Then Fairmont stopped fighting. O’Brien stared at his face, one eye bloody, the life drained from the other eye. O’Brien released him, the body floating upright with the current for twenty feet before slowly sinking under the dark surface.
O’Brien shook his head. Had he killed him? Was he really dead? Was it some hallucination? He didn’t know. He tread water. He could see a mist building across the river. The moon coming out from behind a cloud.
He looked around, trying to find the schooner. There it was, in the distance, the three masts visible in the night sky. The masts looked like three crosses, the cross in the center the tallest. And then something moved between each mast. It moved like a pendulum, swinging back and forth. A man hanging from a rope, a boat anchor hooked through his shoulder. He kicked and cried for his mother, hands tied behind his back, his feet just above the surface of the river. O’Brien watched as flaming red eyes circled the dying soldier. The massive gator launched from the water, its jaws clamping on the man’s legs, the sound of cannons and gunfire booming across the river.
A mist rose from the surface, cloaking the man’s body. Then the fog enveloped the schooner, as it drifted into oblivion. O’Brien thought he heard the band playing Marley’s Redemption Song, the singer’s voice far away. Old Pirates, yes, they rob I…Sold I to the merchant ships…minutes after they took me from the bottomless pit…’
O’Brien wasn’t sure which way was closest to the river bank. His arms felt like they were weighted down. Legs encased in cement. Swim. Where? What direction? A movement of light caught his eye. Cutting through the fog, a soft light swung back and forth, as if someone was holding a lamp on the river’s edge. O’Brien swam slowly toward the light. It seemed so far away. The mist rose around him, the sound of frogs in the night. The old river smelled of fish, wet moss and sulfur.
His head went under the surface. Water in his mouth. O’Brien pushed back to the surface. He was drained, the drug now fully in his system. He wasn’t sure if the light was real. But there was no other direction to go. In the fog, it all appeared the same. He looked up at the moon and stars, he thought of Kim. He felt a kick of adrenaline somewhere in his heart.
He tried to swim on his back, looking over his shoulder for the light.
There it was. Closer. Was it real?
A noise. Something splashing. Another noise. O’Brien stopped swimming for a few seconds, listening. The noise again.
Alligators. Probably coming off the riverbank and heading straight for him. O’Brien tried to look through the mist, to see the knotty heads, the red eyes under the bright moon. His heart raced. He thought blood was seeping out of the palms of his hands. His guts burned.
Something moved. A long object. Very near.
A man’s hand shot through the steam off the water. Then, there was Joe Billie’s face, as if he was looking from a cloud. O’Brien felt himself being lifted up and out of the river, set gently into the canoe. The canoe headed toward the moving lamp. And darkness settled over O’Brien like a blanket thicker than the swirling fog.
EIGHTY-TWO
It was the feel of something across her mouth that awakened Kim. Something wet, cold and rough. She slowly opened her eyes. Her right eye was swollen, hard to open. The image fuzzy through the eye. She blinked. Hoping to blink away a nightmare before her. She was in a dimly lit room, candles on a dresser. An oil lamp on an end table. It was still dark outside, moonlight coming through the one window.
Silas Jackson sat on the side of a bed using a washcloth to dab her face. Used it to wash away the dried blood. The crusty congealed blood around Kim’s mouth and severely swollen eye. She used her tongue to feel for the tooth. Gone. A fleshy hole left behind. She wanted to push him away. Kim couldn’t move her arms. She looked to her right and then left. Metal bands clamped on her wrists. The wrist bands secured to chains, the chains locked on the bedposts. He’s done the same with her legs. Pulled them apart, wide, held in place by short chains secured to posts at the foot of the bed.
Kim realized she was nude. She was naked under a sheet turned a pale yellow from oily hair, engine grease, dried sweat and grime. She shuddered. Opened her good eye and said, “Why are you doing this?”
Jackson stopped cleaning her, his dark bloodshot eyes cutting up to her face. “I told you why. I have no choice. You don’t either. The rest weren’t the woman we’ve been looking for — you’re the one to birth a new leader to take back the county.”
“The rest? You’re crazy! Let me go, and I promise you no one will ever know.”
“I told you I got no say in the matter.” He stood, stepped to the window and looked out at the moon over the palms and cypress trees. Then he turned back to her, running the tip of his index finger slowly down her chained right arm. “Miss, Kim, this goes all the way back to Confederate General Albert Pike. He was the visionary. Wise beyond his time. He predicted three world wars. He was a thirty-third degree Freemason who spoke a dozen languages. Harvard educated. He wore Lucifer’s bracelet. General Pike was the architect of prophecy, a new order of the way society would be governed. You can fulfill General Pike’s foretelling.”
“They’ll lock you up and throw away the damn keys.”
“I ‘spect they’ll be coming for me soon. My death will be the sacrifice I’m willing to take. I’m bettin’ the seed will take, and you, a fine Catholic girl, will let it be.”
“Oh my God…you’ve raped me. You filthy bastard!”
“No! I wouldn’t rape you. No need. I got you hogtied to the bedposts. I can take my time. You won’t be able to get up and use gravity to dislodge the sperm on its predestined journey to plant the seed of a new order.”
Kim closed her good eye, made a silent prayer, and fought the bile rising in her throat.
EIGHTY-THREE
O’Brien could see the fire of cannonball explosions on the horizon in the night sky. Hear the booms echoing across the river. The sounds of guns blazing. The gruesome whizzing and tearing noise of Minié balls blowing through the chests of Union and Confederate soldiers. They were on the river, fighting under the cover of darkness, under the glow of starlight.
Gunboats shooting at other patrol boats. Men jumping from burning vessels. The smells of scorched hair and burning skin mixed with burnt gunpowder. Steamers hit by floating mines that took off the entire bow or stern. The deafening, mournful cries of dying men.
He saw a young Confederate soldier fall in battle on a field, smoke rising, a union soldier, gut shot, lying in the mud near him. The Confederate soldier strained with what little strength he had left to pull a photograph out of his rucksack. He held the photograph in his bloodied hand, the young man looking at the image of the woman in the photograph. Tears welled in his eyes, spilling down his cheeks and into the blood pooling near his chest. He tried hard to whisper his love for the woman, life fading from his broken and bloodied body, the photo falling into the dark mud, a cannon firing in the distance.
Then it was silent and the moon rose over a mountaintop and O’Brien was alone on a ravine in Afghanistan, the moonlight bright against the mountainous landscape. He heard the whirl of chopper blades in the distance, over the hills.
Were they finally coming for me?
He crouched berween two large boulders and waited, glanced at a small village down the hill in the valley, the scent of goat and lamb meat cooking in the night air.