John Hawks - The Dark River

Michael took a flashlight from one of the mercenaries and followed Boone into the storage hut. The floor and walls were splattered with blood, still bright red and glistening. A plastic cloth covered the four dead splicers. A second cloth covered Victory Fraser, but Michael could see the scuffed soles of her shoes.

They climbed down a staircase to a cellar with a gravel floor and passed through a door into a side room. Matthew Corrigan lay on a stone slab with a white muslin cloth over his legs. As Michael looked down at the body, images from the past overwhelmed him with an unexpected force. He remembered his father weeding the garden behind the farmhouse, driving the family’s battered pickup truck, and sharpening a carving knife for a Christmas turkey. He remembered his father chopping wood on a winter’s day, the snow clinging to his long brown hair as the blade of his ax rose up against the sky. Those childhood days were gone now. Gone forever. But the memories still had the power to move Michael-and that made him angry.

“He’s not dead,” Boone explained. “I got the medical kit stethoscope and heard a heartbeat. This is how you look when you cross over to another world.”

Michael resented Boone’s cocky smile and his insinuating tone of voice. “All right, you found him,” he said. “Now get out of here.”

“For what reason?”

“I don’t need a reason. If you want to keep your job, I would recommend you show some respect to a representative of the executive board. Go upstairs and leave me alone.”

Boone’s mouth became a tight line, but he nodded and left the cellar. Michael could hear the other men walking around the storage hut and pushing boxes against the wall. Holding the flashlight in his left hand, he gazed down at Matthew Corrigan. When Michael was growing up in South Dakota, adults always said that Gabriel looked like their father. Although Matthew’s hair was gray and his face was deeply lined, Michael could now see the resemblance. He wondered if there was any truth to the rumor picked up by Tabula computers. Had Gabriel been on this island and had he discovered the body?

“Can you hear me?” Michael asked his father. “Can…you…hear…me?”

No response. He touched his father’s throat and pushed hard. For a second, he thought he felt the flutter of a pulse. If he got rid of the flashlight he could squeeze the throat with both hands. Even if your Light was traveling through another realm, your body could die in this world. No one would stop him from killing Matthew. No one would criticize his judgment. Mrs. Brewster would see his action as another demonstration of his loyalty to the cause.

Michael placed the flashlight on the ledge in the wall and stepped closer to his father’s body. His breath appeared and then vanished in the cold air. In his entire life, he had never felt so completely focused on the moment. Do it , Michael thought. He ran away fifteen years ago. Now he can disappear forever .

He reached out again and peeled back his father’s eyelid. A blue eye stared back at him with no spark of life in its dark pupil. Michael felt as if he were looking at a dead man-and that was the problem. In one world or another, he wanted to confront his father and force him to admit that he had abandoned his family. Destroying this empty shell meant nothing; it would never provide him with satisfaction.

A memory flashed through his mind of a schoolyard fight back in South Dakota when he was a teenager. After Michael had punched and kicked his opponent, the other boy had fallen to the ground and covered his face with his hands. But that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t what he was looking for. He wanted complete surrender. Fear.

He retrieved the flashlight and walked upstairs to the blood-covered room where Boone and two mercenaries were waiting. “Load the body into one of the helicopters,” Michael told them. “We’re taking him off this island.”

The wolves waited until Gabriel stepped back onto the roof and then they grabbed him. His arms were forced behind his back, his wrists tied with a length of wire, and his eyes blindfolded with a torn shirt. When the Traveler could no longer defend himself, one of the wolves punched him in the throat. Gabriel fell onto the tar-paper roof and tried to roll up into a ball as the wolves began kicking him in the chest and stomach. He was blind and desperate, gasping for air.

Someone swung a club at the base of his spine, and a wave of pain surged through every part of his body. Gabriel heard voices talking about the school. Take him to the school . Hands pulled him to his feet and dragged him down the marble staircase. Out on the street, he kept stumbling and tripping over chunks of rubble. He tried to remember where they were going. Left turn. Right turn. Stop. But the pain made it difficult to think. Finally, he was guided up another staircase and taken into a room with a smooth tile floor. The electric cord was untied and replaced with handcuffs. A shackle was fastened around his neck, and he was chained to a steel ring bolted into the floor.

The Traveler’s body was sore, and he could feel dry blood on his face and hands. Images of the river, the shattered bridge, the gas flares burning among the ruined buildings overwhelmed his thoughts. After a while he fell into an uneasy sleep, waking up with a start when he heard the clang of the door swinging open. Hands pulled off his blindfold and he found himself looking at the black man wearing the white lab coat and the man with the braided blond hair. “You can’t get out of this building,” the blond man told him. “You got no life-unless we give it back to you.”

As the wolves took off his shackles, Gabriel glanced around the room. He saw a teacher’s desk and an old-fashioned blackboard. A cardboard alphabet had been fastened to the wall, but some of the faded green letters dangled upside down, held by one last remaining pin.

“You’re coming with us,” the black man said. “The commissioner wants to meet you.”

Holding Gabriel’s arms, the two wolves pulled him into the hallway. The three-story building had brick walls and small windows covered with shutters. During some stage of the endless fighting, the wolves had converted the school into a fort, dormitory, storage house, and prison. Who was the commissioner? Gabriel wondered. He had to be bigger and stronger and even more vicious than the men who swaggered down the hallway with clubs and knives hanging from their belts.

They turned a corner, passed through some swinging doors, and stepped into a large room that had once been the school’s auditorium. Curving rows of wooden seats faced a stage. A steel pipe ran across the stage and fed gas into an L-shaped fixture that burned with a bright flame. Two benches were placed near the back wall; the wolves sat there like petitioners outside the door of a king.

At the center of the stage was a large table stacked with manila folders and black ledger books. The man sitting behind the table wore a dark blue business suit, a white shirt, and a red bow tie. He was thin and bald and his face radiated self-righteousness. Even from a distance, Gabriel felt like this man knew all the regulations and he was prepared to enforce them in every possible way. There would be no negotiations or concessions. Everyone was guilty-and they would be punished.

Gabriel’s two guards stopped halfway down the aisle and waited for the commissioner to conclude his interview with a large man who was holding a gunnysack wet with blood. One of the commissioner’s assistants counted the objects inside the sack and then whispered a number.

“Very good.” The commissioner’s voice was strong and purposeful. “You may receive your food allocation.”