The Island - Part 1

by Michael R Stark

“I told you to get the hell out of my town.”

  He spat the words out in a deep, rumbling growl that sounded like an earthquake had rocked its way through his body. Little looked like a mountain and talked like one too. His sunglasses hung from his right shirt pocket, aligned so as to bisect the badge above. He’d taken off the hat, revealing a massive forehead and a low, thick brow ridge. Dark eyes glared out from under heavy eyebrows as thick as my finger.

  He looked mean and angry. I felt like David standing before Goliath, only I had neither rock nor sling to defend myself. He shouldn’t have taken off the hat and sunglasses. Without them, even his size couldn’t distract from the fact that D period Little was one damned ugly man.

  I gave him a broad smile.

  “Actually Sheriff, I believe the correct wording had something to do with me being on your road. As you can see, I have removed myself from it. In fact, I was just sitting here thinking that if Mr. Little dropped by, he would be most pleased to find me not on his road.”

  Little’s face turned red, so red that if I’d been living in a cartoon world, steam would have shot out of his ears.

  For a long moment, I thought he might say hell with it, pull his gun, and shoot me. About the time that idea had run its course, he did something almost as bad. He reached for the handcuffs at his belt.

  “I’ve had it with you, Hillbilly. Turn around, and put your hands behind your back.”

  I stared at him.

  “You’re arresting me? For what?”

  His hand went to his gun.

  “I said turn around. Do it NOW!”

  When you’re in that spot, it’s not worth opening your mouth again. Everything that comes out of you at that point would go on record as part of the resisting arrest charge he would tack on to the reason he invented for arresting me in the first place. Anything physical, even bumping into him when I turned would evolve into assault charges as well. He had me and he knew it. Even worse, I knew it.

  I grasped for something that might ease the situation, not wanting to simply give in and be carted away in the back of his cruiser. I’d insulted the man’s genitals though. No matter which route I pursued in my mind, all of them ended up right back at that one sore spot.

  The lawman tugged at the button flap that held the pistol in its holster.

  Elsie shot out in front of me.

  “Here now, Dwight. What’s all this? Why are you arresting my nephew? What’s he done?”

  Little’s face turned even redder. The thought slid through my mind that I might just be missing the million-dollar shot. All I needed was a camera. I had the caption. I could see it screaming from the front cover of one of those supermarket tattle-tale rags. Somewhere below the celebrity divorces and just above the little Daily Devotion pamphlets would be my picture of Dwight Little sitting atop a caption that read NEANDERTHAL FOUND!

  “Your nephew?” He ain’t old enough to be your nephew, Elsie. Why you doin’ this? He’s just a bum running up the coast looking for an easy place to lay low. I’m telling you right now, this ain’t it.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “He’s my sister’s grandson, you dolt. He come to take me over to the old home place. His grandma, MY sister, wanted some pictures of the house and the graveyard. She couldn’t come herself. When I found out William was going to do it for her, I decided I’d ride along with him.”

  She turned to me. “Isn’t that right, nephew?”

  Elsie Morgan was not a tall woman. Standing in front of Dwight Little, she looked like a tiny, gray-haired doll. Her eyes glinted with humor, not the funny kind, the you’re-stuck-with-me-now kind.

  I smiled tightly. “That’s right, Auntie. We were just talking about that as a matter of fact.”

  Little looked at her and then at me.

  “You told me you didn’t have any kinfolk in Atlantic.”

  I’ve never been a good liar. I don’t know why they came so easily with Little.

  “Well Sheriff, to be honest, I was trying to protect my aunt here. She’s got some years on her and is getting frail. I didn’t want any trouble for her.”

  Little looked like he was about to explode.

  Elsie’s voice split the sudden silence.

  “Frail?”

  I glanced down. She seemed mad enough to smack me. Fortunately, she vented her emotions on the giant behind her. She whirled around and stared up at him.

  “Now you go on, Dwight. William here hasn’t done anything to you or broke the law. Besides, we’ll be out of your hair in no time. I was packing my bag when you come in.”

  “Elsie, damn it,” he began.

  “Don’t you go cussing in my store, Dwight Little,” she snapped, rising up on her toes. “You know I don’t put up with that kind of language here. Now go on.”

  “But Elsie…”

  “Am I going to have to call the Judge? I will if you keep this up. There’s no call for you to be bullying him and no cause for you to be standing in the way of me going across to the island. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You go arresting my nephew and the Judge will put him right back in here before you can get him out of the parking lot.”

  She raised a thin finger and shook it at him.

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  I’ve never seen a man deflate so fast. Little’s face turned sullen. He looked over the tiny woman in between us.

  “Make one mistake. I’ll be there. That’s a promise.”

  I’d always thought it funny how people walked when their pride was wounded and they needed to preserve at least a little dignity. The lawman’s gait couldn’t have been stiffer if someone had rammed a pineapple right up his rear.

  Elsie waited until the door swung shut behind him before she turned to me.

  “Call me frail again and I’ll whack you with a rolling pin,” she said and then smiled sweetly.

  “You ready to go?”

  I glanced out the side window. Little’s car still sat in the parking lot.

  “I reckon I am.”

  She offered a smile sweet enough to drip honey. “I thought so.”

  Elsie snatched up the bag she had been holding when I walked into her office. Leaning out, she called to the girl up front.

  “Tracy, go out back and fetch Daniel. I need you to run us all down to the boat dock. Park his truck next to the shed when you get back. You can lock up then and take the rest of the day off.”

  Tracy’s eyes brightened. “Yes Ma’am. I’ll get Daniel and meet you all out front.”

  Elsie held up her hand. “Wait a minute.”

  She turned to me. “You got food on that boat?”

  I nodded.

  “Tell Daniel to grab a couple of sleeping bags while you’re back there. We’re going to need them tonight.”

  I stepped between them.

  “Whoa, hold it right there. You said I was to bring you back. You didn’t say anything about staying over.”

  Elsie glared up at me. “By the time you get us up there, the sun will be going down. I got no intention of riding across that sound in the dark.”

  “Where are you planning on sleeping?” I demanded.

  “Your boat,” she retorted. “It looked plenty big enough for me and the boy.”

  Little’s car slid by the office window behind Elsie. I wanted to curse.

  “And where do you expect me to sleep?”

  She grinned. “Outside, anywhere you want—on the seats, in the dirt, on the beach. You have plenty of choices. Don’t worry. We will take good care of your Angel.”

  The woman leaned to look around me.

  “Go on, Tracy. Grab a pound or two of that new coffee on the way. I’ll be wantin’ some of that in the morning.”

  The girl’s voice sounded behind me. “I’m on it, Elsie. I’ll throw in a few more things if you don’t mind. I know he doesn’t have anything a woman would want.”

  I turned and watched her go.

  “Who’s Daniel?” I as
ked when she had disappeared.

  “My great-grandson,” she answered. “I’ve been planning on taking him over. Kids ought to know their history. Today might be the last chance I have. Come on now, let’s get going.”

  “You said great-grandson?” I asked as she scurried past me. “I know I’m not supposed to ask, but how old are you anyway?”

  She didn’t even look back.

  “Old enough, thank you.”

  “What about his mother? What’s she going to say about you dragging him off like this? I don’t want Little turning this into a kidnapping case. Lord knows he would.”

  She snorted and handed me the bag she had been packing. The weight of it told me she’d packed more than a water bottle.

  “I have custody. That should tell you right there about his mama. Now take that out to the truck. We’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  Daniel turned out to be six years old. He seemed tall for his age, but the truth was, I had no idea how tall or short a six-year-old should be. He had chestnut-brown hair that reached down to his collar and eyes that carried some of Elsie’s gray. Where hers looked like chipped ice, however, his were darker like rain clouds brewing on the horizon.

  He said nothing when she introduced him, but stood close to her side, face pale and expressionless, arms hanging limp at his sides. Something about his stance seemed odd, almost lifeless. I studied him for a moment trying to decide if he was autistic or perhaps had suffered some type of brain damage. I hadn’t felt the urge to talk to Becky in over a year. I did then, wondering if she knew what conditions left someone looking like a zombie.

  I offered him a smile. “How you feel about a boat ride?”

  The boy stared at me, his gaze both unwavering and unsettling.

  I glanced up at Elsie.

  “He don’t talk much,” she said, reaching out to pull him closer. The move seemed oddly protective, as if she felt she needed to stand between the two of us. I started to ask her if he was okay, but decided I didn’t want to know. The kid seemed odd from the get-go, like he belonged in a horror movie, something with a title like Satan’s Spawn. I’d been roped into carting them across the sound in return for avoiding handcuffs and a free ride to the county jail. Spending a few hours with the kid wouldn’t kill me. On the bright side, it didn’t look like I’d have to deal with him whining or crying.

  We piled into the Durango a few minutes later, Elsie and Daniel in the back seat, the checkout girl riding up front next to me. Thoughts of autism disappeared when we pulled up next to Angel. Daniel didn’t abruptly turn into a normal six-year-old, but he did perk up considerably.

  He seemed fascinated by the sailboat, his flat eyes suddenly alert and darting from one thing to the next as if trying to take it all in at once. He studied everything on her, playing with the lines, fingering the wooden tiller and running his hand across the compass dial. He saw me watching him and looked up with those somber eyes, holding my gaze as directly as any adult ever had.

  “What do you think about the boat?” I asked him.

  He ran his fingers along the gunwale, his face impassive and his gaze unflinching.

  “It will keep us safe when we go to the island.”

  The words came out soft, yet matter-of-fact as if he hadn’t been judging Angel’s sea-worthiness in general, but speaking specifically to the crossing. The tone, the phrasing, the manner in which they were delivered carried too much knowledge to be coming from a body that small. I stared at him, feeling as if I were looking at someone old and frail stuffed inside a child’s body.

  “Is that a fact?”

  He grinned suddenly, showing too many teeth in the process. I stepped back, startled by the strange expression.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Despite the warmth of an afternoon sun blazing overhead, I felt chills rise along my arms. Before I could ask him anything else though, Elsie popped her head up from the cabin.

  “Well, Hill William, are we goin’ or not?”

  I tore my gaze away from the boy and saw Elsie standing in the open hatch. Her eyes flickered from me to Daniel and back again.

  I nodded. “Yes, we are.”

  After unhooking the aft line from the cleat on the dock, I headed forward to take in the bow line. On a twenty-three-foot boat, that means I walked back up to the point the cabin rose out of the deck and then used a handrail to edge along the tiny space between the cabin and the sheer drop to the water. Angel had lifelines. My father had called them idiot lines. When I’d asked him to explain, he’d retorted that only an idiot would rely on lifelines, that they should be viewed as a last resort rather than a safety net.

  Daniel sat next to a recessed handle embedded in the cockpit seat when I returned from taking in the forward line.

  . “Open that locker beside you. Grab a life jacket for yourself and one for your grandma,” I told him. “Throw another out there for me.”

  Elsie’s voice sounded from inside as I clambered back down in the cockpit.

  “Who taught you how to pack, Hill William? This place is a mess down here.”

  I ignored her and looked at Daniel.

  “And make sure she puts the thing on, okay?”

  He said nothing, but rose and started working at the latch that held the hatch cover in place.

  Satisfied, I made my way to the stern and settled into the fold-down pilot’s chair. Removing the key to the kill switch, I thumbed the start button. The motor fired instantly and settled immediately into a smooth idle. A fifteen-horsepower motor on a boat Angel’s size would normally be like putting an electric trolling motor on a barge - which meant in most cases the vessel would be greatly underpowered. Sailboats were different animals though, where speed wasn’t determined by the size of the motor, but the shape of the hull. A motor half the size Dad had picked could easily push the boat to its maximum.

  I hadn’t argued the point. I figured, the boat belonged to him. He could hang a jet engine off the back if he wanted.

  When I eased engine into reverse, a bit of his stance became clearer. The boat slipped away from the dock with the motor at idle. Once she was clear, I shoved the gear shifter into forward, cranked up the throttle a couple of notches, and pushed the tiller hard to port. The bow came about instantly, cutting a deep arc and swinging her nose out toward the open sound. I left the throttle where it was, barely a third of the way to full and kept her swinging while I watched the compass. A couple of course corrections later, Angel pointed north-east.

  The moment the bow cut through the water, I forgot about Dwight Little’s fury and Daniel’s odd, knowing eyes. Neither could wash away the sense of freedom that came with pulling away from the dock, of shedding the trappings of society and leaving them behind. The world would keep turning. The people on it would continue to squabble over everything from land to taxes, to what some ate and others smoked. The debates, the blame games, and the finger-pointing would still rage. Even a deadly infection threatening to wipe the earth slick couldn’t shelve humanity’s instinctive need to gripe, complain, and hate. Some would undoubtedly die. Some would probably live. The only certainty I carried with me devolved to a simple belief that as long as more than one survived, the infighting would continue.

  Along with the freedom, came a heightened sense of responsibility. The same society that offered all the ill-will, also offered protections—people like Dwight Little when he was actually doing his job and preserving the peace, like doctors and EMTs only a phone call away. I knew even as the excitement swelled that the farther I went, the more responsibility I bore, not only for my life, but of the two hitchhikers aboard.

  I kept the needle on the compass centered squarely between north and east. Navigating on water had little in common with driving a car, where the course taken was determined by roads laid out in connections that looked like a giant spider web. Travel on water tended to be much more fickle, with wind, water, and weather conditions not only playing huge roles in laying a course, but oft
en determining whether or not you could go at all. Unlike cars that travel on surfaces graded out for them, boaters also have to take depth into account. Water too deep rarely presents a problem. On the flip side, shallow water often equated to jittery nerves and cautious maneuvers.

  History had littered both books and coastlines with shipwrecks where the fatal blow didn’t come from giant waves, but rather running into the bottom, a fact driven home with a punctuation mark in personal terms on a trip with my father years before. We‘d been coasting along in a lake situated high in the mountains of North Carolina. Just ahead, off to the starboard side, a small buoy marked a sandbar near the surface. A speedboat coming up from behind had swung right instead of left where deeper water would have carried them past us. Instead the boat had struck bottom about a hundred yards ahead, the impact ripping the motor off its mount. The two men inside had been thrown forward with one suffering severe lacerations after running face first into the windshield.

  Elsie had commented on Angel not being suitable for the open ocean. She wasn’t. That fact played in her favor in the waters of the sound. The boat carried a keel that could be raised or lowered from a hand crank located inside near the sink. Keel down, her draft ran almost four feet. Keel up however, and she could float in a foot of water. Taking her into the deep swells of the open ocean wouldn’t just be stupid, but borderline suicidal. She hadn’t been designed to ply the seas. She’d been built to run along the coast and gunk hole in bays and estuaries. That she did exceedingly well.

  A mile or so ahead lay a channel carved out of the bottom by the Army Corps of Engineers that sliced deeper water across the sound. Elsie wanted to go to the north side of the island. The cut ran directly across to the southern end where the flow of currents in and out of the inlet had carved a natural groove along backside of the island. We could take that route to the old village if we could find it.

  With the keel up, Angel might have been able to take a more direct northeast course. She could make headway in less than a foot of water, but the thought of trying to work my way across shifting sandbars with night closing in didn’t set well. Nor did I want to be put in a situation where changing tides left us either grounded or me in knee-deep waves trying to push her out after she hit bottom.

  The more I thought about heading north, the less I liked my options. The only bright spot I could find in the messy water ahead related to distance. If disaster struck, at least we wouldn’t be bogged down miles from land.

  Daniel stepped up into the cockpit and canted his head back toward the cabin, his life preserver firmly locked into place. Leaning out to look past him, I saw Elsie’s diminutive figure clad in day-glo orange moving about inside the boat.

  I pointed to the tiller.

  “Want to drive for a while? I need to get the GPS and depth finder mounted.”

  As strange and mature as he seemed, I had no idea what type of response I’d get. I shouldn’t have worried. Daniel quickly proved he still had some boy in him.

  “Me? Sure, I’ll drive.”

  I climbed out of the pilot’s seat and motioned for him to take my place. Once he’d settled in, I passed over the tiller and pointed to the compass.

  “See that red line? That’s our direction of travel. Keep it halfway between north and east, or halfway between the N and the E.”

  I made my way over to the compass and put my finger on the dial. “Right here, that’s where we want this tall red line to be. I’ll watch for the buoys marking the channel. Once we get there, I’ll set Angel on a new course. You can steer some then too if you want.”

  He settled back and grabbed the tiller with an air of importance. I should have warned him. Tiller-steering doesn’t take well to a heavy hand. The instant he pulled on it, Angel swung abruptly to the left.

  “Easy,” I told him. “It doesn’t take much and remember, the tiller turns the boat the opposite way. Push it left, she turns to the right. Pull it toward you, she goes left. Just ease her back now, slow.”

  I waited while he brought the boat back in line and nodded.

  “There you go. See? It’s not hard. Just watch the compass and you’ll be fine.”

  He nodded intently, staring at the little red marker as if afraid it would disappear. I fought back a grin. The last thing I had to worry about was venturing off course. Daniel would fret over a degree or two of variation—at least until he realized that manning the helm was actually a chore. I watched him for a moment and then figured I’d better get busy while his interest held.

  The GPS and the depth finder both had permanent mounts on the bulkhead outside the cabin. I set them in place, hooked up the power to both units and plugged the transducer cable into the depth finder. Both flared to life with bright screens, the GPS in full color, the other in black and white. The depth meter instantly noted a water depth of six feet and began running a continuous scan of the bottom drawn in a thick dark line across the gray background. The blips floating by marked fish swimming underneath.

  The initial reading indicated that Angel was making about five knots, surprising since the throttle was still stuck at about one-third.

  With that done, I crawled back atop the cabin roof. The box containing Dad’s chopped-down dune buggy had two straps running across it, securing it on either side to cleats mounted specifically for the task. I checked to make sure they were tight, then went forward and wound up the dock line I’d tossed on the deck earlier. I double-checked the head stay while I was there, taking an extra turn on the turnbuckle.

  Satisfied that nothing would slide off or come crashing down on my head, I moved up to the pulpit and gazed out over the sound. We’d left just before noon. The high angle of the midday sun kept most of the glare off the water, with only occasional flashes marking the passage of the short waves. No more than fifty yards ahead, a green buoy marked the edge of the channel.

  I turned and headed back to the cockpit. Daniel still sat with his eyes glued to the compass.

  “The channel is just ahead. Start bringing her around to starboard.”

  He looked up confused. I pointed to the right side of the boat.

  “That way, slow and easy.”

  Angel swung around in a gentle arc, the compass needle sliding from north east to dead east as she turned. About halfway through the turn, the depth meter suddenly dropped to twelve feet. I climbed up on the cockpit seat and looked ahead. A heavy wooden post rose from the water about a quarter mile ahead. Above the high tide mark, a red triangle identified the next channel marker. I looked back at the green one we’d just passed and estimated the width of the channel to be a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards wide.

  “Keep the red line on the E,” I told Daniel, again using my finger on the compass dial to point out the new heading. He nodded and went back to staring at the dial. I sighed as I realized that I’d have to keep an eye out myself. The boy might keep the boat on course, but he would run over another vessel in the channel without ever seeing it.

  “Aren’t you going to put on your life preserver?” he asked without taking his eyes from the compass. I looked back at the one he had laid on the cockpit seat for me and grimaced. I hated the things.

  “Everyone on a boat should wear them,” the boy said solemnly.

  Elsie stuck her head up from the companionway. “That’s right. Everyone should, even you, Hill William. Now, how about I turn on some music and fix us some lunch?”

  She looked up at me.

  “I’ll cut some slices off one of the FOUR hams I found down here. You need a better diet, boy. By my reckoning, fifty pounds of potatoes, six pounds of butter, and a sack of lemons make up most of your food.”

  “There’s more than that down there,” I protested. “The forward berth is full of stuff and there’s a cooler full of meat under the starboard bunk.”

  She crinkled her nose. “I said most of your food. Yes, there’s more, but half of what you’re gonna eat is right there in them three things
I said.”

  I spread my hands out wide. “Yeah, and those things go well with seafood. I wasn’t joking when I told the sheriff I was going fishing.”

  She snorted and disappeared inside the cabin. A few seconds later, the Beach Boys boomed from the interior, all of them wanting to go to Aruba, Jamaica, and desperately pleading with a pretty girl to go along with them.

  I don’t know where she found the radio station, but the tunes rolling out of the cabin could have been advertised as solid gold from the seventies and eighties. By the time Elsie stepped up into the cockpit, Bob Marley had extolled the virtues of simple life with “Three Little Birds,” and Creedence Clearwater Revival had everyone tapping their feet to “Down on the Corner.”

  The music washed away the somber atmosphere that had permeated the boat ever since we’d pulled away from the dock. I’m no singer, but the songs proved too catchy to stay silent. Even Daniel, who spent most of his time at the tiller looking like a figure from a wax museum, started swaying and bobbing.

  Elsie passed up a plate full of ham and cheese sandwiches and a bag of chips. Once I’d taken them, she followed the food with a jug of iced tea I picked up in Morehead City earlier that morning. She cranked the volume down a few notches and then joined me and the boy in the cockpit.

  The next twenty minutes or so is seared into my memory as one of the last best moments before the fall. The day could not have been better. Small cotton-ball clouds dotted an otherwise clear, Carolina-blue sky. Angel gleamed in the bright sunlight. The tiny waves on the sound glittered like diamonds, tossing shards of light from their shoulders as they passed. The temperature couldn’t have been much over eighty, with enough wind to keep the heat down and the bugs away. Behind us, the mainland hovered on the horizon like a strip of gold with fall colors glowing in the late autumn sun.

  I kept watch for the buoys while we ate and talked, nudging the tiller right or left as needed in order to cling to the narrow strip of deep water. Elsie had finally brought Daniel to life, regaling him with stories of her early years growing up on Portsmouth Island.

  I could have taken a year of such days, even better, a lifetime of them. The same radio that crafted such a feel-good atmosphere, however, also took it away.

  Just as I picked up the last bit of my sandwich, the music faded. The announcer, who’d been cranking out hits in a voice that sounded like he’d rolled a joint the size of Texas on the way to work disappeared, replaced by a woman whose crisp, clear tones sliced away the laid-back atmosphere. Where the DJ had blended feel-good music in a smooth voice free of worries, the woman had us all straightening up in our seats:

  This is Christine Arapaloe. We have a news bulletin to pass on. Stand by please.

  This just in from the AP: Overnight reports across the nation have been bleak, with estimates as high as 2000 people succumbing to The Fever in the past twenty-four hours. As many as 20,000 more reported to hospitals last night with symptoms consistent with the disease. California and Arizona still lead the nation in both infection rates and mortality rates. New figures show that the virus is gaining a foothold. New York, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, and North Carolina have all reported sharp increases in the number of patients arriving in Emergency Rooms with the flu-like symptoms. Mortality figures from those five states represent a third of all deaths reported yesterday.

  Officials believe the scattered nature of the Fever is related to airport hubs located in the affected areas. As of nine a.m. this morning, The Fever has been identified in 40 of the 48 states in the continental U.S. No official estimate of the potential impact has been released as yet.

  Just minutes ago, CDC spokesperson, Ann Trankin, released a statement indicating that the disease may be evolving. Recent cases in California have shown a troubling increase in aggressive behavior occurring in the later stages of the infection. Hospitals in Los Angeles and San Diego issued guidelines yesterday advising that patients be restrained in their beds as the disease progresses.

  Authorities are asking residents to stay home and to eliminate all travel that is not absolutely necessary.

  A press release from the White House this morning indicated that the president will hold a news conference this afternoon at four p.m. to address the issue with the nation.

  We will broadcast it live. Stay tuned here for the most up-to-date news.

  Silence reigned for a long moment, both on the radio and the boat. Then the doper came back and introduced the Three Dog Night. I’d lost my taste for the music though. Elsie apparently had too. She rose and headed below. The radio clicked off moments later.

  The Fever had been like a monster storm, clinging to the horizon for some time. The day Elsie and her grandson rode across Core Sound with me marked the day that the clouds opened. What rained down out of them wasn’t water, but a version of hell on earth straight out of a horror writer’s nightmares.

  That day marked the beginning of the end. What no one knew in that moment was that within an unbelievably short period of time, at least half of the people standing next to them would be gone.

  None of us knew we’d be more afraid of the dark than the disease either.