Richard DuBois - Last Resort

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After discovering his wife’s infidelity, mild mannered adjunct professor Phillip Crane and his wife, Gwen, try to save their marriage with a trip to an upscale resort on a remote island. The tropical isle is paradise on earth, but when an EMP blast knocks out the power Phillip realizes how easily heaven can turn to hell. The stakes for Phillip rise as the resort becomes a fortress besieged by bands of murderous islanders. Within the resort, dangers mount when one of the other guests becomes a ruthless tyrant who covets Gwen for himself. Caught between brutal dictatorship and bloody anarchy, Phillip must fight alone for the woman he loves and for the light of humanity.

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He pours the rum on my injury. The pain is so sharp that I grip the counter and hiss through clenched teeth.

He reapplies the dry cloth to my wound. “That should do the trick. While I’m at it, let me put some on that hole on your leg. How’d you get that anyway?”

“Sea urchin.”

He dabs rum on the calf wound and offers me a swig from the bottle.

I pull up my pants and shake my head, declining the rum. “Not on an empty stomach. Let’s find some food.”

In the same cabinet where Nelson found the rum we discover cans of chili, boxes of dried cereal, and jars of jelly. We devour it all, mixing it into a horrendous new recipe and scooping it into our maws with our hands. I finish eating and take a deep gulp of the rum. All the while, the wild dogs outside serenade us with frenzied barking.

“How are we going to get out of here?” Nelson asks.

I stare at the dog carcass on the floor. “Help me carry that upstairs.”

I grab the thick folds of skin on the dead dog’s neck and Nelson lifts the back end.

“Now I know what they mean by the term ‘dead weight’,” Nelson grunts as we struggle to lift the dog.

Upstairs there are two small, sparsely furnished bedrooms. The room ceilings angle with the steep pitch of the roof. Before I entered the dwelling, I noticed a small upper balcony. Now, I open the window and climb onto it. Instantly, the encircling pack regroups beneath me. Oddly, even as they bark and pace back and forth, many of the dogs wag their tails, as though they cannot decide if they want to play or maul somebody.

I turn to Nelson. “It seems without their leader they don’t know what to do.”

I drag the dead dog over the windowsill and heave it onto the balcony railing. The moment the pack sees their leader they freeze, watching us with tense expectation. I clench my first and beat the dead dog’s ribs, shouting with each blow.

Pointing at the pack below, I holler, “Your leader is dead! I killed him, and I’ll do the same to you.”

I push the carcass off the balcony and it lands with a thud on the dusty, hard packed ground. Three of the dogs bolt fifty yards away, stopping to look back with their tails between their legs. Other dogs tentatively sniff the body of their fallen leader. The stunned silence from the pack is in stark contrast to their previous frenetic barks and growls. They look back up at me and I refuse to break eye contact, staring them down until each one of them looks away.

I climb back into the bedroom. “I believe I got my point across.”

We slide the table from the entrance and venture outside. Half the dogs have vanished, while the remainders keep a wary distance from us, heads bowed, tails between their legs.

“They seem almost tame without the lead dog,” Nelson notes.

I nod in agreement, and then pat the kitchen knife I tucked in the belt loop of my pants. “I’m glad we have this, all the same.”

There is a small, rusted shed not far from the main building. The sliding doors grate loudly as we push them open. The shed contains numerous useful items such as a gas canister filled with gasoline, a long spool of thick, nylon rope, pick axes, saws, hammers and other tools. We find a shovel and a pitchfork and begin digging a grave for Curtis. I am injured; Nelson is old; the noon sun blazes above. Those three facts slow, but do not halt, our progress. As we dig, we relay what happened to one another after Conner banished Nelson from the resort. Nelson explains how he wandered with Curtis; staying off the paved roads for fear that Action and his thugs would see them. As night fell, they spotted the home we are now in, but as they approached the building, the dogs attacked. I tell Nelson of Conner’s attempt to kill me, how I fled into the sea, landed on Goat Island and swam back.

Nelson shakes his head in disgust. “Conner is insane. Curtis would still be alive if it weren’t for him.”

“I have to go back there.”

“He’ll kill you.”

“Not if he doesn’t know I’m there. I can’t leave Gwen. I’ll sneak her out. We can stay here, in this home. It’s got access to fresh water and we can figure out how to grow our own food. This island has tropical fruit farms. If we work with the islanders, we can maintain them. Between fish from the sea and crops that we grow we will have enough food to survive.”

Nelson pauses from digging to catch his breath and consider my proposal.

“It could work, but what about the thugs?” Nelson asks. “They don’t want to work with us. They want to kill us.”

I lean on my shovel and with the back of my hand wipe a trickle of sweat from my eye. I wish I had an answer to Nelson’s question, but I have none. He is right. There is no chance of forming a community with the islanders as long as Action and his thugs run amok. The dwelling could protect us from the dogs should they decide to attack again, but it would not keep the thugs out. The safest place from Action and his men is the resort, and Conner ensures the resort is not safe at all.

I take an old sheet from the dwelling to throw over Curtis’s remains to spare Nelson from the gruesome sight. After a day in the heat, covered in flies, the putrid smell nearly makes me wretch. Dragging Curtis’s body to the grave is awful, grisly work—the kind of thing that causes someone to involuntarily shudder later on when they think about it. Gently placing him in the grave is impossible—he is too heavy—so we unceremoniously drop him in. Nelson looks traumatized by the crude treatment of his beloved.

“Sorry,” I say, and then grab the shovel to cover the body with dirt.

Afterwards, in the rusted shed, I loop the nylon rope from the shed around my shoulder.

“I can use this to lower myself over the cliff surrounding the resort,” I explain in response to Nelson’s questioning stare.

Skeptical, he says, “You don’t strike me as the mountain climbing type.”

“There’s no other way—not if I want to rescue Gwen. The night patrol will catch me if I try to swim across the lagoon, and because of the treacherous sea current, swimming along the coast and sneaking onto the resort via the beach is not an option. Lowering myself down the side of the cliff could work because they won’t expect it. They won’t see me after the sun goes down, and I can descend to the nature preserve.”

Nelson appears unconvinced. “Getting out of the resort will be much harder than getting in. I don’t see Gwen being able to climb up the side of a cliff.”

“I’ll climb ahead of her and pull her up on the rope,” I say with rising irritation, annoyed that Nelson finds flaws in my plan. “It’s a chance I have to take.”

“And how’s your backside?”

“Scabbing over nicely. Will you be here when we return?”

Nelson gives a mournful nod. “This is where Curtis is. I’m not going to leave him. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I reply and head off to rescue my wife.

Sunset is still a few hours away, so I am in no hurry as I walk along the road to the resort. Around the bend, I hear men talking—coming my way. I hide amidst the scraggly shrubs and tall grass along the roadside. Two tall island men walk past me, shirtless, their dark skin shining with perspiration. Gleaming machetes dangle from their belts.

“I get de tall skinny one,” one of the men says to the other.

“Which one is dat?”

“De one wit de long brown hair,” his comrade, who I recognize as Owen, replies. “Remembuh, I pointed her to you when she first arrived. De one wit de husband wit de blonde hair.”

They must be talking about Alexandra, not knowing she is dead.

The other man chortles. “I cannot wait for de night to come.”

Tonight? What do they mean? Discreetly, I follow them through the shrubbery to find out. The road forks and the men follow the branch leading to the sea. I stay far enough way to prevent the men from hearing my footsteps, but close enough so that the men are always in my sight. The land slopes as we reach the sea. The road ends at a boathouse and a bus sized wooden sailboat moored to a dock. Scores of thugs mill about the scene, all of them armed and seeming to have no purpose other than to kill time. Action strolls into view on the deck of the sailboat. This is no sleek rich man’s toy. It is a working boat with obvious signs of wear.

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