The following takes place between 8pm and 9pm
I jogged to the pier where the boats were moored. A landing under fire would be difficult, but not impossible.
There was a small white-sided shack at the start of the pier, and I knocked on the door. The impossibly cramped interior contained a desk, a bored college girl, and enough sailing kitsch to make an old salt wish for the serene depths of Davy Jones’s locker.
The watery grave, not the Monkee.
“Hi,” I said brightly. I was sticky, tired, and cranky, but brightness starts the conversation off on the right foot. “I’d like to get a boat.”
“Two hundred dollar deposit, fifty refunded after return,” she replied in a bored tone.
“Two hundred bucks?!” I choked on the words and fished out my wallet. Twenty-five in cash and dad’s credit card, which was only for meals. “I’ve only got twenty-five. I’m part of that uSoak game, I need a boat. Help a sister out.”
“And I need a deposit in case you get lost at sea and we have to call someone with a helicopter or an official looking boat to save your ass.”
“Fine. I’m just gonna take one.”
“Yeah, good luck with that, sister.” She put a mocking emphasis and finger quotes on the last word and then went back to tapping on her cellphone.
I walked out onto the pier and over to a bollard and checked the mooring. A chain. With a padlock. “Son of a bitch!” I kicked the bollard in anger, briefly considered trying to kick it off, and realized after the first kick it wasn’t going anywhere.
I had three options.
Quit. Not acceptable.
Pay. And risk Dad’s money on this game? Not likely.
Swim. Not an option.
Damn it…
I walked back to the shack. “Can you at least give me a couple of garbage bags?”
She rummaged through the desk and came up with four Heavy-Duty Hefties. “Why?”
I snatched them out of her hand. “’cause ‘The Hard Way’ is my middle name,” I growled.
I walked to the end of the pier and sat down, pulled my boots off. They went into one bag, along with my satchel, vest, and two folded Hefties. Eyes forward, teeth gritted, I pulled off my shirt, glad I’d dressed modestly this morning instead of my usual – smaller – more warm-weather-appropriate apparel. From the beach, I heard a guy shout “Hey, look at this!” followed by a couple of wolf whistles. I extended a bird over my shoulder. I’m not self-conscious at all, I didn’t have problem doing this, but I’m not into that exhibitionist and voyeur shit. I twice did a one-legged dance and put both my jeans and shirt into the black plastic bag. Tying the top, I placed it inside another bag, and tied that one tight as well.
I considered the Pulse Master rifle, and decided – sadly – to leave it on the pier. I’d have enough trouble dragging the bulky bag through the water, much less a large water gun. I’d come back and get it next hour.
I took ten deep, quick breaths to oxygenate my blood, and slipped off the pier. My feet knifed into the water and didn’t hit bottom. That was good; nothing ends a game like breaking your legs.
The water quality nearly convinced me to quit though. It was oily and gritty and stank faintly of sewage. Scummy foam lapped around the posts holding up the pier, and a dead fish floated with a collection of beer cans, caught in a water-level support beam. I closed my mouth tight and tried not to breathe.
You’re either in or you’re out, Samantha, what’s it gonna be?
I switched the bag from hand to hand every few dozen meters, stroking like mad with the other arm and kicking like a fish. Eventually though, I had to breathe, and like any time you try to breathe while swimming, I ended up swallowing some of the foul water. I nearly puked a third of the way to Renard Island. Seriously, I was gonna need MAJOR antibiotics tomorrow.
I’d ranged the distance at somewhere around a klick, probably a bit less, and two thirds of the way there, I started tiring. This wouldn’t have been difficult in a pool on a normal day, but I was already tired, and the cold, briny bay was NOT a pool.
I paused for a moment, treading water, relaxing and trying to float. The world looked different out here. At water level, the coastline was dark and hulking, with only a few points of light dotting the blackness. The bay mixed with the nearly black night sky above, creating a snowblind effect. If it hadn’t been for the hulking even-darker-darkness of Renard ahead, and the halogen spotlights on the dock way to the left, I would’ve been completely lost, like wandering in a shaken snowglobe
C’mon Samantha, you’re more than halfway there…
I righted myself in the water and started stroking my tired arm through the surface.
I wasn’t exhausted when I touched the chopped concrete retaining wall, but I was tired. I floated in the darkness, waiting and listening. Sounds of running and shooting carried to me on the warm breeze. I shivered involuntarily. The air might be warm, but this water was cold.
No sense in doing this half way. I bobbed along, hand on the rocks until I reached the back of the island. It was quite a ways around. There were halogen spotlights on the back of the island as well, but no dock. That hadn’t stopped someone from tying a boat up to a rock outcropping. From the water I surveyed the scene. Tall, dark grass at the top of the rocks. Three blue refill barrels under the lights. Nobody else around. Anyone else competing this hour was headed for the docks, that’s where the code was.
I pulled myself from the water and shook off. This was freaking miserable. I was cold, soaked in scum, my eyes were gritty, I’d swallowed a damn gallon of that terrible tasting bay water, and I was standing nearly naked on a dark island in the middle of Lake Michigan, participating in a water fight.
My mind boggled at the stupidity and my own pathetic-ness. Then I got a grip on it.
I dunked my head in one of the barrels, swished my hair around, blinked underwater a few times to clear my eyes, cleaned the crap out of my ears. Then I got in the barrel. It was big enough to hold me, and I crouched as low as I could under the water and scrubbed at my skin with my fingernails. I got out, and keeping low and behind a barrel, tore the bags open and got dressed. Dry clothes over wet skin and underwear is not fun, but it beat the alternative. I put the extra bags for the return trip in my satchel, checked to make sure its contents – including the Triple Shot – were all in order and slung it.
The next part was not going to be enjoyable. But I thought it necessary anyway.
I stuck my index and middle fingers as far down my throat as I could, and wiggled them around far longer than was necessary to trip my gag reflex. I bent double, puking up bay water and a candy bar from earlier, and then drank out of one of the barrels I hadn’t washed in. Then I did it again, and drank a second time.
My throat burned from vomiting, and the whole experience left me feeling drained. How do bulimics do it so easily?
I refilled the Triple Shot from the third barrel and vowed to “battlefield pickup” a rifle.
Anyone guarding the pier would necessarily expect threats to come from the front, from the direction of Bay Beach. The pier was really the only place possible to tie up a boat, and nobody would be stupid enough to try and swim over. I checked my cellphone’s clock. My stupidity had taken about twenty minutes. Thirty five to go.
The island was covered in waist-high grass which rose and fell with the contours of the land. In sparse patches, small copses of trees waved black-on-black against the sky, the seeds no doubt borne there by the omnipresent seagulls.
I sprinted for the farthest right cluster of trees, keeping low, pistol down. Hopefully I could take out everyone I needed to very quickly. You don’t bring a pistol to a fight if you want to fight very long.
The cluster turned out to be bigger than I thought, and I hugged the edge, settling into the border zone between the grasslands and the woods as I ran forward. I moved by feel and intuition, just barely making out the dark masses of trees in time to avoid them.
Way ahead the spotlights on the dock were lit up like a homing beacon, and beyond that, the lights of the city twinkled faintly.
And here I was, on an island in the bay, walking along the edge of a forest.
The ground was sandy but solid, and the whole area felt and smelled dry. I was sure it was, given the lack of mosquitoes – the bloodsucking pests need shallow still water to breed, and they sure weren’t getting it in the lake, or on the lack of a beach.
Ahead, the forest broke, twenty five meters of open grassland between it and another cluster of trees. I sprinted low for them, navigated their perimeter, and nearly stepped into the circle of harsh white wash cast by the spotlights. About fifteen meters of dense grass ahead was the dock. I crouched even lower and moved through the grass slowly.
There weren’t mosquitoes, but there were flies, and I was disturbing them. I knew it wasn’t, but it felt like my skin was crawling with the little bastards.
At the edge of the grass, I surveyed the scene. A rack of water guns stood in the middle-back of the dock along with five fifty-five gallon blue refill barrels.
Most interestingly of all was a phonebooth, set right in the center, forward of the refill barrels. An old, red, Doctor Who looking phonebooth-telephonebox-thingie. No windows. Weird, but I guessed that’s where the call would come through at ten.
A guy and a girl – both about my age – paced opposite sides of the dock, obviously waiting for company. They had heavy, powerful-looking water guns in their hands, obviously intended to repel assaults on the dock.
The guy was on the right, the girl on the left. I waited until they both had their backs to me, and then stalked out onto the pier. The waves slapped loudly at the concrete block retaining wall, muffling the sounds of my approach. I shot the guy in the back, keeping the trigger down long enough to give him an undeniable sense of how soaked he really was, and whipped the pistol around to tap out the girl with a scatter of five shots to the chest just as he started to yelp “Hey! What was – !”
They didn’t say a word to me. I don’t think there were any to be said. They just put their water guns back in the rack and got into a rowboat tied up next to the pier.
I kept the pistol trained on them the whole time, and only once they were off the wooden planks did I run up to the rack of guns to grab something more rifle-like.
There were half a dozen each of blue Vanquishers and Vindicators by some company called Water Warriors on the left side of the rack. I slung a full Vanquisher, simply because I liked the trigger being in the middle of the cannon-shape. It gave me a chance to pull the tank back into my shoulder like a stock. Not that there were anything approximating sights on the tubular little bullpup, but it’d be a little more accurate to try and aim with it stabilized in three places.
The right side of the rack had a big painted sign in place of three guns. “Antiques! Rare! Renard Island use ONLY! Do not remove!”
The guns on this side were all of a type – aggressive. Some were short and squat, others long and lean, all Super Soaker brand, all looking for someone to soak.
One of the shorter ones bore duct-tape label of “CPS Twelve Kay.” I could tell from the frame that it had been cut apart and put back together. Interesting. A skinny, mostly cylindrical model bore the legend “CPS Twenty Five Hundred.” That might be its designation, but I thought it would be more descriptively described “The Bill Clinton.” Alongside that was a thick, heavy rounded “CPS Twenty Seven Hundred” that, due to the weight, could generously be described as a water warrior’s Squad Automatic Weapon. I ignored that one. Strong though I am, I’d probably break my back trying to heft it around. A double barreled model I recognized from earlier in the day was entitled “The Monster Exx Ell.”
I was sticking with the Vanquisher, but pulled the Twelve Kay and the Bill Clinton off the rack, leaning them up against the barrels.
Warning bells went off in my head, all of an instant. Something evil this way comes – the sixth sense of a prey animal gaining indefinable awareness of a predator nearby.
