooh, a few favors in the black. Don’t spend it all in one place.

  Shut up or I’ll stop drinking again.

  “It’s what I’ve been waiting for. That means it’s time,” he said. His nerves started to jitter, but they could not stand against his elation.

  “Time for what?”

  He cupped her hands in his and looked deep into her emerald eyes. “Time to start our family.”

  Alexis’s jaw dropped open in stunned silence, then she squealed and threw her arms around his neck.

  Oh, you dumb son of a bitch, Jerk whined.

  Ruina Raphael

  Chief James Vandemark

  2 July, 5 yal, late afternoon

  Camp Eight

  The storm curtain of the chief’s hut parted suddenly, startling the family within.

  “There’s something going on, Chief,” Troy stated nervously. “You better get out here.”

  James nodded and pardoned himself from the game of rummy he was playing with Jeanette and Kristin. He followed his trusted advisor outside. As they made their way to the vantage point at the edge of town that looked down on the shore, he noticed that the clouds had grown at least three shades darker. Distant thunder announced the arrival of another storm with its deep rumble. James scanned the choppy seas just offshore, as well as the white sands at the jungle’s edge.

  “Where’s the fishing fleet?” he gasped. Not a single canoe or catamaran was to be found, not even on the shoreline.

  “I don’t know. I was patching up a loose panel on the clinic roof. One minute I look over and they’re all out there, then I look again a couple minutes later and they’re gone. All of them.”

  James closed his eyes, listening to the distant thunder and smelling the sea air. The wind was in his face, the tang of the salty air too sharp, the thunder too close. He snapped his eyes open.

  “Get everyone to shelter, now!” he commanded.

  “But what about the...”

  James didn’t give Troy the chance to finish. “Now!” he bellowed as he burst into a headlong sprint down the sea road.

  Damn it. If the fishermen got caught, we don’t have much time to prepare.

  James felt the first warm drops of rain splash on his face as he bolted from the village. But his flight left him with a dilemma; should he head for the farmhouses to warn their occupants, or come to the aid of the fishing fleet? Either decision was equally heroic and damnable. His people were hanging on by the thinnest of threads, and losing either could mean starvation. He had nearly reached the fork in the road that would force a decision when he saw Nick Petrovsky stumble from the jungle near the beach.

  “Nick! Nick, come here!” he shouted, competing with the wind.

  Nick changed course, staggering to meet James at the fork in the sea road. His hair and clothes were dripping wet. The rain had just started on the island a minute earlier, leading James to believe that the fisherman had abandoned his canoe, or at least been thrown from it. Blood ran from a gash on his upper arm, flowing quickly down as the rain diluted it.

  “What happened out there?” James asked, wrapping his arm around the fisherman to steady him.

  Nick was still panting from his exertion when he spoke. “We thought the storm was going to skirt the island, just like the last one. But then it slowed down and took a turn right for us. Waves dumped us right over just before we got back to land. Our canoe broke apart. The waves were coming in fast, they threw us right on the beach. Part of the canoe landed on me.”

  “What about the others? What happened to them?” James was having a hard time shouting over the escalating wind.

  “Mike’s with Martin. They’re trying to find any others that made it. We got caught with our pants down, Chief. The whole fleet’s gone.”

  Shit.

  The rain intensified dramatically, coming down in sheets that stung when they pelted exposed skin. Time was up. The storm had arrived, and his fishermen were still exposed.

  “Get your ass back to the village. Take cover. Keep your dad safe,” he ordered.

  Nick didn’t hesitate. The winds had intensified again, and standing upright was now a hazard. There was no way either of them was going to search for the wayward fishermen. James took a deep breath, and callously wrote off Michael and Martin as dead. There was only enough time left for James to find cover. The farms were the same distance from where he stood as the village was, so he sprinted toward the farms, hoping he could at least spare one more family by helping them secure their home.

  Giant palms near the shore protected him from the wind long enough for the path to wind to the leeward side of the farm hill. Even still, the raging tempest buffeted everything. The protection that the hill’s shoulder provided was limited, and twice he lost his footing and was forced to stay flat to the ground until the gust passed. James collected himself for the final push to the first farmhouse. His legs burned like hot irons were pressed against his calves and quads, but he pushed through.

  Chief James Vandemark made it to within fifteen feet of the storm curtain, but his luck ended there. In his zeal to save as many lives as possible, he forgot that the slope changed at the last moment, exposing him to the windward side of the hill. Hurricane-force winds swept him off his feet and threw him into the sky like the insignificant speck of matter that he was.

  He did, however, have plenty of time to think about his mortality and his family before crashing back to the ground, miles away, ending his life in an instant.

  William Vandemark

  6 July, 5 yal, early evening

  Colonial cemetery, 1 mile inland from Camp Eight

  Will didn’t think it possible to remain calm under these circumstances. Though his soul has been torn asunder and his mind screamed in torment, his body gave only the slightest clues to his pain. A single tear rolled down his cheek, and his knuckles drained of color from the death grip he had on the shovel. He pointed the tip into the ground and leaned on it. His younger sister, Kris, fell to her knees, wailing.

  Each metallic rasp as Daniel’s shovel sunk into dirt left Will even emptier. His sister no doubt felt the same anguish, watching their mother’s broken body slowly covered with dirt in her shallow grave. They never found their father’s body. It didn’t matter. Everyone knew he was dead after Nick told his story when the hurricane passed.

  Each of the thirty-five survivors had a story to tell. Most were the same; confusion, followed by utter terror when they realized how severe the storm actually was, capped off with laments for the dead. Like most stories told during Camp Eight’s tragic history, they were largely tales of suffering and death. Only one story of sacrifice and heroics had been told, but even that came with an unbearable price tag.

  Will glanced to his right, catching sight of Gina and Karina. Each held a toddler in their arms; Gina clutched her half-sister Daphne, and Karina held Diego Serrano. Gabi’s half-brother looked around with wide, curious eyes, occasionally pointing at something and commenting in butchered, barely coherent words. Neither of the children should have been alive, but for that one sacrifice. It was also a minor miracle t
hat the survivors were able to hear the story. It was told by Aidan Brennan, an orphaned child who almost never spoke.

  The villagers of Camp Eight were no strangers to storms. The tropical island was regularly drenched by vigorous downpours, and occasionally was subject to high winds, which was the reason storm curtains were developed to begin with. But the weather experts—in this case fishermen, since the village lacked any sort of scientific methods or tools—noted that they expected the storm to pass offshore. Just another in a series of storms narrowly missing the island, which was also not unusual.

  But they had been wrong about both the intensity and direction of the storm. It slowed and hooked, hitting the island with all its fury. Camp Eight had almost no warning. Troy Bryant ran from dwelling to dwelling, shouting about the incoming storm. He barely had enough time to get to the Palm Palace in time to secure it. Aidan was inside, along with the two young children, Charlotte Bryant, and two more children who perished in the storm. It was Aiden who told the survivors about how Troy and the other children were sucked through the roof of the place when it peeled back like a cheap can, and how Charlotte forced the children into the corner, clutching each of them for dear life.

  Charlotte was discovered the next day, still shielding the children long after a blow to the head had sapped the life from her body. Aidan was able to use his own body to keep her corpse from crushing and suffocating the younger children.

  Will wiped the tear from his eye and placed his hand on Kris’s shoulder, though she was inconsolable. Daniel drove a crude wooden cross into the ground, marking the completed grave.

  Goodbye, Mom. He thought. More tears welled up, and his throat tightened.

  The last grave had been filled. The last body buried. Will picked his sister up off the ground, urging her to go to the others. She screamed and protested at first, but eventually stumbled off, crying the whole way. He walked slowly behind her. He did not look at her, but instead at the grave markers that he passed, noting the names of dear friends and village elders who were gone.

  Dr. Ken Petrovsky. Charlotte and Troy Bryant. Mark and Emilia Reiber. Leight. Jenkins. Captain Kimura. He clenched his teeth together. Anyone and everyone who has ever had a hand in leading this God-forsaken colony. They’re dead. We’ve failed.

  He reached the group to find Gina and Karina consoling his sister. The rest looked at him expectantly.

  “What?” he growled in irritation. “It’s over. Time to go.”

  “Go where?” Gabi asked.

  “Home,” he retorted as he brushed past her. Daniel caught his arm and stopped him.

  “What home? The town’s gone, Will. We’ve been living in shells since the storm passed.”

  Will paused. He turned around, checking the expressions of the survivors once again. Fear, concern, and apprehension were written all over the faces of everyone old enough to understand. And they all looked to him. A sickening realization dawned on him, something he did not think of when he volunteered to coordinate search and rescue efforts immediately after the storm.

  I’m the new leader. I’m the only leader. No one else is left.

  The skill sets of those left was even more disheartening. Of the thirty-five people that survived the hurricane, only sixteen adults were left. And that count included Karina, who was not quite eighteen years old. They were homeless, nearly defenseless, and would be starving in a matter of days.

  This is what this fucking island does to us. Squeezes us until we die. Well, here we are, about to die.

  The grief he felt was pushed aside violently by a surge of rage and determination. He wasn’t about to die, nor would he let anyone else. He and Gina still had their whole lives together. He would watch after Kris, Daphne, Gabi, and Diego. The others were as good as family too, at this point. Daniel, Nick, Karina and Caleb. Even troublesome Marya and her brother Aidan deserved better than to just wait for their deaths.

  “We will survive,” he said, focusing his determination as a plan formulated in his head. “We start little. The pod on the beach may be dead and on its side, but it will still do for a shelter. We move in tonight. Nick, you take Daniel and Caleb fishing tomorrow. Show them what to do. Kris and Marya will scavenge the town and its surroundings for anything we can use. Tools, food, containers. Anything at all. Gina will watch the kids. Gabi and I will hunt.”

  “What about boats?” Nick asked. “They’ve all been smashed and sunk by the storm.”

  “Any parts you can recover and reuse, drag onto the shore. We’ll need them eventually. If we’re not gathering food or building something, we need to be spending our time training and learning. No more wasted time. We eat, we sleep, we forage, and we train. We need to share our knowledge with each other now. If there’s anything we need to know that we don’t, tell me and we’ll figure it out together. Building skills, survival skills, whatever helps us along.”

  “Just what are you saying?” Gina added, her voice apprehensive.

  “I’m saying we stop letting this cursed island pick us off. Do you really think I want to wait around here and let some other disaster sweep us off the map entirely?”

  Gabi smirked. “No way.”

  “Damn right, Gabs. I know this island better than anyone, and I still remember my dad talking about where the other ships were supposed to land.”

  “Other ships?” Daniel protested. “We don’t even know if they landed. They could have blown up just like Raphael.”

  “They could have. We might leave here and find they never made it. But damn it, I’d rather die trying to do something to save ourselves than just wait around to die. And if I’m right, we’ll have a city of four thousand people waiting for us. Strength in numbers. No more sorrows.”

  Something stirred within the group. He could see the wheels turning as they discussed Will’s proposal. Gabi removed herself from the conversation, nodding at Will and taking a place by him.

  “He’s right,” she chimed in. “We need to go somewhere else. Even if there’s no city, anywhere else has got to be better than here. I’m going with him.”

  “Me too,” Gina affirmed.

  One after another, the adults and older children confirmed their willingness to try, though some did so grudgingly. In the end, only Nick and Daniel refrained from volunteering. Will wasn’t about to let them stay behind and perish, so he declared an edict, forcing them to come along.

  “We will need to work hard and fast,” he reminded them. “We need to come up with a ship design that can carry us and our supplies across the sea, and be something that we can build with the materials we have. I’m guessing this will take more than one ship. We need to have all of them built and stocked before storm season next year. Let’s go to the pod and get some sleep. It might be the last time any of us gets rest for a very long time.”

  Columbus: Mercy

  Project Columbus, Book 5

  By J.C. Rainier

  Original Publication: 22 April 2014

  Gabrielle Serrano

  11 June, 6 years after landing (yal), mid morning

  Camp Eight

  Cool, damp mud slithered from the ground under her knees, wrapping them in a gentle embrace. Her feet tingled and tiny pinpricks stabbed at her feet. Gabi shifted her weight off of her shins and onto her left hip, swinging her legs to her side and rubbing her thin calves.

  “How many times, Gabi? How many times do you have to come back here?”

  Her gaze slowly lifted to meet Will Vandemark’s harsh features. His shaggy brown beard only accentuated the slits of eyes that peered back in judgment. Gabi sighed and dropped her eyes back down. The wooden stake in the ground leaned slightly to the left, just out of the reach of Gabi’s fingers. A thin band of slightly darker wood a couple inches from the top marked where the cross piece had once resided on the grave marker. It had fallen off months ago, and blown away in the storm that followed a few days later. Yesterday’s rains had drenched the wood, but every detail was burned in her memory from the repea
ted visits she had made to the site.

  “Leave me alone,” she muttered just above her breath.

  His right foot made a soft scuffing noise as he swept the ground in a circular pattern. “It all started with her, you know.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “It’s the truth. I was there. She was the first one from Camp Eight to fall to the scourge. For us, the Sorrow started with her. She couldn’t fight it off if she tried.”

  Gabi let loose an exasperated sigh as her eyes darted to the blue skies above. “She wasn’t the first. You know that. Karen said that…”

  Will stepped into her line of vision and his brow furrowed. A snarl crossed his lips as he interrupted. “Karen said a lot. You’d think that they were almost proud of the scourge, that they had survived it. Look where it got them.” His arm shot out stiffly and he pointed to a patch of ground where several more grave markers lay. Some were cairns of stone, others were simple wooden crosses, newer than the one that Gabi sat before, yet still battered by the elements.

  A flicker of flame rose within Gabi, and she clenched her teeth together for a brief moment as she gazed at the dozens of graves that Will called to her attention.

  “Why are you bugging me, Will?”

  “We’re waiting for you. It’s time to go.”

  Time to go, she thought. Time to leave behind everything that I know. For the second time in my life. Time to leave home for somewhere I’ve never been to live in a place no one knows for sure exists.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Will said as he wandered to the base of a nearby palm tree and retrieved their vinewood bows. He casually jerked his thumb at the grave in front of Gabi. “She says so.”

  “She’s been dead for years. She can’t say anything,” she retorted, the heat of anger spreading to her cheeks.

  “She said enough to me when she was dying. And it’s a good thing she said it to me and not someone else in the room when she went. Otherwise I’d be leaving you on this dirt pile to die.” A cruel sneer twisted his beard and nose upward. “Then you could be with her forever. Imagine that.”