Matt Hlinak - DoG

“Be reasonable,” Schuler said. “He’s charged with statutory rape of a sixteen-year-old. You don’t get the death penalty for that. He’s going to be stuck on this island by himself. That’s like a prison sentence. He will be punished.”

“Bullshit. Rapists don’t just get a prison sentence. You know what a prison sentence would be like for this pervert.”

“That may be true, but we don’t even know if he’s guilty. All we know is some prosecutor in Illinois thinks he did something wrong. There hasn’t been a trial. He’s entitled to a trial.”

“Fine by me,” Williams said. “We’ll have one right now.”

He stepped forward and aimed the gun at Culann’s head.

“Did you do what they said you did?” he asked.

“Please, put the gun down,” Schuler said.

“I asked you a question,” he shouted to Culann.

“This isn’t right,” Schuler said. “Stop it.”

“You have three seconds to answer the question. Did you fuck an underage girl?”

Culann thought carefully about how to answer. He considered lying, although he doubted it would save his life. He figured that since he was probably dead either way, he might as well keep his self-respect. He was far from an admirable man, but he had a certain sense of honor, honor that he’d come to Alaska to try to win back. He didn’t want to go to his grave groveling for his life.

“Yes,” Culann said.

The sound of a gunshot boomed across the island and bounced off the waves of the sea. Culann clenched all of the muscles in his body in the hopes that this would somehow cause the bullet to miss him. He went numb, dropping to his knees atop two corpses. Then he exhaled and searched for the bullet hole.

It took him a while to find it. He felt his head, patted down his chest, and ran his hands over his arms and legs. Finally, he looked up and saw Williams crumpled onto the pier with a bloodstain spreading across his chest. Schuler holstered her weapon and bent down to check her partner’s pulse.

“Thank you,” Culann said.

“Don’t say anything,” Schuler replied. She looked like she was fighting to keep from crying. She straightened up, rubbed her eyes and turned her back on Culann.

“Just let me die.”

Culann awoke amidst a pile of slumbering dogs in Frank’s bed. He was sweating, and his handcuffed wrists ached. He crawled over Alphonse to get off the bed and then went to the bathroom. When he finished, he realized that the plumbing in Frank’s shack was run by electric pumps, which were no longer functioning. If he lived much longer, he was going to have to get used to life without running water.

Since the sink didn’t work, Culann had to rely on the contents of Frank’s refrigerator to slake his thirst. All he could find were cans of beer that were barely below room temperature. He choked one down and then set off to see if Schuler had made it through the night. He walked out of Frank’s cabin, not bothering to shut the door behind him. The last time he’d seen her, she’d gone into Alistair’s tavern, so that’s where Culann looked first. The dogs shook themselves awake and lolled after him. The sun hung in its usual position in the middle of the sky, giving Culann no idea what time it was.

When he arrived at Alistair’s, Culann found Schuler hunched over the bar with her arms wrapped around a whiskey bottle. He couldn’t tell if she was dead drunk or dead. The dogs began to whimper, which Culann knew wasn’t a good sign. He placed his hand on her neck. It was cold.

Schuler had saved him, and Culann was grateful for it. He vowed to remember her for the rest of his life, however short it might be. But he’d seen enough dead bodies recently that he didn’t dwell too hard on her passing. He had his own survival to worry about.

First, he went behind the bar and found a few bottles of club soda. He guzzled one and half of another. After a long belch, he started looking for the key to Schuler’s handcuffs. He searched her utility belt, which was a bit difficult because she was slumped forward, but he eventually found a small key in a velcro pouch. He pulled the key out and then realized that unlocking the handcuffs was going to be more challenging than he’d imagined. The cuffs held his wrists tightly together, and the keyhole was on the underside of the cuffs. It took a considerable amount of painful contortion just to get the key into position. Once he had it in the hole, his fingers were stretched so far he couldn’t twist the key in the lock. Twice he dropped the key and had to start all over. By the time he finally coaxed the latch to spring open, the cuffs had scraped away patches of skin on both wrists.

He sat down at the bar next to Schuler’s corpse to rest for a few minutes. He finished the second bottle of club soda and then took a swig from Schuler’s whiskey bottle. He had to get back to the entirely unpleasant task of loading corpses onto the police boat before the bodies decayed or got eaten by the dogs. Culann started with Schuler. Figuring they might come in handy, he first stripped off her binoculars and utility belt and laid them atop the bar. Since she was slumped over in her seat, it was relatively easy for him to position his shoulders underneath her body and pick her up in a fireman’s carry. His legs wobbled as he lurched toward the door, but he managed to slide through and deposit her into the wheelbarrow. He pushed her down the pier and then came upon Williams’ blood-soaked body. Culann cursed and then grabbed Williams by the legs and dragged him to the police boat. The slats of the pier didn’t make for a very smooth surface, and Williams was a large man. When Culann finally reached the end of the pier, he dropped down amongst the corpses and yanked Williams’ legs until his body slid over the rail and into the boat. Culann stripped off Williams’ gun and belt and tossed them onto the dock. Them he pulled himself up onto the pier and resumed pushing the wheelbarrow towards the edge, where he dumped Schuler on top of Williams.

Culann was already exhausted from the effort of disposing of two dead bodies all by himself. Plus, Schuler was a lot smaller than most of the men he’d need to grab. The prospect of repeating this task twenty-two more times discouraged him. He took another swig of whiskey and then grabbed little Marty off the far end of the bar. He figured the relative ease of hauling a child’s body might help him regain his confidence. It did, briefly, but then he struggled with Margaret, Carla and Genevieve, who’d all died close to the pier. Culann’s thighs burned, his arms felt numb, and he still had an island worth of dead fishermen to haul away.

The dogs didn’t help. They followed Culann wherever he went and encircled him as he walked. More than once he stumbled over the mutts while hefting a corpse. They also crawled over the dead bodies just when Culann started to pick one up. He’d shove one dog away, and then another would take its place. At one point he got so frustrated that he shouted, “Get the fuck out of the way,” which the dogs amazingly seemed to understand. The canine sea suddenly parted, opening a clear path back to the pier.

“Stay here,” he said, and just as miraculously, all forty-eight dogs remained where they were. They didn’t seem too happy about it, though. They stared at him, a sea of puppy-dog eyes, and they whined and shuffled their paws, but not one of the normally-unruly dogs followed him.

“Okay, you can come,” he said, and they bounded after him.

He hauled away two more fishermen and finished Schuler’s whiskey bottle before collapsing against the wall of Alistair’s tavern. He’d worked for what felt like two or three hours on an empty stomach, and now his body refused to move. After a few minutes, Culann crawled into Alistair’s kitchen and devoured half a loaf of white bread and several slices of American cheese. He washed it down with a couple of warm beers, which were hard to keep down. He realized he needed a way to keep his beer cold or he’d have a hard time making it by himself.