Cuddles

by Dennis Fueyo

The rain slowed to a drizzle, but waves continued hammering pilings in strong, swift strokes. Hurricane Ben targeted the southeast, raising his ante to five-foot swells. None knew which beach he preferred.

  “Dammit, they have been gone too long,” Sam said. He jingled radio parts in his pocket, the other hand settled on the butt of his watercannon.

  “Look,” Potter said, “they probably don’t care about us. Most of them are sleeping off their drink by now. The big guy, he’s a—what would you say—a parsimonious fella.”

  Juan bopped the back of Potter’s head with his gun barrel. “Cállate, hijo de la chingada.”

  “Ow! Come on, man. You guys might as well leave. They ain’t coming out.”

  Sam looked at Emelia; his eyes asked her thoughts to return.

  Yes, Sam?

  He could taste sugared lavender flowers. Do you detect any snipers?

  No, they’re waiting until morning. Did you tell your father what’s going on?

  Yes. Dad and the others are ready should these Drunks attack. Unfortunately, they will be well-rested and we will not be able to stand straight. We need to take the offensive.

  Sam visualized globules in artistically drawn protein shapes and labeled them: aggressive gang, three hostages, boat in poor condition, four spotters, three enhanced warriors, one battle-ready Britt. He started piecing the subunits together: choppy beach, unmaintained pier, shanty at pier’s edge, long open roads, flammable dwellings, saw grass in the mires beyond. Three-dimensional pieces bounced and wobbled trying to find a fit. Three interlocked.

  How do you do that?

  Weird, huh? I could do it since I was a kid.

  It’s beautiful.

  So are you. Sam cracked a smile.

  I have something to give you later, Sam.

  The globules burst. Sam’s cheeks felt hot.

  Stay focused, my sweet Sam.

  Ok, I got to go. “Potter,” Sam asked, “what is in the pier’s shanty?”

  “Our old stocks, brother. Was hitting a fresh batch when you jackasses arrived.”

  Juan slapped Potter’s head again. “What kind of stocks, pendejo?”

  “Dammit, you God damn wetback!” Another smack from Juan’s pistol brought compliance. “Ok, ok! Redneck juice, man. White man’s fuel.”

  Juan shrugged his shoulders to Sam.

  “Moonshine,” clarified Sam.

  Taking a grip on Potter’s hair, Juan asked, “Moonshine, can’t you speak English, dipshit?”

  That’s not exactly an intellectual term, Emelia’s thoughts projected.

  “I agree,” said Sam making her jump.

  “You heard me say that?” she asked with furled brows.

  “I heard your thoughts.”

  Ok, this is new then, she posited and shied away from his eyes.

  “Stay focused, my sweet Emelia,” Sam said and lovingly rubbed her back. “Shaquan, come with me. Juan, bring up the rest of the team and prep the boat. Emelia, any of them move, even to scratch their asses, kill them.”

  Sam, followed by Shaquan, crept along the pier and ducked under the shoddy lintel of the shed. A musty smell stirred with skunk spray seeped out the shanty’s struts. Sam rolled forward a knee-high barrel, uncorked it with his dive knife and wafted up the fumes.

  “Oh my Lord, Sammy,” Shaquan said and winced. “I can smell that booze from here.”

  “Can you carry two of those off the shelf rack?”

  Shaquan lifted one onto his shoulder. “Easy. We can grab a bunch of them.”

  They scampered back down the pier, a small round barrel propped on each shoulder. Halfway back, Sheila Briggs, Lou Frasier, and Tom Mason caught up with them.

  Shaquan motioned to the shanty and whispered, “Grab as many of these as you can.”

  The group relayed several trips until the boat’s deck was no longer visible. Shaquan and Sheila slipped, slid and shuffled as they secured the barrels, keeping them from shattering into each other over the surf’s turmoil.

  Juan steadied a keg and filled the boat’s fuel tank by moonlight. He nodded up to Sam.

  “Ok,” Sam said, wiping his brow, “we are good to go.”

  A voice rang out across the beach, “Where are you going with my brew?”

  Spotlights rammed Sam’s eyes from the ocean and scores of boots stomped across the awakening street beyond the pier. Vision flaring red, Sam blinked his lids to form three outlines bobbing offshore ranging from twenty to forty feet in length. He wrestled Potter under a watercannon and held him up as a shield. “We have three of your men with us! Let us pass, and they won’t be harmed.”

  “I got a call from a guy named Carver Warden,” the voice echoed through an intercom from the ships, echoing against the shacks along the street. “He said he’d upgrade our weapons if we brought him live Divers.” It cackled and inserted, “I’m thinking dead would be ok, too.”

  Tom pawed at Sam. “They have a radio! We have to try negotiating.”

  A thocking sound twisted Potter’s head sideways. Slumped downward, juice appeared to be pouring from his forehead in the bright lamplight. Several more ricochets dinged the pier. The other two hostages lay still.

  The voice guffawed and hacked. “New plan! Head over to the bar across the street and leave my product. Or,” the voice chuckled and said, “stay right there, and we’ll shoot the barrels. We don’t need the pier anyway.”

  “Ok! Ok!” Sam motioned for Juan to turn the engine over.

  “Are you sure, master hunter?” Keys started jingling in Juan’s shaking hands.

  “He’s full of crap,” Sam said, eyes fixed on Juan’s keys. “Steady Juan. This is their product, right? Man, this guy will not shoot an elixir controlling his gang. We can make this jackass show his cards.”

  Sam then turned and cupped his mouth towards the spotlights, “We are sending the barrels to you!”

  The voice stuttered in response, “Wh…come again? What was that you said?”

  “Shaquan,” Sam ordered, “lose the plankway. Sheila, weigh anchor.”

  Juan turned on the engine and slammed the throttle, then weaved through the tilting barrels to the stern and jumped into the surf. Sheila and Shaquan leaped on his heels.

  “What are you doing?” the voice yelled out on the ship’s intercom.

  Sam shouted, “Run!”

  As he sprinted the pier, bullets pelted up the wood around his feet. Each of his strides lifted over planks degrading into skin-shredding surf underneath. He heard the voice yelp over the intercom to hold fire and not hit the stash.

  Sam stopped, turned, and deigned aloud against his better judgment, “I call you out, you insolent fucking prick. Show me what you got!”

  Mounted SAWs on the ships opened fire tearing up the base of the pier. Section by section, it tumbled into the ocean. Sam pivoted on his heels and followed dark figures of drunk men in poor health fumbling away from the shanty to avoid stray bullets.

  Drunks fell face down into the sand, twitching. The voice did not care if other Drunks were in the way, it wanted Sam dead.

  Sam dived behind a cement base that once held a souvenir shop, caught his dad’s jacket as Tom sprinted by, and swung him around. “How are you with that M2010 rifle?”

  Tom, father of Sam and son of the green pill, understood his intentions. “I got it, Son.” He crept up the concrete base and aimed at the beaten scuba boat. Abandoned with no captain to tack, it listed starboard against the offshore breeze.

  “Close enough! Hit it, Dad, take it out,” Sam hollered.

  Cement chips sprayed overhead as sniper jigsaw shots pruned the foundation. Pylons strained beneath, losing strength under the fifty-caliber deluge.

  Tom fired several rounds to hit the moonshine on the boat’s deck, causing a chain reaction. Myrtle Beach illuminated in flashing hues of red and yellow from the explosion. Then one of the three blockading boats went dark, then another, hit by rocketing embers and shrapnel.

  The team followed Sam to the
shore and rescued three waterlogged teammates; one with cuffs the color of Britt red, another wearing an alligator skin coat over a 1.5 mm snorkel shirt, and the third wrapped a neoprene dive suit.

  Metal bees buzzed by as Tom and his friends laid down a suppressing fire made up of plastic bullets. Shacks poorly maintained by the Drunks strained and collapsed.

  Shaquan, embodying a drenched poodle, shouted for the group to retreat and lobbed a grenade into the storage shanty. They sprinted across the street, overgrown saw grass whipping faces and sand dunes twisting ankles, and head into a series of connecting sulfurous bogs. The path lit by erupting barrels of moonshine and seared wood.

  Clearing a half-mile, Sam slowed to a welcomed meadow and checked for pursuers. Only tears followed behind him cried from the eyes of the Drunks over their lost moonshine. Soon, their ululations died to a whimper.

  Chapter 19

  “My God, Abu, let me see that.” Lou held the young Arab steady lifting his laden coat. A rivulet of blood leaked from a hole in his neoprene top. “Doc, we got to patch him up.”

  “Abu!” Juan cried out, doubled back, and took hold of his arm. “How deep, man?”

  “Missed the liver,” said Abu panting. “It went through. I’ll be ok.”

  “Does it hurt?” Sheila stripped off the cloth from a spare Britt shirt and went to work patching the wound. “Stay awake, Abu.”

  “I just need to rest.”

  “Look at me,” she commanded. Abu’s walnut-colored irises focused on her green Betty Davis eyes. “Eyes here, keep them on me.”

  “I’ll be ok, Sheila. Let me rest a second.”

  Shaquan slogged over to them, sending fireflies scattering. “Wait, Sheila, put this on the wound.” He passed her a handful of mashed peat moss and herbs seeping coagulating sap.

  She secured the mixture, wrapping strands of cloth around Abu’s gut and over his shoulder. “Hang in there, honey, I got you.”

  “Sheila”—Abu held her chin—“Sheila, you’re so beautiful in the moonlight.”

  “Sit quiet. Keep your eyes on me.”

  Sam ran his fingers through Abu’s wet, matted hair. “Sit tight, my friend. Dad, Lou, Emelia. Help me make a perimeter. We will keep watch, Abu. You hang there and rest, ok man?” Abu lifted a thumb prompting the four to spread out. Juan held his head up while Sheila and Shaquan nursed the wound.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  “Shit!” Sam pounded fen water. “Shit, shit, shit!” He wiped away feted fluids, rested in the crook of his elbow, and looked upward. Clouds cleared away to let in the heavens. Plants smelled fresher, and the air felt crisp and alive. Choir frogs rang their chorus, gray tree frogs cranked out their calls and bullfrogs added baritone to celebrate the passing showers.

  It was not fair Abu shouldered such a precarious situation this night.

  Picking out fragments of wood and cement from his neoprene cover, he reflected on Abu’s cooking. Waking up to sweat, buttery smells in the Zaid house. Fatty, toasted fragrances of Abu’s milled cattail bread tucking him in after a long day of perimeter patrol. Comparing megalodon teeth dug up from a hundred feet below a dive boat.

  Abu never believed he fit with the tribe, but he was wrong. Sam heard only praise when his Arab friend’s name surfaced. If not for Abu, the Divers would have perished months ago.

  Sam became lost in masses of stars. Death of a friend was inevitable. He knew it, hated it. He wanted to escape it. All did: Abu, Juan, Sam, and Shaquan. Perhaps if Sam insisted on returning to Raleigh, if he stood up to his dad, his dear friend would not have a hole next to his liver. He remembered what city life was like as a teenager in Cary, the quietest suburb of Raleigh. Safe, ordered, predictable.

  What could he have done to prevent this? His dad, Emelia, and Lou were a superior species. He felt lucky they risked their lives for such a noble cause, but the Divers perished regardless of defending Wilmington. Because of him. He was not careful, and Clark Stone took advantage of his clumsiness. And more tribes were to come. Over time, forgotten lands would degrade and return to the primordial ooze that birthed life.

  Soft footsteps approached, breaking Sam’s downward spiral. Juan settled next to him and raised a finger, pointed upward, and asked, “See that?”

  “I saw it,” replied Sam following Juan’s finger to a shooting star streaking the horizon.

  “His time is tonight.”

  “I know.” Sam picked at a fluffy yellow weed and snapped off its flowering head.

  “I didn’t know him as long as you did, but he’s still my best friend. Like you and Shaquan. We’re more hermanos than acquaintances.”

  “Ojalá no fuera él,” Sam said and let out a slow, heavy sigh. “It should have been me.”

  Juan kept silent, watching Sam closely.

  “You know”—Sam plucked another flower—“when people started forming tribes, they chose stupid names like the Britts in Elizabethtown and the Turtles in Myrtle Beach. Tu sabes porque, verdad?”

  “Yeah, they wanted something familiar.”

  “They did not realize how bad the Wash really was. Choose cute names. Festive. Not thinking about the barbarism thundering in the wind.”

  “The Danvers were smart, right?” asked Juan. “Chose a family name.”

  “Exactly. As tribes lose technology and get beat down by the winters and hurricanes, they have to rely more on what really matters.”

  Shaquan spoke out behind Sam, “Tribalism.”

  Sam nodded: “Exactly.”

  “They revert to a morality specific for the tribal members,” Shaquan pontificated. “You know who decides that, right?”

  “Those that conquer,” replied Sam. He studied Shaquan’s shining, mahogany eyes. “Abu?”

  Shaquan shook his head and motioned to Sheila, rocking back and forth cradling Abu’s body. “He’s with his parents now.”

  “The tribes aren’t the only ones losing the battle against nature,” Juan said and spat. “Our own government supplied the jackers with those cutters.”

  “A symptom of a disease, different from the Drunks and Danvers,” Sam said, pressing down on a moss patch. “I will carry him to the next thicket, then give him a proper burial. I just…I just cannot imagine life without him.”

  Crickets relaxed under the constellations, strengthening their songs. Fireflies lifted their trunks upward and signaled all was clear. The nighttime wind fanned away less savory anaerobic smells of the nearby bogs and carried in sweeter scents from the forest beyond the meadow.

  “Sam…” Abu wheezed out, “Sam?”

  Sam jumped and sprinted back to Abu. He scooped up his hand and pressed it against his chest.

  “Still here, my friend”—Abu squeezed his hand—“but I cannot make this journey. It will take time to recover.”

  “I can carry you,” Shaquan proclaimed. “Little River is north of here.”

  Sheila asked, “What’s at Little River?”

  “It’s the secret bank of the network. Ex-military contractors. They have a termite’s nest of tunnels hiding vaults for the largest tribes. Shaquan winked: “Barry Trenton didn’t divulge that one, huh?”

  “Good idea,” Sam said, “We can wait things out underground. Little River would do anything for the Divers, and they know us.”

  Tom called, “Sam, come over here, please.”

  Sam nodded to his dad and stroked Abu’s cheek. “You stay tough, Zaid. Let me talk to the old man and hear him out.”

  Abu coughed out a laugh while Sam waddled over Tom. Hunching down, he asked, “Yeah, Dad, what up?”

  “What is your long-term plan?”

  “We patch up and head to Raleigh. Tell Ochoa what happened, and reign brimstone down on the jackers before they tighten up the water trade.”

  “Can you not leave them be?”

  “Screw that.”

  Tom remained quiet.

  Sam began ticking off his fingers, “Suzy Lancaster, Sharron Chauncey, Tawny Martin...” He paused, then threw dow
n the execrable example, “James Laramie.”

  “Right”—Tom slapped the ground—“I get it. And after slaughtering everything in Wilmington?”

  “Push them all the way back to Canada.”

  “You and what army? The government will never back that. Otherwise, it would have been done.”

  “Will do it myself. There is always a way,” Sam said, ripping out a clump of mint. He rolled it around his palms crushing the leaves and stems into a pulp. “And I will not be attached to anything. Will bring the fight to them.” Sam wiped the mash over his face and looked back to the heavens.

  “You think that’s why we lost Wilmington? Because you were attached?”

  “I was not as good as Clark Stone. Now we all know he runs the game, with your help, I can beat him.”

  Tom tapped the butt of his rifle: “Seems you are still attached to something.”

  “I cannot beat him alone. Will you not help me? I followed you when you asked me to, back at Elizabethtown. I knew that was a mistake.”

  “That is not what I am saying, Son. You still do not know what you are up against. None of us do.”

  Sam ran his fingers through hair badly needing a long shower. He looked at his palm. Pulled strands of hair stuck in the creases unwilling to release in the night’s gentle breeze. The powerful menthol musk cleared his mind.

  “The Atlantians,” said Sam as he sought out a sprig of lemongrass and shoved it between his molars. “You want us to continue James Laramie’s mission.”

  “There is a race to these people, or tribe, who knows what they are. I know not why, but it was important enough for Jonathon Stone to slip James under Washington’s radar and find out. Jonathon is scared of his sister, Eva Stone. Has every reason to be. She helped Arnold Stone see his vision of a new human race, but not like a decent human being would, formulating that horrid green pill. The thing I do not understand,” Tom pondered at the Milky Way overhead, “is why she would kill her niece, Emelia.”

  Sam laid back against a patch of breakrush chewing on the sprig. “Eva is not planning their moves, Dad.”

  “Come on…”

  “You heard Clark on the radio! Say hi to mother? Clark is the mastermind here. He murdered his own grandfather and his mom.” Sam glanced at Emelia, then shook his head. “I cannot figure out how to ask Emelia if she caught that. Better to let it lie for now.”