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Resident Evil: Quarantine -- Part Two
By Parasaur.w
Part Two: Cascade
Chapter 6 - The Board Meeting and the Warning
The water was never cold enough. Dan Doyle rewet his handkerchief, letting the lukewarm water slosh over it. He squeezed it out and pressed the damp cloth to his forehead. A few guys had walked into the bathroom and glanced at him, but he didn't say a word to them.
How did this whole thing go to hell?
He let out a quivering exhalation, tried to look as calm as possible, and exited the men's rest room. He checked his watch. The meeting was in less then ten minutes, and he'd better be one of the first ones there. He jogged to the Boardroom. He was the first one there. He seated himself in his designated chair and stared out the window, planning what to say.
The worries barraged him. He couldn't focus. Sheila's fired, she's gone. He knew that. They'd can her as soon as he reported what she'd done on this project, which was next to nothing. Am I going to be canned? He hated that word. He wondered what was happening. The infiltration squads were not allowed to contact the outside until the mess was contained. Umbrella knew they were being watched and listened to. He wondered if Lamont was dead.
By definition, by Umbrella definition, a full quarantine meant they had suffered a Class A Error. Meaning one, or all, of three things:
a. There has been a contamination, leak, or breach.
b. One or more of tested subjects has escaped and is not able to be contained.
c. Public awareness has been cause for exposure.
Any one of those occurred, the facility was locked down. Vigorous inquiries ensue, trouble would be had, and inevitably, Umbrella would stand. So far as Doyle could tell, Umbrella could not be brought to its knees by anything, or anyone. It had had its share of travesties. Incidents involving the military, the CIA, and the FBI. Yet even still, its power was towering. Doyle only knew of seven installations, but he was sure there were hundreds. Across the globe. In countries he'd never heard of. Of course. Why would they place their most vital facilities in places where the public eye was all seeing? They were exceptions, Paris, New York, Tokyo, London. But these were merely the civic face of the enterprise. That tiny iceberg floating in the water convinces one and all of its benign innocence. No one sees the vastness of the underbelly. Until it sinks them.
The real truth was that Umbrella was faceless and merciless. They always got their way. No one had ever raised a significant front against it. And that fact had continuously made Doyle feel safe, secure, and powerful.
Until this moment.
Most of the board arrived as one entity. No one uttering a word, they robotically took their places at the table. They stared at him unfalteringly. It made Doyle even more nervous and fidgety. He knew how guilty he must look. It was made painfully obvious by the repeated soft clattering of his pen, slipping from his fingers as though they were covered with Crisco, hitting the mahogany wood table. It was the only sound in the large room. His continual adjustment of his tie. His passing glances at each member. Their eye contact would be direct, connected by two wrought-iron beams, and then somehow, he'd shatter it and look back to his tie, as if the bond they had experienced wasn't actually significant. Just a happening collision of eye contact.
There was no friendship between any of them. That accounted for some fraction of the coldness in the boardroom. Umbrella was constricting on a personal level. For a corporation so large, so vast, with so much to control, its ability to single out an individual and strike at its weakness was staggering. Not that the whole of the mega-international-corporation was conspiring against Dan Doyle. Everyone felt the same. And it was almost as if they were being controlled--
Mike Schroeder, a man of impossible power, lumbered into the boardroom. He was obese and splotchy, and wore a thick pair of glasses. But his demeanor was official and significant. It was rumored that he was also infinitely wealthy. He sat at the head of the large table, and in doing so, began the meeting. He cleared his throat and spoke. "Everybody, how are we doing today?"
Nothing more than indistinguishable murmurs escaped the board members.
"All right." He neatened the pile of papers in his hand, and yet again cleared his throat. He read something from the documents. "On June the 25th, at 11:58 p.m. the I.B. Installation was issued a Class A error, consequently resulting in a full quarantine," he peered over his glasses at Doyle. "The likes of which, we've not seen since the Raccoon City incident. There has been an Assessment and Containment Squad dispatched, along with the site manager. And we should be expected the report in a few hours. Am I correct, Mr. Doyle?"
"Yes, sir. She should be transmitting her report via e-mail at 7:00 p.m."
"Good. What happened, do we know?"
"Not as of yet, sir."
"Ok, not important right now,
anyway. The cover up is what matters. Have drafted any possible solutions?"
A woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a foul expression said, "We have come up with some scenarios, for varying degrees of public awareness and emergency." She stood, and with a nasty look at Doyle, she pulled a folder from her attaché.
The overhead projector at the opposite end of Schroeder came to life with a dusty whir. She pressed a small button on the wall and the lights above dimmed, and tinted shields slid electronically over the windows, blocking out the warm Santa Cruz sunlight, turning day into night. The projector vividly cascaded the blank wall with brightness. The woman, of whom Doyle did not know, yet had the distinct impression she knew him, cast another contemptuous glance at him before sliding the first clear laminate on the projector. The wall displayed a large map of a heavily forested area, with an equally large lake, that went off the image. An island with and X on it in the middle of the lake was clearly visible and no question was raised about what it was. The Ivory Bay installation. This map was nothing new to Doyle. However, the map seemed to be stained. A red blot dyed the island, and a little bit of the surrounding water. Also, a light blue surrounded the fringes of the shore.
"This is our perceived status. This map indicates the level of danger we face, shown in red, and the level of public awareness, shown in blue. Currently, as you can see, public awareness is very low. As you all know, a man was killed last night, and our man in the morgue has confirmed that it was one of our mutations that killed him. Luckily, the police are baffled and we're only in a slight public alert.
"Shown in red, we can see our level of crisis. It's so far contained to the island, except for whatever killed the man. This is a..." she paused, carefully constructing the sentence, "conservative estimate. It's quite possible that our status is such:" She flipped through the folder for a moment and replaced the transparency with another map, this time the red was a much deeper shade, and extended well into the shoreline. The blue, remained small and the same light tone. "Shown here, is Condition A. Public awareness continues to be minor, but level of crisis is severe. In this instance, we've decided that the 'False Disaster' will be the best course of action. Our man stationed in the power plant will cut power, and then blow the North Dam. This catastrophe will flood much of the town, and the citizens will undoubtedly evacuate. Media response will be quick, but we should have enough time to destroy our installation, and make it look like it suffered from the catastrophe. Condition A is our most optimistic state, however, entirely plausible."
She then replaced that map with another. The red seemed to be similar to the previous map, but the blue was also large and very dark. "This is Condition B. Public awareness and crisis levels are both severe. Here we've decided it would be best to employ the 'Military Evacuation' device. There will be no hiding our presence once this level of awareness is achieved and therefore we will utilize that. By using our United States military guise, we will call for a town-wide evacuation, and will direct it. Once the town has been thoroughly cleared, we will begin quick sterilization. Again, we won't have much time before unwanted media or other attention is summoned. So speed is essential and primary, as usual.
"Of these, either is bound to happen. So readiness and order is key. Both of which happen to be trademark for Umbrella. So although our operation in Ivory Bay is compromised, we have some hope of salvaging it." She gathered her maps and slid them back into the folder and touched the button again, letting day flood back in.
There were mild murmurs of consent as she sat down. Doyle studied his nails.
Schroeder spoke; seemingly unfazed by the troubling report the woman gave. "Nina, how and when can we be sure of what our condition is?"
"Well, sir, we have over twenty-five agents within the town, some are in the town's services, like the power plant, the morgue, and others. Some are simply citizens with normal jobs, and some are tourists in hotels. They're all trained in recognizing public awareness and crisis level. If and when one of these conditions occur, we'll be notified immediately."
"And what do we know of the A.C.S.?" Schroeder asked the room.
A middle-aged man, with a grizzled and weathered face, to the immediate left of Doyle answered. "The Assessment and Containment Squad is currently inside the facility, sir. Radio contact has been cut, of course, but we have them on G.P.S. and as far as we can tell, they've just begun the infiltration," A note of concern chiseled his voice. "Sir, might I suggest reinforcements? Perhaps, should two or three more squads be sent in?"
Schroeder looked at the man, and Doyle noticed his eyes slightly shift toward the ceiling, as if irritated at the question. "One A.C.S. will do, Montague."
Montague sighed quietly.
"If that is all for now, then this meeting is adjourned and we will reconvene at 7:30 tonight to review the site managers evaluation report." Schroeder said and arduously got to his feet.
With a shuffle, the silent board members, most of who had said nothing throughout the entire meeting, filed out of the boardroom. Doyle was last to leave. He walked slowly through the halls, watching the muted crowd ahead of him, wondering if they hated him. He took a left at one of the tributary corridors that led to the coffee room. Maybe there were some donuts left.
He opened the door and was surprised to find Montague already in there, silent as the rest of the board, fixing himself tea. He barely glanced at Doyle.
Doyle pretended not to be uncomfortable at the silence between them and went about his business. There were no donuts. He stood a few feet from Montague and prepared a fresh pot of coffee. He was shocked when the gnarled man addressed him.
"I knew the bastard wouldn't send another team."
Doyle nodded. "It's my experience that you never seem to get much of what you want from Schroeder." He was almost delighted that Montague wasn't berating him.
"That's for sure." There were a few more moments of stillness in the air. "That A.C.S. team is dead meat. So is that pretty little site manager, Romero."
Darkened by this thought, Doyle lowered his voice. "How do you know?"
Montague grinned sardonically, "You think that Schroeder actually believes that one squad will be enough? Son, have you read the transcripts from the Raccoon City radio reports?"
"Yes. It's horrible. Tragic."
Irony crossed the scars and twists of Montague's face. "No kidding. I was there."
It took a moment for this to hit Doyle. "Jesus."
"Yeah. I survived, while all but two of my squad was killed. We narrowly escaped."
"How ...did you ...escape?" Doyle got the feeling he was asking a war veteran to recount the horrors he'd experienced. His father had been in Vietnam, and it was a house rule, ever since he returned without a right leg, never to talk or ask about what happened.
Montague's reaction was somewhat like the seven-year-old Danny Doyle had imagined, staring at the plastic prosthetic that his father never wore. His beaten face turned blank and subdued. His eyes narrowed into tiny slits of black, and he seemed to be fighting some powerful emotion. It was a while before Montague spoke again. "We ran. Three of us ran, while our teammates were devoured. We found an SUV and took off. We didn't think to check it. If we had, we'd have seen the body lying in the very back. But we weren't thinking. We were scared, you know? The damn thing woke up, started biting my buddy Tom while I was driving. And it scared me so bad, it jumped my heart, and I can't say why, but I let go of the steering wheel. We crashed, and that's how I became so pretty. My head went through the windshield. But we were OK enough to keep running, so we left Tom.
"I hate Umbrella. But they won't let me go anywhere now that I've seen and lived through that. So they made me chief administrator for A.C.S. operations. I don't want anybody else getting killed, and with proper backup, I wouldn't be so worried about those guys over there right now. But Schroeder says no. So, I suppose they're screwed." He turned and looked at Doyle directly, "Basically if that squad isn't backed up right now, they'll be dead within an hour. That's my bet." Montague swashed down some tea and walked out of the coffee room, leaving Doyle thunderstruck.
Chapter 7 - Not Quite Lassie
Kevin Lamont had found a dog. It was a Doberman Pinscher. It was large and fierce-looking, perhaps a bit underfed, and best of all, it wasn't infected with the T-virus. He'd come across it in the kitchen as he hastily gathered food and water from the large walk-in freezer. He must not have noticed it when he entered the darkened kitchen, but it had apparently noticed him. He was searching the frosted shelves for edible food, instead of raw eggs and dough and evaporated milk, and the thin dog wandered in the open door to inspect the visitor. When it caught his attention, he froze, immediately assuming it was a Cerberus, Dobermans that had been infected with the virus and were appropriately named after the mythical three-headed dog monster.
But upon a quick examination of the slightly withered animal, it was clear that it was not a Cerberus. The two were very distinguishable. While a normal Doberman is covered with a coat of small black and brown fur and is streamline and an effectual hunter, a Cerberus is an extreme version of that. Lamont had run across a couple so far. They were hideous variations of what stood before him now. With enormous patches of fur and skin missing, they were saturated with their own blood, exposing tremendous muscle and pink-stained femurs, ribs and parts of skulls. Their eyes were silver, and their teeth, while not different then when they had been un-mutated, dribbled with frothy, blood red drool. Clearly this specimen that watched him with imploring eyes was not a Cerberus and was looking for food other than Lamont himself.
He didn't quite know what to expect from the creature. Was it infected but too soon to show symptoms? Could it be in league with its demented canine brothers? It seemed to be a bit dazed and lost, and if Lamont could decipher dog expressions at all, a little frightened. His heart suddenly leapt at the thought of having a partner such as this, but how could he trust this animal, when its counterparts were scouring the facility in search of human blood? It definitely didn't seem to want to eat him.
A small whine escaped the
pooch.
Lamont dipped a hand into the should-strapped bag he was carrying, and extracted a package of microwave hotdogs he'd found. He tore the package open, and fished out a slimy particle of the mystery meat. He tossed it toward the dog. With the speed that even lethargic dogs can always seem to manage, its sharp, tooth ridged jaws snapped the hotdog from the air. It didn't really seem to chew it. One chomp and it was swallowed. The dog cocked its head to the side, waiting for more. Lamont smiled and tossed up another chunk, which was snatched up hungrily. He wrapped the plastic over what was missing from the package and replaced it in the bag. "Not now, pup." Without thinking he extended a hand and patted the dogs smooth head. Only after he gave the dog his reassuring touch did it occurred to him how dangerous this was, and how badly it could have turned out. The dog nuzzled his thigh, and the trust between them became cemented.
"You're not exactly Lassie material, you gangly pup, but I'm no Charleston Hesston. So we'll get along all right together, I think."
As he resumed his search through the frozen shelves, petting the dog at his side, he ceremoniously began thinking of a name for it. Nothing exciting came to mind, other than Bingo and Lassie, so he figured he'd come up with it later.
It was emotionally stabilizing for Lamont to be caring for something other than he. Having something to watch over, while it simultaneously watched over him, was comforting. They had a partnership. It felt beyond good to not be alone in this hellish place. It lightened his feelings of entrapment here.
He'd hadn't tried any doors to the outside yet, partly because he didn't dare wandering the halls with human bodies littered about, and because he knew that there was no hope that they would unlock. He didn't have the Pass Code. The deepest dread had overcome him since making that call to Doyle. He knew what he was asking. He knew he'd be trapped with no means of help for a long time, if not at all.
He had tried contacting his investigation team with his walkie-talkie. All he received was static. A bad sign. He knew his team, if they had survived, would be combing the radio channels for their teammates, or at least leave it on. The walkie-talkies clipped to their wastes might be on all right, but their owners might not be alive enough to respond to them. It was a chilling thought, to think of his friends lying on the floor, their eyes blank and cold, while his voice went unanswered at their belts. He hadn't the faintest idea where they could be, breathing or not. And since the power had gone out, for some unknown and surely frightening reason, searching this facility with a dying flashlight had been next to impossible, especially when he avoided corridors occupied by cadavers. The ratio of which was probably three corpse-infested hallways to every one non-corpse-infested hallway. And Lamont wasn't stupid enough to believe the bodies were truly dead. Luckily, this facility was weaving and complex and there was always more than two ways to get somewhere. Which made Lamont wonder if it had been designed with this sort of thing in mind.
The dog had afforded comfort that he had not really felt at all. The solace that the discovery of food had provided was not genuine. He thought he might go insane if he didn't at least pretend to be in high spirits. But having the animal by his side eased him more than he thought it would. He didn't relax at all, but he felt more confident.
He knew that at some point, those bodies would wake up and cease being the humans that glared at him the day before, and become mindless and hungry monsters. Zombies. It was such a childish notion. Zombies. But the truth was, that's exactly what they were. Like Night of the Living Dead.
He almost thought he'd have to coax the dog with hotdog bits to keep him following. But the dog was more than happy to trot along side of Lamont, without the bribe, as they left the freezer (one bag of frozen French fries richer). Man's best friend, indeed.
Some rooms were lit dimly by emergency lights on battery power. The kitchen, certain corridors of significance, and the bathrooms all glowed with an eerie red aura. These were nothing but further reminder, if not drive, to restore power to the facility. Armed only with a meat cleaver, some steak knives, and a dog, Lamont peered at his map of the installation by the dim light of the emergency light above. He was on the right floor for the generator room, but it was on the other side of the base. And finding routes through the maze of death traps would be difficult and lengthy. His eyes searched the map for some other form of encouragement. A subway station, perhaps?
A tiny room that his eyes had skipped over many times with the initials A.C. suddenly grabbed his attention. He never thought to find out what A.C. stood for. He looked at the key below the map went down the list. He spotted it, disbelieving.
A.C. = Armory Center
Lamont was suddenly overflowing with luck it seemed. Some food, a partner, now the chance of a gun. Maybe I'll do all right down here. Lamont envisioned prowling the halls with his canine comrade, M-16 in hand, shotgun strapped to his back, and grenades clipped to his belt. With foolish smile, he realized his vision of himself looked remarkably like Rambo. Well, Rambo would kick ass down here.
The uneasy feeling of moving through the facility to get there was enough to dampen his heroic visualizations. The kitchen never seemed more like a haven. In the dim red light, Lamont scanned the large, stainless steel blanketed chamber. There didn't seem to be any dangers lurking. Satisfied, he sat down on one of the counter tops and deliberated a route through the maze. He'd have to skip the main corridor, the longest one in the facility. It led directly to the Amory Center. But he'd seen some dead bodies in there. There was no telling when -
The dog at Lamont's feet suddenly lifted its head, and its perky ears did a strange flicking motion. Lamont watched the dog for further signs of distress, and neither seemed to be breathing, both locked in a taut moment of anticipation. Lamont could here nothing in or outside of the kitchen. Who knew what the dog was hearing. In the past few days he'd been here, Lamont had noticed the facility made odd noises sometimes. Hissings, sudden loud thrums, and distant hollow banging often echoed through the metallic halls. The engineer told him they were mechanical discharges from all the strange equipment. Perhaps the dog had heard a mechanical discharge.
Cautiously, Lamont lowered his head back to the map, his eyes watching the dog.
The dog began sniffing furiously, then let out a low, rumbling growl.
Lamont leapt off the counter and wielded the meat cleaver dangerously. His heart was immediately thundering in his chest, and the dog got to its feet, staring at the door to the outside corridor. There was silence for a little while.
Then Lamont heard a muffled groan. It was definitely coming from outside the kitchen door. So this was it, they woke up. And there's one right outside. It didn't seem to be trying to enter. So far as Lamont could tell, it was simply standing in one place, uttering deep moans. Lamont gave a quick glance and his map, decided his route, and patted the dog. Peering out of the kitchen door, he saw it. It was a male zombie. Standing with its back to the door, it's greenish-gray head hanging limply in the dim light.
The dog nearly bolted out of the kitchen to attack the zombie. Lamont quickly restrained the powerful animal from blowing their cover and element of surprise that he'd been hoping for. He managed to keep the commotion minimal, but it was enough to alert the dead-eyed zombie. It slowly turned to look at them. It looked a lot like Andy Porter did. Mutated and snarling, it unhurriedly started shuffling toward Lamont and the dog, which went wild and shrugged Lamont's grasp off effortlessly, and launched at the lumbering mindless fiend. The zombie's impulse time was about as fast as its advance. With a boundless leap, the Doberman sunk its teeth into the zombie's throat and tackled it. Then with a blurred jerk of its head, the dog ripped out its trachea and esophagus. Then, upon sniffing its achievement, it trotted back to the stunned Lamont. It sat happily in front of the man, its tail swishing across the floor. Strange gurgling sounds issued from the zombie, and its legs were twitching. The dog whined a bit.
Lamont slowly smiled, "Jesus, I'm lucky to have you." He reached into the bag strapped to his shoulder and pulled out an entire hotdog. The pooch gnawed the meat enthusiastically. "Lucky. That's a good name, huh?"
Chapter Eight - The Fish Never Bite
Shea looked sadly at the empty cooler in which a plastic six-pack ring sat solitary. The red cooler was supposed to be filled with the large-mouth bass that Ivory Lake was so famous for. Kelly was playing a Game Boy at the bow of the boat, unperturbed by the stillness of his rod.
"Kelly, is the fishing usually this bad?"
He didn't look up from Zelda. "Yep."
"Oh."
The gentle sloshing of the lake-water against the boats fiberglass hull was peaceful to Shea, but the constant beeping, zapping, and blipping emanating from the Game Boy at full volume annulled the tranquility of the setting.
"Turn that down, Kelly. It's irritating."
"Boo-hoo."
"Why the hell haven't we caught anything? We've been out here for..." he looked at his watch, "...five and a half hours. We ought to have caught something by now. Like a sunfish or something."
"The fish never bite anymore. The last time I caught a big fish was three months ago, just after the ice thawed. It was a seven-pounder. I catch sunfish once in a while."
"When we were kids, we caught all kinds of big ones. What happened?"
"Well, they conducted some kind of experiment to find out last month. Turns out, the population of the fish has gone down a lot. But the ones that are there stay near the bottom and are fat and healthy. They don't know why. I tried using sinkers, but they still don't work. The fish don't bite. They got something better, I think."
"Like what?"
Kelly looked up from his Game Boy. "Caviar?"
In store for suppertime were microwave dinners. Shea poked at the rubbery meat, which was supposed to be Prime Rib. Kelly was flipping through the channels idly, occasionally stuffing some corn in his mouth. Channel nine was airing Channel 9 News at 9 (Ivory Bay's Most Trusted News Source). The weather was being forecast. Stormy for the next three days. It seemed to set the tone for Shea's current frame of mind. Despite the relaxing, albeit disorderly, vacation down memory lane, the damp night was darkly redolent of veiled melancholy. The night crickets chirped monotonously outside the den's window, and the TV blurred. Boom, like a shotgun, he was battered by a sudden, inexplicable grief. He waited for a relief.
It came from Kelly, who was pleasantly unaware of Shea's sudden onslaught of ache. "Dude, a lake hurricane. Awesome."
Shea refocused on the TV. The weatherman was describing, with the aid of Doppler radar, the path of this large storm. Lake hurricanes are rare. Technically, they're just a very powerful storm that occurs over a large lake. But they show similarity to the huge tropical hurricanes in their movement. Ivory Lake was enormous for the area, and more prone to pick them up. Shea could remember his father replacing nearly all the front windows of the house, and him and his friend Chuck snarling as the hoisted the huge, nine by six foot pane of glass that usually admitted such a beautiful view of the lake from the leather-furniture living room. And his mom sweeping away glass with a broom, a dazed expression on her lovely face, her hair disheveled.
"We have to board up the windows, Kelly."
"No problem. Remember I told you we had one of these storms five years ago? Well, I boarded them up then. After it was over, I made little metal slots to slide the plywood in, on front window of the house."
This kind of thing saddened Shea. Kelly was a remarkable problem solver. He was an electronic genius. Shea was struck with yet another childhood memory of Kelly repairing his older brother's AM/FM radio at the age of ten. But school never liked Kelly and Kelly hated school. While Shea was the "Amazing Catch" on the Ivory Bay Wolves football team, Kelly was the "Amazing Drunk" who came into class once drinking a water bottle filled with rum and coke. He'd been suspended seven times, once for beating the hell out of Shea's best friend. He was also notoriously wild with girls. Shea had the same girlfriend throughout high school, and was the runner-up for class president by four votes, and settled for V.P.
The contrast between the brothers couldn't have been starker. However, there was never any tension or resentment between them. And the fact remained that they were both favorites by teachers and students. Easily the most unanimously liked in school. But no more so by each other. They were great friends.
Kelly had potential, and besides being popular and savvy, Shea really had none. Shea was a success, and Kelly wasn't. Just the kind of irony that tormented Shea. But Kelly didn't seem to feel the same. If he did, he was hiding it. Shea looked at his brother, fixedly listening to the lake hurricane report, and was surprised to see he wasn't pissed off.
Being reasonably close to July 4th, it was Ivory Bay tradition to put on fireworks shows every day for a week before, culminating in a spectacular Fourth of July weekend that brought in tourists by the handful. Back in the days of Football and girlfriends, the two teens, their mother and father, would take the Chris Craft into the middle of the lake, and enjoy the fireworks set off from Strawberry Island.
"They don't do it anymore," Kelly told his brother. "They didn't do it the year before last, and they didn't do it last year. And apparently it's not happening this year either. Strawberry Island's dead quiet. It's that Umbrella place, I bet ya. We have to do something about this, Shea."
"Like what? Go knock on Umbrella's door, ask them to let fireworks go up?"
"Damn it, Shea, this is tradition they're messing with. We should go on to that island and show 'em what's up. I got a buddy who makes fireworks. He'd been into this idea. It'd be great."
"We'd get in trouble, man. I don't know."
"That's crap."
As always, Kelly was artful in his goading and the idea slowly began to sound more and more fun. After working out the small details and setting some inflexible rules, which Shea put forth firmly, Kelly gave Ryan Morgan a call.
Morgan was a stocky character, going bald, and the child of youth hadn't left his face or persona. At ten o'clock he arrived at Sergeant's Marina in a very old Buick, clutching a bottle of liquor and puffing merrily on a cigar. Without stepping out of the vehicle, he gave a smirking nod to Kelly and winked at Shea. "Heya, boys."
The trunk was wide open and three faces, two staggered and one gleeful, beamed down at four milk crates overflowing with what looked like brown, thick cardboard tubing, stuffed with fine sand. From each protruded a copper wire that snaked back down into the crate, creating a jumbled nest deep inside. Also, a car-battery looking device lay cocked on its side near the back of the spacious trunk. "The igniter," Morgan said pointing to it.
Kelly slapped Morgan's back. "It's official. You're my hero."
"Damn right. Now help me get these in that rocket you call a boat."
Even with the crates being extremely heavy, Kelly managed to take one in each hand and hobble down the creaky dock, Shea and Morgan straggling behind, feeling inadequate being strained by only one. The hoisted them onto the carpeted deck with heavy clunks that swayed the boat. Morgan hurried back to his Buick, parked in an empty boat shack, and returned with the igniter. Kelly eased his boat away from the dock, the powerful engine rumbling loudly in protest to not being pushed to its full scope. Once out of the strictly prohibited "No Wake Zone" Kelly pushed the hand throttle all the way forward and the motor kicked in with a roar. The bow of the boat shot up into the air as the two propellers drove down into the water and suddenly Shea couldn't see because the wind was air-blasting his eyeballs and they immediately began watering. It was exhilarating and the three of them swelled with excitement.
"It's nice to be acting like a kid again!" Shea shouted above the oncoming wind to his accomplices. They both looked at him with puzzled faces.
At such a pace, the boat jetted past the surrounding shoreline of the harbor and out onto the expansive waters of Lake Ivory. The lighthouse on Strawberry Island was visible over the heightened bow, but not the actually island, which couldn't really be seen anyway in the darkness. On that thought, Shea looked to the sky. The moon usually illuminated the lake, and the stars were stunning. But there was no moon and no stars. The sky was a black-gray iron with the heavy cloud-cover of the approaching lake hurricane. The forecast said no storming tonight and it would start tomorrow. Still, Shea felt the uneasy feeling of forbiddance, and could smell rain. Morgan and Kelly didn't seem to feel the same, so Shea decided to forget it and let whatever happen, happen.
Kelly edged the accelerator down to a sane level, and the bow settled gently back to the water. The island was dark and desolate. There was no life or action, no lights indicating a facility, and no visible paths or roads. Only swaying pine trees, hushed rustling from a brewing storm's winds.
Umbrella had installed a large metallic dock, where a lonely wooden boat drifted idly, tethered. Shea could tell it was a large craft, but its magnitude wasn't established until they were floating along side of it, on the other side of the metal dock. It looked like an old "party boat". Kelly remembered the party boats, which were steam-driven, cruising the lake, providing dinner and a lovely excursion around Lake Ivory to camera-clicking sightseers. It was a huge tourist draw. The things were large and slow. With three levels, and about twice the length of the dock, it dwarfed Kelly's boat. It begged the question that Kelly blurted almost instantly. "What the hell is Umbrella doing with a party boat?" No one could think of why, so they shrugged and tied up their boat.
Grunting, the three men lugged the crates ashore and onto the pine needle blanketed island. Strawberry Island was inappropriately named; no strawberries could be found anywhere on the island. But blueberry bushes were abundant. Without thinking, Kelly and Shea both directly went to the nearest bush of plump purple berries and began stripping them.
"Hey, guys, don't they sell those things Stop and Shop? Let's go," Morgan said from the darkness behind them.
Shea lingered for another moment to snatch a few more, then convened with his cohorts. They stood in a tight circle and discussed their plan.
"So we need a clearing," Morgan said, "one of these puppies could set this whole island on fire. A clearing with-" He stopped very suddenly. "I just felt a raindrop."
A tiny prick of coldness pecked Shea's hand. "So did I."
"We can still launch if it sprinkles."
"My boat..."
"We didn't bring any coats."
"You guys, I'm going to put the cover on my boat. I'll be right back," Kelly told them, and scurried off.
"Let's get these crates under some tree cover," Morgan said. The two of them lugged the crates one at a time to a thicket beneath a couple of enormous pine trees some distance away. Morgan heaved up the last crate and shuffled off into the darkness.
Shea went back to a blueberry bush and began feasting.
A moment later he heard Morgan's voice in the distance say, "Very funny, Shea." He then heard a frantic shuffling and a few pained grunts. Then silence. Shea started feeling very nervous. He waited in the gloom of the night for ten more minutes before uneasily walking into the woods, in search of Morgan.
*****************
More to come...
This work was written in whole
by Peter Castello
10/23/2003 1:11:27 AM
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