by M. C. Norris
She couldn’t make it. Too far out of reach. Her shattered legs were deadly anchors. The yearning for air seared her chest, her skull, turning each sweep of her arms to a spastic flail. Done. Toxic gases egressed her lungs in an involuntary burst. It was with the starkest realization, not submission or acceptance, that Heather met her death screaming his name in the blue. Lonny. Bucking, seizing, her bowels released as her throat gaped wide to admit the awful torrent of brine.
###
25-A
“Help me!”
A swell rolled beneath him. He kicked loose his remaining shoe, floundering hard in the gooey folds of his suit. With every kick, he felt his socks flapping awkwardly from the ends of his feet. It was decades since he’d last been swimming, down in a sexy Hampton grotto by the glow of Tiki torches, in the aftermath of a property management convention. He was a younger man, back then, in the days when swimming was something effortless, and relaxing. Not anymore. These days, swimming was terrifying.
He wailed, grabbing for his toes as a cramp jerked his calf into a knot. He went under, sputtering to the surface once again. With every passing second, it became more difficult to keep his face above water, and the shore was so far away. He wasn’t going to make it. Waving an arm back and forth, he dipped beneath the waves once again. The others could see him. They were looking right at him, but they weren’t swimming back. They weren’t slowing down. He hailed to them frantically, crying out with a wordless bleat, but no one acknowledged him. They were younger, stronger, the way he used to be, and they were leaving him behind to die.
A breaker thundered over him, tumbling him beneath its oceanic might. This was it. He might not be coming back up from this one. Slipping his thumbs beneath his waistband, he wriggled out of his pants, kicking them to the wayside. Being naked from the waist down felt a little strange, but it helped. He could thresh the water more easily. The shirt and jacket would have to come off as well, after he stole another breath. A few frog kicks returned him to the surface, where he found himself entwined in a mass of kelp. It bogged him down like a heavy net.
Choking, sputtering, he began to panic before seizing an armload of the weird vines and bladders, and he was relieved to find them buoyant. Slurping a breath from the surface, he raked his arms wider until he’d amassed a small fortune in seaweed. He hugged it to his chest, and he found himself breathing more easily. God, his legs felt so weak, so atrophied from all those years behind a desk. He had no idea just how terribly out of shape he’d become. He winced as another cramp bit down into his pasty muscles. Once he was out of this mess, he decided, it was time to hit the treadmill. A couple of the partners had regular gym memberships. Whenever they talked about their morning workouts, he never had much of anything to contribute to the conversation, and it always felt a little awkward. Sometimes, he’d joke about the donuts he’d enjoyed for breakfast, or how much later he’d slept than them. It didn’t seem so humorous now. This week, all of that was going to change. Once he’d regained his wind, he began to kick.
It wasn’t easygoing to fight through the waves with a tenuous bundle of weeds in his arms, but at least he was sure that he wasn’t going to drown. He grunted, spitting the vile salt from his lips, and kept kicking. Some vague boyhood memory settled upon him, in which he’d once clung to a colorful buoy, and kicked his way across a shallow swimming pool. How old would he have been? Five or six? This absurd recollection, and its utter irrelevance to the moment at hand, inspired a smile.
The seas folded over him. Two colliding plates of foam slammed across his midsection with bone-crushing force. Before he was fully aware that his own innards were ballooning from his mouth, he was rolling beneath the blue seas through a crimson cloud. Twirling in a gorgon’s skirt of ensnarled kelp and intestines, he slapped his palms repeatedly against the smooth solidity of the massive head. The seas were whipped to foam, and his body was thrashed into a slurry.
###
22-D
“Did you see that?”
Nate stopped swimming. He’d heard Dawn’s question, but he couldn’t formulate a response. Yeah, he’d seen it. He’d sure as hell seen something, but he couldn’t make any sense out of what he’d just beheld.
“Was that a shark?”
If there was one thing of which he was certain, it was that the creature that had just breached the surface to snatch a human being out of the kelp was not a shark. It was jet black. Orca black. However, it lacked the telltale, dichromatic color patterns of a killer whale. He’d seen a flipper pretty clearly when it rolled. It was long and lancet as a scythe, and he’d also seen what appeared to be a second set of flippers ten meters behind the first. That was a big problem for him. Nothing in the ocean had two sets of parallel flippers. It had to have been more than one creature.
“It might’ve been a couple of pilot whales,” he lied, trying to forget that he’d also seen an elongated set of crocodilian jaws owned by no living animal in the seven seas. Dawn was having the same problem, Nate intuited. She knew every species of marine life on the planet on a pretty intimate level, but she wasn’t arguing with him. She was just quietly treading water, staring at the spot where the swimmer was taken down for a death roll. Nate guessed that it didn’t make a whole heap of difference what the creature was when an immeasurably bigger question loomed that hadn’t been voiced by either of them.
“We need to try and keep up with those kids,” Dawn said, thrusting off into a sidestroke. “Don’t want to get too far behind.”
It was their location. That was the biggest problem. The water was warm, and sapphire blue. A kilometer to the east rose verdant hillocks of palm trees from what appeared to be a tropical coastline. It sure as hell wasn’t Baltimore. The clues offered nothing but mind-bending, sickening impossibilities.
“Wait up,” Nate said, tightening his elbow beneath the chin of his patient, and resuming his scissor kick. Those unfathomable depths beneath his jerking legs seemed to be suddenly watchful, and hungry. Being devoured by some Kraken of the deep didn’t rank highly on his list of wishful thoughts, but the conundrum of their location weighed more heavily on his mind than the threat of predators.
The human mind was a fragile instrument. The invisible thread on which sanity dangled was never something perceived until the moment that it was threatened. Fundamentally insecure, the unconscious mind required a steady flow of reassurance that it was functioning properly. Minute to minute, it was constantly collecting evidence as a sort of quality control, evidence meant to ensure that its perception of the living world was accurate. Recognition of the ordinary, time’s linearity, even the hues of the color pallet were all critical parameters in the reassurance of sanity. When all empirical evidence suggested their geographical location was a few degrees south of the Tropic of Cancer, the incongruity threatened to shake Nate’s reality to its foundation.
“Those hijackers,” Dawn said, spitting brine, frowning at the distant coastline, “they must have diverted the flight somewhere south.”
“But we weren’t in the air for five minutes.” Nate heard a twinge of desperation in his voice, which had taken an almost accusatory tone, as if his wife had any fault in their situation. He watched her stricken expression become almost fearful as she searched the horizon for any sign of familiarity. But, there wasn’t any.
“We were higher,” Dawn said, her voice trembling.
“What?”
“We’d almost reached cruising altitude. We were above the clouds. I was looking out the window right before—everything happened.” She shook her head, biting her bottom lip. “Nobody should’ve survived. Not at that altitude, but when our plane came apart, we were right above the water.”
“I don’t know.”
No explanation could account for their whereabouts. Even the sun’s position was wrong. It was early morning when they’d boarded the plane, but the baking equatorial sun was directly overhead. Whole hours had been lost. Thousands of missing miles. It sent the mind adrift, grasp
ing for answers from tales of the Bermuda Triangle, where ships and planes allegedly winked right out of existence. The problem with that stretch of the imagination was that they weren’t anywhere near the Bermuda Triangle.
“There was a flash. A flash of green light. Right about when all the power went out,” Dawn said. “Did you see that?”
Nate shook his head.
“You didn’t see that flash?”
“No.”
The whole experience seemed so damned surreal. The memory was blurred by the rush of adrenaline and terror. His recollection of the penultimate moment was vivid, when those masked men rose up from their seats, and withdrew revolvers from inside their jackets. That was perhaps the most terrifying moment that Nate had ever experienced in his life. After that, everything kind of went fuzzy. Gunshots, screaming, rushing wind, the smell of burning plastic … it was all a blur.
“It was a bright flash of greenish light.”
“I said I didn’t see it.”
“It came from outside the plane.”
He shook his head.
“I think something happened, right at that moment.”
Nate adjusted his grip around the neck of the federal agent. The man was slipping in and out of consciousness. He was groaning, murmuring unintelligible words. If his life could be saved, then there might be at least a shred of hope that some answers could be obtained. He was the key. No one else but the hijackers, and possibly this man, could provide some explanation as to what exactly that fight was all about up there. Nate recalled the agent saying something about the man in his custody, something strange. He’d referred to his prisoner as—a living weapon?
“It was a bright, blinding flash of greenish light, and then the plane came apart.”
“Honey, I get it, alright. I don’t know what you saw. All I know is that it’s important we get this guy to shore, and maybe then we can start to get things sorted out.”
It was not an easy swim. Even without the extra burden of an unconscious human being, it would have been pretty tough going. He could see that Dawn was straining, and she was one of the strongest swimmers he’d ever known, a true mermaid. When they lost the Calypso’s engine in the Sea of Cortez, it was Dawn who’d made it to shore. It was she who’d returned an hour later, smiling over the gunwales of a squid fisherman’s skiff when they’d hauled his puny carcass out of the drink. They never did get any footage of swimming with a whale shark that day, but they’d certainly gotten their fill of swimming.
“He’s bleeding.”
Dawn’s words snapped his mind back to the situation at hand. Sure enough, crimson plumes billowed from the man’s abdomen. Not good. If he’d taken a bullet to the gut, then his life was going to depend on receiving prompt medical attention. By the uncivilized appearance of the island, there would be no guarantees in that regard. There was no doubt in Nate’s mind that they’d find some help eventually. No place on earth was uninhabited, untouched in some way by humankind. There was probably a fancy beach resort within a mile, but if they were approaching the wild side of an island, a nature preserve, then it could be a long while before their patient received treatment. Hard telling how much time the guy had left in him.
“I’m afraid he’s going to draw in sharks.”
Nate hissed through his teeth, as he gave an extra boost of power to a kick. Dawn’s comment irritated him. She was right, of course. They’d just watched someone else get taken down. All of the blood and floating debris scattered throughout the area were going to excite the worst instincts in the local marine life, thereby creating a great potential for a feeding frenzy, but he didn’t like where his wife’s train of thought was headed. “Well, what the heck do you suggest that I do? Just let him drown?” Again, Nate caught himself sounding accusatory.
Dawn didn’t reply. She just kept kicking, squinting up at the blazing sun.
Nate grunted with every snap of his legs. He was starting to have real trouble keeping up with her. His arm was going numb, hamstrings screaming, threatening to cramp. Dawn’s strong legs kept rhythmically churning, rafting her smoothly over the swells, broadening the distance between them. She was the skin diver, the scientific celebrity whose acclaimed research was little more than just an excuse to stay wet. Nate wasn’t a swimmer. He loved the ocean as much as Dawn, but he preferred to be floating atop it. He was more of her muse, just a pilot whose lot in life was forever returning his mermaid to her home in the sea.
He was losing her. Eyes rolling crazily, Nate grimaced in the direction of Dawn’s shrinking form. Maybe it was just paranoia, but it almost felt as though she was distancing herself from him intentionally.
“Hey,” he shouted, looking back over his shoulder.
Right there. Just like that. That’s how Nate would always remember her. To know with dread certainty that this was his last glimpse of Dawn was of course an impossibility, but to rightly intuit the moment of her demise was a vision to haunt him to the end of his days. With her pretty face pinched in a sunny frown, tilted perfectly on the point of her chin, she vanished with the monster’s breech and roll. Just like that, his mermaid was gone.
###
21-A
Foliage slapped at his face. Thorns clawed at his chest and shoulders. The jungle was an unforgiving bitch. Estranged just three days, and already she’d flown into a jealous rage over where he’d been, where he thought he was going, and who was that other woman on the other side of the world? He should’ve known better than to believe that there would ever be a chance of escaping her warm, wet embrace. She owned him. Alonzo understood that now. He was supposed to die in the jungle. All of them were. Anyone who’d ever set foot in Vietnam were supposed to die in the place that owned all of their souls. None would ever love them quite like her. She’d forgive their little trespasses. See how her leaves lapped seductively against his cheeks, whispering secrets into his ears as he pushed deeper into her? It wasn’t so bad. She knew the depths of his soul, those darkest recesses untouched by any human being. She recognized him without his rifle, all polished and pressed in his Dress Blues. She knew him for the animal that he was, and she spread her boughs wide to receive him, until he’d never dare to think of leaving her again.
“There he is, right up there!”
Alonzo knew all too well what was going to happen once they caught up with that hijacker. Murder left an unmistakable signature in the air. When men’s worst notions purged together in collective hate, it took blood to bed it back down. Today, bloodletting was on the agenda. A killing could happen so easily sometimes. Ordinary people, left forever changed by an unplanned killing. He’d seen it. People who’d never given a thought to taking life sometimes did, and afterward, they’d be transformed into the same thin and ghostly thing that Alonzo had become. Just one sip from that goblet. One little sip. No one would see you in the jungle, secreted behind that curtain of foliage where the worst acts were always celebrated since time’s beginning. No one saw what happened in the jungle, except perhaps whatever god smiled down on a killing with warm approval.
They had him now. Their fists began to pummel, reforming his face into an asymmetric shape. Dangling helplessly from his cordage, he was ensnarled in the same lines that had so recently saved his life, and now, they assured his demise. Poor little man in his parachute. They seized his kicking legs, and wrenched him like an oversized fruit from the garden bower. Silk ripped, branches snapped, and a hijacker crashed to the jungle floor. Red fists rose and fell. They were lifting him now. A loop of nylon whipped round his throat. His body rose, and straightened like a stick. The noose tightened. His Orioles cap fell to the leaf litter. Urine spattered in the leaves. The man’s tongue, purple and questing, lapped the air for a last taste of the air deprived his lungs. Alonzo lingered at the edge of the lynch mob to watch the funny, horizontal hanging.
Death was interesting. Alonzo didn’t mind looking at it. War simplified the whole process of death by stripping away all of those elaborate distractions and for
malities meant to support a complex and meaningful illusion. Death is red. Death is wet. You go until you stop, and then you’re done. Death is agony. Death brought an end to things like eating, and shitting. Once death stopped you, something else would take your seat at the table. The feast of flesh went on, and nothing mattered.
One time, Alonzo had seen a dog, and it was something extraordinary. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a dog. He’d seen plenty of those animals, of course. But the dog he’d seen on that occasion was no an ordinary animal. It was something special. It was a teaching dog.
Alonzo blinked as a fly landed on the corner of his eye. The insect wavered in the air, and eventually resettled on his lower lip. He licked it away. There were lots of flies on the hill where he’d seen the teaching dog. Billions of them. When enough flies got to buzzing all at once, it sounded like the engine to some nightmarish, invisible machine.
In ‘Nam, success wasn’t measured in terms of territory captured, because once an area was cleared, you just left it behind, knowing that the enemy was going to return in a matter of days. Instead, success was measured in terms of body count. Counting corpses was an obsession, and it helped to make sense of it all. It felt satisfying to organize the chaos by converting horror into a number, but that time there were too many bodies to count. He tried for hours, after all of the choppers pulled out, when the natural ambiance of the jungle returned, and it was finally safe to leave his hole, but he couldn’t count them all. In the sanguine light of the setting sun, he’d paced the hilltop counting, recounting, stumbling through a blizzard of flies, and that’s when he saw it. That’s when it came to him.
It was just standing there, smacking and chewing in the red light. It weaved through the carnage on those thin, articulating legs, and nothing that it did mattered. It represented life, all life, rendered down to its putrid essence, propelled through a field of horror on a mindless mission to fill its mouth-hole with flesh, to squat and defecate, to lick its genitals. Nothing that it did mattered. Nothing matters. Fill the mouth-hole. Go until you stop, and you’re over, and you rot in the grass, while a new thing takes your seat at the table, filling its mouth-holes, and on and on, forevermore. It was God’s fault. Nothing mattered, because it was God who created teaching dogs, mouth-holes, and the flesh that filled them. That was the moment when Alonzo realized that God was insane.
