Richard DuBois - Last Resort

“Wait!” I pull back, and point to the bag I dropped on the road when the men struck me. “I need my life preserver in the bag.”

Action crosses his arms, clearly losing patience.

“I can’t swim,” I lie, praying Action did not see me snorkeling around the resort prior to the E.M.P. blast. “This boat is too deep to sail right to shore. You’ll have to anchor off the reef and swim the rest of the way to the resort. Without that vest I won’t be able to come with you.”

Action considers my words.

“Which means I won’t be able to show you where the liquor is,” I seal the deal.

Action tosses the vest to one of his men who toss it to me. Clutching the vest, with my flippers still tied to my waist, I huddle on the bow of the deck and wait for nightfall.

Night comes with a new moon. Thousands of stars sparkle in the sky like crushed glass sprinkled on black velvet. Still damp from my dousing, I don the life vest—both for added warmth and to ensure I will not part from it again. One of the thugs lights a lantern. Anxiously, I wait to see if the two captive women will join us on the boat. To my relief, a man stays behind to guard them. Every member of the gang—save the one left behind to guard the sex slaves—crams onboard. Action sits across from me, our knees close enough to touch. No one speaks to me. Packing tightly together, arm to arm and leg to leg, I smell the stale sweat from their unwashed bodies.

The thugs lift anchor and unfurl the sails on the creaking vessel. Slowly, we gather speed and cruise into open water. I peer over the railing, gauging our distance from land and how much time I have left to enact my plan. Other than the sound of the water slapping against the hull and the occasional flutter of the sails, there is no other sound. My heart beats faster. I gulp air, trying to steady my nerves. We approach the halfway point between the mainland and Goat Island. Soon, we will round the cape that separates the resort from the rest of the coastline. I have to act now.

“I have to piss,” I stand up, preparing to walk to the bow in the hopes I can be alone.

Action shoves me back down. “You already did dat in your pants.”

The rest of the gang laughs.

“Hey, Action, did you ever see his woman?” Owen asks.

“She de one with de tight ass, right?”

“Aye, she de one,” Owen nods.

Action chuckles knowingly. “I remember dat one. I remember dat one well.”

My face grows hot. I look at the floor.

Action taps me on the head. “You say the Yankee man wants your woman. Whatcha tink he is doin’ to her right now? I bet I know,” Action leaps up and, with his hands in the air grabbing what are meant to be my wife’s ankles, thrust his hips obscenely. In a high pitched voice he coos, “Oh, dat’s it, Yankee man. Give it to me. Harder! Harder!”

Owen and the rest of the thugs convulse with hooting laughter. With my jaw clenched in silent fury, I glare at Action. Seeing my rage, Action’s smile slides away. He sits across from me once again. Sensing the tension, the others quiet down.

“Hey, tough guy, why didn’t you kill de Yankee man when you had de chance?” Action asks.

I swallow hard. “I should have.”

“You should have,” Action repeats and nods his head. “But you didn’t. “You tink I don’t know you. You were at de Jacuzzi. I remember. You scorned me.”

“No I didn—”

“Don bother lyin’, mon. I seen it in your eyes,” Action continues. “Maybe you thought you were better than Action. Not better than me now, are you? No, not now when you need me to get your woman back. You thought Action was your enemy and Yankee man was your friend. Now maybe you tink different. Maybe now you see de true lay of de land. Listen and understand me now. It is not white person or black person, islander or visitor. It is who has this,” he holds up a machete. “And what you’re willing to do with it.”

One of the men working the sails tells Action they are about to round the cape into the bay. Before I can blink, Action nods to the men around me—a signal they must have worked out in advance—and the men seize me.

“What are you do—” I try to holler, but one of the men clamps a hand over my mouth. They lift me off my feet and pass me along the side of the boat and below the deck. Light from the lantern swings erratically, allowing me only a brief glimpse of where they are taking me. I see the cramped quarters of a fisherman’s boat: counter tops, navigation charts, and non-working electric equipment. They open a narrow closet—not much bigger than a telephone booth—and shove me inside.

“Let me out!” I kick the door, but there is hardly enough room to lift my leg.

“You come out after we take de resort,” one of the men says.

Groping about blindly in the darkness, I feel wires and bits of insulation. I open the life vest, pull out the bottle of gasoline, and flick the lighter hidden inside the vest so that I can see. Fittingly for my predicament, the closet is as narrow and dark as the interior of a coffin.

My plan is simple: Get on the boat, sail it to the point where the current is strongest, and use my gasoline and lighter to set the boat on fire. Of the murdering thugs, those not burned in the fire will leap into the sea. The deadly current will sweep them away to Goat Island where they will starve to death, unable to swim back to the mainland, or the current will pull them past Goat Island to drown far out in the ocean. As for me, using the flippers and vest, I will swim back to the mainland as I had before. In one shot, I will wipe out the thugs, save the resort and protect Gwen. Up to this point, my plan worked perfectly, and it still can… if I am willing to sacrifice myself.

I start to hyperventilate, horrified at the choice that fate leads me to. Time! Time! I wish for more time, but there is none. Every second that passes brings us closer to the resort. Soon we will sail inside the bay, safely beyond the pull of the current. No matter what, I am a dead man, but if I set the boat aflame now my death will not be in vain. I want to be brave, head high in the face of death, but I cannot. I start to weep.

Gwen. I will never see her face again. She does love me, and she does want to be with me, above all others. I know that now. She proved that the night Conner drove me from the resort. Conner—so masculine and strong—offers her food and protection, but still she chose me. Gwen will never know what really happened to me. She will never know I died trying to protect her.

I yank one of the dangling wires out of the wall and fasten it around the doorknob so that no one will be able to open the door and extinguish the fire until it is beyond control. Fighting back the tears, I wear a rueful smile, realizing Action unwittingly put me in the best spot on the boat to enact my plan. The old wood and insulation that surround me will act as excellent tinder for the fire.

I pour the gasoline around the closet, grip the lighter in my trembling hand and pray that I will swiftly lose consciousness as the flames engulf me.

In the pitch black of the closet, I give myself a moment for any last thoughts and as I do so, I press my back against the wall. The wall buckles behind me. That is odd. It is difficult to turn in the narrow closet, but I face the back wall and press on it. It is no more than thin plywood wedged in place. I rip it from the wall and feel what must be a layer of insulation. I tear it and put my hand into the opening, expecting to feel a hard wall, but instead I feel… nothing. Air. Open space. I tear the remaining insulation away and shine the lighter inside the opening. It is a crawl space running the length of the deck to the bow. The crawl space is exceedingly narrow, but I see right away that I am slender enough to squeeze into it. Does it even lead anywhere? For all I know it could take me to a dead end. There is only one way to find out.