EDEN (23 page)

Bradley stood forward. ‘Put me in there,’ he ordered the captain.

‘My beef ain’t with you,’ Denton shouted at the soldier with false bravado, ‘so stay out of it, Canuck!’

‘You stay here,’ Hank replied to Bradley, and rested a hand on a pistol at his side. ‘You interfere, I’ll shoot you myself.’

Bradley glared at the captain but remained still as Saunders moved around the hatch and unlocked Cody’s cuffs. Cody looked at the captain.

‘I told you, it’s cooperation that helped us survive, not conflict.’

‘Then cooperate,’ Hank replied.

‘This is insane,’ Cody said. ‘This won’t achieve anything but…’

Saunders shoved him hard in the back and Cody tumbled into the hold. He hit the deck hard, managed to roll a bit and came up on his knees to see Denton standing over him.

‘You’re a madman,’ Cody heard Bethany whisper to the captain above.

‘No,’ Hank replied. ‘It is insanity to bring war to this ship when mankind may now exist in such small numbers. And that insanity must be removed. Providence will save the righteous man.’

‘That’s not a higher power you’re invoking,’ Charlotte cried at him. ‘That’s avoiding responsibility for your own actions!’

The captain ignored her as he stood at the edge of the hatch and looked down at Cody and Denton.

‘May the best man, win.’

The captain tossed the pistol out into the hold. Cody stared as the silver weapon spun in a graceful arc down toward the deck and Denton leaped across the hold for it.

Cody’s legs felt as though they had been evacuated of life, rigid and unbending beneath him as he watched Denton catch the pistol in mid-air and swing it toward Cody. He heard shouts from above and the crew roared with a sudden and deafening bloodlust that sounded like something out of a war movie, the hymn of mankind’s hatred of himself.

Cody saw the pistol whip around and he finally found the strength to move. He ducked back and sideways and hid behind one of several thick stanchions that supported the deck above.

He saw Denton’s shadow shift across the hull as he moved.

‘Come out, come out, Doctor,’ the sailor sneered. ‘There’s nowhere to hide.’

Cody tucked in behind the stanchion as he called out to the captain.

‘This isn’t the way to solve problems, Hank!’

Any reply that might have come from above was drowned out by the shouts and sneers of the crew as Cody sought desperately for a weapon in the hold. Barrels made of both wood and aluminium were stacked and braced against the hull walls, and he could see a pair of iron belaying pins sitting in racks on the opposite side of the hold. But he knew that Denton would shoot him long before he got to them.

Denton’s shadow edged closer as Cody huddled out of sight.

‘Where do you want the bullet, Doc’?’ he asked, ‘nice and quick in the head or slow and painful in the belly?’

Cody packed himself tighter against the pillar as he thought of Maria and tears filled his eyes as he realised that this may be the last moment of his life. That he would never see her again, never be able to hold her again, be unable to help her. He didn’t deserve this.

Rage spilled from his heart into his belly.

‘I don’t deserve this!’ he roared.

The crew above burst into laughter as they watched and Cody heard Denton’s chuckles from just the other side of the pillar.

‘Poor Doctor, are you afraid?’

Cody saw the shadow of the pistol on the deck before him as Denton tried to edge around the pillar for a clear shot while staying out of Cody’s reach. The illumination from the dim light in the hold betrayed Denton’s position. Cody turned and pressed his face against the stanchion.

‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ Denton chuckled as he shifted further around the pillar.

Cody swung his fist hard overarm, the belt that he had un-slipped from his waist flashing as the heavy buckle whipped down across Denton’s face. The sailor flinched away from the unexpected blow as Cody burst from behind the pillar with a scream of something alien, a fearsome anger surging inside of him that felt like a brother he had rarely met.

Denton tried to aim at him but Cody lunged inside the weapon as he swung a wild right hook that shattered Denton’s nasal bridge with a dull crunch. The crew roared as they saw blood and bayed for more. Denton staggered backwards and sideways, pivoting around the pistol that Cody had now clenched in his fist, twisting it over for all he was worth.

Denton fell across a small barrel that shattered beneath him into wooden splinters that plunged into the flesh of his thigh.

Denton cried out in pain as he struggled to hang on to the weapon and landed hard on his knees on the deck. Cody turned and with a grunt of effort slammed his knee into the sailor’s face. Pain bolted down Cody’s leg as his bones smashed across Denton’s jaw. The crewman’s head snapped sideways and he sprawled onto his back as his eyes rolled in their sockets.

Cody wrenched the pistol from Denton’s grasp and staggered back, turning the weapon around and aiming it at the sailor.

‘Kill him!’ Bradley yelled above the shouts of the crew.

The raging, competing voices swirled in a maelstrom through Cody’s mind as he watched Denton recover his senses. He crawled onto his hands and knees and looked up. The sailor saw the pistol pointed at him, saw the rage blazing in Cody’s expression, and all at once Denton’s bladder gave way and spilled onto the deck beneath him as he raised his hands.

Cody could not hear his voice above the roaring of the crew, but he could see Denton’s lips move as tears spilled from his eyes.

‘Please, no.’

Cody’s anger changed shape, mutated within him. It seethed within its prison deep inside his chest, seeking an escape but finding none until he looked up out of the hatch and saw Hank Mears watching him with that uncaring, uncompromising gaze.

Cody pointed the pistol at Hank as the rage found its way out of him in a rush and a scream.

‘We’re not animals! Do you understand? We’re not animals!’

‘Cody!’

Bethany’s scream rose above the hollering of the crew just as Cody saw a shadow flicker behind him.

The belaying pin hit him across the back of the neck. There was no pain, just a momentary loss of vision and sensation as he saw the hold tilt over sideways and then shudder as he landed on the deck. The sounds of the crew became distant and muted and he felt a tingling in his legs as the shocked nerve endings came back to life. He rolled onto his back as a deep, dull ache throbbed inside his skull.

The crew looked down upon him from the hatch above, pink mouths agape as they cheered, fingers pointing, eyes filled with malice. He saw Bethany’s face, flushed with horror and tears.

Then Denton appeared to stand over him. He took the pistol from beside Cody’s useless hand and pointed it at Cody. His lips moved again.

‘Good bye, Doctor.’

Cody thought he heard Maria’s little voice in his mind as sadness heavier than all of the world’s many burdens weighed down upon him.

The gun fired a bright flash of flame and smoke. Cody felt his chest shudder as the world heaved beneath him, and then all was silent.

***

HOMECOMING

Traffic.

Lights spilled across the Harvard Bridge like a river of bright white orbs flowing through the darkness. The lights of Boston’s financial district shimmered on the black waters of the Charles River below as Cody drove his beloved Buick Riviera, a ‘66 he’d bought from a collector two years previously.

The late fall weather was warm enough for him to keep the window down as he drove, the brisk night air flushed with the saline scent of the nearby Atlantic. Horns blared, tail lights glowed and engines hummed as he crawled across the bridge toward home. Cody had worked late, as he often did: part and parcel of being at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Despite the workload he had managed to get out early enough to see Maria before Danielle put her to bed, only to hit the damned traffic.

Hazard lights ahead hinted at a wreck near the southern end of the bridge, and Cody passed a truck that had hit the barriers after a tyre had blown out. Nobody had been hurt as far as he could tell, just a few fenders bent as the traffic stream had come to an abrupt and unexpected halt. And yet cars crawled past the wreck, drivers straining for a glimpse of what was happening.

Cody felt something in his guts twist in disgust. There was no obstacle to the traffic, the truck having been already towed clear of the road. Yet still people slowed as they passed by, enslaved to a macabre fascination with the misfortune of others.

Cody glanced at the wreck but he did not slow. As the traffic began to move more freely he instead moved up closer to the car in front and hurried them along.

‘Get out and take a damned photograph if you’re that interested,’ he muttered.

Cody turned west off the bridge and out toward the suburbs. Rows of trees lined colonial-style homes with good sized gardens, patriotic flags in most of them softly illuminated by street lights that glowed amongst the leaves.

Cody pulled into his drive and jumped out of the Buick. He hurried up to the front door and let himself in.

‘Dadda!’

He heard Maria’s voice before he saw her, heard her feet thump quickly from the lounge out back and into the hall. Bright smile. Blonde hair. To-die-for brown eyes. Arms outstretched toward him as she ran. ‘Dadda!’

Cody scooped Maria up into his arms and hugged her closely as he walked through the house and into the kitchen. Danielle looked up and smiled as he wandered in, Maria clinging to his neck with one warm cheek pressed against his own. Pots and pans bubbled with aromatic odours as Cody crossed the kitchen to his wife’s side.

‘Just made it,’ he said as he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Traffic’s lousy. How’s she been?’

‘Okay,’ Danielle said as she swept a strand of hair from her face. ‘Busy as always and full of new words.’

‘Much like being at work,’ Cody said as he tugged at Maria’s cheek.

‘Hey, we’re low on bread,’ Danielle said. ‘Could you get some from the store? I’ll fix dinner once Her Ladyship’s settled down for the night.’

‘Sure,’ Cody said. ‘Wine?’

‘Merlot, and don’t skimp on it.’

Cody walked through into the lounge and kissed his daughter on the cheek with a whispered
be good
as he set her down inside a safe play-den. Maria busied herself with a collection of toys as Cody walked back out of the lounge and headed for the front door. He fished about in his wallet for cash and was about to open the door when he heard a faint tinkle of breaking glass.

Cody stopped in his tracks and turned, called out.

‘You okay?’

He heard nothing in reply and turned back down the hall, his pace quickened by some unknown instinct that surged through him as he hurried into the kitchen and came up short.

Danielle was standing with her back to the kitchen counter.

Standing opposite her in the open door to their back yard was a man dressed in ragged, dirty clothes stained with what Cody guessed was a foul mixture of alcohol and vomit, his face weather beaten and his eyes infected with a radical glitter as they shifted focus to Cody.

‘Don’t move,’ he snapped in a hoarse voice.

Cody did not know much about guns. The snub-nosed pistol in the vagrant’s hands, pointed at his wife, could have come from any period and any country. Unlike many Americans, Cody just wasn’t a firearms fan. He did not keep one in the house. Nor had his father, a man of nobler principles forged in a grander age.

‘Pete?’ Cody stared at the bedraggled form of his brother and tried to see the man he knew through the shell that remained. ‘You can take anything you want,’ Cody added automatically. ‘Just keep the gun out of it.’

Peter Ryan shifted the pistol to point at Cody.

‘Cash,’ he demanded. ‘All of it, or I’ll turn your family into bullet art.’

‘Jesus,’ Danielle gasped as she stared in horror at Cody’s brother. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

Cody did not understand what separated him by such magnitude from his brother. They had been raised together in a close knit, loving family. Their father had worked hard to provide for them, as had their mother. They had both done well in school. Cody had gone on to college, Peter into the army, his great love of sports and the outdoors driving his ambition. Six years later he had been dishonourably discharged after being found guilty of possession of marijuana with intent to supply while serving in Guam.

From there, Peter’s life had degenerated into years spent wandering from one half-way house to another, interspersed with spells in both jails and prison for a colourful array of misdemeanour felonies. Experiments with the very drugs he peddled to losers on Boston’s meaner streets led to escalating addiction until he spent his every waking hour fixated on the destructive pleasures of methamphetamine.

Cody slowly retrieved his wallet and tossed it onto the counter within Peter’s reach.

‘Sixty dollars and change,’ Cody said, ‘only cash in the house. Now get out.’

Peter snatched the wallet up and then his eyes settled on Cody again.

‘Jewellery,’ he spat. ‘I know it’s in here, Cody. Fetch it me.’

Cody didn’t move. Nor did Danielle. Peter’s features twisted with fury as he screamed at her, his mouth a morass of blackened teeth. ‘Get them now, bitch!’

To Cody’s surprise Danielle stared at Peter for a moment before replying calmly.

‘You don’t need to do this, Peter.’

‘Shut up,’ Peter sneered. ‘You run or try callin’ the law and I’ll put holes in my dear little brother here.’

Danielle turned and walked away. Cody looked Peter up and down, tried to swallow his revulsion as he spoke.

‘Is this what you’ve come down to?’ he uttered. ‘You used to just ask for money.’

‘I’m done askin’ any of you for anythin’,’ Peter spat at him.

Peter had always gone to their parents for money, and they had given him what they could until there was no more they could give. It had been the last they’d seen of their eldest son. The man Cody had once looked up to, a soldier, a natural leader, was now a decrepit and shuffling wreck who could barely string a sentence together. He guessed it was a cruel kindness that their folks had gone to their graves without seeing what he had become.