Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (102 page)

# # #

Steve climbed out of the back of the truck and followed his wife and Charlie Tatum through a disheveled front yard of waist-high weeds, around the side of a large and crumbling stone house. From the backyard, the sound stretched out before them, unstirred to the point of appearing frozen in the mounting, windless heat.
 

The three of them strode down the gentle slope of weeds toward the water’s edge. A decaying dock reached out from the bank, and there were people milling about at the end.

Steve caught up with Kim. Because they were the same height, he put his arm around her waist and they stepped together onto the rickety dock. Charlie led them to the end, pointing out the boards that might not bear their weight.

A twenty-four foot Scout lounged in the calm water, and an exceptionally pale man with long black hair manned its cockpit. Steve nodded to him. The man looked away, set the Yamaha outboard gurgling.

Charlie offered Kim his gnarled hand. She took it and stepped down into the boat. Steve followed, and then the old man untied the rope from a gray timber and hopped with surprising spryness onto the deck that reeked faintly of mildew and the discarded
sunspoiled
viscera of fish.
 

Steve glanced at the couple who were already seated on the cushioned
limegreen
bench that ran along the inner sides of the boat. It occurred to him that they did not appear to be having a very good time, but he introduced himself anyway.

The man was bearded, with a tangle of gray-flecked brown hair and guarded eyes. They shook hands. Steve tried to introduce his wife, but Andy didn’t seem interested in meeting her, so he took a seat, a little embarrassed. Andy’s wife, a young woman scarcely older than Steve, wouldn’t even look at him. She just stared off into the sound, nervously brushing her shoulder-length blond hair behind her ears.

"Glad to have y’all aboard," Charlie addressed his four passengers. "It’ll be a thirty minute ride over to the island, so y’all just sit back and enjoy. That’s my son, Luther, at the controls, so don’t worry. We’re in capable hands."

"Should we pay now?" Steve asked, reaching for his wallet.

"Nah. We’ll settle up later."

The old man sat down in the jump seat beside his son. He whispered in his ear, and then the motor growled to life and the boat lurched forward. Steve leaned back into the cushioned seat and put his arm around Kim.

The water raced by as they sped parallel to shore. Steve turned and watched the great stone house dwindling away. That gothic residence looked as though it belonged on a dreary English moor, secreting a gloominess that seemed out of place in the wet sunshine of this August morning.

The tiny figure of an old woman stood in the overgrown backyard, a baby in her arms. She waved to the departing boat. Only Steve and Kim waved back.

The petite blonde sitting across from them lunged for the stern and emptied her guts in orange-green ropes into the wake.

Kim reached over and rubbed her back.

"You okay, honey?" she asked.

The blonde nodded but was sick again.

The old man glanced back from the cockpit, grinning.

"All right there, Miss?" he called out over the groaning motor.

"I’m
fine
."

The old man laughed and yelled something about "sea legs" that was lost in the wind. The blonde returned to her seat and leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. Kim and Steve looked away, back toward Ocracoke, quickly fading into nothing but a green smudge on the horizon.

They crossed the inlet, whitecaps just a few hundred yards east where the ocean and sound ran together. Fifty yards off starboard, thousands of cormorants congregated on a temporary shoal. They scattered as the boat passed by, filling the sky, squawking, some
divebombing
fish in the shallows.

Now Portsmouth loomed. Steve squeezed his wife’s arm and pointed to the approaching island. Kim nodded blandly as the abandoned structures of Portsmouth Village

came into view amid the scrub pine.

The blueness of the sky had begun to wane, to drown in its own heat and fade into an indistinct whiteness that was neither cloud nor sky, but a veil of humidity that is the fate of most afternoons in a southern summer.

The boat continued shoreward, as would a passenger ferry bound for
Haulover
Point. But before they’d neared the dock, where tourists are unloaded for their ventures into the ghost village, Luther turned the boat and guided it around the
soundside
of the island.

They were close to shore now, and as Steve stared into the impenetrable thicket, Kim fell mesmerized by their fellow tourists. The man and his wife seemed oblivious to the island and the sound. They stared out across the water, listless and burdened. She started to speak to them, but the boat turned suddenly and headed up a creek into the interior of the island.

Pines crowded the banks. She could smell them.

The creek narrowed.

The boat slowed.

Drifting now, a sappy branch passed overhead, and she reached up and pinched off a cluster of pine needles.

The motor quit.

Only the soft liquid rip of the bow slicing through the water.

In the
darkgreen
distance, she saw where the creek ended. There was a small dock at the terminus, a rustic shack behind it.

She slapped the side of her neck, came away with a
bloodsmeared
palm.

The first mosquito had found her.

Kim glanced again at the woman on the opposite bench, curious as to why tears meandered down her face, and her hands had begun to tremble.

# # #

Rufus tied the boat to the moorings and stepped down onto the dock. He offered a hand to the young woman, helped her out of the boat, and then her husband.

"You two should go on ahead," he said. "There’s a slough back there."

He waved toward the dense foliage behind the shack.

"Straight through those trees. Tide’s out, so it’s dry now. You follow that a ways, and you’ll come out on a tidal flat. Trek across the flat for a mile and a half, scramble over the dunes, and you’ll find yourself on a deserted beach that’s just as pretty as a picture."

"You going to show us—"

"We’ll be right behind you, but you might as well get a head start. It’s quite a hike."

"What about the ghost village?" Steve asked. "We really want to—"

"We’ll take you there, too, so don’t you worry. It’ll be part of the loop we do."

The young couple set out down the dock, past the shack, and into the pines. We all watched them for a moment, making slow progress as they bushwhacked their way through the brush, glancing back now and then to see if we were coming. When they’d disappeared into the thicket, Rufus looked back into the boat at Vi and me. Grinning, he reached into his pocket and tossed me a key.

"Opens the shack," he said. "I think you remember it, Andy, but don’t worry—no grizzly trap this time. Just a pump-action Remington under the bunk bed and a box of shells on the table. On account of your limp, you might want to get a move on."

I struggled to my feet.

Vi was bawling again.

"Let’s go," I said.

She shook her head.

Grabbing her under the arm, I tried to muscle her to her feet, but she collapsed across the deck. I knelt beside her and whispered into her ear, "Vi, walk off this boat with me. Whatever you have to do to steel yourself up for this, now’s the time. They’ll kill your baby."

She wiped her eyes and looked up at me, then nodded, came to her feet.

We stood there, gazing at Rufus.

He said, "We’ll come help you carry them back when we hear the gunshots."

I started toward the dock, but Rufus held up his hand.

"Wait. Wanna tell you something. I’ve lived out on these barrier islands going on forty years now. Seen a few folks try to do what you’re about to do and fail. Let me tell you this. If you haven’t shattered those values, if you’re still seeing this world through good and evil glasses, it’s going to be hell out there. These are the Outer Banks. The fringe of America. Fringe of thought. Most people aren’t hard enough, pure enough to exist out here. It’s uncomfortable. They’d rather live inland. Safe from the sea. From themselves. But this is where the action is. I hope that isn’t lost on you."

Rufus stepped forward and gave us each a hand down onto the dock. We could hear the doomed couple thrashing about in the thicket.

I glanced at Luther. He stared at me, eyes black and smoldering.

I started limping along up the dock.

We reached the shack. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, told Vi to fetch the shotgun from under the bed. It was right where Rufus had said it would be, a twelve gauge with a twenty-eight inch barrel. She set it down on the table as I tore open the box of shells.

"Double-aught buckshot," she said. "My God, this is going to be messy."

I slid four shells into the chamber, the stench of gunpowder filling the shack.

"Ever handled a shotgun?" I asked.

"My daddy owned several. Taught me to shoot when I was fifteen."

I handed her the weapon.

"Part of me," she whispered, "wants to say
fuck
this whole business, head back down to the boat and just start blasting."

"We’d die and your child would die."

I glanced out the window.

Luther was perched on the bow, aiming a high-powered rifle with a scope at me through the glass.

"Look out there," I said. "We’d be dead the second we started for the boat."

Vi sat down in a chair, sighed long and deep. She sweated through her thin white T-shirt.

"Ever kill someone in the line of duty?" I asked.

"Never even had the occasion to draw my gun. I don’t know how to begin to do this."

I reached into the box, grabbed a handful of shells.

"We better get going," I said.

As we emerged from the shack, I looked back toward the boat. Rufus waved, grinning.

I led us into the thicket, following the trail of broken limbs, trodden weeds. The island was brimming with birds and the whine of mosquitoes. They swarmed us—a mild but constant stinging on every square inch of exposed skin.

In the unbearable humidity, we became drenched in sweat within five minutes, and crowded on all sides by curtains of varying green, I shunned the claustrophobic sensation of being trapped in a sweltering, leafy cage. Little could be seen of the sky above. Only flinders of bleached blue through the ceiling of scrub pine.

We could hear the young couple blazing the trail ahead of us, the woman growing increasingly vocal in her complaints.

"Damn you for this, Steve!" I heard her cry out. From the way her voice carried, I estimated them to be just seventy-five to a hundred yards away.

As we
mushed
on, my thoughts turned to Orson’s cabin in the desert and that shed and the things I’d done there. My insides warmed with an old, familiar numbness. I wondered if Vi felt it, too. I hoped.

She stopped suddenly, said, "Listen."

The woods had gone quiet.

"They either stopped or reached the slough," I whispered. "Come on."

Several minutes later, sweaty, mosquito-bitten, scratched and bleeding from briar pricks, we emerged from the thicket onto the banks of the slough. Marsh grass grew up out of the desiccated
swampbed
, and a breeze swept over us from the east. I gazed up the slough—a quarter mile from where we stood, it opened into a sprawling tidal flat.

Two figures, scarcely visible, trekked across that coastal desert toward the sea.

Vi sat on the bank. I eased down beside her. As she lay the shotgun across her thighs, I put my arm around her and pulled her close. She let her head fall on my shoulder and wept.

"It doesn’t even feel real," she said. "We aren’t really going to do this. Are we?"