AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 76

Byron Reed’s hand was not professionally bandaged.  It was wrapped with a dirty rag, shoved into a sandwich baggie, rubber-banded around the mangled & blue broken wrist, and dumped along with the remainder of his body into locked, unassigned, emptied & divested crew’s quarters.

Byron Reed’s hand had company: three fingers in a second baggie, and Liz (no baggie).

“I knew I never should’a let you drag me along!” she yelled at him.  “You’re gonna get us both killed!  Look’a’chu!  You’re a goddamn cripple!”  Liz was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a grand funk.  Her hands were still in chains, and although her mouth had been taped up in the interests of blasphemy reduction, she had worked the tape free of her mouth.  “Christ’s dick, I hate this boat!”

Reed was somewhere between uncontrollable anger and debilitating shock.  His right hand was clutching the baggie of left-hand fingers so tightly his fingernails were digging blood-wounds into his palm.  He looked at her.  He looked at the baggie of fingers.  He was breathing fast and shallow.  His pains gave him a precise inventory of bodily parts.

He growled, and violently threw the baggie of fingers away from him.  They hit the far wall and lay still on the tile floor, one finger falling out of the baggie.  Reed crawled over——on hand, knees, and elbow——to where Liz was sitting on the floor, and picked up the scraps of duct tape.  They were partially wadded, but mostly in reusable condition.  He set the tape down, seeing that he was messing up the stick-um surface with brown smear-stains.  He rubbed off caked brown blood from his fingers onto his pants.  He spit on his fingers and hand to help clean them off some.  He went at the tape again.  He pulled it with his teeth and his hand that still had fingers on it, to open it and get it unstuck against itself so he could use it.  Every movement hurt.

Liz watched, wide-eyed & stunned.  A guy that beat up and bloody ought to be dead!  His hair: a wild male Medusa with caked blood and unchanged bandages.  And the baggie of liquid blood sloshing around there on his totaled left hand!  It was so gruesome, her eyes kept straying back to stare at it.

“We’re below the water-line,” Reed said, his voice acrid with the blaze of his temper.  “It’s the bilge right below us, I’m sure of it.”

“B-F-D on a B-L-T up your B-U-T!  Get us outta here!”

“I don’t want to get out of here.  I want to kill everyone on this boat who isn’t Courty!”  He pulled the Courty-made knife out of his shirt.  He gripped it like a weapon he was ready to use.

Liz’s eyes opened to super-simp skywide diameter.  “Woah there BB, like I didn’t mean anything by it.  Hey, I’m on your side, man.  All the way.”  She gulped.  She watched him fight his way up onto his feet, horrified at the amount of punishment Reed could take without it killing him.  His arms were all brown-caked with blood smears.  She snapped out of it when she saw him test the sharpness of the spoon on the inside of his left shirt cuff.  It was razor-edged like a surgical instrument, and cut the material easily.  It qualified for the definition knife screw spoon.  She watched him untuck his shirt.  His stomach and chest were black and dark blue with wounds.

“Come here,” he told her.  “Help me tape this thing to me where I can get at it fast when I need it.”

“Hah!  You can go lick Mary Mag’s pussy perfume!  I ain’t goin’ up against these assholes.  I ain’t gonna——”

He growled and came at her with the knife.

“OK!  OK!” Liz yelled, desperately.  “I’ll help!”

“Stand up, Lesbian.”

She gave him a nasty look but she stood and held out her handcuffed hands to help.

Liz helped him duct-tape the knife to his left stomach, then helped him tuck his shirt back in.  “What’re you gonna do?” she asked.

“Sink this boat for starters.”

Liz believed him.  His words grabbed her by the neck with conviction.  “Well, hey, get me off o’ this thing, and outta these chains before you sink it, huh?”  She gave a good look at the baggie full of thumb, finger, and splashing blood, banded around Reed’s left wrist.  “How you gonna do it?”

“I can think of two ways.  More will come to me . . .”

Reed thought about the room he was in now.  The door was locked and the room was stripped; absolutely unfurnished.  Woodpaneled walls.  The ceiling was low, seven feet from the floor.  The seaside wall had just a hint of curvature to it.

Reed went over and banged his good fist against the seaside wall, listening to the nuances of sound.  “It’s not steel-reinforced, I’m sure of it.  Listen to that!  That makes three ways to sink it . . .”

“But how we gonna get off this boat?”

Reed didn’t have time to answer her.  He could hear voices out in the hallway.  His anger had made him strong with pain-forgetting determination.

Liz jumped at the sound of the door’s locks being unlocked.

Reed quietly lay down near the center of the floor in a face-down heap.

The door opened inward.  Liz backed away.  The first guy in was a big character.  Back in the hallway was a thinner Black man holding a pistol on them, with a second pistol tucked into his belt-line.  The big white one smiled at Liz.

“Never mind the cunt,” the Black guy with the gun suggested.  “We ain’t got time.  Get the guy.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ tell me what to do!”  The big one looked down at Reed.  “Hey, you.  Get up.  Get up, asshole!”

“Careful,” Liz said.  “He’s fakin’.  An’ he’s got a knife.”

“Huh?” the big one said.

“You heard me, dumbo!  Touch him ’n’ he’ll slice you into shark bait!”

The slime stalled.

The Black guy said, “She’s bullshitting you, Ben.  Just drag the guy out here.  Come on.  He doesn’t have no knife.”

“He does fucking too have a knife!” Liz yelled.  “Promise you’ll let me go, and I’ll tell you where he’s got it hid.  I’ll even throw in a free fuck.”

The white guy kicked Reed in his shoulder.  “Get up!” he yelled down at him.

Reed groaned.

The guy stomped on Byron Reed’s bloody baggie-covered broken de-fingered left hand.  Stood there: put all his weight on Reed’s destroyed left hand for a second.

Byron Reed groaned again, long and low like a man semi-conscious.  His body slowly, slowly squirmed, like brain-dead sludge.

“Get me outta these chains!” Liz yelled at the dude.  “C’mon, I’m makin’ ya a deal!  Don’t fuck with him!  He’ll kill ya!  He’s gonna sink this ship!”

Both the guys thought that was real cute.  The fucked-up beaten semi-scragged lump of abused flesh was gonna sink The Lowlander.  Right.

The Black in the hallway said, “There’s no way Phil would ever let this guy have a knife.  Just get him, Ben.”

“You shut the fuck up, Matthew!  And you.  Don’t shit-kick me, you pussy.”  He hauled Byron Reed up by his broken hand.

“Ooogh!-Aaagh!-OOOooooogh!” he big white guy yelled, as Byron Reed stood up solidly and fighting mad on his own two feet, and stabbed the guy three times fast——the stomach, the solar plexus, and the heart.  The spoon came out of his shirt with the duct tape stuck to it, flapping around as Reed stabbed and slashed.

“Don’t shoot me!” Liz yelled, cowering down against the wall.  “Don’t shoot me!”

Byron Reed lunged under the stabbed, horrified big man, catching his weight as he fell toward him.  Reed lurched forward, toward the doorway, and heaved the big man’s body through the doorway with his right shoulder like an offsides football blocker crashing through the opposing lineup before the hike!

Reed charged through the doorway, right after.  The gun had never fired.  Reed was programmed to charge right at the loaded muzzle, armed with only a spoon and a strip of duct tape.  But there were three bodies, sprawled and struggling, there on the hallway floor.  The knifed man, and a tad to the right, Courtney (!!), on top of the Black guy with the gun.  Both of her hands solidly on that pistol, forcing its aim up and away.  She was a WASP tornado!  Her knee twisted violently between his legs, and crashed with full-force vertical updraft into his crotch!  The gun fired, and he screamed, and curled into a harmless ruined victim of dirty weather.

Courty came away with his gun in her hands.

The stabbed man was on his back, wheezing and gurgling, trying to hold himself and desperately stop the blood flowing into his clothes.  His eyes, terrible with dread, were riveted on Byron Reed’s eyes.  But Reed’s eyes did not have time for it.  He looked down the hallway to the left.  A long, low, narrow empty stretch, ninety feet or so, with just an odd, full-sized oxygen tank, standing vertical and strapped into the space next to a hanging fire extinguisher.  Doors, each side, every thirty feet or so; a forward stairway.  Reed looked fast right, listening intently.  Thirty feet of empty walkway, then an upright, slightly slanted wall that had to be the sternpost.  Stairs to the side of the sternpost, leading up a half-level.  That was the rear of the ship right there, the bilge and the propeller-shafts had to run right under the hallway corridor.

Reed shifted his concentration onto the sounds.  But the gunshot had damaged his sensitivity, everything was a fuzzy ringing, except for the immediate close-up sounds.  Byron Reed had no leftover emotional baggage for this dying man: he saw a second pistol on the polished wood hallway, and he had it in his good right hand, an instant later.  Trade.  Then he decided to keep the spoon-knife too.  He set the gun down just long enough to tear the tape off the thing with his teeth and hand, and slide the knife into the top of his right sock.  Then he stood up, and gave both directions of the hallway another scan.  Neither of these men were worth an instant’s consideration.  Courty’s victim was not going to do anything but whimper there holding his poor blasted balls for the duration . . . and the big stabbed man didn’t look like he had much of a duration left to him.

Liz was inside the empty cabin, just now daring to look.

Byron Reed turned to Courtney.  She was so gorgeous it hurt, looking at her.

But both Courty’s hands held her pistol down and close to Ben’s head, aimed straight; her deliberate, slow, slightly shaking movement cued Reed, and his right elbow knocked her aim off just as she fired, the bullet cutting a neat black hole into the wood.

Courty said, “No, Reed.  I won’t let you do it!  I won’t!  I can’t let you be responsible!  It’s my fault!  Let me do it.”  Her eyes burned into his.  “Let me do it!” she yelled and tried to aim at his head again.

Reed knocked her hand up before she could shoot.

“Let me do it!”

“Let’s not argue about a homicide!”

The man made a final exhale wheeze, lay still, and there was nothing to argue about anymore.

Courty looked deeply at Reed; her eyes saddened at the blood smeared on his clothes, but something about his manner told her that he wasn’t hurt too bad, and that he would be OK.  Suddenly, she threw herself at him and was hugging him lightly.  She said, “Eric is completely crazy.  I think he’s scrambled his mind with drugs.  But he’s got his own mob, five or six guys who will do whatever he wants.  He’s evil, Reed.  He’s Evil!  He’s human sewage!  We have to stop him!  We have to do it tonight!  Now!  I don’t care what happens afterward.  I don’t think I can live in a world with him in it.”

Reed was already moving.  His thoughts were not nearly so philosophical.  KILL PHIL!  DROWN ERIC!  KILL PHIL!  GET COURTY SAFE!  KILL PHIL!  SINK SHIP!  KILL PHIL!  “Follow me and keep quiet.”  KILL PHIL!  The gears were not grinding now: the man was in motion!

She followed him as they moved down the hallway, to the right, toward the stairway.  She whispered, “I’m not sure, but I think it’s just Eric and Philip up there.  I don’t think anyone else is aboard.”

“Thanks.”

Courty wanted to hold his hand, but she was carrying a gun in her right hand: a heavy revolver that felt solid and dangerous and foreign, as if it were designed for other hands; larger, stronger hands.  Her hand, wrist, and arm stung from firing the gun.  But thinking of holding Reed’s hand, Courty looked at it as she hurried to follow.  She couldn’t see beyond the bloody baggie, but she was shocked almost into tears.

Reed stopped——jerked his head around, aimed his gun around behind Courty!  Then, that blast of tension went out of his body, and he turned around.  Courty heard the jingling sound of chains behind her, and spun around, herself.

There was Liz.

“I’m goin’ with,” Liz whispered.  “Ya gotta gun for me?”

“No.  Shussssh.”

Suddenly Liz was holding Courty’s left hand with both her handcuffed hands.  It had a sweet, tangy quality to it; scared little sister.

Reed stopped at the stairway.  Reed slowly bent his neck around, gun first, and looked up.  He couldn’t hear a damn thing on the boat or the level above them, except for the guy back down the hail whimpering with busted balls.  Reed cautioned Courtney: “They’ve heard two gunshots.  There’s no such thing as the element of surprise.”

Courty nodded.

Reed whispered, “I’m going to take you to the first window or way off the boat, then I want you overboard.  You can call the cops, or not, your choice, but I want you off this yacht and safely away from here.”

Courtney shook her head forcefully.  She mouthed the word, without uttering it: NO.

Byron Reed could see in her eyes the determination to stay on the yacht as long as he was on it.

Reed was about to move up the stairs, when he heard a whisper of clothing movement above them, and what might have been the cock of a gun.

Then Reed thought of a way to motivate Courty to get off the yacht.

He motioned Liz and Courty to stillness and got them moving quickly the other way, down the hallway, past moaning Matthew toward the other stairway.  Reed put the gun in his hip pocket and took a few seconds to pull the Black man out of the hallway.  Matthew still had both hands trying to console his groin.  Reed dragged the dead man out of the hallway too, and then ran quickly over toward Courty.

They were at the other stairway.  “Stay here,” he told them.  He ran back to the large green oxygen tank, cranked the valve for a half-second, releasing a harsh hiss of gas.  Yeah!  He unstrapped it from the wall.

Liz snarled at him, “Jesus ridin’ Mary Magdalene, Reed!  What’re you doin’?”

Courty silenced her.  “That’s a terrible thing to say.  Be quiet.”

Reed took the fire extinguisher down off the wall and slung it down the hallway toward Liz & Courty.  It banged on the polished floor, and rolled down to them.

Courty stopped it with her foot, wondering what Reed was doing.  She looked up the stairway, but couldn’t see or hear anyone up there.

Reed put his right arm around the big oxygen tank, and muscled it down the hallway, half-carrying it, half-dragging it.  It was not the standard industry size, but much larger, for a custom application, apparently.  He guessed that it weighed about 200 pounds: perfect.

Reed had dragged the tank all the way to the far stairway, right beside Liz and Courty, when Phil’s voice called to them.

“Give it up, Reed!”  Philip yelled from the far stairwell.  “Give up now, and I’ll go easy on you.”

Phil’s body appeared around the corner, at the far end of the hallway, and Courty started shooting her gun at him.  Bam!  Bam!  Bam!

Reed dropped the oxygen tank, and yelled at Courty and Liz: “Get up the stairs!”  He knocked Courty’s gun-hand upward.  Her face was red with hate and adrenaline.  Reed pushed her.  “Get up the stairs!”

Phil yelled at them, “You’re a deadman, Reed!”

Reed aimed the big oxygen tank straight down the hallway, valve stem away from Phil, and then picked up the fire extinguisher from off the floor.  “This is so stupid,” he muttered.  “It’ll never work.”  He swung the fire extinguisher around by the trigger-handle, and bashed it sideways against the valve stem on the oxygen tank.

The 1” diameter stem broke off clean, and 3200 psi of 99% pure oxygen blasted out of the tank, roaring like a wind tunnel!  The 190-pound oversized tank zoomed down the full length of the corridor, ricocheting twice off the sides, and bouncing upward about five feet, before it crashed through the stern of the boat, like a torpedo!

A huge spray of water, a foot and a half in diameter, started flooding the hallway. Within seconds, it was splashing water at the feet of Reed, Courtney, and Liz.  And something like a hunk of seaweed was flapping and splashing along the top of the wash of water that was flooding toward them.  It was the head, neck, and left arm of Phil.

Reed said, “Son of a bitch.”

Courtney said, “My goodness!”

Liz said, “Jesus Christ sellin’ condoms door-to-door!”

COURTNEY, Chapter 77
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47